THE TEACHING OF EXTEMPORIZATION
AND HARMONY
In early days the art of melody was developed before that of harmony.
The same plan should be followed in the general musical education of the
child.
As every child possesses a voice, but does not in every case learn an
instrument, it is clear that the fundamental training in music must be
given through the use of the voice. The first step will consist in
learning how to sing at sight and how to take down easy melodies from
dictation. Parallel with this work the child should be taught to
extemporize melodies, and to sing them.
Quite little children will take pleasure in completing a musical phrase
of which the first few bars have been given them. The procedure will be
as follows:
1. The teacher writes two bars in C major, [2/4] time, on the
blackboard.
2. The class sings it through twice, first using the Sol-fa names for
the notes, then singing to _lah_.
3. Volunteers are then asked for to complete the phrase by adding
another two bars. The more musical children in the class will at once
respond, and their efforts will stir the ambition of the others. It will
soon be a question of taking the children in turn, a few at each
lesson--so eager will they be to 'express themselves' in melody.
It is important not to be too critical of these early efforts. The
great thing is to get the children un-self-conscious--variety of melodic
outline and of rhythm will follow quickly enough.
The next step will be for two children in the class to extemporize the
whole phrase between them, one taking the first two bars and the other
the last two. The key and time should be varied as much as
possible--keys a fourth or fifth apart should be used in succession, or
the children will assume that any melody can be sung by them in any key,
which is obviously not the case. A melody sung in C major, which uses
middle C and high F, cannot be sung in the key of G major with the child
voice.
The class will now find it quite easy to extemporize the whole of a
four-bar phrase. Suggestions can be made by the teacher, such as:
'Begin on the third beat of the bar.'
'Introduce two triplets in the course of the phrase,' and so on.
When this becomes easy to them they will be ready to begin eight-bar
melodies. At first the teacher will give the first four bars, and
different members of the class will finish the tune. Modulations should
now be introduced. The same procedure as before should be followed,
until any child in the class can give the whole of a tune, in any given
key and time, and with a given modulation.
Next comes the sixteen-bar tune, in which at least one modulation should
be introduced. A good plan is to begin with the well-known simple form:
1. Four bars to the [6/4] [5/3] cadence.
2. Four bars to the principal modulation.
3. Repeat the first four bars.
4. Four bars to the end.
Three children can be used for this, in the following way:
The first child sings the first four bars, the second goes on to the end
of the eighth bar, then the first child repeats what she sang, and a
third child finishes. This affords excellent practice, particularly for
the first child, who soon learns to confine herself to a simple opening,
as this must be remembered and repeated later.
Memory plays a much larger part in the power to extemporize than many
people realize, and if this step in the preliminary work be
conscientiously taken there will be abundant results later.
We now come to the important stage of extemporizing on the piano. It
must be remembered that a very thorough foundation of the knowledge of
chords has been laid by the ear-training work, leading up to the power
to write down chords from dictation, and to sing them in arpeggio.
The first exercise will consist in playing a very simple tonic and
dominant accompaniment on the piano, while a melody is extemporized with
the voice. There is far more variety possible in this than appears at
first sight. For instance, the sequence of the chords may run in any of
the following ways, among others:
I V I V I I V I }
}
I I V I I I V I }
}
I I I V I I V I }
}
I V V I I I V I }
Those who have studied elementary algebra will recognize a simple
application of the theory of permutations!
It is interesting to note the ease with which children will do this
exercise, if they have been carefully trained in all the preceding work.
Grown-up students are usually very much slower than children at it,
partly because they are inclined to be self-conscious, and to worry
about the sound of their voice, &c. But the child who has been
accustomed to sing at sight and to extemporize with the voice in front
of a class is not in the least embarrassed at being told to go to the
piano and combine a sung melody with a simple piano accompaniment. At
first there will be a tendency to restrict the melodies to the actual
notes of the tonic and dominant chords, but with a little practice
passing notes, &c. are soon added, and graceful little tunes will
result.
The next exercise consists in the use of three chords, tonic, dominant,
and subdominant; the melody, as before, being sung. At this stage it is
wise to let the dictation work in the class take the form of phrases
which can be harmonized with these chords, so as to accustom the
children to use them. This gives invaluable practice in the first
principles of harmonizing melodies, and should precede all formal
treatment of the subject.
Another useful exercise at this stage is to let the children add a
second part, either above or below a given melodic phrase. This will be
the foundation of later work in formal counterpoint.
The class is now ready for the treatment of modulations on the piano.
If the preliminary work in cadences, dominant sevenths, &c. has been
conscientiously done in all keys there will be no difficulty in
extemporizing a sung melody, which modulates, and adding a simple
accompaniment at the piano.
Other chords can now be added, and the children will be ready to
extemporize short tunes, entirely at the piano, without the aid of the
voice. To some people this may seem an easier thing to do than to
accompany the voice, but experience has proved the contrary. The child
is so accustomed to use the voice that it will at first be inclined to
think of all melody as vocal, and will be a little troubled when told
not to think about vocal pitch.
The discipline of these early restrictions is obvious, and cannot be
over-estimated. It quite does away with the 'hymn-tune' style of early
composition, which is such a trap to many amateurs.
Side by side with this work it is advisable to get the class to
extemporize chants, under the same restrictions as have been put on the
melodies, i.e. they will begin by using only tonic and dominant chords,
then adding the subdominant, and so on. The double chant will give
opportunities for more than one modulation being introduced at a time.
This work will prepare the way for figured basses, and more formal
harmony. The children will learn to avoid consecutive fifths and eighths
because they gradually notice the ugliness of them, which seems a better
plan than to learn to avoid them as a 'rule'.
There is an interesting reference to methods of teaching harmony in the
Board of Education Memorandum on Music, issued in 1914.
The writer says:
'It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the current method of
teaching harmony, whereby pupils are taught to resolve chords on paper
by eye, quite regardless of the fact that 99 per cent. of them do not
realize the sound of the chords they are writing, is musically
valueless.
* * * * *
'In no other language than that of music would it be tolerated that the
theoretical rules of grammar and syntax should be so completely
separated from the actual literature from which they are derived, that
the pupil should never have perceived that there was any relation
whatever between them.
* * * * *
'Another very common result of the neglect of an aural basis for harmony
teaching is that students who can pass a difficult examination, and
write correctly by eye an advanced harmony exercise, are often quite
unable to recognize that exercise played over to them on the piano, or
even to write down the notes, apart from the time, of a hymn or a tune
that they have known all their lives.'
The whole chapter in this memorandum is well worth reading.
The final stages in the teaching of extemporization will consist in:
1. Expressing a given idea in musical form, e.g. a march, or a gavotte.
2. Extemporizing on a given theme.
Although these last stages may be thought to be beyond the power of the
average child, experience has proved that it is not so, provided the
previous work has been carefully graded, and that none of the early
steps have been omitted or hurried over.