The teacher of music should bear in mind that his subject is
related to life in a profound and many-sided fashion. The songs
of home and friendship, of religion and patriotism, have no
small place in the higher life of humanity. To cite one example:
I have been present at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner at Harvard when,
at the close, the company of scholars joined hands and sang
together Burns’ song of “Auld Lang Syne.” I have heard the
same song at a company of ministers at a theological seminary
reunion. After the battle of Manila Bay, where the British and
American marines fraternized, as the British men-of-war left the
harbor, the marines of both nations sang the same song. It was
the music of the plowman-poet that best fitted as a parting-song
of friendship for the scholar, the theologian, and the marines
of two great modern nations. Read the tributes to music of noted
men of letters like Carlyle and Newman. See how they have been
imprest by this art, which opens into the world of the ear or
sound--a word which has its artists and poets, its historians
and dramatists, its architects and builders, as the world
of letters or of space.--W. SCOTT, “Journal of the
National Educational Association,” 1905.
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