GeneraZ exposisrest of this paper, that music is infinitely more than a recreation and
should, as I have indicated, play a decisive part in the development of
the intellectual and emotional faculties.The feature that distinguishes music from the other arts is that man,
like many other living creatures, possesses a natural instrument with
which he can form and produce a variety of sounds. The sculptor has
one priceless tool-his hand. But, if he is to model, he also needs a
malleable material and, ifhe is to sculpt, he needs additional implements.
The draughtsman and the painter need things with which to draw,
brushes and different colours. But when man sings, he brings into play
a wonderful organ normally employed for phonation-the larynx. I
have not forgotten the various parts of the vocal apparatus which serve
as a sounding-box or a means of producing consonants and articulating
the sounds produced by the larynx. It is an astonishing thought that
we grudge the time devoted to music in the education of our children,
the education which should give both the individual and the group
their lasting characteristics and determine their destiny, when man
possesses a natural instrument for the production of music.
Like dancing and poetry, music is one of the arts which might be
described as dynamic. If a musical work is truly to live it must be re-
created each time it is performed. In between whiles, it slumbers in the
library or in the memory. I may perhaps add that music moves in the
world's fourth dimension, in time.
The productions of the visual arts, from the moment of their
creation, stand, as it were, in final, unchangeable form. They are
there and they can wait. We have only to go to them and they offer
us all their beauty. This does not mean that the part played by the art-
lover, the connoisseur, is unimportant. A work of visual art must be
understood, loved and wondered at if it is to be appreciated at its
full worth. Finally, the products of the visual arts (or, if you will,
the static arts) involve two or three of the world's dimensions. Even
when they are two-dimensional, like drawing or painting, they
tend to give us a sense of the third. Moreover, to put it shortly,
I would say that most plastic productions suggest actions rather
than states of being and call upon our imagination to introduce the
fourth dimension, time.
Not content with using the instrument he had received from Nature,
the larynx, man very soon realized that he could produce a variety of
other sounds by means of outside instruments. In essentials, these