The Poem Game idea was first indorsed in the Wellesley kindergarten,
by the children. They improvised pantomime and dance for the Potatoes' Dance,
while the writer chanted it, and while Professor Hamilton C. Macdougall
of the Wellesley musical department followed on the piano
the outline of the jingle. Later Professor Macdougall very kindly wrote down
his piano rendition. A study of this transcript helps to confirm the idea
that when the cadences of a bit of verse are a little exaggerated,
they are tunes, yet of a truth they are tunes which can be
but vaguely recorded by notation or expressed by an instrument.
The author of this book is now against instrumental music
in this type of work. It blurs the English.
Professor Macdougall has in various conversations helped the author
toward a Poem Game theory. He agrees that neither the dancing
nor the chanting nor any other thing should be allowed to run away
with the original intention of the words. The chanting should not be carried
to the point where it seeks to rival conventional musical composition.
The dancer should be subordinated to the natural rhythms of English speech,
and not attempt to incorporate bodily all the precedents
of professional dancing.
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