Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” says:
Besides the excellent power music hath to expel many other
diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against despair and
melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself. In proof
of the truth of the foregoing, many well-authenticated
instances may be cited. Among them may be mentioned the case
of King Philip of Spain, who, when suffering from hopeless
melancholia, was restored to health by the singing of Farinelli
in an adjoining chamber, after every other remedy had proved
futile.--Boston _Musical Herald_.
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* * * * *
Music has a vast future before it. We are only now beginning to
find out some of its uses. It has been the toy of the rich; it
has often been a source of mere degradation to both rich and
poor; it has been treated as mere jingle and noise--supplying
a rhythm for the dance, a kind of Terpsichorean tomtom--or
serving to start a Bacchanalian chorus, the chief feature of
which has certainly not been the music. And yet those who have
their eyes and ears open may read in these primitive uses,
while they run, the hints of music’s future destiny as a vast
civilizer, recreator, health-giver, work-inspirer, and purifier
of man’s life. The horse knows what he owes to his bells. The
factory girls have been instinctively forced into singing,
finding in it a solace and assistance in work. And for music,
the health-giver, what an untrodden field is there! Have we
never known an invalid to forget pain and weariness under the
stimulus of music? Have you never seen a pale cheek flush up, a
dull eye sparkle, an alertness and vigor take possession of the
whole frame, and animation succeed to apathy? What does all this
mean? It means a truth that we have not fully grasped, a truth
pregnant with vast results to body and mind. It means that music
attacks the nervous system directly, reaches and rouses where
physic and change of air can neither reach nor rouse.--H. R.
HAWEIS, “My Musical Memories.”
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