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THE PHILOSOPHY
OF MUSIC

A Comparative Investigation into the Principles
of Musical Esthetics

HALBERT HAINS BRITAN, PH.D.
/P —

Professor of Philosophy in Bates College

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LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

FOURTH AVENUE & joTH STREET, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA
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875-

Printed by J. J. Little & Ives Co.
New York

To
E. F. B.,

who has helped me to see the Beauty of

Goodness and the Goodness of

Beauty, I inscribe this book.

PREFACE

IN offering this book to the public, the author
feels constrained to ask for it the kindly considera
tion usually granted to pioneer work. For while
the bibliography of music is voluminous, attempts
at a scientific, psychological analysis of music, and
at a systematic discussion of the principles of musi
cal aesthetics are surprisingly few. Of all the books
examined, Gurney's Power of Sound was by far the
most valuable, though its wealth of keen observa
tions and valuable conclusions is all but buried
under a great mass of needless verbiage and other
forbidding infelicities of style. Under the circum
stances it seemed best to the author therefore to
start boldly out trusting to his psychological knowl
edge for chart and compass, and to his philosophical
training to lead him through the subtleties and half-
mystical generalities which for so long have be
clouded this particular field of art.

The thanks of the author are due, and are here
gratefully given to those whose sympathy has given
him encouragement, and whose suggestions and
criticisms have proven most valuable. Among those
who have thus contributed to whatever value the
book may have, mention must be made especially
of Professor H. C. Macdougall, and of Professor
Horatio Parker, who have kindly read portions of
the manuscript and offered many helpful sugges
tions.

H. H. BRITAN.
LEWISTON, MAINE, July 14, 1910.

REFERENCES

AMBROS, The Boundaries of Music and Poetry.

BARTHOLOMEW, Relation of Psychology to Music.

BELLAIGUE, Musical Studies and Silhouettes.

BOLTON, Rhythm, "American Journal of Psychology," Vol. VI, No. 2.

BUTCHER, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art.

DAURIAC, Essai sur L'Esprit Musical.

EDWARDS, God and Music.

GOODELL, Chapters on Greek Metric.

GURNEY, Power of Sound.

HADOW, Studies in Modern Music.

HAND, ^Esthetics of Musical Art.

HANSLICK, Vom Musikalisch-Schonen.

LEE, The Riddle of Music, "Quarterly Review," Jan., 1906.

LUSSY, Musical Expression.

MONRO, The Modes of Ancient Greek Music.

PARRY, Evolution of the Art of Music.

PUFFER, The Psychology of Beauty.

CONTENTS
PART I

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM STATED

PAGE

SOME CHARACTERISTIC ATTRIBUTES OF Music 3

CONFUSED STATE OF MUSICAL ESTHETICS 8

THE STANDPOINTS, OF THE MUSICIAN AND OF THE ^ESTHET-

ICIAN COMPARED 10

SOME OF THE PROBLEMS OF A PHILOSOPHY OF Music . . 14

CHAPTER II

MUSICAL FORM

Two METHODS OF REGARDING A WORK OF ART .... 22

IMPORTANCE OF MUSICAL FORM 24

THE SCALES 25

THE MUSICAL PHRASE 3°

THE SECTION 33

THE MOTIVE 35

THE PERIOD OR SENTENCE 41

THE TWO-PART FORM 42

THE THREE-PART FORM . . . „ 46

xii CONTENTS

PART II

PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ELEMENTS OF
MUSIC

CHAPTER III

RHYTHM PAGE

THE ELEMENTS OF Music 57

THE PRIORITY OF RHYTHM 58

THE ORGANIC BASIS OF RHYTHM 60

THE MENTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RHYTHM 62

1. In Primitive Music 63

2. In Popular Music 67

3. In Artistic Music 70

RHYTHM PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED 78

CHAPTER IV
RHYTHM (continued)

THE INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT IN RHYTHM 82

MATHEMATICAL CHARACTER OF RHYTHM 83

AN INDUCTIVE STUDY OF RHYTHM 87

EXPLANATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 89

CHAPTER V

MELODY

DIFFICULTY OF AN ANALYSIS OF MELODY 94

MELODY A FORM OF THOUGHT 95

THE ELEMENTS OF MELODY 99

PITCH 99

TONALITY 101

UNITY 104

STRENGTH 108

GRACEFULNESS . . in

CONTENTS xiii

PACT

ORIGINALITY 113

SIGNIFICANCE 115

CHAPTER VI

HARMONY

THEORY OF HARMONY WELL UNDERSTOOD 119

DEVELOPMENT OF HARMONY 120

MUSICAL USES OF HARMONY 125

1. Increased Sound Beauty „ . 125

2. Enrichment of Melody 127

3. A New Medium of Musical Thought 130

THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR MODES 133

CHAPTER VII
MUSICAL EXPRESSION

THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSICAL EXPRESSION 149

EXPRESSION IN Music AND IN LANGUAGE COMPARED. . . 150

THE TWO-FOLD FUNCTION OF EXPRESSION 152

THE INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT IN EXPRESSION 154

THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENT IN EXPRESSION 158

PART III

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

CHAPTER VIII

THE UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY AND POWER OF MUSIC

THE UNIVERSALITY OF Music 167

THE VERSATILITY OF Music i?°

THE POWER OF Music • • I75

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC

PAGE

THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 185

THE PROBLEM RE-STATED 188

THE DRAMATIC OR IMPRESSIVE AND THE ESTHETIC ATTRI
BUTES OF Music 189

THE EMOTIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DRAMATIC ELEMENTS 191

THE EMOTIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ESTHETIC ELEMENTS 197

THE VALUE OF THE INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT IN Music . . 199

CONCLUSIONS 204

CHAPTER X
MUSICAL CRITICISM

PURPOSE AND NEED OF AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE GROUNDS

OF MUSICAL CRITICISM 207

MUSICAL VALUE OF RHYTHM 209

A CLASSIFICATION OF Music BASED UPON RHYTHM . . . 211

COMPARATIVE VALUE OF MELODY 213

THE CRITERIA OF MELODIC VALUES 216

COMPARATIVE VALUE OF HARMONY 218

CONCLUSIONS 223

CHAPTER XI
THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC

IMPORTANCE OF THE PROBLEM 228

VALUE OF Music IN GREEK EDUCATION 230

Music AS A FORM OF RECREATION 233

Music AS INTELLECTUAL DISCIPLINE 236

THE MORAL VALUE OF Music 240

SUGGESTIONS 248

PART I
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM STATED

I. In comparing music with the other arts three
general traits are readily noted, traits which serve
to attract the attention of the mind philosophically
disposed, and to provoke an inquiry as to their
nature, causes and significance. In the first place,
music as a form of art is remarkable for its wide
appeal to mankind. Now and then in the past some
art has so enlisted the sympathies and energies of a
people that it is not inappropriate to speak of the
interest evoked as national. Such, for example, was
the interest in sculpture in Greece during the Peri-
clean age, or in painting in Italy during the hundred
years ending with the middle of the sixteenth cen
tury, or in architecture under the enthusiasm of
Gothic ideals.

And yet, even in the halcyon days of these
arts, there was never, I venture to say, such a
wide-spread interest and enthusiasm as the people
of the Western world are to-day according to music
in its various forms. This is due not to a wave of
popular fancy, a mere society or social fad, but
it will find its explanation only in a theory that
shows music to be eminently adapted to be as it is
to-day, the art of the age and the art of the people.
Even a casual survey of the place music holds in the
social life of our nation will be sufficient to convince

4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

one of its vitality and of its popularity. In our
larger cities are orchestras and choral societies and
opera, which, to exist under present conditions, must
be generously supported; mention may be made
also of countless lesser organizations and soloists,
these, too, dependent for their support upon popu
lar favor. Besides this list of professional musicians,
attention should be called to the universal use of
music in religious worship, in social gatherings of
various kinds, in the theatre, in the army, in our
schools, and in our homes, where in a large majority
of cases music of some form is now cultivated.
Such a survey forces the conclusion upon us that
music is preeminently the art of the people and
the art of the age.

\i Its universal character finds further confirmation
in the fact, now being established through ethnic
and anthropological investigations, that among all
tribes and nations, in every stage of racial progress,
with men of every color, temper and natural dispo
sition, music of some form is found without excep
tion. From the lowest stages of barbarism to the
highest stratum of modern culture music has been
found to play an important part in the mystical,
religious, social or aesthetic life of every people.
It is true that in crudity and demonstrativeness the
music' is closely commensurate with the develop
ment of the people in question, but this only goes
to prove that the roots of music lie deep in hu
man nature, and that music, like all other forms of
mental activity, is subject to the law of development, j

But even more startling and more suggestive than
this universality of musical appreciation is the ver
satility of the art we are considering. Its remark-

THE PROBLEM STATED 5

able adaptability to man's many and varied emo
tional experiences not only serves to differentiate it
from the other arts, but points to some much-needed
investigation of its true psychological character.
Henry Van Dyke, in his recent volume of poems,
in the "Ode to Music" thus poetically recognizes
the wide emotional range of music:

"Where wilt thou lead me first?
In what still region
Of thy domain
Whose provinces are legion
Wilt thou restore me to myself
And quench my heart's long thirst? "

Then follow a Play Song in childlike simplicity; a
Sleep Song of rare beauty, though studied the critics
say; a Hunting Song breathing of the freshness of
the morning ; a Dance Song of lightness and rhythm
well molded; and the Symphony expressive of the
deeper aesthetical truths of the art. However, even
in this varied enumeration he by no means exhausted
the series, or bounded the province of this art. The
inspiriting effect of martial music is too well known
to need more than casual mention; its power to
relieve even the most materialistic fatigue and to
strengthen a lagging will is a fact which armies have
long known and utilized. Of similar nature is the
use of music to arouse enthusiasm upon the football
field and in the old-fashioned political meeting.
Antipodal to these uses in character but no less
powerful in its effect, is the place music holds in
modern enlightened religious worship. Here it allies
itself not with the boisterous spirit of college rivalry

6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

nor with the pugnacious instinct in man, but with
the calm, emotional phenomena of religious medita
tion and worship. The effect desired and produced
in the two cases is in striking contrast; in the
former case music excites, animates the mind, and
energizes the will; in the latter, it calms the soul,
and brings repose and rest, turning our thoughts
by the forceful beauty of its deep harmonies and
sober rhythm to a more serious contemplation of
the experiences of life. In social meetings, to pro
mote good cheer and unity of feeling, music is a
means never failing, never trite. In the dance,
music brings gayety and exhilaration ; but the dirge,
or the funeral march can turn our thoughts at once
from sunlight to deepest shadow. But in the
strength of all these dramatic effects which music
has such power to produce, it must not be forgotten
that as an art music has power to rise to the sublim-
est heights of aesthetic form and so charms the mind
by the pure beauty of its artistic qualities. This
versatility, this adaptability to man's various emo
tional experiences without artificiality or loss of
power, is another of the potent qualities of music
awaiting explanation.

Again, music is remarkable not only for its uni
versality and its versatility, but also for its power.
No other art, with the possible exception of certain
forms of literature, can make the emotions so poig
nantly real, or can so effectively oppose the domi
nance of some mood which may for the time have
cast its spell over the mind. Upon this attribute
of music the world has remarked and perchance
reflected since the days when David took his harp
to solace the heart of Saul, and the Greeks repeated

THE PROBLEM STATED 7

and believed the myth of Orpheus and how by the
magical sweetness of his music he charmed the
hearts of man and beast. The fact which the
ancient Hebrews thus noticed and the Greeks in
their fanciful way represented in their myth, has
not paled beneath the clearer light of modern
scientific examination, but remains unchallenged
though still largely unexplained.

Such are some of the more obvious facts which
meet us when we pause for a moment to consider
music as a form of art. That they are so patent
does not lessen their significance, nor make a critical
examination of their nature and force any the less
imperative. Rather, the fact that they are so evi
dent as to be almost commonplace serves to increase
the obligation philosophy is under to investigate
their nature and to find the secret of their psycho
logical value. Philosophy like philanthropy begins
best by beginning at home. This much may be
given as a tentative conclusion : An art that begins
far back in the obscurity of the earliest forms of
racial progress, and is present as a factor of increas
ing importance through the long ages of develop
ment to the best outcome of ethnic progress; an art
that finds an immediate and a forceful response
from men in every land and in every stage of mental
growth and education; an art so versatile that it
can arouse and stimulate almost every emotion of
the human heart, and with such dramatic power;
an art that in its highest artistic form is worthy to
be classed with the best expression of man's aesthetic
consciousness: such an art is certainly not ephem
eral or insignificant, but must send its roots deep
into the heart of man's mental constitution and

8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

stand intimately related to the basic forms of con
sciousness itself.

2. As might be inferred from the last remark,
musical aesthetics is a subject upon which there is
a wide divergence of opinion and a very general
lack of exact and lucid thought. There are several
reasons why this is true. In the first place, music
is by nature both intangible and evanescent, and
for this reason hard to apprehend clearly without
some natural aptitude or careful training. With a
few paintings before him even a novice might soon
learn to recognize the outward marks of a Turner
or a Corot or a Monet, while only a long training
would enable him to decide with equal facility
whether a composition were by Schubert or Men
delssohn or Beethoven.

Then again, the symbolism in which music is
expressed is incapable of being translated into our
conceptual terminology. Music is the only art of
which this is literally true. Word pictures will go
far toward giving a fairly accurate description of
the conception of any other form of art, but a
melody or a musical thought is essentially untrans
latable and indescribable.

Besides, music through the emotional suggestive-
ness of its dramatic factors lends itself readily to
mystical interpretation and obscure generalities. The
following quotation will illustrate what I mean : "I
for one know well, that, so long as my life-happenings
can be conveyed fitly through words, I will not use
them as a musical theme. The longing to express
myself musically comes over me only in the realm
of obscure feelings, at the threshold of the World
Beyond, the world in which the categories of Time

and Space rule no more." One cannot read very
far in musical literature without meeting many
times with just such expressions. They may be
true in a general sense, but they depart woefully
from the exactitude which a world influenced more
by scientific than by poetic ideals naturally craves.
We labor, therefore, against difficulties inherent in
the problem, and hence inevitable.

Another reason why the philosophy of music is
to-day still immature, unsettled almost as to its first
principles, is found in the fact that music in its
present harmonic form is still in its early maturity.
Attention has been engrossed heretofore with the
cultivation of music for its own sake, rather than
with an attempt to understand its principles in their
philosophical relations. There has been a philos
ophy of poetry, for example, since the time of
Aristotle, but it is only in recent years that syste
matic attempts have been made at a philosophy of
music. And, indeed, it could not have been other
wise: philosophy does not precede, but follows the
actual processes of development. The data must
first be supplied, and then reflected upon and uni
fied into a coherent, logical system. Consequently
philosophy has well restrained the feverish impulse
to appropriate the field of music to her domain
until the art itself should be mature.

But to such maturity music has now attained, and
the time is at hand when music should be considered
in its wider relationships. It is doubtless true that
there will continue to be new movements, new
schools, new ideas (for art does not seek to perfect
the old, but to discover the new), but no one ac
quainted with the music of the last century would

lo THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

dare to say that music has not attained to a vigor
ous and energetic maturity. If past attempts at a
philosophy of music, due to a lack of proper data,
have been sporadic and incomplete, there is no
longer a like reason why similar attempts are
doomed to failure. The present status of musical
theory and of psychological analysis is such that
the material is at hand for such a systematic study,
if we care to avail ourselves of it. What is needed
now is not greater facility in musical analysis, and
a more complete understanding of the architectonic
of musical compositions, but a more reflective study
of such data as we already possess and a synthesis
of such material with the fundamental principles of
mental activity. It will help, perhaps, to define our
problem and to show more clearly the direction in
which our goal lies if we contrast for a moment the
study of music from the standpoint of. the musician
and from the point of view of a student of philosophy.
3. The musician studies music for its own sake.
If music is worthy of the place it claims for itself
in the category of the fine arts, it must have a con
tent worthy to be compared with the best ideas and
ideals of these arts, with the content of our best
painting or of our best literature for example. It
must be an expression of some truth of Life itself,
a truth capable of being crystallized under the form
of sense beauty, and of producing an aesthetic reac
tion in consciousness. Music, we believe, has such a
content; to find such truth and to express it, or to
interpret it for others is the true function of the
musician. Music is no blot nor blank, it means
intensely and it means good; to find its meaning
is, for the musician, if not meat and drink, at least

THE PROBLEM STATED n

his proper task. The musician, therefore, making
music the constant object of his study, gets deep
est into its meaning, understands best its message,
and appreciates best the character of its truth. At
least these are the possibilities that lie open before
him.

All this, however, is not so easy as the statement
might imply. While such power of direct vision may
now and then be granted to some musical genius
that the nature and reality of the goal be not
lost to man, the usual road is one of arduous wind
ings and many a day of rough and barren climbing.
That is to say, the usual method by which musi
cians come to an appreciative understanding of
musical composition is through the study of the
technique of musical form and musical principles.

As a musician, therefore, the student of music is
interested in understanding the structural elements
of music in general and of different compositions in
particular. He must be able to analyze a musical
composition and to see how from certain elements
the composer has builded the logical structure of a
work of art. To do this he must have a critical
knowledge of the various elements and forms of
music, the uses of rhythm, the relation of keys, and
of the major and the minor modes, the theory of
harmony, and the principles of musical expression;
he must be able to pick out the subjects of the
various movements, and to recognize them in their
various forms in the exposition, development and
recapitulation; he must have an ear trained to ap
preciate delicacy of modulation and of harmony,
and to recognize the more logical unity and balance
of rhythmic structure. Besides all this Jbe . must

12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

have musical ieeling, the ability to appreciate and
to express shades of feeling which are beyond the
possibility of graphical representation. As a musi
cian merely the problem of the content of his art,
except as this term is used to denote bare sequence
of tones in succession, is extraneous to his purpose.
His end is attained when he so thoroughly under
stands the musical structure of the composition
that he can intelligently criticise its interpretation
and feel the emotion that inspired, or accompanied,
its creation. True, as a man of culture or even as a
well-informed student of his art, the musician must
know something of the history of music, and of its
general significance, and yet strictly from the musi
cian's point of view this is not essential, except so far
as such knowledge helps him to understand and
interpret the compositions in the way we have out
lined above. Let not our statement be misunder
stood ; we are not advocating in any sense a restric
tion of the field of study of the musician, but merely
trying to set the limits where pure musical purposes
end and other interests begin.

The study of music from the point of view of the
student of philosophy is essentially different from
that which we have just sketched. The interests of
the musician are centripetal, while the interests of
the philosopher are centrifugal. The interest of the
former, as we have shown, centres in the art itself,
while the interest of the latter is directed outward,
seeking for points of relation between music and the
other arts and other forms of human experience.

The philosopher must recognize the right of the
musician to priority in his own field. In matters of
musical theory he can only defer to the judgment

THE PROBLEM STATED 13

of the musician and confess that much of the infor
mation he uses is second-hand. And yet this is
no more the case with music than it is in any other
branch of aesthetics or of philosophy in general.

The true function of philosophy lies beyond the
immediate facts or principles which science gives.
The data of philosophy are all borrowed, so no
more in this instance than elsewhere. The philoso
pher in any branch of sesthetics is but a traveller
passing through the land, not like the spies of
Joshua, that he may spy it out, and return and
possess it, but that he may make of it a compre
hensive survey in order that his map of the whole
realm of art may be complete. He will do well,
therefore, to learn from musicians, the rightful
owners of the soil, those facts wilich a life-long
experience may have given them. Since he is but
a surveyor, as it were, seeking for the defiles, the
passes, the natural avenues of approach which con
nect this enchanted land of music with the outlying
provinces of the other arts and of other fields of
human experience, he must choose as his guide, if
he show the wisdom his name implies, one whose
experience has made him familiar with all the wind
ing streams and hidden passes and fertile plains of
his home land. True it may be that he has never
lifted his eyes to the hills to find the sources of those
enchanted streams which make his country so fair,
nor followed them down to where at last they flow
out into the boundless ocean of Truth ; but this does
not lessen his efficiency as a guide in the land in
which he lives and which he knows better than any
transient incomer from other scenes.

There is, therefore, no cause for enmity or jeal-

14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

ousy between the musician and the philosopher, but
every cause for hearty cooperation and mutual
assistance. The philosopher must gain from the
musician those data which alone make his work
possible. Had he first to master completely the
technical study of music, his prime purpose would
be lost in the multitude of preliminary details. On
the other hand, the musician, if he is to be successful
in his chosen work, must confine himself to his spe
cific tasks and not be drawn away by the allurements
of philosophical theories. But when the philosopher
has completed his work and has formulated his argu
ment in a systematic way, the results of his labor
should be of the greatest interest and help to the
musician in enlarging the scope of his vision and in
giving him clearer ideas as to the relation of music
to other forms of human experience.

4. What, then, to discard our figure of speech,
are some of the more specific problems which a
philosophy of music must undertake to solve?
Clearly, one of the chief inquiries to be raised, chief
both in its inherent importance and because so
much depends upon it, is to determine as clearly
and as accurately as possible the nature of the
psychological processes involved in the musical
experience. The psychological method of investi
gating all phenomena connected with human thought
and action has so abundantly justified itself that it
here needs no defense. It is not without good and
sufficient reasons that this method has become
almost synonymous with scientific accuracy, and
with axiomatic grounds of certainty. In the case
of music the demand for the most thorough-going,
critical psychological analysis is peculiarly impera-

THE PROBLEM STATED 15

tive, (i) because so little systematic work of this
kind has as yet been undertaken, and (2) because
the mental reactions constituting the musical expe
rience are in many respects so intangible and subtle
that they lead readily to exaggeration and vague
generalities which in the light of a scientific psy
chology are either meaningless altogether or mere
platitudes. To understand in the simplest possible
terms the character of the mental reactions which
music engenders is therefore one of the most im
perative problems of musical aesthetics. This can
be attained only by a critical analysis of music into
its elements and an examination of the effect of
these elements taken separately upon the mind.
In this way alone can we hope to come to a clear
and full understanding of the real nature of music
subjectively considered.

Another reason why the psychological examina
tion of music is so important is the fact that upon
the data thus determined rests the possibility of
relating music to other manifestations of human
thought and action. In order that philosophy may
relate one subject to another, one art to another,
or to some subject apparently independent of the
one in question, it is necessary that some bond
of connection be discovered. Now psychological
analysis is the alembic modern philosophy is using
to-day and in it hopes to be able to resolve the most
refractory forms of consciousness, the most subtle
and abstract ideas and ideals. Whether or not these
hopes will ever be adequately fulfilled, it is unques
tionably true that this is the best method yet dis
covered of attacking these more subtle problems
with which philosophy is compelled to deal. Thus

1 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

it is imperative that attention be directed first to
the psychological analysis of music not only for the
interest inherent in this problem, but also because
this is the necessary prolegomenon for the solution
of the further inquiries philosophy is ready to pro
pound. For example, there is urgent need to-day
for the formulation of the principles upon which
musical criticism rests and by virtue of which it
has authority. As critics themselves are ready to
admit, musical criticism is not yet fully conscious
of the principles which underlie the musical art, and
as a consequence there is a notorious lack of unity
and authority in the multitudinous judgments passed
upon music. So much so that one of the papers in
our metropolis amused itself not long since by com
piling a long list of contradictory quotations taken
from the musical criticism of its leading newspapers.
Nothing can remedy this weakness so long as there
is lack of unanimity of opinion as to the true char
acter, purpose, and principles of music. Such an
analysis as we propose ought certainly to do some
thing toward laying the principles for authoritative
criticism.

Passing outside of the realm of music itself to con
sider its relation to some other fields of human
thought, one of the first problems to propose itself is
naturally the relation of music to the other arts. As
an art with a definite character and individuality of
its own, music must have certain differentia by which
it is distinguished from the other artsT~But, on the
other hand, it is no less evident that it must have in
common with the other arts certain essential attri
butes, by virtue of which it is placed in the category
of art. The differentia, the points of difference, are in

THE PROBLEM STATED 17

common thought more emphasized than the points
of agreement. These are the technical attributes,
the proper subject of study for the musician, and for
professional schools. But for a philosophy of music
it is upon the common point of agreement that at
tention must be centred ; these latter, not the former,
are the basis for a real, comprehensive understand- '
ing of music as a form of art. To point out, there
fore, these common attributes and to estimate their
value will prove to be not only an interesting task
intellectually, but it is indispensable for a philosophi
cal appreciation of the true character, import, and
purpose of music. However, a philosophy of music
will lead us farther afield than into these outlying
provinces of the other arts.

Music is not morality; but from the days of Plato
and Aristotle music and morality have been inti
mately associated both in popular and in philosophic
thought. The philosopher, actuated by a dominant
desire for unity, is prone to believe that the asstheti-
cal and the ethical ideals are not only compatible, but
essential each to the other. The man more prag
matically minded finds numerous inconsistencies be
tween certain apparent results of music and the
ordinary conceptions of moral practices. But the
problem — surely the problem remains for him who
would attack it.

Again, art is not religion, but the fact that no one
of the arts in any land has risen to world renown
apart from the guiding influence and inspiration of
religious ideals certainly suggests that this is not
merely coincidence several times repeated. And
while it may be true that the great musical period
of the last century received less inspiration from re-

1 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

ligious conceptions than have some of the other arts,
the intimate relation always existing between music
and religious worship forbids that the question of the
relation between music and religion be not raised,
though it receive but scanty treatment in the follow
ing chapters. If philosophy during the scholastic
period was the ''handmaid of religion," music must
now and always be assigned a more sisterly relation
to religion than philosophy ever was justified in
claiming. Take away from religious worship music in
all its forms and an irreparable, incalculable injury
has been done.

Again, there has been during the last decade or
two a strong tendency to give music a larger and
larger place in our educational practices, and it is
doubtful if the tide is yet at its flood. Can it justify
itself there, when our courses of study are growing so
fast and are even now so overcrowded that school
work seems verging on dilettanteism? And if so,
how? This it may be urged is more a practical than
a philosophical problem, and yet it should be remem
bered that its solution demands just that thorough
going psychological analysis at which this discussion
aims. It might also be urged that to-day even prac
tical educational questions are becoming more and
more problems demanding the broadest philosophi
cal treatment. The question, therefore, is pertinent
as well as practical, philosophical as well as pedagogi
cal, and may well claim our interest and attention.

Among the problems of a philosophy of music one
other must engage our attention. A philosophical
discussion of any subject, whether it be science or
art, soon leads to a consideration of its content as
the most comprehensive, the most searching inquiry

THE PROBLEM STATED 19

connected with the investigation. To any one ac
quainted with philosophical procedure, the reason
for this is obvious ; the central problem of philosophy
is Ontology, or the theory of the ultimate constitution
of reality. This is essentially the problem of the
content of Nature. Now philosophy, whichever way
it turns or whatever the subject with which ic is en
gaged, has always this question to propound, What
is the essential, irreducible content when analysis
has reduced the subject to its lowest terms?

Upon the problem of the content of music musi
cal theorists have long been divided into two oppos
ing schools, the ''Formalists" and the "Expression
ists." The Formalists, of whom Eduard Hanslick of
Vienna is perhaps the best spokesman, maintain that
the beauty of music is in the mere formal play of
musical tones in rhythmic and melodic or harmonic
progression. The favorite figure of speech of this
school is that music is an "arabesque of sound;" that
is, sound patterns intricately but logically interwoven
and interrelated. According to the contention of
those who subscribe to this theory, music is simply
what is heard or, more accurately, what the ear re
ceives ; and the whole content of music is the techni
cal data which the musician discovers in his analysis
of various compositions. As Hanslick says: "Die
Darstellung eines bestimmten Gefuhls oder Affektes
liegt gar nicht in dem eigenen Vermogen der Ton-
kunst." . . . "Die Ideen, welche der Komponist
darstellt, sind vor allem und zuerst rein musikalische.
Seiner Phantasie erscheint eine bestimmte schone
Melodie. Sie soil nichts anderes sein als sie selbst."

The Expressionists, on the other hand, contend

1 Vom Musikalisch-Schonen, pp. 26 and 30.

20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

that music is something more — far more than an
arabesque of sound, artistic and sensuously pleasing
though it be. To regard music in this empirical fash
ion is to defame it and rob it of all its significance and
glory. This school, therefore, regards music as pri
marily a symbolic expression of inner states of feeling,
the richest and deepest the mind can know. Its
power, its significance, its glory are due to the direct
ness and accuracy with which it can express the
yearning and longing and exultation of conscious
ness in its various moods.

The classical proof of this is found in such com
positions as Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, with
its "Scene at the Brook," the "Peasants' Merry
making," the "Storm," the "Shepherd's Song," etc.
Or reference might be made to the "Program
Music" of some of our best composers who now
and then essay to picture for us some definite scene
or mood through the medium of musical sym
bolism. Wagner's innovation also, in which he
attempted with world-renowned success to make
sound and scene and sense harmonious, might be ad
duced as evidence for this theory of music. Then
there is music like that of Chopin and the Roman
ticists in general, the effect of which is so palpably
emotional that it seems artificial to interpret it in
any other way. In the face of such examples the
formalistic hypothesis seems barren if not positively
false. The favorite figure of speech of those of this
persuasion is that music is the ' ' language of the emo
tions." Thus supported by much cogent argument
on either side, the breach has widened until the ex
treme views just outlined have been vigorously sus
tained. And even though it be asserted that this is

THE PROBLEM STATED 21

no longer the vital problem in musical aesthetics,
which is probably the truth, there is a problem here
which, though it needs a new alignment, is still of
great moment in a philosophy of music.

Before we take up the psychological analysis of
music, it seems expedient to borrow from the musi
cians such data concerning the technique of music
as will assist us most in getting a clearer conception
of the psychological character of this art, and help
us to solve the various philosophical problems we
have just proposed. Such is the purpose of the fol
lowing chapter.

CHAPTER II

MUSICAL FORM

I. Every work of art, if its true character and
its full significance are to be apprehended adequately,
must be considered from two distinct points of view,
viz., the objective and the subjective. From the
objective point of view a work of art is a concrete,
sensuous form and must as such exemplify certain
sensuous but aesthetic attributes. f When regarded
in this way, attention is centred most naturally upon
its objective or structural, and upon its obvious,
sensuous attributes. Beauty, to one who looks out -
from such a standpoint, will seem to lie entirely in
these sense qualities and to be explained by attri
butes of sense entirely. Thus a painting, for exam
ple, shows colors harmoniously blended, light and
shadow, forms suggested or accurately drawn, com
position, balance, etc., all objective attributes and,
to a certain extent, to be appreciated and judged
upon their sensational value.

But a work of art is also, at the same time, a sym
bolic form to be interpreted and enriched from the
inner life and experience of the beholder. From this
point of view the objective form is but a skeleton, a
symbol, a sign to be interpreted not in terms of ob
jective reality, but in terms of the inner life of con
sciousness. "From the heart it sprang and to the
heart it must appeal," said one of the masters of one of

MUSICAL FORM 23

his compositions. Under this mode of envisagement
the subjective experience, not the objective form, as
sumes the place of prime importance. Neither of
these two ways of regarding art is superfluous, nor is
the whole truth to be gained from either standpoint
alone, try as we may. Much confusion in aesthetics
has resulted from a failure to observe this truth. In
justice to the subject, and certainly in the interests
of the fullest conception of art and the truth it por
trays, the fact must be recognized that both points of
view are valid and complementary. The Hegelian
method has not been rendered obsolete by the modern
experimental method of investigating the problems
of art. This chapter, it is evident, will have to do
primarily with the objective characteristics of music.
Regarded objectively, each art has its own specific
elements determined both by the nature of the par
ticular ideas to be represented and by the character of
the medium in which it finds expression. In gen
eral, it is true that thus envisaged a study of art
shows certain characteristic forms and relationships
between them. Thus architecture has its columns,
its arches of various styles, its windows and walls,
the dome, the porch, the cornice, etc., structural
forms to be variously disposed and arranged ; sculpt
ure has the different parts of the human body or of
other forms to be designed truly, and to be disposed
both accurately and gracefully or significantly. And
even literature, that art in which content counts for
so much, is by no means barren of formal elements.
Mention may be made of such elements as metre,
rhythm, rhyme, balance, euphony and the like.
Now music, as well as the other arts, has its own char
acteristic formal and architectonic attributes. Not

24 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

only so, but in their extreme importance they rank
music with architecture, the art of pure form, rather
than with literature, the art of deepest thought.
This being true, they are evidently worthy of the
most careful examination.

It is worthy of notice, also, that in a study of an
art for its own sake, attention centres chiefly upon
the objective rather than the subjective attribute
of that art. Thus, so far as the musician studies his
art technically, he is engrossed with the formal or struc
tural attributes of the composition examined, rather
than with the analysis of the mental reactions it
awakens. That this formal side is both rich1 in its
aesthetic possibilities and interesting from an intel
lectual standpoint, the zeal and enthusiasm of musi
cians abundantly proves. An analysis of a composi
tion, like any other analysis, consists of the separation
of a composition into its elements so that their in
herent nature can be intelligently understood, and
the beauty and significance of their synthesis appre
ciated. That these musical elements of form must
be some series of single tones or chords, possessing in
themselves more or less unity and character, follows
from the character of music itself.

2. Two main reasons may be given why the sub
ject of Musical Form is vital for a philosophy of this
art. In the first place, form is a constituent element
in music, and as such plays its own part in the musi
cal experience. Since a work of art must be a con
crete, sensuous form, these elements of form are
a part of the real artistic reality of the art in question,
and as such cannot be disregarded.

In the second place, form in art is important be
cause the thought content is_yitaUy influenced, not to

MUSICAL FORM 25

say conditioned by these formal elements. The form
of an art is, as it were, the mold into which the art
conception is cast, and therefore limits even the
thought itself. Form and content are inseparable
and for art both indispensable. ' And the form is not
only influenced by the content, but the content by
the form as well. As Lessing long ago but once for
all made plain, only a limited class of ideas is
suitable for pictorial representation; while another
limited class is the proper subject for expression
under the form of literature.

The argument is so terse and so convincing that
though well known it is given in the note below.1 The
same principle is involved in the case of music. Its
content is determined partly by the medium in which
it is expressed, but partly by the forms in which con
vention has decided musical ideas should be cast.
Thus, not only to appreciate music critically as the
musician appreciates it, but to understand it phil
osophically the formal elements must be given their
due consideration.

3. The scale is of such fundamental importance in
music, both from the objective and from the sub-

1 "I infer thus: If it is true that painting employs in its imita
tions quite different media or signs from poetry, the former employ
ing shapes and colors in space, the latter articulate tones in time;
if it is unquestionable that the signs must have a convenient relation
to the thing signified, then coexisting signs can only express objects
which coexist or whose parts coexist, and successive signs can only
express objects which are successive or whose parts are successive.

"Objects which coexist or whose parts coexist are called bodies.
Consequently bodies with their visible qualities are the proper
objects for painting.

"Objects which are in succession, or whose parts are in succession,
are called actions. Consequently actions are the proper objects of
poetry."

Quoted from Bosanquet, History of ^Esthetic, p. 224.

26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

jective points of view, that the principal facts con
cerning it, even though they are well known, must
be brought to mind anew. Especially is this urgent
for an adequate understanding of the principles of
musical form, the subject which is to engage our
immediate attention.

Under the equal-tempered system of tuning, the
piano keyboard, both in pitch and in compass,
represents substantially our Western musical sys
tem. For the sake of simplicity and because it
is the instrument most readily available, our dis
cussion will be in terms of the keyboard of this
instrument. On the seven-octave keyboard there
are eighty-five distinct sounds forming a series and
differing from one another primarily in pitch. The
interval between any two successive sounds in this
series is approximately uniform, the interval being
known as a semitone or, in the language of the musi
cian, a "minor second." If we strike all the keys of
the piano in order, beginning with the lowest or the
highest, we have the complete "chromatic scale,"
and have heard essentially all the sounds (at least
as regards pitch) used in Western music.

But this series of sounds readily breaks up into
definitely related groups which are of fundamental
importance in the musical art. These are the octaves
and the scales. For example, if after striking any
given key, the thirteenth key above it be struck
also, the two sounds will be found to combine har
moniously ; the one is an octave above the other
and represents the same note. The significance of
the octave will appear in our discussion of the
scales. We need not, therefore, delay to treat it
further at this point.

MUSICAL FORM

If we start at any point in the complete chro
matic scale represented by the keyboard, and
ascending omit the 2d, 4th, 7th, Qth and nth keys,
we would play the 1st, 3d, 5th, 6th, 8th, loth, and
I2th; the I3th will be a replica of the 1st, only an
octave higher. A continuation of this order through
out the length of the keyboard, regarding the I3th
always as the beginning of the order to be repeated,
gives us the complete diatonic scale. But as the
order of intervals in the successive octaves is iden
tical, and each sound an exact octave from the same
step in the adjoining octave, it is sufficient to con
fine our remarks to the scale as it is found within
the limits of an octave. An examination of the
order of sounds as thus limited will show at once
that the major diatonic scale consists of seven dis
tinct musical sounds leading on the eighth step to
a sound just an octave above the first, the scale
being given, of course, in the ascending order. Of
these seven intervals of the scale within the octave
two consist of one step, that is, a semitone, and five
consist of two steps, or whole tones. The minor
seconds or semitones in this scale always occur be
tween the third and fourth and between the seventh
and eighth, both in ascending and descending. Thus
the major diatonic scale may be regarded as eight
sounds selected out of the thirteen in an octave of
the chromatic scale, the essential point being the
position of the two semitone intervals. Now this
scale serves as the standard of the tonal relation
ships in melody, although it is always possible for
the musician to introduce any of the sounds omitted
in the diatonic scale as occasion demands. But it
is true, nevertheless, that the major diatonic scale

28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

is the scale on which Western music is based pri
marily. This is true not alone as music is considered
structurally, but subjectively, the scale being the
very pole-star of mental reference.

From the above explanation the subject of various
scales, or in common parlance, the "keys," is readily
understood. A major diatonic scale, it is evident,
can be begun on any of the twelve distinct notes of
the octave, upon the C, or C#, D, or D$, E, or F,
etc. Each such scale takes its name from the initial
note, in flats or sharps, as the case may be. The
essential thing is that the relationship of full tones
and semitones as given above should be maintained.
The difference between the keys therefore is funda
mentally a difference in pitch, the sameness or iden
tity a matter of interval relationships. Thus the
relationship of sounds to one another in the scale
is the unchanging datum, the standard, as has been
said, according to which the mind recognizes and
appreciates differences in pitch. This relationship,
as referring especially to the key note, is the prin
ciple of tonality to which we shall have occasion to
refer later on. It may be said also that just as
within the scale some intervals are more natural
than others, so any given key has its related keys
into which it modulates most readily.

Thus far the fixity of the relationship of the tones
of the scale has been the point kept constantly in
view and emphasized as of most importance psycho
logically considered. But with the chromatic scale,
consisting of a series of sounds all separated in pitch
by a semitone, it is evident that there is opportunity
for a somewhat wide variation upon this point, the
same number of steps in the octave being retained.

MUSICAL FORM

The fact that the semitone in the major diatonic
scale comes between the third and fourth and the
seventh and eighth is not a musical necessity, but
a convention. There is evidently room for consider
able variation from this rule before all the 'possible
permutations are used. The Greeks, as a matter of
fact, in their various "modes" did recognize varia
tions in this respect that modern music no longer
uses. Of these possible variations from the standard
major scale modern usage sanctions but one, the so-
called minor scale, in which the semitone comes be
tween the second and third and, under varying
conditions, between the seventh and eighth, as
in the major scale, or between the fifth and sixth.
The subject of the minor mode, an important one
psychologically, will be taken up for discussion in
another connection. For the time being, for the
sake of simplicity we shall confine ourselves to the
major scale.

In the scale itself some sounds are closer related
to the key-note than others, the relationship being
capable of expression in mathematical ratios, the
basis being the number of vibrations per second
made by the individual sounds. Just as among the
Twelve Apostles three were found whose hearts were
in closer accord than the others to the heart of the
Master, so in the twelve tones of the chromatic scale
there are three which harmonize best with the key
note. These are the fifth or dominant, with a vibra-
tional ratio of 2:3; the fourth or sub-dominant, its
ratio being 3:4; and the third or mediant, whose
ratio is 4:5. The octave with a relation of 1:2 is
not considered as a separate sound, but as the key
note repeated and strengthened. In music objec-

30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

lively considered, these relationships are of the
utmost importance; no small part of harmony is
based upon the truth thus simply expressed. But
great as is the importance of these relationships
from the objective point of view, from the subjec
tive standpoint they are no less fundamental; here
their closer relationship to the key-note makes them
subjective points of reference, points of rest and
recognition in the successive tones of melody or
chords of harmony.

The last phrase leads us to another definition,
necessary even in this fragmentary outline of musi
cal principles. I refer to the fundamental chord or
triad, which can be built up on any one of the twelve
tones of the chromatic scale. For example, if any
one of these tones is selected and regarded as a key
note and with it is combined its third and its fifth,
we have a chord or harmony which may stand for
mental reference in the place of the key-note itself.
If, in the same way, a chord is built up upon the fifth,
taking its third and fifth we have the dominant triad
or harmony for the given key. Chords formed in
the same way upon sub-dominant or upon the me
diant, form the sub-dominant and mediant triads
respectively. In modern harmonic music these
triads or chords serve the purpose of their basic
notes in simple melody ; that is to say, they serve as
points of reference and of rest in music of the ordi
nary harmonic type. Such are some of the more
fundamental facts of musical theory preliminary to
a discussion of form proper.

4. It has already been suggested that the elements
of musical form, in the nature of the case, must be
certain combinations of musical tones having a cer-

MUSICAL FORM 31

tain individuality and unity of their own. In view
of this fact the natural point at which to begin a
discussion of the structural or formal elements of
music is with the phrase. By a musical phrase we
mean a structural element of melody (which may or
may not be harmonized) of two or more measures,
and terminated at the completion of a certain number
of rhythmic units by some form of cadence. The num
ber of measures in a phrase is variable, two being
the minimum, four the most typical number, five,
six, or seven not uncommon, eight comparatively
frequent, and more not exceptional. Mendelssohn
is said to have written a phrase consisting of twenty-
two measures. This, however, is exceptional. Mani
festly the number of measures the phrase contains is
not its determining attribute; neither is the rhythm,
for this also is variable. But if not its length or its
rhythm, then evidently the cadential termination
is the secret of its individuality.

By a cadence in music is meant the falling (or
rising) of the melody at the end of a rhythmic unit
to one of the fundamental notes of the scale, to the
tonic or to the dominant in most cases. 1 If the phrase
ends with the tonic, the cadence is said to be perfect;
if with the dominant, it is said to be an imperfect
cadence or a half cadence. Interpreted in terms
of harmony, which in modern music is all but the
universal form, the tonic triad would take the place
of the key-note, giving a perfect cadence; the domi
nant triad the place of the dominant, giving the
half cadence. The musician has other distinctions

1 Rhythmic unit is here used to denote nothing more definite than
that the cadence must come at the completion of a certain number
of measures.

32 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

for various other forms of endings, but for our pur
poses it will be best to let a few of the more funda
mental examples suffice. As examples of phrases
we may give the following:

ARNE: " Artaxerxes."

CHORAL: "O gesegnetes Regieren."

*•>

<5* iy

*j A

— F

In the second example there are two phrases each
of four measures, the first, ending at the fourth
measure on a half cadence, the second, as in the
eighth measure, on a perfect or full cadence. But
for simplicity there are no better examples of phrases
than the music corresponding to the various lines in
our familiar songs and hymns.

As calling attention to the importance of the
phrase in music and to certain of its characteristics,
the following words are pertinent: "It is necessary
to emphasize the importance of the phrase, for from
it all musical forms are built, and in all productions
of music, whether instrumental or vocal, the proper
accenting and phrasing is as vital as in the speak
ing and reading of a language. That the phrase may

NOTE. — The shorter quotations in this chapter are taken from
Prout's Musical Form, unless otherwise indicated.

MUSICAL FORM 33

be distinguished by the listener it is necessary that
an apparent change be made in the rhythm ; this is
brought about by the usual introduction of the
cadence, which is the end of the phrase or the point
of temporary repose between two phrases. The
cadence generally occurs upon an accented beat,
and its presence is commonly made known by the
lengthening of the chord which is sounded at that
point ; when this chord is built up from the key-note
of the phrase, the pause is said to be a full cadence;
when the chord is that of the fifth, it indicates a half
or imperfect cadence. The significance of the full
and the half -cadence will be apparent later in this
same chapter. The cadence is commonly very ap
parent, and rightfully so, as next to the knowledge
of melody, the finding of the true location of the
cadence is the most important task in properly
analyzing and interpreting music; yet in many
cases the cadence is partially concealed by various
technical devices which it is unnecessary to mention
here as we are striving to gain only a general under
standing of our subject."

5. Though the phrase in music by virtue of its ca-
dential ending is, subjectively considered, the small
est fundamental unit, it is not incapable of analysis.
The phrase is usually divided into sections, divisions
determined both by accent or rhythmic, and by pitch
relations. There is no absolute uniformity in the
length of sections, even for any given length of phrase.
Prout's summary states the essential facts: "In
many cases, though not invariably, the phrases will
themselves be divided into Sections. Though it is

1 The American History and Encyclopedia of Music. Theory, pp.
176-177.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

possible for even a section to end with a full cadence,
we mostly find the cadential effect less distinct in a
section than in a phrase. Very often if a sentence
consists of two phrases, one of these will be subdi
vided into two sections, while the other is indivisible.
By this means variety of detail is obtained without
the sacrifice of symmetry." 1 For example, the sen
tence quoted above, given here in its harmonized
form that the cadential effect may be more marked,
is divided into sections as follows :

n% ' ,

| 1

^y -^

r r V^

a & &

M S f?3

i ~r
J J

-a

1 ^

[ v v •** 22 i 1

1 i

*^^ * > L '

„ M, 1 I

1 1 ,

^n i

/**"!' !

xC /*nJ ^

}

l/r\ ,^ '^^

3 e

L >Mx "^ sp

§» 5?

V g

g ii

\ \

J -J-

J J

<s?

\ \~J «i| ! ^-.

^ f^j

^tei^ 1 '

1 ^

.•*' 2_

The shorter brackets here indicate the sections,
the larger the phrases. One other example may be
given.

j'ca/ Form, p. 35.

MUSICAL FORM

HAYDN : " Symphony in G."

Au 1 ./—• ^ t t t *a» f[\ p^ ?!

n^f ^ "* °v r^1

6. Continuing our analysis of the phrase, we come
to another element of music, the motive, which struc
turally is of much greater significance than the sec
tion, for it is often used as the basis of what is known
as thematic music. As the usual mensural length
of the section consisted of two strongly accented
notes, that is, ordinarily of two measures, so the usual
length of the motive is such as to include one and
only one of the primary accents of the measure.
Prout's definition will help to make this clear. "A
motive is composed of a strongly accented note, pre
ceded by one or more unaccented or less accented
notes, and followed by unaccented notes, only when
the harmony requires it, or the context shows that
the following motive does not begin immediately

36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

after the accent." The definition calls attention
to the fact that exceptions to the general rule are
possible, and perhaps not uncommon. Into an analy
sis of such variations from the rule, the purpose of
our discussion does not compel us to enter. It will
be for our purposes sufficient to find the general
truth, the common principles which express not alone
the ruling form, but which determine the exceptions
as well. No rule without its exceptions, we are told,
but certainly, no exceptions without a rule.

The first period of the Choral quoted above is thus
divided into motives:

Each phrase, it will be noticed, begins with an incom
plete motive, the others being reducible to the regu
lar or inverted form of the very simple motive of

two notes in the relation E—

£=1. But one of

the best classic examples of the motive, both because
of its inherent individuality and because of the won
derful use made of it, is the motive upon which Bee
thoven has built the first movement of the Symphony
in C minor.

Such," he said, " is the knock of Fate." In order
1 Ibid., p. 31.

MUSICAL FORM

that the reader may not neglect to hear it anew I
quote a few measures.

BEETHOVEN: "Symphony in C Minor.'

.233.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

There are several devices open to the musician by
which he is able to develop from a simple motive an
orderly and logical artistic whole. Some of these
have been exemplified in the music already quoted,
and are worthy of a brief notice even in a sketch
which purports to be only the briefest possible out
line of the element of musical form. In the first place,
the motive may be repeated either literally or with
certain variations. If repeated literally, that is, with
out change in pitch or rhythm, its use is obvious. But
since the motive consists of two distinct elements, viz.,
pitch relationships and rhythmic figure, so to speak,
it is possible to modify either the order of the inter
vals or the rhythmic value of the notes without de
stroying the identity of the basic motive. For ex
ample, the motive is frequently repeated at different
points in the scale, the intervals and rhythm being
retained, as in the first instance cited ; or the rhythm
being retained, the intervals may be modified as is
done in the Symphony quoted ; or subordinate varia
tions may be made in both the intervals and in the
time elements without entirely obscuring the identity
of the subject. A note or notes may be amplified by
substituting two-eighths for a quarter or two quar
ters for a half, etc.

MUSICAL FORM

Inversion is another variation by means of which
substantial modifications are introduced. This pro
cess consists of using the notes in an inverse order, so
that the interval is changed from an ascending order
to a descending or vice versa, the interval or intervals
being retained. Examples of this process are found
in the Choral cited above. The device being com
mon, however, the following examples may well be
noticed : 1

F. SCHUBERT.

or the modification of this process in Beethoven's
Sonata, Op. 26,

which is repeated as follows :

By such structural devices and others not men
tioned, the musician can develop from even the
simplest motive a very complex and yet a perfectly
logical, artistic whole. For a fuller discussion of this
technical subject the reader is referred to musical
literature.

Thus far the discussion has been limited to an ana
lytic study of the phrase. But this same structural

1 Quoted from Cornell's Musical Form, pp. 9i~92-

40 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

unit by synthetic processes enters into the highest
and most complex musical forms, such as the sonata
and the symphony. It is in this rather than in its
own well-marked individuality that its true musical
significance is found.

The musical phrase, notwithstanding the elements
of unity it possesses, as the name itself would indi
cate, is not able to stand alone and unrelated to other
phrases. Just as in language the phrase is incom
plete apart from its use in the sentence, so the musi
cal phrase apart from the balanced after-phrase fails
to produce in the mind that sense of finality and rest
which characterizes the expression of a complete
thought. The principle of dual balance is so essen
tial to music that in the larger structural forms it is a
rule almost without exception that every phrase or
combination of phrases must be balanced by a phrase
or combination of phrases of equal temporal value.
The phrase is a unit, but music is a composition of
phrases, and in placing them together order must be
observed. Compare for example, the feeling of unity
and completeness produced by the single phrase and
the period of two balanced phrases following it.

ARNE : "Artaxerxes.1

MUSICAL FORM 41

7. The simplest combination of phrases would be
manifestly two phrases of equal length balanced the
one against the other as in the example just quoted
from Haydn. This simple form of two phrases thus
balanced is known among musical theorists as the
sentence or period, the latter, perhaps, the more com
mon designation. When two periods in turn are bal
anced the one against the other, the necessity for
having the fore-phrase and the after-phrase (as the
two phrases of the period are called) of equal length
is obviated; the demand for symmetry and balance
is met in such a case by the more comprehensive
balance of period against period. The case here is
altogether analogous to balance and symmetry in
architecture. For example, if there are in the facade
of a building but two windows, one on each side of
the central doorway, symmetry demands that they
should be of equal size; but if there are two on each
side of the door, symmetry is maintained if one be
large, one small, provided those on the opposite side,
and in the same order, are of like form. This is the
secret not only of the principle of dual balance but
of the whole formal architectonic of music. Thus, in
the period the cadential feeling at the end of the
phrases is supplemented by the feeling of balance or
symmetry.

In the period the first phrase is usually terminated
by some form of a half cadence, thus pointing on
to the second phrase as the true conclusion of the
musical thought. This psychological effect may
be noticed in the following example, or by running
through, line by line, any of our standard simple
songs.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

FORE PHRASE. Beethoven.1

ntt II

J/ "it

XL If

1 N 1

EH .ft _.

_ -> -

.« a

AFTER-PHRASE.

But even such a symmetrical form as the period
does not furnish sufficient body to serve as a genuine
art form, except in very unusual cases. Just as a sin
gle sentence or a paragraph however well turned or
decoratively printed will hardly rank as a work of
literary art, so the period in music, whether composed
of four or eight-measure phrases, will not suffice as
the standard for musical form. It is too fragmental,
however perfect in itself, to merit the noble name of
art. Schumann, it is true, has written a composition
of only eight measures, Op. 79, No. I, but this is only
an exception that proves the rule.

8. The simplest combination of phrases usually re
garded as a standard art form is the simple Two-Part,
or Binary Form; or, as it is often called, the Song-
Form. This form structurally is simplicity itself,
being composed merely of two related periods. Al
though it is composed frequently of one period
simply repeated, the more usual form is to find
some variation introduced in the fore-phrase of the

1 Quoted from Cornell's Musical Form, p. 28.

MUSICAL FORM

second period, the after-phrase of this period being
the same as the after-phrase of the first period. The
following is a typical illustration :

FIRST PERIOD.

Beethoven.1

Jf-w

tfh-fr

1 1 — •

1 f^

— *—

Xk w

i i i , , i

rt\ " e

— J-

! ^ J

* « ' J 0

' J

SECOND PERIOD.

r • 0 ^

L^n —

--n 1= —, — ±=r=

H 1 ! ,

i T\ *^

j ' i i

\Mv J

0 * ' J 0

0^ • 0

V »• u

— -^

— ^J

1 1

fk:'&^

||| : {

M 9

When it is remembered that in this form the length
of the phrases, the melody, the harmony, and the
rhythm are all variable quantities, it is evident that
even in such a simple form as this there is the possi
bility for much originality and for various styles of
music. The list of musical forms which, when ana-

1 Quoted from Cornell's Musical Form, p. 40.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

lyzed show this simple binary structure, is not small,
and the compositions are all but innumerable. First,
may be mentioned the great body of hymns, in which
there is usually but little variation from the normal
form. We give but one familiar one to show the
structure.

As the name "Song-Form" suggests, this is also
the typical form of most of our common and well-
loved songs; indeed, it was given this name from the
fact that the Volkslieder of Germany were written in
this form. In the list of binary forms, therefore, must
be included most of the simple, well-loved songs of
the people, such as Annie Laurie, Blue-bells of Scot
land, Old Folks at Homeland their ilk. In structure
they are so simple and their unity is so evident that
they are the standard of true music for those who are
unable to appreciate the unity of forms of a more
complex structure.

Still another important use of this form in music
is found in waltzes and other forms of dances, not
merely of the popular type, but of the best compos
ers. Schubert, for example, has more than two hun-

MUSICAL FORM

dred of his shorter compositions written in this form.
One of them is here given.

SCHUBERT, "Trauer Waltzer," Op. 9, No. 2.

f Pi"^"~i • ' 1 i 1 r~l — — I — I 1 1 — M

f4-"— I— • — \-m — I-

-w- <r *

$ *

g^=

N : ^-=i-^:

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

These few examples will suffice to give the reader
a general idea of this simplest musical form, to show
its extended use, and to illustrate its possibilities as
a simple, logical form. What has been said or shown,
however, will hardly suggest, except to the musician,
all the possibilities for variation, embellishment, and
personal idiosyncrasies which composers have found
opportunity to introduce, even in this extremely
simple form. To do this, however, is beside our
present purpose, and impossible within the limita
tion of the chapter to be devoted to this subject.
All that can be done is again to refer the reader to
treatises on this subject.

9. The other typical musical form is the Three-
Part or Ternary Form. Though a little more com
plex, it, too, in its plan is so simple that its logical
structure can be understood by any one. Instead of
the two related periods or sentences of the binary
form simply, there is first a complete binary form
ended by a full cadence in the tonic key ; the second
part, often in another key, and contrasted with the
first also by the use of new subject matter, may be
a complete binary form, though often it will modu
late back to the original key instead of closing with
a cadence in the key in which it is written; the

MUSICAL FORM

third part is a repetition of the first part simply,
that is, without variations; or changes of minor
importance may be introduced. Frequently a coda
or tail-piece is added. A single example is given
with the parts marked respectively I, II, and III.

BEETHOVEN: "Sonatina," Op. 79.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

-IT— i 0 0 j

Sfc

MUSICAL FORM

tr.

=rfrp

• *-\ — i-

-f-i--

-\=i

dim.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

~*~"

^^^^™^^^^^^^^^~ — ^^^^•••^"•^^^^^•^ — i
i ^ — i ^

== ==*= =s==EE=iE

-N 4-

—

MUSICAL FORM

(TIT)

espress.

=HLJ— I |__l

t^3^

• — * 1 — • — • -0-9-1 — I -0—0 1 — • — • 1 — *

1 — tHT ^ -^— bl *-t -t^

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

dt=f=

4= — t

-:.->--

r — b-

— y-

=r-r^3 =S

MUSICAL FORM 53

The following is Front's analysis of this move
ment: "The first part of the movement (to the end
of bar 8) is a complete binary form containing two
sentences, the first closing in the relative major and
the second returning to the tonic key. The second
part of the movement begins with a modulation to
E flat, in which key we find the episode. This is
also made of two sentences; the first is four bars in
length, ending with a full close (bar 4), with femi
nine ending; the second sentence is extended to
five bars by the repetition of its first bar an octave
higher. Its fore-phrase finishes with an interrupted
cadence (bar 6), and its after-phrase with a full
cadence in bar 8. The second part is completed by
a third sentence, modulating back to G minor and
ending with a half cadence in that key. The third
part is an exact repetition of the first, followed by
a coda of one sentence in which four bars are ex
tended to five by the sequential repetition of the
second bar. The final cadence has a feminine
ending."1

The ternary form is found both in the larger
compositions of the leading composers, in sonatas,
symphonies, and quartets, in the slow movements,
the minuets, and scherzos, and in many composi-

1 Musical Form, p. 188.

54 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

tions written for the piano such as nocturnes, im
promptus, etc. This form, like the binary, is subject
to the widest possible variation in its rhythmic,
melodic, and harmonic structure, so that only the
trained musician is able to appreciate intellectually
many of the finer structural points which make
music, not only a subject worthy of the most careful
study, but the medium of expression for true genius,
and the most varied forms of individuality. All of
this, however, in the present discussion has been
left untouched that attention may be concentrated
upon the basic principles of musical form and of
structural unity in the various forms of musical
compositions. To go into a detailed examination
of all the modifications of these principles and forms
is the proper work of the musician, not of the student
of philosophy. It must suffice in the present connec
tion if we have gained some knowledge of musical
terminology, have learned the language of the coun
try, as it were, and have shown that music as well
as the other arts has its proper basis of unity in
certain definite structural forms.

PART II

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
OF MUSIC

CHAPTER III

RHYTHM

I. An analysis of a musical composition shows
three distinct elements in modern music — Rhythm,
Melody, and Harmony.1 Whatever the type of the
composition, however strong the personal equation
of the composer, every composition worthy of seri
ous consideration will show these factors coalesced to
form a complete and unitary work of art. These
three elements, therefore, serve as the natural basis
for our psychological analysis of music. What is
the essential nature of each, and, more important,
what is the nature of the psychological reaction to
which each gives rise? The answer to these two
questions will give us the data upon which to base
conclusions as to the true philosophical character of
music and of its relations to other forms of human
experience.

So many scientific investigations of rhythm have
been made that it may seem both useless and pre
sumptuous to attempt to add anything to what is
already known and has been frequently repeated.
Herbert Spencer, for example, has treated the sub
ject in its cosmic relations and shown its presence

1 In the light of the stress now being laid upon orchestration, it is
an open question whether color should not be added to this trinity
of elements. But as what is known as color introduces no new
psychological element in the musical experience, we shall confine
our discussion in the main to the three elements mentioned.

58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

and significance as a law of motion in the evolution
of the material world. Its adaptability to the
method of physiological and psycho-physical re
search has made it a favorite subject for experimen
tal investigation in our laboratories, and its impor
tance as an element in music has led the musical
fraternity to analyze it as a factor in music. But
notwithstanding all that has been done along these
various lines the inquiry we propose has not been
explicitly answered. The principal facts concerning
rhythm, it may be, have been ascertained, but the
argument to prove our point has not been formu
lated. Thus there is abundant reason why we must
take up the subject anew, treat it in our own way,
and justify our conclusions by our own arguments.
That so much matter is available makes the task
easier, but it does not obviate the need for under
taking it.

2. Genetically considered, rhythm is the primary
factor from which music as well as dancing and
poetry have developed; it is the dynamic that first
aroused the mind to an instinct or desire for artistic
expression. Parry, it is true, makes the rhythmic
and the melodic factors coordinate, but he does this
in a general way without raising the question of the
real temporal primacy of either of the two.1 Upon
the basis of physiological and biological investiga
tions rhythm must be accorded the honor of an
tiquity and regarded as the root from which have
developed the various attempts of primitive men
for artistic expression. It is, of the three elements of
music, unquestionably the one deepest seated in the
human organism, and biologically can be traced

1 Vid. Evolution of the Art of Music, Ch. I.

RHYTHM 59

lower down in the scale of life than our suscepti
bility for either melodic or harmonic factors. As it
is found in man susceptibility to rhythm is an
instinct, and he responds to it reflexly and almost
inevitably; it seems, therefore, to be fixed in the
very heart of that most vital of all vital substances,
the nervous system. In modern anthropological
and genetically psychological investigations rhythm
looms large. G. Stanley Hall says: "In the dark
background of history there is now much evidence
that at some point play, art, and work were not
divorced; they may all have sprung from rhythmic
movement, which is so deep-rooted in biology be
cause it secures most joy of life with least expense."
But stronger, more positive still, are the words of
Karl Biicher, who says: "In that centre of conver
gence we see work still undistinguished from art and
from play. There is a single human activity, a
solution of work, play and art. In this unity of
physical and mental activity we perceive the germs
of development all along these lines. . . . The arts
of motion, music, dance, and poetry came into being
in the performance of work ; the arts of rest of form
are embodied, if only in the forms of movement, in
the results of work. This is all simply the instinc
tive action of life in common average humanity—
in savages, in peasants, in working people. The
bond that holds together these elements which we
have come to think so unlike is rhythm, whose
source is in the very essence of the human organ
ism."2

Further probability of the correctness of this

1 Adolescence, Vol. I, p. 211.

2 Arbeit und Rhythmus, p. 357 (quoted from Goodeil).

60 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

view of the primacy of rhythm is furnished by the
wide, almost universal field in which rhythm is
found. Not only is rhythm an instinct which func
tions in the arts, as in music and dancing and poetry,
but it is a principle which seems to extend over the
whole realm of human activities, both voluntary and
involuntary. Mention may be made of the regular
systole and diastole of the heart, the periodic recur
rence of inspiration and expiration, the longer rhythm
of working and sleeping, the recurrence of hunger,
the activity of certain glands, the periodic activity
of the reproductive organs, the rhythm of walking
and of talking, and of thinking as well; the more
obscure but no less certain changes connected with
the nutrition of the individual cells of the body and
even with the growth of the embryo. Considering
the wide range of vital processes in which rhythm
shows itself as a characteristic attribute, it seems
safe to venture the generalization that rhythm is
a characteristic of all organic action, though it
may be modified by forces we do not as yet under
stand.

3. To trace all of these various forms of rhythmic
action, with the exception of the more obscure forms
in nutrition and in the growth of the embryo back
to fluctuations in the nervous discharge controlling
such actions, is a short step and one that must be
taken.

The words of Professor Ladd express a truth to
which few psychologists will wish to dissent: "All
feelings, as such, but especially as 'pleasure-pains,'
are subject to the law of Rhythm and Repetition.
The ground for both of these laws is found in the
most fundamental conditions of the life and activity

RHYTHM 6l

of the nervous system itself. ": Rhythm, therefore,
we conclude is organic, an inherent property of the
nervous system, and manifests itself therefore even
in the activity of the higher centres with which
mental life is so intimately correlated.

That rhythm is a phenomenon connected pri
marily with the functioning of the nervous system
is a fact that goes far toward explaining some of
the problems connected with a philosophy of music.
Being organic and natural, not a cultivated reaction,
it is readily seen why music with a pronounced

1 Ladd, Psychology Descriptive and Explanatory, p. 203.

NOTE. — The physiological explanation of rhythmic discharge of
nerve centres is so simple, so illuminating, that it is given in the
words of a well-known physiologist:

"Suppose a tube closed water-tight below by a hinged bottom,
which is kept closed by a spring. If a steady stream of water is
poured into the tube from above, the water will rise until its weight
is able to overcome the pressure of the spring, and the bottom will
then be forced down and some water flow out. The spring will then
press the bottom up again, and the water will accumulate until its
weight again forces open the bottom of the tube, and there is an
other outrush; and so on. By opposing a certain resistance to the
exit we could thus turn a steady inflow into a rhythmic outflow.
Or, take the case of a tube with an end immersed in water and a
steady stream of air blown into its other end. The air will emerge
from the immersed end, not in a steady current, but in a series of
bubbles. Its pressure in the tube must rise until it is able to over
come the cohesive force of the water, and then a bubble bursts forth ;
after this the air has again to get up the requisite pressure in the
tube before another bubble is ejected; and so the continuous supply
is transformed into an intermittent delivery. Physiologists suppose
something of the same kind to occur in the respiratory centre. Its
nerve cells are always, under usual circumstances, being excited;
but, to discharge a nervous impulse along the efferent respiratory
nerves, they have to overcome a certain resistance. The nervous
impulses have to accumulate, or 'gain a head,' before they travel
out from the centre, and, after their discharge, time is required to
attain once more the necessary level of irruption before a fresh
innervation is sent to the muscles." — Martin's Human Body, p. 418.

62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

accent and strong rhythm finds almost a universal
appreciation among mankind. Response to a ryth-
mic stimulus is instinctive, and as inevitable as any
other reflex act; it is mechanical, not intellectual or
appreciative.

Again, the peculiar power which music with a
strongly marked rhythm has for the natural, untu
tored ear, finds in this physiological theory of rhythm
a ready explanation. It is of the nature of physio
logical reflexes and instincts that they should be
clamant, impellant, gaining their end by the mere
force of direct impulse rather than by any conscious
appreciation of the end to be realized by such ac
tion. Consequently such incentives to action are so
direct, so powerful indeed in their incitation, that
they can be resisted only by the most direct act of
will or by a taste for something higher cultivated
by long and arduous labor.

4. But the question of supreme importance for a
philosophy of music is to determine the nature of the
mental response these elements of music elicit. The
musical experience is fundamentally a mental, not a
physiological phenomenon, and in the end all terms
must be reduced to terms of consciousness. Hence
it will not suffice to regard rhythm merely as a
property of nerve activity; its influence upon con
sciousness is the salient point in the matter.

There are two lines of investigation by which light
may be thrown upon the psychological significance
of musical rhythm, and, because the subject for musi
cal esthetics is of paramount importance, neither
of them can safely be neglected. The first is an em
pirical inquiry into the mental effect of musical
rhythm as it is found in various types of music. The

RHYTHM 63

second method is to carry our psychological analysis
of rhythm a step farther and inquire how the rhyth
mic action of the nervous system manifests itself in
consciousness.

In brief, the thesis which we shall endeavor to
substantiate is that the natural instinctive effect of
rhythm is an emotional modification of conscious
ness. Whatever the possibilities may be for a re
fined development of this element in music, and for
its more intellectual utility as an element in the high
est forms of musical composition, the whole weight of
evidence genetically considered goes to prove that
the emotional is the primary effect upon conscious
ness. If this be true, as we believe the investigation
will clearly prove, it is safe to conclude that, notwith
standing the later more artistic development of
rhythm, it never gets away from its primal character
or ceases to modify the emotional tone of the con
scious state into which it enters. Thus there is found
the basis for an emotional element in music which
both biologically and psychologically is fundamen-/
tal and cannot therefore be either denied or disre-f'
garded.

5. Rhythm, as has been said, is an attribute of
neural activity inbred in the nervous tissue through
ages and cycles of development and growth before
the mind was capable of true creative work such as
both melody and harmony imply. Consequently
the music of undeveloped tribes and of uncultivated
taste is preponderatingly rhythmical.. Instruments
jo^jDercussion are the Javorite musical instrument!^ "
-oL^en^n tile_ lowest stages^ofmental development^
This simple, though strongly reiterated rhythm in
monotone is the music of primitive tribes even to-day.

64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

Among such people the almost universal use of the
rude drum in war-dances and in ceremonials be
speaks the prevalence of rhythm as the element of
music most appreciated, and the results obtained
abundantly emphasize its power and indicate in no
uncertain way its natural effect upon the human
mind. In the war-dance, for example, of our Ameri
can Indians, we may note its intense emotional power
in this crude form; the dance begins with rhythmic
movements, accentuated by the beat of a drum, and
often accompanied by the repetition of some simple
melodic phrase. The phrase, however, serves to do
little more than to help mark the rhythm and to give
opportunity for a more general expression of rhyth
mic action. As the tempo is increased the move
ments of the dancers are accelerated and the emo
tions raised to higher and higher pitch. This is
continued until the minds of those participating in the
dance are worked into a fine frenzy and the time for
rash counsel and deeds of violence is ripe. Our fron
tier soldiers of the last century well knew the extent
and the dangers of such emotional intoxication. As
Parry says, " Pure, unalloyed rhythmic music is found
in most parts of the uncivilized globe ; and the degree
of excitement to which it can give rise, when the
mere beating of the drum or tom-tom is accompanied
by dancing, is well known to all the world."1

In such rhythmic action it is evident that there are
none of the finer elements of purely aesthetic emo
tion : it is little more than an emotional orgy secured
by taking advantage of the natural susceptibility of
man for rhythmic stimulation. The response is
reflex and sensuous, though it contains within it the

1 Evolution of the Art of Music, p. 7.

RHYTHM 65

possibilities for refinement and for true aesthetic re
action.

Mr. Bolton, in his study of Rhythm, says:

"There is no more striking fact in the whole field of
rhythm than the emotional effect which rhythms produce
upon certain classes of people, savages and children. At
tention has already been called to the psychological phe
nomenon of accompanying the changes of intensity in a
series of sounds by muscular movements. So strong is
this impulse in all classes of people that no one is able to
listen to music in which the rhythm is strong and clear
without making some kind of muscular movements. With
some people these movements tend to increase in force
until the whole body becomes involved and moves with the
rhythm. The accents in the rhythm have the effects of
summated stimuli, and the excitement may increase even
to a state of ecstasy and catalepsy. Although the regular
recurrence of the accented syllable is the most important
element, the qualitative changes aid in bringing about the
emotional states. Soothing effects result from certain
rhythms, as is shown in the lulling and patting of a baby
to sleep. The early hypnotizers resorted to the gentle
stroking of their subjects. Savages are well aware of the
exciting effects of certain rhythms, and are accustomed to
use them to bring about the state of frenzy in which their
priests give their prophecies and in which religious dances
are danced. Mr. Ellis, who has made a study of some
tribes in Africa, says, 'Music among the Thsi-speaking
tribes is limited to airs possessing an obvious rhythm.
Such airs seem to appeal to the primitive sense common
to all people, but upon savages, that is, upon children with
the possession and power of men, its influence is immense,
and the state of excitement into which an assemblage of
uncivilized people may be wrought by the mere rhythm of
drums and the repetition of a simple melody, would hardly
be credited. With some races this known emo-

66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

tional influence of music has been utilized with three ob
jects, viz., to stimulate the religious sentiments, the mar
tial spirit, and the sexual passions.'

"In the Yatiati dance among the Indians of British
Columbia, the tribe assembles outside of the chief's house
in which the dance is to be held, and with fists and sticks
they beat the time on the walls as they enter, singing the
dancing song. The dancers who are on the inside are
worked up into a frenzy. The gentle striking at first,
gradually increasing in violence, and the slow approach and
the assemblage of the tribe, wrought in the dancers a pitch
of excitement which forced them to rush out after a time
and begin the dance, jumping about in the wildest fashion.
Such dances cease only with the complete exhaustion of
the dancers." 1

In the same article attention is called also to the
deep effect upon children of the jingles of childhood.
The conclusion to which the author comes is that
rhythm among both savages and children is capable
of exciting them emotionally, even in some cases to
the point of terror or of intoxication. Cases similar
to the ones cited might be multiplied indefinitely, for
the same emotional excitement under the influence
of a strongly accented rhythm is found among all
primitive and uncultured people.

The inference to be drawn from such examples
is manifest: the primary and natural effect of
rhythm upon the human mind is directly and dom-
inantly emotional. So close is the relation between
nerve action and mental states that, though or
ganic in its causal relations, it manifests itself in
consciousness in the most demonstrative and power
ful manner. This reaction, in these more primitive

1 The American Journal of Psychology, Jan., 1894, p. 163.

RHYTHM 67

cases, is unmistakably and intensely emotional.
Such is the conclusion which reference to primitive
conditions forces upon us. The further question
now arises, whether rhythm throughout the long
process of musical development and in the various
classes of music recognized to-day retains this
emotional power and significance. Reference to
certain well-distinguished classes of modern music
will readily furnish an answer to this inquiry.

6. In that great body of modern music — waltzes,
marches, quicksteps, ballads, rag- time — known col
lectively as "popular music," rhythm is construc
tively and psychologically a dominant factor. While
such compositions may not be altogether barren of
certain minor melodic and harmonic virtues, the real
source of their popularity is found in their regular
and strongly accented rhythm. Melody and harmony,
as will appear later, are the real intellectual elements
in music and so, wherever found, require some degree
of mental activity for their appreciation; but rhythm,
as we have already shown, has an instinctive basis,
and reaction to this form of musical stimulus is
reflex, as it were, and hence independent of any
appreciation of its nature or significance. We shall
return to this point, however, in later chapters.
The question now at issue is, does this strong rhyth
mic element in popular music retain recognizable
marks of its ancestral character and still exert an
unmistakable influence over the emotions?

In answer to this question we notice in the first
place the uniformity of the- rhythm in such music.
As was stated in the last chapter, the rhythm of the
phrases is almost without variation, these simpler
forms being almost all perfectly normal in their

68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

structure. Then, also, the tempo in simple dance
music and songs of such form is generally uniformly
sustained. In this there is kinship, to say the least,
with the more primitive forms of music of unde
veloped races. And the psychological effect, though
modified by the introduction of other factors, is too
evident to be misunderstood.

In martial music, while some of the inspiriting effect
must doubtless be attributed to the character of the
instruments used, to the tone color, it is the strong,
stirring rhythm that forms the principal and un
varying characteristic of such music. When the
music is accompanied by words, they also must be
recognized as having a part in the total effect pro
duced. But they are not essential, as all instrumental
music shows. Though the melody in music of this
character may differ, and the harmony be good or
poor, the rhythm, if strongly accented, and of the
proper sort, will almost suffice alone to produce the
characteristic reaction. Certain it is that after all
proper allowances are made for the effect of words,
melody, and harmonization, there remains enough
left over to justify us in attributing to rhythm the
characteristic quality which belongs to music of
this sort. Rhythm not only retains, but it exerts its
pristine qualities, "moving the spirit in a direct and
powerful way to a reaction that is inherently emo
tional. Witness such stirring hymns as La Marseil
laise or Die Wacht am Rhein; or the effect of the less
majestic but no less powerful song of the South,
Dixie. Often has the writer heard it played in its
own sunny land, and seen the remarkable effect
upon the audience. As the tempo is increased, so
grows the excitement of the listeners, until at the

RHYTHM 69

climax, shouts may be heard and hats seen in mid
air. This effect is due primarily to the strong
rhythm and to the exhilarating tempo for which
this air is justly notorious.

Of the same general character are the simple
waltzes and "two-steps" which form the major
share of the repertoire of amateur bands and of
musical neophytes. Their popularity is due in part
to their structural simplicity, but also largely to the
rhythm to which response is made instinctively.
That the mental response is emotional, not intellec
tual is evident from the ease with which response
is made and from the nature of the physical expres
sion of the mental state to which such music gives
rise.

When mentioning examples of strong rhythm in
popular music, reference must be made also to that
peculiar syncopated rhythm known as "rag-time."
The rhythm of this music is so characteristic and the
effect so evident that it serves as one of the most
striking examples of rhythm in popular music. Let
the melody be as "catchy" as you please and the
harmonization as rich as possible, the force of the
rhythmic element will still overshadow them both.
Rag-time — the name itself indicates its principal
characteristic and the source of its power.

That the psychological effect of the rhythm in
these examples of popular music and even in martial
music of the best sort is essentially of the same na
ture as in the cruder cases mentioned above, there is
no reason to doubt. If the rhythm is strongly ac
cented and the tempo is quick there is the same
heightening of the emotional state of consciousness,
the same increased excitement and stimulation that

70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

the more purely rhythmic music had upon the sav
age. The stimulus is the same though veiled beneath
some melodic and harmonic factors, and the nervous
system still is sensitive to such stimulus; the effect,
therefore, must be like in kind though somewhat re
strained by the conventionalities of an older civiliza
tion. It will probably be objected by some whose
idols are thus dethroned that there is the greatest dif
ference between the music of savages and popular mu
sic to-day. That we would not deny : all that we are
here contending for is that the so-called popular music
makes great use of rhythm, depends greatly upon it,
and that the psychological effect of rhythm upon the
mind is still as it has always been. This constant
and invariable effect, constant and invariable because
natural and instinctive, is an emotional modification
of consciousness. And the more marked the rhythm
the more pronounced the result until such a time as
man, through training and education, has supplanted
this instinctive reaction by a desire for, and appreci
ation of, more intellectual elements. If the race has
developed from crude and unrefined reactions to
rhythm, to possibilities for appreciating the rhythm
of Milton's poetry or of Beethoven's music, so each
individual must begin low in the scale of natural re
actions to instinctive elements ; but he, too, may rise
to an appreciation of the greatest masterpieces of
poetical or of musical thought.

7. All music, however, is not of this lower order,
in which rhythm is psychologically of paramount
importance. Nor are the purposes of a philosophy
of music centred in a discussion of these lower forms
of music, but in the highest. The real problem, there
fore, the true end of all our seeking, is to determine

RHYTHM 71

the function and value of rhythm in the highest,
most artistic forms of music. The modifications of
rhythm in music to-day, however, are manifold:
reference to some typical uses, therefore, will have to
serve our present purpose.

It is a matter of common knowledge that in our
highest musical forms, the sonata and the symphony,
the division into parts is based upon the tempo.
Thus in these forms there are such movements (notice
the term) as the Allegro, the Andante, the Largo, the
Scherzo, the Minuetto, etc. Is the characteristic effect
of these different movements due to the rhythm,
and if so, just what is the nature of that effect
upon consciousness? Or, in the light of what has
been determined already, is the psychological effect of
the different rhythms in such compositions still emo
tional, though now more refined and made less ob
trusive by the greater importance of melodic and
harmonic elements? This question goes deep into the
problem, for upon the answer given rests to a large
extent the problem of the presence and value of the
emotional element in music.

What has been stated concerning the effect of
rhythm in the lower forms of music gives the correct
answer to the question; it only remains to justify it
by showing a little more explicitly that the natural,
impressive effect of these movements is emotional,
that rhythm, even to the limits of its development, is
still true to its genesis. In such forms it may lie
hidden, as it were, under a wealth of melodic and
harmonic elements which charm the sense and claim
the active, analytic attention of the mind, and which
are the real sources of the artistic value of the com
position; but the rhythmic factor is still present,

72 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

though not obtrusive, and it determines the mood or
emotional tone of consciousness that serves as a
background upon which the more intellectual ele
ments of melody and harmony stand out in bolder
relief. The natural, impressive psychological effect
of one of these movements, due chiefly to the rhythm,
is a certain emotional state of consciousness, a mood
which colors in sombre hues or bright the whole
field of consciousness, both focus and fringe. How
subtle, but how certain and how powerful is the
change when one movement ends and another be
gins ! How few notes it takes to bring the responsive
mind from the firm confident mood of an Allegro to
the more serious, more intense mood of the Largo!
Or how the shadows lift from their brooding and the
sunlight sparkles on leaf and water when the orches
tra passes to the Scherzo! It is the mood that
changes, the emotions that are vaguely but certainly
aroused, the facile, affective qualities of mind that
respond to the changing stimulus. The suddenness
of the change, the directness with which effect fol
lows cause, the quick response the mind gives to the
changed music, all reveal the instinctive, the reflex
character of the response. This irresistible effect is
due not to melodic elements, for it is common to
movements notwithstanding the greatest differences
in melody, and may come before a single melodic
phrase is completed; nor is it due primarily to har
monic features, though it may be emphasized by this
means, for again the general effect of a movement is
the same under the widest possible differences in har
monic character. There remains, therefore, only the
rhythmic element to which we must attribute this
striking impressive effect of the different movements.

RHYTHM

To make clear by illustration what has been stated
abstractly, the reader is asked to listen to such con
trasted movements as are represented in the follow
ing brief selections taken from Beethoven's Sonatas.

Allegro vivace.

Op. 2, No. 2.

-4- — ^

r r

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

_z) — J — J —

ADAGIO, from Op. 2. No. i.

RHYTHM

V-j

m m

= * ^i

Allegro molto.

SCHERZO, from Op. 26.

Avfto^rv mn/iHa/m ^*~ - i • ,. ^ <

u A 1 . I J -^™ "^^ I I I * ll

«/

? t T

JL '• - 4-

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

A u L

LtJ nM-

-«

fe%

* i

__ ^ ^_

•

. ~

i ,

f s

\ / |

V
»f

1 fi l-i 1

1 i . i

f f

y i f b

>L ft hi

. 1

f/T\> Z

5_ *

u .

ANDANTE, from Op. 26.

x — - T - — ^ ^- ~-^

~ — ===^~*~V"— ^-^ *

RHYTHM

-r r y

These are but a few examples to illustrate what all
music shows. Each composition, if lyrical, engenders
some mood which rises, is lived, and gives place
to some other emotional state as attention passes
to some other of the thousand forms of stimuli to
which the mind is sensitive; each composition of the
more complex sort, like the sonata or the symphony,
by the changed rhythm of the various movements,
and by the corresponding play of melody and force
of harmony, leads us on from one emotional state to
another, the total experience being bound together
by the artistic unity of the composition considered as
a whole. Not that this is the whole of the musical
experience by any means, but for him who enters ap
preciatively into the spirit of the music this part is
certainly essential.

78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

In literature the affective state is determined by
the imagery the words call forth and by the working
out of the plot, whether in comedy or tragedy, to
living joy and light, or to sorrow and death. Mil
ton's Lycidas, for example, is filled with the solemnity
of life, gained by the imagery called forth by his won
derfully chosen words. Music gains the same end,
produces the same effect, but in an entirely different
way. Instead of appealing to the mind by pictures of
sorrow or by definite thoughts concerning the solemni
ties of life, music casts its spell in a more direct way
by appealing to an old and instinctive mode of re
action.

Thus, rhythm is the natural basis for an emotional
interpretation of music which, though not the final
word in musical theory, is the first and as such must
be carefully weighed in making up the final verdict.
This does not at all preclude the possibility of its hav
ing an important function in other directions, but it
does suggest that it can never outgrow or escape this
influence over the emotions. Being ingrained in the
nervous system it may be turned to intellectual pur
poses, but it can never lay aside its birthright, nor in
one generation obliterate all traces of its genetic
origin and use.

8. The emotional effect of rhythm is further sub
stantiated by a psychological analysis of rhythm. It
must be confessed, however, that there is still so little
known concerning the physical basis of the emo
tional life that it is at present impossible to go very
far in this direction or to speak with any great assur
ance. Consequently, theory and hypothesis must
often be given to supply lacunas in scientific knowl
edge. However, what is thought or believed may be

RHYTHM 79

given not as proof, but as evidence corroborating the
results of the empirical method. As such it has, if
not demonstrative, at least some cumulative strength,
^here is a^phyiH^n'^l f.V|fnry nf fViP emotional
aspect of consciousness which holds that the normal,
healthful, functional activity of any organ is accom
panied with a pleasurable concomitant in conscious
ness. With an increased activity of the organ up to
a maximum there is an increase in the pleasure re
sulting therefrom. This point of greatest pleasure is
the point where the destructive or katabolic changes
exceed to a certain degree the restorative or anabolic
processes in the organ involved, and in the nerve cen
tres controlling such organs.

In music a quick tempo well marked tends to in
crease the activity of these centres and so produces a
feeling of life and of exhilaration distinctly pleasur
able. The vital functions under a rhythmic stimulus
are augmented and the feeling tone rises as a conse
quence. If the rhythm is sufficiently impressive, this
reflex response may so overshadow all else that the
character of the response as a whole is determined
more by this than by the other musical elements. In
the same way the rhythm of a slow tempo tends to
retard the physiological processes in the nerve cen
tres and so to produce in consciousness the feeling
tone of a lowered or hindered vitality. Thus we have
the two general classes of emotions, the excitatory
and the serious, the exhilarating and the calm, due,
according to this theory, to the physiological effect of
a rhythmic stimulus upon the nerve centres.

The ultimate physiological explanation of these
changes within the nerve centres is not known. Fur
ther attempts to understand the matter would lead

8o THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

us into the realm of biological and evolutional hy
potheses.

A hypothesis that in some ways better meets the
conditions than this purely physiological theory is
that by a uniform and long-continued connection the
bodily reaction and the emotion are so closely asso
ciated that they have become interchangeable as
cause and effect. That is to say, the physiological
changes produce emotional modifications of conscious
ness, but the emotions also have power to produce
characteristic changes in the bodily organism. Thus
when the listener hears a well-accented rhythm his
body attunes itself, it may be reflexly, to the given
rate of nervous discharge, and the appropriate mood
or feeling state spreads over consciousness; or, on the
other hand, the emotion being present, centrally stim
ulated it may be, the sensitive organism at once
adjusts itself by the proper motor changes to the new
phase of feeling. Sorrow or grief, or the emotions
aroused by the contemplation of the more serious
problems of life, produce a lowered vitality, a retard
ation of the nervous discharges and a palpable inhi
bition in the intellectual processes ; on the other hand,
joy, gladness, humor, or the excitement of good news,
raises the general tone of the system, and quickens
and strengthens the activity of the various centres,
both motor and conscious.

While there would be the greatest difficulty en
countered in an attempt to formulate the rules for
the bodily expression of all emotional nuances, the
general principle involved comports well with the
emotional theory of the psychological significance of
rhythm. Thus the psychological argument, while
inadequate in itself, confirms the historical and we

RHYTHM 8 1

are forced to the conclusion that the natural, instinc
tive effect of rhythm is emotional; and further, that
ev«n to the highest point of its artistic development
it never loses its fundamental psychological charac
ter or is false to its origin.

CHAPTER IV
RHYTHM (Continued}

i . It has been suggested more than once in the last
chapter that there is, besides the emotional charac
teristics of rhythm there considered, another aspect
to the subject, the consideration of which was only
postponed, not disregarded. The time has come now
to turn to this neglected phase of the subject and to
consider rhythm in its more definitely intellectual re
lationships. Primitive music, it was said, is primarily
and predominantly rhythmical, and the mental re
sponse it elicits from the hearer is crudely but in
tensely emotional. This, however, is but the starting-
point; before the end is reached it is quite possible
that new factors then undreamed of may enter, and
that the mental response may be so modified as to
seem almost to lose its kinship with the primitive
form of reaction. Radical changes have in truth
taken place as music has developed. While the emo
tional element is never lost, new factors have been in
troduced, and even the more primitive elements have
been so modified that the account of music as then
known and used is no longer adequate or com
plete.

This development of music has been in the direc
tion of greater refinement in its emotional elements,
and toward the introduction and greater use of in
tellectual constituents. The first line of progress has

RHYTHM 83

been briefly sketched in the last chapter. The other
movement is not less characteristic or significant. It
is seen primarily in the increased importance given to
melody and harmony, a movement yet to be dis
cussed, but also in the development of rhythm so as
to demand no little intellectual activity for its ap
prehension and appreciation.

2. As indicative of an intellectual, rather than an
emotional character, we would call attention first to
the mathematical foundation and exactitude of
rhythm. In musical rhythm we have an element in
this art that must conform to the strictest require
ments of mathematical relations. So unusual is this
in art, so suggestive of the intellectual rather than
the emotional, that on the face of things it would
seem to have some significance certainly for a phi
losophy of music. There is also such a well-defined
tendency in music of recent years to make use of
these mathematical relationships that we cannot dis
miss the subject without a few words to emphasize
this truth. Gurney thus calls attention to the prin
ciple of dual balance in music: "There is, however,
one fundamental characteristic of rhythm, especially
marked in the superior musical development of man,
which may, I think, be accounted for on grounds
which take us back to primeval times; namely, the
characteristic of dual balance. As soon as any dif
ferentiation at all supervenes on a simple series of
equidistant accents, as soon, that is, as such a series is
divided off into parts, felt as having a beginning and
an end, the principle on which these parts are formed
is multiplication by two; . . . To put it in another
way, any complete melodic phrase stops after two, or
four, or six component bars, and so on, but not after

84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

one, or three, or five. A component phrase may con
sist of an uneven number of bars, as three or five ; but
it will be answered by another of three or five. Nor
must this be understood merely of melodies and sub
jects which can be reasonably presented alone ; it ap
plies to clause after clause in the longest and most
elaborate paragraphs, bar answering bar, and pair of
bars answering pair of bars, though linked into a
series from which no independent bits could be de
tached."1

This, however, is only the beginning of the com
plex simplicity of rhythm. It is within the bar itself
that we begin to realize the real mathematical charac
ter of rhythm, and to see the possibilities for rhythmic
variation in the treatment of a theme or subject and
its development. To show this I can do no better
than quote another paragraph from the work just
mentioned. In this paragraph, summed up in a mar
ginal note as the "main facts of musical rhythms,"
he says : " It will readily be understood that the com
plexities of rhythm in Music are not only not incom
patible with the simple regularity of the main rhyth
mic basis, but are really only possible through its
existence. The spaces of time during which any note
in a musical paragraph lasts, and the intervals of time
or rests often intervening between the end of one note
and the beginning of another, are proper fractions,
usually quite simple ratios, of a constant standard;
and this standard is the length of the bar— that is,
the length of time between two main accents, in rela
tion to which every other time-length is estimated,
and without which a variety of time-lengths would
be perfectly vague and unintelligible. But though

1 Power of Sound, pp. 132-133.

RHYTHM 85

the ordinary subdivision of the bar by multiples of
two and three makes the fractions as a rule tolerably
simple, yet as, e. g., one note may last for a whole
bar and another for only the sixty-fourth part of a
bar, we shall not soon exhaust the possible arrange
ments. Thus, not to take an extreme case, £f , 3^, ^f ,
are the ratios which the three notes sounded in this

bar FSzz^= —$ — -f2— ;j bear to the whole length

<j~ ^

of the bar, and as the J4 and Jf could each be divided
up in any number of ways which would retain 32 as
the denominator of the component fractions, while
each unit of the division may be represented either
by a sound or a silence, the range of subdivision is
clearly wide enough for a bar's length to give scope
for an endless number of combinations; and every
bar of a series may differ in its internal time-arrange
ments from every other. Such is the possible variety,
that it scarcely occurs to one to call either the bars
or any of the subordinate groups by the name of feet,
which would seem to imply that the various sorts
could be numbered and catalogued: at the outside,
one would apply such a term to a few very simple
and common examples. Thus complete musical
rhythms — complete series of time-relations — are not
fixed and general things, like recognized poetical
metres, but infinitely various. The great distinction
between one musical rhythm and another has no
reference to these endless combinations, but to rhyth
mical outlines, which again differ from poetical
metres in the other direction, of being far more gen
eral and less various. These are concerned primarily
only with the first division of the length of the bar,

86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

which must either be into two parts or into three, giv
ing respectively two and three main beats for a bar:
this division into double and triple time is generic.
The next stage consists in dividing the halves in the
one case, the thirds in the other, into two parts or
into three parts; and this creates species for each
genus, the original halves still constituting double
time, even where subdivided into thirds, and the ori
ginal thirds still constituting triple time, even when
subdivided into halves."

These words bring before us certain essential facts
concerning the nature of musical rhythm for which
the emotional hypothesis offers no adequate explana
tion. It will be recalled that the two qualities of
rhythm, which in the last chapter we maintained
were of special emotional significance, are the beat or
accent, and the tempo. So far as this reflex influence
of rhythm upon the feeling tone of consciousness is
concerned, it is sufficient if we merely take cogni
zance of the measures marked by the primary accent
into which music is divided, and of the time-rate at
which these succeed one another. But so we do not
comprehend the whole subject of musical rhythm as
it is known and used to-day ; besides the accent and
the tempo there is this exact mathematical analysis
of time relation which to-day is one of the principal
characteristics of rhythm as used by the best com
posers. The emotional theory of rhythm alone does
not take account of this internal complexity of the
measure, nor, if it did, could it offer a satisfactory
explanation for this fundamental fact in the struct
ure of modern rhythm. The emotional explana
tion, therefore, must be either supplemented or

1 Power of Sound, p. 137.

RHYTHM 87

rejected. Especially is it incumbent upon a theory
of music to-day when it is remembered that the
tendency of modern music in its more artistic forms
is away from the excessive use of accent and of ex
hilarating tempo, toward the more discriminating
and intellectual use of this internal complexity of
-jrhythm.

3. The author considers himself most fortunate in
being able to give here some of the results of a new
method of investigating musical phenomena, origi
nated and made use of by Professor H. C. Macdou-
gall, head of the Department of Music at Wellesley
College. His method applied to Rhythm is this: an
examination of hundreds and even thousands of meas
ures in the composition of various composers is made
to determine the actual nature and complexity of the
rhythm. By a comparative study of the earlier and
later composers, data are gained in a perfectly scien
tific way for conclusions as to the actual course of
development in the use of rhythm. The form under
which the results of such study are tabulated is as
follows :

RHYTHM

Number of measures examined .... (normal non-normal )

Divided beats examined (normal non-normal )

Beats duply divided

Beats duply subdivided

Beats duply sub-subdivided

Beats duply sub-sub-subdivided . . .

Beats triply divided

Beats triply subdivided

Beats triply sub-subdivided

Beats triply sub-sub-subdivided . . .
Unusual forms of divided beat ....
Division of units greater than one beat (specify them).

88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

Types of the normal and non-normal measures
may be schematized in the following way:

Normal :

J J |J./J J|J J J ^|J J J"/j| «

Non-normal :

Ji I V 1 I ill1"" I I ! I 0>1 "•"• i ll
j. I j j. j j i jj j j j i jj n J j i

The double or triple division of the beat refers to
the fundamental division of time into multiples of two
or three : the subdivisions to the degree of complex
ity into which one of these primary parts of the meas
ure is divided. For example, when the beat equals a
half note it may be ' ' duply ' ' divided into two quarter
notes J J , or "duply" subdivided J ,H and so
on to various degrees of complexity. Or, starting
with the measure J J J , the process of division
may be likewise carried on through the same degree
as, for example, subdivided J J^ J or sub-
subdivided J j ^^7^ > etc.

The following is a brief summary of some of the
results of the investigation :

Comooser Measures Non-normal Beats Non-normal

Examined. Measures. Examined. Beats.

Haydn 3,050 12.5% 9,280 9. %

Mozart 14,129 14.6% 6,464 10.4%

Beethoven * 1,650 10. % 11,600 8. %

Brahms 450 25. % 3,830 16. %

Tschaikowski . . . . 1,300 23. % 13,230 9-3%

Liszt 590 32. % 6,400 17-5%

Schubert 325 34. % 1,850 46.8%

Strauss 400 44. % 3,900 52.5%

Although these studies of the composers named are
doubtless not extended enough to make the percen-

RHYTHM 89

tages exactly characteristic, they do suggest a de
cided tendency to depart from the simple measure
and decided accent of primitive music. Taking the
figures at their face value, the only conclusion possi
ble is that there has been a well-defined progress
toward an internal complexity of rhythm manifested
both in the measure and in the beat. Such is the
evident testimony of these studies.

4. In seeking for the explanation of this develop
ment of rhythm, some suggestions may be had by
reference to subjects longer studied and better
known. The principles of mental development are
uniform, whether manifested in the expression of
man's scientific interests or in the growth and devel
opment of some particular art. Hence the presump
tion is, a presumption justified by all that is known
or is being discovered concerning the evolution of
mind, that in this development of rhythm toward a
more complex inner structure, the mind has followed
its usual course of progress from its early, crude, emo
tional reactions to a more refined, reflective sym
bolism. That is, the mind here turns from crass
emotionalism to the recognition and employment of
elements that come only by analysis and refined dis
criminations and are, therefore, more truly and more
profoundly intellectual in character. Stimuli, which
before were received en masse and were significant in
proportion to their exciting power, are now broken
up by analysis and their symbolic meaning more and
more regarded. Let us see how this principle of
mental evolution applies in the case before us.

In the lower stages of human progress the primi
tive, undeveloped mind naturally centred its atten
tion upon those stimuli having the strongest instinc-

90 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

tive basis, which, in the case of music, would be the
rhythmic elements, the accent and the tempo. The
appreciation of the more intellectual elements having
no direct or vital bearing upon the immediate wel
fare of the individual comes only with some unusual
genius, or by that long process of mental discipline
known generically as education. Just as among
primitive and uneducated people bright, saturated
colors outweigh color-harmony, and all finer qualita
tive distinctions are lost in the primary, quantitative
considerations, so in music the instinctive elements
of rhythm outweigh the more intellectual factors in
volved. The process of all mental development is
from the natural, instinctive, self -regarding activ
ities toward the acquired, intellectual, and more ab
stract interests of life. This is true in the case of music
as in all other phases of mental experience.

In connection with this thought, the conclusion of
modern biological and psychological investigation,
that in these primitive forms of mental reaction the
emotional element is the dominant one, is pertinent.
This is the widely accepted philosophical doctrine of
the primacy of the will. Before intellectual interests
were sufficiently developed to bear effective incen
tive and guide to action, the appropriate motor re
sponses were guaranteed by the mechanism of reflex
movement and by the impellant force of impulse and
emotion. Mental development is that process of
supplanting these instinctive and impulsive tenden
cies to action by intelligent, rational control.

Consequently in the earliest forms of music, and
even far down in the development of this art, the ac
cent and the tempo remained the two powerful fac
tors in music, and were valued chiefly because of

RHYTHM 91

thsir influence over the emotional consciousness. In
this stage music was more passive than active, more
dramatically impressive than discriminatingly ana
lytic. The mind had not yet acquired either the
desire or the skill to break up this experience, but
accepted it at its more apparent value ; that is, as
an appeal to the emotions. Such is the nature of
the reaction of the nai've and unanalytic mind in all
of its interpretation of stimuli.

Later, however, through the training and develop
ment of centuries of experience accumulated and
transmitted, the mind gains in analytic power and
intellectual interests assume more and more impor
tance. This new spirit of mental inquiry is by no
means confined to the class of so-called ' ' scientific in
terests," but being a new attitude of the mind, ex
tends to all phases of the mind's activities. Thus in
tellectual interests are aroused and become even
dominant in the interpretation of both religious in
terests and artistic phenomena. The history of phi
losophy is a long and accurate verification of this
truth. There comes a time, therefore, when man
will no longer be content to accept rhythm at its face
value, but will discover that it, too, is capable of be
ing analyzed and of being considered as having cer
tain intellectual relationships. This does not mean
that all this is done consciously and "out loud," with
purpose predetermined — this is the stage of philo
sophical reflection — but that the mind will be uncon
sciously actuated by intellectual, as well as by emo
tional interests in reacting to such a stimulus even as
rhythm itself. To advance to the plane where the
mental attitude is thus changed from a reflex emo
tionalism to an analytic intellectualism, to state the

92 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

development in extreme terms, implies a correspond
ing change in the content of the art itself, a content
not before appreciated or even expressed. Mental
development, let us repeat it again, means develop
ment all along the line, in creative power and in ex
pression as well as in receptivity and appreciation.
The conclusion, therefore, is that rhythm is no longer
a purely emotional element, but as used to-day con
tains more intellectual attributes than when it served
merely as an instinctive and reflex excitant for the
emotional consciousness.

That each individual goes through approximately
these same stages of growth and interpretation is a
corollary following from the ontogenetic conception
of evolution.

The method by which the musician utilizes rhythm
as an intellectual element in his art is technical knowl
edge relating to music and need not be entered into
in this connection. It is sufficient to note merely that
by thus making use of rhythm the composer has a
new asset, a new method of expressing delicate rela
tionships, balanced proportions, subtle symmetry,
more refined antithesis, more effective modulations,
a means of giving new forms to phrase and theme, of
introducing greater variety in the development of a
subject, and of emphasizing the unity of the whole.

Briefly stated, our discussion of rhythm has shown
that it has been subject to the normal laws of mental
development, and has passed from the stage charac
terized by crude reflex reactions of a pronounced
emotional character to the recognition and realiza
tion of broader sesthetic principles as the true basis
of its artistic value. The progress has been along the
lines indicated above, (i) toward greater refinement

RHYTHM 93

in the expression of the emotions, and (2) toward a
more intellectual interpretation of the elements of
rhythm. It has been suggested also that music has
now become so truly a mental construct with de
mands for logical development and order and well-
proportioned unity, that it rests no longer upon mere
tonal and rhythmical factors, but upon principles
valid for art in any form.

PROPERTY OF

CHICAGO BOARD OF 'EDUCATION
SA BIN SCHOOL

CHAPTER V

MELODY

I . A psychological analysis of melody is an under
taking of peculiar difficulty; most of the obscurities
and subtleties with which music is beset — and they
are not few nor insignificant — refer to the melodic
aspect of this art. Rhythm, because of its physi
ological and biological basis in the physical organism,
and because it manifests itself in well-defined bodily
reactions, seems to have a definiteness and concrete-
ness not found in melody. Eminently adapted also
to the psycho-physical method of research, it permits
of accurate measurements and of experimental veri
fication. But when we turn to the subject of melody,
no such direct or alluring avenues of approach are to
be found. The physiological and biological relations
of melody are neither so fundamental nor so sugges
tive. Consequently there is but little to be gained by
following the method, which, in the case of rhythm,
yielded such rich returns for the labor expended.

The reason for this striking difference is to be found
in the inherent character of these two elements of
music. Rhythm, as has been shown in the two pre
ceding criapTeT y, liTprimarily physical, having an in
stinctive basis in the structure and normal function
ing of the nervous system; but melody, on the other
hand, is as truly and as purely psychical as any of the
most abstract forms of consciousness. True, it also

MELODY 95

makes use of the physical organism, but only as any
other form of creative thought utilizes the body for
its expression. If rhythm is inherently physical,
melody, on the other hand, is essentially a true form of
thought. So important is this fact for a philosophy
of music that we pause, before beginning our analysis,
to emphasize this truth by calling attention to two
or three general attributes of melody.

2. In the first place music is fleeting, transitory,
ephemeral. Though a composition is just as con
crete, just as unitary as any other work of art, its
unity is a unity in time, not in space. Consequently
its attributes are not spatial, but like all attributes of
consciousness, temporal. It was this fleeting charac
ter of music that moved Browning in his Abt Vogler
to look for a transcendental basis for its perdurance.
Be the value of his solution what it may, it does not
do away with its empirical transitoriness, nor lessen
the inevitable abstractness of a discussion of this
element of music. As a phenomenon in time, music
stands related naturally to literature, the art of
conceptual thought. When judged, or even when
appreciated, melody cannot be apprehended as a
form immediately present to sense, but must be both
judged and enjoyed as a memory. Only constantly
changing sounds are immediately present to the ear ;
melody is a unity never completed except in the past.
In this respect, as has been implied, it shows its es
sential character as a form of thought.

Another point often noted in discussions of the
content of music, but mentioned here to justify fur
ther our conclusions, is the fact that melody is not
imitative. In studying critically a painting or a
statue it is regarded as objective, i. e., representative

96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

of some object or scene of the external world. Such
works of art are meant to represent more or less ac
curately forms either actually existent, as in the case of
a portrait or a statue, or forms that might be real ob
jects in the world of existent things. Though not
actual copies of external forms, they are, and must
be, true to the principles of the external world they
are meant to represent. This is not crass realism in
art ; it only asserts that if the artist does not paint ob
jects as actually seen he must nevertheless still be true
to life in its possibilities, if not in its actuality. Con
sequently the artist is guided in all his creative work
by well-defined, anatomical principles of the external
world. He is surrounded on every hand by models
which, if not copied literally, are the foundation of
his idealizations.

With music, however, the case is different : the com
poser, even in the most liberal interpretation of language,
does not look outside of himself for the models of his
melodies, nor even for the principles according to which
his works of art must conform. The melodies in nature
are, when musically considered, wholly insignificant.
Think for a moment how meagre music would be, how
vapid, if the law of imitation were as binding in music
as in painting and in sculpture. The bird-calls in the
Pastoral Symphony, for example, are introduced
more as a novelty than as essential parts in the the
matic material of that composition. The great
themes of the movement in which they occur, as well
as of all the others, are purely mental products only
incidentally connected with the few notes forming the
call of the birds they are meant to represent. And
even in the most realistic examples of "program
music," but little more can be said in favor of the

MELODY 97

theory of imitation as the source of melody in music.
The use Beethoven makes of nature elements in the
case just mentioned is typical; they are introduced
now and then incidentally, but by no possible inter
pretation of language can they be said to serve as the
basis of music, as objective forms are the basis of
painting and of sculpture.

But if music is not the outgrowth of the imitative
instinct, we are forced to the conclusion that as a fac
tor in music melody is peculiarly and characteristic
ally a product of the mind's own inner activity.
Aristotle contended that music was the most "imi
tative" of the arts, but by "imitation" he meant a
representation, not of something external, but of the
mind's own inner processes. And in this sense of the
term his statement is a very accurate expression of an
important truth. It is probably true that no other
art can express so directly or so accurately the real
dynamics of the emotional life. "Rirh_

wish to emphasizehere is the purely mental or spir-

Lusic, ITo tar as it is melodic, has no prototype in
nature ; it is not an element of the external world, re
fined and idealized or set in new relations, as objective
elements are treated in the imitative arts, but it is ab
initio ad perfectionem the result of the mind's own
creative power. Some one relates that the whole
theme for one of his famous scherzo movements
flashed in Beethoven's mind as he stepped out one
evening under the cloudless and starlit sky. Whether
the incident be true or not, the principle is fundamen
tal in the creation of musical works of art. They are
created spontaneously in a sense in which no other
works of art are spontaneous. That is to say, melody

98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

• * i

is more independent of the external world, more de
pendent upon the activity of the creative imagina
tion, than the elements of any other art. There is
philosophic as well as poetic truth in the well-known
words of Browning, which apply to melody as well as
to the harmony of the musical triad :

" But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them and lo,

they are !
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to

man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth
sound, but a star."

Beethoven wrote concerning his Mass in D: "From
the heart it has come and to the heart it shall pene
trate." These expressions are but various methods of
stating what must be regarded as the fundamental
psychological truth concerning the inherent charac
ter of melody : it is not a copy of anything in the ob
jective world nor an idealization thereof, but an in
dependent expression of inherent qualities of the
mind itself.

The conclusion that music in its melodic elements
is peculiarly psychical necessitates a certain method
of investigation and determines the principles ac
cording to which it must be judged and the grounds
of its philosophical significance ascertained. Since
music is not of the objective world in its origin, but
born of the mind itself, the true principles of its being
and criteria of its value are not to be found in any
principles of the objective world, but in the laws and
principles of the inner world of consciousness. The
thesis thus stated is profound in its bearing upon our
problem; it means (i) that the broader philosophical

100JIOS

Bbuvonag Jo aav oovoub

relationship of music can be appreciated only in the
light of mental laws and principles; and (2) that the
principles of a systematic, intelligent, authoritative,
musical criticism rest upon the truth to be discov
ered by this psychological analysis. However, in our
enthusiasm for the more fundamental subjective
truth, the objective characteristic of melody must
not be overlooked. Though subjective in its origin
in a unique way, melody itself is an objective form
and, as such, exemplifies certain important laws and
principles due to its own inherent, architectonic at
tributes. These, in our analysis, must be given their
proper consideration.

3. The two elements which an analysis of melody
objectively regarded show are (i) the rhythm, and
(2) variations in pitch. Rhythm furnishes, as it were,
a background of uniformity upon which the various
sounds in the melodic sequence stand out in more
effective contrast. It is not altogether fanciful to
say that thus is realized that ancient but not anti
quated aesthetic formula, "unity in variety." The
subject of rhythm in its principal features has al
ready been discussed; we shall not therefore devote
further time to this subject, except to say that it is in
the melodic aspect of music that rhythm finds its
highest opportunity for artistic development.

4. So far as variation in pitch is concerned, melody
depends upon our modern diatonic scale, or, to in
clude all possible modifications, upon the twelve
tones of the chromatic scale. These scales having
been fixed by custom and use, the sequence of tones
in a melody is limited on the one hand by the inter
val of a semitone, and on the other, theoretically, only
by the register of the voice or instrument; but even

loo THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

in the case of an interval greater than an octave, the
tone must be one of the tones of the chromatic scale,
though in a higher or a lower octave. Practically,
therefore, it is correct to say that each melodic step
must be limited to one of these twelve tones. In
fact the variations are usually not so wide, for the
diatonic, not the chromatic scale is the ordinary basis
for simple melody. Stated in its simplest terms,
therefore, melody may be defined objectively as a
series of single tones rising and falling by definite in
tervals upon a rhythmic background marked by a
certain stress or accent laid upon tones at regular
time intervals.

This simple formula, however, by no means ex
presses the whole truth or gives us any insight into
the general psychological character of melody.
Though the successive intervals are limited to the
seven tones of the diatonic scale, to use the simplest
form, it is by no means a matter of chance or indiffer
ence what the order of succession of the various tones
shall be. Certain series of tones charm us and mani
fest all the power and unique beauty of a true work
of art; others, apparently not very different, are in
sipid, meaningless or even positively displeasing. In
the one, shines the indescribable and undefinable fire
of genius; in the other, we feel the labored pains of
mediocrity trying ineffectually to rise. Can the dif
ference from the purely objective point of view be
explained?

Continuing our analysis we are soon met with the
fact that certain intervals seem natural and easy,
while others are difficult to make. This may have its
ground in the relationships which come most ob
viously before us in consonance and dissonance.

MELODY lol

However that may be, the fact remains. For exam
ple, the octave, the third and the fifth are intervals
for the modern ear readily made. But it soon be
comes evident that the secret of melody does not lie
in such relationships as these. The value of two suc
cessive tones as used in a melody cannot be deter
mined beforehand by their relationship in the scale.
The aesthetic value of two successive tones, as of two
successive words in a sentence, is determined and
determined mostly by the part they play in the or
ganic structure considered in its entirety. This is an
aesthetic principle of universal application.

5. Another principle far more important for a cor
rect understanding of melody is the principle of tonal
ity, the relating consciously or unconsciously of every
tone in the melody to the fundamental tone of the
scale in which the melody is written. As was shown
above in the chapter on Musical Form, the funda
mental tone of the scale is psychologically the point
of rest and reference for all the various melodic
changes in that particular key. In transposing a
melody from one key to another, the inner relation of
tone to tone remains unchanged, only the tonic or
starting-point is raised or lowered, as the case may be.
The psychological importance of this key-note is well
emphasized by the fact that most melodies after
gravitating back and forth to various distances from
this point find their conclusions, their centres of grav
ity upon this note at the conclusion of the rhythmic
period. As one writer tersely expresses it, "We may
then understand a melody as ever tending with vari
ous degrees of urgency of strain to its centre of grav
ity, the tonic." Or as Gurney with greater fulness

1 Puffer, Psychology of Beauty, p. 182.

102 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

of words expresses the same idea, "The melody,
then, may begin by pressing its way through a
sweetly yielding resistance to a gradually foreseen
climax; whence again fresh expectation is bred, per
haps for another excursion, as it were, round the
same centre but with a bolder and freer sweep, per
haps for a fresh differentiation whereof in turn the
tendency is surmised and followed, to a point where
again the motive is suspended on another temporary
goal; till after a certain number of such involutions
and evolutions, and of delicately poised leanings and
reluctances and yieldings, the forces so accurately
measured just suffice to bring it home, and the sense
of potential and coming integration which has under
lain all our provisional adjustments of expectation is
triumphantly justified."

This description of melody, though unfortunately
expressed, is, nevertheless, a remarkably accurate
statement of just what occurs, as a melody is carried
on from measure to measure, from phrase to phrase,
to the final cadence. Who has not, when listening to
some melody, run along a few notes ahead of the
music to anticipate the coming changes, and has not
found here and there a shorter by-path home than
the composer has seen fit to follow?

The final word in a musical analysis of a melody
is found in outline in the chapter above on Musical
Form. A melody is a two-part or a three-part musi
cal form composed of phrases and sentences with
their rhythmic outlines and cadences. The musical
analysis of a given melody consists of separating out
these constituent elements in order that their individ
ual character and mutual relationships may be more

1 Power of Sound, p. 165.

MELODY 103

readily and intelligently understood. But even so the
secret of the value or the weakness of a melody has not
been fully discovered. Of the principles of rhythm, of
cadence, of phrase, of sentence, etc., a poor melody
may be as true an exemplar as one of the best.

The truth is that such an analysis of form as this
does not go deep enough to discover the real source
of the artistic value or weakness of a composition.
Form is important in any art, but form is not all;
nor does it strike closest to the root of the prob
lem of a psychology of art. Our definition of mel
ody stating the character of melody in terms of
rhythm and of variation in pitch was defective just
at this point; while it was true enough of melody
considered merely as a sound phenomenon, mel
ody is that and something more. A better defini
tion, therefore, would be, that melody consists of a
series of single musical tones in rhythmic succession ex
pressing a complete musical thought. This means that
melody must be regarded as a form of thought as
well as a sound phenomenon; and any theory that
fails to state the principles and attributes of melody
thus considered will be one-sided and inadequate.
Having failed then on the basis of an objective
analysis alone to discover the secret of the beauty
and artistic value of melody, we turn to the subjec
tive aspect of our subject to see if our quest there
may be more successful. In other words, the discus
sion here turns to an examination of the suggestion
already made, that melody, being peculiarly spiritual
in character, that is, a product of the mind's own
creative activity, must be evaluated according to
psychological principles.

The method of our further inquiry, and to a certain

104 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

extent the answer to the inquiry, are suggested by the
conclusions arrived at thus far. If melody, as has been
said, is, in a unique way, the product of the creative
imagination and not of imitative activity, then the
true criteria of its value and the principles under
lying its true character are mental principles, sub
jective rather than objective laws. Not only so, but
the principles of the mind's activity for any particu
lar type of mental reaction being uniform, the same
standards of value that we apply to test the aesthetic
value of other ideas will apply to music as well. So
far as music is considered as a form of mental experi
ence, therefore, we need not set about to discover
some new norms of melodic value, but can proceed at
once to apply the standards used as criteria of the
value of other art conceptions.

And further, it is also evident that thus considered
we should find the closest analogy between melody
and literature, the most intellectual of the arts. This
we shall assume without further argument to be the
case, and shall justify the assumption only by show
ing that the criteria of literary excellence can be used
also as the criteria of the value of musical thought.
We shall begin with Unity.

6. In literature there is the unity of a single sen
tence, a wider unity in paragraphs, and likewise more
and more comprehensively in topics, in chapters, in
monographs, in treatises. In such forms the unity
is a logical relation, and as it grows more and more
inclusive it becomes commensurately more com
plex, more abstract. In the sentence the unity of
thought involved is a single judgment; in the para
graph it is due to the dominance of a single subordi
nate topic there discussed. In a monograph or in a

MELODY

105

treatise there is room for the wider elaboration of
material. This principle is valid throughout: as the
breadth of the subject increases the unity becomes
more and more abstractly logical and harder to appre
ciate. The unity in a musical composition is closely
analogous to this : there is the unity of a single phrase,
of the period or sentence, of a movement or of a
whole composition of the most elaborate type. This
is, in truth, but the subjective aspect of the struc
tural forms outlined in Chapter II. Attention may
be called to one example to illustrate, and since for
illustration the simplest and best known examples
are the best, we give the well-known Annie Laurie.

q t\--\ — K — , — &-1

«— — — f\- -
— »— j— f — i — i — i —

At the end of the first phrase where the melody
rises from C, the tonic, to D, the mind is left unsatis
fied, expectant. The tonic has not yet been found

Io6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

at the end of the phrase. As the two factors pitch and
rhythm both enter as constitutent elements in mel
ody, it is only when the key-note or tonic comes at the
end of a phrase or period that the mind finds its de
mands for unity fully met. Thus the second phrase
balances the first and the tonic coinciding with the
end of the period, the simplest form of unity is
attained. The sentence is complete. But there
follows another idea, technically another period, re
lated to the first by likeness of rhythm and identity
of key, which the mind readily accepts with the first
as parts of a larger whole, a composition. Hender
son, I believe it was, has said that the sense of incom
pleteness in an unfinished musical phrase is just as
real, just as significant as the incompleteness in an
unfinished sentence. The reason is not difficult to
see ; when we think a musical thought we think it in
terms of rhythm and in terms of the scale in which
the tonic is the ruling tone. To stop before the
rhythmic period is complete or without a cadence,
therefore, is to do violence to the fundamental laws
of musical thought as much as to leave in language
some phrase or clause unfinished.

What is true of simple melodies is no less true of
the architectonic of more complex musical forms;
although, as might be inferred, the unity of the latter
is not so simple nor so readily seen. The unity of
phrase and period in simple melodies is given almost
as a direct impression of sense, but the unity of these
elements in the movement of a symphony, for ex
ample, is so obscured by variations and exceptions
that a more analytic mental attitude is required to
apprehend it ; in such forms the unity becomes as
in a drama or m a novel, a mere logical bond, not visi-

MELODY 107

ble except in the comprehensive envisagement of the
work as a whole. As the scope of the work increases
the unity necessarily becomes less concrete, more de
pendent upon abstract logical relations. Instead of
a mere objective unity sensuously perceived, it is now
a unity of organization. Thus the unity which the
writer produces by the analysis and amplification
and illustration of his principal thought and of sub
ordinate topics, the composer gains by the develop
ment of his theme or subject. To apprehend such
unity in either case is work demanding a thorough
mastery of both the principal and subordinate ele
ments, and of their logical relationship to each other.

But there is another form of unity in literature
that also finds its analogue in music, a unity not
produced by the development of plot or theme, but
by what may be called emotional congruity. While
this emotional unity is a factor in all poetry, in
tragedy and in comedy, it is best exemplified in the
lyric. How utterly incongruous, how impossible to
judge the unity of Milton's Lycidas by the same
standards applied to Burke' s Speech on Conciliation!
There is no logical development in the one case as in
the other. The latter is meant to convince the rea
son, the former to control for a time the mood of the
reader. But how congruous, how consistent, how
perfectly in keeping with this spirit of the poem are
the figures, the allusions, the imagery suggested!

Emotional unity in music is closely akin to what we
have called the emotional unity of the lyric. There
is the same dominance of one feeling state and the
subordination of the content of the composition to
this controlling mood. Not only are all shorter mu
sical compositions like the song, the' nocturne, etc.,

io8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

lyrical in spirit, but even many of the movements in
sonatas and symphonies show plainly the presence of
a ruling mood. Indeed, so far as the various move
ments are designed to express some particular phase
of the emotional life — as they are all intended to do —
they are lyrical in character. The influence of an
Andante or a Largo in inducing a dominant mood is
certainly not less than any lyric that might be named.
In such cases, however, it is obtained, not by specific
imagery pictured through language, but by purely
musical factors. But to whatever causes due, it en
ters vitally into the feeling of unity which every work
of art must in some way produce.

Unity, however, notwithstanding its supreme im
portance, by no means explains the whole aesthetic
effect of a work of art and cannot, therefore, be used
as the sole criterion of the value of any work of art.
There is, or may be, unity in insignificant melodies
as well as in melodies that are immortally great.
There is unity in things low as well as in things high
in the scale of life. Other criteria of value must be
applied therefore, before we get an adequate basis
for judgments as to the true nature and artistic value
of the melodic factor in music.

7. Literary criticism is usually divided into the
two heads, Style and Content. The principal elements
of style are Strength and Gracefulness; of content,
Originality and Significance. These four qualities,
we wish to show, apply as well to music as to litera
ture, and may therefore be used as the criteria of
artistic value of melody as well as of poetry.

Strength in literary expression means that the
style is concise, direct; the thought is set forth in
plain terms without circumlocution or excess of figure.

MELODY 109

In models of strength every word is an arch-stone ; to
take one away not only leaves a gap, but it weakens
the whole superstructure. In such a style there is no
surplus of verbiage, but the thought stands out clear
and distinct, strong in its simplicity and untram-
meled with ornament or needless detail.

The same principles apply in musical composi
tions: the facts just given are principles of style, true
not merely in literature, but for any thought ex
pressed in symbolic form. In music as in literature
there is a thought to be expressed: that the idea in
one case is conceptual, in the other musical, does not
alter this primary fact. Notes, it is needless to say,
can be multiplied as well as words. And ornamenta
tion is common to the two arts. A musical thought,
therefore, can be expressed concisely or otherwise as
well as a conceptual thought. Strength of expression,
therefore, is a virtue of musical expression as well as
of literature.

It may help to justify this conclusion and give a
clearer conception of the nature of strength of style, to
see what are the mental traits from which this qual
ity of style arises. First, there must be clearness of
thought, vividness of imagination. The strong writer
must be fully master of his subject, able to see the
goal from a distance and to know the most direct
route to reach it. Strength of style, therefore, indi
cates a clear, logical, intellectual grasp of the subject
in all its details. These details, however, will be
neglected that the ruling thought may be clearly
seen. Strength, therefore, is the attribute of the in
tellectual writer, whether he be poet or musician.
Another mental requisite of the strong writer is rich
ness of thought, profusion of ideas. Without this he

I lo THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

will tend necessarily to over-elaboration and exces
sive ornamentation. On the other hand the strong
writer, because he has such a profusion of ideas, will
be interested to express the truth he sees rather than
to spend his time polishing his style and ornamenting
his diction. Browning and Tennyson with their
strongly contrasted styles are an interesting illustra
tion of the truth of this. Because of the very richness
of his material the strong writer will not spend his
time upon a worthless theme nor upon the inconse
quential development of a good one.

The style of the Classicists, because of these men
tal attrbutes, is stronger than the style of the Ro
manticists. There is with the former a directness in
the exposition of their themes, a richness of pure
musical thought, a logical arrangement of their sub
ject matter not found in the latter. There is less
ornateness, less feeling, but clearer thought, more
virility. Think, for example, of the simple motive
upon which Beethoven's C Minor Symphony is
founded! How direct, how simple, how powerful.
"Such," he said, "is the knock of fate." And if the
subject is laid down unmistakably, so also is the de
velopment not less logical and clear. It does not re
quire the technical knowledge of a musician to feel
the profusion of his ideas and the power of his
thought. Though I do not remember the numbers of
the program, this impression of force and confidence
and wealth I recall very well, when the Kneisel Quar
tet years ago struck the first phrase of one of Bee
thoven's Quartets. So with Bach : there is this same
thorough mastery of his thought and such a clear ap
preciation of logical development, that every note is
justified by the rules of counterpoint. Brahms also

MELODY 1 1 1

shows that intelligent mastery of his ideas which al
most inevitably results in this direct and forcible
quality of style.

How different when we turn to the compositions
of the Romanticists, of whom Chopin may serve as
an example. In his music we feel not the strong as-
sertiveness of a mind thoroughly master of the situ
ation, but 'more the musings of a strongly emotional
nature. Beethoven wrote because he knew, and
found joy in the expression of ideas so vividly real;
Chopin because he felt, and in his music found ex
pression for the fire which burned deep within. In the
one case the man controlled his feeling, in the other
the feeling controlled the man. Beethoven made his
music obey the law of logical thought ; his strong mind
would tolerate nothing else. Chopin gave himself up
to his musings, and his musical genius enabled him to
crystallize his mood in musical form. It is enough
to appreciate Chopin's music if one is susceptible to
the dramatic elements of the musical art. But much
of the beauty of Beethoven's music lies in its struc
tural elements, in that elusive beauty of form which
demands for its recognition the keenest analysis and
the most attentive study.

8. Gracefulness, the second attribute of style, is
not so easy to define or to explain. Certain asser
tions, however, may be made with confidence, not
withstanding the inherent vagueness of the quality
itself. Strength demands that a thought should be
expressed simply, concisely, logically; gracefulness
demands that it should be expressed in a pleasing
manner. In the first case, the thought is expressed for
its own sake; in the latter, elements of beauty must be
found even in the expression. The graceful writer

112 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

may be or he may not be as logical as the strong
writer, but he must be sensitive to fine shades of feel
ing and appreciation of elements of sense beauty.
His mind is alive to subtle distinctions, delicate
shades of differences, so that anything incongru
ous or unharmonious is avoided instinctively. The
thought of the graceful writer, therefore, is illumined
with flashes of subtle wit, and his works are enriched
with telling metaphor and simile. Suggestions are
numerous, but his good taste leads him to select only
those most proper and containing some element of
beauty.

The same mental attitude applies to the composer
as well as to the writer, and it will just as inevita
bly reflect itself in his style. The fundamental thing
is that there be a mind responsive to such factors.

This virtue of style is, on the whole, not so rare as
strength. The exact, logical mind is harder to find
than the mind responsive to elements of grace and
ease in expression. Strength is characteristic of a
master mind; grace, a condition merely of sensitive
ness. The examples of graceful composers, therefore,
are numerous. Mendelssohn shows grace of a dainty,
sprightly kind; not a little of the charm of Chopin's
music is due to this virtue of expression. Grieg, not
withstanding peculiarities of rhythm, is graceful;
Schubert, in a warmer vein, shows the same quality
of style. But on the whole, Mozart, perhaps, is the
best examplar of this style.

Of the two elements of style, gracefulness is the
easier apprehended and consequently more generally
appreciated. Grace in expression has to do more
with the concrete, with the sensuous elements of
music, than with abstract logical relations. The

MELODY 113

beauty of a graceful phrase may flash upon us, but
the value of logical order, clearness of vision, can be
found only by giving the closest attention, and con
sciously regarding the work as a whole. Thus, grace
ful music is more popular than music exemplifying
strength. Though the thought be not so noble,
though the content be not so profound nor so logi
cally expressed, there is a sweetness, a finish, a sim
plicity in a graceful composition which all — the novice
and the trained musician alike — appreciate and ap
prove. And rightly so, for gracefulness is a truly
aesthetic principle and merits our admiration. But I
doubt if it can justly be given so high a place in the
scale of aesthetic values as should be accorded the
more intellectual element, strength.

When all is said, however, the real secret of a mel
ody or of music in its broader harmonic aspect is not
in its style, but in its content. If there is no really
vital, significant truth to be expressed, even the most
faultless style will hardly redeem the work from
mediocrity. But on the other hand, we are ready to
palliate a poor style, provided the content be of suf
ficient value.

9. The two principal virtues of a work of literary
art considered content-wise, it has been stated, are
Originality and Significance. Hadow, in his Studies
in Modern Music, seeking for the criteria of good
music, names vitality as the important factor. The
composer, he says, must be the parent of his musical
ideas, not their fabricator. The theme may come
to his mind like a meteor flash, or grow more slowly
into shape, but it must be given as it was actually
seen, not as it has been described by another. There
is no question but that he has here hit upon one of the

114 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

most fundamental requirements of a work of art. We
would insist most urgently upon the legitimate birth
of the musical thought in the composer's own imagi
nation. There is no surer sign of mediocrity than to
be servile to the models, even of the masters. The
world little prizes copies of its masterpieces — they
are sure to be inferior — but it is always ready to re
ceive the interpretation of life of an independent
mind. True, the recognition often seems slow in
coming, but it is safe to say that little valuable truth
lies buried in the past. The first thing for the creator
of a true work of art is something worthy to express,
some significant truth of life, some pictorial concep
tion for the artist, some story representing a facette
of life for the author, some theme or melody for the
composer. There must be the splendor of a great
thought else it will not be worth while ; there must be
the reflection of the man's own individuality else the
subject will be trite; there must be the keen, true
insight of the artist's vision else it will pall. When a
man has such an inspiration as this, when his creative
imagination pictures it in the medium of his art and
his hand has expressed it in the symbols of his craft,
lo, a new work of art is born. Does it satisfy the
public taste or even the critical opinions of his time?
It may, but it probably will not. Neither the public
taste nor the critic's judgment is so profound that it
must be taken for granted that they have fathomed
the depths of art and understand all its possibilities.
The true artist, the man of independent thought and
keen vision, may be living before his time. His work
may be prophetic and the world, including critics
and savants, still blind to its truth. So it has always
been, and so it will continue to be.

MELODY 115

10. Significance as an aesthetic virtue is a protest
against trivialities, a demand for things worth while.
This attribute excludes the cheap and commonplace
from art, and stands for dignity and nobility of
thought. Things that are trivial soon pall, and the
commonplace at best can please but for the moment.
Art is serious and must be founded on truth that will
perdure. Therefore only the deep things of life, the
truth that changes not with fads and fancies, or even
with systems of philosophy, the beauty that is beauty
while mind is mind and man is man — only such
themes can be the subject of great masterpieces in
art.

An analysis of this attribute shows that it may be
gained in two distinct ways. There is first what may
be called intellectual significance; the subject may
be treated in a critical, analytic, or constructive way,
so that its logical import is better seen or its implica
tions better substantiated. It is necessary also that
subjects of this class should be intimately connected
with the vital problems of life.

But a subject may be significant also emotionally;
though possessing but little material for reflection, it
has the power to stimulate to active consciousness
some of the finer, but basic emotions of human nature.
Such a work of art as well as that rich in thought must
also be termed significant. To say that music and
the other arts as well gain their significance chiefly
through their emotional characteristics, is but to say
that art is not didactic. Not only are the symbols of
most of the arts too vague to give exactness in ex
pression, a fundamental consideration in matters
pertaining to the intellectual realm, but such an end
is wholly beside the true purpose and function of art.

116 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

There is music, however, significant in both 01
these ways, intellectually and emotionally. The de
velopment of thematic material, the mathematical
relations involved in rhythm and in harmony and
counterpoint, the qualities of style productive of
strength, are all intellectual rather than emotional
in the mental reaction they produce. Bach's Fugues
are the classical example of music of this kind. Not
until their logical character is understood and their
contrapuntal exactitude intelligently perceived can
they be at all adequately appreciated. But not alone
in Bach, but in all the classical composers, these in
tellectual elements are found as distinctive attributes
of their thought and style, giving purity, nobility and
depth to their music.

At the other extreme are the Romanticists and
the modern school of musical "Impressionists," whose
music is impressive through an appeal not to the in
tellect, but through its power to stimulate and to
carry to a climax the human emotions. Since the
emotional consciousness as well as the intellectual is
a constitutent part of the mental life, its normal
activity and its ideals are the basis of one of the
mind's standards of value Music may be significant,
therefore, because of its emotional characteristics and
power. The method by which music thus stimulates
the mind to emotional reactions will be taken up for
discussion in a later chapter.

In connection with this subject of the emotional
significance of music, there is a distinction too impor
tant to be passed by without notice. It, too, is best
seen in literature, but is valid also in music. In lit
erature there is a scale of values of which Farce and
Melodrama mark the lowest register, Comedy the

MELODY 117

middle, and Tragedy the highest. Tragedy marks
the highest point of attainment in dramatic literature,
because it leads us vicariously through the struggles
of a human soul face to face with the eternal prob
lems of fate, or destiny, or character, and arouses in
us emotions recognized to be commensurate in impor
tance with the problems involved.

An analogous distinction obtains also in music;
there is a characteristic feeling-tone in the various
movements, for example, as essentially a part of the
psychology of the movement as is the dominant
emotional element to these various forms of dra
matic literature. On the one hand there is the light
and graceful and sparkling Scherzo, joyful in its mood
and care free in the mental imagery it evokes ; but at
the other extreme the Andante, the Adagio, and the
Largo induce a mood closely akin to the deep emo
tions aroused by tragedy or by the sorrows of real
life. Consequently the slow movements are felt in
tuitively to have more depth, greater significance
than the more graceful, more animated movements
with which they are contrasted. Life when faced
squarely is serious — not therefore sombre — and only
those things which get down to the roots of human
nature and of human conduct are significant in the
deepest and fullest meaning of that term. Thus
there is abundant philosophical justification for the
higher evaluation put upon that class of music to
which Handel's Largo from "Xerxes," Tschaikowski's
Andante for Strings, and Beethoven's Marche Fundbre
of Opus 26 belong.

If what has been said in this chapter be true or even
a fair approximation of the truth, it serves to call at
tention to a fundamental distinction between the in-

Il8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

herein; nature of rhythm and of melody. When we
turn from rhythm to melody we turn from an element
fundamentally organic and instinctive, to an element
that is peculiarly psychical, a result of the free activ
ity of the creative imagination acting spontaneously
in accordance with well-known principles of con
sciousness. Instead of being like rhythm, connected
with the activity of the whole nervous system in its
functional activity, melody is, to say the most, con
nected only with the higher conscious centres. That
is to say it is inherently psychical and its character
and qualities must be stated in terms of the elements
of consciousness. Thus we have in this chapter disr-
covered what melody is essentially, and have stated
what some of its subjective attributes are.

CHAPTER VI

HARMONY

I. For the purposes of the present discussion the
subject to which we now turn offers some interesting
features. In the first place the theory of harmony
from the musician's point of view has been worked
out in great detail and reduced to definite principles
and rules. Discussions of this nature are therefore
abundant. The fact that there can be rules for har
mony suggests also that harmony, like rhythm, is a
matter of exact and readily ascertained relationships.

Again, the subject has been studied thoroughly from
the physical point of view by Helmholtz and others
so that conclusions concerning the physical stimulus
of musical tones have been scientifically ascertained
and established. This does not mean that there are
not many points still unsettled, but the fundamental
facts concerning such subjects as the nature of sound
waves, overtones, of wave combination and interfer
ence, the physical basis of consonance, dissonance
and discord, have been established with all the cer
tainty of scientific conclusions. No element of music
upon the physical side certainly is better under
stood than the subject of harmony.

Historically considered, also, the subject of har
mony is at a distinct advantage as compared with the
two elements already discussed. In the case of both
rhythm and melody historical data had to be supple-

119

120 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

mented by biological and anthropological inferences
in order to fill out the account of their genesis and
early development. So far back do they extend in
the evolution of man that neither recorded facts nor
tradition tells of their origin or of the time when they
did not exist. Even in the case of the Greeks, to
whom we turn instinctively almost for the begin
nings of articulate philosophy and of art worthy the
name, we find but little exact knowledge, and only
the most meagre examples of music. The philoso
phers of Greece all agree in according it a high place
in their civilization, but it is with music as with paint
ing — we must depend more upon description than
upon examples. But in the case of harmony all these
deficiencies are fully met, so that all the value that
comes from a genetic envisagement can be readily
obtained. Harmony is an outgrowth from melody
and in such recent years that we have recorded a very
full, a very accurate account of how it arose, devel
oped step by step, changed gradually the whole char
acter of music and became finally the great oppor
tunity and glory of this art, the one undisputed title
of the modern world to independent art creation.
The opportunities for a genetic examination are thus
too great to be entirely overlooked. We shall, how
ever, only sketch the development in the briefest out
line, limiting ourselves always to those facts which
seem to have the most direct bearing upon the psy
chology of music.

2 . In his chapter on Incipient Harmony, from which
several quotations will be given, Parry says: " It is as
if harmony — the higher intellectual factor in music
—began with the first glimmerings of modern mental
development, and grew more and more elaborate

HARMONY 121

and comprehensive, and more adapted to high degrees
of expression and design, simultaneously with the
growth of men's intellectual powers."1 The intellect
ual awakening of which he speaks is the Renaissance,
for the development of harmony as a vital factor in
music in its essentials is comprehended between the
eleventh and the seventeenth centuries.

Probably, as Parry says, it was due to the different
register of men's voices that the need was first felt
for having melody modified. When singing together
it would obviously be inconvenient, if not at times
impossible, for both bass and tenor voices to sing
always the same note. In such cases the first de
parture would be to sing an octave apart, though such
a distance would often be inconveniently wide. The
problem then would be to find some other interval in
the scale which could be used with a pleasing, har
monious effect. The two intervals after the octave
which best fulfilled these conditions were the fifth and
the fourth. Parry's account of this stage of the de
velopment is so well stated that I quote: "It also
happens that the human mind is so slow to develop
any understanding of the effect of harmony, that men
only learned to endure even infinitesimally dissonant
chords by slow degrees. The combination in which
there is the least element of discordance after the oc

tave is the fifth, SsEEjEE : and after that the

fourth, 3£— And these two were the first

which men learned to endure with equanimity. It
took them centuries to settle down to the comfort-

1 Parry, Evolution of the Art of Music, p. 84.

122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

able acceptance of such familiar combinations as
thirds and sixths, and it took fully a thousand years
after their sense of harmony had begun to dawn before
they could accept the simplest discords without some
preliminary devices to save the ear from being too
roughly assailed by the sudden jar. It is a pregnant
fact that the process has gone on till the present day,
and that the combinations which human ears accept
without preliminary and without protest have been
largely added to in the present century. In later
times the progress has been more and more rapid,
but in early times it was most astonishingly slow.
Men allowed some of our most familiar combinations
as notes of passage — purely subordinate details — and
by their use in that manner they became accustomed
to the sound of them; but they were very long in
coming to the state of musical intelligence which
recognizes even a third as a stable and final combina
tion. The test of complete satisfactoriness for any in
terval is the possibility of leaving off upon it without
giving a sense of artistic incompleteness and a desire
in the mind for something further. In modern times
no chord is complete at the end of a composition
which does not contain a third; but the mediaeval
musicians could not even put up with it in the final
chord till the art had undergone some five centuries
of development. Its relative roughness had much
the same effect that a discord has to modern ears;
and so whereas in modern times a man feels that he
wants something more when he is without it, in medi
aeval times he would have wanted something more
because he had got it."1

The first step toward harmony, then, was taken in

1 Parry, Evolution of the A rt of Music, p. 87.

HARMONY 123

order to meet the exigencies of fundamental vocal
differences among individuals. At first this was in
troduced by having the same melody sung a fourth or
a fifth above or below the " canto fermo " as the basic
melody was called. This was merely doubling the
melody at a harmonious interval, not harmony in the
strict sense of the term.

The next step was taken when instead of singing
the melody at a fixed interval they began to mix
these three standard intervals, the octave, the fourth
and fifth, as for example in the following:1

-TO- —V ^ Z?-

In the next few centuries musicians found out how
to introduce ornamental notes, and so learned to like
the interval of the third. Thus the process up to
this point was essentially a long course in ear train
ing, a process which we are told has continued even
to the present time.

This, however, was not all of it. Another step

1 Parry, Evolution of the Art of Music, p. 89.

124 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

forward was taken when, instead of having the inter
vals determined altogether by the one fundamental
melody, it was discovered that two simple melodies
might be so combined that the result was not only
positively pleasing, but something of an intellectual
feat besides. This was the discovery that formed the
starting-point which led primarily to the rich contra
puntal music of early modern times and later to the
development of harmony itself. In the early years of
its employment it is not strange to find that it ran to
an illegitimate use, the intellectual interests and possi
ble complexities proving a greater attraction than
the simple pleasing beauty of harmonious chords.
Metastasio, an Italian poet contemporary with Bach,
and one of the most intelligent students of music of
his times, says the previous generation was too full
of figures and parts and contrivances to be un
derstood or appreciated by any one except artists.
They had followed out the new departure of com
bining separate melodies so far that its radicalism had
destroyed its artistic value. However, it served a use
ful purpose, if indirectly, by increasing further the
number of combinations musically allowable and
cultivating an appreciation for the contrasted effect
of such combinations.

To trace out in detail the various steps by which
these departures from simple melody developed into
the fugal architectonic of Bach and appreciation of
chords for their own sake, would be to cover several
centuries of diligent application, experimentation, and
gradually growing appreciation of musical devices
hitherto condemned. For centuries this was done in
the interests of counterpoint, not of harmony, for the
polyphonous effect produced by combining and blend-

HARMONY 125

ing two or more melodies. After a sufficient train
ing of this kind the step to harmony was an easy and
a natural one. When these combinations of tones
were sought for their own sake and the old contra
puntal ideal was given up, then modern music was
born and only awaited the coming of the masters of
tone building to rise to its highest glory.

The psychological truth that evolves from this
survey, brief as it is, is (i) that dissonance is to the
natural unsophisticated ear displeasing, and (2) that
custom and training have a very large part in deter
mining what combination of tones will be considered
as musically valid and right. Think, for example, of
the centuries it took for man to learn to endure the
third, and the part it plays in harmony to-day ! But
of this more in another connection.

3. The various uses the composer to-day makes of
harmony can be classified as follows: first, harmony
for its simple tone or sound beauty; second, enrich
ment of melody in various ways; third, sound pat
terns expressed not by single tones in melodic succes
sion, but by a series of chords; fourth, the contrasted
use of the major and the minor modes.1

4. The first use of harmony according to our
classification, the beauty of simple chords considered
as mere sound, is no small element in modern music.
This is the element which together with the struc
tural elements of melody seem so all-important to the
Formalists. That there is some truth in their conten
tion we would not deny. The sensuous element in
art is legitimate and important. Hence, instead of

1 This last applies to melody as well as to harmony ; but as this
seemed the better place to take it up for discussion, it was omitted
in the chapter on melody.

126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

trying to belittle it, it is better to attempt to under
stand it. By striking on the piano a simple triad, as
for example C E G, a new musical sound is produced
different in quality and in character from any single
tone or from any other combination of tones. It is
readily explained from the physical standpoint why
it is different; but just why it should be considered
richer in character, is perhaps not so patent. The
three component tones are such that the air waves
producing them fall into simple commensurate
ratios and the resulting wave has the regularity
necessary for producing the smoothness and uniform
ity of a single tone. The principle can be graphically
illustrated and is readily understood. In the illustra
tion, let A B represent the wave of a given tone, and
A C the wave representing the tone an octave below ;
when they are played together the waves combine
thus losing their identity, the two giving instead a
wave represented by the dotted line AD. In this

case we have a perfectly regular wave, but in more
complex cases, as even in the simple triad mentioned,
the regularity will be apparent only in periods of sev
eral wave lengths of the component parts. But why
the resulting sound should be considered richer in
quality and more pleasing to the ear, does not appear
in such an explanation. The physical explanation
alone, therefore, is inadequate.

The complementary explanation is a psychological

HARMONY 127

one, resting upon the principle that there is an aesthe
tic pleasure to be derived from a harmonious unity of
disparate elements. This principle is as wide as ex
perience itself and can be illustrated readily : if I am in
a power-house and see an engine running smoothly,
silently, I know the parts are all well adjusted to one
another and are all working together well for the
purpose for which they were designed. There is a
pleasure in this apparent unity, even though I am
ignorant of the purpose of it all. But if , on the other
hand, I hear a throbbing or a jarring or the sound of
parts in friction, I am conscious of a vague uneasi
ness at this evidence of mal -adjustment or lack of
proper care. What is true in this particular case is
true of all experience. Discord, consonance, har
mony, are terms which apply to other than to musi
cal phenomena, and in all cases they indicate this
same unity or lack of it. While the feeling element
may be particularly poignant in the case of musical
sounds, it is nevertheless conditioned by a much
wider field of experience. But whatever the explana
tion, the fact remains that certain tones when com
bined produce a richer, more pleasing effect than any
single component tone of the chord, and musicians
seeing this, have found that the principle is capable of
great development and great power. Just as the
painter finds in color as compared with black and
white a richer medium of expression for old ideas and
the possibilities of much new beauty, so the musician
finds in harmony a richer symbolism for old musical
thoughts, a means of increasing the sensuous beauty
of his art and the possibility for the development and
elaboration of ideas entirely new.

5. No small part of the epoch-making changes

128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

wrought in music by the introduction of harmony are
included under the second head of our classification,
viz., enrichment of melody. Especially is this true
in the earlier periods of its use; when the value of
harmony as an element in music was recognized, it
was first employed to enrich the common melodies
of the times, hymns and secular songs as well. So
highly was the innovation esteemed, so completely did
it conquer the field, that to-day pure melodic music
instead of being, as then, the rule, is now the rare ex
ception.

To appreciate how preponderatingly harmonic is
all modern music we need but to enumerate the
various kinds of music and to consider the rela
tive importance of the pure melody and of the har
monic elements. In vocal music, whether in opera or
in song, there is almost without exception a harmonic
accompaniment; music for choral singing is written
in "parts"; orchestral music is so dominantly har
monic that the more common way to emphasize a
theme is to give it added stress rather than to intro
duce it as a solo ; and even the best solo instruments,
such as the violin or the 'cello, are rarely used without
accompaniment. But the fact is so evident that it
needs no further confirmation ; it will be worth while,
however, to inquire a little more particularly into the
artistic justification for the current practice.

In discussing the relation of harmony to melody
Gurney distinguishes four stages: (i) where the mel
ody is able to stand alone without harmonic support ;
(2) where the melody is not only enriched as a whole,
but where the harmony is needed at particular points
to bring out its point and character; (3) where the
melody in certain places needs the harmony to pre-

HARMONY 129

vent it from seeming incoherent or inane; and (4)
where the chords have no definite relation to a distinct
melody, but themselves present a definite sound pat
tern.1 The last division corresponds to division three
of our classification given above, and 2 and 3 are so
closely related that there is hardly sufficient warrant
for separate treatment. We may, therefore, give our
remarks under the two heads : melody able to stand
alone, and ha*rmony used for the enrichment of simple
melody.

As has been said, division (i) includes but a very
small part of modern music. There are some melo
dies, however, generally those of Folk-song, which do
not need the support of a harmonic accompaniment.
These are the simple melodies of popular favor, such
as Annie Laurie, Old Kentucky Home, Kathleen Ma-
vourneen, and their like. The chief virtue of such
music is in the simple melody itself; harmonization
adds but little to their beauty and nothing to their
popular favor. Their charm is in their simplicity,
their palpable unity, their inevitable progressions,
their perfect cadences, and partly doubtless to the
universal and elemental emotions to which they ap
peal. But it is an open question at least just how far
they should be considered true works of art. The
other typical example is found when some melody or
theme of more complex compositions stands unsup
ported for a few measures, but soon graduates into the
richer sound of the harmony from which for the mo
ment it had freed itself. In orchestral music this may
be exemplified by brief passages in which the melody
or theme is taken by some one instrument. But the
age of pure melodic music is past, as evinced by the
1 Power of Sound, p. 250.

130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

fact that such passages are used mostly for the sake
of contrast.

Harmony finds one of its legitimate uses in an en
richment of melody, as a support running along in
the same rhythmic sequence. So intimately related
are they, melody and support, that except for pur
poses of analysis there is hardly ground for distin
guishing between them. They blend in the listener's
ear and are one in the composer's thought. As very
familiar examples of music of this class mention may
be made of compositions essentially melodic in char
acter and yet the melody dependent for its point and
character upon its harmonic support ; such, for exam
ple, are the Intermezzo from the " Cavalleria Rusti-
cana," Schubert's Serenade, Mendelssohn's Spring
Song, and the like. The principality of these com
positions is in the melody, for it is upon this that
the mind fastens as the most distinctive feature.
The ordinary listener will get the melody fixed in
mind long before he has any idea of its harmoniza
tion. Such compositions, because the principality
lies in the melody, are eminently adapted for Obli-
gato with solo instruments. And yet without the
harmonic accompaniment the beauty of the compo
sition is sadly lessened if not lost; the melody, im
portant and beautiful though it be, is not able to
stand alone, but requires the harmonic elements to
reveal its beauty and to enrich it.

6. From music of this melodic character we can
pass by slow gradations to music in which it is diffi
cult to detach the melody from the whole harmonic
ensemble. Here, as in all developing forms, it is im
possible to give an exact classification; the best that
can be done is to call attention to typical examples

HARMONY 131

distinct enough to make the differences obvious.
Thus we have noted music in which the principal
charm is found in the simple melodic form itself ; also
music in which the melody is still dominant, but the
effect is heightened and the beauty of the melody in
creased by its harmonic accompaniment.

In the next class the melodic factor is still present,
but it cannot be so readily detached, as it were. The
total musical effect is now more distinctly harmonic.
Such, for example, is Handel's Largo from " Xerxes."
The melody here does not stand out with quite the
distinctness that it did in the compositions named
above; and yet the melodic element is present and
still so potent that it is not incorrect to regard this
as the inner core of thought.

The last step in this progression leads us to the third
head of our classification— music in which the thought
element is not melodic, but in which sound patterns
are conceived and expressed by a series of chords.
In typical examples of this class of music it may
be impossible to dissociate any simple melody. The
chords must remain as they are or the whole value of
the music is changed or lost. The reason for this is
clear enough : a musical thought may be conceived in
terms" of single tones in rhythmic succession; this is
simple melody, and the units of thoughts are the tones
of the diatonic scale. But a thought may be con
ceived also in terms of the richer units of chords of
varying qualities. In the latter case the music
would plainly be unanalyzable into melody and har
mony. Thus Beethoven conceived in his imagination
the motive upon which the Fifth Symphony is based.

132

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

But he also conceived such harmonic passages as
this from the Seventh Symphony.

Or, as another example, listen to the following chords
at the beginning of the Largo from Dvorak's New
World Symphony.

rfg: § rfg: ^ pi 1 te
«ip -=rz= /

=E5^=

— tk_Z

-I -i

And so we might instance other passages well
known in the musical world as, for example, the
Funeral March in Beethoven's Sonata, Opus 26;
and indeed no small proportion of the best music of
the great composers. In such music the component
parts are not single tones whose primary difference

HARMONY 133

is one of pitch, but chords whose differences are
rather of quality. A definite musical thought may
be thought in terms of pitch and the scale, or it may
be thought in terms of related chords, differing in
quality; that is, in key and mode.

Which is the higher form of genius, the power to
compose a simple melody or a composition of this
deeper harmonic character, it is needless to say.
The minds that can create simple melodies and har
monize them are almost unlimited, but the minds
that can conceive and express such harmonic ideas as
we find, for example, in Beethoven's Sonata, Op. 26,
are but few. There is a complexity, a subtlety, a
richness in music of this character that makes it
the ultimate test of the composer's genius. Just as
the great colorists of all time are but few, so the
masters of the richer vehicle of musical thought are
not abundant.

7. Undoubtedly the most subtle effect of any of the
harmonic factors in music is the psychological effect
of the major and minor modes. For a long time the
striking contrast in the effect of these two modes has
been a standing puzzle for psychologists and physi
cists and musicians philosophically inclined ; and it is
a problem well worthy of investigation, for its solu
tion would bring not only the satisfaction of an an
swer to this particular inquiry, but would throw
much light upon the psychological problems now
most puzzling to students of musical aesthetics.
But before we start on our quest let us state the
problem in its simplest terms.

If I strike the simple triad C E G, and follow it
with the minor chord C Ek G, the simple change in
the chord, changing the E to Ej, produces a profound

134 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

effect in the mental response to the sound stimulus.
The psychological effect of the minor chord is gener
ally, and I believe rightly, characterized as a feeling-
tone of sadness or yearning. The same result is
attained by playing the minor scale in which the
position of the minor seconds is changed from the
third and fourth, and seventh and eighth of the ma
jor scale, to the second and third, and fifth and sixth.
These modifications in the scale and in the chord may
represent for us the whole problem of the major and
the minor modes, for these are the changes at the
basis of the whole subject of these two modes. The
composer, it is true, will find various ways to utilize
the minor mode, but the psychological problem in
all its essentials is found in these two simple changes.

As we pause to reflect upon the simplicity of the
changes introduced, the thing that first impresses itself
upon us is that such an apparently insignificant modi
fication of the physical stimulus should be correlated
with such a profound change in consciousness. To
change the E to Efe makes all the difference between
the strong, confident mood of the major mode and a
mood tinged through and through with sadness and
yearning. Likewise the change in the scale, appar
ently a matter of indifference, would not and could
not foreshadow the profound psychological effect
which it produces. Such, stated in the simplest terms,
are the facts in the case. The philosophical problem
is to explain why such simple changes in the stimulus
should result in the fundamental change produced in
consciousness.

Professor Horatio Parker has suggested to me that
there are probably many analogous cases in nature
where a seemingly insignificant change in the cause

HARMONY 135

results in differences of a monumental character in
the effect. This is doubtless true. As examples of
this in the physical world we may instance the differ
ent members of chemical series : of the oxides of car
bon, for example, CO2 is in itself harmless to animal
life, CO a poison ; the oxides of nitrogen also form a se
ries, each with a powerful and characteristic effect of
its own. Of the various oxides of iron but one is mag
netic. HgCl is insoluble and non-poisonous, HgCl2 is
soluble and poisonous in the extreme. And so we
might continue our list from the physical world, where
the presence of an atom more or less in the mole
cule changes the salient properties of the substance.
But the most illuminating examples can be found
not in the realm of the physical world, but in the
mental. Here again the principle is true and of im
portance. For example, on the stage the step be
tween tragedy and farce is notoriously a narrow one ;
change the accent but to the slightest degree, and
tragedy is turned to melodrama or farce. In hysteria,
the patient may alternate between periods of laugh
ter and of weeping. The good will of a whole audi
ence is gained or lost by a simple story or a manner
ism. We often form our likes and dislikes upon some
insignificant fact, and years are needed to eradicate
the prejudice. But more significant than all of these
is the way in which the emotions are aroused or stim
ulated; a word or an accent or a gesture may be the
cue which unlocks the memory and floods the mind
with emotions of a wholly different tone and color.
Psychology has pointed out instances innumerable
in which we see this principle active. Our associa
tions are so made that with the emotions the law of a
logical relation is neither the sole nor the most im-

136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

portant one : the all-important thing here is to touch
the proper cue, to waken the proper association, and
the emotions come like a flood over consciousness.
The case before us, therefore, is certainly not anoma
lous.

Helmholtz, as might be expected from the charac
ter of his investigations of the physical nature of
sound, attributes the sad effect of minor chords to the
dissonance introduced by the changed note. The
effect of the E2, to retain our former example, is not
sufficient to destroy the effect of the chord, but it so
veils it that it produces a feeling of mystery. In his
own words, "The foreign element thus introduced is
not sufficiently distinct to destroy the harmony, but
it is enough to give a mysterious, obscure effect to the
musical character and meaning of these chords, an
effect for which the hearer is unable to account, be
cause the weak combinational tones on which it de
pends are concealed by other louder tones and are
audible only to a practiced ear."1 Gurney's objec
tion to this explanation seems to me to be well
taken. The effect of these foreign notes, he says, is
to produce a slight element of dissonance. But why
the dissonance, even though it typifies obscurity,
should be interpreted as a feeling of sadness is not at
all evident. If this were true, a dissonance wherever
found should always be so interpreted. Such, how
ever, is not the case.

Dissonance introduced into music in the major
mode does not produce this characteristic mental re
action. This being true, it seems hardly reasonable to
say that the melancholic effect of minor triads is
due solely to the dissonance of the changed tone.

1 Quoted from Gurney, Power of Sound, p. 271.

HARMONY 137

Helmholtz's explanation is valid so far as the physi
cal stimulus is concerned, but it fails as a full explana
tion of the mental effect.

Gurney approaches the problem of the major and
minor modes not through the minor triads, but
through the minor scale. He introduces, therefore,
some elements not recognized in the theory of Helm-
holtz. His own words will best present his thought :
"If we ascend the scale of C and strike E natural, its
nearness to F gives the motion a similar tendency to
rise; hence the E seems able to supply the strength
for the rise, to have got far enough from the D to be
sure of its ground, to have its own balance and the
power of making an independent spring which nat
urally gives an impression of confidence. If, on the
other hand, we strike E flat, the sound keeps close to
the D and seems dependent on it and willing to sink
back to it; if we still advance to the F, we seem to
press our way through the reluctant E flat, not to be
sped onward as by the E natural; and this depend
ence and reluctance to advance give an impression of
diffidence, a character which at any rate seems more
naturally suggestive of pathos than uncertainty and
obscurity were. Similar remarks apply to the
F G A as compared to F G A flat in the second
half of the scale: the A natural of the major scale
is not quitted, it is true, by the step of a semitone, but
it leads on securely and confidently to that step at the
final stage; while the reluctance of the A flat to ad
vance is even greater than that of the E flat, inas
much as the instinct to use the B natural as the
seventh degree in the scale, in view of the approach
ing key-note, is so strong that, if the A flat is used as
the sixth degree, the motion has to make the long and

138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

difficult step of a tone and a half. The same consid
erations, mutatis mutandis, apply to the descending
scale, the pathetic character in the minor descent
always attaching to the note which is only a semitone
from its lower neighbor: not, of course, that the
pathos lies in the mere fact of the close proximity
(for at that rate C B and F E in the descending major
scale would be pathetic), but in the close proximity
occurring in the two cases where there is a choice;
where the confident and independent A or E might
have been used instead of the diffident A flat and E
flat." *

This is the gist of his argument and the real basis
of his explanation. Although he admits that there
are difficulties in so doing, he holds that the minor
scales are the fundamental thing, and the minor tri
ads derive their effect from the implied running of the
minor scale when the chord is sounded. In support
of this he says that with him at least the pathetic
effect is more poignant with the scale than with the
chord, and, second, that the minor triads of D and A
are very commonly used with the harmonies of C
major and yet do not there convey this pathetic im
pression. If the feeling of dissonance were the pri
mary cause, this effect ought to be at hand wherever
the cause is found. Such, however, is not the case.

Whatever we may think of Gurney's own explana
tion, he has demonstrated certainly the inadequacy
of that of Helmholtz. The dissonance of the minor
chord, it is true, is the distinguishing characteristic of
this as compared with the major triad ; but this dis
sonance, as Gurney has shown, may be present with
out the effect on consciousness ordinarily attributed

1 Power of Sound, p. 273.

HARMONY 139

to the minor mode. Manifestly, therefore, there is
an element present which is not provided for in this
purely physical hypothesis.

The same objection will hold against the explana
tion which Gurney offers; to shift the cause of the
emotional effect to the scale does not fully meet the
difficulty. Consequently Gurney 's explanation also
is but a partial one, as he himself indeed regarded it.
What must be done, it seems to me, is to turn from
the nature of the physical stimulus — never, however,
forgetting it — to the psychical side, to look there for
certain principles of mental interpretation. The
phenomenon we are investigating is psychical, and
its ultimate explanation can be found only as we
interpret the physical fact in the light of mental
principles.

Looked at from the psychological point of view,
the problem of the major and the minor modes be
comes largely a question of how, in the course of
musical development, the characteristic emotions
have become associated with the two scales. To us
now the connection seems almost as natural and as
inevitable as pleasure and pain. Whether or not
there is such a nexus can be determined by reference
(i) to musical history, and (2) by a psychological ex
amination of the relation between the stimulus and
the emotion, as shown in other and wider relations.

The modes in ancient Greek music were one of its
most noticeable characteristics, and as modern music
is a lineal descendant from the music of this people,
we look there for light upon the development of the
two modes of modern music. Parry's account is lu
cid and meets our needs.1 The melodic scale of the

1 Cf. Evolution of the Art of Music, Ch. II.

140 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

Greeks, following the usual cadential inflection of the
voice in speech, developed downward, not upward
as is ordinarily thought to-day, and the first interval
to be fixed was the fourth, counted in this direction.

That is, beginning on our A, the fundamental interval

r-s^. & — — q
would be to E FEz*— d with a third note a

L I

semitone above the E corresponding to our F. This
was the tetrachord of Olympus. Then another note
was inserted between the F and A which would give

us the Doric tetrachord FgziE

the nucleus of the Greek system of music. The next
step was to extend this system by adding a similar
combination of notes, with one semitone, the other
whole tones. The Doric mode consisted of two tetra-

chords EFGABCDE, with the semitones coming
between the first and second and between the fifth
and sixth. The Phrygian mode began one tone lower ;
that is, on D, and stood then DEFGABCD with
the semitones between the second and third and the
sixth and seventh. The Lydian began still one tone
lower; that is on C, and stood therefore as our major
mode, with the semitones between the third and
fourth and the seventh and eighth.

That the Greeks attached great importance to the
emotional significance of these modes there can be
no question. Both Plato and Aristotle in well-known
passages leave no doubt upon this score.1 But
whether it was to the difference in the modes as such,
that is, to the position of the semitones in the scale
wholly, or partly to the pitch, it is difficult to say.
We know that they attributed great significance to

1 Plato, Republic, Book III; Aristotle, Politics, Book VIII.

HARMONY 141

pitch, abjuring both the high and the very low; but
doubtless, pitch was only one factor, for the Greeks
were far too sensitive to fine distinctions of sense to
overlook such fundamental differences as these. Be
sides, the difference of pitch between these modes
was too small to account for their clearly distin
guished emotional effect. It is far more reasonable
to suppose that it was the mode, that is the differ
ent positions of the minor seconds, that formed the
ground for their distinction and for the emotional
effect attributed to them.

It is both interesting and instructive to note the
emotional value ascribed to these three Greek modes,
for herein lies a striking contrast with modern
music. The Doric mode, with the minor seconds be
tween the first and second and the fifth and sixth,
was the mode that taught manliness and self-reliance ;
the Phrygian, with the minor seconds between the
second and third and sixth and seventh, the mode of
temperance and reason. Plato thus expresses the
value of these two modes: "I want to have one
(mode) warlike, which will sound the word or note
which a brave man utters in the hour of danger and
stern resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he is
going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some
evil, and at every such crisis meets fortune with calm
ness and endurance ; and another to be used by him
in times of peace and freedom of action, when there
is no pressure of necessity, and he is seeking to per
suade God by prayer, or man by instruction and
advice."1

These two modes were the Doric and the Phry-

1 Quoted from Monroe's Source Book on Greek and Roman Educa
tion, p. 1 60.

142 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

gian. The Lydian mode, which it will be observed
corresponds to our modern major scale, was consid
ered soft, voluptuous, orgiastic.

In the light of such historical data as these it is
evident that the interpretation of the major and mi
nor modes is not fixed physiologically or biologically
in the organism like physical pain and pleasure, but
is a matter of mental interpretation fixed by custom
and habit. Such facts, however, do tend to justify
Gurney's contention that the minor chords are sec
ondary in importance to the scale; the striking emo
tional reaction to the latter antedated the existence
and use of the former by almost two thousand years.

But apparently the explanation of such interpre
tation of musical elements is just as far away as ever.
The Greeks interpreted one mode in one way, we
interpret it in another. The question, Why? however,
remains unanswered. There remains the psychologi
cal data relating to the subject, and to this we turn
for a final word.

Emotions of a full-hearted, joyous character are
physiologically excitatory, raising the general tone of
the system and producing stronger and more health
ful reactions. The truth of this is matter both of
common belief and of scientific knowledge. We have
all been told that cheerfulness influences the diges
tion, that hope is invigorating, and that good news
will reanimate a wearied body. Psychological ex
periments, also, by examining the quickness and
strength of various muscular reactions and by testing
the sensitiveness of different parts of the body, con
firm this impression of popular belief. On the other
hand, emotions of an opposite character, grief, melan
cholia, sadness, etc., reflect themselves no less un-

HARMONY 143

mistakably in bodily reactions. These tend to pro
duce a relaxation of the muscles, a general lowering
of the tonicity of the system, and affect profoundly
the activity of the various glands and organs of the
body.

In brief, modern psychology is continually find
ing some new way to emphasize the fact that the
bodily organism is extremely sensitive to all shades of
emotion and is constantly expressing such aspects
of consciousness through proper bodily movements.
Attention is called to this relation in this connection
to emphasize the fact that points apparently insig
nificant may be fraught with profound import when
psychologically interpreted. Especially is this true
in the psychology of the emotions, which in their
rise and in their development do not, like the cogni
tive faculties, depend upon strictly logical relations.

Thus, what is apparently insignificant, through an
inherited or a habitual connection, may flood the
mind with the deepest and richest emotions. In
itself it is a little thing that at times the voice is
keyed up to a higher pitch, that the words come
quickly and tend to group themselves both in thought
and feeling in climacteric form; in itself it is not of
any great importance that the voice is unsteady,
faltering, subdued. At the most, objectively consid
ered, these are but differences in pitch, ease of utter
ance and quality. In the one case the voice, we say,
is firm and resonant, in the other faltering where it
was firm, subdued where it was resonant and lower
in pitch. It is only as these facts are interpreted
subjectively that their real significance can be appre
ciated. Interpreted in this way, these qualities of
the voice are just the qualities which, through ages

144 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

of development and fixation of meaning, have come
to be the most direct signs of the emotional life.

This firmness of tone is interpreted as evidence
of self-confidence, self-direction, a perfect mastery of
mind and body and of all the passions that human
nature is heir to; in the second case, some emotion
has disturbed this mental equipoise, and the mental
state is revealed in these bodily activities. Thus
qualities of sound, differences in accent, changes in
pitch, in intensity, in quality, in tempo, and even
changes from the customary order in musical pro
gressions and chords, have come to signify or suggest
definite modification in consciousness. Back of these
sensuous differences, therefore, and yet implied in
them, are the mental conditions of which they are but
symbols. Looked at in this way — and how else
should symbols be regarded? — it is not hard to un
derstand how even such apparently trivial changes
in the musical scales, as those which give the distinc
tion between the major and the minor modes, should
have come to signify the most striking differences in
the emotional consciousness.

But the reader is probably objecting to himself
that, notwithstanding this circuitous approach, we
have not yet touched the real crux of the problem.
However, we have not intended to evade the issue,
but only to call to mind those principles wThich will jus
tify us in our more specific treatment. We are ready
now to face the problem fairly, and to see if anything
has been gained. Coming back to our original state
ment of the question we ask again: Why is it that
changing the position of the two semitone intervals,
or striking the minor third in the chord, produces in
consciousness a feeling- tone of sadness or yearning?

HARMONY 145

The ordinary major diatonic scale is, both by cus
tom and by education, the standard scale of modern
music in the western world. That is to say, it serves
objectively as the standard for intervals in melody;
but more important, it is also subjectively the stand
ard of mental reference, the form in which creative
musical thought is involuntarily conceived. This
thought cannot be too greatly emphasized. Just as
we expect a sentence to contain subject, copula, and
predicate, so we normally expect all musical progres
sions to J3e in terms of this scale. Whatever emo
tional significance this scale may possess, arises from
the fact that it is a definite and fixed form of thought,
the musical alphabet, if you please. When music
conforms plainly to this recognized standard, there
is a feeling of satisfaction and confidence, when it
does not, a feeling of interruption of the normal pro
cess and uneasiness. Here as in other fields it is lack
of conformity, contrast to the rule, that most excites
the mind. But in all cases, conformity to a standard is
the secret of the emotional value of the major mode, un
conformity the secret of the minor mode. Thus, in the
minor scale reading upward, the first two steps are
identical with the first two steps of the major scale.
This gives rise to an expectancy that the next step
will also be a full tone, but instead it is only a semi
tone. The mind being disappointed in the antici
pated result, hesitancy and uncertainty now enter
where before there was certainty and the confidence
of custom. The fact that the tone is lower, not
higher than was expected, is also a delicate sugges
tion of what the resulting emotion will be. This
disappointment is too strong to be healed by the
natural order of the remaining notes of the scale.

146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

In the descending minor scale, whether of the har
monic or the melodic form, there is the same inter
rupted sequence, and, more important still, the force
of the tonic is thus destroyed ; for as we descend the
scale and approach the key-note, the mind runs
ahead unconsciously as it were, and looks to the last
few notes of the scale, to the satisfying tonic as a
direct approach home. But here the order is changed,
with the minor interval between the second and third,
so that the force of the tonic when it is found is not
recognized or felt. Thus the effect of the minor
scale is to destroy effectually the normal order of the
major scale, and to introduce suggestions at least, of
sadness, by the tones being lower than in the stand
ard major scale.

In the scale itself it is not merely the key-note, the
tonic that brings satisfaction to consciousness, but
the tonic in its proper, that is to say, its major rela
tionship. Not merely the C, for example, but C
found after the sequence C B A G F E D completes
the scale. This is further evinced by the similarity
in feeling produced by a minor scale, and a major
scale descending, with the final key-note omitted.
Gurney says that when in music we are longing for
unutterable things, in reality we are only longing for
the following notes. And so we are so far as the ob
jective stimulus is concerned. So here in the minor
scale, when we feel the unrest and yearning it pro
duces, we are yearning in reality for the more natural
order of the major mode. So far as the objective stim
ulus is concerned this is true, but at its best it is only
a partial truth. The explanation is not complete, full
rounded in its three dimensions, until we have come
to understand how the differences in the sound stimu-

HARMONY 147

lus have come to stand for vital considerations in the
life history of the individual and of the race, and how
through heredity and association they have become
endowed with their present emotional correlate.
This is just the point at which previous explanations
have been defective. They have considered that the
whole solution is to be found in the objective element
alone.

But not so can any form of conscious phenomena
be adequately understood or explained. We offer the
above, therefore, not to supplant other physical ex
planations, but to supplement them. The major and
the minor modes do differ objectively : this no one can
deny. But these differences, instead of being the ab
solute ground of difference, are merely suggestions for
the mind to apprehend and interpret. And the in
terpretation must come from the inner experience of
the individual, either as it has been transmitted to
him through heredity, or lived consciously and stored
up through memory and association.

In conclusion, a brief summary is in order. Har
mony, as our historical sketch of its development
plainly showed, was not born like Athena, mature
and full panoplied, but was a product of growth, and
came to itself only through centuries of trial and
experiment and of education of the mind to appre
ciate it. Beginning in the old polyphonic music as a
variation of melody, in the course of some centuries
of development it has come to be the distinguishing
characteristic of modern music. To-day there is no
music worthy the name of art that does not draw
largely from this latest factor of music. And yet,
while it has so vastly enriched music by providing a
richer medium of sensuous presentation, by giving

148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

point and character and even new beauty to melody,
by furnishing the composer with a new vehicle of
musical thought and expression, and by making pos
sible the current use of orchestration and of tone-
color, it has not even in all this worked a psychological
revolution in the inherent character of the musical
experience. It has increased the effectiveness of
music and enriched the reaction to which music gives
rise ; but in the essentials music is music, whether in
the simpler melodic or the richer, more complex har
monic form.

CHAPTER VII

MUSICAL EXPRESSION

I. It requires but a moment's reflection to realize
that without a chapter given to the subject of Musi
cal Expression our psychological analysis would be
incomplete. Expression is, as it were, the acme of the
musician's art, and through it alone is revealed the
subtle beauty, the delicate antitheses, the grace and
power of the composer's thought. Rhythm, melody
and harmony are the three fundamental elements of
music, but these without expression lose their charm
and highest artistic worth. Expression gives to a
composition individuality and life, redeems it from
a mechanical sequence of sounds, and makes it reflect
the most delicate nuances of the emotions, or throb
with the deepest passion; expression is the life, the
fire that fills the inert form with the pathos, the
yearning, the sadness, the exultation, the hopes, the
joys, the all but infinite longing of the human soul.
The supreme test of the musician's genius is not in
his technique, wonderful though it be, but in his power
so to interpret a composition and to render it, that all
its wealth of ^thought andfeeling_will be understood
and "appreciaFed by~otHers acquainted with musical
symbolism. Expression is, therefore, the final touch
that reveals the hidden beauty of the composer's
thought, and makes the elements of music reveal this
beauty to the listener.

149

150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

If expression is such an important factor in music,
its analysis ought to give us some psychological truth
of commensurate value. This may be either some
new truth not discovered in our previous analysis,
or some truth discovered before but here further
emphasized. Since expression is the final touch of
genius in the interpretation of music, an analysis of
this subject should throw in the strongest light just
these psychological principles for which our whole
analysis has been made. We shall expect to find,
therefore, in this chapter (i) further suggestions as
to the motives and ends for which music really ex
ists ; and (2) added light as to the essential psycholog
ical character of music.

The first question to arise is, whether musical ex
pression in its essentials is sui generis, or whether the
principles involved are common to the other forms
of art as well. The assumption upon which this book
is written is, that in their psychological character, the
aesthetic principles involved are common to all the
arts. Thus far we have seen no reason to cast doubt
upon this assumption, so we shall regard it as valid
and proceed to apply it to the matter under present
discussion. And further, since genetically the prin
ciples of expression had their origin in articulate
speech, not in music, we shall turn from music to
language to get the fundamental principles of artistic
expression.

2. By expression in the use of language, as for ex
ample in reading, we mean the power of the reader so
to interpret for us the words or symbols of the author's
choosing that we may enter as fully as possible into
both their thought and their feeling content. There
are several remarks to be made upon this definition.

MUSICAL EXPRESSION 151

It implies, it wil' be noticed, that the words of the
author may be meagrely or fully, clearly or obscurely,
rightly or wrongly interpreted. So various are the
meanings of most of our terms, so carelessly do we
frequently use them that language, our most exact
' means of communicating thought, has been called a
jneans of concealing, not of revealing our ideas. Al
lowing for the exaggeration, there is still a modicum
of truth in the witticism; so formal does our use
of language become that it is but seldom we ever
have our attention directed to the exact or to the
full connotation of any of our terms. Expression is
the method by which some part of their original and
legitimate content is emphasized and thus brought
more clearly to mind. Language is symbolic, and in
language, as in algebra, we use these symbols more
mechanically than with a conscious realization of
their import. Sully, in his Human Mind, in the dis
cussion of the relation of Thought and Language,
calls attention to "the tendency of words used re
peatedly to drop their ideational suggestiveness and
to serve in themselves as substitutes for ideas."

In written language, if the thought is not clear, we
can turn back at will and examine again the vague
passages until we have satisfied ourselves that we
have gained the author's thought. With spoken lan
guage, however, the case is different. Here the con
stant and rapid flow of words limits the return to
vague or to vital passages, while the rapid succession
of symbols precludes the possibility of filling out the
picture which the words only schematize. Hence,
under these conditions, other means than the bare
enunciation of sounds are invoked to make the com
munication of the thought more exact, and expres-

152 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

sion becomes a matter of the b ghest importance.
By means of the proper inflection and accentuation,
by changes in the rate of utterance and in force, by
means of tonal differentiation in phrase and clause,
the mind is so directed to the pivotal points of the sen
tences that the thought is made clearer, and the
appropriate emotional response is readily evoked.
Thus we see that from the very nature of language,
because it is an artificial system of symbols by means
of which thoughts are to be communicated, expres
sion assumes a place of the deepest significance. The
same fact, though under different conditions, is true
also of music.

3. Further, our definition serves to call attention
to the twofold purpose of expression. As it was
there worded, the purpose of expression is (i) to com
municate to the hearer as fully and as clearly as pos
sible the intellectual import of the author's words,
the thought content, and (2) to impart the emo
tional state which accompanied, or enriched, or in
spired his words. The truth of this is obvious in act
ing or reading or in oratory or, indeed, in all uses of
spoken language, whether the purpose be to convince
by logical reason, or to persuade or to excite or to
calm the hearer. The relative importance of the two
purposes will vary, however, and between wide ex
tremes, with the character of the discourse.

The distinction just made is one that needs all
emphasis, for it touches the heart of the problem of
expression in art, and sheds a wonderful illumina
tion upon the deeper problem of the true purpose
and function of art. Followed out carefully, I am
convinced that it would help to clear up many of
the obscurities that cluster around the philosophy

MUSICAL EXPRESSION 153

of the several arts, and would resolve many of the
generalities with which discussions of this subject
are often burdened.

The relative value of the emotional and the intel
lectual factors in expression, it has been said, depends
primarily upon the character of the work of art to be
thus interpreted. In the one case, the principal ob
ject will be to make the thought content clear and
vivid, in the other, to make the listener feel the emo
tions that throbbed warm in the consciousness of
him who was thus moved to express his thought in
artistic form. There are some to whom Browning
with his richness of thought, his philosophic attitude
of mind, seems the true poet; others, the majority,
perhaps, prefer Tennyson with his finished phrases;
still others find in the burning thoughts of Shelley or
the intense fervor of Keats the highest type of the
poetic art. But whatever the extreme to which the
poet may go, whether toward intellectualism or toward
emotionalism, the intellectual element is never solely
present, nor ever altogether absent. In literature
there is always thought, always emotion, and to in
terpret and to communicate these two essential ele
ments is the true function of expression.

The same twofold purpose of expression holds true
of expression in music. The character of the thought
to be expressed and the symbols used are different,
but the double function of expression remains never
theless. As has been shown above, the formal, archi
tectonic side of music is an integral part of its reality,
and as such is deserving of intelligent recognition
and appreciation. To disregard all this in the en
thusiasm for a more impressive and emotional ap
prehension of music is not only to neglect an impor-

154 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

tant element, but it is to vitiate the pleasure and satis
faction which the composition was designed to give.

But to be enjoyed these intellectual elements must
be appreciated at their true worth, and to be appre
ciated they must be understood, and to help to a
more intelligent understanding of the architectonic of
a composition is one of the distinct purposes of ex
pression. Thus there is a place for expression in the
rendering of even the most classical forms of music.

Our previous analysis has demonstrated also that
there is in the musical experience a strong emotional
element. To communicate this to the listener in its
more delicate nuances as well as in its deeper and
more intense climaxes, by the modification of the
sound stimulus, is also part of the interpretation of
the composition. To do this is the second purpose for
which expression is demanded. Thus expression in
music is just as vital, just as urgent as in speech;
and furthermore it exists for exactly the same reasons.
Some elucidation of the means of musical expression
will serve to justify this conclusion.

4. The principal elements of expression utilized
to make clear the logical structure of the composi
tion are (i) variations in force, as in the clear enunci
ation of a melody or of some melodic factor or har
monic pattern, and (2) marking off distinctly by the
proper accent the unitary measure and the rhythmic
phrase.

Modification of force or intensity, as will be shown
a little later, is a powerful means of giving emotional
expressiveness to a composition, but it is also a means
hardly less fundamental in making the structural ele
ments of music readily discernible. Our present re
marks are confined to this latter use. Though it may

MUSICAL EXPRESSION 155

be utilized in several ways, the principle involved
is a simple one. Increased force is the natural way
of drawing attention to a particular structural ele
ment by making it sensuously more impressive. It
is a fundamental law of attention that a strong stimu
lus gains the focus of consciousness and thus rises in
clearness and vividness. Thus, when it is necessary
that a structural element should be accentuated more
than others, the simplest method of thus setting it
apart is to lay added stress upon it. For example, in
melodic compositions, where the principality lies in
the melody, it is necessary that the mind should
fasten upon the melody and differentiate between
this and the harmonic accompaniment. So, also,
in thematic music much can be done to help the lis
tener to a more intelligent conception and apprecia
tion by emphasizing the theme and its variations so
that it and they can be more readily distinguished.
In orchestral music, where the conductor has such
varied timbre effects at his command, much can be
done by utilizing these effects; but the need for ac
centuation through added stress is by no means ob
viated even here.

Another opportunity to make the logical relations
of a composition clearer by this same device is found
in thus pointing out harmonic phrases and patterns
as well as melodic elements. In brief, wherever there
is a structural element, phrase, motive, theme or
melody which the mind should grasp clearly in its
inner relationships and in its relation to the whole,
one of the most obvious ways to gain this end is
through a modification of the force with which such
a part is played.

It is needless to add that modifications of force for

156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

the sake of emphasis include the use of piano and
pianissimo as well as forte and fortissimo. Through
contrast, both in speech and in music, the former is
just as impressive as the latter.1

The other way in which expression by modifica
tions of force assists in the intellectual appreciation
of a musical composition is found in connection with
rhythm. A musical composition in its rhythm has a
background of mathematical precision. If this is to
mean anything more than an opportunity for the
reflex response to accented beat of the measure, it
must be made so by so marking out the larger rhyth
mic structure that it will be readily and consciously
perceived. Lussy, in his work on Musical Expression,
classifies the principles of musical expression under
three heads: (i) the metrical accent, which appeals to
the instinct ; (2) the rhythmical accent, appealing to the
intellect ; and (3) the expressive accent, making its ap
peal to the emotions. And he is right so far as he
makes the accent of the measure instinctive, though
it also appeals to the emotions, and in making the
"rhythmical accent " of intellectual significance. The
"metrical accent," also, as he calls it, is not altogether
without intellectual significance, as has been amply

1 The universal tendency of students, both in oral and in musical
expression, is to overlook such distinctions and merge all into an
undifferentiated body of sound. Witness the monotonous drawl or
the sing-song style of the boy or girl learning to read, or the equally
noticeable uniformity of those beginning the study of music. Play
ing without expression is altogether analogous both in cause and
effect to the monotonous reading of the child; there is a failure in
each case to grasp the thought relations, to see the force of any
part, and consequently an utter absence of power to make those
relations evident to others. A thorough understanding and ap
preciation of the composition, therefore, is the first step toward
expression.

MUSICAL EXPRESSION 157

shown above. But the more important accent,
from the intellectual point of view, is the rhythmical,
as he calls it, the accentuation of the phrase and the
larger rhythmic patterns. In the first part of the
chapter upon this subject he thus expresses the pur
pose of rhythmical accentuation : " A performer must
be able to distinguish the rhythmical phrases, so as
to feel the initial and the final notes of each, and
bring them into relief. Bad phrasing is like bad punc
tuation and bad accentuation in reading, and it is as
important in music to phrase and to accentuate ac
cording to the natural tendency of the notes and
the laws of attraction by which they are grouped and
by which they gain their meaning, as it is to give to
each word, sentence, or part of sentence, its due form."
That these relations are purely musical, not con
ceptual as in language, to the uninitiated, makes
them seem more abstract, more intangible. But
they exist, nevertheless, and are part of the very
essence of music. To understand this structural or
ganization of a composition, therefore, must remain
one of the true ends of the musical experience, and
for this reason, one of the purposes of musical expres
sion. Art in its highest works is no formless, im
pressionistic affair, the whole purpose being to
affect the emotions or to deceive the intellect, but it
is true to the principles of the intellectual , as well as
of the emotional life. Thus, it is evident, there is
truth in the words quoted above, and rhythmical
phrasing and rhythmical accentuation, made appar
ent through expression, are to music what punctu
ation and accentuation are to language — a means of
giving a clearer intellectual comprehension of the
logical or thought content of the composition.

158 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

5. But when the term "expression" as applied to
music is used, it is to the emotional rather than to
the intellectual aspect of the subject that popular
thought refers. To play "with expression" is to
render the composition so that the emotional con
sciousness is stimulated in the most effective way.
There 'is a certain justification for thus giving pre
cedence to the emotional element, though no excuse,
certainly, for ignoring the intellectual element. The
real function of art is not to instruct, not to develop
intellectual acumen or breadth of view, but to give
play to the emotions in the plane of the ideal and the
beautiful. Hence even the intellectual elements in
music exist for the sake of the aesthetic emotions they
produce.

It is in the province of these emotional elements
in music also where it is too commonly thought that
principles and laws do not obtain. Art, it is said, is
above all law, and the emotions, like the winds, come
and go, but their causes are never seen. This view,
however, is most certainly erroneous. It is true that
the psychology of the emotions is still but imper
fectly understood, but to contend that the emotional
consciousness is without its own laws and princi
ples is to contradict the postulates upon which all
psychology is based. If this be true, there are
principles of emotional as well as of intellectual
expression.

As the most common and efficient means of thus
increasing the emotional effect of music, we shall call
attention to three devices at the command of the
musician: (i) modifications of force, (2) modifications
of tempo, and (3) peculiarities in the sound stimulus
produced by what is known genetically as "touch."

MUSICAL EXPRESSION 159

The simplicity of these three elements of expression
is perhaps their most noteworthy characteristic.
Although the emotional effects produced are subtle
in the extreme, the means by which such effects are
produced are of surprising simplicity. Herein lies
the mystery of the emotional life.

The three factors given are by no means peculiar
to music, but are strictly analogous to modifications
of the voice in speech, whereby the speaker is enabled
to stir up the emotions of his hearers, now arousing
them, as did Antony, to the heights of passion, now
calming them to the most serious contemplation of
the issues of life and death. In this way he gains a
power over his audience which his logic alone could
never give. It is upon these same sense qualities, too,
that the demagogue relies for his influence with the
masses, and by factors of like nature that the mob
spirit spreads like contagion. Though they are all
when analyzed nothing more than sensuous quali
ties of sound, this does not lessen their effect or de
stroy their power.

One need not listen long to an effective speaker to
find these three points many times illustrated. Now
his words, if the discourse is descriptive, run evenly
with the inflection directed more to a clear expression
of the thought than to move his hearers to strong
emotional reactions ; but when occasion for the latter
comes, all his energy is thrown in the utterance of a
few words, or with masterly skill he so modifies his
voice in speed and strength that his listeners follow
involuntarily all the movements of his emotional con
sciousness. Through it all, the burst of sudden power,
the continued monotone, the lowered voice in phrase
or sentence, the mere intensity of the sound is the

160 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

barometer that registers accurately his own emo
tional states.

Just as readily can the observer note constant vari
ations in the rate of utterance if the speaker be at all
susceptible to the finer possibilities of language. At
one time, stimulated by some strong, exciting emo
tion, the words may fairly pour from his lips, at an
other, when thought is deadened by some depressing
emotion, the machinery of speech works slowly ; and
this by the observer is properly interpreted as sym
bolic of his emotional life.

Corresponding to the last division of the elements of
emotional expression, touch, the speaker has charac
teristic ways of enunciating his words, thus giving
them a direct, impressive, emotional value. Now
his voice may be firm and steady, resonant with
strength, or tremulous, or deliberative. Such quali
tative distinctions also have emotional significance.

If this be true, and the principles of emotional ex
pression in music are found also in articulate speech,
it follows that musical expression is not some mys
terious, inexplicable quality of personality, but
merely a particular application of laws as old and as
universal as language itself. To possess the rare
gift of making use of them is musical genius, but to
understand their application is nothing more than a
little psychological knowledge of one particular as
pect of art.

The application of this truth to music, as has just
been said, is easy, though to put it into practice is
the severest test of the musician's genius and skill.
Take first, modification of force. Plainly, as the con
dition for making proper artistic use of this element
of expression, there must be deep, true feeling on the

MUSICAL EXPRESSION 161

part of him who is interpreting the composition.
But the power to feel deeply — not merely intensely—
is one of the surest attributes of maturity, Nature's
compensation for the joys of childhood forever lost,
the best insurance against ennui, the supreme test of
the artistic temperament. Technically it is called
"musical feeling." In songs, in oratorio, in opera,
where the words are a guide to the sentiment, expres
sion is, or should be, to the thoughtful person compar
atively easy. But in instrumental music, where there
is no such infallible clue to the feeling content, its cor
rect interpretation becomes a matter of far greater
difficulty. Here, only unusual musical genius or the
most finished education-, or both, will enable one to
compass the full emotional possibilities of a master ~
piece. To give expression to this feeling much can
be gained through appropriate modifications in force.
So closely have differences in the quality and inten
sity of the voice become associated with emotional
expression that even such differences in musical
sound are instinctively thus interpreted.

From a natural, instinctive basis for emotional re
actions to intensive differences in sound stimuli, the
musician by a long process of training and educa
tion develops a refined susceptibility for such modi
fications until this becomes one of the most direct,
most powerful excitants of the emotional conscious
ness.

Modifications in its time rate, also, being one of
the attributes of the emotional consciousness which
normally finds expression in bodily reaction, the
various emotions have come to be symbolized in this
physical expression. The stream of consciousness is
one of the most variable streams in the world, and

1 62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

one of its marked characteristics is its ever-changing
rate of flow; now it is hurrying on with all speed to
some emotional climax, now it moves leisurely with
no distinct end in view, and now laboriously, and all
but stops because of the obstacles that impede its
chosen path of progress. All these mental changes
are faithfully reflected in the organism. Now since
this ever-changing rate of movement is one of the
fundamental attributes of consciousness, those fac
tors which signify it — and speech and musical sound
are included under this head — will have a strong
effect upon the mind. Thus the tempo with which a
composition is rendered will exert a strong impres
sive, suggestive emotional influence over conscious
ness. The unchanging rhythm of a popular waltz or
a quickstep of metronomic accuracy is monotonous,
and hence tends to deaden, not to stimulate, that
delicate play of the emotions essential to a genuine
artistic experience. The natural play of the emo
tional consciousness is not so uniform as this. Now
the current is slow, now fast, now leisurely, now aim
less, now shallow, with ripples of laughter and joy,
now deep and quiet. All this can be typified in
musical sound, suggested in the tempo. To use this
factor artistically, so that the emotions will be ap
pealed to naturally and strongly, is a part of good
expression.

By touch the musician understands the style of
striking the keys of a musical instrument so that dif
ferent qualities of sound are produced. Staccato and
Legato are the two principal styles, though so far as
the effect is concerned, Tremolo and all such related
and contrasted effects'should be included. Staccato
passages usually produce the light and airy effect of

MUSICAL EXPRESSION 163

a minuet, for example, while the legato is used to
indicate depth and intensity of feeling.

By means of these comparatively simple modifi
cations of musical sound, the musician is able to
make music an art of wonderful beauty and power,
and to play over the whole gamut of man's emotional
consciousness with the directness and effectiveness
for which music is justly esteemed remarkable. Just
why musical symbolism exerts such power over con
sciousness will be inquired into in the next chapter.

In conclusion, we pause only to reaffirm what was
premised in the beginning of the chapter. Musical
expression rightly understood has a twofold purpose,
viz., to illumine the intellectual element in music by
enabling the listener to see the structural relation
ships more clearly, and to accentuate the emotional
element, especially in its higher and more refined
nuances. Thus the chapter further justifies the
conclusion toward which the whole analysis has been
leading, viz., that music is both intellectual and emo
tional in its content, and that it is true to the princi
ples of art in general.

PART III
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

CHAPTER VIII

THE UNIVERSALITY, THE VERSATILITY AND THE
POWER OF MUSIC

I. Thus far music has been subjected to a psy
chological analysis in order to determine the charac
ter of its various elements and the nature of the psy
chological reaction to which these elements give rise.
All of this is a necessary prolegomenon to the con
clusions to be formulated in the remaining chapters.
But with the chapter on Musical Expression this
analysis is completed, and the trend of the discussion
at this point becomes more strictly philosophical.

At the very beginning of the discussion attention
was called to three general attributes that belong to
music considered as a form of art, viz., its universal
ity, its versatility, and its power. The subject is worth
pursuing a little farther. Besides the interest inher
ent in the question of the causes for these attributes
belonging to music in so marked a degree, the prob
lem thus raised gives an excellent opportunity to
test pragmatically the validity of the analysis we
have just completed. Why, then, is music the most
popular of the arts? Why does it have such versa
tility? And how shall we explain its power?

The principal reason for the universal appeal music
in some form makes to mankind lies in the fact that
rhythm, always an indispensable element in music,

167

1 68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

has an organic or instinctive basis. Among those
who have ears to hear and minds trained to perceive
the true beauty of music as an art, nothing more than
its own inherent worth as a form of art is needed to
give it favor. But music is different from the other
arts in having as its basis a factor which can be
traced far beyond the limits of the proper realm of
art. Man's nervous system is so constituted that it
attunes itself automatically, as it were, to a rhythmic
stimulus and with a pleasurable concomitant strong
enough to insure a decided preference for such form
of stimulation. The mental response to music with
a pronounced rhythm is, therefore, for the most part
merely a passive and reflex response to a stimulus
which, in the course of time, has acquired a direct and
a powerful influence over consciousness. Response
to such music, therefore, is both easy and pleasur
able, qualities which in any connection will win a
large and a demonstrative, if not a very discrimina
ting audience. Thus music even in its more primi
tive, pre-artistic forms is peculiarly fitted to win pop
ular favor. The instinctive elements upon which
other arts are based, with the possible exception of
poetry, which like music is based upon rhythm, are
not so fundamental in the organism, nor so strong in
their appeal to the undeveloped mind.

In connection with this fact it should be remem
bered, as was brought out in the chapter on Rhythm,
that the mental response given to rhythm even in
these more primitive forms is emotional, and that
emotional activity is normally the most attractive,
the most seductive form of all mental activity. Voli
tional and intellectual activity, since they require
attention, are both, as such, fatiguing, and are usually

UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY, POWER 169

engaged in for the sake of some ulterior end; but
emotional activity is an end in itself and so draws
stronger upon primitive instincts than the two other
forms of mental processes. The emotional factors in
music, in the course of man's progress toward his
present intellectual stature, have been discovered,
utilized and appreciated, so that music, in the broader
use of the term, can claim for its adherents now and
in the past thousands who could have no conception
of the nature of music as a true form of art. Thus
there is a palpable ambiguity in the use of the term,
and music as a true form of art probably benefits in
its reputation by the vagueness in which the term
is used.

But even in the narrower connotation of the term,
music has an advantage over the other arts in the
strength of the instincts upon which it rests. The
instinctive reaction to rhythm, we have seen, is not
lost even in the highest forms of music.

However, music is not all instinctive ; in the highest
forms of music in which thought elements and opportu
nities for refined emotional reactions are found, the
charm is not in the rhythm, though conditioned by it,
but in the aesthetic value of form and content intelli
gently apprehended. If music did not thus develop
with the developing mind, it would have been out
grown and cast aside as worthless, except as an effec
tive means of bodily and emotional stimulation. But
music has developed and become a true art, and as
such pleases thousands who have passed far beyond
the love of stirring rhythm for its own sake. Thus,
the instinctive nature of rhythm, the emotional reac
tion to which it gives rise, and the fact that as a
true form of art it retains the force of these primitive

170 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

instincts, all combine to make music one of the most
universal forms of the arts.

One further point must be touched upon, though
it will be discussed more in detail in connection with
the power of music. I refer to the fact that music is
the art of sound, and sound, being the most common
and~efFectIve way of communicating both thought
and feeling, the race has been well trained in suscep
tibility to tonal distinctions.

2. By the versatility of music we mean the unique
power which this art possesses to stimulate in the
human mind, emotions of the most varied character
both in their mental coloring and in the bodily ^e-
actions to which they give rise. As was pointed out
in the first chapter, music can arouse enthusiasm,
stifle bodily fatigue, instill courage and endurance,
animate the mind with gayety, or calm it when ex
cited to religious meditation and worship. Whether
the emotion be of joy or grief, of excitement or re
pose, of comedy or tragedy, music can deepen the
note of sadness or heighten the touch of joy, add
fervor to religious worship, or excite to deeds of reck
lessness. For a discussion of the deeper phases of
music this fact calls for some explanation. A com
parison of music with the other arts in this respect
will serve to suggest the truth we seek.

The emotions that architecture and architectural
elements engender are relatively pure and of a very
decided intellectual character. As the relationships
are all structural and formal, the appeal is primarily
to the intellect and the emotions are thus aroused.
There is little or no appeal to instincts connected
intimately with the direct well-being of the individ
ual or with the more dynamic emotions. Painting

UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY, POWER 171

and sculpture also, while they can picture scenes of
tragic import, or the heroic, or even scenes of hu
morous nature, confine their influence largely to
the more formal aesthetic emotions, which in char
acter are contemplative and therefore largely pas
sive. The purely sensuous factor even of color
does not play such a very important part as an
emotional excitant. There are but few of the hu
man race whom color excites as it does the tradi
tional bull.

Music has all the purely formal beauty of these
arts, stimulating the mind as do they to the intellec
tual aesthetic emotions; but it gives rise besides to
emotions that are powerfully exciting and directly
and dramatically impressive. In its emotional sig
nificance, therefore, music stands in striking con
trast to these arts.

Literature is the one art besides music that has the
power to any large degree to engender these more
dynamic emotions as well as to charm by the more
quiet and contemplative aesthetic sentiments. Be
sides the pure impartial feelings due to the artistic
beauty of a masterpiece of literature, a work of art
in this field may fire the heart with zeal, excite it
to brave deeds or self-denial, awaken the strongest
feeling of sympathy and partisanship, fill the heart
with longing, or bring the reflective attitude of re
ligious worship and prayer. Literature and music
therefore must be classed together in their power to
play widely upon the emotional consciousness, and to
engender other emotions than the purely aesthetic
ones arising from elements of formal beauty there
expressed. They both have the power to control the
emotional consciousness in its broader and more dy-

172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

namic aspects as well as in the restricted realm of
pure art feeling.

But notwithstanding the close similarity in the
emotional results obtained in the two cases, the
means by which this effect is produced stand in strik
ing contrast. Literature, being the art of articulate
speech, is definite and exact in its representation of
scene, or act, or thought. It is the art of conceptual
thought, and is able to portray in the fullest manner
and with all the accuracy of language, the conception
which forms the subject of the production. Its
power over the emotions lies in the facility and ac
curacy with which it represents scenes and actions
and thoughts that simulate actual life. Just as actual
experiences of life are productive of sorrow, or joy, or
yearning, or exultation, etc., so the feigned experi
ence which literature portrays engenders a rich
and varied emotional reaction. By recounting the
glory in the life of the hero, or the ignominy of the
coward, it can inspire man to noble deeds; by pictur
ing for us the tragedies of life, it can oppress our hearts
with sadness; by interesting us in the fortunes of
characters whose lot is cast under sunnier skies than
our own, it can lighten our cares; by the proper in
terpretation of life, it can bring both a philosophic
calm and a divine content ; or it can turn our hearts
to prayer and worship by showing the presence and
love of God in the world. But the time would fail us
to enumerate all the emotions that literature can
stimulate and raise to a motive tension. But in all
these cases the method by which it acts upon the
emotions is the same, viz., by picturing for us in the
definite medium of language some concrete repre
sentation that simulates the conditions of life as they

UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY, POWER 173

actually are or as they might be. Here the emo
tional responses depend directly upon the fulness
and the vividness of the portrayal.

Music, on the other hand, as an emotional excitant
stands in striking contrast to literature; while it is
not less versatile nor less powerful in its emotional
effectiveness, it is justly considered as the most vague
and indefinite of the arts. It cannot express in its
symbolism even the most general outlines of the
scenes and actions and thoughts which literature
pictures with such fulness and clearness. It has not
less power over the emotions, but its method of
stimulating them is radically different from the
method of literature. The secret of the versatile power
of music over the emotions lies in the fact that the sym
bolism of music conforms so closely to the dynamics of
the emotional consciousness. Although this is not a
recent discovery, it has not for all that been -devel
oped or emphasized as its importance deserves.
Aristotle, with his keen insight into the secrets of the
inner life, adumbrated this thought when he con
tended that music of all the arts most closely imi
tated the inner activity of the soul. And Hanslick,
whose whole discussion is against the emotional in
terpretation of music, in answer to the question,
"What element of the emotions does music express?"
replied promptly and correctly, " Nur das dynamische
derselben." The difficulty with him is that he does
not appreciate the significance of his concession. He
passes it by as having but little import, when in
truth this is the very strongest factor emotionally
that could possibly have been named. In granting
that music does give the dynamic of the emotions, he

1 Vom Musikalisch-Schonen, p. 32.

174 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

has granted that there must be some very intimate
relation between music and the emotions. But just
what this relation is, and why it means so much, is
yet to be stated.

The musical elements which in their mere sound
attributes reflect the dynamic qualities of the emo
tions, are the same elements that we have had occa
sion to mention in other connections, viz., modifica
tion of Force and Tempo, Movement, Rhythm, the
effect of the Major and the Minor modes, as well as
the climacteric character of melodic and harmonic
progressions. By means of these the musician is able
to give in the bare sense attributes of music a very
accurate representation of the dynamic qualities of
the various emotions. If the emotion is excitatory,
consciousness moves with increased speed and a
higher tension; this is duplicated in musical symbol
ism by a quick tempo and greater stress in playing.
If the emotion is one of yearning, it is characterized
by a serious mental tone, relative slowness of the
stream of consciousness and by a feeling of obstruc
tion and hindrance ; these can be duplicated in music
by a sedate rhythm, a slow tempo, a legato touch, and
by the use of the minor mode with its altered and
obstructed harmonies. If the feeling tone is cheer
ful, the mental processes are all healthful and strong,
and confidence is a ruling characteristic of the state
of mind: music can express just such qualities in
sound by an allegro movement, and by a firm, con
fident touch in expressing the sound pattern, what
ever it may be. Thus we might continue, and just
as far as we could give the dynamic characteristics
of the emotions, so far could they be duplicated by
means of some of these dynamic qualities of music.

UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY, POWER 175

The secret of the emotional value of literature
lies in its power of accurate representation of those
conditions which in real life would bring such an
emotional reaction. In music the same power is
gained by duplicating in musical sound the dynamic
qualities of the various emotions. The illuminating
word therefore in the one case is representation, in
the other suggestion. In music the dynamic ele
ments of the sound, the tempo, the force, the pro
gressions, the rhythm, suggest the mood in which
such attributes predominate, and from these mere
forms of sensuous stimulus the proper emotion arises
and spreads itself over consciousness. Usually the
suggestion is not confined to any one of these factors,
but several act together and with cumulative effect,
so that there is in the mere sound symbolism a com
pelling power to insure emotions of the proper tone,
though no imagery be present to mold the thought.
Thus, while we must perforce admit that music is too
vague and indefinite in its symbolism to picture
forms or scenes so as to control the emotional re
sponse as literature does, this does not mean that the
emotional interpretation of music is without founda
tion. There is no art that has a stronger influence
over the emotions than music, nor that manifests
this power in more varied ways. And this is due in
the main to the similarity between the dynamic
elements of musical symbolism and the dynamic ele
ments of the emotions which music arouses and
stimulates.

3. Music, in the third place, is also remarkable for
the power it exerts over the human mind. This
power shows itself in two distinct ways: First music
is sensuously more clamant, more impressive, more

176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

insistent than any other art. The medium of the art,
the objective stimulus, sound has for some reason
greater force, engrossing the attention more urgently
and completely than the like stimulus of any other art.

Again, the power of music is revealed in the emo
tions music arouses. No other art, with the possible
exception of literature as exemplified in the novel
and the drama, takes hold of the emotional con
sciousness with such compelling force. In its influ
ence over the emotions music has direct, dramatic
power. As a pure form of art, that is, in its structural,
formal qualities, and in the exemplification of the
higher aesthetic attributes, music does not differ es
sentially from the other arts. Such qualities wher
ever found produce a deep, contemplative, almost
passive reaction. But in its impressive, dramatic
qualities music is unique and demands, therefore,
some explanation for its power.

There are three points to be mentioned as throw
ing light upon the power of music. _First, the bio
logical significance of sound, the medium in which
music is expressed; second, the organic character of
rhythm, always an indispensable element in music;
and third, the dynamic character of the elements of
musical symbolism.

As an art, music gains greatly in impressiveness
and in power by reason of the fact that it has for its
medium of expression that sense stimulus which
both psychologists and biologists are telling us is
most intimately connected with the emotional life.
An Italian psychologist only recently, seeking for an
explanation of the close relation between sound
stimuli and the emotions, has advanced the theory
that the fibres of the auditory and the pneumogas-

UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY, POWER 177

trie nerves are closely interlaced; thus the stimula
tion of the auditory nerve affects also the vital organs
controlled by the latter nerve, and this in turn affects
the emotional consciousness. It is true that this
hypothesis has not been verified, but the fact it was
meant to explain is too obvious to be questioned.

More illuminating is the explanation of biologists.
They, too, impressed with the fact that sound seems
most intimately connected with the emotions, have
not ceased to remind us, from the time of Darwin and
Spencer, that sound is the most natural, the most
common and the most effective way of expressing
and communicating the emotions, not only for man,
but for the lower animals as well. Having become
fixed as the habitual method of emotional expression,
sound is sensuously the most exciting form of sense
stimulus used in art. Spencer's theory of music, it
will be remembered, was that music is but a develop
ment from the emotional outcries of our primitive
ancestors. Here again we leave theorists in peace to
work out and to justify their hypotheses; but the
point we are interested to make is even here further
justified. They give an impartial, unbiased judg
ment and withal a truth that goes far to explain the
attributes of music we are discussing.

Common experience also confirms our point; the
moans of a sufferer excite our sympathy and pity as
a sight of his emaciated form will not ; animals, habit
ually silent, in extremities of suffering or terror give
utterance to cries of the most expressive anguish;
the importance of inflection and accent by the actor
or the reader in producing the emotional response
from the listener also calls attention to the expres
siveness of sound as mere sound. Thus, through the

1 78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

long development of the ages sound qualities have be
come indissolubly associated with emotional states and
have come to be the most exciting, the most power
ful sense stimulus in producing emotional reactions.

This natural impressiveness of sound, instilled
and fixed in us by ages of development in which
issues of life and death were involved, is carried
over from the realm of man's normal experience
with the world to the realm of music, and there func
tions with its pristine significance unimpaired and
not greatly altered. Here it manifests itself by giv
ing to the mere sound qualities of music harmonic
factors such as harmony, discord, dissonance, and the
effect of the major and minor modes, timbre, and
modifications of tempo and force an influence over the
emotions that is almost hypnotic in its directness and
power. The secret of this influence, then, to state it
in other terms, lies in the inherited tendency to rely
chiefly upon sound attributes in interpreting the
emotional content of the mental experience of others.
Through heredity this tendency has become fixed,
until it is both natural and inevitable to regard modi
fication of sound as the most direct and unmistakable
evidence of the feeling tone of others.

We have already had occasion to call attention to
the organic character of rhythm and to state in what
sense this expression is to be understood. So far as
can now be seen, it is due to the metabolism, purely
physiological changes, of the nerve cells. The accu
mulation of energy there is approximately uniform,
while the nervous discharge is essentially explosive,
a certain potential being required to overcome the
internal resistance of the nerve fibres. Under such
conditions the discharge must necessarily be periodic

UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY, POWER 179

or rhythmical. If this be the true explanation of
rhythm, it follows that rhythm considered from the
mental side is an instinctive mode of reaction. This
means much when translated into terms of impellant
force. In proportion as an act is instinctive, that is,
structurally and functionally provided for in the econ
omy of the organism, the driving force, the vis a tergo,
to be effective must be the stronger. The leading
force of consciousness is in such cases inoperative,
the power all-impellant. By means of discipline and
education and by taking advantage of instincts of
later development, man can place rational motives,
high moral ideals, over primitive instincts, but with
out such training and years of external inhibition,
instincts by their native strength would determine
the actions of man as well as of the lower animals.
The impulse to play in the child is naturally stronger
than the impulse to work; the desire for wealth, the
acquisitive instinct, even in spite of years of training,
is sometimes stronger than the cultivated habit of
social regard. Education is easy both for teacher
and pupil just so far as educational practice can base
itself upon these motor proclivities, and a ceaseless
struggle so far as some must be opposed. When we
say therefore that rhythm is organic, wTe say it is in
stinctive and ascribe to it all the clamant strength
that belongs to these inherited predispositions to
certain forms of motor reactions. It may be blind and
unreflective and without any consciousness of its
true function, but it is clamant, intense and strong.
Our third point, the dynamic character of the ele
ments of musical symbolism, has been touched upon
in explaining the versatility of music; but it is not less
effective as one of the sources of the power which is

i8o THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

also characteristic of music. As the principle has
been stated, it affirms that music gains greatly in
power by virtue of the fact that the elements of its
symbolism are inherently dynamic. Thus there are,
even in the sense stimulus itself, the strongest sug
gestions of force and movement, and these through
heredity have became the natural excitants of the
emotions. If we pause for a moment to enumerate
what have been called the sensuous or impressive
elements of music, it will be readily seen how strong
in them all is this dynamic factor. Rhythm is sur
charged with movement and energy and is, indeed,
meaningless without them. Both the movement of
the rhythmic sequence, and the accent by which
rhythm is marked, are due in the last analysis to the
expenditure of energy. And this is evident, not
merely in the broader psychological interpretation,
but even in the sense stimulus itself. Modifications
of tempo and force are inseparable from movement
and change, both dynamic factors.

And even timbre and harmony are so intimately
connected with the progression of melody that they
too give the impression of being charged with the
same dynamic power. Music, therefore, we see, Js
inseparable from movement. Gurney calls melody
"Ideal Motion." The deep psychological signifi
cance of this fact will be better appreciated if we
compare music in this respect with the other arts.

The purpose of the painter, for example, is to
choose some critical moment in the experience of his
characters, or some scene, and to crystallize this
moment for us in such a way that the sense qualities
will be pleasing and the thought content expressive
of some phase of life. But he is limited by the con-

UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY, POWER 181

ditions of his art to the representation of a single mo
ment. In all the forms of his art, in landscape, in
portraiture, in genre painting, this condition is abso
lute. There is, therefore, a total absence of any real
dynamic element in the sense stimulus. In this
sense of the term all painting is "still-life." It is
true that painting has its figures representing mo
tion and energy and effort; but even here there is
wanting that real movement and action in the sense
stimulus which is so characteristic of music. In
Millet's "Sower," for example, the figure is replete
with energy and action, but the mere sense effect in
strength is distinctly below the effect of a strong
rhythm, or the effect of modified force or a changed
tempo. When the painter has done all in his power
the feeling of movement and energy is still biitjn-
ferential, not a direct datum of sense. In this art
there are only quiescent figures, unchanging color
forms.

The influence of these facts upon the mental re
action is important; since there is no similarity
dynamically between the sense factors and the nat
ural life of the emotions, the feeling is aroused not
through the suggestiveness of the sense factors, but
chiefly through the appreciation of the thought con
tent. And while there may be a gain in purity and
in accuracy, there is a distinct loss in force. A paint
ing because of this static quality of the sense stimulus
tends to keep the emotion aroused upon one un
changing plane, rather than to develop it up to its
climax according to the natural developing phases
of a feeling state. Once I comprehend the artist's
thought and appreciate his technique, there is noth
ing in the stimulus itself to carry the emotions on to a

1 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

richer, fuller life. But the emotions are naturally
climacteric, dramatic, and require definite and de
veloping antecedents to arouse them to their greatest
depth and to their greatest strength. Compare, if
you wish an example of this, the emotional effect of
reading an account of a death as given in our news
papers and the tragic death of Hamlet. In the first
case we know nothing of the antecedents of the death,
which may be fully as tragic as that of Hamlet, while
in the latter we are led up to the death which comes as
a climax to a long, emotional and dramatic sequence
of events. The one is a mere expression of a fact, a
sad fact doubtless; but the other, in giving us a
connected account of the circumstances, prepares us
for the full emotional reaction.

In viewing a painting with its static and momen
tary conception, the emotions which have been
aroused by the representation tend at once, by a
well-known law of mental fatigue, to fade away.
The stimulus does not develop. It is true that
through association the representation may be so
enriched that the emotions will develop and be car
ried on to a full and a rich reaction. The associated
factors and the strength of the subjective element will
provide for this. The point we wish to make is not
that such works of art do not stimulate the emotions,
but that they do not do so so effectively as music.
In the case of painting the emotions are aroused
principally through the meaning attached to the rep
resentation, that is, through the thought content, but
in the case of music by this and also by the sugges
tion in the dynamic factors of the sense stimulus itself.

The exceptional power which certain forms of
literature exert upon the human mind, e. g., the novel

UNIVERSALITY, VERSATILITY, POWER 183

and the drama, well confirm our point as a positive
example of the principles which give music its power.
As Lessing long ago explained, literature is peculiarly
adapted to express ideas in which there is develop
ment from moment to moment. It conforms to the
natural process of thought and so is adapted to ex
press thought relations. Literature, therefore, is to
be classed with music as an art adapted to carry the
mind on to emotional climaxes of great intensity
and force. By means of conceptual representations
presented in logical or panoramic succession, that is,
by the concrete imagery of language picture, or by
certain thoughts, the emotions are awakened and
stimulated and carried on through a natural order
of development to maximum degrees of intensity.
Literature, like music, takes a deep hold upon the
mind because it conforms closely to the natural func
tioning of the emotional consciousness. Unlike paint
ing, it does not leave to the individual the task of
mentally completing the drama suggested, but carries
it out definitely so that if the listener but follows the
imagery presented he can hardly help but become en
grossed in the story and follow emotionally all the
changes and vicissitudes of its characters.

But even as compared with literature, music in one
respect stands superior; the dynamic similarity of
literature to the emotional life is confined chiefly
to the thought content, in music it extends even to
the elements of its sensuous expression. And we are
still functionally so truly bodily that these sensuous
elements have an amazing hold upon us emotionally.
It is man's life-long task so to become master of him
self that he can subordinate in certain matters of
moral import the instinctive to the rational, the sen-

1 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

suous to the intellectual. Music in its symbolism,
both in the thought content expressed and in its sen
suous factors employed, conforms closely to the nat
ural laws of emotional reactions. This symbolism
therefore makes a direct and a tremendous appeal to
the emotional consciousness. Thus it is that music
ranks in power with the most powerful forms of the
literary art, and in some respects surpasses it in the
directness and immediacy of its appeal.

CHAPTER IX

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC

i . The central problem in the philosophy of an art
is the problem of its content. What is the essential
nature of its subject matter, its inner core of thought,
the irreducible substratum that gives it character
and determines its proper function in the economy
of life? This is the inquiry that goes nearest to the
heart of the matter, that lays bare as it were the very
principles of its being. In comparison with this sub
ject the problem of form is relatively simple and easy.
The truth there sought can be empirically investi
gated and scientifically determined, but the data thus
gained are only the starting-point for the more pro
found inquiry concerning the content. However,
though the problem is difficult, its solution will yield
ample returns for all the labor expended; for when
once determined, the content becomes a very touch
stone through which that art may be related to other
phases of human experience.

It is upon this problem of the content of music, it
will be remembered, that musical theorists have long
been divided into two opposing schools — the " For
malists " and the " Expressionists." The former con
tend that the content of music is nothing more than
the auditory nerve receives and transmits to the brain,
that is, sound patterns, melodic, harmonic and rhyth
mic, and withal as a stimulus sensuously pleasing, and

185

1 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

in their mere sonorous reality beautiful. This school,
therefore, emphasizes the architectonic, the formal
attributes of music, finding the essence of the beauty
of music, the content, in the mere formal play of tones
and in the structural unity expressed in musical sym
bols. The latter, on the other hand, contend for the
emotional significance of music, finding its true func
tion not merely or principally in the play of tones
standing in logical relations to one another, but in the
stimulation of the emotions. The one school con
siders music merely an "arabesque of sound," the
other a "language of the emotions."

This wide divergence of opinion is due largely to
the two points of view from which musical theorists
have considered the question. The theories, there
fore, are not necessarily mutually exclusive nor irrec
oncilable. The Formalists, considering music from
the objective standpoint, describe it in terms of its
objective reality, that is, music consists of sound pat
terns of definite logical form, differing in their rhyth
mic, melodic and harmonic attributes. Being an
objective phenomenon, its ultimate reality must be
ascertained through the sense. That this is a valid
and a legitimate point of view cannot be denied. The
inadequacy of this conception of music is not due to
any falsity in the general tenets held, but rather to
the fact that the whole truth can no more be gained
from one point of view than a solid can be seen in its
entirety from any one side. So long as the stand
point of the Formalists is rigidly maintained their
argument is well-nigh if not quite irrefragable.
Music is certainly all that they claim it to be, though
not necessarily merely that: it is a well-ordered,
logical sequence of pleasing musical sounds express-

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 187

ing a musical thought. Certainly it is. But it may
be all this and much more besides.

The indictment to be brought against this hypoth
esis therefore is not so much inaccuracy as inadequacy.
To limit the term content merely to that which is seen
from the objective point of view, is to use the term in
the most superficial and unphilosophic manner. Ob
serve the illuminating analogy that can be drawn in
this respect between music and the other arts ! The
content of sculpture is not the bare form of stone to
be apprehended by the eye alone. The content of
painting is not the mere form on the canvas, the color,
the light and shade, the drawing, the composition and
perspective, qualities visible to the eye. These are
all essential qualities of painting, it is true; but
granted that they are worth all that painters claim,
even so we do not fathom the depth of art or find the
true secret of artistic genius. Who beholding the
Sistine Madonna would be content to note merely
the form, the lines, the shading, the color, and not
feel the influence of the pure, thoughtful soul that
looks out of the wondering eyes of the Child's
mother? And if there are paintings whose value
lies wholly in the formal attributes, as there doubt
less are, it is due rather to the limitations of genius
than to the adequacy of the theory itself. They who
painted thus lacked the genius of Raphael and An-
gelo and those who reveal in their works the deeper
passions and truths of life. This latter is the sublime
in art, the deeper content that not only satisfies the
soul of the beholder, but even the quest of the phi
losopher looking for the deep foundations of life and
of art. Who, I say, who has once felt the force and
depth of this element in art, can escape the feeling of

1 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

trivialities when he is recalled to the mere sense quali
ties of art ? And yet such an one is he who sees in
music nothing more than a discourse of sweet sounds.
The objective elements of every art are genuine and
important, and with their principles and sensuous
beauty worthy of intelligent appreciation. But after
all they are but the means of expressing a thought
that can hardly be found in such an analysis as this.
Music, as has been shown throughout our whole dis
cussion, has its thought and its emotional aspects as
well as its striking sense attributes. When we refer
to the content of music, therefore, we must compre
hend under the term something more than is found
in the conception of the Formalist.

2. From the subjective point of view, the stand
point of the Expressionists, the time-honored ques
tion is, "Does music express the emotions?" This
question they answer unhesitatingly and emphatic
ally in the affirmative. Music is not only able to ex
press the emotions, but so direct is its power over the
emotional consciousness that it is, as it were, a very
language of the emotions. But the question itself is
most unfortunately stated because of the manifest
ambiguity in the pivotal word "express." And be
sides it no longer serves to state accurately the real
problem in musical aesthetics. Few indeed are they
who still hold to a strict interpretation of the Formal-
istic hypothesis and deny to music a direct and a
powerful influence over the emotional consciousness.
In this respect the Expressionists have won a deci
sive victory. The real, vital problem in musical
aesthetics to-day is the problem of the relative value
of the emotional and the intellectual elements in
music, it being no longer denied that music does

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 189

contain them both. The result of our psychological
analysis justifies this new point of attack. We leave
the old question, therefore, and turn to this more
modern and more fruitful inquiry.

3. In an inquiry as to the emotional significance of
music, it will be well to keep in mind a distinction that
has been suggested between the dramatic or impres
sive attributes of music and its more comprehensive,
more abstract, aesthetic qualities. No small part of
the confusion in which the subject of musical aesthe
tics now stands is due to a failure to distinguish
properly between the impressive qualities of musical
sound considered merely as sound and the more
truly aesthetic qualities of music which make it a true
form of art. As one writer expresses the distinction :
"Music presents two sets of psychological phe
nomena. It can suggest and stimulate feelings akin
to those produced by the vicissitudes of real life ; and
it can interest, fascinate, delight or weary and dis
please by what we can only call the purely musical
qualities of its sound patterns. Music thus awakens ,'
two sets of emotions — a dramatic one referred to its
expressiveness, and an esthetic one correlated with
the presence or absence of beauty." The distinc
tion is an excellent one and our discussion of the
emotional significance of music will be based upon it.
Music, by the presence of certain factors, is peculiarly
adapted to arouse and to stimulate the emotions in
a direct and dramatic way; but it is also by the
presence of universal aesthetic qualities capable of
arousing the less intense aesthetic emotions or senti
ments.

As an art, music is blessed with unique power and

' Vcrnon Lee, Riddle of Music, Quarterly Review, Jan., 1906.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

effectiveness by having as its medium of expression
that sense stimulus which both for biological and
psychological reasons is most directly and intensely
impressive. Consequently there is to music, by vir
tue of the character of its medium, an impressiveness
strong enough at times to overbalance completely
the less obtrusive, less clamant aesthetic qualities
which belong to music in its higher artistic relations.
These impressive or dramatic qualities of musical
sound are all so perfectly adapted to awaken and to
stimulate the emotions that it seems to be playing
loose with the facts in the case to explain them in any
other way.

But besides the impressiveness of musical sound
due to evolutionary factors, music exemplifies as a
true form of art certain aesthetic attributes common
to all the arts and universally regarded as principles
of beauty in its purer forms. These principles, we
say, are common to all the arts; the musician, like the
poet or the painter, has an idea to express in sensu
ous form, an idea characterized by certain assignable
aesthetic principles due to the character of the idea
and not to the nature of the medium in which it is
expressed. That the idea is musical, not concep
tual or pictorial, in no way alters this fundamental
fact. Because such an idea is musical and must be
expressed in musical sounds, it has its own charac
teristic sense qualities ; these are the obvious factors
that first appeal to the natural ear, the differentia
determining its specie.

But if the composition is worthy of the name of
art there must be besides these pleasing qualities of
sound, or behind them, an idea exemplifying, not
withstanding its musical character, the same aesthetic

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 191

ideals and principles that determine the value of any
other work of art. Indeed, music is an art only by
virtue of this fact. Art is something deeper, some
thing nobler and more significant than mere sense
stimulus, enriched and intensified though it be by all
the qualities that can be predicated of such forms of
objective reality. Music is music, if you please, be
cause of its sound attributes, but it is an art only
because it is a vehicle for the expression of thought.
These thought attributes are the principles that de
termine its genus, that is, make it a true form of art.

But in whatever terms it is stated, the distinction
is valid and important and much will be gained
toward a truer conception of music if it is kept con
stantly before us. In discussing the emotional sig
nificance of music, therefore, we shall observe this
twofold character of music and note first some of the
impressive qualities of musical sound, and then some
of the most typical aesthetic principles.

4. It is no difficult task to analyze a musical com
position so as to determine the various sources of its
psychological effect. Indeed so few and so simple
are these elements found to be that they have been
declared for this very reason inadequate for the de
mands made upon them by the Expressionist's hy
pothesis. We need not hesitate, therefore, to enumer
ate them: the real problem is to understand how
factors apparently so simple can still be so tremen
dously effective. Gurney, in his Power of Sound,
enumerates the following means at the disposal of the
musician, whereby he is able to awaken emotional
responses in the minds of his hearers: Timbre, the use
of the Major and the Minor Modes, Harmonic Feat
ures such as Discords and Resolutions, Pace, strongly

192 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

marked Rhythmic Outlines and Undecided Rhythm.1
To these must be added, certainly, modifications of
Force. These dramatic or impressive factors can
all be conveniently subsumed under the following
heads: Rhythm, Harmonic Factors including the
major and the minor modes, Timbre, and modifica
tions in Force and in Tempo.

It is little wonder that to those of a formalistic dis
position of mind these few elements, one and all,
should seem too vague, too indefinite to meet the re
quirements of a "language of the emotions." More
over, the emotions are notoriously averse to any
orderly manipulation such as the term "language"
implies. But while this is all true, we may still in
quire as to the presence and value of the emotional
element in music.

Rhythm has already been declared to be instinc
tive, that is, directly, and without the mediation of
consciousness, impressive and emotional. The re
action it calls forth is quasi-reftex, but with the most
profound and dramatic influence over the emotional
consciousness. This point needs no further elucida
tion.

Harmonic elements also have a direct, sensuous,
dramatic power as well as a more complex, aesthetic
significance. While the explanation of the major
and the minor modes, for example, entails an abstract
analysis and shows the presence of complex psycho
logical principles, these principles manifest their
presence chiefly in the reaction to the mere sensuous
differences so emphasized in Helmholtz's explana
tion. The contrasted effect of the two modes, there
fore, is also more direct, dramatic, than an intel-

1 Vid. Chapter XIV.

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 193

lectual appreciation of all the elements shown by a
logical analysis to be involved. And this mental
response also is strongly colored emotionally.

Of the same nature and due to the same develop
mental reasons is the effect of discords and resolu
tions mentioned by Gurney. They also are potent
emotionally, but the reaction to them has become so
habitual that the reflective element, if it was ever
present, has been lost, and they are appreciated now
in this same gz*<m'-instinctive fashion, and for their
emotional value.

Timbre or "tone-color," as it is often called, refers
to the quality of the sound, due, as physicists tell us,
to the presence and prominence of various over
tones entering into the composition of the fundamen
tal tone. This tone-quality is also directly and dra
matically impressive, that is, has in itself emotional
significance. The recognition of this fact is not a dis
covery of modern music. Aristotle in his scheme of
education, because of the dissolute tendency of such
instruments, would interdict the flute, the harp, and
the lyre.1 But it is only in recent years, through the
development of orchestration, that this fact has been
seized upon and developed so as to produce a new
departure in music. In the light of the recognition
and emphasis it is thus receiving, it will be well to
note carefully its true character and thus to see the
strength and the weakness of the movement based
upon it.

We have just said that timbre is a quality of
sound due primarily to the character of the over
tones produced by various instruments or voices.
Because of the different shapes of the resonating

1 Vid. 'Politics, Bk. VIII.

194 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

cavities of musical instruments the fundamental
tones have different overtones, or these are variously
emphasized. Thus timbre is primarily a sensuous
attribute, and to pitch and intensity and "touch" is
added another sense attribute hardly less obvious
than the most evident of these sensuous qualities of
sound. To a close observer it is not strange that a
characteristic so palpable as this should be used to
base a new departure in music: its inherent impor
tance justifies the movement.

Timbre thus is the principle underlying the decided
musical movement of our day, viz., orchestration.
To discuss this subject in detail is the work of the
musician; we shall only note its principles. In the
orchestra, as we know it to-day, there are certain
groups of instruments, each group characterized by
its own quality of tone. Such, for example, are the
"strings," the "wood-wind," the "brass" and the
"battery." But the principle leads to a much more
extended division than this ; indeed, each instrument
of each group has its own peculiar color, and for the
musician this has a certain specific value. Each in
strument, therefore, is an opportunity for the musi
cian to further accentuate this sensuous character of
musical sound, and to make a direct appeal to the
emotions of the listener. The insistent tones of the
violin, the martial tone of the brass, the plaintive tone
of the flute, the clanging cymbal, illustrate what is
meant. And even between instruments as closely
related as the violin and the viola the modern
world has learned to ascribe important differences.

The modern school of "colorists," seizing upon
these qualitative distinctions in conjunction with the
other sense qualities, have developed them most fer-

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 195

tilely and have produced a music of unprecedented in
tensity and passion. Strauss, for example, in some of
his latest "tone-poems" has startled, amazed and
even shocked the musical world by the passion he
pictures. Whether or not this be the highest or even
the truest form of art, there is no question of its
dramatic effectiveness. The thought will rise, how
ever, that in the very intensity of his music and in
the appeal he makes to these sensuous attributes he
is departing from the sober advance along the lines
of pure musical thought, rather than pointing with
unerring hand to the sacred wray of enduring art.
To ignore the demands of pure thought for the
greater impressiveness of sense is, in all art and for
all time, a questionable procedure. However, this is
no reason why the movement may not result, when
sober second thought has pruned away its asperities,
in a decided enrichment of the musical art, not only
in an increased sensuous beauty and effectiveness,
but also in the possibilities for working out new
thought relations.

To complete the list of these impressive or dra
matic attributes of musical sound, we refer again to
modifications of Force and of Tempo, which, because
of their similarity dynamically to emotional changes,
have a direct and a powerful suggestibility. They
too are made use of in modern music to heighten and
intensify its sensuous effect, and belong, therefore, to
the same category as the factors previously men
tioned.

In considering the character and mental signifi
cance of these factors, the first common attribute
is their immediacy. As has been pointed out, they
may all be regarded as attributes of the musical

196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

tones considered as sound ; they do not therefore de
pend for their effect upon their symbolic content,
though they may all have such value, but as mere
modifications of sensuous stimuli have the directness
and force of sensational and perceptual elements.
It is a well-known psychological law that factors
long and repeatedly used assume a quasi -reflex char
acter, exercising their pristine function without the
mediation of consciousness. This is just the case with
the factors we are now discussing. Once interpreted
as symbols of emotional reaction, they have now
become fixed in the organic structure of the individ
ual and function with their primal force, but without
consciousness of the end they subserve.

Another common attribute of these sense qualities
is their indefiniteness. Were any further evidence
needed to show the inadequacy of the expression-
istic hypothesis, this fact should prove convincing.
The sensuous factors, remarkable though they be,
are one and all too vague, too indefinite to fulfil
the exigencies of a language. And yet as compared
with the other arts, music is in this direction far su
perior to any art that might be named. The sensuous
factors utilized for emotional expressiveness in sculp
ture, or architecture, or in literature, or even in
painting, are not to be compared with those avail
able in music, either in number or in expressiveness.
So, while we admit their conceptual vagueness, we
must not overlook their sensuous suggestibility.
And as we have already said, not accurate represen
tation, but suggestibility, is the illuminating term in
the psychology of the emotions.

In the net outcome upon the emotional conscious
ness I am not sure but that this indefiniteness is

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 197

a distinct gain rather than a source of weakness.
For example, if I am reading a poem or looking
at a picture I must follow the representation there
definitely and accurately expressed. Such repre
sentations may or they may not be for me rich in
interest and in emotional significance: that will de
pend upon my education and previous experience.
But the indefinite suggestibility of the sensuous fac
tors of music leaves the mind free to create its own
imagery, to bring to consciousness ideas which for
it are fraught with feeling. The laws of association
teach that it may be just for this reason, indeed, that
they are revived. So long as these factors have char
acter enough to give color to the feeling, and this
cannot be denied, their conceptual vagueness may
therefore be a distinct gain emotionally, not a source
of weakness. Such being the case, it is folly to over
look their inherent character and to deny that, psy
chologically considered, they have direct and re
markable emotional significance. Being direct and
sensuous, they serve to give to the emotions music
engenders a warmth and vividness and color that
approximates in these particulars the emotions pro
duced by the vicissitudes of real life.

5. In estimating the value of the emotional element
in music, the more abstract aesthetic attributes must
also be considered. Though they are by no means
so clamant or exciting or so dramatically powerful
as the sensuous qualities to which we have already
called attention, they are the source of an aesthetic
pleasure, pale in hue it may be, but pure in texture.
Such, for example, are unity, symmetry, graceful
ness, originality, and the like. As aesthetic attributes
they are common to all the arts, though in the case

198 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

of each differently expressed; the unity in a drama
is not produced by the same means as the unity in
a building or in a painting, or in a musical composi
tion. Nevertheless, since it is unity in each case,
the psychological reaction is identical. So far as
the logical and psychological value of the principle
is concerned, it is a matter of indifference whether
it is manifested in one work of art or in another.
The emotional value of these aesthetic attributes,
when realized in music, therefore, is not different
from their psychological function when found in
any of the other arts; it is true that their effect is
supplemented, often overshadowed, by the more
striking effect of the dramatic qualities of musical
sound, but as aesthetic principles, considered for
their own sake, there is no sufficient ground for
introducing a distinction.

These aesthetic attributes in music, as in the other
arts, produce the characteristic aesthetic emotion,
an emotion of a refined, intellectual character, calm
or contemplative, but pure, and recognized as of
high inherent worth. They and they alone redeem
music from being merely an effective means of emo
tional stimulation, and place it high in the category of
art. Thus the emotions they arouse are an indispensa
ble element in the psychological reaction to music;
otherwise, there is nothing worthy the name of art.

The conclusion, therefore, to which we are led
by the argument, is that if the proper function of
art in its other forms is to awaken an emotional
reaction, the same is true of music, and also to a
like degree. The purpose of art is one, whatever
its form. Music is blessed by having at its disposal,
due to the medium in which it is expressed, numerous

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 199

factors of direct emotional significance; but these
in no way change its function as a form of art.
They give it power, they give it universality, they
give it versatility; but the true purpose of music is
not changed thereby, and any attempt to neglect
the former or to even emphasize the latter is a de
parture from the true pathway of art and of art
development.

6. In our discussion of the intellectual element
in music, the purpose of this chapter does not demand
that we enter into a detailed description of such
factors, but only that we attempt to evaluate them.
In the true content of music is there a real and a
vital intellectual factor ? Or, in other words, in
the aesthetic experience resulting from the apprecia
tion of a musical composition, what is the value of
the intellectual activity involved ?

As a preliminary to the consideration of this sub
ject, it should be remembered that there is the
widest difference in musical compositions as to the
presence and relative importance of these intel
lectual elements. Some compositions depend for
their effect so largely upon the dramatic qualities
and so little upon formal architectonic elements,
that they are correctly characterized as emotional;
others subordinate these attributes and demand
upon the part of the listener a very keen, analytic
attitude of mind if the content is to be at all ade
quately apprehended. In the first case, appeal is
made largely to reflex and instinctive factors, and
the mind is more passively receptive than dis
criminatingly and actively analytic. But there is
music also that cannot be comprehended in any
such listless fashion. The compositions of Bach or

200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

Beethoven, for example, or of any of the classical
composers, demand a marshalling of the powers of
the mind and a critical and sustained attention
that can be denominated nothing else than intellec
tual. In this respect music is again closely analo
gous to various forms of literature. Just as some
poems, for example, require little more than a pass
ive though sensitive response to the obvious ima
gery of the word pictures, so some music is ade
quately apprehended through a simple response to
its dramatic elements. But there is literature also
which, to be appreciated, requires the most energetic
activity of the mind's analytic powers and of in
tellectual synthesis. In the latter case, the proper
aesthetic emotion comes only through the clear
comprehension of the thought.

When we speak of the intellectual element in
music, therefore, it is evident that we do not refer
to any fixed or constant factor. Some music is rich
in such elements, some relies for its effect more
upon the impressive attributes of musical sound.
Under such conditions we can escape the difficulty
either by making our remarks so general that they
will apply to the two extremes, or we can inquire
more specifically as to the general character of the
intellectual processes involved in the musical ex
perience, and then determine the source of the
pleasure in such activity. Our method will be the
latter one. Two questions will serve to focalize
our remarks: First, what are the intellectual pro
cesses involved in apprehending a musical composi
tion ? And, second, do such activities result in a truly
aesthetic pleasure ?

In apprehending a musical composition as an

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 2ol

objective form, there are involved necessarily all
those activities of the sense organ and brain centres
used in any perceptual process. This is obviously
true,, whether the composition be of the emotional
or of the intellectual type. It makes no difference,
so far as this stage of the process is concerned,
whether the composition is to be apprehended for
aesthetic or for critical or for scientific purposes.
There must be a certain voluntary or involuntary
focussing of the attention, a real though an unre-
flective discrimination of factors, an implicit or
explicit judgment such as is involved in any process
of sense perception. However, this does not get
to the heart of the matter, for the aesthetic experi
ence is determined, not by the process of sense per
ception, but by the mental attitude toward an
object when perceived. We must look, therefore,
to the processes involved in the apprehension of these
higher aesthetic qualities of a work of art.

In the aesthetic apprehension and appreciation of
a quality like unity, intellectual processes of a high
order are involved. The unity of a musical compo
sition is not a datum of sense, and thus a part of
the perceptual process. If the composition is at
all complex, it is more like the unity of a drama or
a novel, an attribute to be recognized only as sense
data are analyzed and the relation of part to part
intelligently understood. To be more specific, the
recognition of unity in music worthy of the name
of art, presupposes an analysis of the composition
into its structural elements and the recognition of
the relation between them, the evaluation consciously
or unconsciously of thematic, rhythmic and har
monic features, and the whole series of related ele-

202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

ments synthesized into an artistic whole. It is
true that for a mere impressionistic appreciation of
some music all this need not be done in so clear
cut and conscious a fashion as is implied in. our
remarks; there is what we may call an emotional
unity attainable through the dramatic qualities of
musical sound. But for a composition built upon
more severe intellectual lines, this kind of mental
reaction will not suffice.

The reason classical music is so often a bore to
the average listener is exactly the same as the reason
technical discussions fail to interest the man on the
street ; he is unacquainted with the terminology in
which the thought is expressed and fails, therefore,
to find meaning in the sounds through which the
thought is expressed.

The recognition and appreciation of balance or
symmetr}'' in a composition implies a high degree of
refinement in discriminating ability and enough
practice to lead to the appreciation of contrasted
musical elements.

Strength in expression, we have said, implies com
prehensiveness and clearness of vision, that is to say,
a logical, masterful understanding of the thought
expressed. This is essentially an intellectual pro
cess, a matter of the understanding, not of the
emotions.

The detection and appreciation of gracefulness is
first of all a sensibility for fine distinctions, both of
sense and of thought, and is, so far, closely akin to
the other intellectual processes of discrimination
and judgment.

For the appreciation of originality and significance
in the content of a composition, there is required the

THE CONTENT OF MUSIC 203

functioning of the mind in the most abstract and
plainly intellectual way. These two attributes are
inherently attributes of thought, not of the emotions,
and can be apprehended and appreciated, therefore,
only through the activity of intellect. That this
is true will be readily seen if it is remembered what
the recognition of such attributes implies, viz., the
analysis of the most abstract ideas, the application
of standards of intellectual and emotional values,
and comparisons with ideas and ideals which are
comparable with the abstract processes of scientific
judgment and reasoning.

We conclude, therefore, that music of any real
artistic value, because such music must exemplify
these various aesthetic attributes, does contain an
intellectual as well as an emotional element. Thus
pure emotionalism as the basis for a theory of mu
sic is proven inadequate. Not only are intellectual
elements present, but they play so large a part in
the musical experience that they must be recog
nized as an indispensable element in the musical ex
perience. With this conclusion forced upon us, the
question now arises, is such intellectual activity for
its own sake, or for the sake of the pleasure resulting
therefrom ?

To maintain that these intellectual processes
exist for their own sake were to confuse the aesthetic
and the scientific experience. We affirm at once,
therefore, and without further argument, that they
are not to be thus interpreted. But, on the other
hand, the analogy between the musical experience
and other forms of artistic reaction leads us to
assert that in the intellectual activity involved in
the apprehension of these aesthetic attributes there

204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

is that refined, intellectual pleasure known as the
characteristic aesthetic emotion. To explain why
such intellectual activity should give pleasure, we
shall refer, in lieu of a better one, to the biological
theory of pleasure and its function.

If there is an aesthetic pleasure in the physiological
activity of the sense organs, due, as the theory
phrases it, "to the healthful functioning of the
organs involved," the presumption is that pleasure
of a similar character wrould result, as the mind in
its higher processes functions aesthetically. In
deed, if the theory is to be credible at all, it must be
so. Pleasure is the reward Nature gives her children
for working for their own advantage, pain her
penalty for self -in jury. But the intellect, evolu
tionists tell us, is Nature's crowning gift to man,
the most perfect instrument of adaptation and ad
justment. Since, however, the mind is still the
battle field of evolutionary forces, favorable activities
still need the preferential accompaniment of pleasure.
Thus we are justified by the theory in regarding
these higher intellectual processes involved in the
aesthetic experience as productive of a pleasurable
emotion, strong enough, unless inhibited by other
stronger factors, to insure a preference for such
modes of activity. Thus, ultimately, even these
most pronounced intellectual processes involved in
the highest type of musical experience yield a rich
return in the common currency of the art realm,
viz., in the emotions. We close the chapter with a
brief summary.

7. The analysis of this chapter has been based
upon the distinction between the sensuous qualities
of musical sound and the more abstract aesthetic
attributes of music which give it place in the category

THE CONTEXT OF MUSIC 205

of art. These sensuous attributes of music psycho
logically considered have greater value than the sen
suous attributes of any other art. So urgent are
they, so clamant, so intense in their appeal, that they
tend to overshadow the more intellectual attributes
with which they have been contrasted. In the course
of men's development these sensuous factors have
acquired a direct and a powerful influence over the
emotional consciousness. Music, therefore, that
relies chiefly for its effect upon such attributes,
whether it be the crude music of primitive people or
"popular music," or much of the music of the ro
manticists, or the "tone-poems" of the current
movement, is as to its content predominately emo
tional. Such music may be tremendously impress
ive and intense, and yet demand but little intellect
ual activity or appreciation.

On the other hand, there is music that produces its
proper effect not so much through the use of these
impressive attributes as through the elaboration of
pure musical thought. So little are the mere sense
factors regarded, so important is the presentation of
the thought for its own sake, that a failure to appre
ciate this latter element results inevitably in boredom
for the listener, none the less real that it is unfash
ionable to let it be known. In music of this class the •
content is musical thought expressed for its own sake, ;
thought demanding upon the part of the listener \
concentrated attention and genuine intellectual
labor. And, yet, even here the emotional element is
not absent, for it is through such intellectual activity
that the purest and richest aesthetic emotion is to be
gained.

Because there are these two wellrciefilie.iasp_e.c_ts to
music, and because they are utilized in such varying

206 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

proportions, the content of music cannot be ex
pressed solely in terms of either. Music that em
ploys in the main these impressive attributes of
sense, derives its value chiefly from the active func
tioning of the emotional consciousness. The dan
ger in such music is that it will sacrifice refinement
for intensity, a true aesthetic enjoyment for an excit
ing emotional reaction. However, these factors have
their proper place and function in music of the high
est type, although alone they are not sufficient.

Music of the sort that will live and be loved per
ennially, that does not grow old, that tries to stimu
late the mind not merely effectively but aesthetically,
must do so by finding its virtue principally in these
aesthetic attributes. The sensuous attributes, one
and all, may then be present to aScTinterTsity and
warmth and life to further the effect of these more
intellectual qualities. But without the latter all the
impressiveness, all the intensity, all the dramatic
power, will but go to show how sadly the composer
has missed the true purpose and function of art.
The reason there is any more question as to the con
tent of music than of any other art is due partly,
doubtless, to the non-conceptual character of musi
cal symbolism, but also partly to the remarkable
emotional impressiveness of these sensuous factors.
However, they alone are not sufficient to produce
masterpieces in this art. Not strength, but refine
ment of feeling is the true criterion of the aesthetic
experience. And this in its greatest purity and
beauty can be obtained only in these aesthetic attri
butes. The future of music, therefore, we dare to say,
does not lie in the conception of strongly impression
istic "tone-poems," but in the expression of clear,
logical, artistic musical thought.

CHAPTER X

MUSICAL CRITICISM

I . It is not our purpose in this chapter to trespass
on the rights of the musical critic by offering sug
gestions as to the canons of correct musical taste, but
rather to get down beneath such canons to examine
the principles upon which they rest and by virtue of
which they have authority. Musical criticism being
a systematic evaluation of individual compositions,
it is not surprising if our analysis of music should
throw some light also upon the subject of musical
values. Whether or not this presumption is justi
fied the discussion itself will decide.

The need for a critical examination into the
grounds of musical criticism is particularly urgent. In
no other branch of art criticism is there less unanim
ity of opinion, or so little understanding of the phil
osophical basis upon which correct judgment must
be founded. Musical criticism to-day lacks both sys
tem and authority, and the difficulty evidently is
that there is no common and philosophical basis for
judgment as to what is valuable in music. Conse
quently individual caprice and multifarious opinions
are left to flaunt themselves where there should be
unanimity and authority. It is not long since one of
our leading comic papers .amused itself and its read
ers by publishing side by side a long list of contradic
tory opinions concerning the value of certain musical

207

208 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

productions, taken from the musical criticism of the
leading papers of the metropolis of our country.

That musical criticism is in a sad plight no one
realizes better than musical critics themselves. Only
a few months ago the writer read with interest from
the pen of one of the leading critics of the country a
jeremiad upon the lamentably unstable condition of
musical criticism. That conditions are as they are is
due to the failure to get down beneath individual
opinion and caprice to the fundamental principles
upon which there can be general agreement. When
such a starting-point is found, then and then only can
musical criticism firmly establish itself for systematic
and effective work. It is true that there will always
be room for difference in the final judgment, but that
is no objection, provided good reasons based upon
some tangible principle can be shown. So long as
such principles are wanting, however, musical criti
cism must remain in its present purely individualis
tic state, a condition not unlike the condition mathe
matics would be in without its axioms, or science
without its postulates.

That there are such principles, provided they can
only be found, is as certain as that music is a true
form of art, and that art has its own definite charac
teristics and attributes. If there are principles of
literary or dramatic criticism, there are also princi
ples of musical criticism. And it certainly behooves
those who love and revere this art to lose no time
in seeking for the unchanging psychological grounds
upon which all sane and telling criticism must firmly
rest.

In the light of the analysis already made, the sim
plest and most direct method of proceeding will be to

MUSICAL CRITICISM 209

take up in order the elements of music, rhythm,
melody, and harmony, and inquire as to their rela
tive aesthetic value, and for the criteria of worth for
each in its own proper sphere.

2. So far as the analysis has gone, it goes to show
that of these three elements of music, rhythm in its
absolute aesthetic value ranks lowest in the scale.
That it has a legitimate place and an important
function in music is not to be denied ; that it possesses
unusual power as a stimulus for the emotional con
sciousness is also quite evident ; but in itself consid
ered, and for its own sake, its artistic worth is not pro
portionate to its emotional effectiveness. That it has
an important place also in the economy of the vital
processes of life has been shown to be a well-estab
lished fact, but biological standards of value are not
artistic standards, nor are they interchangeable. In
fact its emotional effectiveness and the striking re
flex response it elicits from the listener are doubtless
the source of the popular misapprehension as to its
inherent artistic value. A brief resume of the essen
tial facts brought out in our analysis will suffice to
justify the conclusion that it is distinctly below
melody and harmony qualitatively considered.

Susceptibility to rhythm, it has been shown, is in
stinctive and the response elicited is more reflex than
reflective. This, it is needless to say, is an attribute
belonging to the order of lower organic reactions, not
to those of the higher, more intellectual type. The
basis for the one is in nerve centres controlling muscu
lar action, while the basis for the other is in the higher
centres connected, we know not how, with the func
tioning of mind in its more abstractly intellectual and
emotional activities.

2lo THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

It does not require any strenuous intellectual activ
ity to respond to the palpable rhythm of "ragtime"
or the popular waltz or two-step. The mind, under
!, the stimulus of such music, is essentially passive,
stimulated to an emotional activity, but in a niean-
\mgless way. In such music the melody is usually but
indifferently good or positively poor, though which
ever it is, the strong rhythm overshadows it so that
it loses its effect. And as to the harmonic factor
Parry says, "Dance music demands very little in the
way of harmony. The world would go on dancing to
the end of time without it ; and whatever harmony
is added to pure dance tunes, even in days of ad
vanced art, is generally of the simplest and most
obvious character." Reaction to rhythm, therefore,
though strongly emotional, is an activity containing
only a minimum of genuine intellectual elements,
and is in this respect distinctly below both melody
and harmony.

That rhythm serves but a subordinate function in
art is further established by the fact that it relates
more to the form of a wrork of art than to its content,
and that alone it has little or no real artistic value.
Rhythm can enhance the artistic value of a poem,
for example, but the rhythm without the thought is
meaningless. Rhythm is essential to the dance, but
without the animated living forms it loses all its
charm; the rhythmic movement of machinery in
itself does not fascinate or produce any lasting aesthe
tic emotion. In the same way rhythm in music,
though it has its proper function and heightens the
artistic effect produced, does so by putting its stamp
upon a content that is in itself genuinely intellectual.
Rhythm alone, as found in the most primitive forms

MUSICAL CRITICISM 211

of music, is not art but merely an effective mode of
emotional stimulation. The truth we are interested
to stress will be clearer from a possible classification
of music based upon the presence and value of
rhythm alone.

3. First, music of the primitive sort, preponder-
atingly rhythmical, either in monotone or with sim
ple melodic figures, which, repeated over and over,
serve to further accentuate the rhythmic element.
Second, music in which both melodic or harmonic
factors are found, and yet in which the rhythmic
element is still predominant, as in popular music and
in dance tunes referred to above. Third, music in
which the rhythmic factor is still pronounced, and
yet not so powerful as to overshadow the melodic
and harmonic elements which are here of a higher
order than in music belonging to the preceding
classes. Under this head would come many of the
world's national songs, like Die Wacht am Rhein, La
Marseillaise, etc., marches and spirited music of the
higher order. The essential difference between music
of this class and of the class just preceding is that
here there is a logical and an artistic justification for
the rhythm in which the composition is written, while
in the former case there is not. For example, the
heroic element is an integral part of patriotism, and
music representing this fine feeling should reflect this
essential element ; the pronounced rhythm does this,
though not to the exclusion of melodic and harmonic
virtues. Consequently the pronounced rhythm is not
an intrusion, or a meaningless excitation, but a part
of a consistent artistic idea. Then fourth, and
finally, there is music in which the rhythm is less
pronounced, more subtle but still serves a definite

212 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

artistic function. Here as before the rhythmic factor
exists not merely as an effective means of emotional
excitation, but as a most delicate, most subtle in
strument for stimulating the emotions in their most
refined nuances. The end of rhythm in such music
is to accentuate the beauty of the structural element
by a direct control of the mood under which this
beauty will be most effectively apprehended. It
thus serves a definite and an important artistic pur
pose.

Music of the first class, dependent upon rhythm
almost exclusively for its effect, as a matter of fact
has no just claim to be placed in the category of art
at all. Its function is not artistic, but mere emo
tional excitation of the cruder sort.

Music of the second class, in which the rhythmic
factor is still predominant, at the expense of melodic
and harmonic elements, marks a step in musical
development, but hardly a transition to the true
realm of art. It is true that in music of this class
the melody may be "catchy," and clever, as it was
for example in the hilarious Hiawatha, a composition
that lived both broadly and vigorously for a time,
but only briefly. The rhythm in such music is still
obtrusive and forms the principal source of its
attraction and charm. But such forms of stimu
lation soon pall, and music that depends for its
charm upon such a factor soon goes to a deserved
oblivion. In any true form of art there must be
elements of perduring worth, truth that wakes to
perish never, beauty that time cannot destroy.
Such truth, such beauty is not found, or has not
been found as yet, by emphasizing the rhythmic factor
at the expense of the other two elements of music.

MUSICAL CRITICISM 213

In music of the third class there is a balancing
of musical factors that leans more to the side of art.
The rhythm is still plainly evident, but it is not the
dominating element as heretofore. The principality
now lies in the melodic and harmonic factors and the
rhythm is used — and this is the redeeming fact —
not merely to excite the mind for the sake of the
excitation, as alcoholic beverages are sometimes
taken, but for the sake of producing a definite result
as was shown above. It now has a true artistic
raison d'etre.

In the last division of our classification this use
is further exemplified, only in more subtle forms.
Thus it passes from the primitive function of a
crude emotional excitant and becomes a legitimate
element of art, but, as has been said, its function is
even here a subordinate one, and to over-emphasize
it for the sake, of its emotional effectiveness, is to be
false to the first principles of true art.

4. Our psychological examination of melody led
us to the conclusion that it is par excellence the
thought element in music. It is true that there is
in the higher forms of music an intellectual element
in rhythm, and that harmony like melody is a pure
product of the creative imagination. Notwith
standing this fact, however, the analogy between
melody and conceptual thought is more extended
and more vital than it is between these other ele
ments of music. Melody, like conceptual thought,
is indissolubly connected with time relations, both
being inherently phenomena in time. Musical
phrases and periods, essentially melodic factors,
like the elements of language, follow each other
successively; also, they stand in definite ascertain-

214 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

able — shall we not say — logical relations to each
other, successive phrases and periods amplifying,
illustrating, expounding the principal theme or sub
ject. The bond which unites them into an aesthetic
whole is also closely akin to the abstract bond that
unifies the elements of discursive thought. In
neither is the source of unity a datum of sense,
but an abstract relationship, to be detected and ap
preciated only through the functioning of the higher
powers of mental activity.

Historically, also, the conclusion that melody is
jthe most distinctive thought element in music is
justified. Before harmony was born the principles
of melody resting upon the tonal relations of the
scale were firmly established, and the principles of
structural unity fully recognized. The introduction
and development of harmony as an additional ele
ment in music did not invalidate or obviate the
position melody had held as the thought element of
music. Harmony was utilized to enrich melody,
not to supplant it. Thus the primacy of melody
as the thought element in music has not been lost.
Whether or not an exception to this fact is found in
the more radical forms of modern music is a point we
shall not here engage to decide. When it shall have
been more definitely shown that this movement is
in the direction of permanent advance, there will
be time enough to examine this question further.

In characterizing the melodic element in music
as the thought element of this art, we have ascribed
to it a high place in the scale of musical values.
Though its thought content is not the sole, nor the
ultimate test of a work of art, a work of art can
hardly be a masterpiece unless it represents some

MUSICAL CRITICISM 215

truth of commanding importance. Great art is a
vision of some great truth, and truth is a relation
apprehended and appreciated through the cognitive
powers of the mind. Art is not truth for truth's
sake, and yet, as has been shown, significance is one
of the most important aesthetic attributes. Art
without thought significance is almost sure to be
vapid, ephemeral, and soon becomes a weariness to
the flesh, not a source of mental inspiration and de
light. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the
appreciation of thought relations is the source of an
aesthetic pleasure, pure and permanent, not to be
gained by an appeal to the more dramatic elements
of sense.

Applied to the case in hand, this means that music
that lays stress upon the melodic factor, music
whose palpable virtues are melodic, is superior in
artistic worth to that which emphasizes chiefly the
rhythmic element. Intrinsically, melody is of higher
worth than rhythm or of any of the purely sensuous
elements. This is not said to disparage the sense
elements, but to exalt the thought content. This
does not mean that rhythm does not have its proper
and indispensable function, nor that simple melodic
music is the highest type of music; it does mean,
however, that music that accentuates the thought
element, that finds its value whether in simple beau
tiful melody or in the more complex development
of theme or motive, is on a higher plane than music
that appeals primarily to strong instinctive ten
dencies in man, such as rhythm, or to other sensuous
qualities of sound as sound. Music that emphasizes
these sensuous, dramatic elements will almost cer
tainly be both effective and popular, but if this is

2l6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

all, or the principal source of its appeal, it fails to
measure up to the standard and dignity of a true
work of art.

5. But this, however, is only the starting-point;
for further progress suitable standards applicable to
each individual composition must be agreed upon.

The nature of these criteria of value for melody
is determined by the nature of melody itself. In the
chapter above dealing with this subject such criteria
have already been enumerated. If we accept the
conclusion there maintained, that melody is in a
unique way the thought element in music, then these
criteria of melodic value are the criteria of the
thought value of any other work of art. The value
of any melody, therefore, or of any thought element
in music, is to be determined by examining it with
reference to its unity, its originality, its .significance,
its strength, its gracefulness, etc. The way in which
these attributes will be expressed in music will be
different from their expression in the other arts, but
this does not alter their character nor their psycho
logical effect. They can be taken, therefore, for the
criteria of value in music just as they are accepted
as the criteria of value in any other form of art.

The relation of these attributes to one another,
the proportion in which they shall exist in works of
artistic merit, cannot be definitely fixed. There is
the greatest freedom and variation as to just which
quality in a given work of art shall be predominant,
and to what extent the others shall be present and
how much they shall be emphasized. However,
certain general conclusions can be formulated and
affirmed with confidence. It is safe to say, for ex
ample, that no one of these qualities alone, to what-

MUSICAL CRITICISM 217

ever marked degree it may be present, is sufficient
to give a composition standing as a masterpiece nor
even as a work of art. Unity will not suffice, nor
originality, nor grace, nor strength, nor any other
one attribute, however important it may be. Origi
nality may be the vagaries of a disordered brain;
unity is an attribute of logical as well as of artistic
significance; profundity of thought is a quality of
value, but it may be altogether independent of art.
And so we might go through the list but never find
in any one of these attributes the secret of a true
art conception. Unity is perhaps of them all the
only one that is really indispensable. The others
may be important, and each will add something of
aesthetic value not provided for in any other way;
but gracefulness may take the place of originality
and strength, or significance in the subject matter
may so excuse blatant faults in the elements of style
that the work though marred is esteemed immor
tally great. Thus it is obviously true that a work
of art is not to be judged according to any fixed rule
or pattern. Every work of art, being a true work of
creation, must be judged for its own value. There
are no patterns in art, though we are endeavoring
to establish certain principles. Because of the rich
and varied character of these aesthetic elements
there is always the possibility for some new and
forceful combination. Thus new movements in
art, new schools rise now and then to disturb our
narrow and fixed preconceptions, surprise or shock
us for the time by their unfamiliarity, but soon
are given a place in our ideas of what true art may
include. The standard of art in its details is not
a fixed, but a developing ideal. Elements that may

2i8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

be approved to-day are obsolete to-morrow, and
those which meet with invective to-day are hailed
as precursors of a great movement to-morrow.
There is no way accurately to gauge popular ap
proval in these details, but the principles of art
fixed in the mind are inviolable, unchangeable, the
bed-rock upon which criticism must firmly take
its stand.

6. The comparative value of harmony in the
trinity of musical elements is also to be determined
by its inherent character and by what it adds to
music. A cursory survey of its place in modern
music leaves the impression that it is second in
importance neither to rhythm nor to melody. Is
it not to the harmonic element that modern music
owes its distinction, and in it finds its greatest
possibilities for development and for beauty ? Is
it not in this element that the modern world finds
its sole claim to have originated and developed a
new form of art ? Take from modern music all
that harmony gives, and all the glory and most of
the beauty are gone forever; and this not merely
because modern music has been conceived and
written under the form of harmony, but because
harmony adds to music elements of beauty and power
that can be found nowhere else. Thus it would
appear, that since modern music is the highest
manifestation of the musical art, and modern music
'finds its essential characteristics inseparably bound
up with harmony, harmony ipso facto is the element
of superlative worth. But such a general line of
argument, though it is not without its value, is not
sufficient for the present discussion. We must look
at the matter, therefore, from another point of view.

MUSICAL CRITICISM 219

What, as a matter of fact, has harmony added to
music, and what is the true valuation of such ele
ments ?

In the chapter on Harmony it was asserted that
harmony (i) adds sensuous beauty to music; (2)
that it serves to enrich melody, and (3) that it forms,
as it were, a new medium in which musical thought
is conceived and expressed. If such are the uses
of harmony in modern music, its artistic value must
lie therein, and can be evaluated approximately by
noticing the aesthetic significance of each.

Since every work of art must be a concrete,
sensuous form, there must be some virtue inherent
in these sensuous attributes indispensable for a
truly aesthetic reaction. The Law of Gravitation
and Kepler's Laws of Motion as forms of thought
are beautiful conceptions in the abstract, but they
are not works of art, nor do they suffice to produce
a genuinely aesthetic experience; they are too ab
stract, too impersonal, to produce the warmth and
vigor requisite for such experience. Or again,
though the sublime in art can be gained only by the
representation of some profound truth of life, some
representation of an inner human experience, the
representation itself must be made in some concrete,
individual form. Great art must be an expression
of a great truth, and yet it is worthy of note that the
masterful, artistic representation of sensuous attri
butes in themselves and for their own sake is a very
common and withal a legitimate justification of a
very large number, if not, indeed, the majority of
the pictures we find in modern exhibitions. Color,
light and shadow, atmosphere, perspective, draw
ing, compositions, etc., are the aim and end of

220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

thousands upon thousands of paintings found in
our galleries to-day. Van Dyke's A rt for A rt's Sake,
to mention a well-known treatise on art, leaves the
impression that this is even the greater part of art.
Nor is this aspect of the subject trivial or unim
portant. Great colorists in all the roll of painters,
we are told, are but a scanty dozen or so, because of
the inherent difficulty of mastering even this one
sensuous attribute. And its value when attained
is, from the painter's point of view, fully com
mensurate with the difficulty of its attainment.
Thus in painting, certainly, the sensuous side of
this art is of sufficient importance to merit the
highest consideration and to serve as a proper
sphere of effort for the talent and energies of the
artist.

And yet it is to be remembered that the great
masterpieces that rise to the sublime touch a deeper
strain. But in itself the sensuous is important,
though not sublime.

Thus while it is evident that we cannot give to
harmony because of the increased sensuous beauty
it gives to music the first place in the scale of musi
cal value, it is proper to recognize its legitimate
function and not to disparage what is beautiful
merely because it is sensuous.

The second use of harmony given, viz., enrich
ment of melody, also fails to show that harmony
has any clear title to precedence in the evaluation
of the elements of music. The phrase itself suggests
that it serves only in a subordinate position, that
instead of expressing the essence of music it is used
j more as a decorative feature. It adds to the beauty
and value of music, but it does so by enhancing the

MUSICAL CRITICISM 221

value of an element that is more elemental and, pre
sumably, more fundamental.

There remains, however, one other claim of har
mony to be examined, namely, its value as a new
medium of musical thought and expression.

That the richness, the fulness, the power, the
beauty, and even the thought content of an art
depend vitally upon the medium in which it is ex
pressed is a conclusion that admits of little doubt.
Illustrations of this truth are legion, examples being
found not only in the case of every art, but also in
the wider field of all linguistic expression. The
arts each have their own proper subjects because of
the nature of the medium in which that art finds
expression. We shall let one illustration suffice.

In painting, the principal idea, the thought con
tent, can usually be expressed in black and white,
that is, without the aid of color. Prints and photo
graphs of the Madonnas of Raphael or of the frescoes
of Michael Angelo, for example, if carefully studied,
will enable one who has never seen the originals to
get a fairly accurate and adequate conception of the
thought and genius of these two masters. Even
without the color — which most of us without train
ing would not appreciate — the ideas and ideals of
these two men are obvious enough. But even so,
<ve do not compass the whole purpose and province
of painting; all the beauty, the harmony, the vital
touch which color gives is of course denied to him
who thus becomes acquainted with art. If not all
that they prize and strive in the concrete to realize,
so much is gone that artists themselves would feel
that such a method of studying art is most frag
mentary and incomplete. The difficulty is that

222 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

color is a new medium that defies adequate descrip
tion or representation. For the new elements it
introduces and for the effect they produce upon the
mind there is no substitute. The vitality due to
color, the color-harmony, the sensuous effect of the
color scheme, are all integral parts of the artist's
conception, and without color all of these are irrep
arably lost.

The same principle applies to music, though even
in a more vital way. Harmony not only adds to
the sensuous beauty of music, and accentuates and
augments the beauty and force of the melodic
factor, but it furnishes music with a new element, a
new medium, in which ideas are conceived, wrought
out to more varied, more perfect forms, and ex
pressed. As a new element it has its own inherent
attributes and laws, but it also opens up new possi
bilities for musical thought. In it musicians have
found such opportunities for development and for
the elaboration of new forms of beauty that it has
indeed been, in this respect, not the means of in
augurating a new departure in music, but the means
of creating what is essentially a new art. It has
made possible sensuous beauty never before even
dreamed of, it has brought to melody the richest
boon; but, more than that, it has revealed a new
world of musical relationships, in which musicians
find the richest beauty, the most profound thought,
the most perfect works of art. It is in this revelation
, of a new world for musical thought that its true
greatness lies, and here that it can best justify its
claim to be the highest element in music. So com
pletely has harmony conquered the field, so universal
has the custom become of conceiving musical thought

MUSICAL CRITICISM 223

i i terms of harmony, such is the wealth of new
musical relation it alone makes possible, that we
must admit its exalted worth. This does not mean,
however, that it is to possess the field solely and
completely, or that the principles of musical form,
principles essentially melodic in character, are now
or ever will be obsolete. Color has not obviated
form in painting, but only enabled it to realize its
latent possibilities. And so it will be in music;
harmony has not superseded melodic form, but
only opens up the way through which music as a
form of thought is to manifest its highest esthetic
worth.

7. In conclusion, we pause to look back over the
way our argument has led and to gather up the
threads that have now and then appeared through
out the discussion. If some of the conclusions seem
trite and without significance, let it be remembered
that they are given not so much for instruction as
for doctrine, to show that the principles thus formu
lated apply to the whole field of music, and not
merely to music in its more specialized forms.

We conclude: (i) that the true goal of music is not
found in its sensuous impressiveness. It has been
shown that music due to the medium of its expression
and to the biological significance of that medium
has remarkable dramatic power, that it thus has a
direct and potent influence over consciousness not
equalled in any other art. This influence, depending
upon racial factors, is inherited and therefore in
stinctive. There is opportunity, therefore, by means
of these various factors, for playing upon the emo
tions with the most intense and demonstrative
effect. But the true goal of music does not lie in

224 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

this direction; to regard this sensuous impressive-
ness as the measure of musical worth is plainly to
revert to primitive standards and to give up alle
giance to the ideals of thought for which the race
has contended and striven through long cycles of
mental development. The standards of highest
worth in art are not independent of the ideals in
other realms of thought, but, on the contrary, de
pendent upon them in the most intimate way.
To look for the ideals of music in its sensuous
impressiveness, therefore, is to be false to the first
principles of mental growth.

The true function of sensuous impressiveness in
music is closely analogous to the place of pleasure
in ethics. Pleasure is a good and not to be despised,
except as it conflicts with some higher standards
of value. It is only when it would arrogate to
itself the honor of the highest good that it deserves
the condemnation of the ascetic. As a means it is
to be highly esteemed; it is a witness of physical
welfare, a safeguard to health, a spur to action, and
an incentive to right conduct. But as the end, the
Summum Bonum, its dignity, its inherent psycho
logical character, its transient nature, its inde
pendence of the intellect in so many forms, all
declare its inadequacy. So it is with sensuous
impressiveness in music. In itself it is a source of
pleasure, a source of power; but let it try to assume
the dignity of the true end, and at once its lower
birth and character make it the object of attack
for the merest novice in the principles of psycho
logical and philosophical analysis.

(2) Though in itself eminently desirable, and fror.-
the (Esthetic point of view valuable, even sensuous

MUSICAL CRITICISM 225

beauty is not the end of music nor the final test of the
musical worth of a composition. By sensuous beauty
we comprehend such elements as the beauty and
charm of simple melody, the consonance and in
creased sound beauty of harmony, timbre, palpable
conformity to the elemental requirements of musical
form, the simpler forms of balance, etc. It is upon
the issue involved in this point that the musician
and the philosopher are apt to differ radically. This,
it will be remembered, was the question upon which
the two schools, the Formalists and the Expression
ists, were divided. To ascribe the real end of music
to sensuous beauty is to over-emphasize the ob
jective attributes at the expense of its psycho
logical or subjective qualities. But this you urge
is no argument; as well place the final criteria of
worth in the objective as the subjective. True
enough if this were the whole truth. The fact is,
however, that these objective attributes do not have
meaning or value, except as interpreted as symbolic
for the needs of the perceiving mind. Then, again,
it is true that though developed to the highest
degree, without some deep significant thought con
tent, these sensuous qualities will not suffice to
place a work in the highest rank. Their effect upon
the mind is too fleeting, too ephemeral, too super
ficial to represent the deepest truth in art.

(3) The analysis made, all goes to show that in the
evaluation of musical factors the virtues of musical
form rank high. In the first place, it is impossible
to have content without form; and in order that
the content may be readily and easily apprehended —
an essential requirement in art — it must be ex
pressed in an intelligible, pleasing manner. Form,

226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

therefore, is the indispensable condition for the proper
expression of thought. Again, form in music is
what order, proportion, symmetry are in architecture,
or what logical development is in the drama or the
novel; it is the plan, the logical arrangement of
parts, the structural order, the system that redeems
musical compositions from being disjointed, hetero
geneous, chaotic, meaningless, babels of sound, and
makes them definite, intelligible, organized, unified
works of art. Form, therefore, is not only a pre
condition for the expression of thought, but a form
of thought itself and as such productive in the mind
of a pure, intellectual form of aesthetic emotion.

(4) The final test (not the sole one, however) of the
value of a musical composition is the inherent worth
of its thought content. Just as in literature no virtues
of style have ever sufficed, independent of a deep,
significant thought content, to give first rank to
literary productions, so in music the ultimate test
of greatness is the worth of the thought expressed.
Of such manifest importance to consciousness are
the things pertaining to itself that it ascribes highest
value only to those qualities and attributes which
plainly relate to its own aims and ends. Call it
anthropomorphism or egoism or an inherent preju
dice of consciousness, or whatever you will, the
fact remains that qualities and attributes are thus
evaluated. The whole trend of art and of art
development to a certain extent justifies this pro
cedure, for from its inception until now art has
to a larger and larger degree found its proper con
tent, not in mere objective forms, but in subjective
ideas and ideals. Literature develops from the
epic to the drama, from mere descriptions of objective

MUSICAL CRITICISM 227

scene or act to the most subtle psychological anal
ysis of motives, of consciousness, and of character.
Painting passes from the crude representation of
form and action to the representation of the deepest
emotions and the most profound depths of character.
Music also has followed the same line of progress
and has led from an undue stress given to sense
elements, to a form of art in which genuine thought
relations are the mark of the highest worth.

What some of these thought relations are has
been pointed out in our discussion of the aesthetic
attributes of music. To form correct judgments of
musical value, to apply the standards we have
attempted to enumerate, is the proper work of the
musical critic, not of the student of musical aesthetics.
We leave this aspect of the problem, therefore, to
those to whom it properly belongs.

There is one caution, however, to which attention
must be called before we conclude. While we have
thus introduced distinctions of worth among the
various attributes and qualities of music, this does
not imply that any one is sufficient in itself, or that
others lower down in the scale do not exert a proper
and an important aesthetic function. On the other
hand, it were truer to fact to say that just so far
as a work of art fails to exemplify all of these at
tributes, just so far does it fail to attain to the
perfect fulness and beauty and significance and
power of the ideal of art.

CHAPTER XI

THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC

i . In these days of the practical even in the very
heart of philosophical discussion, there is little need
to excuse the introduction of a concluding chapter
upon the practical or educational value of music.
It will certainly do no harm to the sanctity of the
theoretical if it can be made to serve as the basis
for some suggestions by means of which its truth
will bear fruit in actual life. Indeed, the theoretical
and the practical should be so correlated that each
will supplement and complete the other. They are
both essential parts of the complete envisagement
of a subject. Theory without practice is but futile
speculation; practice without theory puerile ex
perimentation. Practice needs to be guided by
theory to attain the best results, and theory should
be checked by experience, if it is not to lose itself
in empty generalities. Hence it is eminently
fitting before we bring our discussion to a close,
that we desert for a time the goal that has guided
us thus far, and frankly turn our faces toward the
practical. This we shall do by endeavoring to
estimate the educational value of music.

Attention has already been called to the large
place which music now holds in our social, educa
tional, artistic, and religious life, and reasons given

228

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 229

to explain its importance. Starting with this same
fact, we shall now inquire, cui bono ? To what
end ? What does music bring to the individual or
to society to justify the enormous expenditure of
time and energy now devoted to its cultivation ?
Not only are millions of dollars expended annually
in our larger cities for its artistic development —
that in itself were a matter of little importance —
but on every hand we see the "precious plastic
period of youth" in our schools and out of them
being expended that it may have even a greater
part in our social and intellectual life. Can it
justify its place in our already overcrowded courses
of study, and in taking the time that might be
devoted to more practical pursuits ?

The answer to these questions can be found only
in a careful inquiry as to the true educational
value of music. But before we are ready to discuss
the subject intelligently, we must have before us
some definite conception of the proper function of
education. For as an object has value only in
relation to some end to be attained, so a subject in
a course of study must be appraised in relation to
the ideal of education itself. Before we can say,
therefore, whether music has educational value,
the purpose of educational discipline must be stated.
In so doing we must necessarily be somewhat
dogmatic, for there is here no opportunity to support
our definition by argument. To meet the present
need, we premise that education is that mental
discipline and growth by which a man is prepared
to enter intelligently and sympathetically into the
most important forms of human thought and action,
and to attain for himself maximum efficiency in

230 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

some useful line of human endeavor. It is in the
light of some such comprehensive conception of
education as this that the educational value of music
must be considered and its value determined.

2. In seeking to get a clear idea of the practical
value of music as a method of educational discipline
it is natural, and it will be helpful to turn first to
that people whose educational maxim for centuries
was, " Gymnastics for the body, music for the mind."
And not only was this the maxim of Athens in the
days of her glory, but it was through following this
method of education that she attained to her exalted
place as the world's preceptress in so many branches
of learning and of art. It is true that with the
Greeks the term music included more than it does
with us to-day, but it is also true that no small part
of the training of their youth consisted in learning
to improvise upon the lyre a rhythmical and melodi
ous accompaniment to passages of Homer. The
teacher of music — music in this technical sense — had
his place with the teacher of reading. So even in
the restricted sense of the term, their "music" was
largely musical; that is, a training in rhythm and in
melody. We to-day have no training comparable
to their training in these two subjects.

As to the value which they attributed to this
kind of training there can be no question. Listen
to the words of Plato, who but expressed the current
belief of his time : ' ' We wrould not have our guardians
grow up amid images of moral deformity,, as in some
noxious /pasture, and there browse and feed upon
many a baneful herb and flower day by day, little
by little, until they silently gather a festering mass
of corruption in their soul. Let our artists rather

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 231

be those who are gifted to discern the true nature
of the beautiful and the graceful; then will our
youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights
and sounds, and receive the good in everything;
beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into
the eye and ear like a health-giving breeze from a
purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from
earliest youth into likeness and sympathy with the
beauty of reason." As to the best means to secure
this inward disposition of soul, he says: "Musical
training is a more potent instrument than any other,
because rhythm and harmony find their way into
the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily
fasten imparting grace and making the soul of him
who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is
ill-educated ungraceful. And also because he who
has received this true education of the inner being
will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in
art and nature and with a true taste, while he praises
and rejoices ever to receive into his soul the good,
and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame
and hate the bad now in the days of his youth,
even before he is able to know the reason why;
and when reason comes, he will recognize and salute
the friend with whom his education has made him
familiar."

Such was Greek education, not merely in theory,
but in actual and long -continued practice. In
what it resulted, history informs us; we still to-day
look back with wonder and admiration to see what
this people accomplished, not only in Art, in the Epic,
the Drama, in Sculpture, in Architecture, but in
other fields where mental acumen and trained powers

1 Republic, III.

232 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

of discrimination are essential. Whatever the causes
may be, the fact remains that during the Periclean
age and immediately following, there was in Athens
such a coterie of poets, sculptors, dramatists, orators,
philosophers, and statesmen, as the whole world
has not equalled at any one time since. And whether
or not the musical training which the Greek youth
as a rule received be the whole explanation, it is
true that just such a training in the power of dis
crimination is an essential factor in producing that
sensitiveness to fine shades of difference which is
demanded not only in art, but in all the higher forms
of mental activity. On the whole, therefore, I am
inclined to believe that their musical education goes
far to explain the remarkable intellectual genius
of this people.

Aristotle, also, with his more analytic mind,
similarly approves the importance given to musical
education.1 He goes further than Plato, and sug
gests definite reasons why music should be retained
as a factor in their educational procedure. In
brief, his argument can be summarized under three
heads : ( i ) Music should be cultivated as a desirable
form of pleasurable recreation; (2) as conducive
to mental development, and (3) for its effect upon
moral character. But we cannot accept unquestion-
ingly as advantageous for society to-day educational
practices which then may have been never so
beneficial. New social conditions, new industrial,
new ethical, new religious environment demand on
the part of the individual new adjustments, new
reactions. So while this musical training seems to
have been eminently adapted to the aesthetic and

1 Vid. Politics, Book VIII.

233

intellectual life of the Greeks, from that fact alone
there is but little assurance that, followed now, it
would result in like effects. We can properly do
no more than consider these facts as suggestions
worthy of consideration in the light of the changed
conditions of our modern environment. We shall
take these suggestions of Aristotle, therefore, and
see how far they can be adapted with helpfulness to
modern life.

3. There is no need, I fancy, to advance argument
to show that in order to obtain from the human
organism, either physically or mentally, the highest
results, both quantitatively and qualitatively, some
form of recreation is imperative. The demand is
one which has the sanction of law, both divine and
scientific, and is a fact of experimental knowledge
with all who have done intense or long-continued
labor, whether physical or mental. In modern life,
this demand has -become peculiarly urgent; our
social and industrial organizations have so modi
fied the activities of life that this need is greater
than ever before. In the days of simpler organiza
tion, the duties of life were different enough to
satisfy the demands for variation in the form of
activity for the day or the week. But to-day
excessive specialization has altered this condition
of labor. The highly organized condition of all
departments of human activity, educational, politi
cal, industrial, has divided society into two general
divisions. On the one hand, there are the few at
the head of great corporations and organizations
where the nerve strain of management and control
is intensified by the magnitude of the interests
represented; on the other hand, there is the great

234 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

mass of people condemned in their work to a life of
mental inanition because of the monotony and
routine required in their subordinate positions.
There are the few, of course, who will rise to more
responsible positions, or have other interests to
keep the mind from stagnation. But the great
masses cannot or will not; they will settle down in
their narrow sphere and become little more than a
part of the great machinery of life. And the
tragedy of it is, that the closer they approach to
this automatism, the better they are fitted to fulfil
their part. Such is the actual condition of thousands
upon thousands employed in our factories to-day.
This is a part of the price we must pay for progress.
With the few, great responsibility and nerve strain,
and with the many, lack of initiative and the in
spiration from control, and too often a monotony
in their work that blunts the sensibilities and the
emotions and atrophies the intellectual faculties.

In both cases recreation is demanded to prevent
disaster. In the one case, to take the mind com
pletely away from its cares and usual circle of
activity ; in the other, to stir the mind to life by some
thing different from the ceaseless hum of machinery
and from the deadening fatigue and monotony of
the same action, repeated week after week, year
after year. It is to break the monotony of such
lives, to give opportunity for fancy, stifled in the
grime of the shop, to play, and for the emotions,
weighted down with the cares of a sordid reality,
to rise, that we see our theaters filled by melodrama
or vaudeville and stand astounded at the sale of
indifferent fiction. It is not a question whether
or not the people will have recreation — that is a

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 235

psychological demand or protest that cannot be
smothered — but what shall be the nature of their
amusement. The conditions of life to-day, as they
did not in a simpler society, justify the demand for
radical recreation.

For this great, almost overpowering demand of
the masses for some form of relaxation and relief
from the tedium of their toil, music may become a
veritable godsend. Notice, if you will, how well
it meets the prime conditions of a good form of
recreation. First, a good recreation must call into
activity those mental faculties which, in the course
of one's vocation, are usually dormant. Second,
if it be more than a passing fad, it must be inherently
pleasurable. There is an undoubted, an ascertain-
able physiological effect in pleasure, a stimulus to
healthful metabolism, which is often more effica
cious than the services of the best physician. Then,
third, it must hold the mind so firmly that there is
no slipping back into the old grooves of thought.
It must have such inherent interest and power
that the mind is, as it were, compelled to follow in
these new lines of activity, leaving the fatigued
centres of the brain time to recuperate and recover
their vitality and power.

Music, it is needless to say, is eminently adapted
in all these respects to serve as an ideal form of
recreation, and to help counterbalance the emotional
lifelessness which present industrial conditions make
inevitable in so large a part of labor. Music, as
has been so often asserted, is a direct and a powerful
stimulus for the emotions and so, better than any
other art, can relieve the fatigue of the day and
arouse the mind from its listlessness and lassitude

236 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

to pleasurable and intense emotional reaction. In
such uses as this there is no need to discard the
sensuous qualities which give it power. Thus it
meets the first condition of a good form of recreation
in the fullest manner. Music is also inherently
pleasurable and so produces that beneficial effect
which results from the heightened feeling tone, and
also creates a taste for itself so that it may the more
readily become effective as a method of relaxation
and recreation.

It also claims the attention completely, so that
it in fact produces that mental condition requisite
for a literal re-creation of nervous force and energy.
In all these respects, therefore, it meets the demands
of a good form of recreation. If for no other reasons,
it has to-day sufficient value, upon this ground alone,
to justify its place as an important element in life,
and worthy of careful and widespread cultivation.

But however strong may be the claims of music
as a desirable form of recreation, education, it will
be insisted, should be for the business of life rather
than for the enjoyment of its leisure. Prepare
for the business and the people will look out for
amusement. Though this principle is plainly con
trary to all psychological law and to educational
theory, as well as to common sense, we are by no
means limited to this one means of justifying the
place of music in our educational practices. Music
has value, also, as we shall now attempt to show,
as a means of intellectual discipline as well as a
valuable means of recreation.

4. There is a popular impression that the value of
music as a means of intellectual discipline is so
small that it can safely be neglected; nay, more, it

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 237

is held that the cultivation of this art is positively
injurious to intellectual interests, that it leads to
such excessive emotionalism, that .the stability of
the judgment and of reason is seriously impaired.

The source of this misconception is now evident.
It lies in the failure to discriminate properly between
the two aspects of music which we have called the
"dramatic" and the "aesthetic." There is such
force, such dramatic impressiveness in the sensuous
attributes of music, that for the untutored, untrained
mind, they overshadow the less evident aesthetic
qualities. Consequently, there is a tendency on
the part of those not versed in the intricacies of
musical structure to overlook this aspect of the
subject and to regard the dramatic attributes as
the characteristic elements of music. The instinct
ive, quasi-reflex, response to the sensuous attributes
of musical sound is mistaken for genuine musical
appreciation, when in some respects they are no
more alike than the tingle of pain from a burn and
a scientific discussion of the molecular theory of
heat. In the one case the reaction is organic,
physiological, reflex, while in the other it is strictly
psychical, analytic, and discriminatingly intellectual.

Were these sensuous attributes all that there is to
music, there would be some justification for the
popular belief just referred to; there is little educa
tional value in simple reaction to instinctive forms
of stimuli. They are by nature fitted to accom
plish their purpose without the mediation of con
sciousness; this is what their instinctive nature
signifies. But there is to music, as our analysis
has plainly shown, another aspect, the possibilities
of which are not to be compassed bv any such

238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

simple, inattentive way. As a true form of art,
music rises above the plane of primitive emotions
and simple reaction to sense stimuli, to the realm
of the intellectual, and of the emotions in their very
purest forms. To get the thought element in music
of this latter type, to appreciate the beauty of form
and of formal relations, to apprehend the unity of a
composition, the unity of logical structure in the
midst of sensuous complexity, or to feel the proper
interpretation for the subtleties of harmony, all
of this opens up a new field for intellectual and
emotional activity of a very complex and intricate
kind. There is no dearth of opportunity here for
intellectual acumen, for logical analysis, and for all
the activities of aesthetic synthesis. Plainly, it is
in this direction that opportunities for real and
useful intellectual activity may be found.

In considering more specifically the value of music
as a form of intellectual discipline, attention is
called first to its possible utility as a means of ear-
training. In connection with the activity of each
sense there is necessarily a certain amount of
mental functioning involved, discrimination in
cipient or explicit, comparison and judgment, etc.
To develop these processes so that accuracy of ob
servation becomes a matter of habit, is no little
task nor an inconsequential form of mental attain
ment. The sense of hearing, next to the sense of
sight, offers the greatest opportunities for develop
ment of this sort, and is second in importance only
to the visual sense. Whatever mental discipline
there is to be gained in the perceptual process,
through the training of the sense to greater accuracy
and greater sensitiveness, can be gained as readily

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 239

by developing the sense of hearing as the sense of
sight. And is it not possible, aside from the practi
cal value of such training, that a greater refinement
of this sense might reveal beauties around us to
which most of us are habitually insensible ? While
nature is doubtless richer in her visual attributes
than in her auditory, there may still be something
of value even for the ear if it only be trained to hear
it. Why might there not be a poet of nature's
voices as well as painters of her visual phases?

But of greater practical value would be the sensi
tiveness to tonal inflection in spoken language
which such an ear-training would promote. As a
matter of fact, only a few are responsive to in
flection when it is heard, and only now and then do
we find one who to any degree utilizes the possibili
ties of his voice in this direction. An increased
susceptibility to the sound qualities of language
would not only increase the pleasurable effect, but
it would serve to promote the efficiency of spoken
language for all the purposes for which it exists.

The chief source of the intellectual value of
musical training, however, is to be found in con
nection with the more complex aesthetic attributes
which belong to music by virtue of the fact that it
is a true form of thought. To apprehend the unity
of a musical composition of any structural com
plexity, such as is found in almost all good music,
is an intellectual process of no trivial or insignifi
cant character. It is the perception of a mental
ideal in sensuous form, the interpretation of sense
symbolism in terms of the most abstract form of
thought. To pass judgment upon a composition
as to its originality or its strength demands the

240 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

highest degree of exact discrimination, of compari
son, and of mental synthesis. The appreciation
of gracefulness betokens a sensitiveness to fine
distinction of form and meaning which may prove
most beneficial, not only in art, but in mental pro
cesses both intellectual and moral. Whether or
not intellectual discipline is to be found in the
study of music, therefore, depends altogether upon
the manner and purpose of such study. It may be
merely a reflex response to instinctive elements, or
it may be a critical analytic study which will give
both acumen and balance to the intellect, and that
sensitiveness to fine shades of beauty in which we
as a nation with vigorous constitutions and indus
trial ideals are so noticeably lacking.

5. The third suggestion of Aristotle as to the
educational value of music, viz., that music has a
profound influence upon character, is worthy of
careful notice in this connection. Is it true, as the
Greeks believed, that music does in some subtle
way so influence the soul that it has value as a means
of developing character ? Under the Greek con
ception, where the good and the beautiftd were so
conjoined that they were almost identical, this
teaching is not hard to appreciate; but in terms of
our stricter discrimination between the moral and
the aesthetic, can music still be utilized for moral
training and moral development ?

Upon such an open question as this it is not strange
that opinions directly contradictory to one another
should be held and often expressed. At the one
extreme there is the belief, justified by many un
fortunate examples, that as a profession music is a
severe strain upon character and even inherently and

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 241

positively destructive of moral rectitude. On the
other hand, it has been believed from the time of
Aristotle until now that music and morality are not
inconsistent, but are mutually helpful. Philosophers
have not been slow to call attention to the fact that
elements of beauty are to be found in the moral ideal,
and elements of morality in the beautiful. In such
extreme positions, however, there is such a notice
able lack of scientific accuracy that they serve to
do little more than to call our attention to the fact
that there is here a problem worthy of the most
careful examination. In the first case, it is plainly
nothing more than an opinion founded upon in
dividual examples more than upon analysis; in
the second, the truth is so abstract that it needs
men philosophically disposed to appreciate it. The
problem is too comprehensive for an adequate dis
cussion here, though some suggestion following
from our analysis of music may prove helpful.

In what has been said concerning music as a form
of recreation, we have already called attention to
one way in which music may be utilized for the moral
uplift of society. Reforms never come by merely
execrating what is disapproved, but by offering a
substitute for the evil to be overcome. Especially
is this true in regard to amusements and forms of
recreation. All the maledictions of the just are
not so potent to remove evil and keep it removed
as the less exciting, more arduous labor of showing
people plainly the value of things that are wholesome.
Music has those attributes which adapt it to sup
plant many of the lower forms of amusement, and
to give a taste for those things wrhich are refined
and noble and beautiful. To do this would require

242 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

intelligent instruction and guidance, but there is no
form of wholesome recreation that could so easily
be introduced or could more readily serve as a means
of bringing to the great mass of the people the
pleasures and the benefits of true art ideas. If art
is a work of culture, it is worth while to cultivate
it among those who now know so little of its true
meaning or benefits. If art in general, or music in
particular, is a suitable subject to engage the thought
and energies of the higher stratum of society, it is
a suitable subject for cultivation by those whose
intellectual attainments are not their chief source
of self -congratulation.

In considering the moral aspect of music, some
attention must be given to the close relation music
holds to religious experience. So closely are music
and religion associated that it is hard to believe that
there is not some potent bond between music and
the moral life. Without music religion would lose
one-half its power, not because religion is less
strong, but because music has the peculiar power of
leading the mind to an attitude of prayer and
solemn praise. The church bell may call the people
to the outer courts of the temple, but it is the or
gan and song that purify the heart so that they may
pass into the inner court where those who worship,
worship in sincerity and in truth. So close is the
relation in modern thought between religion and
morality that in the light of these facts it is hard
to believe that music does not have also some pro
found though subtle influence over character.

The principle according to which the question of
the moral significance of music must be determined
has appeared in our discussion. There is in music

243

besides the intellectual element, which has only a
nominal relation to morality, a strong emotional
factor which may well be the very source and inspira
tion of much that is inherently and characteristically
moral. We neglect, therefore, the intellectual as
pects of music, though it is not altogether negligible,
that we may emphasize the more the point which
is most vital. We shall accept, then, as our work
ing principle the fact, that the moral value of music
is found in the direct and powerful effect which it
exerts upon the emotional consciousness. If experi
ence and reflection have shown that knowledge is
not virtue, or even a guarantee of moral earnestness,
psychological and sociological investigations have
emphasized the fact that in the emotions are the
springs of both moral and immoral action. It is in
this line of investigation, therefore, that the solution
of the riddle must be found.

'"'More than any other art, better than almost any
other mental stimulus, music, through the direct
and powerful factor of rhythm, and through the
inherited biological significance of sound, stimulates
the mind emotionally. In this fact lie both its
strength and its weakness; strength, because it can
play with a master hand over the whole gamut
of man's emotional life; weakness, because there
is about the emotions music awakens an indefinite-
ness that leaves them unattached, as it were, to
any conceptual thought or ideal of conduct. And
as Professor James has told us, pure emotionalism
tends to weaken character rather than to strengthen
it. It is just here that we find the difference in the
moral value of music and of the sermon in the
services of the church. Music stimulates the emo-

244 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

tions and brings the attitude of worship, but it
leaves the emotions unattached to ideals of action
or of conduct. The minister finds the heart, through
the services of music, receptive and aglow, but he
must take these emotions and connect them con
sciously with right actions, right thoughts, or they
will evanesce and the mind that felt them intensely,
it may be, will have received no permanent good.
Music can awaken the emotions, but it cannot
direct them or connect them with proper ideals of
ethical action.

Judged in the light of the relation between the
emotions and conduct, a just evaluation of the moral
value is not so difficult as it might otherwise appear.
Granted that the moral significance of music comes
through its emotional power, it remains only to
show the relation between the emotion music pro
duces and conduct. And this fortunately is not such
a very obscure psychological problem. We note
first certain fundamental differences between ethical
and aesthetical emotions.

The distinguishing marks of the ethical feelings
are found in their personal character and in the
authority they claim in all matters of conduct.
Their right to primacy is a part of their reality;
they do not advise, they do not dissuade, they regard
not desires or pleasure, but they summarily and
categorically dictate what ought to be done, what
must be done. Interpreted for our present pur
poses, this means that the motor element is a domi
nant one. It is a part of their true character to
actualize themselves in conduct. The ethical emo
tion of justice includes the command, "be thou
just;" the feeling of mercy enjoins us to be merciful.

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 245

In all the ethical emotions there is always the feel
ing of personal obligation to let the sentiment bear
fruit in deed.

The aesthetic emotions, on the other hand, are as
truly characterized by the lack as the ethical
emotions by the presence of this same personal and
obligatory element. One of the first characteristics
of the aesthetic experience is that we tend to project
ourselves into the work of art, to lose the feeling
of personal identity, as it were, by living intently
for the time the conception represented. Personal
self-consciousness dwindles and the artist's idea
looms large in consciousness. That is, for the
time we live vicariously in the conception of the
artist. In the same way the feeling of obligation,
the quintessence of the moral feeling, is hardly
present at all in the aesthetic emotions. There are
certain principles of art which are the criteria of
right judgment and good taste, but they are not
binding in the same uncompromising way as are
ethical laws. It is more a lack than a positive fault
if my judgments do not accord with them. The
obligation I am under to regard these principles of
good taste is nothing more than a conventional
ought, and lacks altogether the categorical impera
tiveness which Kant tells us is the essence of the
moral law.

Such being the case, it is evident that music, or
any other form of aesthetic culture, in itself will not
suffice as a system of ethical training; the emotions
engendered by such experience, though varied and
strong, are lacking in just that personal reference
which is the vital element in all ethical experience.
In order to develop moral force and stamina, the

246 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

volitional nature must receive a more direct, a more
heroic discipline than comes from the chance sug
gestion of the aesthetic sentiments. While the
musician must live in the realm of the emotions
largely, these emotions, being aesthetic rather than
ethical in character, have only a nominal value for
real moral discipline. Thus it is that we sometimes
find men whose education has been largely artistic,
whether musical or some other form there is little
difference, who through neglect of these other factors
are from the moral point of view ill-balanced and
unstable. But the source of the trouble is not witl
the education they have received, but with the part
that has been neglected.

We conclude, therefore, that music as a profession
is not inconsistent with a thoroughly moral character,
but that it alone is not sufficient for the proper train
ing of the will implied in character. The aesthetic emo
tions, though strong and inspiring, lack that personal
factor in the ethical sentiments which leads to their
application in conduct. The difficulty, therefore, is
not that art and morality are contradictory or in any
way inconsistent, but merely that in the emotional
life these two aspects fail to meet at the most
crucial point.

Thus far we have spoken only of the limitations of
music considered as a form of moral training; there
is, however, a more positive aspect of the problem
too important to be overlooked. Sometimes it is
true, and never more frequently than in moral train
ing, that what cannot be gained by a rigorous, logical
method can be accomplished by indirect methods and
without showing the iron hand that leads the way.

It is well to remember, therefore, that something

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 247

more than a rigorous training of the will, however
essential that may be, is required to raise virtue
from the austere sphere of law and duty to the
plane of a great enthusiasm, capable of enlisting the
sympathies and whole-hearted allegiance of the
developed man. What is required for the most
effective morality is not a constant, half -morbid
self-analysis of motives, but that the individual
shall lose himself, as it were, by becoming identified,
heart and soul, with some great purpose in life. And
high purposes, lofty ambitions, effective zeal, are
born of great hopes, great emotions. The day of
puritanic ideals, of constant self-denial, is past; the
day when conduct is to be determined more by
loyalty to some world-wide, altruistic purpose has
already dawned. Thus, the part of the emotions
in determining conduct is destined to be greater
than ever before. And music, through its great
emotional power, is peculiarly adapted to enlarge
the scope of man's mind, to reveal to man the un-
fathomed depth of his own spirit, to awaken long
ings for the infinitely perfect, to create in the heart
that divine harmony of mental equipoise which
may give birth to inspired ambitions and to pur
poses of the most gloriously unselfish character.

The ethical and the sesthetical ideals, notwith
standing their points of difference, are by no
means unrelated. In a very comprehensive, very
forceful way it can be readily shown that the
charm and attractiveness of the moral ideal is
to no small extent due to its aesthetic qualities.
The Good is beautiful in many profound respects.
The cultivation of the aesthetic sentiments, and
sensitiveness for the elements of beauty, will, as

248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

Plato said, serve to cultivate a taste for what is
wholesome and fair. Not only will music rightly
used enlarge the emotional nature, making possible
great enthusiasm and great ambition, but it will
also prove a safeguard from what is ignoble and
base. He who has a refined taste for the deeper
beauty of literature or painting or music, is cer
tainly not worse, but better prepared to be at
tracted by what is morally high and unselfish and
motived by right principles.

If it is recalled, it will be found to be the rule that
even the faults of our artistic fraternity are not the
worst in the category of crime or sin. The strong
emotionalism of such characters may lead to certain
excesses, to such an overstepping of the conventions
and customs of society that punishment must be
meted out ; but maliciousness and satanic heartless-
ness and hardness are not the ruling faults of men
of this profession. So exclusively scientific and in
tellectual have our educational ideals and practices
become, that we stand much in need of some sub
jects which will develop in its finer reactions the
emotional side of human nature. Music properly
used is eminently adapted to fill such a place in our
educational practice.

6. But the question now arises, are we in our
current use of music utilizing it to the best ad
vantage? Music, in our system of schools, is being
taught, on the whole, efficiently; is not this training
adapted, and adequate to meet all the requirements
of the best educational interests ?

There are two principal reasons why this train
ing as now given in our schools is not entirely ade
quate to meet the demand we have the right to

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 249

expect from the place it holds in our educational
practice.

In the first place, the training there given is for the
most part, if not entirely, vocal; and while this is
important, it will not serve to open up to the pupils
the best treasures of modern music. I doubt
whether the training in reading music, such as is
given in our schools, will go very far toward making
the pupils appreciative listeners to music of the
better class. It is all essential, but not adequate.

Then, again, and this is by far the weightier reason,
there is such a profound difference between a capacity
to sing or to play correctly, and a refined and appre
ciative musical taste, that something should be done
to insure the latter as well as to cultivate the former.
We are not so inconsistent, fortunately, in regard
to literature. We do not believe that the ability
to read intelligently will give a taste for Shakespeare,
or Browning, or Tennyson, when the more exciting
forms of story and novel are at the hand of the
pupil. We have learned that the only way to cul
tivate a taste for good literature is to study the
masterpieces and to become acquainted with their
richness of thought and beauties of expression.
Taste for an author is developed only by studying
his works, and for good literature only by becoming
acquainted with it. The teaching of music in our
schools must necessarily be of the rudiments and
without sufficient time to lead up through technical
knowledge to a correct taste for the highest and best
in music. This may be possible in musical schools
and conservatories, but manifestly not in the public
schools. Consequently, the question arises whether
something more directly in the line of cultivating

250 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

a good taste might not be undertaken with profit ?
The importance of good taste here is hard to over
emphasize. As compared with technical skill or
knowledge, it should be much the more strongly
insisted upon. Skill may be employed on what is
idle and useless as well as upon what is beautiful
and helpful. But once good taste is acquired, we
have introduced an ever-potent, uplifting influence,
which will not only point to the upward road, but
will lead toward what is refined and noble, and so
elevating both morally and intellectually. Taste
in the aesthetic world is what character is in the
moral world, a settled principle of choice, a habitual
and proper method of responding to stimuli. What
is needed, therefore, if we are to derive the best
returns from musical education, is that there be
some general attempt to raise the standard of
musical taste so that there will be a wider appre
ciation of music of this higher sort.

An objection likely to be raised by musicians to
any such plan as this is that there is no other way
to musical appreciation than the road through
technical musical 'knowledge. While we grant the
value of such knowledge, and are only restrained
from urging this as the proper gateway to musical
appreciation by the many demands made upon
our time and energy by an ever-increasing course
of study, we still contend that there is a shorter road
that will greatly increase our appreciative knowledge
of music, though it may be entirely inadequate for
a critical knowledge. Not every one who enjoys
Shakespeare on the stage is fitted to be a dramatic
critic; nor is the average reader of poetry, he who
reads it for the pure pleasure it brings, always

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF MUSIC 251

capable of stating explicitly just the source of the
pleasure he finds. On the whole, it is an open
question just how far an exact, critical knowledge
of an art stands in direct proportion to the pleasure
it gives. And the advantages we are interested to
secure are those which come partly through enjoy
ment — an appreciative enjoyment — not through a
critical knowledge of art.

Let us, then, accept as the practical method of
securing these benefits the method used in securing
like results in literature, the only other art seriously
studied in the schools. The way to cultivate a taste
for good music is to hear it, to have it explained so
as to be able to recognize the various elements intro
duced, their nature and their use. Can this be done,
you ask, except through a musical education ? We
believe that it can, and shall conclude our discussion
by offering a suggestion for a simple, easy, economical
method of securing these eminently desirable results.

Let the pupils of our secondary schools and the
students in our higher institutions of learning have
an hour once a week, or even once in two weeks,
devoted to music in this practical way, and I am
sure the results would more than justify the expense
in time and money. Let them hear good music and
have its structural and aesthetic attributes pointed
out to them, as attention is called to the elements
of beauty in a work of literature, and they will
learn to appreciate good music as they learn to
appreciate good literature. Let them hear it in
properly graded series, not once or twice, but often
enough to get acquainted with it to recognize the
more obvious characteristics, and a taste for what is
artistic and what is valuable can be formed. A few

252 THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

hundred dollars a year would provide a teacher in
this new work, for only the hour would be required,
and the other work of the school would not lose
but gain from a period devoted to the cultivation of
a taste for what is in the best sense beautiful.
Thus might the benefits now confined to the chosen
few be made the common possession of thousands,
to whom the true beauty of music is now a riddle
they cannot solve, a mystery they cannot understand.

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Full text of "The philosophy of music; a comparative investigation into the principles of musical aesthetics"

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