"No ladder needs the bird, but skies
To situate its wings,
Nor any leader's grim baton
Arraigns it as it sings.
The implements of bliss are few--
As Jesus says of Him,
'Come unto me,' the moiety
That wafts the cherubim."
--EMILY DICKINSON.
OH, Music! voice inspired of all our joys and sorrows, of all our hopes and
disappointments, to thee we turn for life, for strength and peace. The
choristers of Nature--the birds--are our teachers. How free, how vital, how
unconstrained! The bird drops into song and delicious tones as easily as he
drops from the bough through the air to the twig or ground. To learn of the
bird has been found to be a truthful means whereby children's attention and
interest may be held long enough to absorb the sense of intervals in pitch,
notation on the staff, and rythms.
In teaching a child, it is obvious that the desire to learn must be kept
widely awake, and heretofore black notes on five lines and four spaces,
with heiroglyphics at the beginning to denote clef, and figures to indicate
the rhythm of the notes, have never interested children. But now, color and
the bird with its egg for a note, telegraph wires for the staff, and
swinging the pulsing rhythm instead of beating the time, has charmed
children into accomplishment of sight singing and sweet purity of tone.
Formerly, and by the old method, this was a long and laborious task, barely
tolerated by the musical child and disliked by the little soul unawakened
thereby to its own silent music.
It may be questioned, what is the new method, and what its value? The
method is this: In recognizing tone, the finer and more sensitive musician
has realized that certain intervals of scale suggested to their minds or
reminded them of certain colors. Thus the Doh, the opening and closing tone
of the scale, the foundation and cap stone, suggested Red, which is the
strong, firm color of colors, and on the ethical side suggested Love, which
is the beginning and end, the Alpha and Omega of Life. This firmness and
strength is easy to recognize in the tune "America," where the tonic Doh is
so insistent, and colors the whole melody. "The Star-Spangled Banner" and
"Hail Columbia" are other strong examples.
The Dominant or fifth tone in the scale is clear and pure, which the blue
of heaven represents, and so also the quality of aspiration or exaltation
is sounded. This is joyously clear in the Palestrina "Victory," set to the
Easter hymn, "The strife is o'er the battle done."
The Mediant or third of the scale is peaceful and calm, and the color
Yellow is suggested, with its vital, radiating, sunshiny warmth and
comfort. The "O, rest in the Lord" from "Elijah" exemplifies this quality
of restful and peaceful assurance. Of the tones of the Dominant chord
besides the Soh which we have considered, the Ti or seventh interval is
full of irresolution and unrest, crying for completion in the strong and
resolute Doh. This unrest and yearning suggest the mixed color Magenta. The
quality is expressed in bits of an old English song entitled "Too Late."
The insistency of the seventh is felt in the strong measures with the
words, "oh let us in, oh, let us in."
The Ray or second of the scale which completes the Dominant chord is
rousing and expectant--quite in contrast to the eagerness and dispair of
the seventh. This second is represented by orange, the mixture of red and
yellow between which it stands being equally related to both, with the
expectancy born of trust and rest which the Mediant expresses, and the
rousing hopefulness which is the outcome of the firm strength and
conviction of the Doh. As a musical example take Pleyel's hymn set to the
words: "Children of the Heavenly King." In the remaining tones of the
sub-dominant chord Fah and Lah, we find Fah the fourth has a distinctively
leaning tendency, a solemnity which calls forth the direct opposite of the
seventh or Ti which yearns upward and cannot be otherwise satisfied, while
Fah is a downward leaning, a protective and even-solemnly grand, dependent
tone. We hear this in the dead march in "Saul," and the almost stern
reproach in the two measures of "Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now."
Fah's tonal qualities suggest the protective green.
Lah, or the sixth tone is expresive of tender sympathy, and unlike Fah, is
a variable tone which may turn upward or downward for rest. It is found
prominently in Minor music and is represented by the half mourning color of
lavender or violet. "By the sad sea-waves" is a good illustration of this
gentle wail.
While these emotional effects are certainly true, it may be well to remind
the reader that when modulation comes in, the character of the tones is
necessarily changed; just as the appearance and impression of an individual
will be modified and altered by change of surroundings. Consequently these
effects are strong only in the pure unmodulated key.
In awakening the musical sensibility of the child, we are rescuing it from
probable loss of appreciation for the noble, and true, and fine. This loss
is shown by such as are pleased with the trash of the "popular" tunes of a
day--tunes which express nothing worthy of the great gift of expression.
Music is life in all its moods and tenses, but we should be sensitive only
to that which is the expression of the best and most helpful.
Through the many percepts of sight of the birds which represent the
intervals of the scale, of touch in pasting the little colored discs on the
staff, of ear in singing the tones of the Doh bird, the Me bird, the Soh
bird, etc., the child finds the symbols and mechanics of musical notation
entrancing instead of tedious.
In teaching the rythms and value of notes the imagination is called upon in
marking off rooms instead of measures, and putting one or more bird eggs
into them, naming them with the time names and swinging the rythm with a
snap-tape measure.