Music and Modern Youth

Abstract

of the youth of this country was largely adult controlled. Boys and girls played and listened to music selected by parents and teachers. Places of public recreation were not only limited in number but youthful participation was strictly curtailed by parental authority. Times have changed. The automobile has made a marked difference by breaking up what was once a closely knit home and community life. Nowadays everybody, from grandmother to baby, gets about. Range of environment, by motorcar alone, has been immeasurably enlarged. Then came the phonograph, broadening musical experience to a hitherto unprecedented extent. However, yet more remarkable extensions of cultural and recreational surroundings have been made actual by means of the radio and the sound film, both being easy and prompt disseminators of ideas, news, music and entertainment. In addition to a well planned and regulated musical environment, the everyday lives of all are flooded with gratuitous music. Furthermore, present conditions have widened not only the scope of experience but also the freedom of boys and girls to range within it. Hence the home, the church, the school and the conservatory are no longer unrivaled influences in developing the musical taste of youth. Nevertheless, each of these agencies, along with public recreation and commercial entertainment, have profited by the phenomenal increase of musical advantages made possible by a machine age. Music education has habitually kept abreast of the times. From its earliest beginnings, the phonograph has been employed to enhance music's programs. The same may be said of piano playing devices. Good reproducing instruments and comprehensive libraries of records and rolls are considered a part of standard school equipment. Despite the growing educational service of the radio, I believe it correct to say that under present conditions the majority of music teachers find it a less flexible instrument than the phonograph. This is, of course, due to circumstances over which we have little control. However, the fact that the finer musical programs are more frequent after than during school hours has not excluded them altogether from the classroom. We find teachers throughout the country cooperating with their pupils in assembling and tabulating information about forthcoming events on the air. Students are encouraged to report upon and discuss their serious out-of-school listening in relation to what is going on in school. Likewise, resourceful instructors are discovering numerous ways of making curricular material of the sound films-these not limited to educational and socalled musical movies, but including run-of-the-mill feature pictures and shorts as well. The latter two are influential from simple force of number. Like the radio, all screen presentations lean heavily upon music