This fact is sometimes overlooked, and unnecessary difficulties are created for the children.

It is important for a class to sing at sight fluently in one key before attempting a new one. Some teachers take keys in groups, and try to teach them all together. This plan rarely leads to satisfactory results.

Minor Keys.

It is wise to defer the treatment of these until all the major keys have been mastered. The harmonic form of the scale of C minor should then be taken, the children identifying the two notes new to them as the flattened third and sixth of the scale. It is a good plan to get them to sing a few melodies from the blackboard which are in C minor, but which bear the signature of C major, the flattened third and sixth being supplied. This impresses the new notes on the children.

Later on, the correct signature should be evolved by experiment, and the same plan followed for the other keys, before the 'rule' for finding the signature is discussed. The melodic form of the scale can then be taught, and both forms practised to give plenty of freedom in the new tonality. The various minor keys should then be taken in the same order as that in which the major keys were taken.

It is advisable to limit the work at first to melodies which do not modulate to the relative major. Later on, when the children are fairly fluent, they can take these. At first they will have to make use of 'bridge-notes' at the modulation, but, with a little practice, they will soon be able to sing at sight to lah.

Part-singing.

Children should not be allowed to sing part-songs until they can sing at sight in parts. The reason for this is that in the majority of part-songs the under parts are written too low for the child voice, and if they are practised several times in succession, harm is likely to result. If, on the other hand, the songs can be read at sight, the parts can be interchanged, and the voices of the children do not suffer to the same extent. The greatest difficulty in teaching part-singing is a moral one: a child who takes an under part does not like the feeling of some one singing above her. The voices must be divided carefully for this work—some teachers prefer to get the balance on the side of the under parts, in order to avoid the feeling that it is necessary to shout in order to be heard! The ideal plan is to interchange the parts freely at the same lesson.

Exercises should be chosen at first in which the under part starts on a fairly high note and, if possible, before the upper part enters, in order to give confidence. The under part should also move freely, and should not consist of long holding notes. Exercises in which the parts cross afford excellent practice. Good instances of easy exercises are to be found in Nos. 9, 68, 80, 101, &c. in Book III of A Thousand Exercises; also in the many canons to be found in that book.

Sight-singing in three parts should always begin with exercises written in the contrapuntal style. There are instances of these in Three-part Vocal Exercises, by Raymond, published by Weekes & Sons. This book is also suitable for use where men's voices are obtainable, the two treble parts being taken by two tenors, and the transposed alto part by a bass.

A good series of part-songs is to be found in the Year Book Press, which only admits songs by standard composers.

CHAPTER VII

THE TEACHING OF TIME AND RHYTHM

It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of careful study before a teacher attempts to train children in a sense of time and rhythm.

Not only must an intellectual conception of the importance of the subject be arrived at, but a subconscious realization of it. The function of rhythm in the world should be perceived, and such natural phenomena as day and night, the seasons, the tides, and countless others, seem to be examples of the same principle. The same influence may be traced in social activities. Work cannot be organized and carried on where rhythmic order is not found, and no conception of the brain or of the artistic faculty can emerge uninformed by rhythmic continuity.

A human being imperfectly endowed with a sense of balance or rhythm is a danger to the community, and one who is entirely without this sense is spoken of as 'insane'.

In the training of the teacher it is well to call attention first to the rhythm of speech, before entering into that of music. Those who have had a literary education have already studied the metrical properties of poetry and prose. They will readily agree that such phrases as:

'My father's father saw it not.'
'Happy New Year to you.'
'Because I sought it far from men,
In deserts and alone.'
'We must go back with Policeman Day,
Back to the City of Sleep.'

can be thought of as written in [2/4], [3/4], [4/4], [6/8] times respectively.

M. Jaques Dalcroze has shown, through his Rhythmic Gymnastics, the extraordinary effect that rhythmic movements can have, not only on physical health, but on mental and moral poise. For highly nervous children some such work is of especial benefit, but for all children it is of great value. It should be supplemented in the ear-training class by constant practice in beating time to tunes. The teacher begins by playing simple tunes, with strongly marked accents. The children should discover these accents for themselves, and should be taught to beat time, using the proper conductor's beats from the first.

The French time names—ta, ta-té, &c.—are invaluable in early stages. They are based on sense impression, and are picked up quickly by the children. By taking the crotchet as the unit to start with, the old-fashioned plan of exalting the semibreve, the least used note in music, to a primary place, is avoided.

If the order given in Somervell's Fifty Steps in Sight-singing be followed, the question of complicated time will not be forced too early on the attention of the children. Pupils trained on other systems have sometimes been found incapable of singing melodies written in complicated time, even though they can beat time to the notes, giving the time names, without mistake. The same thing is noticeable in their instrumental work. This is due to the fact that one side of their training has been developed at the expense of the other—time at the expense of pitch. There seems little point in teaching a child such time-values as