THE EXPRESSION OF LIFE
"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life"
_Beethoven_
If Music be a means of expression, we must needs ask ourselves what it
expresses. It is entirely insufficient to accept music as sequence or a
combination of tones that "sound nice." It would be just as reasonable
to regard a meal as something that tastes nice, whereas of course the
meal has a meaning and a use beyond mere taste: its purpose is to
sustain life, and the question of taste is merely incidental to the
larger issue. Music therefore may sound nice, but we desire to arrive at
some explanation far transcending this.
All phases of life express something, and we shall not be very far from
the truth if we regard that something as spirit. The grass, we say, is
alive: but its life consists in its ability to express that essential
something which we here term spirit. When it is no longer able to
accomplish this, the grass is still there, but we call it dead. We might
draw an apt parallel from the electric light bulb: this is nothing but a
possible source of light, until it is connected with the main supply
from the generating station. The seeming independence of the bulb is a
fiction, it has no true existence as a lamp until it expresses itself by
giving light. Yet the light is not its own light, and when the filament
breaks and the current can no longer circulate through the bulb it
ceases to be a lamp. It is, like the grass, dead: and for exactly the
same reason, that it can no longer express life or spirit.
Furthermore, the amount of resistance that a lamp interposes to the free
circulation of the current through it has its effect upon the light it
gives. One lamp may yield a fine light, and another on the same circuit
may afford but poor illumination: the one expresses well, and the other
ill. So, too, with the grass, one patch may be free-growing and another
may be but poor stuff: one expresses well, and the other feebly. In the
same way with ourselves, if our bodies have the life force circulating
freely they express robust health: and if the force find but a
constricted channel, then our bodies express health in scanty measure
and approximate more to disease than to the normal well-being. Our
bodies are no more independent organisms than is the lamp bulb: they
express the spirit which is the essence of the self, and when that self
withdraws the body is as dead as the grass or the worn-out bulb. Yet the
failure of the bulb casts no reflection upon the generating station, for
the current is still there. We do not need to assume that the current
has failed, for in that case it would fail alike for every bulb upon the
circuit. If every form and phase of life were to expire and cease at a
given moment, we might then, and then only, be justified in assuming
that spirit had ceased to be: but in that case there would be but little
need for us to worry about the point.
We may imagine spirit as the driving force behind everything, as the
urge towards evolution, as the pent-up intelligence which ever seeks one
variation and then another. Then, when one variation appears, more
appropriate to its surroundings than others, this, because of its
fitness, survives. As human beings we are individualised fragments of
the great universal spirit. There is only the one life and the one
spirit, but there are diversities of gifts to enable that spirit to be
expressed. The grass expresses it in its luxuriance, its colour, and
its growth: the birds in their song: and the whole of what we are
pleased to term the lower creation bespeaks this spirit in the daily
activity. When this expression ceases, the thing that was once alive is
dead.
There is no special merit that all the works of the Lord should thus
praise the Lord in their expression, because below the stage of a human
being there is no option. The lower forms of life are like lamps on a
circuit which light up by reason of the current over which they
exercised no control. But a human being is like a lamp that is connected
with the main circuit and yet has its own switch. This ability to switch
on or off constitutes our measure of freewill, our power of saying yes
or no. It is a necessary accompaniment of our knowledge of good and evil
for "no choice, no progress." It betokens our progress from the merely
animal stage of consciousness to that of self-consciousness--the phase
of existence where we not only know, but we know that we know. This
ability to express well, badly, or not at all, just as we may please, is
our special prerogative: it gives man the privilege, which is denied to
all life below him, of deliberately choosing the worse and of making a
fool of himself. The animals know what is good for them because they
follow their unreasoning instincts and blindly repeat the racial course
of action implanted within them, and the mere survival of the species
proves that this particular response to the particular circumstance has
been "tried out" by ages of experience. But a man blinds and smothers
his instincts (and these at the best, it may be observed, are distinctly
mixed) or perhaps indulges them in defiance of his better judgment, and
thus his expression of his own divinity is often sadly marred.[5]
[Note 5: James Rhoades.]
"Know this, O man, sole root of sin in thee
Is not to know thine own divinity."
A man may even deny the very existence of spirit, and thus by a subtle
but efficacious species of self-suggestion prevent its manifestation in
himself. But whether he expresses this spirit well or ill, a man does in
fact join with all creation below him in manifesting this innate
spirituality without which there can be no life.
Thus everything stands for something else that is deeper, there is an
outer form and an inner soul or spirit. Spenser thus expresses it:--
"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."
It is only when we grasp this elementary truth that life becomes in the
least plain and intelligible, and the result of grasping it is that we
cease to be deceived by the apparent values of things, and are able to
appraise them more at their true and spiritual worth. We are then
enabled to pass from circumstances (which are results) to the realm of
causes: the balance is transferred from the seen to the unseen, and the
point of view approximates more to the eternal than the transient. A
greater poise and certainty follow as a matter of course, since the
mental outlook is centred in the true rather than the seeming.
All life then is the expression of spirit, and our varied activities are
but the modes of this expression. To this, Music is no exception. Very
naturally also, the better the machinery or the technique of expression,
the more of the spirit can get through. We can play more
sympathetically, more fluently, and with finer effect on a beautiful
"grand" than on a jangly upright instrument: the one is a better vehicle
of expression than the other. So also we can secure more fluent
expression with a fountain pen than with one that continually interrupts
the free flow of ideas by demanding to be dipped in the inkpot. We have
two typewriters of the same manufacture, but one is an early model and
the other a modern machine: there is a vast difference in the ease of
expressing thought, in the favour of the later instrument with all its
special conveniences. In general terms the object of all improvement of
technical means is the better expression of the spirit. Musically, to
practise scales and exercises with the object of getting one's fingers
loose is like eating for the sake of developing a fluent jaw action--the
vision of the end has been lost in the means. We must ever keep in view
the fact that life itself, and especially Art and Music, can only fulfil
a proper purpose when resulting in the ever-increasing and better
expression of the underlying spirit, or as Elgar puts it--"more of
Truth."
The law of spirit is Love. The drive of spirit is ever upward towards
progress, aspiration, and unity. If we take a drop of quicksilver and
separate it into smaller particles, as soon as ever the conditions
allow, these smaller globules will amalgamate themselves with the larger
body from which they have been temporarily divorced. We can almost
imagine we hear them utter a fervent "thank goodness" as they reach that
home of heart's desire. So are we, too, as separated and individualised
sparks of the divine fire, burning till at length we reach our freedom
and can merge ourselves in that Sun of spirit whence, "trailing clouds
of glory," we have come.
Man, we say, is a gregarious animal, and it is certainly only the man of
warped mind who seeks to cut himself off from his fellows: we are all of
us spirits, and spirit seeks unity and approach. Love is the one uniting
and binding force in the universe, just as its opposite--hatred--is the
disintegrating element. Love operates in attraction, as we see it in
motherhood, childhood, and the love of man and maid. But it also works
on the grand scale in the guise of the law of Gravity which attracts and
binds universes together, and regulates and controls the swing of
inconceivable immensities. Look again and we may see love working as
chemical affinity to attract molecule to molecule, or as cohesion to
keep the very particles knit together in kinship.
It is this spirit of love that unites the myriad cells of our own body
into the little commonwealth of self: when this life-force withdraws,
the love ceases to bind, and immediately the "dead" body becomes
infinitely alive, but the unity is at an end and decomposition has set
in. So love is the fulfilling of the law: not merely "a" law, but the
very fundamental law on which our continued existence hangs. Eliminate
gravity, and the universe as we know it must come to an end in a
catastrophe which it is beyond the power of our imagination to conceive.
If cohesion ceased to be, then everything would fall to powder and would
disintegrate. Destroy all love between man and man, and civilisation
itself would fall to pieces. This is no question of dogma, gospel, or
man-made law, it is simply a plain statement of the fundamental
condition of our very existence. The importance of love is paramount,
and if we are wise we shall seek to discover these overriding laws of
our being, and adjust our lives in conformity with their requirements.
Spirit is love, and love manifests itself in service: the love that
seeks its own ends, or strives to get instead of to serve, is no love at
all. Therefore if Music is to express this spirit it must do so by
contributing its meed of assistance to make this workaday world more
bright by gladdening the heart of man. Quite obviously much of the music
that is written has been composed with no such intent, therefore and to
that extent it stultifies itself. It must be classed as the "sounding
brass and tinkling cymbal" of the prophet. St. Paul's analysis of the
reason of the ineffectiveness of such, too, is searchingly accurate:
that, lacking charity, it signified nothing. Charity is only another
synonym for that love which is the manifestation of spirit. The true
musician has this spirit of love within him and it demands expression,
and so we find Mozart exclaiming "I write because I cannot help it." So
Granville Bantock, too--"The impulse to create Music is on me, and I
write to gratify my impulse. When I have written the work I have done
with it. What I do desire is to begin to enjoy myself by writing
something else."[6] The musician sings because he must: he writes so
that the spirit may find its outlet in that direction: or he plays, when
only through his fingers and the instrument can he find that expression
which his soul demands.
[Note 6: J. C. Hadden, "Modern Musicians."]
When Music is thus outpoured it speaks of spirit, and adds to the
spiritual store of the world. It reinforces the unseen hosts that fight
for spirit in the age-long struggle with the powers of materialism and
darkness. No breath of spirit is ever lost, and nothing devoid of it is
ever permanent, either in music or in anything else. Sounds without
sense or meaning are futile, notes without a heartfelt message are
"returned empty" as they were sent forth, and practice without purpose
other than mere self-gratification, agility, or display, is a
magnificent and glorious waste of time. But Music, when its true
underlying purport is discovered, is at once an inspiration and a most
real means of achieving that fundamental object, for which our very
existence here at this present moment is devised, namely spiritual
growth and development.