Music - Ursula Creighton

"So many books are written for beginners on the appreciation of music that I can be thankful that advancing age makes it unnecessary for me to read them, and when I do have to look into any of them I wonder whether the young people of to-day derive as much pleasure from them as I did at eighteen from reading Sir John Hawkins’ History of Music. But I have read this book of Mrs. Creighton’s with much enjoyment, for she is a musician who enjoys music herself and has the art of conveying that enjoyment to others. She has had enough experience as a teacher of the pianoforte to understand the minds of youthful readers, but she has the good fortune to have had no experience of lecturing to appreciation classes. This gives her book a fresh and unconventional point of view. She does not trouble her readers with a mass of historical detail, but talks about the music which she has herself heard and enjoyed. She spares us the well-worn (and in most cases unauthenticated) anecdotes about the great composers ; she prefers to tell us things which help us to realize the social environment in which they lived and made their music. It is a book for those who enjoy music and like to read about it for their own pleasure rather than from fear of examinations ; and one advantage of its discursiveness is that it can be enjoyed by those who like to read comfortably, dipping here and there at haphazard." (from Preface, by Edward J. Dent)