It is strange that those who would accept the general facts of
musical logic as outlined above do not perceive that they have
thereby cut away the ground from under the feet of the "natural
language" argument. If the principle of choice in the progress
of a melody is tone-relationship, the principle of choice cannot
also be the cadences of the speaking voice. That musical
intervals often RECALL the speaking voice is another matter, as
we have said, and to this it may be added that they much more
often do not. The question here is only of the primacy of the
principle. Thus it would seem that the facts of musical structure
constitute in themselves a refutation of the view we have disputed.
To say that music arose in "heightened speech" is irrelevant; for
the occasion of an aesthetic phenomenon is never its cause. It
might as well be said that music arose in economic conditions,--
as indeed Grosse, in his "Anfange der Kunst," conclusively shows,
without attempting to make this social occasion intrude into the
nature of the phenomenon. Primitive decorative art arose in the
imitation of the totemic or clan symbols, mostly animal forms;
but we have seen that the aesthetic quality of the decoration is
due to the demands of the eye, and appears fully only in the
comparative degradation of the representative form. In exactly
the same way might we consider the "degradation" of speech
cadences into real music,--supposing this were really the origin
of music. As a matter of fact, however, the best authorities
seem to be agreed that the primitive "dance-song" was rather a
monotonous, meaningless chant, and that the original pitch-
elements were mechanically supplied by the first musical
instruments; these being at first merely for noise, and becoming
truly vibrating, sonorous bodies because they were more easily
struck if they were hard or taut. The musical tones which these
hard vibrating bodies gave out were the first determinations of
pitch, and of the elements of the scale, which correspond to the
natural partial vibrations of such bodies. "The human voice,"
Wallaschek<1> tells us, "equally admits of any pentatonic or
heptatonic intervals, and very likely we should never have got
regular scales if we had depended upon the ear and voice only.
The first unique cause to settle the type of a regular scale is
the instrument." To this material we have to apply only that
"natural persuasion of the ear" which we have already explained,
to account for the full development of music.
<1> _Primitive Music_, 1893, p. 156.
The beauty of music, in so far as beauty is identical with
pleasantness, consists in its satisfaction of the demands of
the ear, and of the whole psychophysical organism as connected
with the ear. It is now time to return to a thread dropped at
the beginning. It was said that a common way of settling the
musical experience was to make musical beauty the object of
perception, and musical expression the object, or source, of
emotion. This view seems to attach itself to all shades of
theory. Hanslick always contrasts intellectual activity as
attaching to the form, and emotion as attaching to the sensuous
material (that is, the physical effects of motion, loud or
soft sound, tempo, etc.). He speaks of the aesthetic criterion
of INTELLIGENT gratification. "The truly musical listener" has
"his attention absorbed by the particular form and character of
the composition," "the unique position which the INTELLECTUAL
ELEMENT in music occupies in relation to FORMS and SUBSTANCE
(subject)." M. Dauriac in the same way separates the emotion
of music<1> as a product of nervous excitations, from the
appreciation of it as beautiful. "It is probably that the
pleasure caused by rhythm and color prevails with a pretty
large number, with the greatest number, over the pleasure in
the musical form, pleasure too exclusively PSYCHOLOGICAL for
one to be content with it alone....The musical sense implies
the intelligence....The theory...applies to a great number of
sonorous sensations, and not at all to any musical perceptions."
Mr. W.H. Hadow<2> tells us that it is the duty of the musician
not to flatter the sense with an empty compliment of sound,
but to reach through sensation to the mental faculties within.
And again we read "the art of the composer is in a sense the
discovery and exposition of the INTELLIGIBLE relations in the
multifarious material at his command."<3>
<1> "Le Plaisir et l'Emotion Musicale," _Rev. Philos._, Tome
42, No. 7.
<2> Op. cit., p. 47.
<3> Grove's _Dict._ Art. "Relationship."
Now it is not hard to see how this antithesis has come about.
But that the work of a master is always capable of logical
analysis does not prove that our apprehension of it is a
logical act. And the preceding discussion has wholly failed
to make its point, if it is not now clear that the musical
experience is an impression and not a judgment; that the feeling
of tonality is not a judgment of tonality, and that though the
aesthetic enjoyment of music extends only to those limits within
which the feeling of tonality is active, that feeling is more
likely than not to be quite unintelligible to the listener.
Indeed, if it were not so, we should have to restrict, by
hypothesis, the enjoyment of music to those able to give a
technical report of what they hear,--which is notoriously at
odds with the facts. That psychologist is quite right who
holds<1> that psychology, in laying down a principle explaining
the actual effect of a musical piece, is not justified in
confining itself to skilled musicians and taking no notice of
more than nine tenths of those who listen to the piece. But on
the understanding that the tonality-feeling acts subconsciously,
that our satisfaction with the progression of notes is unexplained
by the laws of acoustics and association, we are enabled to bring
within the circle of those who have the musical experience even
those nine tenths whose intellects are not actively participant.
<1> Lazarus, _Das Leben der Seele_, ii, p. 323.
The fact is that musical form, in the sense of structure, balance,
symmetry, and proportion in the arrangement of phrases, and in
the contrasting of harmonies and keys, is different from the
musical form which is felt intimately, intrinsically, as the
desired, the demanded progress from one note to another. Structure
is indeed perceived, understood, enjoyed as an orderly unified
arrangement. Form is felt as an immediate joy. Structure it is
which many critics have in mind when they speak of form, and it
is the confusion between the two which makes such an antithesis
of musical beauty and sensuous material possible. The real
musical beauty, it is clear, is in the melodic idea; in the
sequence of tones which are indissolubly one, which are felt
together, one of which cannot exist without the other. Musical
beauty is in the intrinsic musical form. And yet here, too, we
must admit, that, in the last analysis, structure and form need
not be different. The perfect structure will be such a unity
that it, too, will be FELT as one--not only "the orderly
distribution of harmonies and keys in such a manner that the
mind can realize the concatenation as a complete and distinct
work of art." The ideal musical consciousness would have an
ideally great range; it would not only realize the concatenation,
but it would take it in as one takes in a single phrase, a simple
tune, retaining it from first not to last. The ordinary musical
consciousness has merely a much shorter breath. It can "feel"
an air, a movement; it cannot "feel" a symphony, it can only
perceive the relation of keys and harmonies therein. With
repeated hearing, study, experience, this span of beauty may be
indefinitely extended--in the individual, as in the race. But
no one will deny that the direct experience of beauty, the
single aesthetic thrill, is measured exactly by the length of
this span. It is only genius--hearer or composer--who can
operate "a longue haleine."
So it is that we must understand the development in musical
form from the cut and dried sonata form to the wayward yet
infinitely greater beauty of Beethoven; and thence to the
"free forms" of modern music. "Infinite melody" is a
contradiction in terms, because when the first term cannot
be present in consciousness with the last there is nothing to
control and direct the progression; and our musical memory is
limited. Yet we can conceive, theoretically, the possibility
of an indefinite widening of the memory.
It was on some such grounds as these that Poe laid down his
famous "Poetic Principle,"--that a long poem does not exist;
that "a long poem" is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
He says, indeed, that because "elevating excitement," the end
of a poem, is "through a psychical necessity" transient,
therefore no poem should be longer than the natural term of
such excitement. It is clearly possible to substitute for
"elevating excitement," immediate musical feeling of the
individual. What is the meaning of "feeling," "impression,"
here? It is the power of entering into a Gestaltsqualitat--
a motor group, a scheme in which every element is the
mechanical cue to the following. Beauty ceases for the hearer
where this carrying power, the "funded capital" of tone-
linkings ceases. In just the same way, if rhythm were a
perception rather than an impression, we ought to be able to
apprehend a rhythm of which the unit periods were hours. Yet
we may so bridge over the moments of beauty in experience that
we are enabled, without stretching to a breaking-point, to
speak of a symphony or an opera as a single beautiful work of
art.