The Project Gutenberg EBook of Music As A Language, by Ethel Home

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Title: Music As A Language
Lectures to Music Students

Author: Ethel Home

Release Date: July 6, 2005 [EBook #16225]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Oxford University Press

_London_ _Edinburgh_ _Glasgow_ _New York_
_Toronto_ _Melbourne_ _Bombay_

Humphrey Milford _M.A._ _Publisher to the University_

MUSIC
AS A LANGUAGE

LECTURES TO
MUSIC STUDENTS

BY

ETHEL HOME
HEAD MISTRESS OF THE KENSINGTON HIGH SCHOOL
G.P.D.S.T.

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1916

PREFACE

The following lectures were delivered to music students between the
years 1907 and 1915. They have been partly rewritten so as to be
intelligible to a different audience, for in all cases the lectures were
followed by a discussion in which various points not dealt with in the
lectures were elucidated.

An experience of eight years in organizing a training course for
students who wish to teach ear-training on modern lines to classes of
average children in the ordinary curriculum of a school has shown me
that the great need for such students is to realize the problems, not
only of musical education, but of _general_ education.

Owing to the nature of all art work the artist is too often inclined to
see life in reference to his art alone. It is for this reason that he
sometimes finds it difficult to fit in with the requirements of school
life. He feels vaguely that his art matters so much more to the world
than such things as grammar and geography; but when asked to give a
reason for his faith, he is not always able to convince his hearers.

He feels with Ruskin that:

'The end of Art is as serious as that of other beautiful things--of the
blue sky, and the green grass, and the clouds, and the dew. They are
either useless, or they are of much deeper function than giving
amusement.'

But he has not always the gift of words by means of which he can
describe this function.

We want our a