General expodsMethods may vary, but the goal is the same. We have to choose
between free social life with a sound, creative education marked by
sage moderation, and unstable, unbridled devotion to false obedience
or a blind mania for authority. Rousseau, with his expression ‘mode-
rately controlled freedom’, gave the best description of the ideal mean
between the two.
It is our hope that Europe will become mindful of its origins in a
sound and fruitful state of unity. So far as our culture, our education
and our music are concerned, I think we may say that the United States
of Europe already exist.
[Translated from tbe German]
MUSIC EDUCATION
ON THE AMERICAN CONTINENT
bY
Arnold WALTER
Director, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto, CanadaSome forty years ago Chaliapin was known to say: ‘I pity the Ameri-
cans, they have no light, they have no song in their lives.’ He must
have seen America then as so many still see it today: incredibly rich in
natural resources, wise as to technical know-how, brimful of energy,
the world‘s best organizer: but lacking in spiritual tradition and
artistic taste-a modern Rome, depending on Greece (that is: on
Europe) for its culture.
Chaliapin was probably wrong then when he said it; he certainly
could not say it today. In the middle of the twentieth century, America
is no ‘Land without music’, it is simply a musical paradise. The last
50 years witnessed a development that quickened from decade to
decade, that grew in geometrical progression, with the result that
performance, education and finally composition have reached a level
that must be experienced to be believed. It may be worth while to
glance at the musical scene as a whole, to understand better the part
that music education played in that astonishing process.