ignorance, carelessness and imposture, that music might be placed under
the same legal protection accorded other important factors in social
life, and that no one be permitted to teach it without a license granted
by a competent board of judges after the applicant had passed a
successful examination, theoretical and practical. This would be well if
there was any certainty of choosing suitable persons to select the
judges.

A practical Vienna musician, H. Geisler, has recently created no little
sensation by asserting that the pianoforte, although indispensable for
the advanced artist, is worthless, even harmful, in primary training,
and that the methods used in teaching it are based on a total
misapprehension of the musical development prescribed by nature. Sensual
and intellectual perceptions must actively exist, he feels, before they
can be expressed by means of an instrument. It is a mistake to presume
that manual practice can call them into being, or to disregard the
supremacy of the tone-sense. He considers the human voice the primitive
educational instrument of music and believes the reasonable order of
musical education to be: hearing, singing, performing.

This order is to be commended, and might readily be followed if primary
instruction was given in classes, which being less expensive than
private tuition, would admit of more frequent lessons and the services
of a competent teacher. Classes afford the best opportunity for training
the ear to accuracy in pitch, the eye to steadiness in reading notes,
the mind to comprehension of key relationships, form and rhythmic
movement, and the heart to a realization of the beauty and purport of
music. In classes the stimulating effect of healthy competition may be
felt, an impulse given to writing notes, transposing phrases and
melodies, strengthening musical sentiment and refining the taste.