Excerpt from Literature and Music: A Manual for Teachers and Students in School and Home
Some one has said that "Music is of all the arts the directest epitome of life." Since literature is the interpretation of life it is obvious that the teaching of literature and music has a common aim and method. When we realize that the relations of men to each other and to nature are, after all, emotional and not intellectual, it is clear that teaching appreciation in literature aims to create power to perceive, visualize, and feel truth and beauty.
The general trend of education to-day is toward unity of conception and treatment. No teacher, no subject-matter lives unto itself. The chief problem in pedagogy is how to secure willing and intelligent co-operation among teachers, and practical and vital correlation of subject-matter. This co-operation is not merely a matter of helpful assistance; it is a serious effort to find identities of aim, content, and method in teaching so that the minds and spirits of young people may not only be freed but given harmonious development.
Vocational education has very well provided for the purely intellectual and material training of youth. Great sums of money are expended so that they may be taught how to make a living. But we are going to give greater attention to those processes of education which will make life worth living. The problem of the leisure hour, the elevation of taste and morals, the implanting of ideals so that the life may be more than meat and the body than raiment, is the task of the future. Its solution in our schools lies in the hands of the teachers of Literature and Music. Their efficiency lies in complete joining of forces.
This union of forces implies the conviction that their work is the most important and practical work of the school. It means devotion to a noble cause, and a vision. It means a recognition of the fact that both music and literature must be taught for their immediate, esthetic values, not their deferred, prudential values. It also imposes certain obligations: the English teacher should use the Grafonola in his class-room, should read musical literature and biography, should understand musical terminology and form, and should be familiar with musical compositions; the Music Supervisor or teacher should acquaint himself with the types of English literature and literary biography, and should study the rhetorical terminology of poetry, drama, and fiction. Both should sustain a willing, intelligent, and helpful attitude of interest and service toward each other as the daily problems of class and school activities arise.
Assuming that both teachers, of their own initiative, have acquainted themselves with the respective literature of each subject, they should hold periodic conferences so that the English teacher may inform the Music Supervisor of his class work in its various stages, and so that the Music Supervisor may suggest music material to employ and methods of using it. They should confer when preparing for the school's public exercises so that the music and literature will fittingly carry out the central idea of the program. The dramatics of the school should always be conducted along educational and artistic lines, never the merely entertaining. It is the duty of the English teacher to consider the drama as the most potent visible and aural interpretation of the life and thought of man. Co-operating with the Art and Crafts department, he should no less co-operate with the Music Supervisor, both working with one end in view, - the infusion of the best musical literature in song, dance, and incidental music into the dramatic values of the production.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Literature and Music (Milnor Dorey)