Scan 27
Musical Courier 1893-05-17: Vol 26 Iss 689, 1893
48 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026. Printed page 28. See the scan on archive.org.
1ance. Something of this imagined change we can trace in ourselves as we leave the centres of civilization for the solitude of nature. In the town, in our home, objects of vision fill our thoughts and monopolize our attention; in the forest or on the seashore we listen as much as we look.
3May we not suppose that primeval man was at least as much occupied with his ears as with his eyes; that the things he heard impressed him at least as much as the things he saw? Does it not seem probable that the age in which appeared the first rude beginnings of language must have been an age in which sounds impressed man more than sights? True, there is little enough in our present languages to remind us of this earlier stage; but the ascendency of vision which has modified everything else has modified language not more nor less. Even music, that unique art, that solitary protest against the tyranny of the eye, is gradually yielding to the same irresistible influence. She has begun to find that she lacks "meaning," that she must needs tell a story, that therefore her composers must write "program music" and label each movement with an explanation, unless indeed as one composer suggests, she should cease to utter any sound at all except as an adjunct to the spoken word.
5If this suggestion should ever be justified by the event, and music as a separate art should cease to exist, it will only be the last step in a process which has been going on for ages—the gradual subordination of sounds to sights.
7There are moments in the life of every man when he is reminded of the world of sound which might have been his universe if sights were not. These moments are rare; rare even in youth, and much rarer when the age of first impressions has passed. Probably musically minded persons will object to this statement. They are under the belief that such an experience occurs to them every time they listen to a symphony of Beethoven or a mazourka of Chopin.
9But it may be permitted to one who has been all his life profoundly impressed by music to say that in his experience the moments of real transference to the realm of sound have been such as may readily be numbered, and their occurrence has been in connection with the simpler rather than with the more complicated forms. Three or four such occasions of real absorption stand out in memory from a long musical experience. Perhaps a little consideration of them may help to throw some light on that obscure subject, about which volumes have been written in vain, the true sources of emotional power of music.
11The first was an impression derived in early youth from the choral practice in Lincoln Cathedral heard at a distance while standing in the darkened nave. The second was the effect of the chromatic progression of the tenor and bass parts on the words confoveri gloria in the "Inflammatus" of Rossini's "Stabat Mater;" this also was heard at a distance while standing in a dark corridor during a choral rehearsal. The third was an impression repeated on several occasions, but in circumstances of such close similarity that they may be regarded as one occasion; it was the impression produced by distant church bells in the evening.
13Other momentary impressions there may have been in later life, recalling in arresting power these recollections of youth. Sometimes the first clear note of a trumpet, the crescendo of the Leeds chorus in some movement of Bach, the overture to "Tannhäuser" at a Richter concert, may have seemed for the moment to take possession of the whole mind; but in these later experiences there is nothing absolutely novel; they come as reminiscences of impressions which have been felt before. It is not in these, but in the earlier and simpler instances, that general principles of musical effect must be sought, if they are to be discovered at all.
15No doubt both the musical enthusiast and the professor of aesthetics will scoff at the idea that the sources of pleasure in music are to be traced in such simple instances. But both the enthusiast and the professor are apt to misapprehend the real nature of their problem. They waste their time in discussing the beautiful in art, whereas they ought to be discussing the sensitive in human nature.
17We do not desire to understand why a particular product of art is call beautiful, but we do wish to understand why certain sounds make us still and silent, and why certain other sounds stir us with the feeling that we too could do something great. The late Mr. Gurney wrote a ponderous volume on the "Power of Sound" without once in his six hundred pages coming within sight of the real problem. He conceived that the power of sound was to be made clear by talking about music; if he had tried to arrive at the power of music by talking about sounds he would doubtless have written less, but it would have been more to the purpose. The fact is that nine-tenths of the interest which musical people take in the performance of a symphony or a sonata is an intellectual interest in an intellectual product, and has, strictly speaking, nothing to do with the power of sound at all, any more than the scholar's interest in the text of a classic has to do with the power of poetic thought.
19It is in the remaining tenth, in the purely emotional excitement raised by certain sounds, that the mystery of musical enchantment is to be sought. If therefore we would ever learn anything of the power of music over us, we must go down to the deep lying primal simplicities. We must disentangle and cast aside every element of interest which seems to depend on associations of time, or place, or story; on circumstances of refinement or civilization; on suggestions of artistic skill, whether creative or interpretative; and we must fix our attention on the elements that were present in the old world sounds to which man listened before he had invented any sounding instruments for himself. The source of those impressions which are now produced upon us by artificial combinations of sound must be traced, if it can be traced at all, in the feelings with which the savage listened to the sound of the winds and waves, to the cries of beasts, and to the voices of his own kind.
21Now in all the three instances above quoted there does appear to be one simple impression which is traceable also in the sounds of nature, and which may be called the element of vastness. In two cases there was a direct suggestion of distance; in the third case, that of the chimes, the same effect was suggested indirectly by the alternation in volume due to the passing wind. The emotion thus aroused may be compared with that which we sometimes experience when contemplating the depths of visible space or the records of remote times, but neither sight nor touch, nor mental calculation, can turn the idea of dimension into a vivid impression of vastness so readily as can the sense of hearing. When we see an express train approaching, the gradual increase in size assures us of the distance through which it is moving, but it is the crescendo of sound that impresses us with the vastness of the changes taking place.
23So the faintness of a sound which we know to be loud gives us a sense of remoteness much more impressive than any we derive from the diminution in size of visible objects. In the alternation of sound, now near, now far, as the wind carries it, and in its imitation, the crescendo and diminuendo of artificial music, we get an impression which is unique in its suggestion of vastness. It can be likened only to the effect of those Eastern drugs whose fumes confuse the sense of proportion, lengthening out the moments into ages, and multiplying finite impressions in an expanding series. Probably no thoughtful person has ever listened to the sound of distant bells without having his standpoint in nature insensibly altered. He is no longer the child of the moment, but has become heir of past infinites and forerunner of the ages; he stands on a point of time midway between the Laurentian and the final dissolution, on a point of space midway between Auriga and the Southern Cross.
25Perhaps he might not so define his impressions to himself in words, because their exact nature would naturally take some special coloring from his own past experience; but they would all partake of vastness or remoteness, whether of space or time, of actuality or vision. To some the suggestion may be of the solitudes of a geologic past, to others of a past that may be counted by years; some will recall the wastes of ocean, others the depths of interstellar space; some will be reminded of the widest guesses of science, others of the deepest mysteries of theology. Whatever in past mental life has called up the feeling of vastness is apt to recur to the listener as he hears the sound of the rising and falling chimes.
27Music is full of devices which imitate the rise and fall of sounds borne upon the wind. The alternation of pp and ff is an extreme case of the kind; but the same effect is produced by many more legitimate methods—by the pianissimo of a large orchestra or chorus, by the harmonics of the violin. Sometimes (it is a favorite device of Beethoven's) the rush and hurry of a forte passage is arrested by a soft phrase in another key.
29No one who listens attentively to one of these passages can fail to notice that the distinctive emotional effect is that of vastness. It might be paralleled if in an instant we could trace the sunbeam which blinds us here playing with mild radiance on the vapors of Neptune; it is paralleled when we listen at night to the wintry wind in the tree tops. The musician in his most inspired moments produces on us the emotional effect which nature achieves with her storms and calms; nor could he desire to do more.
31The savage was probably impressed less by the element of vastness than by another factor of the power of sound, which may be called the element of unknown danger. This is an effect which we experience only occasionally, as when we are alone in a storm at night, or when our attention is arrested either by a sound entirely strange to us or by one of unprecedented violence.
33Rare though these occasions are they are impressive, and we can readily recall the emotions they excited. We can remember the suspended breath, the fixed jaws, the attention concentrated on the impending moment. In times when much of man's life was spent in loneliness, the strange sounds of the forest or the strand must have entered deep into his experience, and every strange sound must have been felt as a presage of danger. The world of sights is too much with us now, and the habit of listening too much outgrown to allow of our attending to the sounds which might otherwise impress us. But when we are compelled to listen, as in darkness, in solitude, or upon occasions when we are rendered helpless, we are still able to realize that the vague apprehension conveyed by unfamiliar sounds is the most powerful emotion to which we are accessible.
35We may see proofs of this in the terrors which strange noises waken in childhood; and, if nature has so gifted us, we may recall some pale reflection of the feeling as we hear the first piece of modern music in which we are able to absorb ourselves. For the prime element in musical impressiveness is this same power of exciting an expectation as a something impending, a vague apprehension which at times in the young and susceptible is accompanied by the physical signs with which we attend the progress of some perilous adventure. It is an effect which the musician has it in his power to attain by many ways, by a fortissimo, by abrupt transitions, by unusual progressions. Every approach to a climax has in it the suggestion of something impending; and when we are listening to the coda of an overture we are really experiencing, in greater or lesser degree, the same kind of emotion as that with which we watch a lifeboat struggling through the surf or a fireman crossing the burning rafters. Perhaps the nearest possible parallel to the musical enthusiast absorbed in Schumann or Chopin is to be found in the gaping crowd watching a performer on the high trapeze. The comparison may appear more complimentary to the latter than to the former, but as a fact it is just to both. It must be added, however, that this kind of musical excitement belongs more especially to the younger listener.
37There is an age at which our attitude to music alters, and after which we become critical and listen as to an echo of that which we heard in our youth. The intellectual elements retain their interest; we may recognize the greatness of the workmanship even more fully; but if we are perfectly candid we must admit to ourselves that the work no longer produces the same effect on us. While we talk of the work of a great master as being ever fresh, we are secretly sensible of the fact that it is no longer fresh to us. After the second or third hearing no piece of music is ever the same to us again. In a great and complex work we may still for some time continue to discover the unexpected, but by the time we know it thoroughly it has become but an echo of its former self, and we greet it with the faint smile with which we linger over the photographs that remind us of the holidays of past years.
39With equal truth it may be said that the music of one generation does not produce quite the same effect on the next. When the prayer from Rossini's "Mosé" was first performed in Naples women fainted and men trembled. There is very little excitement to be got out of the prayer from "Mosé" in the present day; and perhaps fifty years hence even the overture to "Tannhäuser" will be dry and cold. But this only shows how much of musical impressiveness depends on this element of vague apprehension. Each generation, tired of the outworn devices which furnished its predecessor with excitement, demands newer and stranger effects to stimulate its emotions. As the devices of the classicist grow pale the listening public demands a romantic school with new forms and strange progressions. The romantic school would, if some hearers had their way, be succeeded in turn by a chaotic school, and in the race for new sensations all vestige of artistic form would disappear.
41But fortunately for the permanence of musical art there is another element of prime importance in the power of sound. Man is not only a listening animal, he is also himself vocal; and the human larynx furnishes the means of investing artificial sounds with the semblance of human passion.
43He who listens for the first time to persons conversing in an unknown tongue experiences a new sensation. At first he misreads the nature of his discovery and infers that the speakers are in the heat of passion; but he presently finds that he is simply listening to the cadence of human utterance which is going on all the time around him, unnoticed, so long as the attention is directed to the meaning of the spoken word, but now brought into prominence by the fact that it is the only thing to which the attention can be directed. Much as the cadence of speech has been subdued by civilization, there is still sufficient left to make itself felt in the mouth of a great actor or a great orator; and it is not difficult to imagine a time when our ancestors talked as our little children sometimes do now in an approach to recitative.
45Upon this cadence of speech depends the emotional effect not of song merely, but of all intervals and progressions of artificial sounds. Many melodic devices are direct copies of human utterance; many more are indirectly suggestive of different peculiarities of intonation under special modes of emotion. A portamento ascent to a higher pitch on the violin is a direct copy of human cadence, when the passion of resistance is roused and the speaker is compelled to assert himself. A chromatic progression, even on a keyed instrument, suggests to us the cadence of speech under rising intensity of excitement. A passage in syncopation affects us as an echo of human utterance struggling under contending emotions.
47In fact every "voice," whether of the solo instrument or in the orchestra, is constantly employing successions of sounds which are inseparably associated with the movement of human passions. For when the voice had once as-
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