Great Symphonies; How to Recognize and Remember Them by Sigmund SpaethReview by: Carroll C. PrattNotes, Second Series, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Mar., 1953), p. 273Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/892880 .

Accessed: 17/06/2014 11:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Music Library Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Notes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.78.43 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:37:03 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

greed-in general, laid about with the broadsword of righteous indignation. This would have required, of course, an armor of invulnerable knowledge, taste, discrimination, and judgment in matters

musical. I get the impression, from Mr. Smith's occasionally expressed opin- ions on music as music, that he has no such armor. He is no Shaw.

LAWRENCE MORTON

Great Symphonies; How to Recognize and Remember Them. By Sig- mund Spaeth. Revised Edition. Introduction by Eugene Ormandy. New York: Comet Press Books, 1952 [first pub. 1938]. [10 leaves, 308, (5) p., music, 8vo; $3.501

If in music education the end justifies the means, then the revised edition of Dr. Spaeth's book needs no defense and is presumably immune to the carping criticism of this brief review. The end has been to make it easier by means of extraneous associations to recognize and remember the themes of great symphon- ies; and if sales constitute any valid sort of criterion, then Dr. Spaeth's mnemonic tricks have enjoyed huge success. The device is simple. The reader is given jingles to learn along with the themes. An old principle of association used to argue that if two items were repeated together enough times, the recurrence of one would tend to reproduce the other. So in the present context if the reader can memorize the jingle, then he is supposed to recall and identify the theme.

The words which go with the opening theme of Mozart's G Minor Symphony, for example, are "With a laugh and a smile like a sunbeam, And a face that is glad with *a funbeam, We can start on our way very gaily, Singing tunes from a symphony daily; And if Mozart could but hear us, He would wave his hat and cheer us Coming down the scale, all hale and strong in song, all hale and strong in song." The main theme of the second movement of Schubert's C Major Symphony is brought back to mind by the words "Far in the woods a piping note is heard so clear, Drawing ever near, Sounding like the playing of a satyr to a little band of fauns that in a dance are finding cheer." And so forth, ad nauseam! At any rate, this reviewer finds the whole idea revolting, and cer- tainly not worth the effort, even if themes thereby are more accurately identified. In any case, what reason is there to sup.

pose that love of great music is enhanced when fortified by an ability to detect tunes?

Mnemonic tricks are useful only if the material to be learned has little or no internal coherence and meaning. Extra- neous items committed to memory, if easy and jingly, are then often capable of calling back material which otherwise would be forgotten. Probably all doc- tors and physiologists can reproduce the names of the twelve cranial nerves by saying to themselves the little ditty "On Mt. Olympus' piny tops, A Finn and German picked some hops," for the first letter of each word is also the first letter of the name of a nerve: "on" is "optic," "Mount" is "motor," "Olympus" is "olfactory," and so on. The device is useful, for the ditty is likely to stick for life, and no harm is done by mixing it up with a list of names which would other- wise be forgotten in short order. But think of going through life with silly jingles mixed up with the great symphonic themes of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms! Both Dr. Spaeth and Mr. Ormandy give it as their opinion that "these easy little jingles are actually for- gotten once the music is firmly estab- lished in the memory, having served their purpose." This opinion is probably much too optimistic. And if by good luck the forgetting curve for the jingles did quickly reach zero, what would then have been the point in learning the stuff in the first place? "Please do not under any circumstances," says Dr. Spaeth, "sing the words into the ear of a neighbor at a concert,"-to which this reviewer can only add, please do not under any cir- cumstances learn or even read the words at all. CARROLL C. PRATT

273

This content downloaded from 62.122.78.43 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 11:37:03 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions