UNIVERSITY MUSIC VALUED

If someone should inquire in what way a college education was most helpful to those who intend to devote the whole or part of their life to music, I should answer that it was in learning to look upon their art from the viewpoint of the amateur. And in this connection "amateur" signifies all that is best and most healthy in the unprofessional idea of things. About us on all sides are evidences of a professionalism made all too necessary in a country where commercial development has not yet left much room for deliberate, peaceful thought, nor the pursuance of artistic ideals. The market value of toil and ambition, of genius, of capacity for understanding, is what we are all most familiar with; so much so that it is easy to forget what the love of a task for itself really means. It is this amateur spirit that is cherished and guarded in our universities and schools. And it is this spirit that we, and especially those of us who have artistic ideals, should cherish and guard in our later life as the heritage of our undergraduate days.

Unprofessional Quality Necessary.

Speaking broadly, every worker, no matter to what task he is assigned in life, should have some of the unprofessional quality in his life; that is, he should care for his work not solely for the amount it brings in, but as something of itself interesting. If, in the fields of industry and profession, this outlook is needed to make life really worth while, how much greater is the need in the fields of art? All that music, that literature, painting or sculpture live for is the individual contribution to the beauty or significance of the world, which springs from enthusiasm and conviction. To perform this contribution, the artist must not be thinking of how it will be received. That is the death-knell of inspiration.

Music Needs Enthusiasm.

In music, we need this enthusiasm today as in nothing else. For in music in this country our only very appreciable progress has been professional. professionalized music, bought and sold like any other commodity of luxury or convenience, has been the brand with which we are all familiar. We hear of exorbitant prices paid to the great singers. We know the tremendous cost of maintaining opera, or a symphony orchestra; and on the other hand, we hear about the fortune made by a clever writer of popular songs. Our basis of the value of music is for the most part two-fold: that of the popular brand of music, which we respect according to the amount of money it has made; and that of the other kind we indiscriminately term "classical," which we think to be best when we pay the most for it, like expensive articles of food. We have not yet had time to consider what our music means,--what soul or mind there is behind it.

Music as Essential as Religion.

Music is as essential to human life as a religion. The growth of true music, as the growth of a great philosophy, must be from the heart and from the mind. And to bring a man's intellect to the proper pitch for producing music, it is necessary for him to have had the time to be a student,--to have probed to the truths of life for their own sake. This is the lesson of the college to the artist and to the musician, a desire to understand and to express life, and a firm conviction that what he is doing is worth while, whether it is recognized or not. This is the challenge which must be flung to those who are professionalizing art in this country as our business and even our sport is professionalized. And that lesson the College should teach well.