Musical society

“ But great regret is openly expressed that the members of so long established, so distinguished a musical society,—a society to which we are indebted for the finest works of their kind that this, their native country, ever produced,—should now, when genius is not abundant, bind themselves to award their prize, whether the candidates do or do not establish a just claim to it. ”

“ Lady Morgan, an experienced leader of society, used to tell me, "My dear, give them plenty of wax-candles and people will enjoy themselves;" to which I add, manage the music well, and teach your daughters to help you, and cultivate musical young men, keeping, however, the law in your own hands.
Almost the only art we have not spoiled by machinery is music—for we do not consider the barrel-organ in the light of music. ”

“ The dogmatic emotional need has drawn forth from that type’s resources the austere musical products of master genius. Do we not find today in France, Germany and in modern Italy a national rhythm disturbed by critically intellectual [19] stimuli, which in turn call forth critically intellectual Music of the most distinct complexity? Music is both a social and a socializing force, which, although created by society, reacts upon its creator. ”

“ Step by step—not a violent leap to a dizzy height; we cannot become musical by the force of our aspiration even though it be quite sincere; nature unrelentingly exacts of us that same slow growth which she herself makes. There is no to-morrow.
If all the people in a community expressed themselves at appropriate times and seasons by singing, it would naturally follow that a goodly number of them would form themselves into a singing society. This society would satisfy the [Pg 129] desire of the community to hear such music as can be performed only after considerable practice. ”

“ Most of the leading minds whose zeal and energy directed the earlier movements of the various musical societies in this district, are yet among the living, and the natural dictates of refinement cause us to shrink from any attempts at their biographies; it is, therefore, with the deference due to real genius, which needs no praise, that we pass in silence over the names of the most earnest promoters of the growth and cultivation of music, especially as developed in the workings of the Festival Committee, and its important adjunct, the Choral Society. ”

“ The accompaniment, too, is not less to be approved.
VOCAL SOCIETY WE have great pleasure in announcing the first meeting of a Society, under the above designation, comprising a body of musical talent, calculated, as we think, to render most essential service to the cause of music generally, but more especially so to the exhibition of vocal excellence, unfettered by the caprice or tyranny of that non-descript, but all-powerful, influence which is known under the familiar term—Fashion. It is, perhaps, the fairest way that the Society should speak for itself ”

“ If they cannot have legitimate opportunities to realize their impulse to associated activity, they will provide less satisfactory unconventional opportunities. One of the best means for promoting sociability and providing an outlet for youthful energy in concert has been found in the use of music. The old-fashioned singing-school filled a real need and its passing has left a distinct gap. Where musical gatherings have been revived experience has shown that they are a most effective stimulus to a new community consciousness. ”

“ 'But,' said I, 'to be quite honest, I do not think I can live without something of a musical society. I condition for nothing else; but without music, life would be a blank to me.'”
“We cannot suppose,” said Emma, smiling, “that Mr. ”

“ We will only add, that if the probability of these corollaries be admitted, then music must take rank as he highest of the fine arts—as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare. And thus, even leaving out of view the immediate gratifications it is hourly giving, we cannot too much applaud that progress of musical culture which is becoming one of the characteristics of our age. ”

“ He it was who stifled music with the curse of professionalism; so that now, like shivering shop-boys paying gate-money to watch games they cannot play, we sit mute in our stalls listening to the paid performer. But for the musician, music might have been universal. The human voice is still the finest instrument that we possess. We have allowed it to rust, the better to hear clever manipulators blow through tubes and twang wires. The musical world might have been a literal expression. Civilisation has contracted it to designate a coterie. ”

“ Lovers and critics of modern music who are at the same time interested students of the social changes which have preceded and accompanied its growth must often ask themselves whether there is any deep connection of cause and effect between the two sets of phenomena, or whether they merely happened to take place at the same time. Have the important social transformations of the nineteenth century reached so far in their influence as to the music of our time? Has sociology any light to throw upon musical art? The question raises a problem as difficult as it is fascinating ”

“ In fact, the national response to this situation involves the greatest American musical movement of the day. In its earlier phase the question asked was: Will the people, under democracy, rise to the accepted standards of musical culture? A negative answer to this question has been generally entertained, and among cultured people it has been commonly supposed that democracy would drag down the standards of musical culture. ”

“ Notwithstanding all this, it had come to be necessary to take some measures for advancing musical art throughout the country, where great towns and busy centres of industry had multiplied, without the civilising influence of music being to a corresponding degree diffused. ”

“ Yet now a human hand has gathered us from moor and mountain and lonely fell, and side by side we lie and give out music to the hand that strikes us. Thus we, who had lain for centuries unconscious that there was a note of music in our hearts, answer one another in melodious tones, and combine in rich chords, just because we have been brought together. Union makes us musical," said the Rocks. ”

“ An art that in some form is found in the varied activities of all people, at all times, must be the common heritage of humanity. "It does not speak to one class but to mankind," said Robert Franz, the German song writer. Alexander Bain called it the most available, universal and influential of the fine arts, and Dr. Marx, the musical theorist, thought music beneficial to the moral and spiritual estate of the masses. ”

“ Music we shall have, simply because we need it. Or view it from the opposite side, from the point of mere political economy. Music, in many ways, has built itself up into a great industry among us,—music-publishers, musical instrument-makers, music teachers, musical performers,—all mutually dependent, and together swelling the national industry to the amount of many millions. It is the opportunities of hearing music, it is the concerts and the operas, that give the impulse to this whole many-branched machine. ”

“ This same sort of an effect has been noted by us and by innumerable others in many other places, and various testimonies to the beneficial social effect of community singing, neighborhood bands, school orchestras, children's concerts, and similar types of musical activity have come from all parts of the country since the inception of the movement.
The impulse to bring music into the lives of all the people is not a fad, but is the result of the working out of a deep-seated and tremendously significant innate tendency—the instinct for self-expression ”

“ This article, then, expresses my conviction that the average American man or woman is potentially musical. I believe the world of music to be a true democracy. I am convinced that our chief need is to make music ourselves. ”

“ Music is among the most potent factors in developing national spirit and loyalty. Plato wrote: "Any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole state, and ought to be prohibited.... When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them." ”

“ It would be sufficient, one would suppose, to be made familiar with the skill of ordinary musicians; but you could take no interest in their performances, they are drilled to do them, and they can do nothing else: but here is a multitudinous family of musicians, hastening from the loom, the study, the workshop, the laboratory and the warehouse, who each has a distinct business to which he must devote his attention, to join, from a desire to please his fellow-citizens, in the execution of the most difficult and beautiful productions of the musical art ”

“ If we nourish the hope of surmounting the dangerous crisis through which western culture is presently passing, we must make clear distinctions, and if we wish to surmount the particular, so to speak, accessory crisis of American musical maturity, we must not lose sight of the difference between ideas of an aesthetic or sociological nature on the one hand, and, on the other, the individual works of art which supposedly embody them. ”

“ What a new world, with new processes and new ideals, will do with the tractable and still unformed art of music; what will arise from the contact of this art with our unprecedented democracy—these are the questions of deepest import in our musical life in the United States. The past has consisted chiefly of a tasting of the musical art and traditions of the old world. The present is divided between imitation of the old and searching for the new, both in quality and application. The fruitage of our national musical life is still for the future. ”

“ The body which occupied his attention at this crisis of the commonwealth, was a musical deputation, which craved sweet counsel regarding some matter of crotchets or of bars. It is not the first time that music has been heard in the midst of stirring events. ”

“ The amount of music in a community and the public interest in its musical entertainments are among the most significant indices of its general culture and progressiveness. Where there is music there is life. ”

“ Such reflections are applicable to the whole range of our music life, but specifically to concert and opera in this country. In no other land, we believe, is there such a divergence between what takes place, on the one hand, in the established concert and operatic life, and, on the other, in musical enterprises supported by universities, schools, or private groups of citizens, enterprises run not for profit but for the musical experience that can be gained from them. ”

“ The director of community singing must therefore, first of all, be a good mob leader. But if, having met the people upon their own level, he can now call upon his artistic instincts and his musical training, and by means of a purely esthetic appeal raise his crowd a degree or two higher in their appreciation of music as a fine art, eventually perhaps finding it possible to interest them in a higher type of music than is represented by the songs sung in this friendly and informal way, then he has indeed performed his task with distinction, and may well be elated over the results of his labors. ”

“ If, therefore, it is to folfil this fonction efficiently, it must never be divorced from, but must always faithfully reflect, those qualities which are peculiar to the nation from which it proceeds. A nation’s music, for instance, must, at every stage of its development, be closely related to those spontaneous musical utterances which are the outcome of a purely natural instinct, and which proceed, it will always be found, from those of the community who are least affected by extraneous educational influences—that is, from the folk. ”

“ In part at least I have tried to repay what I owe to my compatriots for their confidence and help. But the power of the individual is comparatively small, and while our musicians have already accomplished miracles within the short period that music has played a part in our civilization, so much yet remains to be done that I long for at least one hundred more years of life, partly to continue my work but still more to satisfy my eager curiosity as to the musical future of our people. ”

“ And just as the whole future of America is dependent upon the young people of today, in like manner, the fate of the bands of tomorrow depends upon the musical education and training received by the boys and girls of this present time. Youth must go marching on.
Throughout the ages man has found music to be [181] essential in voicing his own innate sense of beauty. Music is not a thing apart from man: it is the spiritualized expression of his finest and best inner self.
There is no one wholly unresponsive to the elevating appeal of music. ”

“ Once more, the question—How is the expressiveness of music to be otherwise accounted for? may be supplemented by the question—How is the genesis of music to be otherwise accounted for? That music is a product of civilization is manifest; for though savages have their dance-chants, these are of a kind scarcely to be dignified by the title musical: at most, they supply but the vaguest rudiment of music, properly so called. And if music has been by slow steps developed in the course of civilization, it must have been developed out of something. ”

“ If now we set out to glance over the circumstances which have eventually brought about the present condition of music in America, we find that this history, taken in its largest outlines, has a threefold aspect, the features of which may be roughly termed appreciation, creation, and administration. The degree in which the new world has grasped and understood the facts of musical development in the old must constitute a chief factor in any consideration of its musical evolution, and this subject will naturally include a reference to musical culture in America. ”