A little thought will show that it should be no more difficult for average children to learn a piece of music by heart in this way, than for them to learn a piece of prose or poetry by heart.  The initial steps are exactly the same—­the language has to be known, and it is then a question of memory, and memory alone.  Who would think of learning poetry by heart by the process of repeating it aloud a hundred or more times?  Yet this is what was formerly done in the case of music.

Sixty years ago no girl was considered educated who could not play the piano a little.  Since then a reaction has begun to set in.  The standard of playing has gone up to such a degree that parents are often heard to say that their child is not musical enough for it to be worth while to teach it an instrument.  This is a pity.  Music is used so much in our daily life that we cannot do without our ‘average performers’.  The soldier marches best to a tune, the sailor heaves his anchor to a song, the ritual of all forms of religion needs the aid of music; we need it, not only in the pageantry of our processions, but in the solemn crises of life and death.  For these purposes artists of the first rank are not necessary.

Every child, however apparently unmusical, should be given its chance, at any rate up to the age of twelve years.  During this time, the stress should be placed, for the unmusical child, not so much on perfection of technique, but on the ability of playing easy pieces really well, and to read at sight such things as duets, song accompaniments, &c.

If, in addition, the children have joined an ear-training class, they will, at any rate, be intelligent listeners for the rest of their lives to other people’s playing.

For all children, sight reading should form part, not only of every lesson, but of every day’s practice.  Many books for sight reading have been published, well graded, some of them beginning with little pieces in the treble clef only, and going on to advanced tests.  The following are a few, selected from many other excellent ones: 

Schaefer (3 vols., published by Augener).

Hilliard (5 vols., published by Weekes).

Somervell (2 vols., published by Augener and Weekes respectively).

Taylor (1 vol., published by Bosworth).

As a child will need more than one such book in the course of her study, and as she cannot play the same test twice, a plan has been made in some schools for the music to be sold second-hand from one pupil to another, through the medium of a mistress, in the same way in which ordinary school books are sometimes passed on.  This reduces the expense of constantly having to buy new books for sight reading.  Another plan is to establish a lending library, each child to pay 2_d._ or 3_d._ a term.

In the teaching of ‘pieces’ music mistresses should bear in mind that children must, from time to time, revise those which they have finished.  Nothing is more irritating to a parent than to be told by a child that it has ‘nothing to play’ to a visitor.  The mistress who is anxious to get a pupil on as quickly as possible often overlooks this point, and an entirely wrong impression is given of the child’s progress to the parent.