history and modern biography. Is it only among the ancient and
primitive people, and among the musically uneducated, that the divine
art exerts an emotional influence? St. Jerome evidently did not think
so. He believed, at any rate, that music can exert a _demoralizing_
influence, and he taught that Christian maidens should know nothing of
the lyre and the flute. The eminent divine was guided in this matter
by the same process of illogical reasoning of which, later, the
Puritans were guilty when they banished music from the churches. In
view of the fact that music was used to heighten the charms of wanton
Roman festivities or Pagan rites, St. Jerome condemned the art itself,
ignorant of the fact that music can never be immoral in itself, but
only through evil associations. St. Augustine took a different view of
music from St. Jerome. When he first heard the Christian chant at
Milan he exclaimed: "Oh, my God! When the sweet voice of the
congregation broke upon mine ear, how I wept over Thy hymns of praise.
The sound poured into mine ears and Thy truth entered my heart. Then
glowed within me the spirit of devotion; tears poured forth, and I
rejoiced." Here we have an illustration of how music intensifies and
exalts the emotions of educated men. St. Augustine's devotion "glowed
within him" when he heard the music. It is for this power that the
church has always employed music as a hand-maid; and those
ecclesiastics who would to-day banish it arbitrarily from the church,
know not what a valuable ally they are blindly repulsing in these
days of religious scepticism. As Mr. Gladstone very recently remarked:
"Ever since the time of St. Augustine, I might perhaps say of St.
Paul, the power of music in assisting Christian devotion has been upon
record, and great schools of Christian musicians have attested and
confirmed the union of the art with worship."
But the greatest musical enthusiast in the ranks of mediæval churchmen
was Martin Luther. To judge by the extraordinary influence which music
had on him, Luther must doubtless be classed among the lowest of
savages, if Dr. Hanslick is right in saying that it is on savages that
music exerts its greatest influence. He wrote a special treatise on
music, in which he placed it next to theology. "Besides theology," he
wrote in a letter to the musician Senfel, "music is the only art
capable of affording peace and joy of the heart like that induced by
the study of the science of divinity. The proof of this is that the
devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles,
flees before the sound of music almost as much as he does before the
Word of God. This is why the prophets preferred music before all the
other arts ... proclaiming the Word in psalms and hymns.... My heart,
which is full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by
music when sick and weary."
Luther had a good voice and a knowledge of musical composition. He
played the flute and the lute, and in church he introduced
congregational singing, in which the people took an active part in
worship by means of the chorales. It is related that, as a child, he
used to sing with other boys in the street in winter, for his daily
bread, and that on one occasion, Frau Cotta frantically rushed from
her house on hearing his pleading tones, took him in, and gave him a
warm meal. Later in life, when he was an Augustine monk, he often
chased away his melancholy and temptations by playing on his lute, and
the story goes that "one day, after a self-inflicted chastisement, he
was found in a fainting condition in his cell, and that his cloistered
brethren recalled him to consciousness by soft music, well knowing
that music was the balsam for all wounds of the troubled mind of their
'dear Martinus.'"
Coming to more recent times, we find that some of the greatest
composers and other men of genius were "savages," judged by Dr.
Hanslick's standard.
When Congreve wrote that "music hath charms to soothe the savage
breast," did he not mean to imply that educated people are not
affected by it? Take the case, for instance, of that old barbarian,
Joseph Haydn, and note how he was affected by the "Creation" when he
heard it sung. "One moment," he said to Griesinger, "I was as cold as
ice, and the next I seemed on fire, and more than once I feared I
should have a stroke." Another "savage," Cherubini, when he heard a
Haydn symphony for the first time, was so greatly excited by it that
it forcibly moved him from his seat. "He trembled all over, his eyes
grew dim, and this condition continued long after the symphony was
ended. Then came the reaction. His eyes filled with tears, and from
that instant the direction of his work was decided." (Nohl.)
Similar incidents might be quoted from the biographies of almost all
the great composers. Berlioz, in his essay on Music, after referring
to the story of Alexander the Great, who fell into a delirium at the
accents of Timotheus, and the story of the Danish King Eric, "whom
certain songs made so furious that he killed some of his best
servants," dwells on the inconsistency of Rousseau, who, while
ridiculing the accounts of the wonders worked by ancient music,
nevertheless, "seems in other places to give them enough credence to
place that ancient art, which we hardly know at all, and which he
himself knew no better than the rest of us, far above the art of our
own day." For himself, Berlioz believed that the power of modern music
is of at least equal value with the doubtful anecdotes of ancient
historians. "How often," he says, "have we not seen hearers agitated
by terrible spasms, weep and laugh at once, and manifest all the
symptoms of delirium and fever, while listening to the masterpieces of
our great masters." He relates the case of a young Provençal musician,
who blew out his brains at the door of the Opéra after a second
hearing of Spontini's "Vestale," having previously explained in a
letter, that after this ecstatic enjoyment, he did not care to remain
in this prosaic world; and the case of the famous singer Malibran,
who, on hearing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the first time, at the
Conservatoire, "was seized with such convulsions that she had to be
carried out of the hall." "We have in such cases," Berlioz continues,
"seen time and again, serious men obliged to leave the room to hide
the violence of their emotions from the public gaze." As for those
feelings which Berlioz owed personally to music, he affirms that
nothing in the world can give an exact idea of them to those who have
not experienced them. Not to mention the moral affections that the art
developed in him, and only to cite the impressions received at the
moment of the performance of works he admired, this is what he says he
can affirm in all truthfulness: "While hearing certain pieces of
music, my vital forces seem at first to be doubled; I feel a delicious
pleasure, in which reason has no part; the habit of analysis itself
then gives rise to admiration; the emotion, growing in the direct
ratio of the energy and grandeur of the composer's ideas, soon
produces a strange agitation in the circulation of the blood; my
arteries pulsate violently; tears, which usually announce the end of
the paroxysm, often indicate only a progressive stage which is to
become much more intense. In this case there follow spasmodic
contractions of the muscles, trembling in all the limbs, a total
numbness in the feet and hands, partial paralysis of the optic and
auditory nerves. I can no longer see, I can hardly hear: vertigo ...
almost swooning...." Such was the effect of music on Berlioz.
As in a matter of this sort personal testimony is of more value than
anything else, I may perhaps be permitted to refer to some of my own
experiences. I have often been in the state of mind and body so
vividly described by Berlioz, except as regards the numbness of the
extremities and the partial paralysis of the sensory nerves. Hundreds
of times I have enjoyed that harmless æsthetic intoxication which I
believe to be more delicious to the initiated than the sweet delights
of an opium eater--a musical intoxication which does not only fill the
brain with floods of voluptuous delight, but sends thrills down the
spinal column and to the very finger-tips, like so many electric
shocks. As a boy, every experience of this sort fired my imagination
with ambition, and led to all sorts of noble resolutions, some of
which, at any rate, were carried into execution. The deepest
impression ever made on me by any work of art was at Munich, ten years
ago, when I heard for the first time Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde,"
which I was already familiar with through the pianoforte score. The
performance began at six o'clock, and I had had nothing to eat since
noon. It lasted till eleven o'clock, and one might imagine that, after
all this emotional excitement, I must have been ravenously hungry. So
I was; but without the slightest affectation, I was horrified at the
mere thought of indulging in such a coarse act as eating after
enjoying such ravishing music. So I hurried back to the hotel, eager
to get into my room and indulge in a long fit of weeping; and not a
wink did I sleep that night, the most passionate scenes from the opera
haunting me persistently, and almost as vividly as if I had been back
in the theatre.
Indeed, it was the irresistible power of Wagner's music that first
made me go to Europe, and that changed the whole current of my life.
After graduating from Harvard I had only a few dollars in my pocket;
but instead of trying to find employment and earn my daily bread, I
recklessly borrowed $500 of a good-natured uncle and went to Europe,
for the sole purpose of attending the first Bayreuth Festival. I had
about four hundred dollars when I arrived in Bayreuth, and of these I
spent two hundred and twenty-five dollars for tickets for the three
series of Nibelung performances, not knowing what would become of me
after the remaining one hundred and seventy-five dollars was spent. It
was several weeks before the performances, and Wagner had given strict
orders that no one, without exception, should be admitted to the
rehearsals. But I was not to be so easily baffled, and one afternoon I
sneaked into the lobby and succeeded in catching some wonderful
orchestral strains by applying my ear to a keyhole. But my pleasure
was short-lived. An attendant espied me and summarily ordered me off
the premises, despite my humble entreaties and attempts at bribery. I
now resolved to make a personal appeal to Wagner; so, a few days
later, as he was entering the theatre, arm in arm with Wilhelm, I
boldly walked up to him and told him I had bought tickets to all the
performances, but was very anxious to attend the rehearsals, adding
that I represented a New York and a Boston journal. At the mention of
the word newspaper, a frown passed over his face, and he said, rather
abruptly, "I don't care much about newspapers. I can get along without
them." But, in a second, a smile drove away the frown and he added: "I
have given orders that no one shall be admitted. However, you have
come a long way--and as I have found it necessary to make some
exceptions, I will admit you too." He then asked for my card and told
me I would be admitted by mentioning my name to the doorkeeper. That
he did not bear any deep resentment against me for unfortunately being
a newspaper man, he showed the next day, by walking up to me and
asking me if I had succeeded in getting in.
I mention these incidents because I think they help to disprove the
notion that modern music has less power over the actions and feelings
of men than primitive and ancient music. It was the wild enthusiasm
inspired in me by Wagner's earlier operas that led me irresistibly to
Bayreuth, and I really would have been willing to toil as a slave for
years rather than miss this festival. And my experience was that of
hundreds who had saved up their pennies for this occasion, or had
formed pools and drawn lots if the sum was too small. I met three men
in Bayreuth who had scraped together enough money for a third-class
trip from Berlin, but not enough to pay for a complete Nibelung ticket
for each. So they took turns and each heard his share of the Trilogy.
The artists, moreover, the greatest in Germany, were prompted by their
enthusiasm to give their services at this festival without any
pecuniary compensation. Such actions are more eloquent of deep feeling
than any words could be. How trivial are those ancient _myths_ about
Arion and Orpheus compared with this modern _fact_--the building of
the Bayreuth Theatre with the million marks contributed by Wagner's
admirers in all parts of the world!
It is easy to see how Prof. Hanslick fell into the error of imagining
that music exerts its greatest influence on savages. He probably
inferred this from the fact that savages are more obviously excited by
it, and gesticulate more wildly, than we do. But this does not prove
his point. Savages are more _demonstrative_ in their expression of
_all_ their emotions than we are; but this does not indicate that
their emotions are _deeper_. On the contrary, as the poet has told us,
it is the shallow brooks and the shallow passions that murmur; "the
deep are dumb." It is a rule of etiquette in civilized society to
repress any extravagant demonstration of feeling by gestures; and this
is the reason why we are apparently less affected by music than
savages. Yet, how difficult it is even to-day to repress the muscular
impulses imparted by gay music, is seen in the irresistible desire to
dance which seizes us when we hear a Strauss waltz played with the
true Viennese swing; and in the provoking habit which some people have
of beating time with their feet. Would anyone assert that a man who
thus loudly beats time with his boots is more deeply affected by the
music than you or I who keep quiet? Fiddlesticks! He shows just the
contrary. If he had as delicate and intense an appreciation of the
music as you have, he would know that the noise made by his boots
utterly mars the purity of the musical sound, and jars on refined ears
like the filing of a saw. If demonstrativeness is to be taken as a
test of feeling, then the ignorant audiences who stamp and roar over
the vulgar horse-play in a variety show have deeper feelings than the
educated reader who, in his room, enjoys the exquisite works of humor
of the great writers without any other expression than a smile.
Granted, then, that music has as much power to move our feelings as
ever, if not more, and bearing in mind that feeling is the chief
spring of action, does it not follow that music affects our _moral_
conduct, making us more refined and considerate in our dealings with
other people? Not necessarily and obviously, it seems, for there are
authorities who, while conceding the emotional sway of music, deny
that it has any positive moral value. The eminent critic, Prof.
Ehrlich, takes this sceptical attitude, in his "History of Musical
Æsthetics." If music, and art in general, has power to soften the
hearts of men, how is it, he asks, that the citizens of Leipsic did
not come to the rescue of the last daughter of the great Bach, but
allowed her to live in abject poverty? And how is that, in Florence
and Rome, some of the greatest patrons of art were princes who were
extremely unscrupulous in their manner of getting rid of their
enemies? Other instances might be added to those given by Prof.
Ehrlich. African tourists say that the Dahomans, although passionately
fond of singing and of instrumental music, are probably the most cruel
of all negroes. Nero, the cruelest of emperors, is said to have
regaled his ears with music after setting fire to Rome; and you have
all heard the story of the two famous prima donnas whose vicious
temper and jealousy drove them to a tooth and nail contest on the
stage, right before the public. Everybody knows, furthermore, what a
lot of scamps and vagabonds are included in the number of so-called
music teachers, and what irregular lives some composers have led.
At first sight, these facts look formidable and discouraging; but they
are nothing of the sort. If anyone asserted that music is _a moral
panacea_, an infallible cure for all vices, these facts would, of
course, be fatal to his argument; but no one would be so foolish as to
make such an extravagant claim in behalf of music. Music may be, and
doubtless is, a moral force, but it is not strong enough to overcome
all the various demoralizing forces that counteract it; hence, it must
often fail to show triumphant results. If we take the cases just
cited, and examine them separately, we see that they are delusive. Is
it not asking a good deal of the Leipsic citizens to support the poor
relatives and descendants of all the great men that city has produced?
If Bach himself had lived to claim their charity, I am convinced he
would have been cared for, notwithstanding the fact that probably most
of those who love his music are poor themselves, while the public at
large does not even understand it, and cannot, therefore, be morally
affected by it. Similarly, the reason why the Viennese allowed
Schubert to starve was not because his music failed to make them
generous, but because he died before they had learned even to
understand it. To-day they worship his very bones, and build Schubert
museums and monuments.
Again, if savages and emperors can be musical and cruel at the same
time, this only proves, as I have just said, that music is not strong
enough to overcome _all_ the vicious inherited and cultivated habits
of civilized and uncivilized barbarians. As for the fighting prima
donnas, it is obvious that a singer whose success is constantly
dependent upon the whims of a fickle public, is more subject than
almost any other mortal to constant attacks of envy and jealousy, so
that it is unfair not to make some allowance for temper in her case.
Allowances must also be made for music teachers, who, from the very
nature of their profession, rarely hear music as it ought to be, and
therefore naturally become impatient and irritable. They illustrate,
not the normal, but the abnormal effects of music. Moreover, owing to
the lamentable ignorance of so many parents and pupils, the
profession of music teachers is invaded with impunity by hundreds of
tramps who know so little of music that, if they tried to become
cobblers or tailors with a corresponding amount of knowledge, they
would be ignominiously kicked out of doors. Surely it is unfair to lay
the sins of these vagabonds on the shoulders of music.
Finally, as regards the moral character and temper of composers, it
should be remembered that, if some of them occasionally gave way to
their angry passion, they were generally provoked to it by the
obtuseness and insulting arrogance of their contemporaries. Had these
contemporaries honored and commended them for enlarging the boundaries
of art and the sphere of human pleasures, instead of tormenting them
with cruel and ignorant criticisms, the great composers would, no
doubt, have been amiable in their public relations, as they appear to
have been almost invariably toward their friends. Wagner's pugnacity
and frequent ill-temper, for instance, arose simply from the fact
that, while he was toiling night and day to compose immortal
master-works, his contemporaries not only refused to contribute enough
for his daily bread, but assailed him on all sides with malicious
lying, stupid criticisms, with as much obvious enjoyment of this
flaying alive of a genius as if they were a band of Indians torturing
a prisoner of war. Among his friends, Wagner was one of the most
gentle, tender, and kind-hearted of men, and it made him frantic to
see even a dumb animal suffer. He wrote a violent pamphlet against
vivisection, and one day missed an important train because he stopped
to scold a peasant woman who was taking to the market a basket of live
fish in the agony of suffocation. I hardly know of a great composer
who, in his heart of hearts, was not gentle and generous. Bach,
Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann,
Mendelssohn, Weber, Liszt, and a dozen others who might be named,
though not without their faults, were kind and honest men, living
arguments for the ennobling effects of music.
In no other profession can men and women be found so ready to aid a
colleague in distress. Take the case of poor Robert Franz, for
instance, who lost his hearing through the whistle of a locomotive,
and thereby lost his professional income, and was brought to the verge
of starvation because his stupid contemporaries (I mean ourselves)
refused to buy his divine songs. Hardly had his misfortune become
known when Liszt, Joachim, and Frau Magnus arranged a concert tour for
his benefit which netted $23,000, and insured him comfort for the rest
of his life.
And in general, let me ask, why is it that, whenever a charitable
project is organized, musicians are invariably called upon first to
give their services? Does not this amount to an eloquent and universal
presumption that musical people are generous and kind-hearted?
Nor is this the only kind of presumption indicating that music
commonly goes hand in hand with kindness. The English in the days of
Elizabeth, as Chappell tells us, "had music at dinner, music at
supper, music at weddings, music at funerals, music at night, music at
dawn, music at work, music at play. He who felt not, in some degree,
its soothing influence, was viewed as a morose unmusical being, whose
converse ought to be shunned, and regarded with suspicion and
distrust." That this was the general sentiment in England is also
proved by the oft-quoted passage in "The Merchant of Venice," where
Shakspere notes the magic effect of music on men and animals, and
concludes with the verses--
"The man that hath no music in himself
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus;
Let no such man be trusted."
This, of course, is a poetic exaggeration, for we know that there are
other sources of refinement besides music, and that some of the
noblest men and women can hardly tell two tunes from one another.
Nevertheless, the general presumption remains that music and jolly
good-nature go together, and that music is incompatible with crime. An
experience I once had in Switzerland brought home this fact to my mind
in a forcible manner. I was taking a fortnight's tramp, all alone, and
one day I came near the summit of a mountain pass where, some time
previously, a solitary tourist had been robbed and murdered. There was
no house within five miles, and I had not met a soul that morning
until I approached this place, when I suddenly saw a shabbily dressed
man coming down the road. Not having any weapon, I could not but feel
nervous, and my heart began to beat almost audibly. Presently the man,
who had apparently not yet noticed me, began to sing a Tyrolese
melody. With the first notes all my fear instantly vanished, and I
breathed freely again; for an instinctive feeling had told me that a
man intent on murder and robbery would not sing.
Such presumptions, however, although they have some weight as
arguments, do not amount to full proof. Our feelings may mislead us,
and cannot be accepted in lieu of facts. We must therefore confront
our problem more directly. In what manner does music affect our moral
character? Does it make us less inclined to murder, stealing, lying,
lust, avarice, anger, hatred, jealousy, dishonesty, cruelty, and other
vices? And if so, by what means?
I find among writers on Music and Morals, a curious tendency to dodge
the direct question, and indulge in side issues and digressions. Mr.
Haweis, in his book on the subject, talks glibly about the training of
the emotions, and has much to tell about the lives of the composers,
but very little bearing directly on his subject. Wagner, in one of his
essays, asserts that music has as much influence on tastes and morals
as the drama itself. A frivolous and effeminate taste, he says, cannot
but affect our moral conduct. The Spartans understood this when they
forbade certain kinds of music as demoralizing. He believes that men
who are inspired by Beethoven's music make more active and energetic
citizens than those who are charmed by Rossini, Bellini, and
Donizetti; and he refers to the fact that in Paris, at a certain
period, music became more and more frivolous as the people degenerated
morally. At the same time he is obliged to admit that this, perhaps,
proves rather the effect of morals on music than of music on morals;
and so our problem remains in a vague twilight.