Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/311

Rh while there may be a countless number of methods of doing this.

Finally, Chevé's third and great idea consists in popularizing music and its instruction. His method of instruction completely attains this object. And this is not merely Chevé's desire, and it is not merely my hypothesis, but it is a fact. In Paris I saw hundreds of horny-handed laborers sitting on benches under which were laid the tools which they had brought with them from their work, and they were singing from notes, and they understood and were interested in the laws of music.

As I looked at these workmen, it was easy for me to imagine Russian muzhiks in their places, with Chevé speaking Russian: they would have sung just as well, they would have understood in the same way all that he said about the general laws and rules of music. We hope to speak in still greater detail about Chevé and particularly of the significance of popularized music, singing especially, in the revival of decadent art.

I pass on to a description of the course of instruction in our school. After six lessons the goats were separated from the sheep; only musical natures were left—the amateurs—and we went on to minor scales, and to the explanation of intervals. The only difficulty was to find and distinguish the diminished second from the second. Fa had already been called healthy; do seemed to them likewise a noisy fellow and so I had no need of teaching them—they themselves felt the note into which the diminished second resolved, therefore they felt the minor second itself.

Without difficulty we ourselves found that the major scale consists of a succession of two whole tones and one half tone, three whole tones and one half tone. Then we sang Slava Otsu in the minor key, and by ear reached the scale which seemed minor; then in this scale we found one whole tone, one half tone, two whole tones, one half tone, one augmented whole tone, and one