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 desire of the community to hear such music as can be performed only after considerable practice. I cannot emphasize too strongly the connection between the community and the singing society. The latter should be the answer to the community's de-. sire, and not be a spectacle if I may mix my metaphors to that extent.

III

I live in a town of some six thousand inhabitants which about answers to the description given near the beginning of this article. There was a singing society in the place about thirty years ago, but since then there has been little choral-singing. Two years ago I asked some thirty people to come together to practice choral-singing. I then stated that I should like to train them if they would agree to two conditions: first, that we should sing none but the very best music, and second, that our concerts should be free to the townspeople. These conditions were at once agreed to and we started rehearsing. We found it possible to get the use of the largest church with a good organ, and we found four people who played the violin and two the violoncello. Our little orchestra finally grew until we had some eight or ten string players. We borrowed kettle-drums and one of our enthusiasts learned to play them.

We have given three concerts, at each of which the church was more than filled-it seats about six hundred people. Our programmes have contained Brahms's Schicksalslied (Song of Fate) and parts of his Requiem, Bach's Motett 'I Wrestle and Pray,' arias from

the St. Matthew Passion, and similar compositions. Our soloists have been members of our chorus, with little previous experience of such music as we have been singing but with a profound sensibility to it brought about by continued practice of it. The townspeople who have come to hear our music have given certain evidence of a fact which I have for many years known to be true, namely, that when people have a chance thoroughly to know a great composition it invariably secures their complete allegiance. Knowing this, we have repeated our performance of these various works, sometimes singing one piece twice in the same concert. We have given, for example, the Schicksalslied three times in two years, and both singers and audience are completely won over to it.

Our singing society is supported by the payment of fifty cents each by any individual who cares to subscribe. We give two open concerts a year, at which six hundred people hear the finest choral music at a total annual expense of about seventy-five dollars. Every one connected with the project gives his or her services free. Our concerts take place on Sunday afternoons. At the last one I tried an interesting experiment. Bach's Motett, 'I Wrestle and Pray,' is based, as is common in his choral pieces, on a chorale which is sung by the sopranos in unison, with florid counterpoints in the other parts. At the end the chorale is given in its original form, so that the congregation may join in the singing of it. It was a simple matter for us to get six hundred copies of this chorale reproduced by mimeograph, and these were distributed in the pews. The result was almost electrifying to one who had heard the feeble church singing of feebler hymns in our churches. The second time the Motett was sung - we performed it at the beginning and at the end of this concert - nearly every one

joined in and the echoes rolled as they had never rolled before in that church. Why? These very same people send up feeble, timid, disorganized, slightly out-of-tune sounds every Sunday morning in their various churches. Has a miracle happened that they are lustily singing together? Not at all. They have merely been offered an opportunity to do what they are all quite capable of doing, namely, singing a hymn suited to them. This chorale has a range of but five tones from ƒ to c; it is largely diatonic, proceeding step by step of the scale, and it is noble and inspiring. How often had such an opportunity been presented to them before? Why not?

The members of our chorus are such people as one would find in most American towns of the same size. Perhaps we are more than usually fortunate in our solo singers and our orchestra. I believe the chief reason why a project like this might be difficult in many places is because it might not be possible to find a leader who cared more for Bach and Brahms than for lesser composers. The technical problem is not extreme, but the leader must have unbounded belief in the best music and tolerate nothing less. The moment this latter condition lapses, choral singing will lapse as it would deserve to do.

There are many small communities where choral concerts on a large scale are occasionally given. Great effort and great expense are not spared. Several hundred voices, a hired orchestra, and hired soloists make the event notable. But the music performed is of such a character that no one wants to hear it again; neither the singers who practice it nor the audience who listen to it are moved or uplifted. There have even been systematic efforts in some middle western states to establish community singing. The effect of such efforts depends there, as here, on the

kind of music which people are asked to sing, for this is the heart of the whole matter. No advance in music, or in anything else, can be expected without constant striving for the very best. And it is quite within bounds to say that most of these efforts are nullified by lack of a really high standard. Finally, let me say that a concert of good music by a local choral society is, to the people of any community, immensely more valuable than a paid musical demonstration by performers from abroad which costs five times as much money.

IV

Leaving this actual experience and its effects on the community, let us ask ourselves what this singing means to the individuals who do it. In the first place it makes articulate something within them which never finds expression in words or acts. In the second place, it permits them to create beauty instead of standing outside it. Or, to speak still more definitely, it not only gives them an intimate familiarity with some great compositions, but it accustoms them to the technique by means of which music expresses itself. They learn to create melodic lines, to add a tone which changes the whole character of a chord; they learn how themes are disposed in relation to each other; they come into intimate contact with the actual materials of the art by handling them. This, we do not need to say, is the key to the knowledge and understanding of anything. You cannot understand life, or love, or hate, or objects, or ideas, until you have dealt in them yourself. Singing has the profound psychological advantage of giving active issue to that love of beauty which is usually entirely passive.

The artist has two functions: he draws, or paints, or models; he uses language or sounds. This comprises

his technique. But he also possesses imaginative perception. Now, nothing is more certain than that our understanding of what he does must be in kind. We learn to understand his technique by actual experience of it. So, also, we learn to enter into the higher qualities of his art by the exercise of the same faculties which he uses. Our feelings, our minds and our imaginations must take a reflection from him as in a mirror. If the glass is blurred or the angle of reflection distorted we cannot see the image in its perfection. The light comes from we know not where.

Let any reader of these words ask himself if the statement they contain of the qualities of music and of our relation to it could not with equal force be applied to his own business or occupation. Is not his understanding of that business or occupation based on these two essentials: first, familiarity with its methods and materials, and, second, on some conception of the real meaning, significance, and possibility that lie behind its outward appearance and manifestation?

I have not laid sufficient stress on the advantage to men of singing. Not only does it enable them to become selfexpressive, but it gives them the most wholesome of diversions, it equalizes them, it creates a sort of brotherhood, it takes their minds off their cares and gives them a new and different insight. This is, of course, not accomplished by the kind of music men now sing, which is chiefly associated with sports and conviviality. So long as music is only outside us, so long as we educate our children without bringing them into actual contact with its materials, giving them little real training in the development of the senses, just so long will it remain a mystery, just so long will its office be misunderstood. What a perplexity it is now to many of us! How it does thrust us away! We have

got beyond being ashamed to love it, but we love it from afar.

From a sociological point of view this discussion has thus far been somewhat limited. Now, the possibilities in music to weld together socially disorganized communities have never been fully realized in America. Were we to set about using it directly to that end, we should find out how valuable it is in breaking down artificial barriers. By choral singing, people in any one locality can be brought into a certain sympathy with each other. Groups who attend the same church, the fathers and mothers of children whom the settlements reach wherever there is a 'neighborhood' there is a chance for singing. It needs only a person who believes in it, and who will rigidly select only the best music. And where neighborhood groups have been singing the same fine music, any great gathering of people would find everybody ready to take part in choral-singing. This would make community music a reality, and would doubtless so foster the love of the art as eventually to affect the whole musical situation. Any one who has ever had personal experience of bringing fine music to those who cannot afford to attend concerts knows that such people are as keen for the best as are those who can afford it. There is no one so quick to appreciate the best as the person who lives apart from all these social usages of ours which constitute our silk-spun cocoons. There we lie snugly ensconced, protected from sharp winds, completely enshrouded, while these other folk are battling with life itself. We may be satisfied with a gleam or two through the mesh; they are not. They meet reality on every hand and know it when they see it. No make-believe can deceive them.

Let us not misunderstand this situation. I am not writing about painting or sculpture, for I know that these arts

involve certain perceptive and selective qualities of the mind which require long training. I am writing about music, which appeals to a sense differentiated and trained long before the sense for color-vibration or for beauty of form was developed, a sense which we possess in a highly developed state in very childhood. There is absolutely no comparison between, say, Beethoven and Rembrandt in this respect.

Imagine a small opera house in the lower East Side of New York or in the North End or South End of Boston, which the people there might frequent at sums within their means; imagine a small western city with such an opera house; and compare the probable results with those now attained by our gorgeous and needlessly expensive operatic performances which, whether at home or abroad, leave little behind them but a financial vacuum, and a dim idea that somehow opera means famous 'stars' singing in a highly exaggerated manner in a strange language, in stranger dramas, where motives and purposes are stranger still. Concerts and operatic performances such as these would supplement and complete our own musical activities. These paid artists would be playing and singing to us in a language we ourselves had learned by using it. Music would be domestic; we should understand it better and love it more.

I am familiar with the old argument that concerts and operas so conducted would not pay. To this I reply that it is probably true. Does settlement work pay? Does a library pay? Does any altruistic endeavor anywhere pay? No; nothing of this sort ever shows a money balance on the right side of the ledger. But we do not keep that column in figures. It foots up in joy, not in dollars. The best kind of social 'uplift' would be something that made people happier. The real uplift is of the soul, not of the

body. Let a rift of beauty pierce the dull scene. Let us have a taste of Heaven now; and let it be not yours or mine but theirs. In music everybody makes his own Heaven at the time.

The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from an investigation of our musical situation is that we need only opportunities of expressing ourselves. Every village contains a potential singing society, every church contains a potential choir, every family in which there are children might sing simple songs together. There is a singing club hidden away in every neighborhood. Every city might have, on occasion, thousands of people singing fine songs and hymns. What is the present need? Leaders: educated musicians who have learned the technique of their art and have, at the same time, learned to understand and appreciate the greatest music, and who prefer it to any other. Our institutions for training musicians are sending out a continual stream of graduates, many of whom begin their labors in small towns and cities. Nearly every community has at least one man with sufficient technical knowledge of music to direct groups of singers, large and small. What kind of music does he, in his heart, prefer? The answer is to be read in programmes here and there, in the record of unsuccessful singing societies, in the public performances of 'show pieces.' Should not our institutions pay more attention to forming the taste of their students? Is it really necessary to teach them technique through bad examples of the art of music? Can they safely spend several years dealing with distinctly inferior music for the sake of a facile technique? Is rhetoric or oratory superior to literature? There is no such thing as teaching violin or piano-playing and teaching music. If the violin or piano teaching deals with poor music which the pupil practices several hours a day,

no lessons in musical history, theory, form, or æsthetics can counteract the effect of that constant association. We cannot advance without leaders. We look to the training schools for them. And these schools cannot expect to supply them to us unless they so conduct their teaching as to develop in students a love and understanding of the best.

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. I believe that under right conditions we should enjoy doing so; I think all art is closely related to the sum of human consciousness. And just as I see great

music based on what we are and what we feel, so I see the expert performance of music as being merely our own performance magnified and beautified by extreme skill. I see, in short, a necessary and natural connection between ourselves and both composer and performer. I believe that all the great pictures and sculpture and music lay first. in the general consciousness and then became articulate in one man. I believe no statesman, no philosopher, no, not even a Christ, to be conceivable save as he lies first in men's hearts. What they are in posse, he is in esse. That we all are more musical than we are thought to be; that we are more musical than we get the chance to be of this there is no doubt whatever.