[Sidenote: IMPORTANCE OF MUSICAL SCHOLARSHIP]

The musical amateur who is ambitious to conduct should therefore study
music in all its phases, and if in doubt as to his talent, he should
submit to a vocational test in order to determine whether his native
musical endowment is sufficient to make it worth his while to study
the art seriously. If the result of the test is encouraging, showing a
good ear, a strong rhythmic reaction, and a considerable amount of
what might be termed native musical taste, let him practise his piano
energetically and intelligently, and especially let him learn to read
three and four voices on separate staffs (as in a vocal score) in
order to prepare himself for future reading of full scores. Let him
study harmony, counterpoint, form, and, if possible, composition and
orchestration. Let him work indefatigably at ear-training, and
particularly at harmonic ear training, so that notes and tones may
become closely associated in his mind, the printed page then giving
him auditory rather than merely visual imagery; in other words, let
him school himself to make the printed page convey to his mind the
actual sounds of the music. Let him study the history of music, not
only as a record of the work of individual composers, but as an
account of what has transpired in the various periods or epochs of
musical art, so that he may become intelligent concerning the ideals,
the styles, and the forms of these various periods. And finally, let
him hear all the good music he possibly can, listening to it from the
threefold standpoint of sense, emotion, and intellect, and noting
particularly those matters connected with expression and
interpretation in these renditions. In as many cases as possible let
him study the scores of the compositions beforehand, comparing then
his own ideas of interpretation with those of the performer or
conductor, and formulating reasons for any differences of opinion that
may become manifest.

Let the young musician also form the habit of reading widely, not
only along all musical lines (history, biography, theory, esthetics,
_et cetera_), but upon a wide variety of topics, such as painting and
the other arts, history, literature, sociology, pedagogy, _et cetera_.
As the result of such study and such reading, a type of musical
scholarship will be attained which will give the conductor an
authority in his interpretations and criticisms that cannot possibly
be achieved in any other