Reports on the study of music Tarbut pedagogic courses

Reports on the study of music Tarbut pedagogic courses

Report by Abraham Moshe Bernstein (1866-1932), the famed cantor of the Choral Synagogue in Vilna on his music courses in the late twenties or early thirties at Tarbut Hebrew Teachers Seminary. He begins with a discussion of his dilemma on what exactly to teach. He is concerned about teaching adults with no prior musical background (or possibly even talent for music at all) who will eventually serve as music teachers. Should he merely teach them a large repertoire of songs which they can eventually sing with their students, or would a more solid background in systematically taught musical knowledge turn them into more successful teachers? He decides that the study of solfeggio, a pedagogical technique for teaching musical sight-singing, would be most beneficial to the students, despite the time and effort needed, and the lack of appropriate text books. In one of the courses, over 100 lessons of solfeggio were covered, but the program could not be completed because of lack of time. In addition, 40 children's songs were taught.  Bernstein mentions that he himself did publish a book on sight-singing, but that it was not used much by the students, and was not purchased for their use by the school.

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