MUSIC IN PREPARATORY SCHOOLS.

FOR the last thirty years the progress of music in English schools has been very great, and now at last in our High Grade Schools for boys it is enjoying a growing popularity. When the writer went to his Public School in 1848 (a school of 600 boys) he cannot remember a piano in the place, or a boy who thought of learning. Now there is hardly anyone who is not brought more or less into contact with the influence of music. If a boy doesn't take it up as a part of his work, anyhow he lives in an atmosphere where it must reach his ear and heart in some degree, and get into his system; in fact, he learns almost in spite of himself, so irresistible is the tide.

Each year, too, more and more boys are keen and anxious to be taught, and the work is becoming a necessary part of the general scheme of school education; and all such elementary training, however dry it may seem to the inexperienced, can be made attractive and pleasant by a sympathetic teacher. Of course, the study of such a subject, even to a gifted genius, is a long and tedious work, and the first beginnings of reading and playing, like other rudiments, should be mastered in boyhood. A child can hardly start too young, because at a later age a beginner is far more inclined to be disheartened; and in no subject is steady, slow, and gradual advancement more necessary. Parents must remember this: they often want to hear their child play something," and the arriving prematurely at that "something" has to be at the expense of the far more important and steady training; to produce immediate results the boy will have worked with his ear instead of his eye, and such parrot-utterances are bound in the end to be disappointing.

Of course there is the difficulty of time. Some of the hours in the week of unalterable hour-limits have to be devoted to it, and the scheme of work at a Preparatory School must take its shape from the Public Schools, and under these circumstances the young English schoolboy is at a disadvantage; he cannot work like the German.

However, education is becoming more liberal, and this ensures a greater appreciation of art and science: time that used to be utterly wasted by certain boys on Latin verses and Greek authors can now be spent otherwise; the Piano and the Studio and the Laboratory stand a better chance.

But it is at the Preparatory Schools that this work should be carefully started and nursed; it is extremely improbable that a boy will take up music at his Public School or in after life, if the subject has been neglected during his preliminary education.

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At a Preparatory School, where boys all live under one roof, the many difficulties are more easily met: times can be arranged, duties dovetailed more satisfactorily into one another, music put into half-hours that do not rob a boy of his play; something of course will have to be sacrificed, but then there is invariably a something which is of minor importance if you will take the trouble to find it.

It is impossible to put down a cut-and-dried schedule of hours that will hold in each and every school; time is found if men care for it and if parents are interested. I would here remark how often it happens that in the holidays when any amount of time might be found, a boy lies idle, and, not only loses ground, but feeling a lack of genuine interest at home, he comes back to school very half-hearted to a work that necessarily requires his best efforts; the parents should be more particular about this.

In all instrumental work encouragement is what is specially wanted. Perhaps at school nothing is more helpful in this respect than well-ordered choir work. The singing is the handmaid of the instruments. At all events, every boy possessing anything like an accurate ear and a fair voice should join the choir. In this way he will have the opportunity of acquiring a general musical knowledge., which will act as a stepping-stone to instrumental progress, and help theory and practice to run more easily together.

Of course the master must be earnest and enthusiastic, and make his subject interesting. A judicious arrangement of vocal exercises and blackboard illustrations all tend to attractive and bright teaching; the ear tests, the elementary theory lesson, the beginning to read at sight, the school songs, all make the boy enjoy his three-quarter hour whilst he is with the choir. And the music connected with the chapel services and the concerts naturally give him a definite and an important object of interest that he always has before his eyes as specially belonging to himself.

In a school of this size (130 boys) we find it necessary to have three choir classes arranged according to merit, and this leads to a healthy competition and enables the master to give more individual attention.

There is no want of suitable music; an interesting selection may be made of Novello's school songs. Stanford's "Song-book for Schools" will be found very useful for small boys, as containing an excellent collection of songs in one, two, or three parts.

It will not be out of place to quote Spencer Curwen's remarks on the use of boy singing, in his book, "The Boy's Voice":"Singing, it should be remembered, promotes health. It does so indirectly by causing cheerfulness, a genial flow of spirits, and the soothing of the nerves. It does so directly by increasing the action of the lungs. So far as these organs are concerned singing is a more energetic flow of speech; as we sing we breathe deeply, bring more air into contact with the lungs, and thus vitalise and purify the blood, giving stimulus to the faculties of

digestion and nutrition. A physiologist, in fact, can trace the effects of singing from the lungs into the blood, from the blood into the nerves, and finally into the brain, which of all organs is most dependent upon healthful and well oxygenated blood; boys disposed to consumption have been specially noticed to improve in health after joining the choir; and the medical man who declared that if there were more singing there would be less coughing, expressed in a graphic way the healthful influence of vocal practice."

It is worth considering this among the manifold ways in which mind and body subserve each other's happy interests.

The success of all music work depends greatly on its being popular in the school: the staff of masters, not the music masters only, must believe in it. The man who is keen on the cricket and football of the school must also be a hearty member of the choir, and let the boys see that he is something more than an athlete; if the choirmaster is a gamester, still further is the work helped on. Boys are imitative creatures, always ready to follow a fashion, a strong one as well as a weak one. If some special work is in hand, the choir or the band will always be ready to make use of a spare quarter hour that really is not required for anything else, and so to say would be wasted, provided the community votes music to be "the right thing."

In conclusion, perhaps the greatest reason one has for encouraging music is to bring out the gentle strength of a boy's nature, the double power.

If you can combine refinement with athleticism you then have a very perfect being; Minerva herself carries the distaff and the spear, she is the representative of perfect wisdom, and if schoolmasters will act under her auspices they will not forget that in olden times she was specially the schoolboy's deity-goddess of athleticism, and inventress also of all musical instruments.

I subjoin the following statement drawn up by Mr. Cheriton, one of my music masters, which supplies some of the detail of the music working in this school, and as he is able to compare it with his experiences in a smaller school, the information may be useful.

W. EARLE

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It is difficult to Preparatory Schools. environment.

APPENDIX.

BY MR. W. W. CHERITON.

enter into detail on such a subject as Music in Each school is necessarily influenced by its own

One school will number as few as twenty boys or so, and yet be doing good and useful work in this humanising branch of education; another will possess as many as 130; while the majority, perhaps, vary from forty to eighty boys. Again, one school will possess a chapel, another will not be so fortunate. One school will have one or more masters whose services are entirely devoted to music; another will lack such advantages.

Under these circumstances it will perhaps be best to give, from the writer's own experience, a short survey of the systems adopted, with some measure of success, in two Preparatory Schools whose capacities and opportunities were somewhat different.

The first school in question numbered between fifty and sixty boys. It possessed no chapel of its own. The piano and violin were taught by a lady of much ability and great patience. The singing was taken by one of the form masters.

The whole school was taught singing, with the exception of a few boys whose parents had some objections or other, and the lessons took place on two nights a week, from 7.30 to 8.0, immediately after preparation. The first lesson in the week was usually devoted to the elements of music, with copious use of the blackboard, the singing of scales, sight reading, and the test of single voices. "Hullah's Singing Method," Part I., was used as a text-book. Beating time during this lesson was insisted on. The second lesson during the week was devoted mainly to the learning of school songs, selected from Mr. John Farmer's excellent collection called “ Gaudeamus," and as the price of this book was somewhat high (5s.) the school was provided with sixty copies, towards the purchase of which a small charge was made every term, until the books became school property. The five classes into which the school was divided stood or sat together in separate groups, and a healthy rivalry was promoted by little contests between the classes.

In addition to the singing class there was the school choir, consisting of about twenty boys, formed mainly for the purpose of leading the services on Saints' Days at the church which the school attended. Practice for these services took place out of school hours, and some little treat was usually provided by the headmaster every term as a compensation for the loss of play time.

At the end of each term a "school concert " on a small scale took place, the programme generally consisting of pianoforte solos and duets, violin solos, songs, recitations and school songs sung by the choir, while on several occasions Romberg's or Haydn's "Toy Symphonies" were given as pièces de résistance, much interest being taken by the boys in getting up these works. Thus, with limited resources, music was made to play a not unimportant part in the school's curriculum.

The second school to which reference has been made numbers, at the present time, 130 boys, of whom 75 learn singing and 70 the piano, and 10 the violin, while two boys take lessons on the 'cello. This school possesses a chapel of its own, a splendid three-manual organ, two masters and one lady teacher whose time is solely devoted to the music of the school, while one of the form masters assists with the singing classes.

The boys who learn singing are divided into three "choirs" of twentyfive boys. Each choir has two lessons a week-three-quarters of an hour (during the winter, an hour) for each lesson. The work done by the third