Mu~ic in educationIn my opinion, conservatories and publishing firms should stand in
very close relationship to each other, similar to that of communicating
vessels in physics. If institutions like conservatories, in order to satisfy
currents of intellectual opinion and meet constant changes of taste,
work out new teaching ideas, involving reforms or alterations in sylla-
buses, the publisher cannot remain indifferent.
Similarly if the publisher, after consulting the chart of that sensitive
electromagnetic receiver, the ‘sales position’, happens to be able to tell
the teacher of any new trends appearing in the musical world, the
teacher cannot turn a deaf ear and entrench himself behind outdated
opinions.
The school, like the publishing firm, while greeting anything new
with natural caution, cannot escape the truth of Heraclitus’ saying that
‘all is flux’; both must evolve in line with the changes brought by time,
if they do not wish to appear ridiculous in the eyes of future generations.
It goes without saying that it is not the teacher’s business, but the
publisher’s to give practical effect to the changes required, and to
provide for them. Thus, at the beginning of the nineteenth century
Giovanni Ricordi, the founder of the firm, assisted dramatic opera, by
applying for the position of prompter at the Scala Theatre-on condi-
tion that the new scores of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi were
in his hands; which resulted in his becoming, so to speak, the pivot of
the theatrical movement of his time.
Today, any publisher with the vision of Ricordi must have noticed
that in the space of some ten years (which at the feverish speed of
modern life is equivalent to several centuries of earlier times) educa-
tion in general has abandoned the use of a number of studies, collec-
tions of exercises, textbooks and methods associated with a style which
is now out of date and out of line with the tastes and modern require-
ments of youth. It is not merely the fact that they contain old and
hoary rules that causes certain educational works to be discarded; it is
also, and mainly, the trend in modern teaching, which concentrates,
no longer on technical difficulties thought up by the teacher, but on
the direct study of what is ‘actual’.
For instance, it is unthinkable that, in a modern university surgery
class, demonstrations should be carried out on organs made of card-
board.
We should remember that, long before the existence of ‘studies’, there
were executants, such as Bach, Scarlatti, Handel, Mozart and even
Clementi, whose Gradt/s ad Parnasszlm is really a monumental collection
of technical matter already studied direct.