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HA P T E R XXII THE BEGINNING OF MUSICAL ART THE briefness of the reference to musical education which is made in this book is not due to disparagement of the value of music in education, but to the fact that with the child of tender age music can only have a beginning; it has its development somewhat later. Besides, success is bound up with the need for the production of plenty of music around the child, so that there is set up an environ- ment calculated to develop musical sense and intelligence. To have available a good musical performer, or to possess simple instruments adapted to children like those which Dolmetch makes today for the equipment of his marvellous children's orchestras, .are things which we cannot lay down as being absolute essentials in a school which has to be accessible to all. In the model Montessori schools, however, musical education is cultivated in a serious manner, trying to leave to the child free choice and free expression, as in aE branches of its development. Already Signorina Maccheroni has made some beautiful ex- periments, published in part in my book L*Autoeducazione (The Advanced Montessori Method, II); and after some time, Lawrence A. Benjamin, with the help of distinguished music teachers in Vienna and London, has made important contributions to the