Favorite Songs and Hymns For School and Home, page: 0284

450 Of The World's Best Songs And Hymns, With Lyrics & Sheet music for voice & piano.

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	The mistake has been made in teaching music, that the names of the characters representing music have been taught first, instead of music itself. To little children, and even to children of a larger growth, it thus becomes dry and uninteresting; but if we reverse the process and teach music first and the names of characters incidentally, the work may be a constant de�light and much valuable time will be saved. Mr. Holt does not claim to have invented anything, but simply to have discovered that the educational principles which underlie the true teaching of any other subject can be	applied to music. He has discovered a method of pre. sentation according to such principles that any one having teaching ability can successfully lead even the little child of five years to a surprising knowledge of music, provided only that the teacher has at the outset the musical ability to sing the scale. In order to be�come a musical nation we must have music taught in the public schools, and the daily work must be done by the regular teachers with special supervision at cer�tain intervals. The only rote lesson in the whole course is the first�the teaching of the scale, which is taken
	OH, MY BRAVEST AND BEST.		Vincenzo Bellini.
	as the unit of thought in tune. Aside from this there is no imitation. It is a system of much thinking. Time and tune are taught separately, the whole measure being taken as the unit in tune. He has taught what not to teach, and has stripped music of the technicalities and enigmas which have been a bugbear to so many. He has shown�what has been proved in many schools� that it is as easy for children to read in one key as in another. There are no difficulties in the representation of music. One strong point is that practically but one scale is taught in different positions. The syllables are	used Simply as a means to an end, and are soon dropped. They are valuable in elementary work if used within certain limits. It can only be said that their use is better than none, since they bring up quickly the characteristic quality of the intervals. All music is written upon the basis of tone relation and these syllables aid the mind somewhat to grasp the idea of this relation of sounds. The musical tones which can be used with advan�tage, and have clearly distinguishable pitch, have be�tween forty and four thousand vibrations in a second, extending over a range of seven octaves.�Helmholtz.