Note 10 — Chapter IV

This danger is especially insidious just now in our college and high school courses in the appreciation of music. Instructors in such courses are often so zealous in causing pupils to understand the machinery involved in the construction and rendition of music that they sometimes forget to emphasize sufficiently the product resulting from all this machinery, viz., beauty. The idea of these courses is most excellent, and in time those in charge of them will doubtless realize that the hearing of actual music in the classroom is more valuable to students than learning a mass of facts about it; and that if a choice were necessary between a course in which there was opportunity for hearing a great deal of music without any comment, and one on the other hand in which there was a great deal of comment without any music, the former would be infinitely preferable. But such a choice is not necessary; and the ideal course in the Appreciation of Music is one in which the student has opportunity for hearing a great deal of music with appropriate comments by the instructor.