that bringing together, into one focus or centre, of many teachers and many pupils, whereby breadth
and soundness of general musical education are or
should be attainable. Turning to the schools of
music of the present day, we find the academic system very fully developed everywhere except in our own country of Scotland, whose turn is coming, we hope.
The system is indeed said to be rather over-devel-
oped in the great metropolis. Recently a London
musician of note, in advising as to the course for a
young student coming to town to one of the minor
'colleges of music,' said that there were now so
many so-called colleges of music good, bad, and
indifferent, that it needed a little caution and care
to make a good choice. Professional musicians
seem there to have been led by the prevailing
fasliion and the force of circumstances into teaching
combinations, which by their very numbers and
mushroom growth are degenerate. • Still the abuse
of a system impugns not the use thereof, and we may
look with satisfaction upon the work done by the
great schools — the Royal Academy, the Royal
College, the College of Organists, the Guildhall
School, etc. Our satisfaction is also heightened as
Scotsmen by the knowledge that our countryman,
the composer of the Rose of Sharon, is now at the
head of the first-named institution, to guide and
inspire it with his native common-sense and artistic
power.
Germany has long enjoyed the benefits of good
schools and good teachers, which continue to attract
students from our own shores, from America, and
elsewhere. The names of Mendelssohn, Raff",
Bralims, Rubinstein, Frau Schumann are powerful
for good far and wide. As to our universities, it is
a difficult task to determine the exact amount of
educational work performed by the various classes
of music. A university professor of music is, we
fear, in Great Britain too little associated with the
practical — that is, with the interpretation of the
classics, whether in operatic, oratorio, orcliestral, or
chamber music — to reach the people. The chair of
music is one among many chairs, and does not
officially include or possess the machinery for the
rendition of music, if we except here and there the
organ. There is however a mission which the
university professor seems peculiarly called upon
to fulfil. It is that of a leader in musical politics,
a learned critic, a fosterer of the best scliools of
composition. It is that of a musical historian,
pliilosopher, and grammarian. He must be a man
of light and leading, a theorist who is more than
a grammarian, and who, going deeper into the mines
of musical ore, can tell us what are the yet un-
wrought seams, — how far, for instance, a system of
improved temperament is possible or impossible.
The giants, from Bach to AVagner, have apparently
left so little room for newness of form or originality
of expression, that we turn with eagerness to the
declaration that has been made in a high quarter
that elaboration of rhythms is the next musical mine.
Whether from national feeling or original conception,
Dvorak has in some of his music treated us to a
freshness of rliythm that is undoubtedly charming,
— witness The SjKcti-e"// Bride. But to return from
a digression — if we have sought with a free hand to
indicate the possibilities and ideals of a chair of
music, let us not expect too much of the men who
fill such hardly definable posts.
Yet Sir Robert Stewart has for many years been
the head and ornament of the musical profession in
Ireland. He has kept up a school of church organ-
playing and choral accompaniment, recalling the
days of S. S. Wesley. He has lectured, examined,
and composed — or as he himself once said: ' I have
spoilt a good deal of music paper in my time.'
The Rev. Sir Frederick Ouseley stands out as the
greatest living British contrapuntist — the friend of
all those younger musicians who have come under
his fascinating and kindly influence. He, and pro-
bably he alone, can extemporise a fugue on any given
subject with a strictness, fertility of invention, and
grandeur of effect never to be forgotten by the
privileged listener.
Every musician should be a theorist in order to
methodise and render intellectually interesting his
playing or singing. Much has been done for the
teaching of the elements of music by such writers as
Troutbeck, W. H. Cummings, Davenport, Hullah,
Curwen and his coUaborateurs, and a host of others.
There is no excuse for any one being ignorant of
the rudiments of music with such a variety of
excellent primers as are nowadays to be had.
The whole series issued in recent years by Novello,
under the editorship of Dr. Stainer, testify to the
widespread interest in the study of music. These
primers are marvels of condensation and of clearness of treatment.
The scientific study of harmony is of immense practical value. As to the method of study doctors differ, as might be expected. Sir George Macfarren's system of harmony is, we think, defective in respect that it gives no play or freedom to the mind of the student, but reduces a partly cEsthetical science to a cast-iron rule and an equally unyielding code of exceptions, so carefully tabulated as to overreach the mark and cripple the young composer. The Oxford professor has done better. His text-book on harmony is philosophical, clear, and interesting. The professor's theories may not in toto
