What Does Charlotte Mason Say about Music? Volume 2

The second entry of six walking through Charlotte Mason's volumes, searching out everything she had to say about music. In this post, we take a look at Volume 2 - Parents and Children.

(2/185) The seventeenth chapter of this volume deals with the development of the senses. This quote comes from the section entitled "Discrimination of Sounds." "A quick and true ear is another possession that does not come by Nature, or anyway, if it does, it is too often lost. ... Music is, no doubt, the means par excellence for this kind of ear culture. Mrs. Curwen's 'Child Pianist' puts carefully graduated work of this kind into the hands of parents; and if a child never become a performer, to have acquired a cultivated and correct ear is no small part of a musical education."

(2/252) Music is a vital part of the first year of a child's life. The title of this section is "Intellectual Labour of the Child's' First Year." "When we consider the enormous intellectual labour the infant goes through during his first year in accommodating himself to the conditions of a new world, in learning to discern between far and near, solid and flat, large and small, and a thousand other qualifications and imitations of this perplexing world, why, we are not surprised that John Stuart Mill should be well on in his Greek at five; that Arnald at three should know all the Kings and Queens of England by their portraits; or that a musical baby should have an extensive repertoire of the musical classics."

(2/262) Art (which encompasses music) is intimately linked with ideas! "We begin to understand that mere technique, however perfect--whether in the rendering of flesh tints, or marbles, or of a musical composition of extreme difficulty--is not necessarily high Art. It is beginning to dawn upon us that Art is great only in proportion to the greatness of the idea that it expresses; while what we ask of the execution, the technique, is that it shall be adequate to the inspiring idea." "...and lastly, we shall inspire our children with those great ideas whilch shall create a demand, anyway for great Art."

(2/269) Oh, the wonderful twenty-fifth chapter of Volume 2 - The Great Recognition Required of Parents. If you have not studied the fresco on the wall of the Spanish Chapel of the Santa Maria  Novella in Florence, John Ruskin's commentary on it, and Miss Mason's own Recognition that came through it, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you do so! This is a quote about just one small part of that fresco. "Next, Music, with head inclined in intent listening to the sweet and solemn strains she is producing from her antique instrument; and underneath, Tubal Cain, not Jubal, as the inventor of harmony--perhaps the most marvellous record that Art has produced of the impact of a great idea upon the soul of man but semi-civilised."

(2/278-279) "Give him living thought in this kind, and you make possible the co-operation of the living Teacher. The child's progress is by leaps and bounds, and you wonder why. In teaching music, again, let him once perceive the beautiful laws of harmony, the personality, so to speak, of Music, looking out upon him from among the queer little black notes, and the piano lesson has ceased to be drudgery."