Sixty Years of California SongAlverson, Margaret Blake
History
Sixty Years of California Song
Alverson, Margaret Blake
Music -- California -- History and criticism
Her songs were accurately sung in any language with which she was
familiar. Her singing was highly complimented upon, yet there was
something I had not yet found. I sang many hours for her the old and
the new songs and she accompanied with musicianly art, but no
expression came to me from her. I got an idea from her mother which
songs she liked best and I soon found she had supplied herself with
those she did like and I had sung for her in practice. In December,
1909, I at last reaped my reward. She, with other pupils, remembered
me, and before bringing her gift she felt as though she had not given
me enough, and at last she said, "I must do something more," and
entered her room, and closed the door for a half hour. She had given
me in verse what she could not say to me. Her excessive shyness
prevented her, much as she appreciated my singing and teaching and the
interpretation of song and its different modes of expression, whether
it be sacred, descriptive, florid or romantic. She portrayed these
lines with a poet's art--never did Tennyson write his first efforts
with more beautiful description than this young poetess has written in
these beautiful lines which I cannot read without emotion. She gave me
her affectionate expression in this poem which I appreciate more
highly than rubies, and with pride I place her offering in this book
of memoirs for all to read and for all young persons who are students
to feel that a conscientious teacher deserves their love and
appreciation in return for their efforts to develop the highest
perfection in the pupil. They cannot all be poets but they can at
least honor the master by showing appreciation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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