Mmic education in tbe czmicu1u.mways. No similar renewal of the musical idiom took place in Norway
and Sweden, at any rate not at that stage.
One has to be acquainted with this background in order fully to
understand the musical education of adults as well as children in Den-
mark. On the nineteenth-century verse, and on the twentieth-century
melody, is based the education of the people. Community song, with
an historical, literary and musical perspective, where both words and
music have an artistic value, is something which every teacher and
every pupil must assimilate.
Quite a number of Danish music teachers agree that community
singing, in the sense defined here, is of high literary and musical value
and should be the starting point of a musical education. This intimate
contact with a direct musical and human medium should accompany
the teaching of music to child and adult amateurs. Naturally it is under-
stood that the training of the ear and the voice, rhythmics, musical
appreciation, choral and instrumental classes must be included in this
tuition, the latter on a voluntary basis. All schools in Denmark have
at least one compulsory period each week given to music and singing.
Forty-eight out of eighty Copenhagen schools have voluntary choirs ;
there are school symphony concerts, radio youth concerts, a big youth
orchestra in the capital; a musically gifted Copenhagen boy who has
a good voice can be admitted to a special school from which the singers
of the Chapel Royal are recruited and whose conductor Mogens Wol-
dike has achieved great fame. Young people in Copenhagen, in parti-
cular grammar school pupils and university sudents, have their own
chamber music society, and professional musicians are often invited
to perform for them.
For the grown-ups, there are folk music schools (in the German sense
of the word); many sorts of university extension courses and municipal
evening classes for adults have been organized, and political parties have
started music education work, in particular an equivalent of the Work-
ers’ Education Association-this being a way to bridge the gap between
the political and more general cultural aspects of the modern citizen.
Many private teachers of music take oGcially recognized diplomas,
while ordinary elementary schoolteachers are sent to training colleges
where about 75 per cent take music as one of the subjects, music being
compulsory unless some grave defect of ear or voice is evident. Gram-
mar school music masters usually have a university degree, and here
the universities co-operate with the conservatories.
From all this, it should not be inferred that, from a musical point of
view, Denmark is in an ideal condition. There are indications that the