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Excerpt from Third Year Music Sight singing. Reading is getting thought from symbols and presupposes the ability to think in the language. Reading a melody is getting tonal and rhythmic thought from musical symbols. As the reading of English is impossible without the power to think in English, so the reading of music is impossible without the power to think in the tone language. Notes, rests, and bars have a definite meaning only to the reader who has a definite knowledge of the tones and rhythms which these symbols represent. Rote singing therefore is not a sufficient preparation for sight reading. Rote singing must be supplemented by a systematic course in ear-training, giving the pupil the power to recognize the tones and rhythms repre sented, and teaching him to think and speak the language. Not until the pupil can sing with the Latin syllables the melodic phrases which he hears played, (or sung to a neutral syllable) is he ready to recognize their representation. Without this definite knowledge, so-called sight reading is no other than a more or less successful guessing process. 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.