I.

There is a class of persons to whom art in general is but a fashionable

luxury, and music in particular but an agreeable sound, an elegant

superfluity serving to relieve the tedium of conversation at a soiree,

and fill up the space between sorbets and supper. To such, any

philosophical discussion on the æsthetics of art must seem as puerile an

occupation as that of the fairy who spent her time weighing grains of

dust with a spider's web. Artists, to whom, through a foreign prejudice

which dates back to the barbarism of the Middle Ages, they persist in

refusing any high place in the social scale, are to them only petty

tradesmen dealing in suspicious wares (in most instances unshrewdly,

since they rarely get rich, which aggravates their position); while what

they call performers are looked upon by them as mere tricksters or

jugglers, who profit by the dexterity of their fingers, as dancers and

acrobats by the suppleness of their limbs. The painter whose works

decorate their saloons figures in the budget of their expenses on a line

with the upholsterer, whose hangings they speak of in the same breath

with Church's "Heart of the Andes," and Rosa Bonheur's "Cattle Fair."

It is not for such people that I write; but there are others,--and to

these I address myself,--who recognize in the artist the privileged

instrument of a moral and civilizing influence; who appreciate art

because they derive from it pure and ennobling inspirations; who respect

it because it is the highest expression of human thought, aiming at the

absolute ideal; and who love it as we love the friend to whom we

confide our joys and sorrows, and in whom we find a faithful response to

every movement of the soul.

Lamartine has said, with truth, "Music is the literature of the heart;

it commences where speech ends." In fact, music is a psycho-physical

phenomenon. In its germ, it is a sensation; in its full development, an

ideal. It is sufficient not to be deaf to perceive music, at least, if

not to appreciate it. Even idiots and maniacs are subject to its

influence. Not being restricted to any precise sense, going beyond the

mere letter, and expressing only states of the soul, it has this

advantage over literature, that every one can assimilate it to his own

passions, and adapt it to the sentiments which rule him. Its power,

limited in the intellectual order to the imitative passions, is in that

of the imagination unlimited. It responds to an interior, indefinable

sense possessed by all,--the ideal.

Literature is always objective: it speaks to the understanding, and

determines in us impressions in keeping with the determined sense which

it expresses. Music, on the contrary, may be, in turn, objective and

subjective, according to the disposition in which we find ourselves at

the moment of hearing it. It is objective when, affected only by the

purely physical sensation of sound, we listen to it passively, and it

suggests to us impressions. A march, a waltz, a flute imitating the

nightingale, the chromatic scale imitating the murmuring of the wind in

the "Pastoral Symphony," may be taken as examples.

It is subjective when, under the empire of a latent impression, we

discover in its general character an accordance with our psychological

state, and we assimilate it to ourselves; it is then like a mirror in

which we see reflected the movements which agitate us, with a fidelity

all the more exact from the fact that, without being conscious of it, we

ourselves are the painters of the picture which unrolls itself before

our imagination.

Let me explain. Play a melancholy air to a proscript thinking of his

distant home; to a deserted lover; to a mother mourning the loss of a

child; to a vanquished warrior;--and be assured they will all

appropriate to themselves the plaintive harmonies, and fancy they detect

in them the accents of their own grief.

The fact of music is still a mystery. We know that it is composed of

three principles,--air, vibration, and rhythmic symmetry. Strike an

object in an exhausted receiver, and it produces no sound, because no

air is there; touch a ringing glass, and the sound stops, because there

is no vibration; take away the rhythm of the simplest air by changing

the duration of the notes that compose it, and you render it obscure and

unrecognizable, because you have destroyed its symmetry.

But why, then, do not several hammers striking in cadence produce music?

They certainly comply with the three conditions of air, vibration, and

rhythm. Why is the accord of a third so pleasing to the ear? Why is the

minor mode so suggestive of sadness? There is the mystery,--there the

unexplained phenomenon.

We restrict ourselves to saying that music, which, like speech, is

perceived through the medium of the ear, does not, like speech, call

upon the brain for an explanation of the sensation produced by the

vibration on the nerves; it addresses itself to a mysterious agent

within us, which is superior to intelligence, since it is independent of

it, and makes us feel that which we can neither conceive nor explain.

Let us examine the various attributes of the musical phenomenon.

1. _Music is a physical agent._ It communicates to the body shocks which

agitate the members to their base. In churches the flame of the candles

oscillates to the quake of the organ. A powerful orchestra near a sheet

of water ruffles its surface. A learned traveller speaks of an iron ring

which swings to and fro to the murmur of the Tivoli Falls. In

Switzerland I excited at will, in a poor child afflicted with a

frightful nervous malady, hysterical and catalyptic crises, by playing

in the minor key of E flat. The celebrated Doctor Bertier asserts that

the sound of a drum gives him the colic. Certain medical men state that

the notes of the trumpet quicken the pulse and induce slight

perspiration. The sound of the bassoon is cold; the notes of the French

horn at a distance, and of the harp, are voluptuous. The flute played

softly in the middle register calms the nerves. The low notes of the

piano frighten children. I once had a dog who would generally sleep on

hearing music, but the moment I played in the minor key he would bark

piteously. The dog of a celebrated singer whom I knew would moan

bitterly, and give signs of violent suffering, the instant that his

mistress chanted a chromatic gamut. A certain chord produces on my sense

of hearing the same effect as the heliotrope on my sense of smell and

the pine-apple on my sense of taste. Rachel's voice delighted the ear by

its ring before one had time to seize the sense of what was said, or

appreciate the purity of her diction.

We may affirm, then, that musical sound, rhythmical or not, agitates the

whole physical economy,--quickens the pulse, incites perspiration, and

produces a pleasant momentary irritation of the nervous system.

2. _Music is a moral agent._ Through the medium of the nervous system,

the direct interpreter of emotion, it calls into play the higher

faculties; its language is that of sentiment Furthermore, the motives

which have presided over particular musical combinations establish links

between the composer and the listener. We sigh with Bellini in the

finale of La Somnambula; we shudder with Weber in the sublime

phantasmagoria of Der Freischutz; the mystic inspirations of Palestrina,

the masses of Mozart, transport us to the celestial regions, toward

which they rise like a melodious incense. Music awakens in us

reminiscences, souvenirs, associations. When we have wept over a song,

it ever after seems to us bathed in tears.

A celebrated pianist tells me that, in a city where he was giving

concerts, he became acquainted with a charming young girl. He was twenty

years old, and had all the poetic and generous illusions of that

romantic age. She was sixteen. They loved each other without daring to

confess it, and perhaps without knowing it themselves. But the hour of

separation came: he was passing his last evening at her house. Observed

by the family, he could only furtively join hands with her at the moment

of parting. The poem was but commenced, to be arrested at the first

page: he never saw her again. Disheartened, distracted with grief, he

wandered through the dark streets, until at two in the morning he found

himself again under her windows. She too was awake. Their thoughts,

drawn together by that divine tie which merits the name of love only in

the morning of life, met in unison, for she was playing gently in the

solitude of her chamber the first notes of a mazurka which they had

danced together. "Tears came to my eyes," said my friend, "on hearing

this music, which seemed to me sublime; it was the stifled plaint of her

heart; it was her grief which exhaled from her fingers; it was the

eternal adieu. For years I believed this mazurka to be a marvellous

inspiration, and it was not till long after, when age had dispelled my

illusions and obliterated the adored image, that I discovered it was

only a vulgar and trivial commonplace: the gold was changed to brass."

The old man, chilled by years, may be insensible to the pathetic accents

of Rossini, of Mozart: but repeat to him the simple songs of his youth,

the present vanishes, and the illusions of the past come back again. I

once knew an old Spanish general who detested music. One day I began to

play to him my "Siege of Saragossa," in which is introduced the "Marcha

Real" (Spanish national air), and he wept like a child. This air

recalled to him the immortal defence of the heroic city, behind the

falling walls of which he had fought against the French, and sounded to

him, he said, like the voice of all the holy affections expressed by the

word _home_. The mercenary Swiss troops, when in France and Naples,

could not hear the "Ranz des Vaches" (the shepherd song of old and rude

Helvetia) without being overcome by it. When from mountain to mountain

the signal of revolt summoned to the cause the three insurgent Cantons,

the desertions caused by this air became so frequent that the government

prohibited it. The reader will remember the comic effect produced upon

the French troops in the Crimea by the Highlanders marching to battle to

the sound of the bagpipe, whose harsh, piercing notes inspired these

brave mountaineers with valor, by recalling to them their country and

its heroic legends. Napoleon III. finds himself compelled to allow the

Arab troops incorporated into his army their barbarous tam-tam music,

lest they revolt. The measured beat of the drum sustains the soldier in

long marches which otherwise would be insupportable. The Marseillaise

contributed as much toward the republican victories of 1793, when France

was invaded, as the genius of General Dumouriez.

3. _Music is a complex agent._ It acts at once on life, on the instinct,

the forces, the organism. It has a psychological action. The negroes

charm serpents by whistling to them; it is said that fawns are

captivated by a melodious voice; the bear is aroused with the fife;

canaries and sparrows enjoy the flageolet; in the Antilles, lizards are

enticed from their retreats by the whistle; spiders have an affection

for fiddlers; in Switzerland, the herdsmen attach to the necks of their

handsomest cows a large bell, of which they are so proud, that, while

they are allowed to wear it, they march at the head of the herd; in

Andalusia, the mules lose their spirit and their power of endurance, if

deprived of the numerous bells with which it is customary to deck these

intelligent animals; in the mountains of Scotland and Switzerland, the

herds pasture best to the sound of the bagpipe; and in the Oberland,

cattle strayed from the herd are recalled by the notes of the trumpet.

Donizetti, a year before his death, had lost all his faculties, in

consequence of a softening of the spinal marrow. Every means was

resorted to for reviving a spark of that intellect once so vigorous; but

all failed. In a single instance only he exhibited a gleam of

intelligence; and that was on hearing one of his friends play the

septette of his opera of "Lucia." "Poor Donizetti!" said he; "what a

pity he should have died so soon!" And this was all.

In 1848, after the terrible insurrection which made of Paris a vast

slaughter-house, to conceal my sadness and my disgust I went to the

house of one of my friends, who was superintendent of the immense insane

asylum in Clermont-sur-Oise. He had a small organ, and was a tolerably

good singer. I composed a mass, to the first performance of which we

invited a few artists from Paris and several of the most docile inmates

of the asylum. I was struck with the bearing of the latter, and asked my

friend to repeat the experiment, and extend the number of invitations.

The result was so favorable, that we were soon able to form a choir from

among the patients, of both sexes, who rehearsed on Saturdays the hymns

and chants they were to sing on Sunday at mass. A raving lunatic, a

priest, who was getting more and more intractable every day, and who

often had to be put in a strait-jacket, noticed the periodical absence

of some of the inmates, and exhibited curiosity to know what they were

doing. The following Saturday, seeing some of his companions preparing

to go to rehearsal, he expressed a desire to go with them. The doctor

told him he might go on condition that he would allow himself to be

shaved and decently dressed. This was a thorny point, for he would never

attend to his person, and became furious when required to dress; but, to

our great astonishment, he consented at once. This day he not only

listened to the music quietly, but was detected several times joining

his voice with that of the choir. When I left Clermont, my poor old

priest was one of the most constant attendants at the rehearsals. He

still had his violent periods, but they were less frequent; and when

Saturday arrived, he always dressed himself with care, and waited

impatiently for the hour to go to chapel.

To resume: Music being a _physical agent_,--that is to say, acting on

the individual without the aid of his intelligence; a _moral

agent_,--that is to say, reviving his memory, exciting his imagination,

developing his sentiment; and a _complex agent_,--that is to say, having

a physiological action on the instinct, the organism, the forces, of

man,--I deduce from this that it is one of the most powerful means for

ennobling the mind, elevating the morals, and, above all, refining the

manners. This truth is now so well recognized in Europe that we see

choral societies--Orpheons and others--multiplying as by enchantment,

under the powerful impulse given them by the state. I speak not simply

of Germany, which is a singing nation, whose laborious, peaceful,

intelligent people have in all time associated choral music as well with

their labors as with their pleasures; but I may cite particularly

France, which counts to-day more than eight hundred Orpheon societies,

composed of workingmen. How many of these, who formerly dissipated their

leisure time at drinking-houses, now find an ennobling recreation in

these associations, where the spirit of union and fraternity is

engendered and developed! And if we could get at the statistics of

crime, who can doubt that they would show it had diminished in

proportion to the increase of these societies? In fact, men are better,

the heart is in some sort purified, when impregnated with the noble

harmonies of a fine chorus; and it is difficult not to treat as a

brother one whose voice has mingled with your own, and whose heart has

been united to yours in a community of pure and joyful emotions. If

Orpheon societies ever become established in America, be assured that

bar-rooms, the plague of the country, will cease, with revolvers and

bowie-knives, to be popular institutions.

Music, when employed in the service of religion, has always been its

most powerful auxiliary. The organ did more for Catholicism in the

Middle Ages than all its preaching; and Palestrina and Marcello have

reclaimed and still reclaim more infidels than all the doctors of the

Church.

We enter a house of worship. Still under the empire of the external

world, we carry there our worldly thoughts and occupations; a thousand

distractions deter us from religious reflection and meditation. The word

of the preacher reaches the ear indeed, but only as a vague sound. The

sense of what is said is arrested at the surface, without penetrating

the heart. But let the grand voice of the organ be heard, and our whole

being is moved; the physical world disappears, the eyes of the soul

open; we bow the head, we bend the knee, and our thoughts, disengaged

from matter, soar to the eternal regions of the Good, the Beautiful, and

the True.