Music edidcation in the cicrricidzontheatre, with its far-reaching influence, which helped towards an under-
standing of music. Nowadays, music is extending to ever-widening
circles, the music-loving public is becoming constantly more numerous,
and showing a great desire for increased knowledge of the subject;
and the radio is bringing musical compositions to the ears of millions
of listeners. Practical lessons in the playing of instruments are therefore
no longer sufficient; a certain musical education is more than ever
necessary, if listeners are really to understand the works they hear.
That is where the composer’s help is, of course, needed, and he must
not allow himself to lapse into a refined and aloof self-centredness.
Today’s young listeners are eager to develop a personal feeling for
music, and they have a respect for musical art. The Musical Youth
movement bears witness to their interest in the subject.
Immediately after the last war, musical institutions were created in
certain Italian universities, and they are now attracting an extremely
lively and up-to-date public.
Music societies have even been established in some secondary
schools, for it is during adolescence that cultural aspirations begin to
stir in young people, together with an instinctive urge towards inde-
pendence which, when accompanied by intelligence, arouses in them
deep and ardent feelings. Care must be taken at this period to ensure
that they avoid extremes and remain within the boundaries of artistic
dignity. This calls for caution and complete objectivity. Nothing is
worse for a boy or girl than to be obliged to listen to a programme
that seems to have been deliberately simplified for the occasion. Young
people will confidently accept anything they hear or see, provided it
has human appeal. From 1949 until the present day, 54,600 Italian
secondary schoolchildren have attended concerts specially arranged
for them in Rome, Naples, Palermo, Venice, Pesaro, Bohano, Milan,
Florence and Bologna, by AGIMUS, the big musical association for
young people, which is organized on a nation-wide basis and sponsored
by the Italian Ministry of Education. Approving or disapproving, but
invariably respectful, the young people listen with genuine and spon-
taneous interest to every style of classical and modern music, from
Vivaldi to Stravinsky, from Bach to Pizzetti and Ghedini.
I know from personal experience that there is nothing so satisfying
as conducting at a concert for young people, or introducing them to
one’s own compositions. They are as excited by Schubert’s Unfinished
Symphony as by the Sacre du Printemps, and are most grateful, for
instance, to Markevitch when he explains the latter work to them before
it is performed. For them, a concert hall is not a museum, it is just a