General expohin art, was worth more than the most complicated of systems or me-
thods. His influence, however, was at first more strongly felt in the
field of creative music than in that of school music.There is complete
harmony between the personal and social ideas of Pestalozzi and Beet-
hoven; both were supreme practical moralists, one in popular educa-
tion and the other in music.
Technical progress however, and with it increasing rifts in the social
structure, proceeded relentlessly. Europe was soon split into classes
and groups, each with their own narrow prejudices. The abyss between
educated and uneducated was as great as between rich and poor. Cul-
tural conditions in the nineteenth century have often been described
as a pyramid. At the apex were a few major institutions for the culti-
vated, namely operas and concerts. By buying a season ticket for con-
certs one could ‘subscribe’ to culture, register oneself as a ‘cultivated
person’. Culture cost a certain amount, which the well-to-do could
afford and were often prepared to pay, without thereby necessarily
profiting from this opportunity really to educate themselves. At the
foot of the pyramid were the uncouth horde of the untaught, who had
been unable to raise themselves in the social scale and had therefore
to rest content with the simplest forms of popular music. Where the
gulf between the classes is so wide, there can be no bridge between
‘lofty’ art music and ‘lowly’ popular music. A similar fundamental
differentiation was made between the professional musicians and those
who were simply connoisseurs or lovers of music.
An age of divisions is an age of decadence; and so it proved to be
in the nineteenth century as regards music education in the schools
and music in daily life. The music lesson became the Cinderella of the
curriculum. Even the so-called private music teacher, who was a fea-
ture of the period, was more or less the product of ‘social embarass-
ment’ or of the vanity of the new ‘cultured and moneyed’ class. It was
high time for a reform in both culture and social life.
This brings us to our own times; and these, too, lie under the influence
of technical progress. Almost daily we encounter new tricks and sen-
sations due to modern industrialized and standardized technique. No-
one can escape this development simply by saying: ‘I’m not interested
in these discoveries and will have nothing to do with them.’ Yet
everyone realizes that it is essential to fit technical progress properly
into education and culture and to create a new bond between the cul-
tivated and the uncultivated-which means, incidentally, bridging the
gap between popular music and ‘art’ music. Much has already occurred