# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1914_S31
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

14th Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1914. 31

play. For singing instruction, in which all students take part in
three groups, eight lesson periods per week are set on our schedule.
Harmony instruction is given only in the three upper classes and
requires four lesson periods per week. In violin instruction, the
more musically gifted and advanced students of the two upper classes
take part, in four lesson periods per week. All students receive
piano instruction except the first class: students in the sixth and
fifth classes twice a week, students in the fourth and third classes
once a week, and students in the second class once every two weeks.

Piano instruction is preparatory and supplementary to organ
instruction. Only after a student has acquired a certain proficiency
on the piano does he begin organ playing, since the organ is a far
more difficult instrument than the piano. By and large, organ
playing is restricted to the last three year-classes.

Let us now take this year's enrollment — 192 — as our basis and
calculate how many music lesson periods per week ought to be given:
singing, 8 periods; harmony, 4; violin, 4.

Organ:  1st class: 26 students,  6 periods.
        2nd class: 17 students,  8 periods.
        3rd class: 19 students, 10 periods.
Piano:  3rd class: 19 students,  5 periods.
        4th class: 30 students,  7 periods.
        5th class: 45 students, 22 periods.
        6th class: 52 students, 26 periods.
Total: 100 periods.

That is work for three full-time teachers, and if, as we may expect,
our enrollment increases next school year, the number of music
periods will increase as well. Should there be, for example, 20 more
students next year in the fifth and sixth classes, this would
probably not require more instruction time for the other subjects,
but it would for piano instruction; for those 20 students would make
up five more groups and require ten more periods per week.

This year we have worked according to the above plan and
accommodated the music periods by additionally employing a number of
the more musically advanced graduating students as teachers of the
beginners. While we can be glad of the noticeable improvement, we
must also say that such an arrangement can hardly be permanent. It
places too great a burden on the graduating students concerned, and
after Easter they are no longer able to do this work either, because
they need all their time to prepare for their examination.

Besides the graduating students, the following teach music alongside
their instruction in other subjects: Prof. Backhaus, 5 periods; Prof.
Lochner, 14 periods; and Prof. Schmitt, 2 periods. Our