From Song to Symphony a Manual of Music

9781417926299

1417926295

1924. This volume is the text for the second year of a study course in music understanding adopted by The National Federation of Music Clubs. Mason writes in the preface that: Only as we Americans learn to react individually to art, resisting the herd opinions that are so easy and so false, can we become discriminating enough to acclaim the good and reject the bad...Again, it is only through such independence that we can hope to raise our taste above provincialism and give it freedom and reach-let it breathe the air of the world. The smug self-satisfaction, the narrow nationalism into which inexperience so easily falls can never satisfy those of us who have once really known and loved masterpieces. We shall be on our guard against that strange sort of patriotism that would give American anything less than the best, wherever it may have been produced. We shall know that in art the only frontiers are those that separate mediocrity from excellence. Contents: The Folksong; The Art Song; Opera and Oratorio; Piano Music (The Smaller Forms); Piano Music (The Sonata and Concerto); Chamber Music; Orchestral Music (The Classic Period); and Orchestral Music (The Modern Period). See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.