author
Ethel Home
A thoughtful early-20th-century music educator, she wrote practical, student-friendly books that treat music as something to be understood, expressed, and actively made. Her work is especially remembered for connecting classroom teaching with creativity and musical self-expression.
1 Audiobook
Music as a Language: Lectures to Music Students
by Ethel Home
About the author
Ethel Home was a British music educator and author whose best-known work, Music as a Language: Lectures to Music Students, was published in 1916. Sources available here identify her as headmistress of Kensington High School, and her writing focuses on how music should be taught as a living form of expression rather than as a dry set of rules.
Her books suggest a strong interest in practical teaching. In addition to Music as a Language, records for her work include Improvising: A Simple Method of Teaching the Subject to Children of Average Ability, published in 1922, and Short History of Music, first published in 1947. Across these titles, she appears as a teacher-writer concerned with making musical understanding accessible to students and teachers alike.
Very little biographical detail about her life was easy to confirm from reliable public sources during this search, so the clearest picture comes from the books themselves: a school leader and music teacher who cared deeply about pedagogy, ear training, improvisation, and helping learners experience music as a real language.