Part 24

We have occasionally been accused of taking the attitude of self-laudation, but I really do not think there is great danger of an epidemic of this malady. We do not receive enough encouragement. Once in a while, to be sure, someone tells us, or tells the public, what a great and valuable institution the public library is but the treatment that we receive is generally mildly humorous when it is not characterized by downright indifference and neglect. Whenever a book comes into my hands telling of some movement in which I know that the library has borne an honorable part I always turn first to the index and search for recognition under the letter L. Generally it is not there; when it is, it is almost always inadequate. If we are attacked by the “big head,” it will have to be a case of auto-intoxication.

Exploitation is another possible rock. I have already alluded to the danger of capture by a political machine, but there are other interests more subtle and quite as dangerous. Many a useful institution, intended to be nonpartisan, has been captured and used by some interest or other while remaining non-partisan on the surface. Our safety, so far, has resided in the inability of most interests to see that we are worth capture. When the drive comes, as I believe it will, our continued safety will lie, not in resistance, but in an equal yielding to all--a willingness to act as the agent for all isms, religious, economic, political and industrial without exalting one above another or emphasizing one at another’s expense. Something of this we are already doing, and in so far as we succeed in it we are placing ourselves in a position of vantage from which it will be very difficult to dislodge us.

Assuming the truth of all this--and it is something of an assumption, I grant you--what then, is our library of 1950 to be? An institution not very much larger or more expensively operated than our present maximum, although with a higher minimum, carried on with a more careful eye to economy and watching more jealously the quality of its output. It will have two units of service, as at present, the book and the citizen, but it will tend to regard the latter as primary, rather than the former and will shrink from no form of service that it can render him. The higher quality of its work will be reflected in the greater pride of the worker--in a spirit of professionalism that will insist on adequate training and proper compensation and possibly will use organization to enforce these ideals. It will reach out somewhat further among the people than it does now, although not so much that the difference will be notable. Finally the teamwork between different libraries will be more frequent and effective, assistants will be exchanged freely, readers’ cards used interchangeably and inter-library loans will take place easily and often.

What effect will these changes have on the desirability of library work as a profession? The only conclusion can be that it will be greatly increased. By this I mean that it will be more interesting, more likely to give pleasure to the worker as a by-product. I do not mean that it will necessarily pay very much better. The most interesting and pleasurable occupations are generally, I think, those that do not pay well in money. One should not expect full payment in both cash and pleasure. The exception is where the acquisition of money is itself the feature of the occupation that gives the pleasure. I do not quarrel with those who pursue this form of pleasure, but they certainly have no business to be librarians or teachers, or artists or authors, or to engage in any occupation which in itself constitutes to the worker the fullness of life and its illumination. The library profession will make its appeal in 1950, as it does today, to men and women who like to work with and among and through books; who also like to work with and among and through people; who enjoy watching the interplay of relations between the man and the book and using them for the advancement of civilization. This is an intellectual and spiritual appeal, and it is not likely to be replaced by that which glitters on the metallic face of the dollar.

In taking leave of our subject we may go back to our opening simile of the railroad train. The flier that reaches New York is the same train that left Chicago; its passengers have not greatly changed, and yet its environment is wholly different, so that the outlook of those within it has totally altered. It is in some such fashion that the library of 1950 will differ from that of today. It will be the same institution with the same staff, but it will have traveled far on the rails of time. Its environment, its outlook will be different, and in its response to that variation it must needs do different things and render a different service. May its motive power never fail, its machinery be kept well oiled, and the crew maintain their strength, intelligence and sanity!

POPULARIZING MUSIC THROUGH THE LIBRARY[18]

The purchase of music by a public library is justified by the assumption that its use is to be somewhat analogous to that of printed speech. The analogy is, in fact, somewhat closer than most persons realize, and its consideration reveals some mistaken ideas about the use of music in a library and may give rise to suggestions for the improvement of that use. A page of music, like a page of written language, is a record of something whose primary expression is obtained through sound. Anyone who understands the notation in either case may reproduce the sounds. In one case this is “reading aloud”; in the other it is a performance of the music. In the case of the music the sounds may be made with the voice, or with an instrument or with one or several of both at once, but this is only an apparent complication and does not affect the principle. The reader, of course, may learn the language, or the music, by heart and then dispense with the written record. In practise there are important differences between the treatment of records of speech and music. As sound is readily imagined as well as actually produced, both speech and music may be enjoyed by a reader without making a sound. If the reader of a book cannot do this, he is not regarded as at all skilled. Most of us, I think, do not consider that a person knows completely how to read when he is not able to read “to himself”, but finds it necessary to make the actual sounds of speech, whether loudly, or only under his breath. In the case of music, however, only the skilled musician, as a general thing, is able to read a page of music “to himself”, as he would read a page of written language. This is especially the case with instrumental music and with music where there are several parts. An accomplished musician, however, may run over an orchestral score and hear the performance “in his mind”, with the quality of each instrument brought out, the harmonies and the shading of intensity.

We may go a step further as a matter of curious interest. Language is not necessarily connected with sounds at all. A deaf mute, who has never heard a sound, and is incapable of understanding what sound is, may nevertheless learn to read. He is, however unable to appreciate a page of written music, and I do not know how it would be possible to explain to him what it is like, except the rhythm of it, which may be made to appeal to the senses of sight and touch, as well as to that of sound. In general, however, the reader of music must at least imagine the sounds represented by the notation before him. This is not the case with the reader of speech. Anyone who can read fast and well enough may, like the deaf mute, understand what he reads without even imaging the sound of the words. One may even read so fast that the mere speed forbids any thought of the corresponding oral language. Skilled readers may take in a sentence, a paragraph, almost a page, at a glance. This is the sole point of difference between reading language and reading music; and it does not greatly concern us here because all that it practically affects is speed of appreciation.

Something that is of greater importance is the difference of purpose usually found between those who read words and those who read musical notes. When we say of a child that he is studying music we usually mean that he is learning how to sing or to play on some instrument with the special view of being able to perform before some kind of audience. A music-teacher in like manner is one who teaches his pupils how to play on the piano or the violin, or how to sing.

But when we teach a child to read we are not primarily concerned with his future ability to read aloud or to recite so as to give pleasure to an audience, what we are thinking of is his ability to read rapidly to himself so as to understand what is in books. Looked at in the same way the main thing in musical instruction would be to teach rapid sight-reading so that the reader should get the ability to become acquainted with as large a number of musical masterpieces as possible. One learns to talk by talking; one learns to read by reading; and the same is true of reading music. And as the omnivorous reader of books always wants to express his own thoughts in writing, so the omnivorous reader of music will want to compose. Neither the one nor the other may produce anything great, but the effort will aid in mental development. As a matter of fact, the child begins to put his thoughts into words before he knows how to read. He is encouraged to do so. No mother ever tried to stop her baby from learning to talk because its first efforts were feeble, halting and unintelligible. How differently we treat the child’s attempts at musical expression--for that is the explanation of many of the crude baby noises that we hear. As the child grows, its expression in this direction is discouraged, and seldom is any effort made at encouragement or development. Is it not a wonder that anyone succeeds in composing original music? How many great poets or novelists should we have if every baby were discouraged in its efforts to express itself in words; if it were never taught to talk and never to read?

By the time we librarians are able to exert an influence on the reader, this period is past, but it is still possible to do something. Our first job is to disabuse the public of the idea that enjoyment of music has necessarily something to do with mastering the technique of some musical instrument. The phonograph has done good work in removing this impression, but we should never be content with the phonograph any more than we should consent to do away with all printed books and rely wholly on works “read aloud” on the victrola. There will always be pleasure and profit in doing one’s own reading, whether in speech or in music. One must understand musical notation of course, just as one must know the notation of written speech before he can read books. He must also understand a little of some instrument, preferably the piano; though only enough for sight-reading, his object being to understand and appreciate the music himself, not necessarily to bring understanding and appreciation to others.

I think I have gone far enough along this train of thought to show the principle on which I should select the music for a public library collection. I should form such a collection in precisely the same way as my collection of books. A very large proportion of the books in a public library are properly intended for those who will read them for their own delectation, enjoying and appreciating and profiting personally by what they read. A much smaller proportion are books for study and research. A still smaller number are dramatic or other selections intended principally for recitation or declamation. So, in selecting my music I would acquire chiefly selections for reading. I do not mean elementary reading--one does not limit his language books to primers. I should buy works of all grades of difficulty, but I should have always in mind the primary use of these for sight reading. Comparatively few would be pieces written solely for display--to dazzle the hearer or to show off technique. Few would be pieces whose interest is chiefly historical or academic. I do not say that I should exclude either of these kinds, but I certainly should not include them in greater degree than I should include analogous material in buying ordinary books. Bear in mind also that I am speaking of an ordinary public library, of average size, not of a university library nor that of a music school; nor a public library so large that it may properly have some of the functions of both of these.

Just as it is a conspicuous duty of the library to raise and maintain the level of literary taste in its community and to keep this fact in mind in the selection of its books, so it is the business of its musical collection to raise and maintain the level of musical taste.

My own opinion, which some may regard as heretical, is that taste can not be cultivated, in literature, or art, or music, to any considerable extent by study. The study of these things must have to do largely with history and technique, and while a knowledge of these is desirable it can not affect taste, although we may imagine that it does. We may reduce this matter to its lowest terms by thinking for a moment of something that depends on the uncomplicated action of an elementary sense--physical taste. If one does not like an olive when he eats one for the first time, that judgment can not be reversed by studying the history of olive culture. If he dislikes cheese, it will be useless to take him into a cheese factory and explain to him, or teach him the technical processes of manufacture. The only way to make him change his mind is to induce him to keep on eating olives, when one of two things will take place--either his dislike of olives will be confirmed, or it will disappear. As most people like olives when they become accustomed to the taste, the latter result is to be expected. Now suppose that someone does not care for Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. My contention is that he cannot be made to like it by studying the history of music, or that of this particular selection, nor by analyzing its structure, but that he may be led to do it by listening to it repeatedly. As persons familiar with good music do generally enjoy this piece, it is probable that this result will follow.

I know that I must now justify this comparison. When I make it I am accustomed to indignant protest on the part of some of my students. Is it not unworthy to compare the music of the Moonlight Sonata to a mere physical sensation like the taste of an olive? Only as it may be considered unworthy to compare the great and the small; the complex and the simple. Both the taste of the olive and the sound of the sonata, have a physical origin and impress the brain through the agency of the sense organs. And as a matter of fact I doubt whether the sensation of the music is much more complicated than that of the taste. We know that an acoustic sensation is a unit. When a chorus is singing with orchestral accompaniment the result is not a hundred sound waves, but one; it strikes the ear drum as a unit, and that vibrates as a unit, so that the impression on the brain, about whose mechanism we are ignorant, must also be a unit. The popularity of the phonograph enables us to illustrate this familiarly. Examine with a microscope a record of a complicated musical performance, with many voices and many different kinds of instruments, and you will find a single wavy line. When the needle causes the disk to vibrate by following this line, it vibrates as a unit, just as the ear-drum does. There is but one disk, yet its vibration enables us to pick out separately the different voice parts, and to recognize the separate quality of the stringed instruments, the woodwinds and the brasses, with the drums, bells, and what not. When we taste the olive, we get a sort of chemical effect. We do not know what happens as definitely as we do in the case of a musical sound, but the various atoms, each vibrating in its own way, act upon the taste-buds of the tongue so that a sensation is transmitted to the brain--transmitted as a unit, just as the sound is. I want to be fair, so I will acknowledge that instead of comparing a single sensation of taste to a sequence of sounds, I should have likened it to a musical chord. To get a taste analogy with a sonata we should have to use a sequence of taste sensations, possibly that presented by a course dinner. I submit, however, that this does not affect my argument.

Let me repeat my conviction, then, that art is primarily a matter of the heart and not of the head--of the feelings and not of the intellect, and that the feelings are trained by personal experience, not by study. One cannot learn to appreciate a poem, or a picture or a piece of music by examining it historically or structurally, only by experiencing it and others like it again and again, and also by experiencing in life the emotions that the art is intended to arouse. Of course I do not mean to say that knowledge of history and technique is not interesting and valuable. It is highly interesting to know the recipe for the pie and to watch the cook make it; but this does not affect the taste.

Knowledge obtained by study does affect ability to reproduce or create. One must know how the pie is made before he can make one himself. One can not write a poem or paint a picture or compose a song, without preliminary study. This should be understood, but it is outside the pale of our present discussion, which relates to the chief purpose of the music collection in a library and of its chief uses. My contention, to repeat, is that it is related to musical art precisely as the purpose of the book-collection is related to the art of literature.

Now the present status of the music collection is precisely what that of the book collection would be in a community where the percentage of literacy was small, where a considerable number of persons did not understand the language of the books, even when spoken or read aloud, where those who knew the language understood it only when spoken or read and where readers were obliged to read aloud before they could appreciate what they were reading. A community, moreover, where teaching generally meant solely teaching how to recite or read aloud acceptably to others, with only enough ability to read to get the sense of an extract and enable the reader to commit it to memory. A librarian set down with a collection of books in such a community would not be true to his vocation if he did not attempt to better this state of things, while admitting the elements of good that it contained. For instance, the imaginary situation that I have described would be quite comparable with a real appreciation and love of good literature.

In the first place, the librarian would wish to see that all the members of his community were able to understand the language of his books, if not to read it. To remember our analogy for a moment, he would practically fit his books to his people. If they were predominantly French, for instance, he would buy many French books. But one can not do this with music, for music is a language by itself, for the most part untranslatable into any other. We must assume that in the world to which our imaginary community belongs there is but one language, and that to understand the books those who do not know that language must be taught it. School instruction in language is largely limited to reading. Children who go to school understand and talk their language already, having been taught it at home. It is to the homes, therefore, that the librarian would have to look for this instruction and he would have to bring to bear on parents whatever influence might be at his disposal to make them see its value and uses.

Secondly, he would have to see that as many as possible were taught to read the language. This would be the function of the schools.

Thirdly, it would be necessary to see that facility in reading proceeded so far that readers would not find it necessary to read aloud, but could when they desired, read rapidly “to themselves”. It would be necessary, of course, to show many of the teachers and almost all of their pupils, that reading is primarily not to enable the reader to recite to others, but to make an impression on his own mental equipment. It is quite possible for one to learn to read out loud after a fashion, in a foreign tongue, without understanding a word of it, but so that listeners may get a fair idea of it. The effect on the reader in this case is absolutely zero.

Musically, this kind of community is precisely the one that public libraries have to deal with. Many of our clients do not like or understand music at all, or they care for only the most elementary melodies, harmonies and rythms--comparable to the literature that one gets in a child’s primer. Of those whose range of appreciation and love is fairly wide, comparatively few are familiar with musical notation, and can not read music. Of those who can read, few can read rapidly and with assurance, and fewer still can read without audible utterance; that is, they can not read to themselves. It is common to hear persons who can sing or play on some instrument with a fair degree of success and taste say “Oh, I can’t read; I have to pick out the notes and get my teacher to help me.” This is exactly as if someone who had just recited an oration or a poem with some feeling should proclaim complacently: “Oh, I can’t really read. I had to pick out that piece word for word, with my teacher at my elbow to help me out.”

In the face of such a situation the librarian should feel and act precisely as he would feel and act if the situation existed with regard to books, as it has already been imagined and described.

First, he should try to influence the growth of musical appreciation through the home, so that all the children in a family shall come to understand and use musical language as they do the language of the spoken word.

Secondly, he should try to influence the schools so that they shall teach the reading of musical notation as thoroughly as they do the reading of the printed word, and to persuade teachers of music to teach music really and not simply the art of performing on some musical instrument.

Thirdly, he should point out to his musical clients that music may be read “to oneself”, just as language can, and encourage them to try it, beginning with easy examples. Note that reading to oneself can be done only by those who already know how to read aloud, and only by practise. There is no way in which it can be taught.

Fourthly, he should have in his library a selection of music picked out to a great extent to further the ends outlined above. Much of it should be for readers, not for performers. His lists should be made for readers and the comments on individual titles should be for readers. Moreover, they should at present be such as will help the beginner; for a very large proportion of our musical readers are beginners although they may be in the anomalous position of the reader who knows and appreciates his subject matter very thoroughly, while he can read about it only hesitatingly and haltingly. Imagine a well-informed and intelligent student of history who has completely forgotten to read, owing to some concussion of the brain which has not impaired his knowledge in any other way, and you have the situation of many music-lovers.