THE AESTHETICS OF MUSIC
In this and the following chapters which treat of the arts, I plan to
make a concrete application of the aesthetic theory thus far developed.
I want to show how the general principles which we have tried to
establish can be used to explain the facts of our artistic experience.
In doing this I shall hope to achieve a double purpose: first, to
verify anew our theory of art, and second, to deepen and enlighten
appreciation.
I begin with music because, as we shall see, there is a musical factor
in all the arts, an understanding of which at the beginning will enable
us to proceed much more easily in our survey of them. I shall confine
myself to an elementary analysis; for a more detailed study would take
us beyond the bounds of general aesthetics and would require a knowledge
of the special technique of the arts which we cannot presuppose.
Moreover, we shall not concern ourselves with the origin or history
of the arts further than is needful for an understanding of their
general character. We are investigating the theory, not the history,
of taste, and are more interested in the present developed aesthetic
consciousness than in its rudimentary forms.
As we appreciate it to-day, music lends itself readily to our definition
of art. It is a personal expression--who, when listening to music which
he enjoys, does not feel himself poured forth in the tones? It is
social and public--what brings us together under the sway of a common
emotion more effectively than concert or opera? It is a fixed and
permanent expression, for we can renew it so long as men preserve the
score where it is written; and, finally, it is free--who can find any
practical or moral or scientific purpose in an etude of Chopin or a
symphony of Mozart? Music is the most signal example of a mode of
expression that has attained to a complete and pure aesthetic character,
an unmixed beauty. Yet this was not true of music in its earlier forms,
and a long process of development was necessary before freedom was
realized. For we must look for the beginning of music in any and all
sounds through which primitive men sought to express and communicate
themselves. These were, first of all, the cries of the human voice,
expressive of fear and need and joy--at once direct outpourings of
basic emotions and signals to one's fellows, to help, to satisfy, and
to sympathize. In the voice nature provided man with a direct and
immediate instrument for the expression and communication of himself
through sound. Then, perhaps by accident, man discovered that he could
make sounds in other ways, through materials separate from his body,
and so he constructed drums and cymbals and gongs; and by means of
these, too, he communicated his needs and stimulated himself to rage
and excitement--and his enemy to fear--in war dance and battle rush.
And in doing this he was imitating nature, whose noises, exciting and
terrifying, he had long known: the clap of thunder, the whistle of the
wind, the roar of the waves, the crackling of burning wood, the crash
of fallen and breaking things.
Out of unbeautiful noise sprang beautiful music. Men discovered that
through the voice they could make not only expressive noises, but also
pleasant tones; they found, perhaps by accident, that they could do
much the same thing with reeds and strings; they observed that when
they beat their drums at regular intervals to mark the motion of the
dance, they not only danced together more easily, but also experienced
joy in the very sounds they made; or that when they threshed the corn
with rhythmic strokes or rowed a boat in rhythmic unison, their task
was lightened and their wearied attention distracted to the pleasure
of their noise. Hence at their dances of love or war or religion, they
sang instead of shouted; and their instruments of irregular and
expressive noise became instruments of rhythmical and melodious tones.
Eventually, having experienced the pleasure there is in tones and
rhythmical sounds, they made them for their own sake, apart from any
connection with tribal festivals, and the free art of music was born.
And yet, as we shall see, the significance of music depends largely
upon the fact that tones are akin to noises; music could not take such
a hold of the emotions of men did they not overhear in the tones the
meaningful and poignant noises of voice and nature; to understand
music, we must think of it against its background of expressive noise.
In music we still seem to hear a voice that breaks the silence and
speaks, the thunder that terrifies.
The material of music consists of tones, the conscious counterparts
of periodic, longitudinal vibrations of the air. Tones differ among
themselves in many attributes, of which the following are of chief
importance for music: pitch, determined by rate of vibration, through
which tones differ as higher and lower; color, determined by the
complexity of the vibration wave, the presence of overtones of different
pitch along with the fundamental tone in the total sound; intensity,
dependent upon the amplitude of the vibration, through which tones of
the same pitch differ as soft or loud; and finally, quality, that
specific character of a tone, by reason of which middle C, for example,
is more like the C of the octave below or above than like its nearer
neighbors, B or D, whence the series of tones, although in pitch linear
and one-dimensional, is in quality periodic, returning again and again
upon itself, as we go up or down the scale. [Footnote: "See Geza Revesz:
_Tonpsychologie_."]
The number of qualities in use in music--twelve in our scale of equal
temperament--is, of course, not all there are in the world of tones;
they are a human and arbitrary selection, governed by technical and
historical motives, into which we shall not enter. Peoples with a
different culture have made a different selection. But we are not
concerned with the music of angels or of orientals, but with our own.
With these twelve, with their possible variations in pitch, loudness,
and tone-color, the musician has a rich and adequate material.
All the elements of an aesthetic experience are present in striking
simplicity even in the single musical tone. There is the sensuous
medium, the sound; there is a life expressed, a feeling aroused in us,
yet so completely objectified in the sound that it seems to belong to
the latter on equal terms with color or quality or loudness; there is
a unity and variety and orderly structure in the dominance of the
fundamental among the overtones and the fusion of all in the total
clang. Thus every note is a complete little aesthetic organism. Yet
the beauty of single tones is very slight,--less, I think, than that
of single colors; they need the contrast or the agreement in consonance
with other tones in order to awaken much feeling; they must be members
of a wider whole; observe how, when sounded after other tones, they
become enriched through the contrasting or consonant memory of those
tones. Nevertheless, the single tone has its feeling, however slight,
and to understand this is to go a long way toward understanding the
more complex structures of music.
In the first place, tones, unlike noises, are all pleasant. Although
we cannot be sure why this is true, there can be little doubt, I think,
that the regularity of the vibrations of the former, in contrast with
the irregularity of the latter, is largely responsible. The clang,
with its ordered complexity, is a stimulus that incites the sense organ
and connected motor tracts to a unified and definite response, unlike
noise, which creates confusion. The pleasure in the single tone is
similar, in its causes, to the pleasure in the consonance of two tones.
As we should expect from this analogy, the pleasure is greater in rich
tones, which contain many partials, than in thin tones, which are
relatively uninteresting. But the feeling of tones is something more
than mere pleasantness; it is also a mood. Now this mood of tones is
partly due to associations,--some superficial in character, like the
pastoral quality of flute tones or the martial character of bugle
tones, others more fundamental; but it has also a still deeper-lying
root. For a sound stimulus awakens not only a sensory process in the
ear, the correlative of which is a sensation, but also incipient motor
reactions, which, if carried out, would be an emotion, but which, being
too slight and diffuse, produce only what we call a mood. Every
sensation has a meaning for the organism in an environment where it
has constantly to be on its guard for danger or assistance; every
sensation is therefore connected with the mechanism of reaction, with
its attendant emotions. In ordinary experience, there are objects
present to which the organism may actually respond, but in the aesthetic
experience there are no real objects towards which a significant
reaction can take place; in music, the source of the sound is obviously
of no practical importance, while in such arts as painting and sculpture
where interesting objects are represented, the objects themselves are
absent; hence the reaction is never carried out, but remains incipient,
a vague feeling which, finding no object upon which it may work itself
off, is suffused upon the sensation. These sense feelings are the
subtle, but basal, material of all beauty.
The variety of moods expressed in tones is almost endless. When we
experience them, they come to us as the inner life of the total concrete
tones, but they depend actually upon the working together of all the
tonal attributes,--color, quality, pitch, and loudness. There is the
subtle intimacy of violin tones compared with the clear arresting ring
of the trumpet; the emotional differences between qualities like C and
G, too delicate for expression in words; the piercing excitement of
the high, bright tones, compared with the earnest depth of the low,
dull tones; the almost terrifying effect of loud tones compared with
the soothing influence of soft tones.
The precise psychophysical mechanism through which the different moods
are aroused is for the most part hidden from us; yet in certain
particulars we can form some idea of it. For example, the richness of
feeling in the tones of certain instruments as compared with others
is doubtless due to the fact that through the presence of more overtones
and the admixture of noise, the reaction is more complex; the tense
excitement of high and loud tones, as compared with the soft and low,
is probably connected with the fact that their higher vibration rate
and greater amplitude of vibration produce a more marked effect, a
more pervasive disturbance,--the organism does not right itself and
recover so rapidly and easily. These direct and native elements of
feeling are then broadened out and intensified through other elements
that come in by way of association. For example, in order to sing high
tones, a greater tension and exertion of the vocal chords is needed
than for low tones; loud tones suggest loud noises, which, as in
breaking and crashing and thundering, are inevitably associated with
fear; the loud is also the near and present and threatening, the low
is distant and safe. Although each tone, as separate and individual,
possesses its own feeling in its own right, the tonal effects are
immensely accentuated by contrast with one another,--the high against
the low, the poor against the rich, the loud against the soft--and
through the summation, by means of repetition, of the influences of
many tones of like character; the full meaning of music depends upon
the relations of tones, especially the temporal relations.
This fact was fully recognized by Aristotle, who raised the question
why tones are so much more expressive than colors. Music is almost the
sole important art that relies on the expressiveness of the sense
material alone, independent of any element of meaning. To be sure, the
beauty of oriental rugs depends entirely on their color and line
harmonies; for the meanings which the patterns have for their oriental
makers is generally unknown to us of the western world; yet what we
feel when we contemplate them cannot compare in volume and intensity
with what we experience when we listen to music. And Aristotle correctly
assigned one of the chief reasons for the superior significance of
music--its temporal character. A color or line scheme may express a
momentary mood, with perhaps just the most rudimentary movement as we
go from the dark to the bright colors, or as we follow the motion of
the lines as they curve or converge; yet it cannot express an action
or process that begins, proceeds, continues, ends. When we look at the
colors or lines of a painting or rug, we feel intensely, but there is
no development or process of feeling; if the mind moves, it moves
inevitably not with, but away from, what it sees. But tones are given
to us in succession; we are forced to move with them; hence they come
to express for us, in ways which we shall try to analyze, the changing
and developing process of the inner life.
In its temporal aspect, music has two chief characteristics, rhythm
and melody. In our music these are inseparable; yet they can be
separated for the purposes of analysis; and a rhythmical roll of
drumbeats or a careless succession of tones harmonically related proves
that each may produce an aesthetic effect without the other. We shall
consider melody first.
A mere succession of tones, however pleasing separately, does not make
a melody; for melody depends on a definite scale and on certain
relations between the tones of the scale. These relations illustrate
the three modes of aesthetic unity. First, there is harmony. Tones are
harmonically related when they belong to the leading chords of the
key. The tones of such chords, when sounded together, are consonant.
Now harmony, which is an aesthetic feeling, although not identical with
consonance, which is a purely sensory relation between tones, depends
nevertheless upon consonance. In order to understand harmony, we must
therefore first understand consonance, and, in order to do this, we
must begin by describing the experience and then look for its possible
causes. [Footnote: Consult the discussions in Karl Stumpf,
Tonpsychologie; Carl Emil Seashore, The Psychology of Musical Talent,
chap. VII.] As for the first, consonant tones, when sounded together,
seem to fit one another, almost to fuse, despite the fact that the
different tones are distinguishable in the whole. This fitting together,
in turn, seems to depend on a resemblance or partial identity between
them. For example, the most consonant tones are a note and its octave,
which are, perhaps, actually identical in quality; but lesser intervals
are also alike, as for example a note and its fifth, which are more
readily mistaken for one another than two dissonant tones, say a note
and its seventh. As for the explanation of consonance, we know that
consonant tones have identical partial tones and are caused by vibration
rates that stand to one another in simple ratios. Thus in a clang
composed of a tone and its fifth, the first partial of the fifth is
the second partial of the prime, and the vibration ratios are as two
to three. The bearing of this second fact on the question of partial
identity will become clear if we consider the concrete case of a tone
produced by 24 vibrations per second, whose fifth would then be produced
by 36 vibrations per second, and then consider the same tone and its
dissonant second, the ratio of whose vibrations is 24 to 27; in the
former case, there is a common part of 6 vibrations, a fourth of the
total number of the first tone; in the latter, only 3, an eighth. That
identity of partial tones is not a sufficient explanation of
consonance--as Helmholtz thought it to be--is proved by the fact that
simple tones, which have no partials, may still be consonant.
Nevertheless, an identity of partials does undoubtedly contribute to
the consonance of the complex tones used in our music; ultimately,
however, the final reason for consonance must be sought in some
underlying identity within the tones themselves, an identity that seems
to be given psychologically in their resemblance, and with which
physically the simplicity of their vibration ratios probably has
something to do. And that in music the feeling of harmony should depend
upon partial identity is what we should expect from our previous study
of harmony in general. [Footnote: See page 87.]
The second of the tonal relations upon which melody depends is contrast.
First, there is the contrast between the high and the low; even when
notes are harmonically related, as a note and its fifth, they are in
contrast, in so far as the one is measurably higher and more distant
than the other. Of equal importance is the rivalry between the
fundamental tones in the leading harmonic chords; for example, the
rivalry between the tonic and the dominant. For each of these claims
to be the center of the melodic progression, and draws to itself all
the tones which belong to its chord. Dissonance is a cause of rivalry;
for a dissonant tone is one that will not fit into a given harmony;
yet since it is still a part of the melody, must have its home
somewhere, and belongs therefore in another harmony, which, through
this tone, is set up in rivalry with the prevailing one. A tone that
did not belong to any harmony would not be a dissonance, but a
discord,--a tone without meaning musically. Dissonances, like other
contrasts, enrich the melody by establishing rival harmonies; discords
destroy melodies. Just as the drama has little significance without
conflict, so melodies are uninteresting without dissonances.
Were it not for the third of the tonal relations, melodies would lack
unity and system and go to pieces under the stress of rival forces.
This third relation may be call finality; [Footnote: The explanation
of this is obscure; there is no unanimity among the specialists in
musical theory.] it belongs among relations we have called evolutionary.
By it is meant the fact that certain tones demand and naturally lead
into other tones, in which they seem to find their completion or
fulfillment. For example, the tones of a chord demand the fundamental
tone of the chord; dissonances must be "resolved,"--must be followed
by other tones of their own harmony; the diatonic tones over and above
the tonic--the "upleader" and "downleader"--naturally lead into the
tonic; and all the tones demand, either immediately or through the
mediation of other tones, the tonic of the scale to which they belong.
This principle of finality, which, in the classic music, is the basis
of what is called "tonality," by establishing the tonic as the center
of reference and point of completion of all tones, gives to melody its
dramatic unity. Through it, by creating the tonic chord as fundamental,
the rivalry between the tonic, dominant, and subdominant is overcome,
and all dissonances finally resolved into unity. Definite scales and
tonal laws and schemes of composition are of the utmost importance for
musical composition; there are, of course, many of these besides the
classical, and they are all partly conventional; but that does not
matter so long as, by being well known, they enable the melody to move
along definite lines, arousing and fulfilling definite expectations.
Those forms of modernist music that dispense with scales altogether,
in which therefore there are no fixed _points de repere_ like the
tonic or dominant of the older music, can express chance momentary
moods by means of rich and strange colors, but not an orderly and
purposeful experience.
Of course, in our modern harmonic music the melodic movement proceeds
by means, not of single tones, but of chords. Yet no new principle is
introduced by this fact. For the chords have in part merely the
significance of highly enriched tones, the harmonized tones of the
chords taking the place of the partials of the single notes and
imparting a more voluminous color, which may have its own beauty as
such; and, in addition, they simply confer upon the melody another
dimension, as it were, the tonal relations of harmony and contrast
operating between the tones of the chords simultaneously, as well as
temporally between the successive elements of the melody.
The orderly beauty which the tonal relations confer upon music is
further enriched and complicated by rhythm. Rhythm in music is of two
sorts: a rhythm of time and a rhythm of accent, or increased loudness.
Through the one, the duration of a musical composition is divided up
into approximately equal parts filled by notes and rests of definite
length, and through the other, the light notes are subordinated to the
heavy notes. The two, however, are interrelated; for the bars are
divided from each other by the accents, and the accents recur at
approximately equal intervals.
The pleasure in rhythmical arrangement is derived from two sources:
first, from the need for perspicuity which is fulfilled through the
regular grouping of the tonal elements in the bars,--their length being
adjusted to the average length of an attention wave, and the number
of tones that fill them to the number of items which can be taken in
at one act of attention,--and through the subordination of the light
to the heavy within the bars, the bars to the measures, and the measures
to the periods. The second source of satisfaction in rhythm is the
combination of feelings of balance and harmony aroused--a rhythm is
not only a pleasing perspicuous order, but an emotion. [Footnote: See
chap. V, p.90] For every recurring accent and interval competes with
its predecessor for the mind's attention, yet is in agreement with it
since it, too, fulfills the law that pervades them all.
The full significance of both melody and rhythm depends, however, upon
their interrelation, the concrete musical structure, the motive or
melody in the complete sense, being an indissoluble unity of both. Now
if we take the term will with a broad meaning, Schopenhauer's
characterization of melody as an image of the will still remains the
truest aesthetic interpretation of it. For, when we hear it, we not
only hear, but attend to what we hear; we hear each tone in its
relations of harmony or contrast or fulfillment to other tones,
freighted with memories of its predecessors and carrying with it
expectations, which the following tones fulfill or deny. The melody
begins, let us suppose, with the tonic note. This note then becomes
for us a plan or purpose; for as it goes, it leaves in the mind a
memory of itself, no mere pale sensation--no image ever is--but a motor
set, an expectation and desire to hear the note again. If the next
note is harmonically related, this purpose is partially fulfilled and
we get the satisfaction of a partial success. If, however, the tone
does not belong to the tonic chord, but, let us suppose, to the
subdominant, it comes as a hindrance, an obstacle, or perhaps as a new
and rival purpose springing up in the course of the fulfillment of the
old,--a purpose which can be satisfied only through the other tones
of its chord. Hence the tension of conflicting expectations and the
excitement as now the one and now the other is fulfilled in the
succeeding notes. Yet, since all other harmonies are subordinated to
the tonic harmony, and even through their very opposition increase our
desire for it, they must give way to the fundamental purpose with which
we started; and when the tonic does eventually triumph, it fulfills
not only itself, but all lesser desires of the melody; in it we find
what we have been seeking, we arrive where we set out to go. And in
this success we not only obtain what we first wanted, but more--an
experience enriched by every conflict, and harmonious ultimately through
the inner adjustment and resolution of its elements; for in hearing
the final note we hear the memories of all previous tones, also. When
the departures from the keynote are many and distant and sudden, and
the melody wanders into the bypaths of foreign harmonies, moving along
broken and zigzag lines, it expresses an exciting, a dangerous and
difficult adventure; when, however, the departures are gradual and
confined for the most part within the limits of a single harmony,
moving in a smooth and curving path, it expresses a life that is secure
and happy, tending to repose as the line approaches the horizontal,
and as repetitions of the same note predominate.
Rhythm enters into melody to differentiate and emphasize. By means of
accent and time-value, the different tones are weighted and their
relative value fixed. The heavy tones assert their will with a more
insistent energy; the long tones upon which we linger make a deeper
and more lasting impression; while the light and short tones in contrast
become points of mere passing and transition. If, moreover, we include
the element of tempo, then all the temporal feelings are introduced
into melody--the excitement of rapid motion, the calmness of the slow;
the agony of delay, of waiting and postponement, with the triumph and
relief when the expected note arrives at last. Finally, the effects
of shading must be added, the contrasts between piano and
forte--loudness that brings the tones so near that they may seem
threatening in their insistence; softness that makes them seem far
away and dreamlike.
Following the large idea introduced by Schopenhauer, which was enriched
by the minuter studies of Lotze, Wundt, and Lipps, we may sum the
foregoing analysis in the statement that music expresses the abstract
aspects of action, its ease or difficulty, its advance or retrocession,
its home coming or its wandering, its hesitation or its surety, its
conflicts and its contrasts, its force or its weakness, its swiftness
or slowness, its abruptness or smoothness, its excitement or repose,
its success or failure, its seriousness or play. Then, in addition,
as we shall see, all modes of emotion that are congruous with this
abstract form may by association be poured into its mold, so that the
content of music becomes not a mere form of life, but life itself.
It is, of course, obvious that our analysis has confined itself to the
barest elements of the musical experience. Our music to-day, with its
many-voiced harmonies, with its procession of chords instead of single
tones, with its modulation into related keys, has an infinite wealth
and complexity defying description. A large part of the astonishing
effect of music is derived from the fact that in a brief space we seem
to hear and absorb so much: the careers of multitudinous lives
compressed into an instant. Yet the meaning of the complex whole can
be understood, I think, from such an analysis of the simple structure
as has been given.
The methods by which the larger musical wholes are built up illustrate
principles of aesthetic structure with which we are already familiar.
There is the harmonious unification of parts through the simple
repetition of motives, their inversion or imitation in higher or lower
keys, either successively or simultaneously; the execution of the same
theme in another time or tempo; and through the interweaving of themes.
There is the balance of contrasted or competing themes; the
subordination of the lesser to the more striking and insistent motives;
the preparation for, emergence and triumph of, a final passage that
resolves all dissonances and adjusts all conflicts. Because of music's
abstractness, the connection between the parts of a musical composition
may be loose or subtle, taxing the synthetic powers even of the educated
listener; yet some contrast or analogy of feeling must always unite
them. The structure of the whole may be either static or dramatic; in
the former case the dramatic element is confined to the themes, the
purpose of the whole being merely to work out all their significant
variations,--to embroider and repeat them in new keys and rhythms and
tempos, and to contrast them with other themes. Repetition is the great
creative principle of musical development, the composer seeking to say
over again in ever new forms what he has said before. And this, again
because of the abstractness of music, is a significant process; to
repeat the concrete is tiresome and trivial, but an abstract form is
always enriched by appearing in a new shape.
The explanation of musical expression thus far given, although it
suffices to account for the basis of all musical feeling, is, I think,
inadequate to its full volume and intensity. There is a concreteness
of emotional content in some musical compositions--an arousal of terror
and longing and despair and joy--infinitely richer than any abstract
forms of feeling.
To account for this, two sources of explanation suggest themselves.
First, the arousing of emotions through deep-lying effects of rhythm.
It is a well-known fact, cited in most discussions of this subject,
that the motor mechanism of the body is somehow attuned to rhythm.
When we hear rhythmical sounds, we not only follow them with the
attention, we follow them also with our muscles, with hand and foot
and head and heart and respiratory apparatus. Even when we do not
visibly move in unison with the rhythm--as we usually do not--we tend
to do so, which proves that in any case the motor mechanism of the
body is stimulated and brought into play by the sounds. There is a
direct psychophysical connection between the hearing of rhythmic sounds
and the tendency to execute certain movements. But there is an equally
direct relation between emotions and tendencies to movements, through
which the former find expression and are given effect in the outer
world. To every kind of emotion--love and hate and fear and sorrow and
joy--there corresponds a specific mode of motor manifestation. The
connection between rhythmic sound and emotion is therefore plain; the
link is a common motor scheme. Rhythms arouse into direct and immediate
activity the motor "sets" that are the physical basis of the emotions,
and hence arouse the corresponding emotions themselves, without any
ground for them outside of the organism. And these emotions, since
they are aroused by the sounds and not by any object to which they
might be directed and upon which they might work themselves off in a
meaningful reaction, are interwoven into the sounds,--they and the
sounds come to us as a single indissoluble whole of experience. The
emotions become the content of the sounds. And hence the strangeness
of the musical experience--the fact that we feel so deeply over nothing.
The second cause for the concreteness of the musical experience I take
to be certain emotions and feelings which are aroused by association,
not with the rhythmic elements of music alone, but with the tone-color,
intensity, and melody also. There is a human quality, a poignancy and
intimacy, about much music, which can be understood only through its
analogy with the sounds of the human voice. For the human voice is
emotionally expressive through its mere sound alone: one can know a
large part of what is going on in the breasts of people who talk in
a foreign tongue just by listening to the sound of their voices--their
excitement or boredom, their anger, love, or resentment; and one becomes
conscious of these emotions, as in hearing music, without knowing what
they are all about. All human emotions betray themselves in speech
through the rise and fall, range of intervals, loudness or softness,
tempo and differences of duration of tone. Now, although it is far too
much to say that music is actually an imitation of the voice, it is
nevertheless true, as Diderot thought, that in certain musical passages
we overhear the voice. There is never any exact similarity between
music and vocal sounds, but there is enough resemblance to awaken by
association the feelings that are the normal accompaniments of such
sounds. Any tone analogies that there happen to be are felt as such.
This is notably true of all music that has a peculiar lyrical and human
quality,--the music that readily becomes popular because it seems to
speak direct to the heart. Originally, all music was song, and since
speech and song employ the same organ, it would be surprising indeed
if something of the same expression of the emotions that overflows
into the one should not also overflow into the other, and that musicians
should not, unconsciously or consciously, tend to choose their melodies
because of such analogies. Instrumental music probably got its first
melodies from song, and despite its vast present complexity and
independence, has never completely lost touch with song. Since the
first meaningful sounds that we hear are those of the voice, music
must always have for us the significance of a glorified speech.
The fault of the original proposers of the speech theory was that they
thought it a complete explanation of the facts of musical expression.
Its explanatory value is, however, strictly limited, and supplemental
to the more basic considerations adduced; yet it remains a necessary
part of the complex theory of the complex fact we are studying. And
the acceptance of it as such does not imply a belief in the speech
theory of the origin of music. Song did not grow out of impassioned
speech, but arose coeval with speech, when men found--perhaps by
accident--that they could make with their voices pure and pleasing
tones and intervals of tones, and express something of their inner
selves in so doing. Yet, as I have suggested, it would be strange if
speech did not react upon song--if the first vocal tones were not
purified words, and the first intervals an approximation to those of
speech. Thus in song, lyric poetry and music arose together as a single
art for the expression of feeling, until the development of instrumental
music freed the one and the invention of writing freed the other; while
speech kept to its different and original purpose--the expression of
ideas for practical ends, and produced an aesthetic form of its own
only at a later period and under independent influences.
The complete understanding of musical expression involves, finally,
as was suggested at the beginning of this chapter, the recognition of
the analogy that exists between music and the noises produced by nature
and human activities. Through the imitation of their rhythm, force,
and tempo, some of these can be directly suggested by musicians. Yet
this direct suggestion, although employed by the greatest composers,
plays a subordinate part in music, and, since it introduces an element
of representation of the outer world--_tonmalerei_--is usually
felt to involve a departure from the prime purpose of music: the
expression of the inner world through the emotional effects of pure
sound. In the best program music, therefore, the purpose of the composer
is not the mere imitation of nature--which is never art at all, and
in music is always recognized as an unsaesthetic _tour de force_
of mere cleverness--but rather the arousal of the feelings caused by
nature. And as an aid in the expression of such feelings, imitation,
when delicately suggestive rather than blatant, will always play a
part.
There are, however, subtler and remoter analogies between music and
noise, which produce their effects whether the musician wills them or
not. Such, for example, are loud bursts of tone suggesting falling or
crashing, events which usually have a terrifying significance;
crescendoes, suggesting the approach of things, so often full of
expectancy and excitement; diminuendoes, suggesting a gradual departure
or fading away, bearing relief or regret. And there are doubtless
hundreds of other such associations, too minute or remote or long-
forgotten to recover, which add their mite of feeling to swell and
make vast the musical emotion. As Fechner pointed out, these
associations may work quite unconsciously, giving evidence of their
functioning only through the feeling tones which they release. So
important is the part which sound plays in our lives that there must
be an especially large number of such underground associations aroused
by music. All of our experiences are connected together by subconscious
filiation; but it is only in art that their residual feeling tones
have a full opportunity to come into the mind; for in everyday life
they are crowded out by the hurry of practical concerns. In the earlier
stages of the development of music they must have contributed a still
larger share to musical expression, when the different forms of music
were connected by habit and convention with particular crises and
occasions, religious, domestic, and social, in the life of individuals
and groups. But even to-day, despite the new freedom of music, they
are not absent.
Looking back over our analysis of music, we see that it is characterized
by the expression of emotion without the representation of the causes
or objects of emotion. This fact, which has now become a well-recognized
part of aesthetic theory, distinguishes music from all the other arts.
Music supplies us with no definite images of nature, as painting and
sculpture do, and with no ideas, as poetry does. It contains feelings,
but no meanings. Music offers us no background for emotion, no objects
upon which it may be directed, no story, no _mise en scene_. It
supplies us with the feeling tones of things and events, but not with
the things or events themselves. It moves wholly in a world of its
own, a world of pure feeling, with no embodiment save only sound. It
may express terror, but not terror over this or that; joy, but whether
the joy that comes from sight of the morning or of the beloved, it
cannot tell. In one brief space of time, it may arouse despair, hope,
triumph--but all over nothing.
Yet--and this is the central paradox of music--despite its abstractness,
nay, because of this very quality, it remains the most personal and
intimate of the arts. For, itself offering no images of things and
events to which we may attach the feelings which it arouses, we supply
our own. We fill in the impersonal form of musical feeling with the
concrete emotions of our own lives; it is our strivings, our hopes and
fears, which music expresses. By denying us access to the world about
us, music compels us to turn in upon ourselves; it is we who live there
in the sounds. For, as we have seen, the rhythmic tones seize hold not
only of our attention, but of our bodies also--hand and foot and head
and heart, resounding throughout the whole organism. And, where our
bodies are, there are we. Moreover, our life there in the sounds need
not remain without objects because the music does not describe them
to us; for out of our own inner selves we may build up an imaginary
world for our feelings. As we listen to the music, we shall see the
things we hope for or fear or desire; or else transport ourselves among
purely fanciful objects and events. Music is a language which we all
understand because it expresses the basic mold of all emotion and
striving; yet it is a language which no two people understand in the
same way, because each pours into that mold his own unique experience.
In itself abstract and objectless, it may thus become, in varying ways,
concrete and alive.
The great variety in the interpretation of musical compositions has
often been used as an argument against the existence of emotions in
music, but is, as we have seen, the inevitable result of their
abstractness. This abstractness may, indeed, be so great that apparently
opposite concrete emotions, such as love and religious adoration,
despair and joy, may be aroused in different people, according to
different circumstances, by the same piece. The music of the opera can
be used in the cathedral. Yet strikingly dissimilar emotions have
common elements--worship is the love of God; joy may be a rage equally
with disappointment; and at their highest intensity, all opposed
emotions tend to pass over into each other: hope into fear, love into
hate, exaltation into depression. The elementary feelings out of which
our complex emotions are built are few and simple; hence each one of
the latter is identical in some ingredients with the others. And even
the elementary feelings may have common aspects of intensity and tempo,
of strain and excitement. Some musical compositions, like the fugues
of Bach, seem to express nothing more than such extremely abstract
modes of feeling, without arousing any associations that would impel
the mind to make a more concrete interpretation. To express feelings
of this kind in language is, of course, impossible, for the reason
that our emotional vocabularies have been constructed to communicate
only the emotions of everyday life. Other types of music--like the
romantic tone poetry of a later day--which are more abundant in their
associations, and hence richer in their emotional content, are difficult
of translation for another reason: the rapidity of succession and
subtlety of intermixture of the expressed feelings are beyond the reach
of words, even of a poet's, which inevitably stabilize and isolate
what they denote.
But abstract and objectless emotions occur in other regions of
experience beside the musical, even beyond the entire field of the
aesthetic. All except the most healthy-minded and practical people are
at times filled with vague fears, longings, and joys, the objects or
causes of which they cannot formulate. Normally, feeling is directed
towards definite objects and leads to action upon them, but may
nevertheless become isolated from its proper connections, and function
without issue. The extreme cases of this are the pathological states
of mania and depression, where such feelings assume proportions
dangerous to the existence of the individual. Intoxication and hysteria
present analogous, though more transient phenomena. And one may observe
the autonomous development of mere feeling even in the healthy life,
as when one remains jolly after all occasion for it has ceased, or
angry after the cause for anger has been removed. All feelings tend
to acquire a strength beyond what is necessary for action and to endure
after their proper objects and conditions have disappeared; hence the
luxury of grief and revenge and sentimentality.
In their most general character, musical emotions stand on a level
with other purposeless emotions, except that they are deliberately
induced and elaborated to an extent and complexity unmatched elsewhere.
But while these emotions are morbid and evil outside of music, within
music they are innocent. For outside of music they spring from
dislocations of the practical and striving core of the personality,
where, if persistently indulged in, they exacerbate the disturbance
of which they are the sign, interfering with action and eventually
endangering the health and happiness of the individual; while in music,
being induced from the outside by mere sounds, they have no ground
within the personality itself where they can take root, and hence exert
only a harmless and transient effect upon the mind; they belong to the
surface, not to the substance of the self, to imagination, not to the
will. Or when, as sometimes happens, the deeper and perhaps morbid
strata of the self are reached by the sounds, the feelings which are
awakened from their sleep there, where they might be productive of
evil dreams, find an orderly and welcome release in the sounds--they
are not only aroused, but carried off by the music. This the Greeks
understood when they employed music as a healer of the soul and called
this effect catharsis.
If, indeed, music were just a means for the arousal of feelings, it
would not be a fine art, but an orgy. For, in order to be aesthetic,
feelings must be not merely stimulated by, but objectified in, the
sense medium, where they can be mastered and known. But the intimacy
of music is not in contradiction with the freedom and objectivity
characteristic of all art. For musical feelings, although they are
experienced as our own, are nevertheless also experienced as the sounds;
in music we live, not as we live ordinarily, within our bodies, but
out there, in a rarer and unpractical medium--tone. And in this new
region we gain dominion over our feelings, through the order which the
form of the music imposes upon them, and also self-knowledge, because,
in being externalized in the sounds, our feelings become an object for
our reflection and understanding. In music the light of reflection is
turned straight upon ourselves.
The poignancy of music depends upon just this fact that through it we
get a revelation of ourselves to ourselves. In the other arts, this
revelation is indirect, occurring through the representation of the
lives of other, real or fictitious, personalities; but in music, it
is direct; for there the object of expression is oneself. Even in the
lyric poem, where the reader and the poet tend to become identical,
the unity is less complete; for when embodied in words, feelings become
more exterior than when put forth into tones; a tone is closer to the
self, because like a cry or a laugh, it is less articulate. Moreover,
words are means of communication as well as expression; they therefore
embody of any experience only as much as can be passed from speaker
to hearer; the unique is for the most part lost on the way; but in
music the full personal resonance of experience is retained. In music
we get so close to ourselves that at times it is almost frightening.
And this is the reason why, on all the high or serious occasions of
human life, music is alone adequate to express its inner meaning. At
a marriage or a funeral, in church or at a festival, the ceremonial
is traditional and social; it expresses the historical and group
significance of the situation, but not that which is unique and just
one's own; it always contains, moreover, much that is outgrown and
unacceptable--a creed of life or love or death that belongs to the
past, not to us. But the music embodies all that we really believe and
feel about the fact, its intimate, emotional essence, clear of
everything irrelevant and external.
But music does more than express the inexpressible in ourselves; it
gives us entrance into a supernatural world of feeling. Except at the
rare high moments of our lives, its joys and despairs are too exalted
for us; they are not ours; they belong to gods and heroes. In music
the superman is born into our feelings. Music does for the emotions
what mythology and poetry do for the imagination and philosophy for
the intellect--it brings us into touch with a more magnificent life,
for which we have perhaps the potency, but not the opportunity here.
And in doing this, music performs a great service; for, outside of
love and war, life, which offers endless occasions for intense thought
and action, provides few for passionate feeling.
Thus far our study of the art has been confined to so-called absolute
music. We must now complete our survey by a rapid consideration of the
union of music with the other arts. Because of its abstractness, music,
of all the arts, lends itself most readily to combination with others;
yet even in the case of music the possibility of union is limited by
the existence of a clear identity between the arts combined. Thus,
music goes well with the temporal arts, poetry, the dance, and the
drama, and particularly well with the first two because they are
rhythmical; it will also unite with architecture, because that is
another abstract art; but with the static, concrete arts like painting
and sculpture, it will not fuse. One might perhaps accompany a picture
with a single chord whose emotional meaning was the same as that of
the color scheme and the objects represented, but not with more; for
the aesthetic experience of the picture is instantaneous and complete,
while that of the music requires time for its development and fruition;
hence the two would soon fall apart, and a person would either have
to ignore the music or cease to look at the picture.
Originally, of course, music was always combined with some other art,
and first of all, probably with the dance. In its earliest form, the
dance was a communal religious expression, about which we shall have
little to say, since it belongs to the past, not to living art. For
to-day the dance is a free art like music. The beauty of the dance
consists, first, in the free and rhythmical expression of impulses to
movement. This expression, which is direct for the dancer who actually
carries out her impulses in real motion, is for the spectator indirect
and ideal, for he experiences only movement-images aroused by movements
seen, and then, by feeling these into the limbs of the dancer, dances
with her in the imagination. And to secure this free and large, even
though vicarious, expression of pent-up impulses to movement is very
grateful to us whose whole movement life is impoverished, because
restricted by convention and occupation to a few narrow types. But the
dance would have little interest for men were it not for another element
in its beauty: the expression of the amorous feelings of the spectator.
These, although really located in the breast of the spectator, are
nevertheless embodied in the personality of the dancer, whose charm
they constitute. Finally, the content of the dance may be further
enriched through the use of symbolic costume and mimetic gestures,
suggesting emotions like joy or love or grief, emotionally toned ideas
like spring, or actions such as courtship. Now music, with its own
rhythmical order and voluminous emotional content, has an obvious
kinship with the rhythmic form and amorous substance of the dance, and
so can well serve to accompany it.
The result of the union is to enforce the rhythmic experience through
the medium of sound, the dance keeping time with the music, and, through
the heightened emotional tone and increased suggestibility created by
the music, to deepen the sympathetic rapport between dancer and
spectator. Thus the music is given a concrete interpretation through
the dance, and the dance gains in emotional power through the music.
In the union, the gain to the dance is clear and absolute; but the
music pays a price for the concreteness of content which it secures,
by forfeiting its power to express chance inner moods--what it gains
in definiteness it loses in scope and universality. And only music
with a strong and evident rhythm is capable of union with the dance;
the more complex and subtle music, aside from the impossibility of
making its delicate rhythms fit into those of a dance, has a variety
and sublimity of meaning so far transcending the personality of any
human being, that to attempt to focus it in a dancer, no matter how
charming, would be a travesty.
Of equal naturalness and almost equal antiquity with the union of music
with the dance, is its union with poetry. In song this union is a real
fusion; for the tones are the vocal word-sounds themselves, purified
into music. Here, of course, unlike absolute music, the tones are
expressive, not only as other tones are through their mere sound, but
also through their meaning. And this can well be; for as Schopenhauer
remarked, just as the universal may be illustrated by any object which
embodies it, so the vague musical content of a tone may be fused with
the concrete meaning of a word of like feeling. And for many hearers
music doubtless gains by thus becoming articulate; for, being unable
to supply out of their own imagination the concreteness which music
lacks, they welcome having this done for them by the poet; yet the
gain is not without a corresponding loss. For when the musical meaning
is specialized through the emotions that are the burden of the song,
it necessarily loses the power which it would otherwise have of
expressing one's own inner life--once more, what it gains in
definiteness it loses in scope. It no longer possesses the unique
function of the musical. Hence, if we love the music, we shall not
care whether or not we understand the meaning of the words, and what
we shall value in the song will be only the peculiar intimacy which
it derives from its instrument, the voice. Only rarely is it otherwise,
as in some of the songs of Schumann, when the poetic interpretation
is so beautiful and so completely at one with the musical feeling,
that we prefer to accept it rather than substitute our own
interpretation for the poet's. But even so, the music, if genuine,
will have value without the words. At the opposite pole are those
songs, often popular, where the music, having little worth in itself,
is a mere accompaniment for the words. In all cases, however, the music
can lend to the poetry some of the intimacy which is its own, so that
its burden has a deeper echo in the soul.
Yet much of poetry is unfit for union with music. This is true, first,
of all highly intellectual poetry, where the emotions are embodied in
complex and abstract ideas. One could not, for example, readily set
Browning to music. Music may be deep, mystic, even metaphysical in its
meaning, but it cannot be dialectical. The emotions that accompany
subtle thought, even when intense, are not of the voluminous, massive
kind which music expresses; they lack the bodily resonance of the
latter; they are, moreover, clean-cut and static, while in music
everything flows in half-lights, like a river moving in moonlight.
On the other hand, poems which express rapidly developing states of
mind, which contain quick, subtle transitions, are equally unfit for
union with music. For music, although always in motion, is always in
slow motion; it needs time to get under way, and time for its
development in embroidering, varying, and repeating its theme. And
this difficulty applies in a general way to every union between poetry
and music. For words are primarily practical and communicative, and
therefore cut short the passion which they express; whereas tones,
never having had any other purpose than expression, draw it out and
let it have its way. Moreover, poetry, because of its definiteness,
is compatible with only a limited range of variation, beyond which it
becomes monotonous, while music, because of its abstractness, permits
of variations almost endless, and is enriched by every new shape in
which its meaning can appear. If, therefore, poetry is to keep time
with the slow movement of the music and conform to its mode of
development, the verses have to be repeated again and again; but this
destroys the poetic form--as in the oratorio, with its senseless
iterations.
Finally, the temporal and developmental character of the drama would
seem to fit it for union with music. Yet the union of these two arts
is confronted with the same difficulties that beset the connection
between poetry and music. The movement of the acting drama is swift
and straight, that of music is slow and circular; hence if the music
is to have its way, the action of the drama must stand. In consequence
of this, there is little real action in most operas, prolonged dialogues
in song taking its place. Only rarely--as for example in Strauss'
"Salome," perhaps--is the form of the drama preserved. As a rule the
unity of the musical form is also destroyed, the thread of the story
being substituted for it. Last, as in the song, the universality of
the music is renounced in favor of the interpretation given to it by
the program. In the _leit-motif_, indeed, as Wagner uses it, where
a musical phrase is provided with a fixed connotation of ideas and
acts which is understood by the hearer whenever it recurs, opera ceases
to be music at all in the strict sense, and becomes a musical language.
Yet in the opera, as in the song, the music, when genuine, possesses
its own independent meaning, which can be appreciated without the
_mise en scene_ or the program. And then only rarely, as in the
Toreador song in "Carmen," is the action so close to the inner meaning
of the music, that the latter seems to gain by the interpretation.
It follows that Wagner's dream of making the opera a sum of all the
values of poetry, drama, and music, and so an art more beautiful than
any one of them, is fallacious. For, as we have repeatedly seen, in
uniting the arts, there is gain as well as loss; something of the form
or meaning of each has to be sacrificed. The work that results from
the combination is really a new art-form, in which the elements are
changed and their individuality partly destroyed; and its value is a
new value, which may be equal to, but is certainly no greater than,
that of any other art-form. To put the matter epigrammatically, when
the arts are added together, one plus one does not equal two, but only
one again.