The Lesson in Appreciation; An Essay on the Pedagogics of Beauty (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II ENEMIES IN THE GATE Let us assume that one of these " red-letter" lessons is to be given. A first impression is to be made which, we hope, will be indelible. We wish to make the lesson the starting point of a new and powerful interest. How can this end be effected ? The enemies to appreciation are, perhaps, subtle and numerous. How are they to be overcome ? Working up excitement: A passage from Wagner. ? In some cases it will be possible to work up what we may call anticipatory interest or excitement. We all know the tricks of advertisers, ? a most instructive topic for teachers to study. If an exhibition is to be opened or a new play to be produced, the management will take measures to arouse the expectation of the public long before the opening. " Inspired " news ] items will appear in the papers; little concrete and personal anecdotes will keep the general topic in the public mind; and at the " psychological moment" ] ambitious posters will flare from the hoardings. Preliminary interest is, as it were, a marketable commodity with a money value of its own. And if it has this value in the general scheme of life there is no doubt that it rests upon a fundamental principle of human nature which education may be able to turn to its own ends. Let us see. Wagner, in the Autobiography already quoted, describes how, early in his career, he worked up an effective preliminary interest in a forthcoming performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "In the first place, I drew up a program, for which the book of words for the chorus furnished me with a good pretext. I did this in order to provide a guide to the simple understanding of the work, and thereby hoped to appeal, not to the critical judgment, but solely to the feelings of the audience. Besides this, I made...