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Updated: June 21, 2025
It is practically important to recognize that these various qualities are distinct perceptions, and that the "ear" for relative pitch may exist well developed and the color, clang, or quality of a tone be imperfectly recognized, and the reverse. The most comprehensive ear-training involves attention to each of the above characters of tones, and then uniting them in a musically perfect result.
After the age of thirteen it is again possible, as was the case with the ear-training work, to distinguish between the musical children and the others. The former should increase the amount of practising each day; the latter, if they continue to learn, should not exceed half an hour. The piano lessons will in most cases consist of two half-hours a week. Concerts, Music Clubs, &c.
Modes of expression need not begin till after five, or later. With regard to music, every child should begin to undergo a simple course of ear-training on the sol-fa system as elaborated and taught by McNaught, because the faculty of so learning is lost atrophied by the age of twelve or fourteen.
Few adult piano students study string instruments, such as the violin or 'cello instruments which cultivate the perception of hearing far more than can the piano. For this reason all children should have the advantage of a course in ear-training. This should not be training for pitch alone, but for quality of tone as well.
We cannot do without the visions of our artists, and a country or a school, is the poorer when full use is not made of the driving force of artistic inspiration. The musical work in a school falls roughly into four divisions: 1. Ear-training, leading on in later stages to harmony, counterpoint, &c. Voice production and songs. Instrumental work. Concerts, music clubs, &c.
We now come to the important stage of extemporizing on the piano. It must be remembered that a very thorough foundation of the knowledge of chords has been laid by the ear-training work, leading up to the power to write down chords from dictation, and to sing them in arpeggio.
Ear-training which is to be treated on the lines suggested will be opening up a new 'sense' to the pupil, and the concentration necessary is such that the children cannot stand the strain of a long lesson. The following lengths of lessons are therefore advisable: For children from four to seven years of age, a quarter of an hour four days a week.
As was said in the preceding chapter, the ideal for all young children who are about to learn the piano is that they should first go through a short course of ear-training. If this be done, the progress in the first year's work will be about three times what it would otherwise be.
We are concerned with the average child, taught in fairly large classes, in the ordinary school curriculum, and with only a very limited amount of time at our disposal. All those who teach ear-training should keep a book in which they write on one side of the page the proposed scheme of work for each lesson, and on the other the actual work done.
In fact, ear-training and harmony lead to great economy of time. It seems very obvious that if the pupil could perceive the harmonic relationship between these two chords he would be spared the trouble of identifying an entirely different chord when he finds the repetition of it merely in another key.
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