comes a simple matter to present two eighth notes joined by their flags as a symbol of two sounds to one pulsatior, or the triplet as a symbol of three sounds to one pulsation. It is obviously impossible in a limited time to go into detail, but any teacher should be able to plan a simple scheme of developing symbols. These symbols should always be presented after the child has heard and understands the musical example, and not before. The pitch relationships of melody are represented by the position of the note made absolutely exact by the lines and spaces of the staff, and these should only be presented after the child has a thorough understanding of the pitch relationship of the tones of the scale. No special value need be attached to the possession of absolute pitch by the child, but a sense of absolute pitch is often the result of careful training. However, an exactness of perception of the relative highness and lowness, and an appreciation of exact pitch relationships as based upon our modern scale may be taught to anyone with a normal sense of hearing. When this has been done, symbols representing these relationships should be given, and not before. The same value attaches to creative work in music as in other branches of study. A child may learn more of musical symbols in writing out his own original compositions than in observing volumes of the writings of others. EDUCATIONAL RHYTHM-TRAINING ANNA GOEDHART, SUPERVISOR OF MUSIC, PUBLIC SCHOOLS My subject today is "Educational Rhythm-Training." You may ask why educational? Is not all rhythm-training necessarily educational? Yes, but all that calls itself by that name is not always rhythm-training. In order to be worthy of the name, and therefore really educational, the work done must be truly rhythmic, that is, show forth and emphasize the character of rhythm; be methodical, that is, regularly progressive towards a definite end, and the results obtained must be commensurate to the time and energy spent in the attaining. Thus I will deal briefly with these three points: 1. Rhythm-What is it? 2. Method in rhythm-training. 3. Result desired and obtained. First, as to rhythm. Rhythm is the soul of music. The Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives: "Rhythm is the systematic grouping of notes with regard to duration; its subdivisions are accent and time." his Musical Education says: Lavignac in Rhythm is nothing more than division of time into equal or unequal, but always proportional fractions. Time is the absolute equality in duration of all notes of the same value. We can play in time while giving the rhythm in an incomplete manner; we cannot produce correct rhythm without playing in time. This is perfectly true. However, he seems to me to leave out the most important thing, which is accent. The most comprehensive and clearest definition I have found in Adolph F. Christiani's The Principles of Expression in Music. Rhythm is the regulated recurring motion made clear in music by the periodical recurrence of accent. The best simile for rhythm is perhaps pulsation. If pulsation gives the fundamental idea of rhythm, the next idea would be that rhythm is method, for it brings order into every kind of movement. He sums up as follows: Art has as its fundamental law, the law of beauty. Beauty presupposes symmetry. Symmetry is visible rhythm. Rhythm is audible symmetry, or symmetrical motion. Symmetrical motion is the ground element in music. The metrical basis of a composition cannot be altered without destroying completely the character of the work. Convinced of the absolute necessity of definite rhythm in order to produce good music, let us see what we should do to train the children to realize it. Some people ask, When should the musical education of children begin? My answer is, In the cradle. And it actually does, for the mother that rocks the baby, singing a little ditty, is beginning the musical education of the child. How she does it will determine whether the foundation be a good one or not. If she sits in a rocking chair and rocks one way and sings to another rhythm she will be actively destroying any sense of rhythm the child may have had to start with. Thus the mother may persistently be rocking the rhythm out of the child which the teacher will have to rock in again. So unless we can first educate all the mothers to rock in time, our rhythmic education has to commence in the kindergarten or in the first grade. In the first grade I first teach the feeling of the equality of the beat, after that the regularity of the recurring accident, then the grouping of long and short tones, from a note that lasts one beat to one that lasts two, three, four beats. This is prepared and supplemented by rhythm-games and motion-songs. In doing this with the children, care is taken that the movements of the children correspond to the accent of the music. There are many good motion-songs that I use, but, as the tone is likely to suffer through the motion of the body, I prefer to let the children do the motions while the teacher sings, or to divide the class, letting onehalf do the singing and the other the motions. Hand in hand with the ordinary schoolwork a great many devices can be used to emphasize rhythm outside the time especially devoted to music. For instance: groups or rows going to the blackboard in time to music played or sung; writing to music; erasing to music, taking special care that the down stroke is made on the accent. Anything done to music ought to be done to the rhythm, and this brings me to another point; namely: it should be done not only to the accent of the measure, but according to the phrasing as well. Often in physical culture exercises are given to music, but not planned with regard to the phrasing. The teachers say in their defense: "But I don't know anything about music, how can you expect me to know all these technical details?" How does a child know? Play the game called "Going to Jeru salem” and invariably the children will want to take a seat at the end of a sentence, because their ear expects a stop. The other day at a garden party I saw a little girl do some quite wonderful dancing, but the effect was marred by the lack of correspondence between the movements and the music. She started every new group of movements in the middle of a phrase, and ended with her bow several measures before the end of the tune. Now, if dancing is to be educational the teacher should also see to this side of it, and so with any other exercise done to music. So far as to training the sense of rhythm. The question now comes of training the children to reproduce rhythmnamely, to translate the symbols and to keep up the regularity of the accent through all sorts of varied combinations of long and short tones, by their own individual mental effort. If, during the singing of the children, the teacher has to beat vigorously on her desk, I do not call it the unaided effort of the children. If, to make the children hold the notes the required time, the teacher has to point to every note on the board, I do not call this unaided effort either. But I call it unaided effort when the children sing, without help from the teacher's voice, pointer, or ruler, independently, a melody presenting such rhythmic difficulties as are not above the standard of the grade. We have all found that certain rhythms, hard to transport from the eye to the ear, are immediately cleared up by giving a certain word or sentence to illustrate the movement. A professor in despair how to get a little boy to play the following rhythm correctly, at last called out, "Don't you feel how it goes?" "Terrible, terrible, naughty boy," and then the boy could play it. As in ordinary reading the letters in their different groupings call to the reader's mind the words they represent, so in music the notes in their different groupings should call up distinctly and immediately the rhythm they stand for. I recommend the use of the tonic sol- fa- time names. They are simple, logical, and fundamental, and have one name for each unit, and I have my pupils beat the time. The value of this practice is clearly shown by the fact that even a great many teachers find it hard to beat the time when the class sings. They swing their hand to the notes instead of indicating the beats. Tapping the time, as is advocated nowadays, is not half as effective as beating the time, because it does not illustrate accent as clearly as the old-fashioned beating with its strong downward stroke. In rhythm-training I thus appeal first to the ear, then to the eye, and after that I give time dictations, letting the children write down what they hear. I apply the educational maxim, “One difficulty at a time," as much as possible. Therefore in taking up a new melody, I let the children sing the syllable names first, so that there may be no confusion on that point, then I let them say the time names, beating the time themselves, and after that I let them combine the two. At the meeting of this department in 1905 a vigorous protest was raised against hampering the grade teacher with methods. The speaker finished by saying, "Give her the benefit of teaching children and not methods." I most decidedly think that we cannot give a greater boon to the teacher than by giving her a good method; in other words, definite steps by which she can with the children climb up the steep mountain of art. It sometimes has been claimed that it is belittling art to be bound too strictly by laws. Yet, in order to become a worthy servant of this great mistress, we have to learn obedience, for there is no freedom but freedom under law. ROUND TABLE TOPIC-WHAT SHOULD BE EXPECTED FROM THE NORMAL SCHOOL IN THE PREPARATION OF THE GRADE TEACHER FOR TEACHING MUSIC, AND ALSO OF THE SUPERVISOR? I. C. A. FULLERTON, PROFESSOR OF VOCAL MUSIC, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL In the few minutes at my disposal I shall consider some phases of normal-school music that seem to me to be in special need of emphasis. After eleven years of experience in the music department of a normal school and after investigating quite extensively what other normal schools are doing in music, and what the public schools need and want, I am firmly convinced that the most urgent need is for the musical development of the students themselves. Let us imagine a new normal school with a body of students possessing average musical equipment when they enroll. These students need music before they have any need of methods for presenting music. If it were impossible to equip these students with both musical development and methods for teaching music there is every argument in favor of giving them musical development. From the standpoint of the school superintendent, for whom these teachers are at work, the supervisor with whom they are to teach, the communities where they are to live, the normal school itself, where they are to spend a few years, their immediate families, the students themselves, and the children whom they are to instruct, the musical culture of these students is of first importance. Fortunately music can be taught to adults by practically the same methods that should be used with children, and so it is possible to give the normal students this musical culture and musical experience and in the process of giving it to them, give them methods for teaching music to a large extent. If this newly organized normal school is going to measure up to the reasonable demands of the twentieth century it must abandon the narrow conception of being merely a school of methods. The death knell to that kind of normal school is already in the air. It must become in its special sphere an educational center with ideals second to none and with an enthusiasm for scholarship which will be contagious. And it must add to this equipment of high ideals and scholarship skill in the art of teaching. The music department of this modern normal school, if reasonably well equipped, should be expected to accomplish three specific things: It should give a maximum of musical experience and training to the rank and file of the students; it should surround them with good musical atmosphere; and it should train them, in some degree, in the most rational and artistic methods of teaching music to children. Now, for some practical suggestions on how to bring about these results. So far as the musical training of the students is concerned the particular feature of the work that should be kept in the center of the stage is the beginning classes. The future of the department is carved out here. The teacher is put to his greatest test here and those who do not believe that music is for the benefit of humanity in general should be converted to that belief or abandon this field. The teacher who realizes the transcendent importance of this work will face it with a glad heart and if he succeeds with the musical development of these students he will succeed in doing three distinct things: First, and most important, he will get as much of the song spirit into their lives as possible by singing with them the very best and most attractive songs obtainable; second, by using these same songs as a basis he will develop technical skill in performing music; third, he will give these students good substantial training in the theory of music. The first two phases of this work can be given to these adults in practically the same manner as would be employed with the children, the third should be adapted more particularly to the adult mind. In creating musical atmosphere about a school the most effective agency is the interest aroused and the skill developed in these beginning classes. Musical atmosphere can exist for the individual only in proportion as musicianship is developed within him. Every person, like a planet, carries his own atmosphere with him. We cannot create musical atmosphere for students. We must create it with students and with their active co-operation. Any sound education involves the double process of getting and giving-receiving impressions and giving expression to them, and leaving out one of these processes is about as futile as trying to cut with one-half of a pair of scissors. This steady growth in musical skill and appreciation furnishes the much-desired educational spirit. The rest is comparatively easy. Glee clubs, choral societies, etc., will spring into existence and the school will enjoy the music of the masters. Voice teachers, piano teachers, and violin teachers will be demanded by this increased interest in music and they will be forthcoming. Concerts, recitals, and lecture recitals will naturally follow and a glad public will help to bear the expense. The music of the automatic piano player may well be introduced here, first to be enjoyed, then to be analyzed, then to be enjoyed the more. "Rag time" will take its exit as darkness does when you turn on the light-only not so suddenly. Real hymns will be sung oftener and religious "rag time" will gradually become distasteful. A school for supervisors of public-school music, a discussion of which is excluded by the limitations of this paper, will naturally grow out of these conditions and where can there be found a more favorable setting for such a school? And where can be found a more attractive field for the musician who has the true educational spirit? II. MISS JULIA E. CRANE, DIRECTOR OF MUSIC, STATE NORMAL SCHOOL The question propounded for discussion does not state whether we are to consider what should be expected of normal schools under ideal conditions, or under existing con ditions. But since we never reach the best results under existing conditions without a vision of the possibilities under ideal conditions, it is probably best to consider both phases of the subject. My ideal state normal school is governed by a state board of education whose members realize the value of music as a factor in education, and a local board of similar intelligence. The principal of this school has sufficient musical education to know when music is being taught as it should be taught in a normal school; a man who cannot be duped by the teacher who knows music for school exhibition purposes only, or by one whose theories, rather than her practical knowledge, constitute her equipment for teaching. On the other hand, this ideal principal sees the normal-school music in its relation to the musica] needs of the public schools, and is able to recognize the ability of the teacher who is supplying those needs, even though her psychology be practical rather than glibly theoretical, and her school exhibitions fail to compete successfully with "Wonderland." The ideal music teacher in this normal school is first a man or woman of such nobility and purity of mind that he sees the development of character in the pupils as his first concern, the good of the school as more important than the extension of any one department in it, and the success of his own work measured by what he does toward fitting teachers for |