So far as I can see, this is the least stable of the arts. From the
earliest records we learn that there were musicians, and people seem to
have been just as fond of music as we are ourselves, but, whereas we find
the old sculpture, painting (what there is of it) and literature to have
been in all essentials like our own, and not only this but whereas we
find them essentially the same in existing nations in Europe, Asia,
Africa and America, this is not so as regards music either looking to
antiquity or to the various existing nations. I believe we should find
old Greek and Roman music as hideous as we do Persian and Japanese, or as
Persians and Japanese find our own.
I believe therefore that the charm of music rests on a more unreasoning
basis, and is more dependent on what we are accustomed to, than the
pleasure given by the other arts. We now find all the ecclesiastical
modes, except the Ionian and the Æolian, unsatisfactory, indeed almost
intolerable, but I question whether, if we were as much in the habit of
using the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixo-Lydian modes as we are of
using the later Æolian mode (the minor scale), we should not find these
just as satisfactory. Is it not possible that our indisputable
preference for the Ionian mode (the major scale) is simply the result of
its being the one to which we are most accustomed? If another mode were
to become habitual, might not this scale or mode become first a kind of
supplementary moon-like mode (as the Æolian now is) and finally might it
not become intolerable to us? Happily it will last my time as it is.