Seed Thoughts for Singers

Excerpt: ...have smooth and well defined melodies should be selected. Modern composers seek by the strangest harmonies, following each other without coming to points of definite rest, to do things different from what has been in use so long that it is looked upon as common. The pupils in their early study cannot understand such music, and while bewildered by it, they misapply what they know to be correct use of the voice. The first selections should be simple, melodious, and of easy range. The songs of Mozart and Mendelssohn are much better for early use than are those which are being published now. As the pupil advances in the knowledge of songs add in any quantity the latest and most weird music, providing it has merit. CRITICISM. The phraseology of newspaper criticism often disturbs musicians, especially those who are very sensitive, and sometimes arouses their ire so that they make reply. In doing so they make a mistake. They place a weapon for further attack in the hands of the critic and add to the force of his remarks by showing that they have hit the mark. One does not prize a shot which goes wide of the point at which it was aimed but is quite proud if, by chance, he hits the bull's-eye. The sensitive man in his reply shows how fortunate the critic is in his shooting. It is not easy to bear the remarks of a harsh critic and it is much harder to draw from them any good lesson. (Whether one may draw a lesson from criticism is not open for remark at this writing.) Yet, when one gives serious thought to the criticism which seems so cruel he will learn that no one has been hurt by it except the critic himself. He has lowered his thought from a high plain and has made his nature, thereby, coarse and uncomfortable. That cannot come to anyone, even for a few minutes without making him less manly. Out of the fullness of his heart at that moment the critic has written and sent out into the world that which lowers. What he sows, that shall he also reap, and in...