teaching, children are called one by one, out of whatever class they
happen to be attending, to have their music-lesson. Either the whole of
the rest of the class must mark time at some unnecessary exercise until
the missing member returns, or one child must miss some stage, some
explanation that will involve a weakness, a lameness for the rest of
the course of instruction. Not only is the actual music-lesson a
nuisance in this way, but all day the school air is loaded with the
oppressive tinkling of racked and rackety pianos. Nothing, I think,
could be more indicative of the real value the English school-
proprietor sets on school-teaching than this easy admission of the
music-master to hack and riddle the curriculum into rags. [Footnote 1:
Piano playing as an accomplishment is a nuisance and encumbrance to the
school course and a specialization that surely lies within the private
Home province. To learn to play the piano properly demands such an
amount of time and toil that I do not see how we can possibly include
it in the educational scheme of the honourable citizens of the coming
world state. To half learn it, to half learn anything, is a training in
failure. But it is probable that a different sort of music teaching
altogether--a teaching that would aim, not at instrumentalization, but
at intelligent appreciation--might find a place in a complete
educational scheme. The general ignorance that pervades, and in part
inspires these papers, does, in the matter of music, become special,
profound, and distinguished. It seems to me, however, that what the
cultivated man or woman requires is the ability to read a score
intelligently rather than to play it--to distinguish the threads, the
values, of a musical composition, to have a quickened ear rather than a
disciplined hand. I owe to my friend, Mr. Graham Wallas, the suggestion
that the piano is altogether too exacting an instrument to use as the
practical vehicle for such instruction, and that something simpler and
cheaper--after the fashion of the old spinet--is required. Possibly