Excerpt from Harmonic Primer To arouse and to cultivate the child's aesthetic nature, and to create in him a love for the good, the true, and the beautiful, is the main object of art study in elementary education; but if the effort in music stops with the mere elementary steps, if we are to depend upon what he merely hears and repeats from memory, we miss the greatest value in the work. While the child is living in his senses we must take advantage of his love for simple music to induce him to master those elements of notation which will enable him to extend his study into wider and wider fields, and to acquire elements of power which will continue 'to develop during his whole life. We must train his ear not simply to hear but to discriminate. We must train his mind not only to receive impressions, but also to create and express, that the creations of his own brain may find a place among the thoughts of other men. Therefore with the rote songs we present matter for use in the cultivation of the ear in the perception of tone relation, and for the culti vation of the eye in the mastery of symbols. The work is so arranged as to call into activity every power of the mind, and at the same time it is so carefully graded that the child and his teacher experience the keenest pleasure not only in the daily recitation, but in the consciousness of growing power, of higher appreciation, and of purer enjoyment. This book is intended for use in the second and third years in school. The group of rote songs constituting Part I., with which the book opens, is simply a reservoir from which the teacher may draw for supple mentary material. The Rote Song Book may be used in the same way. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.