Music in education
THE ROLE OF POPULAR LIBRARIES
IN MUSIC EDUCATION
by
Alfons OTT, Music librarian, Municipal Library, Munich, GermanyThe Brussels Conference has set itself the task of studying the contri-
bution that music can make to education, and the means by which
day-to-day work can help it to achieve its maximum effect. First and
foremost, we are profoundly convinced that music has an educative
power and that it can exercise a decisive influence on man’s physical,
spiritual and intellectual development. Moreover, there can be no
doubt that all the spiritual energies to be found in music can and should
be turned to better account in the never-ending struggle in which man
himself is at stake. It is for this reason that we shall consider the ways
and means by which the musical education of young people and adults
can be promoted and extended. As regards the enhancement and
deepening of musical culture, it is much less important to hear as much
music as possible and, in listening to it, to experience a purely sensual
pleasure, than to apprehend all its implications, discover the spiritual
sources from which it springs, recognize the intricacies of its structural
form and penetrate as deeply as possible into the realms of spiritual
expression to which it holds the key. Music not ody gives us a certain
aesthetic pleasure but, above all, helps to vitalize our existence and is
therefore one of the mightiest forces militating against mechanization
and the desintegration of what is most personal and individual in man.
To approach music in this way, to make of it a direct and intimate
experience and to feel its cultural value, is what we are entitled to
demand of an education that faces up to its responsibilities. To achieve
this result, it is not enough to listen to music: we must make music
ourselves. One of the major requirements of music education is that
people should be induced actually to practise the art of music and be
helped to do so.
This is the basic idea behind the establishment of the popular music
libraries and is sufficient reason for their existence side by side with