North Andover High School - Knight Yearbook (North Andover, MA)

Page 19 text:

THE GOBBLER-1944 JOHNSON HIGH SCHOOL SALUTATORY Mr. Hayes, distinguished guests, faculty, parents and friends: It gives me great pleasure to welcome you in behalf of the Class of 1944 to this, the seventy- fifth graduation exercise of Johnson High School. The Art of Enjoying Music IS impossible to develop the art of enjoying music simply by reading books about it. The one absolute necessity is to hear plenty of music of all kinds, and thus get the habit of forming one’s own opinions. If these opinions keep changing, so much the better. It probably means that a definite development of taste is taking place. If a piece of music sounds dull and uninteresting at a first hearing, don’t give it up on that account. The fact that its beauties are not obvious is quite likely to be in its favor. On the other hand, do not be carried away by first impressions. Music that follows the line of least resistance may be temporarily popular, but is not necessarily good on that account. In listening to music of any kind, try to listen from the standpoint of the five organizing factors: rhythm, melody, harmony, tone color and form. They will appear in varying degrees of importance, but they will inevitably be present in every significant composition. The “foot-listener,” who merely responds to rhythm, is decidedly limited in his enjoyment of music, but the “head-listener,” who approaches the art with his intellect alone, is perhaps just as limited. Between the two are the “heart- listeners,” the emotionalists, to whom music is just a romantic stimulant. The great majority of haphazard listeners respond to music in this way. But anyone who makes an art of enjoying music approaches music from all three angles: physically, by way of the feet; emotionally, by way of the heart; and intellect¬ ually, by way of the head. All really great music of the world is written with this triple appeal. The direct pleasure that comes from the recognition of inspiration in a piece of music is something impossible to describe. Fritz Kreisler has given it the physical sensation of that tingling, shivering ecstasy commonly known as “goose flesh,” and he may be right when he says that only the music that produces that particular sensation is really worth while. Beyond this direct enjoyment and analysis of music there are unlimited possibilities of associating it with other interests, as well as with other studies. If your mind is a mathematical one, you can find all sorts of opportunities to work out the mathematics of music. The relationship of vibrations to pitch is a mathematical one. The 440 A is considered Standard Pitch, meaning that the sound A above middle C represents 440 vibrations per second. Each interval of the scale has a mathematical relationship to the adjoining tones and all the others. All the details of time and rhythm are naturally mathematical in a very special sense, and the term “measure” really differentiates the modern, well- 19

Page 18 text:

THE GOBBLER-1944 JOHNSON HIGH SCHOOL JOHN R. BURNS Blue eyes . . . blond hair . . . skating . . . boating . . . “Red” . . . dimples . . . goes for Jack London stories . . . likes math .. . shy ... headed for the service PAUL HULUB Class Vice-President 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . Football 1, 2, 3, 4 . . . Baseball 2, 3 . . . salvage drives (chairman) . . . Class Supper 3 ... A. A. member . . . brown eyes and hair .. . six-footer ... physics . . . heartbreaker ... dancing . . . Jack London, of course . . . duck hunting . . . is gracing U. S. Marine Corps GALE H. KLEINER Blue eyes . . . light brown hair . . . tall... quiet. .. hunting . . . fishing ... skating . . . swimming . . . skiing . . . western stories ... Zane Grey... phys¬ ics .. . passed Army A-12 DOROTHY F. ST. LOUIS Transfer student from L. H. S. 2 . . . officer of Girl Reserves . . . hazel eyes, brown hair . . . adventure stories . . . writes him a letter a day . . . Canobie Lake ... ice skating . . . loves long hair . . . movies, dancing . . . Bing Crosby . . . secretary WANDA A. STEFANOWICH Defense chairman . . . brown hair, blue eyes ... sports .. . office machines . . . Florida sunshine STUART R. WOOD 5 ' 7 ... hazel eyes ... skating, base¬ ball, football . . . dancing (good!) . . . bowling ... A. A. member . . . Obser¬ vation Post . . . salvage drive (chair¬ man 3, 4) . . . Victory Corps 3 . . . friendly, quiet . . . headed for farming after the war .. . now sailing the Seven Seas SEVENTY-FIFTH GRADUATION EXERCISES Johnson High School Stevens Hall, North Andover, Mass. June 23, 1944 Processional March . . . Prayer. Response . Class Salutatory with Essay- “Your Land and My Land” Orchestra Mendelssohn .Rev. Clinton W. Carvell .Chorus “The Art of Enjoying Music” Caroline Hayman . Romberg Chorus Class Essay—“Practical Idealism” .Barbara Loyola Dandeneau “Great Is Thy Love”. Bahm Chorus Class Oration—“The More Prepared, the More Powerful” William Norman Wilkinson, Jr. Presentation of Prizes.The Principal North Andover Woman’s Club Scholarship Award . . Mrs. C. Mason Tucker Presentation of Diplomas. Dr. Fred C. Atkinson “Holiday”. Ganne Chorus Essay with Valedictory—“New Horizons” .... Joan Therese Fitzgerald Class Song .Graduates “The Star Spangled Banner”.Audience and Graduates Exit March 18

Page 20 text:

THE GOBBLER-1944 JOHNSON HIGH SCHOOL organized music from the haphazard “plain-song” which was not measured in terms of time. If your interests are literary rather than mathematical, music offers an even larger field of enjoyment. It is interesting, and often amusing, to observe how some of the composers have treated the authors of great literary masterpieces. Shakespeare has not been very successfully set to music on the whole. Verdi’s “Othello” and “Falstaff” are the most important operatic treatments of Shakes¬ peare, and Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet” is at least adequate. The finest Shakes¬ pearian music is still the youthful overture to the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” by Mendelssohn. The French poets have had an enormous influence on French music and a large proportion of all program music owes its existence to such poetry. Debus¬ sy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” is a characteristic example, based on a poem by Mallarme. Narrative music is almost as common as descriptive, even when no words are used. Music has often been compared with language itself. While it combines easily with actual language, it also speaks a language of its own, which has become universal. To understand the significance of the organizing factors of rhythm, melody, harmony, tone color and form, the knowledge of a familiar language is helpful. Music has its own alphabet, of only seven letters, as com¬ pared with the twenty-six of the English alphabet. Each of these letters repre¬ sents a note, and just as certain letters are complete words in themselves, so certain notes may stand alone, with the force of a whole word. Generally, however, a note of music implies a certain harmony, and in most modern music the notes take the form of actual chords. So it may be said that a chord in music is like a word in a language. Several words form a phrase, and several phrases form a sentence, and the same thing is true in music. Measured music corresponds to poetry, while the old unmeasured plain-song might be compared to prose. If you are interested in history or geography or both, the co-operation of music again becomes highly significant. There is no better way of studying nationalism than through the folk music of individual countries. There is no mistaking the character of a Hungarian Rhapsody or an Irish Jig, or a Polish Mazurka, or a Viennese Waltz. The music of a country should always be an important part of the study of its geography and history. Music has played a dramatic role on numerous historic occasions, such as the fall of the Bastille, when the Marseillaise was heard, the rise of Protestantism, inspired by Martin Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” even the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, when Yankee Doodle turned from an army joke into a march of triumph. Music is so closely knit with the other arts that one could not very well get along without the other. Painting, sculpture, and literature all have their anal¬ ogies in music, and the art of the dance could not exist without music, which is its heart and soul. But the greatest significance of music is in its relation to life itself. It is 20