An Appreciation of Music
ANON-TECHNICAL course in music should be one of the easiest for an alumnus to obtain. The semesters spent in music classes while in college may have stressed particular branches—harmony, the building of chord formations; orchestrations, the use of instruments in combinations; musical history, a glimpse of the head-liners in the art over the last two thousand years; all these courses justify their place in the curriculum only as they create a demand in the after college years for music and more music on the part of the former student. If the interest has been awakened, the alumnus is going to find the means of continuing his Z Webster days.
Never could so much good music be heard so readily in this country as at the moment. There seem to be three vehicles for bringing the subject before most of the college graduates. First in importance, but less available to some, is any one of the fine symphony orchestras that gives a series of weekly concerts from October to May. There can be no finer method of education than the sessions with Dr. Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony, using as a text-book the program notes of our adopted alumnus, Mr. Philip Hale. Through a season of such concerts you will find the music of your undergraduate days mingled with that which is the talk of the day. You might like what you had disliked, and loath what you had loved; you would praise and condemn without too much reason, but at the end of the season you would have benefitted by your experience and another October would find you ready to resume your class for another semester.
I am inclined to place second in importance as a means of hearing fine music, the latest development in what was once the scratchy gramophone or talking machine. It is interesting to notice that present day college men are going in for collections of the best records as the nuclei of larger libraries which they expect to own as alumni. It is now possible to secure practically all of the best in music of all epochs, made by those who are world figures. For instance, did you know that all the Beethoven Symphonies can be purchased and that several of the Wagnerian Operas are to be had on records? That if you like Handel's "Messiah" (and many do) you may turn it on whenever you are in the mood for it? That this Stravinsky fellow of whom there is so much talk in recent years, has supervised or taken part in the recording of his most debated works? Yes, that Ravel and his "Bolero" are to be had in several versions; did you realize all this and more? My reason for placing the records as next in importance to the actual experience of hearing the music first-hand, is that like good books you can have them about you and come to know the musical compositions as old friends. Atmospheric conditions seldom mar an orthophonic concert.
The third means of listening is for many the preferred. The back cover of a recent weekly, one of the few still selling for a nickel, tells us that "Science and Music have joined hands to create human tone—That is about the truth, and credit must be given to the radio for the general improvement in the music they send out to us. Two of the big hours of the week during the winter have come on the Friday mornings when Damrosch has presented his talks and illustrations for the school children but also for the alumnus, and on Sundays when we have Philharmonic programs under Toscanini, as great a figure as there is in orchestral music to-day. These are only two but there are many others who might be named as excellent guides for the musically interested. After all, one can read about music, talk about it, but it has to be heard in order to be known.
If one is looking for a text, one single volume that will cover all the information on the subject, there is of course no such tome. The bound collections of Mr. Hale's program notes contain an enormous amount of material. I might give a list of the dozen books that seem to me to be of most use to those who want to be good listeners but I am sure some other person could name another twelve equally good. Here are some suggestions that may help the alumnus in his after college course.
Music, A Science and An Art by Readfield The Anatomy of Music by Parkhurst Music, An Art and A Language by Spaulding These three try to explain a technical subject without the use of technicalities, and succeed quite well. Bach by Boughton Beethoven, The Man who Freed Music. . . .by Schauffler Wagner as Man and Artist by Newman These are excellent studies of the three musicians most people want to know well. Music, Classic, Romantic and Modern by Hull Modern French Music by Hill Hill and Hull tell a little about various stages of music's development. A Thousand and One Nights of Opera. . . .by Martens This tells you enough about any opera that you might see so that you could give your friend a fair reason for the complications of the plot. My Musical Life by Walter Damrosch Caruso by Key Schumann-Heinle, Last of the Titans by Lawton Easy to read accounts of people of our own time who have helped to make the musical history of this country.
