Chapter X: The Teaching of Elementary Composition

A wise musician has drawn attention to the fact that music has a more important educational function than any foreign language, being a common language for the expression of emotion, imaginative power, and rhythmic feeling. He went on to say that, as a training, it is of use from the very earliest years, and for all classes of the community.

If we agree with this view--and it is encouraging to note the increasing number of those who do so--we must so organize the musical education of children that a time comes when they will be ready to 'express themselves' in music in the same way in which they can express themselves in their native tongue.

An earlier chapter in this book has dealt with the teaching of extemporizing, first, treated as vocal expression, then as instrumental. When a class of children has arrived at the stage of being able to extemporize a tune of sixteen bars, in any given key and time, and introducing given modulations, it is quite ready to begin the more formal study of composition, and to be initiated into the mysteries of form. Hitherto the experiments of the class in this direction have been chiefly spontaneous; the teacher has of set design left the child who is extemporizing as free as possible, but the time has now come for a new 'window' to be opened in its mind.

A preliminary talk should be given on the need of form in music. It must be pointed out that we cannot be intelligible without it, that it is not enough to have a language at our command; we must have _shape_ in order to convey our ideas to others. The child should realize that the great artists in all the arts are under the same necessity as the youngest beginner in composition. Inspiration must be embodied in a definite form, or others cannot share the vision of beauty.

For a time the child now has to learn to select a musical form, then to choose a musical thought which can be fitly expressed in it. It will seem a cramping process after the freedom of extemporizing, but the child who loves the work will willingly submit to the discipline. It cannot be too often impressed on the young teacher that children as a whole _like_ discipline. They despise those who are indifferent to it, and give a ready submission to those who expect it, provided they feel sure of an underlying sympathy.

The first lessons in form should consist of the analysis of simple tunes, preferably of the Folk Song type. The forms known as AB, ABA, and the variants derived from these will be explained, and the class will write examples of each, at first not harmonizing the melodies, but afterwards doing so. The old dance forms will then be taken. At this stage it is absolutely necessary for those of the class who are musical, and who wish to give a little extra time to music, to go through a course of strict harmony and counterpoint; endless time will be wasted if they do not do so. The work will be very much lightened because of the foundation already laid, for, without knowing it, the children have been doing a little free counterpoint for some time, when they added vocal parts to a given melody, and their knowledge of practical harmony will make it possible for them to take many a short cut in the formal work.

The dance forms, together with very simple fugues and contrapuntal studies, and a few 'free' exercises in songs and short pieces, will be as far as the majority of children will get in the study of composition. But there will always be a few in each class who will be eager and able to go farther, and to begin the study of sonata form. For such children, and certainly for all teachers of music, there can be no better text-book than Hadow's _Sonata Form_, published in the Novello Primer Series. This book is often described as 'more exciting than a novel'! Somervell's Charts for Harmony and Counterpoint are also most valuable, and will save the necessity of a text-book in these subjects--at any rate for the beginner, who works under guidance.

There is one curious fact about all but the most musical children when they begin to _write down_ tunes of their own composition. They make mistakes which they have never made when _extemporizing_ the same type of tune. This seems to arise from the fact that they suddenly feel self-conscious--they have more time to think when writing than when singing or playing, and are inclined to compose one bar at a time instead of phrase by phrase. They will produce a tune of seven bars--they will end on a weak beat--they will come to a full stop in the middle of an eight-bar tune on the tonic chord, root at the top--the last half of the tune will have nothing to do with the first half. We could write a page of their possible mistakes!

The cure for these lapses is to insist on the tunes being sung before being written. The old unconscious habit will then assert itself, and the little tunes will fall into shape.

It is a useful lesson to get a class to criticize all original tunes when played by the young composer. For one thing, the criticism of our contemporaries often carries more weight than that of our elders; and for another, the practice arouses the critical faculty, and teaches the children to listen keenly, for they have not the written tune in front of them.

After a little practice quite good criticisms will be given by children. They will notice such points as a weak scheme of keys--undue repetition of the chief melody--a clumsy modulation--a trite ending--an over-laboured sequence--a tendency to borrow ideas from others, and so on.

This training will be of the greatest possible value to them later on in the concert-room. As a writer in _The Times_ once put it:

'The vague impressions which are all that many people carry away from the concert-room would be replaced by definite experiences.

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'Mental analysis is not, of course, the main object in listening to music, but it is a most powerful aid to full appreciation. It is the failure to perceive any definite relation between the parts and the whole that baffles so many people, and sends them away from the concert-room remarking that they cannot understand "classical" music.'