PRAISE AND BLAME IN MUSIC
Music is unique among esthetic appeals in that it demands immediate
response in the form of praise or blame. The orator demands immediate
response; but his appeal is to reasoning, not to feeling. The painter,
sculptor, and poet demand esthetic response, but this response is
delayed and does not keep the artist on the tip of his nerves to receive
it. The musical appeal is all the more emotional because it is not only
an appeal for personal recognition but for the aggrandizement of the
noble art. The musician at all ages and all stages of advancement can
perform for his own pleasure in isolation, but even here the demand for
praise or blame on the spur of the moment is emphatic and essential.
It is, of course, fully recognized that at his best the musical
performer is not conscious of making a direct appeal for approval by
others. His objective is rather that of self-expression and experiment
in the execution of an artistic skill. He is often aware of a negative
attitude in his audience, and he may take an attitude of aloofness or
superiority toward the audience, recognizing its incompetence. Yet back
of it all, there may be even a distant hope of approval in a coming
generation or the critical judgment of the select few; but the attitude
of the immediate audience or the public toward his performance plays
heavily upon his unanalyzed feelings and moods.
The bases for musical praise and blame are notoriously inadequate, be
they meaningless approval, empty flattery, or censorious criticism. A
general attitude of spontaneous approval without knowing or giving
reasons among listeners in general is praiseworthy as an expression of
good will; but for serious purposes we must question the competence of
the listener for the response manifested. The fault may lie in the
listener's ignorance of the art of music, his incompetence in
recognizing elements of merit, his failure to credit the performer in
relation to natural ability or purpose. Praise or blame may also carry
or miscarry in so far as it may wisely serve to motivate or discourage
the performer on the specific issues involved in the performance. With
the sudden popularizing of music, the incoming tendency is to associate
music with the beginning of a scientific approach to the understanding
of the music and the musician. This situation is changing at a
gratifying rate for the good of music. It is worth while to consider in
some detail the factors in this progress.
VANTAGE GROUNDS
_Artistic insight._ The extraordinarily rapid introduction of real music
education in the grades and in the high school and college curricula,
and even in graduate study, is changing the attitude of the listener by
increasing his competence. Children and youth now hear more good music
and hear it presented in such a way as to increase their understanding
of it. At the college level music is presented as an academic subject,
with primary emphasis upon the art of hearing music together with some
knowledge of history and content of music. The training of high-school
teachers of music has changed radically in a generation from the mere
development of proficiency with an instrument or voice to a deeper
insight into the nature of the art, its history, and its roles. At many
levels well-developed courses in music appreciation have acquired a
permanent status and have proved a good foundation for further
penetration into the art of the appreciation of music. This implanting
of points of view and development of esthetic attitudes in the academic
instruction in the schools is hastened to fruitage by the popularizing
of music for the masses through radio and phonograph as well as through
the penetrating of the skills acquired in school into the home and
social institutions. The popularizing of good music, where public
entertainment in the parks and other public places is of good musical
quality and furnished free or at popular prices, is a great help in
developing a critical attitude even among those in other respects quite
uneducated. Therefore, we may say with great satisfaction that training
in the art of hearing music has come upon the educational horizon in
America in a very promising way.
_The scientific attitude._ We are constantly impressed with the analogy
between scientific insight into the nature of music and the
corresponding insight in other sciences, such as botany or astronomy. A
child starts out with an inborn capacity and urge for the love of
flowers; but as a student of flowers he soon encounters many marvelous
revelations. On the one hand his horizon is broadened by acquaintance
with larger and larger classes and varieties. He learns to see
relationships to habitat. He learns to trace scientifically the laws of
their evolution, the methods of artificial breeding and development of
new plants, and even the beauty in their usefulness. On the other hand,
he turns to his microscope and discovers not only the external parts
visible to the naked eye but the internal structures, their modes of
evolution and development, even down to the discovery of the mechanisms
of heredity through the genes, which are so small that we know them only
by inference from what the microscope reveals. The natural history of
music is analogous to that of such a material science.
This scientific insight into the structure and function of music goes
hand in hand with the development of the artistic insight into the
nature of the esthetic values from the point of view of the art of
music. Thus the student of music is now furnished the facilities for
increasing his power of appreciation of music and a critical awarding of
praise or blame from two complementary points of view: a study of the
art and a study of the science of music.
_Terminology._ The mere matter of terminology here plays a very
important role, as is now being demonstrated so successfully in the
recent developments in the field of psychology of music and acoustics.
Take, for example, the concept of tone quality. Until a few years ago
there was probably not a single adequate statement of the nature of tone
quality in the entire literature on music; and yet this is the most
important element in music. In the past the listener and the student
have generally approached the subject in an attitude of acceptance or
rejection of the unanalyzed impression, but often with no more
competence than that with which the ignorant shepherd appraises the
grandeur and meaning of the heavens above on a starlit night. The
teacher, as a rule, said "This is beautiful," or "This is ugly," without
being able to give the reasons why, for want of a tangible terminology.
The teaching and development of tone quality therefore has wallowed in a
slough of despond. Recent researches in the field of musical acoustics
are ushering in a new era. The structure of tone quality has been
dissected, and its parts have been adequately described and defined.
This is leading to an improved musical language. The same is true for
other musical concepts. Thus, through the systematic development of
musical terminology, there will gradually develop a scientific
classification of the various aspects of the musical medium which is
essential not only for the learning of music but also for the awarding
of praise and blame.
_Musical talent._ With this development of a knowledge of the nature of
music, the scientific student of music has turned to the analysis of the
nature of the musical mind attempting to assign specific roles to
musical heredity and musical training and environment. Hazy concepts of
the gift of music have been subjected to scientific analysis,
experiment, and measurement. From this, it is being demonstrated that it
is impossible to award praise or blame without taking a reasonable
account of the innate fortes and faults of the performer which determine
in large part the direction and limits of achievement or failure. The
recognition of this fact, of course, plays its fundamental role in the
early encouragement or discouragement of the inceptive musician, in the
recognition of the purpose of his education, and in the motivation
through training.
PARTIES CONCERNED
_The pupil._ Modern education has revealed the importance of a
student-centered and student-originated learning process as opposed to
the traditional and institutional direction of development of the
individual. The question of self-praise and self-blame, satisfaction or
dissatisfaction on the part of the child or youth, is of course of first
importance both in the initial stages of orientation and throughout the
course of specialization and achievement. Instead of imposing
regimentation, the home, the school and the private teachers tactfully
aim to assist the child in the discovery of his natural interests,
resources and promises which aid him in the building of his personal
convictions. But emphasis is laid upon the principle of
self-determination in the light of progressively available reasonable
facilities for self-appraisal. This refers both to the appreciation of
music and to the development of musical skills. This principle of
self-determination has frequently run amuck in the hands of progressive
educators, capital _P_. But it is a fundamental and permanent principle
for the development of personality and motivation in specific pursuits.
The child will soon discover that in order to pursue his interests and
satisfy himself in performance he may have to work hard, conform to
requirements, be patient, and make sacrifices; but his first goal is to
feel satisfaction in what he is getting and in the worth-whileness of
the pursuit.
For these things he will find an analogy in any form of play, physical
or mental, into which he enters in a wholehearted way. This feeling of
self-approbation comes easily in the musically talented where the urge
for music is clearly manifested; but with moderate talent this attitude
of self-reliance needs cultivation. And in the assumed absence of
talent, there is need of assistance in the real verification of this
absence. The greatest danger lies in the intrusion of prejudice and
social pressures. This principle of self-determination is of most
importance in those fields which are to be pursued primarily as a source
of self-expression and pleasure in the pursuit as distinguished from the
pursuits which are essential for the earning of bread and butter and the
maintaining of social status.
_The teacher._ The recognition of this principle of self-determination
and the sustained will to achieve has revolutionized the art of
teaching, or we may say better, has laid the beginnings for an art of
teaching. One of the greatest obstacles the teacher encounters is the
traditional social demand, and often the recognized objective in the
profession, to make everybody musical. Finding that there is no adequate
natural interest and no marks of gratifying achievement are developing,
the teacher settles down to the sledge-hammer method of forced
development. We must therefore bespeak for the live music teacher the
right to refuse to make gold out of iron. The private teacher's fee and
the tuition of the school are, of course, the temptations of the devil
to face the situation with complacence. The constituency granting
lenience in this respect has the right to expect that, in turn, the
teacher understands and has exercised the effective means of
self-discovery, self-orientation, self-determination, and
self-motivation on the part of those who are on the border line. In this
art, the profession has made but little progress so far. The
constituency also has the right to impose the obligation upon the
teacher to respect the individuality of the gifted and to give all types
of freedom to the pupil commensurate with his natural line and degree of
successful achievement in developing appreciation for various types of
music.
In breaking with the traditional routines of musical drill, the teacher
must first of all give up the attempt to cast the musical mind of the
child in the mold of his or her own pattern. This principle has acquired
its greatest significance in dealing with the highly gifted, where it is
clearly substantiated by the musical history of precocious children. The
public must acquire tolerance for the principle of giving musical
facilities to child and youth in proportion to this self-determination
and demonstrated ability to achieve. The great musician and the musical
virtuoso are not fostered by educational or social conformance but
primarily by the enjoyment of the principle of free determination and
development of divergent personality.
_The critic._ The music critic unfortunately, as a rule, is a newspaper
man and must conform to the pressure methods of efficiency in writing
down. This newspaper ability has often been the basis for the
unfortunate selection of musical critics. On the other hand, the
thoroughly competent musical critic, if he were to ply his art as a
technician, would find but small outlet for publication and a negligible
constituency of readers. He would face, most discouragingly, the fact
that many of the performers on the stage do not have critical knowledge
of what they are doing and are not interested or even capable of reading
the highly technical and critical analysis of their performance. So we
must be tolerant with the musical critic.
If music were a simple thing or had a specific goal, such as the
development of a logical proposition, the task of the critic would be
easier. But, as it is, he is dealing with a highly fluid and chaotic
state of affairs when he is supposed to aid the common reader in
assigning praise or blame to the performance. One of the most striking
faults of the work of the musical critic is his lack of words--lack of
concepts which are discriminating and logically definable. We tolerate
his splashing of his personal likes or dislikes as if he were competent
to boil down our feelings of the situation into a fair assaying of
praise or blame of the performance. One difficulty lies in the demand
for writing in smart and emotional style. Among critics there are rare
individuals who have a fine artistic insight and a balanced esthetic
judgment in regard to what is good or bad in music. But we seldom see
their names in the musical-review columns.
Phonophotographic recordings reveal art principles which had not been
discovered in the musical world through hearing, and yet functioned very
largely. They enable the critic to use scientific language in the
description of achievement and assign praise or blame on the basis of
identifiable and describable grounds. We can now photograph the sound
waves of a performance at any distance from the source of sound and
convert this into an analyzable performance score. As a whole, this
principle cannot be available to the musical critic who must render an
immediate opinion. But we have a right to expect that he should have a
scientific knowledge of the types of facts which are revealed in such
objective records. He is living in a new musical era in which the
qualifications for the critic are as new as they are for the artistic
and scientific orientation of teacher and performer.
_The public._ I can recall the time when the possession of a piano and
piano lessons for the darling girl represented almost the sole ambition
of the mothers in our state aside from the spontaneous and untutored
self-expression in song. The public demand has changed. Instruments have
changed. Methods of teaching have changed. Understanding of the art has
increased. Cosmopolitan tastes have spread. Knowledge of the science of
music has become aligned with knowledge in other sciences. The public
rapidly learns to demand all these things and take the right for
granted. The ambition of the mother, the objective of the teacher, and
the expression of the youth of fifty years ago are coming to be
historical curiosities. The art of music in America is coming to a
wholesome fruitage and is becoming associated with present-day academic
learning. For the first time in history it reaches out into the remotest
corners of the land and many of the technical aspects of the art and new
concepts of the musical medium are fast becoming common-sense knowledge
and therefore add in the just awarding of praise or blame.
THOUGHT REVIEW
Principles
(1) Music is designed to give pleasure when heard, and therefore calls
for immediate affective response.
(2) Capacity for esthetic response varies with natural talent and
training, both artistic and scientific.
(3) It is important to know "where to laugh and when to laugh."
(4) For scientific description of likes or dislikes we need a
discriminating terminology.
(5) As every scientific discovery and invention gradually becomes
common-sense knowledge when popularly known, so artistic judgment
tends to crystallize into common-sense feeling.
(6) Musical criticism may be chastized and chastened into balanced and
critical judgment, relatively free from emotional explosions.
(7) The spontaneous and natural smile or frown is often more
eloquently telling or cutting than words.
Consider These Questions
(1) Is the conventional response to music affectedly temperamental?
(2) Why is listening intently to a major musical performance more
exhausting than listening to an equally engrossing lecture on
"International Relations?"
(3) Was the English visitor right when he said, "You have no art,
because whatever you have you display"?
(4) Does insight into the nature and structure of the thing beautiful
tend to lessen or to strengthen the artistic appeal?
Discuss This Situation
(1) During the last twenty years in a Midwestern city of 30,000 people
music has "come to town." Curricular and extracurricular music in
the schools has been tenfold what it was during the foregoing
twenty years. Music clubs and other musical activities have
greatly increased. The community often takes as strong an interest
in local, district, state, and national contests in music as
ordinarily attaches to football. Discuss the effect of this upon
(a) the musical, (b) the social, (c) the recreational and (d) the
educational life of the community. Evaluate the change in interest
and capacity for assigning fair praise and blame to music.
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Transcriber's Note
Where hyphenation occurs on a line break, the decision to
retain or remove is based on occurrences elsewhere in the
text.
The errors deemed most likely to be the printer's have been
corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the
page and line in the original text.
8.2 Play is essentially social and find[s] its added
highest
21.13 The old conflict be[t]ween enthusiasts for added
rote singing
38.11 has, of course, been unparall[el]ed in the added
history of the world.
39.48 generally has a[n] hereditary basis in removed
66.30 for example, in the present "Novac[h]ord" added
71.23 flexibil[i]ty of tone quality is even more added
desirable.