The _Impasse_ of Musical Theory
Will twenty chapters render plain
Those lonely lights that still remain
Just breaking over land and main?
For fairly obvious reasons the psychology of Music is often regarded
as more backward than that of the other arts, and the _impasse_
which has here been reached more baffling and more exasperating.
But such advance as has been possible in the theory of the other
arts has been mainly concerned with them as representational
or as serviceable. For poetry, for painting, for architecture
there still remain problems as perplexing as any which can be
raised about music. For example, what is the difference between
good and bad blank verse in its formal aspect, between delightful
and distressing alliteration, between euphony and cacophony,
between metrical triumph and metrical failure? Or in the case
of Painting, why do certain forms excite such marked responses
of emotion and attitude and others, so very like them geometrically,
excite none or produce merely confusion? Why have colours their
specific responses and how is it that their combinations have
such subtle and yet definite effects? Or what is the reason that
spaces and volumes in Architecture affect us as they do? These
questions are at present as much without answers as any that
we can raise about Music; but the fact that in these arts other
questions arise which can in part be answered, whereas in Music
questions about the effects of form overwhelmingly preponderate,
has in part obscured the situation.
Other effects are of course also involved; in programme music
something analogous to representation in painting; in opera and
much other music, dramatic action; and so forth. But these effects,
although often contributing to the total value, are plainly subordinate
in music to its more direct influence as sound alone. The difficulties
which they raise have such close analogies in painting and poetry
that a separate discussion may be omitted. The problem of ‘pure
form’ arises, however, with peculiar insistence in music.
More than forty years ago Gurney summed up the state of musical
theory as follows: “When we come to actual forms, and to the
startling differences of merit which the very simplest known
to us present, the musical faculty defies all explanation of
its action and its judgements. The only conceivable explanation
indeed would be an analogy, and we know not where to look for
it[55]”. And the work done since has added remarkably little.
As he so admirably insisted, even though we confine ourselves
to the responses of one individual, all general explanations
of the musical effect apply equally to the ineffective, to the
distressing and the delightful, to the admirable and the atrocious
alike. But the same is true of all attempts to explain the effects
upon us of any forms which neither represent something nor are
in obvious ways serviceable. Whether they are forms seen or heard,
whether they are made up of notes or of movements, of intervals
of time or of images of speech, the same is true of them all.
Whatever effects cannot be traced to some practical use we might
make of them (as we use a plate to eat from or a house to live
in), or to some interference with or threat against the ways
in which we might act, or to some object practically interesting
to us, which they represent—all such effects are necessarily
very difficult to explain.
There is nothing in the least mysterious, however, about the
difficulty of explaining them. The facts required happen to be
beyond our present powers of observation. They belong to a branch
of psychology for which we have as yet no methods of investigation.
It seems likely that we shall have to wait a long while, and
that very great advances must first be made in neurology before
these problems can profitably be attacked. But however regrettable
this may be, there is no justification whatever for the invention
of unique faculties and ultimate, analysable, indefinable entities.
To say that a thing is unanalysable may be to assert either that
it is simple or that we do not know yet how to analyse it. Musical
effects, like the effects of forms in general, are inexplicable
in the second sense only. To pretend that they are inexplicable
in the first sense is mere mystery-mongering. To take two parallel
cases, trade booms and fine weather were until recently inexplicable,
and are doubtless still in many respects difficult to account
for. But no one would pretend that these blessings require us
to assume unique _sui generis_ tendencies in economic or
meteorological affairs.
But the practice of describing the ‘musical faculty’ and the
formal effects of the arts in general as _sui generis_ has
another cause in addition to intellectual bewilderment. Many
people think that to say that a mental activity is unique, or
_sui generis_, in some way gives it a more exalted standing
than if it were recognised as merely too complicated or too inaccessible
to experiment to be at present explained. In part this is a relic
of the old opinion that explanation is itself derogatory, an
opinion which only those who are, in this respect, uneducated,
still entertain. Partly also this preference for ‘unique’ things
is due to confusion with the sense in which St Paul’s may be
said to be unique. But the experience of ‘seeing stars’ after
a bang on the nose is just as ‘unique’ as any act of musical
appreciation and shares any exalted quality which such uniqueness
may be supposed to confer.
Every element in a form, whether it be a musical form or any other,
is capable of exciting a very intricate and widespread response.
Usually the response is of a minimal order and escapes introspection.
Thus a single note or a uniform colour has for most people hardly any
observable effect beyond its sensory characteristics. When it occurs
along with other elements the form which they together make up may have
striking consequences in emotion and attitude. If we regard this as an
affair of mere summation of effects it may seem impossible that the
effect of the form can be the result of the effects of the elements,
and thus it is natural and easy to invent ultimate properties of
‘forms’ by way of pseudo-explanation. But a little more psychological
insight makes these inventions appear quite unnecessary. The effects
of happenings in the mind rarely add themselves up. Our more intense
experiences are not built up of less intense experiences as a wall is
built up of bricks. The metaphor of addition is utterly misleading.
That of the resolution of forces would be better, but even this does
not adequately represent the behaviour of the mind. The separate
responses which each element in isolation would tend to excite are so
connected with one another that their combination is, for our present
knowledge, incalculable in its effects. Two stimuli which, when
separated by one interval of time or space, would merely cancel one
another, with another interval produce an effect which is far beyond
anything which either alone could produce. And the combined response
when they are suitably arranged may be of quite another kind than that
of either. We may, if we like, think of the effects of impulses at
various intervals of time upon a pendulum, but this metaphor is, as
we have suggested, insufficient. It is over simple. The intricacies
of chemical reactions come nearer to being what we need. The great
quantities of latent energy which may be released by quite slight
changes in conditions suggest better what happens when stimuli are
combined. But even this metaphor incompletely represents the complexity
of the interactions in the nervous system. It is only by conjecture
that its working can as yet be divined. What is certain is chat it is
the most complex and the most sensitive thing of which we know.
The unpredicable and miraculous differences, then, in the total
responses which slight changes in the arrangement of stimuli
produce, can be fully accounted for in terms of the sensitiveness
of the nervous system; and the mysteries of ‘forms’ are merely
a consequence of our present ignorance of the detail of its action.
We have spoken above of the ‘elements’ of a form, but in fact
we do not yet know which these are. Any musical sound, for example,
is plainly complex, though how complex it is from the point of
view of its musical effects is still very uncertain. It has pitch,
it has _timbre_, the characters which change as it is played
upon one kind of instrument or another, the characters which
are sometimes called its colour. Its effects also vary with its
loudness and with its volume. It may be far more complex still.
Its relations again to other musical sounds may be of at least
three kinds: pitch relations, harmonic relations and temporal
relations, complicated, all of them, in the utmost degree by
Rhythm. Possibly other relations still are involved. There would
be no advantage here in entering into the detail of the analysis
of these qualities and relations. The one point of importance
for our present purpose is the immense scope for the resolution,
interinanimation, conflict and equilibrium of impulses opened
up by this extraordinary complexity of musical sounds and of
their possible arrangement. It is not in the least surprising
that so few invariable correspondences between stimuli and total
responses have as yet been discovered.
The same state of affairs recurs wherever forms by themselves,
dissociated from all practical uses and from all representation
produce immediate effects upon the mind. In painting, in sculpture,
in architecture and in poetry, we need equally to be on our guard
against those who would attribute peculiar, unique and mystic
virtues to forms in themselves. In every case their effect is
due to the interplay (not the addition) of the effects which
their elements excite. Especially we do well to beware of empty
speculations upon ‘necessary and inevitable relations’ as the
source of the effect. Of course in a given case a certain relation,
a certain arrangement, may be necessary, in the sense that the
elements if differently disposed would have a quite different
combined effect. But this is not the sense in which necessity
is usually claimed. It is necessity, in the metaphysical sense,
some here utterly obscure kind of ‘logical necessity’ which is
the favourite toy of a number of art critics. To those who have
some familiarity both with Logic and with Psychology the regular
appearance of the term ‘logical’ in describing these relations
is the clearest indication that nothing definite or adequately
considered is being said. The fact that, given certain elements
arranged in a certain way, a certain further element can usually
be introduced in one way and one way only _if a certain total
effect is to be produced_, does, it is true, give a certain
‘inevitability’ to the artist’s work. But what the effect is
and whether the effect is worth while have still to be considered,
and this inevitability has nothing to do with _a priori_
rightness and is a matter simply of cause and effect. The salt
required to make a soup palatable is ‘logically necessitated’
in this sense as much as any relation in a picture. The value
lies not in the apprehension, conscious or subconscious, of the
rightness of the relations, but in the total mental effect which,
since they are right (i.e. since they work), they produce.
[55] _The Power of Sound_, p. 176.