Geneva1 exposhour assessment of the value of music on a ‘factual’ basis so that the
requirements on which we now insist are bound up with irrelevent
economic factors. The professional concert, which has affected the
style of composition itself, is designed to give ‘pleasure’-it must
please; the public must be attracted and gratified. In order to set foot
on the first rung of the ladder of ‘success’ the essential requirement
is evidence of ‘musical competence’, and this evidence has to be
secured by means of a system of technical tests and examinations,
differently organized in various countries. Criteria naturally differ
from place to place, so that we may find the absurd situation arising
in which it is maintained that one people is musical and another
unmusical!
It is of course impossible for us here to go into all the details of the
concept of musicianship. We need only mention that the professional
musical world of today is entirely taken up with the problems of
musical competence. Furthermore, at a time when the various media
of mechanical reproduction-the radio, the cinema, the gramophone
and television-play so large a part in our life, technique becomes
more important, since economic factors are involved in the promotion
of the ‘technicalization’ of musical life. These few comments may
suffice to account for the conflicting aspects of our problem and we
have seen how the situation in which the concept of musicianship
arose is being constantly narrowed down so that it is becoming more
and more an organized ‘profession’, a craft-guild with recognized
technical qualifications.
We now come to our most important point. Music education in
Europe must be recognized as a means of reconciling these opposing
approaches into a synthesis, of exalting artistic creation and technical
musicianship into the highest levels of music education. The real
import of all musical education is, perhaps, particularly clear to us in
Israel. We are particularly close to the divine source of the Judaic-
Christian stream of European culture which has carried our music
education and in the last 50 years we have perhaps perceived better
than others, in the melting-pot of European history, the true signi-
ficance of music education in Europe.
It has thus been brought home to us that music can be made
an immediate educative force at all times and in every age, and that
the creative powers of the child can be stirred and developed by
musical instruction, and that ‘the latent creative urge to music-
making and music enjoyment can be used in teaching so as to show
that instrument and voice are the external means for expressing