Nation-Wide Interest in Developing Musical Ability

THE MUSIC FIELD

THROUGHOUt the country there have been increasing evidences of a growing interest in the study of music by the many thousands who have no thought of a professional career.

The love for music was never so much alive nor widespread. In Detroit not long ago 15,000 eager, enthusiastic children participated in a Piano Playing Contest. In Chicago an even larger number are now engaged in a similar friendly competition. In Wisconsin, where a Piano Playing Contest is under way, to be preceded by several months of group instruction, applicants have been enrolling at the rate of five hundred a day, ranging in age from six to sixty. Reports of similar interest shown on the Pacific Coast and at other points throughout the countrv tell of the widespread interest that is being shown in the study of this instrument alone.

In the public schools the opportunity is steadily increasing for the study of music and musical instruments of all kinds. The National Federation of Music Clubs, musicians and musical authorities of pre-eminent standing, and men and women of national prominence are showing much interest in this subject, as well as parents and educators.

PROMINENT SPONSORS OF PIANO STUDY

One of the most interesting recent developments has been the organization of a notable Committee for the Advancement of Piano Study that will give a most substantial background to the general movement for encouraging the study of music, with their efforts along this line directed primarily toward promoting the study of the piano in the schools of this country.

Among those of national and international prominence who have gladly agreed to serve on this committee are included: Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Harold Bauer, Yolanda Mero, Maria Carreras, Frank La Farge, Mrs. Edgar Stillman-Kelley, president of the National Federation of Music Clubs; Oscar Saenger, Lawrence Tibbett, Olga Samaroff, Walter Damrosch, Frank Damrosch, Alfred Hertz, James Francis Cooke, president of the Presser Foundation; Frederick Stock, Rudolph Ganz, Walter R. Spaldins, Professor of Music at Harvard University; Josef Hofmann, Herbert Witherspoon, Ernest Hutcheson, W. M. Hinshaw, Professor Leopold Auer, Harold Randolph, director of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Baltimore, Md.; Wm. Van Hoogstraten, Reinald Werrenrath, Percy Grainger, A. M. See, secretary and general manager of the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, N. Y.; Dr. J. A. C. Candler, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.; and Dean Harold L. Butler, of the College of Fine Arts of Syracuse University.

Others will be added to this National Committee whose progress will be watched with more than usual interest and who are certain to add decided impetus to the early study of the best that music has to offer.

The study of music and its more general cultivation among all classes promises much for American family life. Few things can do quite so much to bring happiness into the home. It is a source of inspiration for every one, a promoter of family harmony and contentment. To the rising generation it supplies a cultural value that money cannot buy in later years besides adding to happiness, popularity and social standing.