Here’s a little curiosity that I came across last autumn. It’s published by Thomas Nelson, yes, but I’m not entirely sure why I bought it. I certainly didn’t know what I was getting!
The title should have given me a clue, but it wasn’t enough to tell the whole story:-
A RURAL SIGHT READER
Being an Amalgamation of “Eyes Right!”
and “Look Ahead!”
Okay, you might say, so there were clearly two earlier books. Correct, there were. But the amalgamation was performed by having “Eyes Right!” (the simpler sight-reading book) on all the left-hand pages, and “Look Ahead!” on all the right-hand pages, until just past halfway through the book. The rest is all ‘Look Ahead” material.
You might ask why? The answer is quite simple. A teacher in a small rural school in those days might have a wide age-range in one class, so they could hand out one set of books (are you with me?) and have two age-groups use it at the same time. The idea was that the older children would follow along when the young ones were sight-reading, and vice versa.
The one thing they could not do, was sing together simultaneously. That absolutely would not work. (Opposite pages might have different time signatures, and or different keys – they were completely unrelated.) Ah well, it was a nice idea. The publishers went on printing it from 1937 until 1948, when His Majesty’s Inspector for Music pleaded with them to reprint it, suggesting that a different title might make it more saleable. There was still a need for it, he insisted. (I have since discovered that he was the unnamed author of this miserable little book!)
It was not reprinted. The publisher’s sales reps reported adverse comments and little customer interest. Looking inside, I’m not surprised. Apart from the first page of ‘Look Ahead’, which patriotically contains the National Anthem with the right rhythm followed by various odd permutations, they aren’t even recogniseable tunes, just abstract little melodies to familiarise the pupils with the ups-and-downs and simple rhythms of notated music. Functional to a fault.
And my copy – look closely at the image at the top – was a publishers’ sample copy. It may never even have been used. But the little singing child image was used again on the front and title pages of two other titles – E Fosbrooke Allen’s A First Song Book, and a much more popular book – Desmond MacMahon’s New National and Folk Song Book vols. 1 and 2. (Possibly elsewhere too – I haven’t seen enough titles to be able to say.)
Whilst I admire the laudable desire to have every child leaving school musically as well as functionally literate, the Rural Sight-Reader is a truly dull and uninspiring little offering. I imagine the children wriggling and kicking under the desk until it was playtime, or time for something more appealing!
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 