Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/113

Rh But though music is made a part of almost all Christian worship, and though its great masters have proved by their compositions, that it expresses the highest ideas, and even the most varied thoughts, as well as sentiments, of humanity more adequately than words can do; yet it does not take its place in American education, even upon a par with reading. Somewhat of the practice of music in choral singing, it is true, begins to enter into our common-school education. But this hardly goes beyond the metropolis; and the theory of music is not taught in any school or college in our country, with the exception of the asylums for the blind, and a few private schools. There are multitudes of the fathers of our country who, as school-committee men, direct its education, who never have thought of music but as an amusement of the senses; who never have dreamed of its moral, far less of its intellectual, influences. And there are some who look upon it, when introduced into religious services, as a mere rest of the weak mind from the laborious act of worship.

But it is time that the importance of music, taught thoroughly, especially in its theory, should be recognized in education; and that the hideous screaming, without melody, measure, or harmony, which is heard in most places of Protestant worship, should be stilled, together with the scraping of violins and bass-viols, and the pounding of the keys of piano-fortes and organs, to the destruction of all musical ear, and the derangement of every standard of proportion which God has planted in the nervous organization of man, for the first discipline of the mind to order.

One objection that is made to the introduction of music into common education is the time that it would occupy, which, it is said, should be taken up with more useful exercises. But, waiving the circumstance, that this objection entirely begs the question respecting the comparative importance of music in education, we reply, that, were music and dancing a regular part of school exercises every day, as they should be, it would be no hardship to children to remain more hours at school. These exercises could profitably be so arranged that they would break the monotony of book-studies, and supersede the boisterous, and too often