Amateur musician

“ This music is so foreign to the conceptions of the ordinary amateur, and exacts so much skill in the singing of the intervals, lacking the prop of modern tonality as it does, that it is seldom that an amateur body can be found equal to its performance. ”

“ In the present day, many singers who have come before the public with considerable success, are said never to have studied singing systematically at all. They have learned under a skilful professor so many parts—as amateur pianists learn particular pieces, without attempting to master the whole art of pianoforte playing. ”

“ Old rubbish bears germs of new creations; released from the heavy burden of the words, the light play of the voices in the clavier-pieces introduces a fresh, youthful life that is full of promise for the future.
The isolation of the voice and of the instrument, the sensuous delight in sound, demands a chamber-music and a chamber-style. Chamber-music demands the Maecenas of the great house, and the wealthy amateur, who is so powerful a factor in every advance of art. ”

“ This will be easily understood when it is remembered that while most members of the latter are not only expert players, but educated musicians, the amateur, on the other hand, is more often than not, a player of humble attainment, whose knowledge of music, limited by the small amount of time that can be devoted to the subject, is necessarily superficial. ”

“ They cannot but be varying if they are to depict the motley crowd of figures that go to make up one's own experiences. Such chapters are like the various pieces on the programme of a musical recital. There we are taken from a fugue to a notturno, from a grande valse to a moonshine sonata; and the pianist, if by some chance he happens to be a musician, leads us with a few improvised chords, from one mood to another, from flats to sharps, major to minor. ”

“ Borrowing as by right from all the arts, and pressing into its service all that has been won in the region of form and colour to enforce its own message of the spirit, it is nevertheless inevitable that to music it must remain the heaviest debtor, for its chosen vehicle of rhythmic language approaches most nearly to the abstract instrument of the musician. ”

“ He attends a piano recital and acquires many ideas of touch, tone, phrasing and interpretation; he hears a great singer or violinist and absorbs a wholly new set of thoughts, or he listens to a grand orchestra, and gains more than from all the others. Then there is life to study from: experience—living—loving: all go into the work of the musician. A musical career is indeed the most exacting one that can be chosen.
"I have been asked whether I prefer to play for an audience of 'music-lovers' or one of 'music knowers.' Perhaps an equal mixture is the happy medium. ”

“ Arrived at manhood he embarked in business in his native city, but continued the practice of music as an amateur. He possessed a fine, rich, full-toned bass voice, and became not only solo vocalist, but an active manager of the principal amateur society in Norwich. ”

“ The music aide should be able either to play the piano at sight or he should study one of the rapid systems of piano instruction for he will be called upon not only to accompany group singing but to assist visiting artists or talented patients.
Although a foundation in classical music is part of any good musical training, a musician who refuses to recognize the importance of popular music in American life is not suited to this work. If he has a positive dislike for popular music, he should look to other fields. ”

“ Every step is made as clear as A. B. C. You don’t have to know anything whatever about music. You learn to play your favorite instrument right in your own home, quickly, easily and without endless study and practice. Long before you now think it could ever be possible, you will actually play well enough to be in demand as a well-paid entertainer, teacher or musician.
A delighted 17-year-old girl, Miss Jessie Theall of North Houston, Tex. writes, “My first six entertainments that I played the violin for, paid me $39.25 besides all the pleasure of playing for my friends.” ”

“ But while cordially admitting the progress made by them, it must be recognised that the difference between the performance of an amateur band, however worthy, and that of a modern professional orchestra must ever remain abysmal. ”

“ In much that pertains to the art of music, the singer's training must include the same subjects that form the training of every musician. In addition to this general musical training, about the same for all students of music, each student must acquire technical command of the chosen instrument. This is necessarily acquired by practice on the instrument, whether it be piano, violin, oboe, or whatever else. In the same way, vocal technique is acquired by practice in actual singing. Practice makes perfect, with the voice as with everything else. ”

“ In a certain manufacturing town, of no great size, there lived a musician. For the most part he gained his living by playing at concerts and giving lessons; but he was young, ardent, and clever, and he had always nursed a hope that he might one day be a great composer. ”

“ There has been no attempt to cover the immense field of executive music, but only to call attention to the lives of those musical celebrities who are universally recognized as occupying the most exalted places in the arts of violin and pianoforte playing; who stand forth as landmarks in the history of music. ”

“ The encouragement of musicianship in general suffers for the stress laid on what is obviously technical impedimenta. But more and more, as time passes, the playing of such artists as those already mentioned, and others like them, shows that the real musician is the lover of beautiful sound, which technic merely develops in the highest degree.
"To-day technic in a cumulative sense often is a confession of failure. For technic does not do what it so often claims to—produce the artist. Most professional teaching aims to prepare the student for professional life, the concert stage. ”

“ Very often they take expensive lessons from some professor, who undertakes to ‘finish them off.’ But they never are finished off. The sign and mark of the serious amateur is that he practises assiduously some piece of music, maybe a Chopin study or a Brahms sonata, until he has it by heart ”

“ One of the chief uses, indeed, of the professional performers should be to suppress amateurs by furnishing a standard of performance which lovers of music would silently apply to the music which formed the daily delight of their inner ear. ”

“ Of course, we all sing nowadays as a matter of course in the training of the voice, and some learn to play instruments for their private amusement; but the professional music is so much grander and more perfect than any performance of ours, and so easily commanded when we wish to hear it, that we don't think of calling our singing or playing music at all. All the really fine singers and players are in the musical service, and the rest of us hold our peace for the main part. But would you really like to hear some music? ”

“ It is the fact, that the young city people of the better classes, play the piano, flute, violin, or guitar: the half-breeds devote themselves almost wholly to music, and many skillful composers and players have sprung up among them. ”

“ If one goes in for a musical career, one should realize at the start, something of what it means, what is involved, and what must go with it. Singing itself is only a part, perhaps even the smaller part, of one's equipment. If opera be the goal, there are languages, acting, make up, impersonation, interpretation, how to walk, how to carry oneself, all to be added to the piano and harmony we have already spoken of. The art of the singer is a profession—yes, and a business too. ”

“ The improvising musician and his audience act and react upon each other; the latter receive the direct impression of the artist's individuality and power, and feel themselves, as it were, let into the secret of his method of producing the works which delight them, while the former is inspired to fresh efforts of genius by his consciousness of possessing the sympathy of his hearers. ”

“ The amateur ought also to select the easiest instrument, an instrument in which the notes are made for him already, rather than one which compels him to fix the notes as he is playing. 184 The violin tempts amateurs who have a deep feeling for music because it renders feeling as no other instrument can render it, but the difficulty of just intonation is almost insuperable unless the whole time is given to that one instrument. It is a fatal error to perform on several different instruments, and an amateur who has done so may find a desirable limitation in restricting himself to one. ”

“ We should then have more musicianly players and singers. We should more often be brought under the magic spell of exquisitely shaded tone that may make a simple little melody alive with beauty.
BRAHMS
A grave blunder of our present music study is the neglect of ensemble playing and singing. Some of the noblest music written is for part-singing and for two or more instruments. Much profit and delight will be the result of making its acquaintance. Four and eight hand piano arrangements of the great overtures and symphonies, too, are valuable and enjoyable. ”

“ I aint much of a musician myself, although I am very fond of hearing music either vocal or instrumental.”
“Have you any vocalists?”
“We shall have some volunteers—​some of the choir will, of course, do some part-singing; besides there are several amateurs as well as one or two professionals, have agreed to come forward on this occasion. Oh, I dare say we shall have a tolerably good muster. Mr. Knight presides at the piano, and he has consented to play the accompaniments to the vocalists.”
“No easy task,” remarked Peace, “especially if he is not acquainted with the performers.” ”

“ The amateur, on whom more and more the art depends, is incapable of composing, but he will, on his clavier, hear the works of the masters, which are now so numerous, or even play them himself. He desires to have acts of operas, arrangements of concertos, or many dainty short pieces. The old clavier-books, which we can trace from the Elizabethan Virginal Book to the volumes of Bach’s children, now gradually disappear. Instead of copying with its personal character, the press is more and more in requisition, and the musical treasury is more and more thrown open to the public. ”

“ III. THE ANALYSIS OF MUSICAL TALENT Since about the year 1915, psychologists have turned somewhat from the study of the nature of music to the investigation of the musical person. They have raised the questions: In what way does the musician differ from others in his psychophysical equipment? Why are some persons unable to produce or appreciate music?
The pursuit of these questions led immediately to an analysis of musical talent, for it was evident at once that a great variety of subsidiary functions contribute to any kind of musical performance. ”

“ Each time let the pianolist try to get more meaning, more expression out of it than he did before. He will find, if he does this, that, when he takes up another composition, the expression, the art of interpretation, will come to him more naturally and more quickly, until, from an ignorant beginner, he soon will have developed into a musical [164] artist who can give himself and hundreds of others the most exalted pleasure—that of listening to music, not to mere playing. ”

“ Many men of brilliant musical genius and of remarkable industry and perseverance were born; and, with new conceptions of the scope and capabilities of the divine art, they penetrated its innermost depths, and brought to the ears of the music-loving world new and enrapturing forms of harmony. Among these great masters, leaving out those already mentioned, were Handel, Henry Purcell, Bach, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Spontini. ”

“ Setting aside half a dozen—perhaps a dozen—great masters of a moribund craft, who will say that the average mechanical piano is not as competent as the average pianist? When the human performer of music goes the way of the galley-slave, the charm of personality, of course, will be pumped out of the performance of music. ”

“ Piano-playing, in such an unparalleled advance, became of necessity a profession, which at one time enticed to deceive, at another rewarded abundantly. It is a profession which on one side leads to royal wealth, on the other to that extreme of misery which is the half of all art. ”

“ In several ways the correlation of the musician with the non-musical world is now more intimate and conscious than ever before. Forty or fifty years ago—in spite of brilliant individual exceptions—musicians were, in the main, self-centred craftsmen ”

“ I say this from the conviction, many times confirmed, that, as an average, by very far the best practical musicians, those I mean whose musical readiness gives them the air of having music as an instinct or of second nature, those who are ever prompt with their talent to produce or to perform without preparation at the requirement of the moment; those whose ears are quick, whose wits are sharp, and whose utmost ability is ever at their fingers' ends—are they who have passed their art infancy in one of our ecclesiastical arenas for constant practice. ”

“ Then you have music, harmony, the highest, fullest, finest! Educate your men to form a band, you shame dexterous trickery and imitation sounds. Then for the difference of real instruments from clever shams! ”