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THE MAJORITY of the faults found in our average school instrumental ensemble can be grouped under three headings. For instance, here is a high school orchestra with four celli. One is playing quite well but the other three, by their combined efforts, are nullifying his good work. Upon inquiry, it develops that the first chair player has been playing for six years, but the others started in their junior or senior years. The fault here is in organization. Good organization makes provision for starting the training of the majority of ensemble players before they enter high school. In this same orchestra is an oboe player, who is making the type of unmusical contribution so frequently associated with this instrument. It develops that he has been making such sounds over a period of several years and doesn't seem to improve. The reason? His teacher, a pianist, concentrated on rhythm and of necessity said nothing about position, embouchure, or breathing. The fault here is poor teaching. Good teaching will lay a solid foundation which will insure continuous improvement within the limits of each player's inherent ability. There are other faults in this same orchestra. It is particularly noticeable that whenever the trumpets enter, they overbalance the rest of the ensemble. The tempo drags and the playing is listless. Lack of balance and incorrect interpretations are due to poor conducting. A good conductor will take a group of individuals and with them make a unified ensemble. With this ensemble he will produce music which is correctly interpreted. Here, then, are three essentials in an instrumental program-organization, teaching and conducting. Each one has such scope that only a most perfunctory abstract of each can be given here.

CONTINUING the MENC GI symposium opened in the September-October issue, here is another sampling of the letters received from around the world in response to the invitation to write something for the Journal.

T HE CONTENT of the four-year training program for majors in music education is divided into three large areas: General Education, Professional Education, and Specialization (basic music). There have been minor changes iin the ratio of time given to each of these areas since the four-year curriculum was first introduced in the twenties, but stabilization in recent years would indicate that the proponents of each area have reached agreements which make major alterations in the near future quite unlikely. The newest threat to this balance, the emphasis on General Education, has caused some changes in certain localities and emphasizes what has become more and more evident in recent years-that the greatest expectation of improving teacher training lies in making more efficient use of the time now allocated to specialization rather than in the expectation that more time is going to be given to specialization. This article confines itself to focusing attention on two areas in which experimentation should be encouraged.