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Cornell University Library 
 ML 3845.G98 
 
 The power of sound 
 
 3 1924 022 202 687 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022202687 
 
THE 
 
 POWER OF SOUND 
 
THE 
 
 POWEE OF SOUND 
 
 BY- 
 EDMUND GURNEY 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGIi 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDEK, & CO., 15 WATEELOO PLACE 
 
 1880 
 
 [AU r ig hts reserved'] 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 A COKSIDEEABLE part of the substance of this book has already 
 appeared in the shape of articles in the Fortnightly Review, the 
 Nineteenth Century, Frasers and Macmillan's Magazines, and 
 Mind. This disconnected mode of publication was specially- 
 unfavourable to a subject where the prevailing doubt and dis- 
 agreement as to the very first principles precludes taking anything 
 for granted. In their present more coherent form, I trust that 
 my main positions may at any rate have gained in clearness. 
 One word may be said as to arrangement. My primary concern 
 being with the sesthetics of Hearing, and in particular with Music, 
 the various analogies and contrasts which other regions of experi- 
 ence present have been introduced in connection with the different 
 divisions of the main subject; which has led to a somewhat 
 sporadic notice of other arts. To those who beheve in trans- 
 cendental hnks, making all the arts One, this treatment may 
 appear unsatisfactory; but it certainly conduces to the distinct- 
 ness of my humbler hue of argument. 
 
 My chief object, after certain preliminary explanations, has 
 been to examine, in such a way as a person without special tech- 
 nical knowledge may follow, the general elements of musical 
 structure, and the nature, sources, and varieties, of musical effect ; 
 and by the Hght of that enquiry to mark out clearly the position 
 of Music, in relation to the faculties and feehngs of the individual, 
 to the other arts, and to society at large. Since the pubhcation 
 of Helmholtz's Tonempfindungen, an epoch-making book in the 
 branch of physics which deals with musical sound, the study of 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 that subject has been widely popularised. But while the indis- 
 pensable material of musical phenomena has thus met with ex- 
 ceptionally complete treatment, and has been in its sahent points 
 exceptionally well understood in this country, Httle attempt has 
 been made to apply scientific treatment to the musical phenomena 
 themselves. Many special fields of enquiry — history, biography, 
 criticism, the various technical aspects of the art — have found 
 able and zealous workers : but very few EngHsh writers have 
 attempted any separate treatment of the more general facts and 
 problems which underlie the whole subject and are appreciable 
 apart from technical detail. It is the more unfortunate that I 
 find myself distinctly at variance with the greater part of these 
 previous attempts, as well as with Helmholtz himself in respect 
 of several questions lying on the borderland of the physical and 
 the aesthetic enquiry.^ This isolation has been to me a source of 
 most serious misgiving, and has considerably delayed the comple- 
 tion of my task. I will not forestall what has to follow by men- 
 tioning particular points ; but will only say that, after repeated 
 reconsideration, the various analyses and expositions which I have 
 met with still seem to me greatly to fail, not only in recognition 
 of the difficulties which the phenomena of Music present, but 
 (what is more important) in recognition of the phenomena them- 
 selves ; these last being actual more or less ascertainable facts, 
 and mainly implicit of course in the musical experiences of those 
 who, wisely enough, take their enjoyment without troubling their 
 heads about the how and the why. These are the facts which I 
 have given my utmost endeavours to reahse as they are, apart 
 
 ' I have not read any of the Gennan extracts quoted), there must doubtless be 
 
 systems of aesthetics, general or musical, others of a more instructive kind; but I 
 
 Among many vchich are confessedly in have not happened to hear of any in which 
 
 the clouds, which replace scientific en- the fundamental facts and problems of 
 
 quiry by barren systematisation or abstract Music, as they appear to me, are connec- 
 
 metaphysics, and either ring the changes tedly considered. Dr. Pole's Philosophy of 
 
 on arbitrary hierarchies of the arts and the Music came out too late for me to consult 
 
 emotions, or inform us, e.g., that ' when it, and I do not know how fai- his ground 
 
 Music shall have thrown off the tyranny coincides with mine. My debt to Mr. 
 
 of rhythm, then and only then will she Darwin on one very fundamental topic 
 
 attain self-consciousness ' (and these are will appear abundantly in the sequel, 
 iuvariably the ones from which I find 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 from theories, and it is only through its harmony with them that 
 I have felt any confidence in working out the more theoretic part 
 of my exposition. On this more tangible ground, the sense of 
 speculative isolation is at any rate reUeved by abundance of 
 unspeculative sympathy ; and even as regards conclusions and 
 applications, the views to which I have tried to supply a scientific 
 basis are the very ones I find more or less exphcitly held by scores 
 of reasonable people, who have observed for themselves and are 
 keenly interested in the position and prospects of the musical art. 
 But though many may be led to them by individual instinct and 
 experience, none the less must I hold it important to get at the 
 scientific basis for them, if possible ; less for the satisfaction of 
 holding connected and logical views than to obtain definite 
 ground for opposing dangerous tendencies ; for refuting fallacies 
 which are the more insidious and elusive in proportion as the 
 assthetic impressions themselves have an appearance of vagueness ; 
 and for insisting with authority on the truest and noblest func- 
 tions of the people's art. 
 
 It is in this last point, in the convergence of my arguments to 
 conclusions concerning the popular bearings and possibihties of 
 Music, that my chief encouragement has lain throughout. It is 
 to my growing conviction on that subject that I chiefly aim at 
 winning others ; the conviction that this art, if its conditions were 
 better understood, might do far more for numbers in aU classes 
 who at present feel themselves at sea in it, and get comparatively 
 little out of it ; but more particularly that it has a unique 
 message for the uncultivated and ignorant, for the publicans and 
 sinners ; and not in the millennium, but now ; not after but 
 before they cease to be uncultivated and ignorant. I may add, 
 that if such phrases have here an ad captandum and exaggerated 
 air, and suggest irrelevant rhetoric about the general soundness 
 and impressibility for good of the popular heart, my support of 
 them in the sequel, with restricted reference to this most isolated 
 region of experience, will probably prove only too persistently 
 plain and rigorous. 
 
 And this brings me to a few words of explanation and 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 apology as to the general method of treatment. The words 
 theoretic and speculative which I have used above need not 
 alarm any reader with a vision of remote hypotheses and re- 
 condite arguments. Even the parts of the investigation where 
 I have been most driven to the use of abstract words deal, for 
 the most part, with quite concrete matters : for instance, the 
 long account of Melody and Harmony is an analysis as to the 
 Tightness or wrongness of which any intelhgent person who has 
 felt an interest in hstening to Music, and who will follow my 
 method of interrogating his experience, will be competent to form 
 a very fair opinion. Still less need the most ardent believer in 
 the spiritual character of the art fear to find the domain of genius 
 measured by mechanical rules, or the feehngs whose indescrib- 
 able and mysterious nature no one, I think, can have reahsed 
 more deeply than myself, docketed off under cut-and-dry psycho- 
 logical formulae. So far am I from the thought or desire of 
 
 Untwisting all the chains that tie 
 The hidden soul of Harmony, 
 
 that one of the first results of my analysis is to define the 
 boundary of the vast region that lies beyond it ; and one of the 
 most direct conclusions from my general explanations is the hope- 
 lessness of penetrating Music in detail, and of obtaining, whether 
 in objective facts of structure or in fancied analogies and inter- 
 pretations, any standpoint external to the actual inward impres- 
 sion, from which to judge it. At the same time I have not been 
 able to avoid a considerable amount of definition and distinction, 
 nor can I hope to be of service to any reader who is not will- 
 ing to accompany me for a certain distance over dull ground. 
 The region is naturally a foggy one ; and in it any hond fide 
 enquirer, who aspires to be in some degree a guide, has to reckon 
 with very singular conditions in the feehngs and ideas prevaihng 
 around him. For while Music, on the clear side of its direct 
 utterances, its actual pleasure-giving quahties, is a subject which 
 a vast number of people care about deeply and appreciate truly, 
 not one in a hundred of these has ever had a moment's independ- 
 
PliEFAGE. ix 
 
 eiit curiosity to look beyond this direct delight, and to distinguish 
 even the most general characteristics of the things which impress 
 him or of his own impressions. The consequence is that among 
 the deluge of musical talk and writing which the days bring 
 forth there is hardly a view or a phrase too shallow or fantastic 
 to obtain unquestioning assent. Many genuine lovers of Music, I 
 am sure, are vaguely stimulated with a sense of the dignity of the 
 art, when they hear that Beethoven was a prophet who ' disen- 
 tangled the confused web of human existence,' or that Schumann 
 ' stated the riddle ' (of the painful earth) ' and left the solution to the 
 hearer ;' or when they read in a popular text-book that a composer 
 has to ' dive into the psychological mysteries of the human heart,' 
 being instinctively aware how indispensable this practice is, in 
 order ' to appreciate the different degrees of feehng produced by 
 various phases of mental disposition ; ' and that he is thus led to 
 the profound psychological discovery that as a single feehng, hke 
 melancholy, cannot always remain at the same strength, he must 
 not make his themes aU aUke. But none the less must talk like 
 this (and more, compared to which this is sober reason), on the 
 part of accredited musicians, react damagingly on the art ; and 
 its prevalence might excuse even pedantic efforts after precision. 
 Controversy, again, which I would gladly have avoided, has 
 been unavoidable where what appear to me fallacies are in 
 possession of the field. My best apology on this head will 
 perhaps be that my argument, so far as it is true, cuts the 
 ground from under the sort of musical controversy which is most 
 rampant and useless — the endless disputation and dogmatism 
 about the comparative merits of composers and compositions—^ 
 by showing how little tangible basis such disputation has ; how 
 utterly unconvincing it is doomed to be ; and how the application 
 of the only possible test distinctly points to the wisdom, in this 
 region, of exceptionally wide tolerance. 
 
 In conclusion, I must repeat that I am not writing for 
 musicians, but for those who care for Music. I should be sorry 
 indeed that the excellent musicians, both practical and hterary. 
 
X P HE FACE. 
 
 who from time to time have expressed to me their agreement 
 with many of the views here set forth, should not know what 
 valuable help I have found in their sympathy. But members 
 of a skilled minority, who have spent years of labour on a subject, 
 or who have been used to regard it as intimately bound up with 
 refined culture, may very naturally look with suspicion on an 
 attempt to strip it to some extent of its esoteric character and its 
 intellectual pretensions. WhUe, then, I shall be doubly grateful 
 for any favours I meet with in this quarter, I do not feel that I 
 am depending on a verdict of experts. Though there are many 
 points on which musicians must be the judges, or rather the most 
 accredited witnesses, these are not the points which I am chiefly 
 interested in discussing : and failure for me would be failure to 
 be understood by educated persons outside the technical circle. 
 It is true that I have been unable to adopt ' popular treatment ' 
 even in what is to some extent an advocacy of the popular cause. 
 But as regards musicianship, such amount of it as is implied in 
 remembering any simple melody is all I ask to begin with : while, 
 in return, I hope to prove to any one who possesses this faculty, 
 that he knows much more about Music than he perhaps imagines. 
 A slight amount of technical information will present itself as we 
 go along ; and if a very elementary point is sometimes emphasised, 
 it is because I often find people who have been enjoying Music 
 all their lives, to whom it is still a piece of information, e.g., that 
 the quality of a musical note is something difierent from its 
 pitch. Lastly, as to examples. A writer on this art of sound is 
 keenly sensible of his disadvantage in this respect, as compared 
 with those who deal with visible things ; for he can but set on 
 the page the symbols, and not the faintest shadow of the reality, 
 of his illustrations, while they can put before even an untutored 
 eye the very traits they are describing. Still no reader I am 
 hkely to find will have any difiiculty in getting the quotations 
 played to him, even if he cannot himself make them out : and 
 examples are of such immense help that I would gladly have 
 much increased their number. I have continually had the 
 
rilKFACE. xi 
 
 mortification of feeling tliat I was obliged to sacrifice to reasons 
 of space what would have been to me the easiest and to others 
 the most interesting part of my work. Such as they are, the 
 examples have been chosen Avith a special view to simplicity, and 
 will be found to embody in the most direct way possible the 
 points they are meant to illustrate. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. The Organs and Impeessions of the Higheb Senses . 1 
 
 II. Unfoemjld Sound . . . . . . . 25 
 
 III. The Elements of a Work of Art . . . .40 
 
 IV. Abstract Form as addressed to the Eye . . . 62 
 V. Abstract Form as addressed to the Ear . . .91 
 
 VI. Association . . . . . . . . 113 
 
 VII. The Factors of Melodic Form . , . .127 
 
 VIII. Melodic Forms and the Ideal Motion . . . . 150 
 
 IX. The Relations of Reason and Order to Beauty . .178 
 
 X. Further Remarks on Musical Form and ' Subject ' . . 202 
 
 XI. Polyphony and Harmony . . ^ . . 234 
 
 XII. Material and Colour . . . . . . 283 
 
 XIII. The Two Ways op Hearing Music . . . .304 
 
 XIV. Music as Impressive and Music as Expressive . . . 312 
 XV. The Suggestion by Music of External Objects and Ideas . 349 
 
 XVI. Music in Relation to Intellect and Morality . . . 360 
 
 XVII. Further Peculiarities of Music's Nature and Position . 380 
 
 XVIII. Music in Relation to the Public . . . . 400 
 
 XIX. The Sound-Element in Verse ..... 423 
 
 XX. Song . . . . . . . . . 451 
 
 XXI. The Speech Theory . . . . . .476 
 
 XXII. Opera . . . . . . . . 498 
 
 XXIII. Musical Criticism ...... 524 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 A On Pleasure and Pain in Relation to the Evolution of 
 
 THE Senses . . ■ . • . • 541 
 
 B. On Rhythm in Relation to the Notion of Succession in 
 
 Time ....... 547 
 
 C. On Discord . . . . . • . . 549 
 
Hrrata. 
 
 P. 20, last line of text omit grave, 
 
 „ 21, second column of note, line 9, iefore the degree insert and. 
 
 „ 35, last line but one of first column of note, for tone read tune. 
 
 „ 157, second column of note, line 4, after facts insert comma. 
 
 „ 166, second line of musical example, the bass notes should ie semi- 
 quavers. 
 
 „ 169, line 12, for of four octaves read or four octaves. 
 
 „ 247, line 8, for point if its occurrence, read point of its occurrence. 
 
 „ 374, line 2, for motion read notion. 
 
 „ 416, line 13, for initiating read imitating. 
 
 .. 442, lEist quotation, for laborem read f urorem. 
 
 „ 444, line li, for function read fusion. 
 
 ., 486, last line but one of text, for musical notions read musical 
 motions. 
 
THE 
 
 POWEE OF SOUND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF THE HIGHER SENSES. 
 
 It is now generally admitted that our organs of special sense, the channels § i- The 
 
 by which we keep up our constant and various intercourse with what tionra" dS- 
 
 we call the external world, have been formed in past ages by gradual pro- presence or 
 
 cesses in correspondence with stimuli which that external world sunnlied: "^sejiceofa 
 
 "■ _ ^^ ' epeciiU sense- 
 
 and that as the physical organs themselves are the highly modified de- o''san i 
 scendants of undifferentiated and comparatively simple tissues, so the 
 sensibilities connected with them must have been represented, in the 
 embryonic stage of evolution, by something analogous to those modes of 
 feeling which we find in ourselves to be the simplest, the least differen- 
 tiated, and the most crudely suggestive of actual bodily affection. These 
 are connected with the general continuous covering of our bodies, as dis- 
 tinguished from our special sense-organs; and are comprised, broadly 
 speaking, under the heads of touch, and of heat and cold. The very fact that 
 more than one of these modes of feeling can be mentioned shows, of course, 
 that as regards the sensibilities themselves, differentiation is not wholly 
 absent ; heat and cold are felt as something quite different from touch, and 
 if they are not connected with some special nervous apparatus, they must 
 at any rate be connected with some special mode of nervous action ; but 
 they resemble touch in that they belong to no special localised organ, being 
 felt in the same way over almost the whole of the outer (and in some degree 
 over the inner) surfaces of the body. With these may be included certain 
 other modes of sensation which, though more restricted in locality, are still 
 hardly conceived of as falling within the domain of a special sense-organ ; 
 those, namely (apart from taste), which have to do with food and drink. 
 
 If now we compare these simpler sensations with those belonging to contrasted in 
 the more differentiated organs, in respect of one special aspect which is varieties of 
 common to both kinds, the aspect of agreeableness and disagreeableness, "^ ^ ' 
 we immediately encounter a striking contrast. We are accustomed 
 
 B 
 Si 
 
2 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 to use the two correlative words, Pleasure and Pain, in respect of all our 
 sensations ; but it is only in respect of the less differentiated class that 
 we find anything Uke universal agreement as to what is pleasurable and 
 what is painful. A blow or a burn are objected to by all alike; the 
 feelings of hunger and its satisfaction (as apart from the differentiated 
 sense of taste) are universal experiences : whereas in respect of the diffe- 
 rentiated class, be it smell, taste, sight, or sound, the varieties of opinion 
 are infinite; the greater differentiation of the organs seeming to carry 
 with it an ever-increasing possibility of such varieties in the experiences 
 of individuals. And not only are the tastes of individuals extremely various 
 — savages deUghting in food, in odours, in gaudy colours, and harsh sounds, 
 which are revolting and distressing to more civilised senses — ^but there are 
 possibihties of great variation in the same individual at different times. 
 Habit may act both by deadening and by cultivating the sensibilities ; asso- 
 ciation may modify and even reverse previous preferences and antipathies. 
 andofPieflsme Further, if we arrange our modes of sensation in a series, putting 
 aod Pain. sight and hearing first, and descending through smell and taste to the 
 
 modes which are unconnected with any differentiated organ, we find 
 special peculiarities in respect both of Pleasure and Pain. The pleasure 
 which is obtainable by this latter class seems to depend almost wholly on 
 some pre-existing distress or craving, or, at the very least, desire. It is 
 delightful to eat and drink when one is hungry and thirsty, and to plunge into 
 cold water when the skin is hot or irritated : but to eat when one is not 
 hungry can only give pleasure by the effect on the specialised sense of taste ; 
 and similarly, when the body is in a normal state, unnoticed from the very 
 fact that it is neither pleasurable nor painful, contact with warm or cold 
 bodies yields the very slightest satisfaction ; and in the case of merely tac- 
 tile impressions the possibilities seem smaller still. Relief and contrast then 
 seem necessary factors ; the previous state must have presented a decided 
 divergence from the line of neutrality or indifference, if the change is to 
 give a distinctly positive result ; for in this less specialised region, diver- 
 gences from a purely neutral state in the direction of pleasure are so slight 
 that they seem scarcely worthy of the same name as we apply to our more 
 vivid experiences. Pain, on the other hand, applies with such force and 
 reality to this very same region, and especially to the modes of impression 
 whose area is largest,' that its use in connection with the higher senses 
 seems by comparison quite metaphorical. Doubtless the sensations of the 
 
 ' I am speaking only of the sensations due to say, unless we have been previously 
 
 to stimuli from foreign sources ; there are, suffering, no involuntary change in our 
 
 of course, other sensations due simply to organism, which is not connected with some 
 
 changes in our own frames. These, when external stimulus, seems capable of giving 
 
 passive, as in the case of thirst or toothache, us pleasure. The aciiwe pleasure of muscular 
 
 seem to be entirely of the painful kind, and movement, on the other hand, is as marked 
 
 to have no pleasurable counterparts : that is as is the pain of muscular fatigue. 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 3 
 
 higher senses may often be to sensitive persons a source of acute dis- 
 tress : but whatever may be thought at a moment when the choice is not 
 absolutely presented, I do not believe that even the shrillest shriek of a 
 railway whistle, or the most glaring and discordant colour, could be so 
 much an object of dread to any one as a sharp cut or blow. In this 
 respect unpleasant smells and tastes seem to occupy an intermediate 
 position ; a nauseous taste being less disagreeable than a blow, but more 
 so than a jarring sound. To revert now to what was said in the last para- 
 graph as to agreement and variety of taste, we find that there is indeed a 
 consensus as to what is pleasurable and painful in connection with the 
 most fundamental bodily needs ; but that if we confine our attention to 
 such modes of contact with the external world as are, so to speak, quasi- 
 accidental and adventitious, which are over and above the satisfaction 
 of these primary cravings, Pain, where it appears, has practically no 
 correlative, being the sole and certain result of any wide divergence from 
 the neutral state, and that here, in its literal sense, it constitutes the 
 great thing about which people are all agreed ; while those regions of 
 higher sense where Pain becomes less distinct and positive, and where, 
 the effects of distressing experiences are comparatively transient, are just 
 those where Pleasure, in a distinct and positive form, appears on the 
 scene, and also where varieties and modifications of Kkes and dislikes be- 
 come prominent facts ; and in these more differentiated regions we begin 
 to be able to mark off certain feelings and sets of feelings by the word 
 cesthetic, and to reason or dogmatise about higher and lower and more 
 or less cultivated tastes. We shall have much to do later with the 
 ideas and distinctions represented by these words : at present I am only 
 concerned with the point that the region of sensation which has aesthetic 
 possibilities is also the region of variety of taste ; broadly illustrated by 
 the fact that in this same region we do not find as the correlative of 
 Pleasure anything to which the word Pain, with its implication of what all 
 alike agree in shunning- and dreading, can be literally applied.' 
 
 ' These general principles may seem to real kind. The sense of touch admits of 
 
 admit of exceptions. For instance, the great specialisation under certain ciroum- 
 
 sensibility to pain from external contact stances, and the absence of one or more of 
 
 varies enormously in degree : sensitive and the normal senses may probably contribute 
 
 delicate persons may shudder at the mere much to this result. Thus, a boy called 
 
 soimd of the slaps on the back which their ' Blind Peter ' found it the height of luxury 
 
 coarser or more robust fellows regard as an to stroke velvet, and probably experienced 
 
 agreeable and friendly mode of salutation, in so doing a delight the nature of which 
 
 Such an exception, however, is but apparent: others can hardly conceive; so that here 
 
 for the difference here is clearly only in the the sense of touch was really elevated to 
 
 degree of the external stimulus ; the amount the sesthetic class. Many of the lower 
 
 of whatisnecessaryto produce pain may vary, animals difEer from man in having more 
 
 but the stimulus may always reach a point localised organs of touch ; but whether this 
 
 at which the stoutest will object to it. involves superior specialisation and variety 
 
 There are, however, exceptions of a more in their tactile sensations we cannot tell. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 § 2. The Of the physiological concomitants of agreeable and disagreeable sensa- 
 
 conditions'rf tion very little can be said with certainty ; but the accepted doctrine is 
 disagreeable'* worth noticing here, if only to show what a short way it takes us. The 
 most"*!"" "^ doctrine is that, as sensation depends on nervous stimulation, agreeable 
 fectiy known ; seusation depends on a certain limit of amount in the stimulation, on its 
 ed fprniuiH is reaching a point short of that degree of violence which would fatigue and 
 mjs eat mg, -^^ear the organ. Now if this is merely taken to mean that, if we are to 
 receive sensuous pleasure through an organ, this organ must be in a 
 tolerably fresh and responsive state, it is doubtless true : but the form 
 in which the right conditions are usually described, as combining the 
 maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue, has an air of 
 scientific precision which is rather delusive. At first sight, indeed, the idea 
 seems attractively simple through our familiarity with the agreeable sense 
 of muscular activity, rising in intensity up to a certain point, and capable 
 both of keeping short of, and of reaching, the painful pitch which we call 
 fatigue. But when the nervous changes are represented in consciousness 
 not by fatigue, but by a special made of disoom,fort, as in the case of a 
 nasty taste or a grating sound, though it may still be a most reasonable 
 assumption that some sort of nervous wear and tear is going on, yet a 
 phrase which seems to assume a scale of degrees of stimulation, or, more 
 accurately, of ratios of stimulation to wear and tear, answering to degrees 
 of agreeableness or disagreeableness, seems quite out of place. Of many 
 tastes and odours, the faintest possible suggestion is disagreeable ; and a 
 harsh sound can in no way be made to appear like the excess of a sweet 
 one. Again, the organ of smell, if continuously stimulated, will quickly 
 cease to appreciate either an agreeable or a disagreeable odour ; that is, it 
 reaches the same state of indifference and insensibility through a stage 
 in the on« case of entirely agreeable, in the other of entirely disagree- 
 ble sensation. The natural inference is surely that the corresponding 
 physiological processes must differ in kind rather than in degree ; for that 
 the degrees of stimulation in the two cases must be tolerably equal, seems 
 indicated by the fact that the times during which the agreeable and dis - 
 agreeable sensations are respectively appreciated, previous to the deaden- 
 ing of the sensibility, will not differ much in length. The very fact that 
 we can roughly compare and equate an a,greeable and a disagreeable taste 
 or odour, in respect of intensity or pungency, points to the same conclu- 
 sion. Once more, the over-stimulation which deadens must apparently 
 be something different from the over-stimulation which excites and 
 annoys a sense-organ. For example, a sensation of fragrance (provided it 
 be not over-strong) remains enjoyable, but gradually decreases in vivid- 
 ness up to the point when we become insensible to it ; while a continuous 
 musical tone, however sweet, will force itself more and more on our 
 attention, and end by thoroughly annoying us ; so that under continuous 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 5 
 
 stimulation of a kind accounted agreeable, the sense of smell passes to a 
 deadened state without any stage of discomfort, while the sense of tone 
 passes to a state of increased wakefulness with continually growing discom- 
 fort ; and if our sliding scale of wear and tear is to run parallel with both 
 these subjective phenomena, its character as the physiological basis of 
 either does not seem to have much explanatory force. The fact is that the 
 actual molecular processes which accompany sensation are unknown 
 to us: we know neither the chemical changes nor the transformations 
 of energy which are involved in the course of nervous wear and repair. 
 And even if this knowledge were revealed to us, if we could actually 
 apply our mechanical conceptions of wear and repair to these inmost pro- 
 cesses, if we could calculate a scale showing how the wear of a nerve 
 might be'variously well or ill adjusted to its opportunities of repair (some- 
 what as we might calculate degrees of reason or unreason in various 
 modes of adjusting a man's food and sleep to the work required of him), 
 we shoidd have no right to assume that the relation of such a scale of 
 measurements to the variations of our sensations would be at all percep- 
 tible to us ; for we have no proof that the physiological conditions of 
 those variations are completely and exhaustively summed up under the 
 heads of amount of action and repair.' 
 
 The essential indefiniteness of the formida, in spite of its air of pre- and essentially 
 cision, may be seen in another way. For what, according to it, should we 
 consider the best condition ? "Would it not be the condition when the ratio 
 of stimulation to wear and tear is largest, that is, when the repair is going 
 on as fast as the wear ? But this would seem very contrary to our experience 
 
 ' The application of the above-mentioned that the nervous action was in some way 
 
 principle, even in some of the simpler cases freer and easier in the less complicated ac- 
 
 where it might be expected to succeed, tion belonging to the perception of a single 
 
 presents great difficulties. For example, the tint, than in the response to the larger 
 
 eye dwells on a moderately illuminated white number of different stimuli which make up 
 
 surface without fatigue or discomfort, but for us white light. But in the face of the 
 
 with very little positive gratification ; but if facts that the comparative lack of freedom 
 
 the blue which is present as a constituent in and ease, thus assumed in the case of the 
 
 that white light be separately presented, by more neutral sensation, is not felt as any 
 
 elimination of the other constituents, the mode of discomfort, and is compatible with 
 
 gratification is instantly increased. The some amount of gratification, and that the 
 
 experiment may be fairly made by looking same assumed lack has absolutely no effect 
 
 at a piece of fairly bright white sky, first in reducing the general quality of the light, 
 
 with the naked eye, and then through a h'ightness (for the white was perceived as 
 
 beautifully tinted blue glass. Clearly the brighter than the blue), it would seem that 
 
 increase of pleasure is not due to an increase the particular quality of blueness must have 
 
 of stimulus on the retina, for the physical the physiological correlative of its superior 
 
 stimulus is diminislied by the whole amount enjoyableness entirely in the made, not the 
 
 of light eliminated ; as little can it be due degree, of nervous action, in a set of events 
 
 to a prevention or cessation of the conditions comprising essential elements beyond any 
 
 of fatigue, for the white was not at all which our mechanical notions of wear and 
 
 fatiguing. The only possible application of tear could possibly reach, 
 the physiological theory would seem to be 
 
6 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 of those higher pleasures for which our senses are the channels : for we often 
 receive our greatest aesthetic delights at the expense of great subsequent 
 dulness and exhaustion of the head, which shows that nervous wear has far 
 outrun repair at the time of enjoyment. And experience seems to point 
 to a similar fact, though less marked in proportion as the periods of en- 
 joyment and subsequent fatigue are usually far shorter, in the case of 
 purely sensuous pleasures. But if we once admit this third element of 
 tifne for nervous repair, all certainty as to our original ratio vanishes. It 
 is intelligible to speak of the maximum of stimulation compatible with an 
 amount of wear which shall be reparable at the moment ; but to speak 
 of the maximimi of stimulation compatible with an amount of wear 
 reparable at some future moment, is to make the ratio between stimu- 
 lation and wear utterly indefinite, unless that moment is fixed and named ; 
 and there is nothing in the formula or in the facts to suggest an idea 
 of a general rule as to the fixation of such a moment, much less the 
 rule itself. Moreover, even if it seemed conceivable that such a ratio 
 could be adjusted, the attempt to connect it with the phenomena of 
 pleasure would land us, on the subjective side, in all the complications of 
 measurement by intensity and measurement by duration. 
 § 3. The Still more obscure than the physiological basis of agreeable and 
 
 sure and Pain disagreeable sensation is its history. The origin of Pleasure and Pain 
 andthdr Mriy (^^ adopt the more convenient phrase, in which Pain must be under- 
 Hel^^ut?d"th ^^^ ™ its larger and looser sense) is exactly as inscrutable as the origin 
 theory of ratu- of sensatiou itself. Like sensation in general, Pleasure and Pain must be 
 
 ral selection. i . i . . 
 
 regarded as psychical concomitants of certain nervous processes, starting m 
 an embryonic form probably with the very dawn of consciousness, and equally 
 with consciousness beyond the reach of explanation and derivation. It is 
 necessary to notice this, inasmuch as it is not uncommon to encounter more 
 or less definite views which refer Pleasure and Pain, or at all events their 
 early development, to the theory of natural selection. The prominent facts 
 of pleasure felt in certain common actions which are obviously advantageous 
 to the existence of living individuals and their species, and of pain felt 
 in deprivations or occurrences which as obviously tend to destroy or shorten 
 such existences, with the concomitant impulses towards the advantageous 
 and /rom the disadvantageous things, are enough to account for a vague idea 
 that natural selection must have had a direct part in fostering the pleasur- 
 able and painful sensibilities, as in fostering so many other conditions favour- 
 able to survival. To pursue this subject here would, however, carry us too far.' 
 Passing then from this somewhat dubious ground to the specialised 
 senses, those of smell, taste, seeing, and hearing, as now indisputably known 
 to us, we at once recognise very great differences in the way in which their 
 
 ' An enquiry into the relations of pleasure and pain to advantage and advantageous 
 impulses will be found in the first Appendix. 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 7 
 
 several functions are exercised ; and with these differences are connected §4. The 
 
 varying degrees of intensity in the pleasures thfey afford. Thus according fnslsfvarious 
 
 to a generally recognised law, the more intense pleasures of sense would be ^f "le^'i^a^tres 
 
 naturally those connected with organs whose activity is intermittent, so that *•»«)' afford.^ 
 
 the nerve-organs concerned have long periods of repose. And if sensations 
 
 be looked at in isolation this appears to be the case : a strawberry probably 
 
 gives keener pleasure than any single ungradated tint of colour, isolated from 
 
 aU associations with nature and from all mental elements of comparison 
 
 and contrast ; or than any single sound on a musical instrument. Judged, 
 
 then, on this ground, the organs of sight and hearing, with their constant 
 
 and to a great extent unselecting activity, would apparently labour under 
 
 a great disadvantage : their being always ready for their work would seem 
 
 to mean that the work is not to be rewarded : and if, notwithstanding this, 
 
 sight and hearing are universally acknowledged to be the highest of our 
 
 senses, to be the aesthetic senses far excellence, we must seek a further 
 
 reason. Various facts have been adduced which hardly seem to touch the 
 
 root of the acknowledged superiority ; as, for instance, that the pleasures of 
 
 sight and hearing are unconnected with any directly life-serving function, 
 
 and that in the outlet to nervous force which they give without being 
 
 clogged by prosaic utilitarian aims, they partake of the nature of play. 
 
 But though this is true, one fails to see a priori why connection with the 
 
 preservation of life should derogate from the character of a pleasure : even if 
 
 we allow that it is a higher thing to enjoy life than to live, such a principle 
 
 could not of itself elevate experiences which, without being proved superior 
 
 in enjoyableness, are only proved inferior in usefulness. Again, it has been 
 
 said with truth that the two higher senses are those whose pleasures can be 
 
 shared by numbers of people simultaneously, so that they are ennobled above 
 
 other pleasures by their social character. But even if all mankind could 
 
 be fed at once and gratis on heavenly manna, it would hardly alter the 
 
 accepted view as to the comparative inferiority of the pleasure of eating. 
 
 The real distinction is a much more fundamental one, and introduces §5. The great 
 us to two words with which we shall have much to do — Form and Colour, regards piea- 
 The great fact which places sight and hearing in a totally distinct and i,"gher senfcs^is 
 unique position as regards pleasure, is the power which we possess of '^Form'^'""' 
 grouping the separate impressions received by the eye and the ear, and 
 combining a number of them in distinct wholes; in other words, our 
 power, in connection with these senses, of perceiving Form : Colour, on 
 the other hand, is imdistinctive, having analogues in connection with all 
 the senses. The special characteristics on which the power of perceiving 
 Form rest, and its peculiarities in the respective domains of sight and 
 hearing, will be examined directly : for the moment, the mention of the 
 bare word and fact was desirable for the better understanding of what will 
 more conveniently precede, the facts and contrasts presented by the correla- 
 
in all the 
 tiensos. 
 
 8 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 tive, Colour. Both the words present difficulties as regards our purposes ; 
 Colour being employed strictly of one set of impressions only, those of 
 sight, and so confined within limits which we shall have largely to extend ; 
 while Form is commonly used with very wide latitude, and very vague 
 apprehension of what it can and cannot mean in its various applications ; 
 whence the importance of getting its most fundamental meaning, as the 
 correlative of Colour, clear from the very outset. 
 Colour, on the Colour, then, apart from Form, represents, in the sense of sight, that mode 
 
 its analogues"^ of consciousness which is common to all the senses : it represents sensuous 
 impression, simply as such, vrithout any supervention of a grouping and 
 coordinating faculty. A colour unbounded by a line (as the blue of the 
 sky when we gaze straight up into it and see nothing else), an isolated 
 musical sound, the scent of a rose, the taste of a peach, are all truly 
 parallel things. They are all perfectly simple and self-complete experi- 
 ences : none of them has any reference to other experiences of a kindred 
 sort, preceding or following them. Preceding circumstances may of course 
 affect our powers of receiving the normal sensation from these sources, by 
 affecting the respective organs : if we have already eaten peaches ad nau- 
 seam, our present peach may disgust instead of deHght us ; if we have 
 dazzled our eyes by looking at the sun, we shall see instead of the pure blue 
 sky the sun's image printed thereon. Equally, what we are now experienc- 
 ing may affect our next experience : if we look from the bright sky to the 
 foliage near us, it may look blanched and withered ; if we sip a delicate 
 wine while the taste of the peach is still in our mouths, its flavour may 
 be lost to us. But the necessity that our organs should be in a special and 
 unfatigued state, if they are to convey to us what we hold to be the 
 normal impression from the object, in no way affects the fact that the 
 impression, when we really get it, is of a perfectly simple and independent 
 kind. It may indeed have associations linked with it, and in this way be 
 connected with our supersensuous nature ; but it has no inherent relation- 
 ship, and makes up no connected whole, with the impressions of the same 
 sense which are contiguous to it in time ; it carries its whole character and 
 essence with it in the moment of its presentation. 
 
 There is, unfortunately, no generic word to express these simple and 
 unanalysable sensuous experiences, derived through the channels of our 
 various specialised sense-organs. Smell and taste are most intimately 
 allied, the impressions of the one sense being sometimes even mistaken 
 for those of the other ; and words like aroma and bouquet seem to con- 
 tain a reference to both senses, or to the region where one shades into the 
 other. Similarly, colour and musical tone possess affinities of a dimmer 
 kind ; affinities which, as we shall see hereafter, have been a most fruitful 
 source of misapprehension, but which are at any rate distinct enough to 
 constitute these sensations a separate sub-group. As regards the relation 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 9 
 
 of the isolated and purely sensuous impressions to the forms and com- 
 binations into which the mental faculties organise them, and in the con- 
 trast between sensuous and formal elements as connected with contrasts in 
 character, value, and duration of effect, the tone-sense and the light- 
 sense are often very comparable ; and as we shall have to trace out this 
 resemblance in various directions, no apology seems necessary for some- 
 times combining the two modes of impression under the term colour. A 
 single term is absolutely needed ; and it would be no more reasonable to 
 refuse the word colour to the timbre or quality of musical tones than to re- 
 fuse such terms as harmony and discord to the phenomena of visual colour. 
 
 Our sensuous experiences of colour and tone are of course so com- § g. Grades 
 pletely bound up with those combinations and forms in connection with ^^^^^^ "gt^ 
 which we have received them, that it needs a considerable effort to dis- Wish among 
 
 the pure and 
 
 entangle the purely sensuous element, and it is probably quite impossible simple sense- 
 to judge of it entirely on its own merits. Even when we lie on our back ™P''*^^' 
 and see nothing but blue sky, the sense of space and freedom, involving 
 complex mental elements, comes in as a factor of our pleasure : the same 
 colour would not move us as it does if it were a yard from our eyes. But 
 so far as we can succeed in isolating the piirely sensuous element of our 
 visual and auditory experiences, and comparing them with their analogues 
 of taste and smell, the view which was stated above, that amount of 
 pleasure depends on intermittences of nervous activity in the organ, seems 
 just. As regards colour and its analogues, it is in the appreciation of har- 
 monies, gradations, and contrasts, that is, in the ^perception of relations, 
 that one sense proves its superiority to another ; and this depends ulti- 
 mately on the very points of structure and action to which we shall trace, 
 in a moment, the general superiority of the two higher senses. But apart 
 from such relations, it is hard to see in what sense the ear and eye, in enjoy- 
 ing a tone or coloiu- merely as such, reach a higher level than does the nose 
 in enjoying a sweet scent ; and indeed, if the further element of association 
 be allowed to count, the sense of smell might put in a good claim for the 
 highest place of all. Looked at merely on this common ground of purely 
 sensuous impression, colours and tones present a perfect parallel with the 
 experiences of the lower senses, not only in nature, but in many of the 
 phenomena found in connection with them. The piercing shouts and 
 laughter of children in the streets, the harsh and noisy music of savages, 
 an undiscriminating love of gaudy tints, a preference for coarse and highly 
 flavoured food, and so on, are all signs of uncultivated and unrefined 
 organs, which are susceptible, if taken in time, of considerable modification 
 and education. This uncritical love of violent stimulation is common to 
 all the senses, and is often found in connection with all of them in the same 
 individual. In the same way delicacy of organisation impHes, for the 
 most part, a preference for delicate flavours throughout the whole gamut 
 
10 
 
 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 § 7. Ultimate 
 grounds of the 
 superiority of 
 the eye and ear; 
 the power of 
 discrimination. 
 
 Double nature 
 of discrimina- 
 tion. 
 
 of sensation ; nose and palate, ear and eye, each claiming consideration 
 and resenting violence. 
 
 But there is a fundamental peculiarity of the eye and ear which utterly 
 differentiates them from the other sense-organs, and which sets them, as 
 regards the scope of their activities and the enjoyment attainable through 
 them, in a position totally apart. This peculiarity is extreme delicacy 
 and complexity — the possession by both organs of a multitude of terminal 
 elements capable of separate individual action, and, by the eye, of appa- 
 ratus for innumerable distinct movements — combined with extremely rapid 
 power of recuperation ; a combination which renders them most rapidly 
 sensitive to an immense number of differences in the impressions they 
 receive. It is owing to this that the experiences are possible, which con- 
 stitute these two senses beyond all comparison our most important channels 
 of commimication with the world of people and things, and place the 
 impressions received through them in a wholly unique relation to our in- 
 tellectual and emotional activity. True, it is not hard to find other groimds 
 of superiority. Thus, the eye and ear are able to act at a great distance 
 from their object; and again, their readiness to act at any moment, 
 and comparative unsusceptibility to fatigue, must be reckoned an advan- 
 tage, provided that their enjoyments are provided for (as it wUl be further 
 shown that they are) by some other means than the mere recuperation 
 of nervous energy and of the power of responding to stimulus, which the 
 lower senses attain by long intervals of repose. There is another very prin- 
 cipal characteristic of these senses in relation to impressive general concep- 
 tions, as of size, force, and pace, which we shall study more conveniently 
 later. But these further points we shall find to be also connected ulti- 
 mately with the enormous power which the eye and ear possess of rapidly 
 discriminating impressions ; so that this power may be stated generally to 
 be at the root of their superiority. 
 
 Discrimination of sense-impressions is of two sorts — discrimination of 
 the sensations in respect of their individual character, including both 
 quality and intensity, and discrimination of their relative 'positions in 
 space or time.' Discrimination of the first sort may be wide or narrow ; 
 discrimination of the second sort may be rapid and complete, or slow and 
 sHght. The enormous superiority of the eye and ear, as channels of per- 
 ception and intercourse, consists rather in the pre-eminent degree in which 
 they combine the second sort of discrimination with the first than in a 
 monopoly of either. The senses of taste and smell are open to a very 
 great variety of impressions, distinguished as different in individual 
 
 ' Impressions of hearing may present a of space and time in which xelaXiwe positions 
 unique sort of difference, desoribable indeed of elements are held and distinguished 
 as adifEerence of individual quality, but really namely, pitoh ; but into the detailed discus- 
 connected with a perfectly unique analogue sion of this it would be premature to enter. 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 11 
 
 character. But in connection with them there is no discrimination in 
 space, and only the barest rudiment of discrimination in time, appearing 
 just in the moment of transition from one to another : if we recall the 
 order in which we have experienced many various tastes, as at a dinner 
 of many courses, it is by deliberate and separate efforts of memory, where 
 moreover some reference to the name or look of each dish will probably 
 have to precede recollection of its taste ; not by summoning up a connected 
 passage of sensation where each item falls instinctively into its place. 
 Here the ear, with its enormously greater speed of operation, is pre- 
 eminent. It might take a minute to realise in succession a dozen or 
 even half a dozen distinct tastes, each requiring as it does some time for 
 its appreciation, and then again an interval being necessary before we are 
 in a state to appreciate the next ; while we can easily count a dozen aloud 
 in a second, where each word entails several distinct auditory impressions ; 
 and a whole string of nonsense-syllables can be recalled in a flash. Again, 
 in connection with muscular and tactile impressions, we have some power 
 of discrimination in space, and, owing to the rapidity with which they are 
 realised, a very considerable amount of instinctive appreciation of their 
 order in time ; but then in their case the varieties of individual impression 
 are comparatively insignificant in number and interest. 
 
 In connection with discrimination of the individual and qualitative Thekindaof 
 characteristics of impressions, one special point as to these favoured arrangement 
 organs is worth noticing ; namely, that the complexity of arrangement ear rrapec-*" 
 which constitutes the physiological basis of the phenomena is not of a ^^'^^y- 
 precisely similar sort in the two cases ; and this can be understood without 
 any minute acquaintance with anatomical details. The eye and ear agree, 
 indeed, in the delicacy and intricacy of their terminal nervous apparatus, 
 which is inunensely greater than anything found in connection with 
 the lower senses. But as regards the actual differentiation of structure in 
 the organ itself, the actual assignment of different parts of it to different 
 sorts of affection, the ear stands completely apart, containing an enormously 
 large number of structurally distinct elements,* each responsive to a special 
 mode, or at most to a very narrow range, of physical stimulus. In the 
 eye, on the other hand, it is held that the kinds of elements differentiated 
 in actual structure for the reception of colour-impressions, are only three ; 
 and the differentiation is rather in the numerous modes of nervous pro- 
 cess, to which variously combined affections of these few elements are able 
 to give rise. As regards sensation, however, this difference has no value ; 
 
 ' These elements are not distinct in the tively loosely in the direction of its length, 
 
 sense of being anatomically disconnected Its transverse fibres may thus, as Helmholtz 
 
 from one another ; they form part of what has shown, be regarded as forming a sys- 
 
 is known as the basilar membrane, which is tem of stretched strings, each capable of 
 
 a long narrow membrane tightly stretched vibrating independently in response to a 
 
 in the direction of its breadth, but compara- special exciting tone. 
 
12 
 
 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 § 8. Great 
 difference be- 
 tween the 
 senses of sight 
 and hearing, in 
 the ordinary 
 use made of 
 their wide dis- 
 criminative 
 powers. 
 
 § 9. Reasons 
 why series of 
 ordinary audi- 
 tory impres- 
 sions make up, 
 as a rule, no 
 objective 
 groups or 
 forms. 
 
 the variety of impression provided for by the variety of degree in which 
 each kind of element takes its part, in a combined response to the variously 
 constituted rays of light, is of such a sort that we get a multiplicity 
 of colour-impressions not less simple, distinct, and rapidly changeable, 
 than if we had a separate sort of retinal element for every shade of colour. 
 
 The eye and the ear agree then in this superiority. But examining a 
 little further into the respective modes in which their discriminating powers 
 are commonly utilised, we at once encounter a striking difference ; the first, 
 and perhaps the most fundamental, of the many differences between these 
 two privileged senses which we shall come across in the course of our 
 inquiry. In the case of sight we habitually make use of the eye's power 
 of discriminating a multitude of individual impressions, to combine these 
 into groups or objects. Into the physiological details of the process we 
 need not enter : roughly speaking, the muscular mechanism of the eye 
 enables us to distinguish the numerous instantaneous movements by 
 which impressions are brought from the various less sensitive points to 
 the most sensitive point of the retina; whence we obtain our concep- 
 tions, not only of the outsideness to one another of the various parts of 
 objects, but of their relative positions. Turning now to the ear, we find 
 no such habitual grouping of impressions. Incomparably the most im- 
 portant use that the ear makes of its discriminative power is connected 
 with speech : * and in this it is occupied merely with symbols, the 
 attention being directed not to sense-impressions, but to the ideas 
 symbolised. Quite different sounds in another language might convey 
 precisely the same ideas; and the sounds, merely as such (altering 
 perhaps even in repetitions of a single familiar phrase by a single voice), 
 present no certain group having the character of an object. 
 
 This is not sufficiently accounted for by a mere reference to the com- 
 monly recognised distinctions between time and space. For though in 
 the case of the ear we have not, as in the case of the eye, the means of 
 discriminating impressions in space, still, if we can discriminate their 
 relative positions in time, there seems no a 'priori reason why a series of 
 them should not form for us groups with a certain character of objec- 
 tivity and permanence. And indeed this may occur up to a certain 
 Umited point. Any known word or phrase partakes of the character ; and 
 the rapidity with which the ear grasps the elements presented to it, 
 and learns to associate each separate impression with its predecessors 
 and successors, enables even a set of nonsense-syllables to obtain, by 
 repetition, an objectivity at least to this extent, that if a change be made 
 in the order, it is instantly recognised and, it may be, resented, as baulk- 
 
 ' In some animals the sense of smell seems 
 to reach a perfection and scope which adapts 
 its impressions for symbols ; it is conjectured 
 
 that ants have a language of smell, and even 
 that articulata possess senses of which we 
 have no knowledge. 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 13 
 
 ing an expectation ; an experience quite beyond the scope of the slow-acting 
 and rest-needing senses of smell and taste. Still this objectivity is not 
 even remotely comparable to that which we associate with sight : and for 
 this there seem to be two main reasons. First, the sense of permanence 
 in visible objects depends greatly on the passivity and indestructibility of 
 •matter. Sound is the result of motion, usually of visible motion, and 
 even when the same series of sounds is repeated and is familiar to us, we 
 still are conscious of its dependence on movements in its source, move- 
 ments which it lay within the option of ourselves or of another to make or 
 not to make. When the source is impersonal, sounds are rarely sufficiently 
 rapid or various to make up any recognisable group, besides being hardly 
 ever repeated in regular order ; and, moreover, here also we feel that the 
 exciting causes are transient and accidental, and may be at any moment 
 destroyed by human or natural agencies. Secondly, the things we see 
 gain a quite unique character of objectivity and permanence from the 
 associations of the senses of touch and muscular movement. It is pro- 
 bably impossible to overestimate the effect of these factors in the formation 
 of our conception of objects. We can of course touch the things which 
 yield to us sounds, smells, and tastes : but the objects of sight we can not 
 only touch, but can trace out, part by part, in space, by a series of muscular 
 and tactual sensations which run exactly parallel at every step with the 
 accompanying visual sensations. We thus acquire an instinctive assurance 
 that it is possible to obtain exact confirmation of what we see, by another 
 line of different but exactly corresponding experience, of experience too 
 which naturally gives the most vivid sense of external contact and resis- 
 tance ; and this mutual reaction of the two lines of feeUng seems at every 
 moment to witness to the validity of each. 
 
 So far we have been considering the general everyday activity of the § lo. There 
 eye and ear ; not their enjoyments. As regards enjoyment, the fact that the experience™ " 
 eye is normally and habitually perceiving forms is no special advantage to y'lere^auditory 
 it. It is for the most part busy either with symbols, as in reading, or with combined into 
 objects the interest of which (if there be any) is mainly owing to the and so attain 
 mental activity they evoke, not to special delight in the contours of the 
 objects themselves. People may vary in the comparative amounts of in- 
 terest they gain by sight and by sound, by reading and looking about them 
 and by intercourse with their kind : as regards the respective use of the 
 two senses in the ordinary course of life, it would perhaps be hard, on the 
 average, to assign a superiority to one over the other. But then, among 
 a number of uninteresting forms, the eye does at times encounter some- 
 thing wholly distinct, something which has not as yet been mentioned, 
 something which, if it could not be paralleled by the ear, would at once 
 turn the balance; namely, Beauty. Has, then, the perception of beautiful 
 forms an analogue in the domain of sound? We have seen that the 
 
i4 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 sets of impressions which the ear receives in the ordinary course of things 
 cannot be said to make up groups or forms at all, much less beautiful 
 ones : is there any exceptional region where this rule does not apply ? 
 Fortunately there is : there does exist one special region of auditory 
 phenomena, where organised groups and forms do exist, and not only exist 
 but attain to perfect and unsurpassable beauty. What that region is 
 need hardly be said ; how it comes to exist, and to contain within it such 
 marvellous possibilities, we shall inquire in subsequent chapters : at 
 present it is enough to notice the unique place which it occupies in the 
 domain of auditory impressions, and the aesthetic rank which the sense of 
 hearing derives through it. Indeed the very word Beauty, which we have 
 just used, is a standing testimony to the fact that, in respect of enjoy- 
 ment, the eye and ear hold a position of as striking and unique superiority 
 to the other sense-organs as we have seen that they do in respect of varied 
 activity : the world of Beauty is preeminently the world of Form, 
 tufatioii^^™''' '^^^ perception of form,* to recapitulate, takes place through the super- 
 
 gards Form. vention of a combining and coordinating faculty on sets of elementary 
 sense-impressions. To any one who is familiar with it, this point seems 
 so obvious and fundamental that it is hard for him to realise how com- 
 monly it is ignored, at any rate in the case of sound. Even people with 
 sufficient education to know what nerves are, will be found to explain 
 Music as an agreeable stimulation of the nerves of hearing; and con- 
 currently with such a view there naturally goes a failure to perceive what 
 we have noticed above, that on the purely sensuous side the superior 
 senses may fall far short of the inferior, and that too at the very moment 
 when they are engaged in the delighted contemplation of beauty. Com- 
 pare a melody or a face with the scent of roses. The perception of a 
 melody, like that of a face, consists in the combination of a number of 
 sense-impressions ; and what truly corresponds to the perception of the 
 scent, as a simple and ultimate phenomenon due to nerve-stimulation, 
 is not the combination of units, but each separate unit, whether of 
 sound or colour. And these units, though corresponding with the sensa- 
 tion of sweet smell in respect of their simple and ultimate character, are 
 probably extremely inferior to it in respect of enjoyableness. For just as 
 the perception of a face, drawn in pencil, is made up of neutral units of 
 impression, of simple black and white, so each note of a tune, whistled 
 with the truest musical enjoyment, may be and commonly is, as regards 
 sound, a very poor affair indeed ; so that the reference, the only possible 
 one in the case of a sweet scent to simple physical stimulation of the 
 nerves, is not only wrong, but especially delusive. The supervention of 
 the higher faculties we found to be possible in the two cases of sight 
 and hearing, through the enormous variety of the possible impressions 
 and the rapidity with which they are grasped; this variety and 
 
THE niGIIER SENSES. 15 
 
 rapidity, again, being connected with the extraordinarily complex nature 
 of the organs concerned. In the case of the eye we found the super- 
 vention to take place habitually, and to lead to our ordinary perception 
 of external objects; in respect of which we have assumed, as a fact 
 generally recognised, that some possess beauty and some do not, but 
 have at present sought no explanation of this difference. In the case 
 of the ear, on the other hand, we have seen that the combination of 
 sense-impressions into coherent groups of any complexity takes place 
 exceptionally, but with a resulting beauty often comparable in degree to 
 the very best attained by visual forms ; of which beauty, again, we have 
 deferred all account and explanation. 
 
 I cannot quit the special subject of this chapter without pointing out § 12. Diffi- 
 that the subtler physical peculiarities, connected with qualitative dis- counting for 
 crimination of impressions by the two higher senses, present to the deUcacy™^ 
 evolutionist certain very noticeable problems ; more especially noticeable thrhigh'er^ ""^ 
 in the case of the ear, both in themselves, and because we shall find that sense-organs, 
 (over and above that rapid discrimination in time which has been men- 
 tioned) certain qualitative differences, those of pitch, have an essential 
 relation to the higher sort of auditory forms; whereas qualitative dif- 
 ferences of retinal impressions, being simply coJour-differences, have no 
 such relation to visual forms. The case of the eye, however, had better 
 be considered first, as it is by comparison and contrast with this that the 
 still more remarkable facts as to the ear will be best reaUsed. 
 
 If we consider that sense-organs have had two principles of develop- '^^^ "J^^ °^*^ 
 
 o *^ ^ ^ eye ; how far 
 
 ment — gradual adaptation through subjection and response to particular is the delicate 
 
 Til • p p 11 •• 1 IT- discrimination 
 
 stimuli, and the stamping 01 lavourable variations by natural selection — of colour a 
 it naturally occurs to ask at what stages and in what proportions the two q*uiSecf bv indi- 
 influences have respectively acted. But there are some preliminary ^"J"*'^^ 
 questions. It may seem that often the power of delicate discrimination 
 of sense-impressions is a faculty acquired by the individual, and cannot 
 be directly referred to inherited or transmissible modifications of structure. 
 This view seems specially applicable to the senses whose organs have 
 not, like the ear, a multiplicity of elements, each structurally diffe- 
 rentiated from all the others ; since, in their case, we can account for a new 
 sensation, or an increased power of discrimination, by a new and more 
 refined mode of nervous action,' developed through exercise into a greater 
 
 ' It is not necessary to go into the disputed possible to one and the same fibre, and 
 
 point as to whether stimulation of one and caused by the different effects of different 
 
 the same nerve-fibre is susceptible of quali- stimuli on its terminal structure. If the in- 
 
 tative as well as quantitative differences ; dividual fibres are not so susceptible of 
 
 tLat is to say, whether, in the case of any various modes, but only of various degrees, 
 
 particular sense, differences of sensation are of affection, and if the sensations received 
 
 based on different wforf^!* of nervous discharge through them are numerous in kind, while 
 
16 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 nicety of response to stimuli, and comparable to some of the acquired and 
 individual aptitudes and feats of skill which are so familiar to us ; and we 
 are not encumbered by having to account for structures whose complete 
 diflferentiation would involve periods far beyond the individual life. The 
 senses of taste and smell are of this kind, admitting as they do of an 
 enormous amount of cultivation and of the most various degrees of discri- 
 minative power. This is well exemplified in the case of taste by men's 
 relative faculty for judging of wines and vintages ; while those who have 
 had experience of chemical work will bear witness to the same power of 
 improvement and varieties of cleverness in respect of the sense of smell. 
 Now it cannot be denied that the colour-sense seems to a certain extent 
 to come under this class. While perceptible shades of colour seem almost 
 infinite, the actually differentiated sorts of retinal elements, as has been 
 mentioned, are only three ; and the various ways in which the component 
 parts of the retinal response are combined, under the various physical 
 stimuli, might seem referable to those modes of nervous action in which 
 it might not seem unreasonable to imagine a considerable amount of indi- 
 vidual acquirement : while the wide agreement in the mode of action, 
 the less degree of individual and quasi-accidental variations, such as 
 corresponded in our instances of taste and smell to very marked variety and 
 uncertainty of discriminative power, might be attributed to the altogether 
 exceptional constancy and universality of the physical stimuli. But this 
 view will hardly stand examination. For though the presence of colour- 
 stimuli of some sort is no doubt a constant and universal fact, the 
 conditions seem quite sufiiciently variable {e.g. in the environment of a 
 town-child and of a country-child) to produce, were they truly effective, 
 far greater variations than we find to exist, 
 and how far is There are not lacking, however, other abounds of doubt as to the 
 
 It a recent phe- phi- , 
 
 nomenon, degree of parallelism and connection between increasing discrimination of 
 
 colour and structural changes in the sensory apparatus. For as regards 
 optical facts, it is specially easy to imagine that they may have been 
 there without being noticed ; and that modes of effort, interest, and atten- 
 
 they, as distinguished by their terminal different tastes : but what is clear is that 
 
 . structures, are few in kind, all we have to do there must be somewhere a particular affection 
 
 is to refer the differences in the ' mode of of nervous substance for each particular 
 
 nervous action' to the higher centre, to simple sensation, whether originating in the 
 
 what goes on at the cerebral point where actual passing of the telegraphic messages, 
 
 the yariously proportioned stimulations or only on their arrival. Whatever view be 
 
 reach their junction and terminus. Thus, adopted on the disputed point, the ear seems 
 
 we do not imagine we have a separate to stand quite alone in the immense number 
 
 gustatory fibre for every imaginable taste, of its actually differentiated terminal struc- 
 
 We may then leave mi judioe the question tures : and this distinction is too striking 
 
 whether the same fibres, by different modes not to connect itself with the all-important 
 
 of action, or several distinct sets of fibres, by sensory distinction that the ear alone has, 
 
 different combinations of degrees of action in pitch, a true scale of sensations, present - 
 
 (as in the colour sense), give rise to the ing not only differences but distances. 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 17 
 
 tlon are at the root of the changes, which on that view, it might be alleged, 
 would easily be rapid. On the very natural and common view which con- 
 nects discrimination of tints with enjoyment of them, it may seem 
 specially easy to refer the later elaboration of the faculty to psychical 
 concomitants of concentration and attention, and to modes of relation to 
 the environment which are not only far withdrawn from the struggle for 
 existence, but may be represented as matters of comparatively recent 
 occurrence. It has been urged with considerable force that a very 
 large part of the power of delicately discriminating tints (a power which 
 must be carefully distinguished from length, keenness, and quickness of 
 vision) has been developed within a time which in the history of evolution 
 is a mere nothing : and a very extreme hypothesis of marked deficiency 
 of colour-sense in the most gifted people of antiquity attracted lately a 
 good deal of attention. 
 
 If this were so, we should certainly find the readiest explanation of the and connected 
 fact in connecting it with the action of higher nervous centres than that of of higher ner- 
 vision. Experience shows us how much the power of perceiving depends ^°"^ centres 
 on interest in the thing seen, which may have the most various sources ; 
 and how great are the differences which exist in individuals all possessing 
 what passes for normally good sight, and in the same individual at 
 different times. And this alone would be enough to suggest that 
 the physiological part of the phenomenon must be to a great extent 
 behind and beyond definable points of structure and action, in nervous 
 tracts where we cannot trace or even guess at the course of variations. 
 The line where the differentiating facts begin is quite impossible to draw; 
 It is matter of common recognition how possible it is for stimuli of 
 various sorts to take actual effect on the physical organism without being 
 at aU noticed ; how sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly, by a seeming 
 accident we wake up to them, or how by an act of will we can make our- 
 selves notice them ; how sometimes we become alive once for all to a 
 difference we had never detected, and how one order of impression may be 
 found pleasurable and interesting by one person, and attended to accord- 
 ingly with gradually increasing powers of discrimination, and another by 
 another; whence we may perceive the evident impossibility, in many 
 cases, of knowing how far perception and discrimination, when they come, 
 are due to the formation of a power of physical response previously absent 
 in the organ immediately concerned, and how far the facts must be referred 
 to the exercise of attention and the deliberate dwelling on differences. It 
 is enough to realise that this latter element cannot but play an important 
 part; and that the sorts of physiological events which accompany the 
 adjustment of the attention, and which result in the improvement of the 
 faculty, must have to do with much more unstable nervous structures and 
 functions than the definitely hereditary on^s associated with a particular 
 
 c 
 
13 THE ORGANS AND IMPEBSSIONE' OF 
 
 organ of sense. These remarks apply of course chieiy to the superior 
 orders of sensation, and pre-eminently to vision, which affords such wide 
 and perpetual scope to the advanced mental activities involved in rapid 
 distinction and comparison ; while the lower senses, with their slow one- 
 by-one impressions and long periods of rest, offer less .ehanoe for such 
 subtleties. 
 §i3.Eeason8 At the same time, there are very weighty reasons for hesitating to 
 ingftlSty assign to the more delicate discrimination of colour at all a recent origin. 
 ^riT*^™" As regards the points last noticed, we shall find it hard indeed, when we 
 look round us, to accept an hypothesis of immense increase in the 
 individual .attmiioTC to colour; to believe that an observant interest, 
 absent in the Greeks, is active now in the great mass of mankind. And 
 the interest, it must be noticed, would have to be special and original in 
 each case; since we lack evidence that that sort of improvement which we 
 o^bserve in a sensory faculty in connection with interest and attention is 
 transmissible to descendants. Still more .untenable of course would be 
 the hypothesis that a large proportion of the actual structure of the 
 optical apparatus has been a matter of recent development. Again, notions 
 of artistic discrimination are in this connection decidedly dangerous ; since 
 they easily lead to confounding (the pleasure derived from the shades and 
 gradations of beautiful colour with the actual power to discriminate. 
 But coarseness in the one sense does not at all imply coarseness in the 
 other. A savage's eye may be in a sense as discriminative and as atten- 
 tive as our own, though he may prefer the most barbarous and crude 
 effects of colour. And when we consider the excellence of sight which is 
 a common characteristic of savages, and also the exceptional advantages 
 which that .characteristic undoubtedly entails in the vicissitudes of primitive 
 life, it seewis not unnatural to imagine two separate stages in the later 
 history of the faculty ; one in which the sense had attained, through con- 
 stant and attentive use, a very high level of discriminative power, a level 
 which natural selection would tend to preserve if not to heighten ; and 
 another in which the faculty remains, or has been revived, to a great extent 
 in direct connection with pleasure, as a part of the higher nervous sensi- 
 bility, and with such amount of hereditary character as that may involve. 
 Between the two stages, when the power is neither a prime necessity in 
 the struggle for existence nor a special source of artistic enjoyment, it is 
 easy to conceive that it might considerably decline ; though again it would 
 be rash to affirm this decline, in respect, for example, of the less civilised 
 members of civilised communities, unless experiments were made which 
 obviated the risk of confusing want of taste with want of discriminative 
 power. 
 
 If we agree, then, that the development of the colour-sense must be 
 referred back at any rate beyond the historic human times, when the 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 1§ 
 
 accidents of individual habit and the varieties of taste -would greatly 
 obscure the problem, our two principles— of natural selection and of Natural sele(v 
 gradual adaptation to an increasing variety of stimulus through exercise renti^av?*^ 
 of function — stand clear. Now of these two principles we should at had little to do 
 
 „ . c r ^itlj the final 
 
 nrst be mchned to regard the influence of the latter as having been development of 
 here, not only exceptionally powerful and precise (owing to the peculiarly sense? ""'" 
 precise and close relation between a sense-organ and the external con- 
 dition of its action), but exceptionally independent of the aid of natural 
 selection. Eecalling Mr. Spencer's argument, that 'as fast as essential 
 faculties multiply, and as fast as the number of organs that co-operate 
 in any given function increases, indirect equilibration by natm-al selection 
 becomes less and less capable of producing specific adaptations, and 
 remains fully capable only of maintaining the general fitness of consti- 
 tutions to conditions ; ' and again, ' as fast as the number of bodily and 
 mental faculties increases, and as fast as the maintenance of life comes to 
 depend less on the amount of any one, and more on the combined action of- 
 all, so fast does the production of specialities of character by natural 
 selection alone become difficult ; ' we may certainly find grounds for 
 including discrimination of colour among the faculties to which that argu- 
 ment applies. For it must be noticed that advanced power of discrimi- 
 nating colours is of far less service for the mere recognition of objects 
 than for their distinction among a number of others ; and this distinction 
 would apparently only be of advantage to creatures whose mental and loco- 
 motive powers were decidedly advanced, and who thus belonged to the later 
 stage of evolution described in the passages just quoted. The difference Difference from 
 from, e.g., the sense of taste may be thus represented. An enormous number diaoriminationf 
 of tastes are recognised by us as entirely and individually distinct ; and 
 whatever might be the limits of this faculty in lower organisms, it is at 
 any rate plain that the sense of taste could only be advantageous at all so 
 far as it truly recognised individual impressions. But in colour the in- 
 numerable varieties are for the most part varieties of shade of a few orders 
 of colour, blue, green, brown, and so on, as to which moreover the same 
 object, in different lights and weathers, may vary between extremely wide 
 limits : and to recognise a number of such tints as individually distinct, 
 without seeing them in actual juxtaposition, is to a great extent even now 
 beyond the power of any but cultivated sensibilities. On this ground alone, 
 then, it would be difficult to credit primitive organisms with any appreciable 
 share of such a faculty ; while as regards advantage, the extent to which 
 it would have helped them in the important acts of recognising living- 
 creatures or specimens of vegetable growth, is as nothing compared with 
 what would be naturally effected by simple sensibility to degrees of light 
 and dark and the power to perceive shapes and movements. As soon, 
 however, as we come to the distvnction of one object among a number of 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 THE ORGANS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 § 14. Diffi- 
 «Blties in the 
 principle of 
 direct adapta; 
 tioB ; 
 
 others, we have a condition where shades of colour are of the utmost im- 
 portance, and to which taste hardly presents the slightest parallel. Now 
 this, as I have said, seems to belong naturally to a stage of advanced 
 locomotive and co-ordinative power, when attention could be concentrated 
 with advantage on a multitude of definite points, when food would be 
 hunted for in various localities, and danger detected at considerable dis- 
 tances. And the extent and complication of the various actions involved 
 in the useful exercise of this discriminative faculty might certainly seem 
 to warrant us in assigning the later stages at all events of its develop- 
 ment to the time when, according to Mr. Spencer's view, natural selection 
 had ceased to be concentrated on the enhancement of particular modifica- 
 tions.' 
 
 But now comes the curious point. The seemingly natural reference 
 of the 'more delicate perception of colour to gradual adaptations, caused by 
 the perpetual presence of coloured objects in the environment, will be 
 found to present some very unexpected grave difficulties of its own.'^ The 
 
 ' I cannotentirelyharmonlse Mr. Spencer's 
 statements on this point. After explaining 
 the difEerentiation of the higher sensory 
 organs from the general integument, he 
 says it is ,an open question whether these 
 differentiations are due wholly to indirect 
 equilibration (that is practically natural 
 selection), or partly also to direct eqiiilibrar 
 tion, that is, to difEerentiation of structure 
 through the actual exercise of a function ; in 
 the case of thesense-organs through response 
 to external, stimuli. He grants that possibly 
 light might ' aid in setting up certain of the 
 modificatSons by which the nervous parts of 
 visual organs are formed : ' but adds that ' it 
 seems clear that the oompUxities of the 
 sensory organs are not thus explicable ; ' that 
 ' they must have arisen by the Tiatural selec- 
 tion of favourable variations.' Surely those 
 parts of the organs for the explanation of 
 which we can only look to favourable varia- 
 tion and selection (since they could not have 
 been developed through the exercise of func- 
 tion in response to stimuli), are the less com- 
 plex and more mechanical parts which Mr. 
 Spencer has been describing, such as the 
 anterior chamber of the eye, and the auditory 
 sac formed by infolding of the external in- 
 tegument ; but as regards the far greater 
 ' complexities ' more immediately connected 
 vrith sensation (as of the retinal elements), 
 in spite of the difficulties to be immediately 
 suggested as to modification through exercise 
 in response to stimtjli, Mr. Spencer's own re- 
 marks, quoted above in the text, seem suffi- 
 
 ciently to mark natural selection as merely 
 or chiefly a oonsei'vatwe factor. 
 
 ^ The points respecting environment which 
 follow by no means exhaust the problem as to 
 the share which direct stimulation and exer- 
 cise of function, apart from natural selection, 
 may have had in the development of the senses. 
 There exists a more fundamental difficulty, 
 at any rate as regards actual formation of 
 new structural elements ; which will at once 
 appear if we compare the case of sense- 
 organs with some other imaginable case of 
 structural growth. For instance, there seems 
 little a ^wtOT-i difficulty in conceiving a large 
 development and difEerentiation of the mus- 
 cular system, including the appearance of 
 actually new elements, through the exercise 
 of elements already present ; muscular eflfort 
 being applicable in all sorts of directions, 
 for all sorts of known and desired results, 
 and not depending on the presence of any 
 special order of stimulus. In such a case, 
 the fact and its cause, the relation between 
 function and structure, and the parallel 
 development of the two, would be entirely 
 comprehensible. If, on the other hand, a 
 new sensiMlUy appeared, e.g. to some new 
 colour, due to rays beyond those of the 
 spectrum as at present known to us, wa 
 might, indeed, infer the existence of some 
 new sort of retinal element, by such means 
 as have already led us to infer the exist- 
 ence of the present three sorts ; but how 
 could we conceive that it had been de- 
 veloped through exercise of the elements 
 
THE HIGHER SENSES. 21 
 
 very fact that admiration of colour is supposed to have played an important 
 part in the processes of sexual selection, the admiration being clearly of 
 something recognised as exceptional, suggests the question how the re- 
 quisite sensitiveness could have been developed. The point is the better 
 worth noticing, as the colours themselves have received much more at- 
 tention than the means of perceiving and enjoying them : while the rarity 
 of certain colours in the environment, however much a reason for enjoying 
 them when the perception has once become possible, certainly makes that 
 perception the harder to account for in creatures who were entirely de- 
 pendent in such matters on what nature presented to them. 
 
 On the theory, then, that the perpetual response to the stimuli of light especially as to 
 
 •' ' r r r o j gj ^nd orange. 
 
 received from various objects may have gradually differentiated the means 
 of distinguishing colom-s, how are we to account for' the differentiation of 
 the means to perceive such an exceptional colour as bright red ? It is im- 
 possible to imagine that the coloured environment of any creature (unless 
 perchance a secreter of coral) can at any time have contained more than 
 an infinitesimal fraction of this element ; and even the white of which it 
 is a factor is comparatively rare in objects. The' preponderance of browns, 
 greens, and blues, whether on land or water, seems as if it must always have 
 been overpowering ; and the fact that the general environment would be 
 less noticed than exceptional features in it is irrelevant ; as what we are 
 considering is a purely physical effect, the natural condition- for which' is 
 
 already present, which depend' for exercise of direct observation. We are reduced, 
 on one particular sort of stimulus, and therefore, for our views of development, to 
 would obviously be quite incapable of active inferences from subjective facts, and' as 
 efforts towards an unknown result ? How, animals cannot describe their sensations, we 
 in this case, could we conceive development axe almost confined to our own species. 
 of the new element by exercise, till it was Nor, even if careful records of sensation had 
 itself there, at any rate in a rudimentary been made for many generations, showing 
 form, to be exercised? which rudimentary themodificatiouspmduoible in the experience 
 form would imply an origin not by direct of an individualjrne degree in which modi- 
 stimulus but by accidental variation. And fications'can be transmitted, should we feel 
 in application to the past history of our any confidence in using the results as evi- 
 organs, a similar hypothesis of accidental denoe- of pre-historic facts, except so far as 
 variation clearly- carries with it the they- were of a/ distinctly positive kind. In 
 necessity of imagining someindireot means spite,' however, of all obsourities, thereseems 
 for preserving the variation ; that is, brings no choice between largely admitting the 
 us round to the natural selection whose aid method of direct modification through sub- 
 we were trying to dispense with. jection and response to stimuli, and invoking 
 This difficulty as to the m-i^im of new struc- the whole machinery of natural selection for 
 tural elements does not apply to our ooncep- a multitude of small changes of little or no 
 tionsoftheiT suhseguent development hyexei- advantage in the struggle for existence; 
 cise ; but all speculation on the subject must and belonging, moreover, to a stage of deve- 
 be very uncertain, owing to the limited range lopment when the relations between organ- 
 of possible experiment. For in the case of ism and environment must have become so 
 sense-organs, with their nervous apparatias, complex as to make the invocation of that 
 structure really means to a great extent mole- principle for improvements in any tingle 
 cular and chemical constitution, and so far its sense-organ decidedly unsafe, 
 modifications entirely transcend our powers 
 
22 
 
 THE OEGASfS AND IMPRESSIONS OF 
 
 § 15. The 
 case of tlie ear ; 
 
 that the physical stimulus shall be sufficiently frequent and continuous, not 
 that it shall attract special attention. And the difficulty is even greater 
 than it at first sight appears : for not only is red perceived, but it is one of 
 three colours for which one of the three sorts of retinal elements connected 
 with colour sensations has a maximum of excitability. It is comparatively 
 easy to imagine a new mode of stimulation, a new nervous action set up 
 by the application of a new stimulus to given nerve-endings, as when we 
 experience a new taste for the first time : but here in the retina we have 
 a distinct structure gratuitonsly differentiated, so to speak, for a certain 
 stimulus of which the experience must have been of the most minute and 
 intermittent kind. That the stimulus of red is relatively violent when it 
 does occur seems shown by the manner in which it fatigues the eye ; but 
 this clearly goes a very little way towards relieving the difficulty.' 
 
 In the case of the ear, where we have nothing analogous to the 
 muscular action by which the eye perceives shapes and movements, the 
 only perceptive and discriminative power which it would be advantageous 
 to possess would be concerned with the character of sounds, as signs of 
 this or that object ; and even at a very early stage the advantage in being 
 
 ' I canflot think that this- point has 
 been sufficiently recognised. Mr. Grant 
 Allen, in his Physiological Esthetics, draws 
 attention to what he calls- the a'dkptation of 
 eyes to colours, noticing that the converse 
 adaptation had been more dwelt on by Mr. 
 Darwin and others. But he appears to me 
 to mix up the advantages of this- adaptation 
 with its origin, without perceiving that the 
 facts of the former are precisely those which 
 make the latter obscure. Thus, given animals 
 who can appreciate red and orange, and who 
 feed on red and orange fruits and berries, it 
 is clearly advantageous to them to be attracted 
 by the vividness with which a few specks of 
 red stand out among acres of green ; and the 
 simplest contrivance for efEecti'ng this end, 
 according to Mr. Allen, would be to give the 
 greatest possible rest to such retinal elements 
 as respond to red and orange rays : but this 
 rarely broken rest would scarcely be the 
 simplest contrivance for establishing the 
 assumed power of response. Again, he says, 
 as though intending It for an explanatory 
 account of the method of adaptation, that by 
 a natural consensus, 'pari, passie with the 
 development of brilliant colour in the vege- 
 table world, must have come the development 
 of a taste for brightness in the animal world.' 
 Now if the requisite physiological elements 
 are there already, such a consensus is intelli- 
 gible : thus, a taste for new gustatory or 
 
 olfactory sensations might readily follow on 
 the appearance of new sorts of food. But 
 what we want to understand is the actual 
 differentiation of a special physiological ele- 
 ment for red colour ; the differentiation 
 is- at amy rate something different from 
 gratification of the taste which it makes 
 possible. We have found this differentiation 
 hard enough to account for even on the 
 widest supposition of red and orange already 
 there in the environment. So far as we ac- 
 cept Mr. Allen's -view, that ' the very existence 
 of reds-, yellows, and purples in the outer 
 world is indirectly almost entirely owing to 
 their special effect upon animal organism,' 
 we are cutting away our only possible condi- 
 tion for making out the eye's adaptation to 
 red to be historically at all parallel -with its 
 adaptation to blue and green ; namely, that 
 the environment shall do at any rate all it 
 can, by having some of its reds, the more 
 marked and brilUant the better, there and 
 ready to act as the blues and greens are. 
 The last quoted statement is opposed to the 
 authority of Mr. Dar-win, who is careful to 
 point out that brilliantly coloured substances 
 must have continually originated chemically 
 in the tissues of animals and plants, without 
 any relation to perception or advantage. 
 Similar considerations must doubtless apply 
 to the natural conditions of fragrance in the 
 external world. 
 
tones. 
 
 THE HIGHER SENSES. 23 
 
 made aware of the proximity of prey or of friends or enemies might he 
 considerable. Natural selectiofi may thus be credited with a most important 
 part in the development of such early perceptions: while the generally 
 neutral character of sound's, and the want of precision and regularity in 
 their physical conditions, Would lead Us to expect the differentiation through 
 the direct influence of environment to b^ very insignificant. The number 
 of distinct sounds in natilre, even including the noises made by friends and 
 enemies, would be necessarily limited, arid the general run of them, foot- 
 steps, rustlings, crackUngs, and so on, are absolutely colourless. And in 
 this general lack of variety, advantage would lie less in the power of 
 marking differences than in susceptibility to very slight impressions, 
 analogous to long and keen sight, and like that a very common character- 
 istic of savagiBs. 
 
 So far the case of the eaf seems pretty plain, as this very monotony simple, when 
 and neutrality of character precludes any difficulties connected with meSy^' 
 fine shades of discrimination, individual peculiarities of predilection and ^^f,«fexoep- 
 attention, and extraordinarily rapid development. But this immunity euiT'whtJfwe 
 only extends to what we know as noiaea, not to What we know as tones, regard it as an 
 
 rr\.- • 11 • i i T • . organ for dis- 
 
 iQis IS an all-important distmction, which will occupy us fully in the crimination of 
 next chapter : for the present purpose I need not do mOre than appeal 
 to the reader's general appreciation of the difference between the two 
 things ; merely adding that while the perception of noises requires com- 
 paratively simple structural elements, tones are discriminated by means 
 of a separate and most elaborate part of the aMitory apparatiis. And 
 when we consider this more elaborate part, standing as it does com- 
 pletely alone in amount of structural differentiation of elements, and 
 try to apply the general theory of development through direct adaptation 
 to surrounding conditions, we have the sort of difficulty just suggested by 
 the perception of red colour multiplied a thousand-fold. We shaU see 
 further on what a small part definite musical tone plays in the natural 
 environment : jet a very large part of the auditory apparatus, as we know 
 it in man, seems set apart for the liiost minute discriifaination of the pitch 
 and quality of tones and for nothing else. It is true that this part of the 
 apparatus comes into play in the perception Of the pitch and quality of 
 sounds in speech : but in the first place the tone-element there, as we shall 
 find, is extremely unremarkable and caused by little infinitesimal and ir- 
 regular fragments of the sort of vibration for which the various parts of 
 the auditory organ are respectively differentiated, so that to imagine the 
 differentiation to have taken place through them seems like imagining a 
 person to learn swimming by flapping one hand in a basin of water ; and 
 in the second place the range of pitch within which musical tone is per- 
 ceived extends on both sides immensely beyond the furthest limits of 
 speech. And if we look lower in the scale of creation, the faculty of 
 
24 THE HIGHER SENSES. 
 
 discriminating tones, though there doubtless immensely inferior to our 
 own, seems scarcely less strikingly out of proportion to the apparent 
 means for forming it. Artificial tones are of course as unknown in the 
 animal world as artificial colours : and in comparing what nature has done 
 for animals in respect of the two modes of sensation, we have to set off 
 such sounds as animals have the power of making for themselves, incon- 
 siderable in variety and of most intermittent occurrence, against the 
 perpetual and lavish display of visual colour in the external world. And 
 the very fact which we shall notice later, that the power of making such 
 sounds seems in many cases to have been developed greatly for the sake 
 of the pleasure it gave, seems to involve the idea that the auditory 
 changes necessary for responsive vibration and consequent enjoyment kept 
 ahead of, or at any rate parallel with, the increasing variety of stimulus ; 
 or at the very least must have followed with miraculous speed. 
 
 On the whole, then, the relation between the development of the tone- 
 sense and the conditions of physical environment seems to constitute a most 
 obscure problem. In the ease of the eye and colour, whatever minor diffi- 
 cidties may be found, we at any rate are certain of the physical conditions of 
 light and coloxu", as prime constituents of the environment, long before there 
 was any germ of living organism to be environed : while tones to the very 
 last remain exceptional phenomena ; comprise elements at both ends of the 
 scale which are exceptions even among the exceptions ; and moreover are 
 still heard by many persons, and must have been heard by the immense 
 majority of our progenitors, under the constant disadvantage of great 
 unsteadiness and poverty of timbre, entailing on the physiological side a 
 ■very feeble and imperfect exercise of function by the organ, and a corre- 
 spondingly small chaince of developments 
 
25 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 UNFORMED SOUND. 
 
 In oiir sketch of the senses we passed on rapidly to a point whence we _ § l. Pecu- 
 could obtain at once a clear view of the ground which really gives to sight impressions of 
 and hearing their unique position in the hierarchy ; and also could glance eOTmd.'"' 
 at the fundamental peculiarity presented by the sense of hearing, in the 
 very occasional character of that highest activity which gives it its place 
 in relation to Beauty, and makes it equally with sight the key to an 
 otherwise unimaginable world. Having done this, we may now con- 
 veniently retrace our steps to the region of simple and unformed sense- 
 impressions ; and as this same sense of hearing is to be henceforth the 
 main subject of our enqtdry, we may proceed to examine some of the 
 characteristics of sound, regarded for the present simply as such, apart 
 from any grouping and co-ordination of elements. A few of these pecu- 
 liarities, as has been already seen, are common also to the sense of sight ; 
 while others mark off hearing from all the other senses. 
 
 To begin with, then, the feelings of sound are extremely unloeal, pre- Uniocai sen- 
 senting strong contrast to those of taste and smell. Sight agrees with 
 hearing in this respect, as, though the eye is the great organ for apprecia- 
 tion of external locality, the impressions it receives are not noticed as 
 belonging locally to it and to no other part of the body. When the eye 
 is fatigued, however, it may experience pain or discomfort of a quite 
 local kind, connected, not with the actual seeing elements of the retina, 
 but with the associated apparatus. The ear is not liable to this expe- 
 rience, and impressions of sound may therefore be said to be the most 
 unlocal of all ; the discomfort caused by a sudden loud noise,, or, in some 
 cases, by extreme shrillness, being not so much connected with the aetua;l 
 sound as with a less differentiated sense of shock or jar. 
 
 Again, the means of access, the media through which the impressions impression by 
 of light and sound are received, ether in the one case, air in the other, 
 constitute a fundamental difference in the sort of material, so to 
 speak, which the external world presents to the two higher senses. The 
 existence of these media is of course connected with the power of the 
 eye and the ear to act at a distance from the exciting cause, which 
 affects them by vibrations set up in the medium, not by direct contact : 
 
26 
 
 UNFORMED SOUND. 
 
 The universal 
 presence of the 
 media, and the 
 wide diffusion 
 of the sources 
 of impression 
 throBgh them ; 
 
 which iiB in 
 some Vvays a 
 disadvantage. 
 
 §2. Great 
 peculiarity of 
 sounds: the 
 positive colour 
 quality only 
 exists in a 
 small minority 
 of them. 
 
 such a power, however, is not confined to these senses, for the organ of 
 smell, though needing direct contact of exciting particles, may encounter 
 these particles at a considerable distance from their main source, whence 
 they are enabled to spread by reason of their extraordinary minuteness. A 
 ftiore notieeable point lies in the omnipresence of the ethereal and aerial 
 media ; since only by this omnipresence could the organism be connected 
 ■(vith every object and movement in its vicinity. We saw in the last 
 chapter that the priority attaching to sight and hearing in virtue of this 
 connection entailed no superiority of sensuous pleasure : it may now be 
 added that the more universal phenomena of sight and sound are in some 
 Ways more beyond the choice and control of individuals than any others. 
 Ordinary light means something very different in London and in Athens, 
 and langua,ges, like voices, inay be harsh as well as sWeet. Aild on an 
 average of cases, the ear and eye certainly do not get more than a very 
 insignificant fraction of the amount of agreeable sensation of which they are 
 capable : the ratio of opportunity to capacity would probably prove, if a 
 census could be taken, to be very much sinaller in their case than in that 
 of taste. Moreover, their constant liability to impressions, owing to the 
 universal presence of their Inedia, places these highet senses at a dis- 
 advantage in a more positive way ; for they are perpetiially liable to be 
 taken unawares, and to be condemned to what they dislike without the 
 chance of escape. The ear is in this respect especially helpless, since it 
 cannot by its own action shut out what displeases it ; while, unfortunately, 
 the excessive and wearing sounds of city-life are, of all outrages to the 
 senses, those of whien one can least foresee the cessation. Nor can we 
 foresee the slightest chance of improvement in this respect through 
 change in the organism, the jar on the nerves prodiiced by disagreeable 
 sound represents too infiidtesimal a piece of unfitness for conditions to 
 stand any chance of being weeded out : we may even regard the general 
 nervous susceptibility implied in such experiences as a natural concomitant 
 of the superior physical and mental organisation which tends to supremacy 
 and survival. Nor can more be hoped from gradual adaptation ; since it 
 is exactly the sudden and intermittent character of the annoyance which 
 both gives it its character aftd prevents our getting indifferent to it. I 
 fear we must take oiir unfitness to our conditions in this respect as a set- 
 off against the development of our ears to a point so remote from 
 utihty and so condiicive to enjoyment as that implied in the main subject 
 of this book. 
 
 We pass now to a distitietion which is altogether peculiar to sound, 
 and is of the greatest importance. We have seen already that the im- 
 pressions of all the sense-organs, of the eye and ear as well as of the nose 
 and palate, as long as they are regarded merely as isolated impressions, 
 and not as combined by a superior faculty into complex groups or wholes, 
 
UNFORMED SOUND. 27 
 
 have a common character of ultimate and irreducible simplicity ; and 
 further, that in the cases of light and tone this common character might 
 be fairly represented by the term colour. Now every impression which 
 the ear receives from moment to moment, just like every separate im- 
 pression of light on the retina, has a particular quality which makes it 
 a distinct and recognisable phenomenon;, as we know white or' blue or 
 yellow when we see them, so we know the sound of a fiddle or of 
 thunder or of running water when we hear them. But when we think of 
 various sounds, when we recall what the sense-impressions really are in 
 the several cases, they seem to separate themselves into two classes which, 
 though they may merge into one another, are in nature quite distinct, 
 the class of tones and' the class- of noises ; these may be provisionally dis- Tones and 
 tinguished as the class where that quality of sound exists- which is °'"'°^' 
 generally described as musical, and the class where that quality is absent. 
 And it is only to the former class that such a term^ as colour seems at all 
 applicable ; the colotir-quaUty of a voice or an instrument is at once 
 understood as signifying its tone or timbre ; but to speak of the sound of 
 a cough or a cart-wheel as having colour-quality would be thought absurd. 
 Not but that it may be important for us to distinguish the sound of 
 wheels on a road from amy other sounds which may be audible at the 
 same time; we constantly avoid being run over by our power so* to distin- 
 guish. But the characteristics of non-musical sounds never strike us as 
 shades of some common character in reference to which they can be com- 
 pared. A cough is one thing, the sound of a waterfall is another, the 
 grating of a saw is another. The first may be neutral,- the second pleasant, 
 the third unpleasant ; they may present varying degrees of suddenness 
 or of loudness, and in these respects we can certainly compare them ; but 
 in their lack of any essential common nature, they are disparate things ; 
 and the only generic word for them is just noises, which is here really a 
 negative and quasi-technical term, implying absence of musical ton«. 
 
 The 'physical difference (I may beallowed to remind my readers) between Their phvainal 
 musical tones and non-musical noises, is the difference between regular cai Imfeali; ' 
 and irregular stimulias. In the case of tones, the aerial vibrations are 
 regular, precisely similar condensations and rarefactions of the air 
 succeeding each other in unvarying order, so many to the second ; and the 
 auditory apparatus is so constituted that a parallel regularity of nervous 
 stimulation is set up in it. Noises, on the other hand, are due to an 
 irregular disturbance of the air ; the state of which in their case, as com- 
 pared with the state which produces musical tones, finds a rough 
 parallel in the surface of a pond blown by gusts of wind and churned by 
 oars and paddle-wheels-, as compared with the same surface on a still day 
 with regular waves circling out from some point where a stone has been 
 dropped. 
 
28 UNFORMED SOUND. 
 
 and one import- The exceptional Occurrence of true musical tones in our experience of 
 
 quenceofitin sounds Suggests one consequence which we shall find to be of great 
 
 Son.'*"'™" importance; namely, that when they do occur, they reap the benefit of 
 
 rare and intermittent stimulation, which was noticed in the last chapter as 
 
 characteristic of the keener bodily pleasures. The full and proper activity 
 
 of those elements of the auditory apparatus which respond to regular 
 
 vibrations being only occasionally called out, the sensational effects of 
 
 such activity are proportionably remarkable and exciting. 
 
 §3. Tones It has been already said that these two classes of sound, which we 
 
 no'definite *™ have provisionally defined as tones and noises, merge into one another. 
 
 det'ermmed"by '^^ presence ot absence of some slight degree of musical timbre in a 
 
 smmd"^ and sound is too hard to establish to permit the drawing of any distinct 
 
 cannot be dis- boundary Une'. A certain amount of musical timbre may exist in sounds 
 
 the criterion of which are generally accounted noises, and never thoxight of in connection 
 
 agreeabieness. ^-^j^, jyf^g-^^ ^^g. j^ ^.j^g gound of vrind, or in the tinkling of a fountain, or in 
 
 piercing and distressing cries ; while in musical tones, on the other hand, 
 
 there is almost always a certain infusion of non-musical noise, as;, for 
 
 instance, in the rattling of the keys on the piano, or in strong consonants 
 
 pronounced by a singing voice. Nor, in endeavouring to fix the amount of 
 
 this or that element in any particular phenomenon, must we be led away 
 
 by any notion that agreeableness will serve as a criterion. The tones of a 
 
 cracked or screaming voice singing a song, may be as distracting as- the 
 
 noise of splashing water is soothing. Thus the terms musical and uti- 
 
 mmsical are somewhat ambiguous and misleading ; it would be natural to 
 
 call the singing voice unmusical, and the splashing fountain musical ; so 
 
 that the two words, used in relation to the quality of sounds, are in no way 
 
 synonymous with capable and incapable of serving as material for music. 
 
 § 4. Tones This cross-distinctiou involves a modification of our definition of tones 
 
 h-v^ certainty of and uoiscs '. for it rcveals" that something quite different from what we 
 
 •P''"''- understand as musical quality is necessary to constitute a sound a true 
 
 tone. This something is certainty and distinctness of jpitch ; a certainty 
 
 which is always possessed by, and is therefore generally associated with, 
 
 sounds which have, besides, distinct and agreeable musical quality, as the 
 
 notes of good instruments- ; but which very jarring and ugly sounds, as 
 
 the notes of bad instruments, may equally possess. 
 
 At first sight, a difficulty may seem to be here involved. For it 
 mav be asked, how is it possible that this definite certainty in the pitch of 
 a tone can exist unless as a result of regular -vibrations and regular sti- 
 mulation of the auditory apparatus ? and these, as we saw, are the very 
 conditions for agreeable musical quality or colour in the sound. The 
 answer is that such regularity of vibrations must undoubtedly be present 
 in every case where the- pitch of a sound is distinctly recognisable ; but 
 these main vibrations, though succeeding each other with regularity, may 
 
UNFORMED SOUND. 29 
 
 each of them have a broken and uneven motion on its own account, so 
 that a line representing them would have waves at regular intervals, but 
 would be covered with minor jags and roughnesses ; also each main wave 
 may have superposed on it minor waves which fight and clash among 
 themselves in the ear ; and thirdly, in conjunction with the main regular 
 elements, there may be all manner of irregular and jarring elements quite 
 unconnected with them. To revert to our simile of the pond ; the main 
 set of regular circling waves might still be quite perceptible to the eye, 
 even though their edges were chopped and jagged, and though the whole 
 surface were lashed up into a number of shifting irregular elevations 
 and depressions. So the ear is able to pick out and respond to the 
 regular elements of the stimulus, which means that it hears a tone ; but 
 the irregular elements, which simultaneously affect it, may cause the tone 
 to be utterly rough and disagreeable, or, in ordinary parlance, unmusical. 
 Whether we consider this rmmusicalness as harshness, or as absence of 
 musical quality, is a mere matter of language; a substratum of some 
 true musical quahty there must be, since certainty of pitch and musical 
 quaUty are necessary results of the same cause ; but this may be so 
 overborne by supervening elements, that while the pitch remains recog- 
 nisable, the quality of the sound may be altogether on the wrong side of 
 the neutral line. 
 
 It must be distinctly realised that the regularity we have spoken of is Many sounds 
 of elements far too rapid to count, or to perceive as discontinuous: phy- clnTeCTiar! 
 sically, we know that they are regular, but in consciousness a multitude ^'^^f the^"™^ 
 of them constitute one ultimate phenomenon, namely a tone. A thing special sort of 
 may souTid regular, may be represented in consciousness as uniform or which consti- 
 monotonous, without any regularity of this kind in its constituent ele- " ^? 
 ments ; for instance, the rustling of leaves in a forest affects the ear in a 
 steady gentle manner, without shocks or jars, but also without any of the 
 regular stimulation which constitutes distinct tone. There are many 
 sounds from which regularity of vibration is almost or entirely absent, but 
 where the irregular disturbances, though entirely in the ascendant, are not 
 of a jarring kind. Yet such sounds, though agreeable, are noises, even as 
 jarring notes, though disagreeable, are tones. The sound of a fountain, 
 or of distant thunder, may be decidedly agreeable ; but though we are con- 
 scious here of some slight blending of the tone-element, which distin- 
 guishes the sounds from the crackling of leaves or the rattling of a cab, 
 yet it would be hopeless to attempt to assign to such sounds a distinct 
 pitch in the scale ; the tone-elements are far too much involved and 
 swamped in what is merely noise, and far too uncertain and transitory on 
 their own account, to be separately estimated and identified. Even sounds 
 with a much more definite element of timbre than these may, nevertheless, 
 be excluded by the criterion of clear distinguishable pitch from the class 
 
30 UNFORMED SOUND. 
 
 of true tones. Such sounds are those of common speech ; for though we 
 speak of a musical voice, with a far clearer conception of the implied 
 colour-element than when we speak of a musical fountain, still the non- 
 musical elen3,ents in speech are so prominent, and the sounds are often 
 so unceirtain, shifting, and spasmodic, that even a skilled musician may 
 find it a hopeless task to track out the actual notes with anything 
 approaching completeness. 
 
 It will be noticed that distinctness of pitch and positiveness of musical 
 quality, depending as they both do on regularity of vibration, which may 
 be swamped and hidden by simultaneous irregularities, naturally vary to- 
 gether as regards their prominence and the ease with which the ear 
 detects them. The pitch of an extremely grating note is propontionably 
 hard to identify ; while if sounds are sharply clearly musical in quality, 
 their pitch is recognisable even when they are extremely light and rapid. 
 Now in the majority even of agreeable voices, the timbre (which must be 
 carefully distinguished from clearness and refinement of pronunciation) 
 is extremely neutral and inconspicuous. For sounds with so little true 
 colour-quality to be definitely identified as to pitch, it would be necessary 
 that each should he dwelt on for a very appreciable time; whereas in 
 speech the shifting and sliding to and fro is as rapid as it is habitual. 
 We need not dwell on the topic here, as we shall encounter it again 
 when we come to consider the relations of speech to Music. 
 § 5. Sum- So far, then, our position is as follows. We have found that musical 
 
 tones, sounds with a true and distinct colour-quality, are quite exceptional 
 things, only slightly and dubiously represented in the ordinary course of 
 experience in the world around us, and mainly connected with a quite 
 special and isolated.class of phenomena. We have further found that the 
 word tone must not be confined to the sounds which are musical in the 
 sense ,of being agreeable, but rather to the sounds which are musical in 
 the sense of being available as material for Music, as elements of the 
 recognisable combinations known as tunes ; and that for this class agree- 
 ablen«ss of quality, though so universally associated with the idea of 
 musical notes, is a far less useful and accurate criterion than certainty 
 of pitch. To this we may add, what indeed has been already implied, 
 that in general this sa^e certainty of pitch is, equally with distinctly 
 musical quality, associated with an isolated set of phenomena: though 
 we ccm, we practically seldom do, produce musical tones except in music. 
 It was impossible to avoid here the notice of this fact, if only by way of 
 contrast ; but it will be perceived that we have assiorned, without dis- 
 cussion, the existence of and necessity for certain and recognisable pitch in 
 the sound-material of Music. To discuss this point would be to trench 
 on the subject of Music itself, and to forestall a great part of our subse- 
 quent enquiry. At present we are more immediately concerned with 
 
 marv.. 
 
UNFORMED SOUND. 31 
 
 sense-impressions regarded as unformed and independent phenomena; 
 and our point is that for these, in the case of sound, we have what 
 amounts to a double mode of sensibility, the ordinary and the extra- 
 ordinary, responding respectively to irregular impulses and to regular 
 vibrations of the aerial medium. 
 
 In this connection we may conveniently notice two points respecting §6. Cnrions 
 the enjoyment of sound, which seem at ^^rst sight to present a certain ^"reenesHnd 
 incompatibility. On the one hand coarse and uncultivated natures seem sensitiveness in 
 
 ^ •' _ many ears. 
 
 capable of getting enjoyment from sounds which are especially distressing 
 to others : and even without having resort to the coarsest natures or the 
 most excruciating sorts of sound, we perceive that the firing of a gun on 
 the stage must be a source of pleasure to a large number of the audience, 
 or it would not be so constant a feature of modern melodrama ; and that 
 the ordinary style of after-dinner chorus must have charms for the 
 majority of young. Englishmen. On the other hand there is no doubt 
 that a set of East End roughs would almost instantly discover the difference 
 between, e.g., a perfectly beautiful and a moderately good soprano voice : 
 the better the voice the more they like it. That is, they show here, when 
 they get the chance, a real discriminative delicacy of colour sense, un- 
 paralleled in any other region of their sensations : for the same persons 
 would certainly not pick out that particular flavour of wine which the 
 connoisseur would most approve, as specially superior to others which he 
 would despise ; nor would their taste in visible colour satisfy a more 
 artistic eye. It would be extremely interesting to know whether the 
 same taste in sound would be found in savages ; whose delight in what 
 seem to us hideous noises can in no way be held to prove that they are 
 incapable of enjoying what they have never had the chance of hearing, 
 sound of realty beautiful musical quality, in face of the fact that such 
 sound is appreciable by many among our own roughest classes whose 
 ears seem as obviously callous as theirs to violent usage. In the case of 
 tones with any pretension to musical quality, I do not think the poorer 
 and harsher are ever deliberately preferred to the richer and sweeter, 
 though there may be any amount of differences of taste as to particular 
 varieties of timbre. And as coarsely organised hunqian beings seem com- 
 pa,ratively little behind their more refined fellows in detecting superiority 
 of tone when they hear it, so also here they seem to be most distinctly 
 removed from the brute creation. For in respect of the .other senses 
 animals often show a decided agreement with man, as in a liking for 
 bright colours, for the. tastes of various sorts of food, and in some 
 cases apparently for f-igrance; nor does the enjoyment by some of 
 them of flavours and smells the very idea of which is to us disgusting, 
 at all exceed that frequently found among savages. But, without relying 
 for evidence on such facts as that dogs often howl at the sound of a fiddle 
 
32 
 
 UNFORMED SOUND. 
 
 This is to a 
 great extent 
 explicable by 
 considerations 
 of general 
 physical stimu- 
 lation, 
 
 and of tlie dis- 
 tinction be- 
 tween noise and 
 tone j 
 
 tone beinj; 
 peculiar in two 
 
 ways. 
 
 (prompted by feelings not perhaps wholly unknown even in human expe- 
 rience), I am not aware that, since the days of Orpheus, animals have ever 
 shown any special partiality for distinctly beautiful musical tone, or even 
 for tone which is so much as moderately satisfactory to us ; in spite of so 
 often having a sort of music of their own, and occasionally even possessing 
 a command of really sweet notes. 
 
 The remarkable coarseness and remarkable sensitiveness which seem 
 to be combined in a large number of human ears, though strangely con- 
 trasted, each admit of a considerable amount of explanation. The love 
 of coarse and violent sound is connected with the mere love of violent 
 stimulation, and manifests the exceptional way in which stimulation of 
 the auditory nerve overflows into the general nervous system ; the dis- 
 charge often finding vent in actual movements, and causing a general 
 diffused excitement throughout the organism. This general discharge and 
 need of a vent is shown in the fact that a person is pleasingly excited by 
 sounds in the making of which he is actively participating, when passive 
 endurance of them would be intolerable. The constant use by savages of 
 instruments of percussion, which from the suddenness and sharpness of 
 their sound are particularly effective in this way, exemplifies the same 
 point ; and the use is commonly accompanied by yells and dances. 
 
 The perception of beautiful quality of tone, on the other hand, has no 
 connection with general stimulation, and is entirely a matter of the 
 more delicate and differentiated part of the ear : and the very contrast 
 I am noticing would afford a strong a priori presumption for the truth 
 of Helmholtz's elaborate theory that different parts of the ear are appro- 
 priated to noises and to tones. We observed in the last chapter what 
 an extraordinary problem the development of the tone-portion of the ear 
 presents : but once developed, there seems no special difficulty in the fact 
 that it is regular and spontaneous in action, and that the sensations con- 
 nected with it are well characterised and pretty universally possible and 
 similar. And indeed there are grounds for regarding both the certainty 
 and the general similarity of the enjoyment as specially natural in the 
 case of tone. For in the first place, thanks primarily to Helmholtz, the 
 objective conditions of beautiful tone can be referred with exceptional 
 definiteness to comprehensible points of physical law and physiological 
 function. The varieties of tone-sensation are connected in the most in- 
 telligible manner with a large number of actually differentiated elements, 
 and the combined action of several of these, necessary for the production 
 of a satisfactory quality of tone, takes place according to the most definite 
 numerical proportions : whence, as long as the elements are there to be 
 stimulated, it is not surprising if the sensations seem less liable to idio- 
 syncrasies and divergences than do those of the organs which are less 
 structurally differentiated, and where the various modes of nervous 
 
UNFORMED SOUND. 33 
 
 affection underlying the character of sensations are more remote and 
 obscure. In the second place, the unique and independent position of 
 tone in the world tends distinctly to the same result : beautiful quality 
 of tone is altogether too exceptional a phenomenon for variable conditions, 
 beyond the simple sensation of the moment, to have any appreciable effect 
 on the kind and amount of enjoyableness. 
 
 These points become clearer through the contrast to them presented § 7. Contrast 
 by visual colour. In its case, enjoyment and criticism perpetually have the varieo-""" 
 reference to other elements than the absolute quality of the tint. ^ng*^art°y 
 Associations with objects and textures, and with habits and fitnesses, are duetorefer- 
 
 ' ' ences and asso- 
 
 contmually present in such overpowering force, that only by a strong ciations far 
 effort can the purely sensory quality be detached and judged. Numerous primary sen'- 
 instances of this might be found in the various applications of colour to ^"^ v^»^^^^^> 
 personal adornment, where anything unfamiliar naturally seems eccentric 
 or extravagant ; and the style in which many savage customs are reported- 
 shows how habitually the eye refuses to recognise the quality of (it may 
 be) beautiful colour in the wrong place. Often too the more refined 
 pleasure, when it exists, is connected with gradations and juxtapositions 
 which entirely remove the phenomenon from the simplest sensory class. 
 So that even in the natural course of individual experience, we find far 
 less fixity and absoluteness about the pleasing and displeasing qualities of 
 simple colour, than of any other order of simple impression. 
 
 The contrast in the case of visual colour to the general certainty and but in great 
 agreement about beauty of tone-colour, cannot, however, be altogether, or to a very wide 
 even chiefly, referred to this cause; there is quite sufficient fixity in individual tiSf^°thI"'*' 
 appreciation of individual tints to afford ample evidence of wide varieties Pfj^"'' ^™*'' 
 of sensibility, quite apart from the more involved questions of application 
 and juxtaposition in relation to which taste in colour is so often criticised. 
 To realise this, we have only to compare a walk through a Manchester 
 warehouse with a walk through a Cairo bazaar ; or to recall the popu- 
 larity of the aniline dyes among people who would show themselves at a 
 ballad-concert perfectly competent judges of harshness and sweetness of 
 voice. Such facts certainly approximate the colour-sense, as regards the 
 range of the variations in sensibility to which it is liable, rather to the senses 
 of taste and smell than to that of tone. And we shall the more readily 
 rest content with this variableness, if we observe the extreme obscurity 
 of the physiological facts on which the variations are based. Even the 
 most general formulae which would connect coarse taste with pleasure 
 in violent stimulation are exceptionally difficult to apply in the case of 
 colour : for instance, the more luminous edition of a colour, which would 
 be for all alike superior in pleasurable quality to a deader edition of the 
 same tint, can hardly be held to fall short of the latter in violence of 
 stimulation ; and a colour may be dazzlingly strong without giving to the 
 
 I) 
 
34 UNFORMED SOUND. 
 
 most refined sense the slightest impression of vulgarity or crudeness. 
 We certainly seem driven to choose roughness, or some other less definite 
 word than violence, to express the special character of the nervous action 
 which the coarser organ feels as pleasant or indifferent, and the more 
 refined as offensive. But whatever word we adopt, the real place and 
 nature of the physiological facts remain equally unknown to us ; and this 
 very obscurity completes the contrast with the case of musical tone, 
 where the sorts of physical and physiological interruptions and shocks, 
 connected with a jarring quality of tone, are as well understood as the 
 conditions of richness and fulness. 
 §8. Theneu- It will be evident, from all that has been said, that the ordinary class 
 ccSou?i"ane83 of souuds, those met with in the normal course of experience, are the 
 soun^°"^ most neutral of all the impressions connected with a special organ ; things 
 heard can be neutral in a sense in which things seen, smelt, and tasted 
 never can. All tastes, for example, are variations of a single mode of 
 sensibility, and all have a positive character : any apparent exception to 
 this positive character would only mean that the material in our mouths 
 was affecting the nerves of touch in the tongue, but not those of taste. 
 All visual sensations, again, are of positive colour, since colour is of the 
 essence of light ; absence of colour is blackness, which means absence of 
 sensation. The colour may be dull and dingy, through poverty of light 
 and an unfortunate mingling of its constituents ; but it is none the less 
 truly colour, and has for its physical cause vibrations as regular as those 
 which generate purer and brighter tints. The grey sky and dull bricks 
 which my eyes encounter as I now look forth, are certainly neutral enough 
 as regards pleasure-giving quality, but what I see is still colour ; whereas 
 the scratching of my pen as I write, the sound of footsteps, and opening 
 and shutting of doors in the house, and the distant clatter outside, are 
 not only neutral in the sense of being heard with indifference, but in the 
 sense of wholly lacking timbre, that is, of having no colour-quality at all. 
 In the region of sound colour depends on exceptional physical conditions, 
 on a mode of stimulation which is occasional, not habitual ; so that the 
 sounds possessing it in any conspicuous degree form a class quite apart. 
 A practical experiment will show how real are the effects of this contrast. 
 Daylight costs nothing; and the organ which is perpetually receiving 
 colour-sensations of some sort, is sure of at least occasional gratification. 
 No city is so steeped in smoke and ugliness as wholly to lack, in buildings 
 or costume, bits of colour which may attract and arrest the eye ; or even if 
 it were, the face of heaven could not be entirely shut out. Flowers, again, 
 present to the senses both of sight and smell the cheapest of all luxuries. 
 But it would be quite possible to spend whole days in walking about a 
 city, without receiving the slightest iota of direct satisfaction through the 
 medium of the ear. The only bits of striking sound colour with distinct 
 
UNFORMED SOUND. 35 
 
 pitch and timbre that one would encounter, might probably be the shrill 
 cries and laughter of children, which, though they may warm the heart, 
 certainly do not exhilarate the sense. 
 
 We may even go further, and assert that the ear will not stand definite such neutrality 
 sound colour as part of its ordinary environment. The most musical note, nfanfedTby the 
 if prolonged continuously, would weary us in less than a minute ; and *"■ 
 formless successions of such notes would be more irritating still. Compare 
 looking at a sun-lit marble wall for half an hour, and Kstening to a tone or 
 a few changing tones without form. This shows the contrast. The eye is 
 always seeing lights and colours, and rests contentedly on agreeable 
 masses ; while the ear is peculiarly affected and excited by the occasional 
 phenomena which present distinct sound colour. Again, from a visual 
 colour which wearies us, we can commonly turn our eyes ; a fragrance 
 pervading the place in which we are, cannot indeed be avoided by such 
 simple means, but will soon cease to affect our consciousness ; but in the 
 case of the ear the sensibility of the organ is not deadened by the persist- 
 ence of the stimulus, and the presence of true musical colour may make 
 it as hard for us to become unconscious of a prolonged sound as would 
 excessive and disagreeable loudness. 
 
 In spite, however, of the neutrality, the lack of colour-quality, which we § 9. Tet 
 find in the general run of non-musical sounds,' they have certain remarkable "ounds'^te 
 modes of affecting us : modes which we shall encounter, indeed, as promi- eertain tci^ 
 
 . ° ' ' J. special pcssi- 
 
 nent factors m the domain of Music, but which stand out as exceptional in biiities ; 
 the case of quite formless sense-impressions. These modes may be distin- 
 guished as the soothing and the stimulating. 
 
 Where a non-musical sound has a soothing character, we shall find iu the way of 
 that this depends on the very condition which we have found to render *°'' ™^' 
 a musical sound in supportably irritating, namely, that it shall be pro- 
 longed for a considerable time. And this is the very reason that open- 
 air sounds of a soothing kind are for the most part banished from cities, 
 where all continuity of sound is swamped in fragmentary hubbub, and 
 winds and waters get no chance ; indeed, the only monotonous sound 
 which can address the city-dweller with any soothing power is the distant 
 
 ' The word waB-nmsical conveniently de- ugly ; a musical sound commonly means an 
 
 scribes the sounds which, through the lack of agreeable sound, like the splashing of oars, 
 
 any element or substratum of distinct and which for all that has no distinct pitch and 
 
 assignable pitch, are outside the region of could never appear as an element in a tune. 
 
 tones, as above defined : Mra-musical is iden- A further ambiguity lies in the word tone : 
 
 tified, according to common use, with harsh- in the singular it is constantly used to denote 
 
 ness and disagreeableness of quality. Musical what I have called timbre or colawr, as when 
 
 is constrained to serve as correlative to both people speak of one violin as superior iat time 
 
 these negative terms : a musical note com- to another ; that is, to denote not sounds, but 
 
 monly means distinct pitch, which can there- a quality of sounds. This ambiguity seems 
 
 fore appear as an element in a tone, but to justify the use of the French word, *ij»ij-e, 
 
 which for all that may be very harsh and in preference. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 UNFORMED SOUND. 
 
 roar of the streets, the effect of which is too easily destroyed, by associa- 
 tion, even when not broken in upon by some nearer noise. In the 
 country or by the sea, on the other hand, the prolonged and gentle sounds 
 «f Nature have a markedly soothing, and even a soporific, effect on most 
 organisms. There are, it is true, exceptional cases where the sound of the 
 sea is distinctly objected to, and actually prevents sleep: this effect, 
 however, may probably be referred to the rhythmic character of the waves, 
 the attention being kept alert by a kind of unconscious counting, such as is 
 often induced by the ticking of a clock. Where the general sound of the 
 sea is found unpleasant, in the absence of any such special feature of 
 annoyance, mental elements of association, or the melancholy connected 
 with a sense of vastness and fate, are probably at work. I do not remem- 
 ber to have ever heard of a similar objection to the equally monotonous 
 effect of a flowing stream; in connection with which I could much 
 more easily conceive the ' beauty born of murmuring sound,' which will 
 recur to every reader, to be a literal fact. Again, the lulling effect of a 
 gentl« voice reading aloud is well known. Here, indeed, the sound is not 
 continuous in .the sense of being quite unbroken ; but the timbre of the 
 separate parts is too diluted and inconspicuous for that annoyance to be 
 possible which we saw would ensue from a formless succession of distinctly 
 coloured tones. 
 
 In these soothing effects the sense of sight seems to come very far 
 behind that of hearing. To a person who is sensitive to refinement of 
 colour, daily peace of mind may of course be greatly promoted by a con- 
 genial entourage in this respect ; but no specially lulling effect results 
 from contemplation of any expajise of uniform colour, however mild and 
 restful in tint. A soporific effect may indeed be produced through the 
 sense of sight, by an amount of light which distinctly wearies the eye ; 
 but this happens more especially when the eye is actively employed, as in 
 reading. It is the result of over-stimulation, but not of a gentle and un- 
 broken uniformity of impression ; and moreover as a rule darkness, that is, 
 absence of all visual activity, is the preferable condition for sleep, 
 and in the way Still more remarkable are the effects of sound in the way of stimula- 
 
 of stimulating^ tion. Of all formless impressions, sounds can give by far the strongest 
 being some- shock to the organism. The phenomenon of starting is a common example 
 startling kind, of this fact. Tostes and smells cannot affect us with such sudden violence, 
 nor can the stimulus in their case overflow with such rapidity into the 
 general nervous system, as to produce a real instantaneous start ; and though 
 we start at the sudden sight of something unexpected close to us, it will be 
 noticed that the something is usually either a living .creature, or else an 
 object in rapid motion. If we open the door and unexpectedly find on the 
 threshold a ladder or some conspicuous inanimate object, we may recoil a 
 step, but we do not start in approximately so violent a manner as if we 
 
UNFORMED SOUND. 37 
 
 come upon a human being equally close to us ; or, if we enter a room whicL: 
 we imagine empty, and find some one in it, we often start, whereas the 
 sudden discovery of a new chair or table in the room will have no such 
 effect on us. Here, then, the phenomenon is due to elements beyond 
 the mere sensory impression, and connected with a feeling that the space 
 near us is occupied in a totally unique manner, when the occupying body 
 is a living creatiu'e. We carry about an habitual instinct of having around 
 us a certain amount of space in which we are alone, and any sudden vio- 
 lence to this instinct is very unnerving. That this is the true explana- 
 tion seems to be shown by the fact that the gentlest possible touch, if it 
 gives the same impression of unexpected nearness to a living creature, 
 causes a similar start. The start produced by rapid motion in our immediate 
 vicinity has probably a different source, the instinct, namely, of self-pre- 
 servation: the start is invariably /rom the exciting object, and resembles 
 the recoil from a threatened blow. Nor are these causes absent in the 
 case of sound ; identical instincts must certainly play a part in the nervous 
 shock produced by a sound which suddenly gives the impression either 
 of a living creature, or of some sort of violent motion close to us. But in 
 the starting caused by sound, there seems to be often a large element 
 which lies quite outside these instincts : a loud sound will startle us vio- 
 lently without being conceived of as due to anything close to us. There is 
 no sudden adjustment of ideas, as when we start at the sudden proximity 
 of a fellow creature ; and no co-ordination of movements, as in the charac- 
 teristic recoil from a threatening danger ; only a uniquely disagreeable 
 shock to the organism. 
 
 But it is not in this painful way that the very direct effect of sound on sometimes of 
 the organism is chiefly interesting. In the early and instinctive awe which spjrfng kind. 
 a single mighty sound produces, the sense of hearing has no parallel. No 
 case can be mentioned in which simple sensory impressions,- of a sort of 
 which our personal experience would appear too limited to have originated 
 anything like an abstract idea, as of external or hostile power, neverthe- 
 less excite feelings which seem at least to touch the confines of such an 
 idea. Among the other senses, that of sight is the only one which could 
 even be mentioned in connection with such feelings ; and in its case we 
 get far more definitely into a region where ideas have been clearly formed 
 from sense-material by an infusion of mental elements and associations, 
 and involve objects and occurrences of known experience, Eoughly 
 speaking, a large object, like a mountain, impresses us with a sense of 
 tremendousness, partly because we have acqiiired a conception of space 
 and distance in connection with a long series of muscular experiences, 
 partly through associations of mighty movements, and even catastrophes, 
 with great height ; but a mere blaze of light, the true analogue of a mass 
 of sound, conveys to us no such impression. The exciting and /awe- 
 
38 
 
 UNFORMED SOUND. 
 
 § 10. They 
 also lend them 
 t-elves readily 
 to associa- 
 tion. 
 
 1 11. Form 
 and Ckilour, 
 Ijoth cf ttiem 
 excepfaenal in 
 the regiom of 
 sound, aw 
 found coini- 
 bined in ooe 
 set of pheno- 
 mena. 
 
 ijnspiring effect of sound, the sense of mystery and mightiness which it 
 forces on us, may, indeed, for aught we know, be connected with events and 
 catastrophes of the remotest past, but certainly does not seem due to any 
 experiences of our own lives ; and it is one of the most deeply seated and 
 universal of instincts both among civiUsed and savage peoples. 
 
 As this experience of awe has already carried us somewhat beyond the 
 region of mere sense, one more property of sounds may be noticed, which, 
 though by no means peculiar to them, is still in their case very marked ; 
 the readiness, namely, with which they lend themselves to association in 
 the experience of individuals. Mr. Spencer has adduced a very good 
 example of this in the cawing of rooks ; a sound which certainly has no 
 intrinsic beauty, and yet which many persons hear with a certain pleasure 
 and emotion. Mr. Spencer connects this pleasure with half-unconscious 
 associations of early life, of holiday evenings and pleasant country-scenes 
 among which the sound first became familiar. As a converse example of 
 annoyance caused by a sound which on its own merits would seem to be 
 agreeable, I sometimes imagine that a feeling of melancholy and distress 
 produced in me, and I find in many others, by the sound of church-bells, 
 may be traced to the dulness and confinement of childish Sundays. These 
 effects of association often seem to bear an inverse ratio to the actual 
 strength of the sound-impressions : they form in connection with the sub- 
 dued murmurs of a summer-evening, with village-sounds and cries heard 
 in the distance, with the faint tones of the Swiss herdsman's horn far 
 away among the hills, rather than in connection with sounds which more 
 directly force themselves on the attention. And indeed it seems 
 natural that the favourable cases for such effects should be those where 
 the original impressions blended with a general stream of agreeable 
 experience, without themselves rising into special prominence. 
 
 We have now briefly glanced at the chief characteristics of sounds, 
 regarded as impressions of sense, each of which constitutes (as a noise 
 invariably must, a tone through isolation ifnay, constitute) a perfectly 
 simple phenomenon, having all its powers and properties there with it in 
 the moment of its presentation, standing in no special relation to any 
 other sound, and so calHng up no exercise of any co-ordinating and com- ' 
 bining faculty. But we saw, when we were justifying the high position 
 •of the sense of hearing in the aesthetic hierarchy, that there is a particular 
 set of phenomena where sounds do come under the domain of a co-ordina- 
 ting faculty ; and we have since seen, in connection with the colour quality, 
 that a certain class of sounds are marked off by certain characteristics as 
 tcnes, and that there is also a particular set of phenomena to which these 
 specially belong. It need hardly be said that the particular set of phe- 
 nomena in the two cases is one and the same. The coincidence is not, 
 indeed, absolutely perfect ; as, on the one hand, there is one mode of com- 
 
UNFORMED SOUND. 39 
 
 biTiing sounds, the rhythmic mode pure and simple, which takes no 
 account of their pitch or their timbre ; and, on the other, definite pitch 
 and timbre can exist in sounds which enter into no combination, as in the 
 distant sound of a threshing-machine, or as when a person sounds a single 
 note, or intones in monotone. But, neglecting such cases for the present, we 
 may state broadly that for sound the region of Form is the region of Colour, 
 and that while the eye is encountering form and colour at every moment of 
 its waking activity, the ear practically identifies them with that unique 
 order of experience, called Music, in which alone they are combined. 
 
 And this order of experience is not only exceptional ; it is also purely which is an en- 
 artificial. Among the sounds of inanimate nature, though many of them proiiuc*, ' 
 are agreeable and impressive, there is not a vestige of form, scarcely even 
 a vestige of the tone-material out of which forms are built. We shall find, 
 in the sixth chapter, that a rudimentary sort of music is widely diffused 
 in the animal kingdom, and even that it often holds a less exceptional 
 position, in relation to the whole amount of sounds the animals can make, 
 than with us ; but that it is produced, like ours, with a distinct view to 
 pleasurable excitement. With man, the production even of the material, 
 of the tones possessing sufficient certainty and permanence of pitch to 
 serve as elements of forms, requires a deliberate effort of the voioe ; while 
 these tones would never, unless governed by a conscious aim, reach the 
 stage of form. This, however, will be better appreciated when we come to 
 discuss in detail the nature of melodic forms : for the present we may be 
 content with the universal admission of the fact that Music is an artificial 
 product. But universal admission goes further : according to it. Music is 
 not only artificial, it is an art. And as, in reviewing the properties of and constitutes 
 sound, we discover one set of phenomena where alone the all-important 
 factors of high aesthetic pleasure enter into combination, where alone, 
 therefore, the supreme and peculiar power of sound could be imagined to 
 reside, so now we find that in pursuing our enquiry we shall be engaged 
 wholly with art, with sound as present in works of art. The very words 
 may well put us on our guard, so charged are they with ambiguities 
 and pitfalls : and since it would be impossible to proceed without a clear 
 realisation of what is and what is not implied in these and other com- 
 monly associated terms, it will be convenient at once to clear the ground 
 by a brief examination of the most general elements involved in a work 
 of art, and of the relations which they hold to one another. This 
 analysis will be the means opening out new points of comparison and con- 
 trast between the two supreme aesthetic senses. 
 
40 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 § 1. Analysis To many it is a disagreeable and difl&cult task to try to analyse the pleasure 
 
 fn connedao™' derived from beauty. To attempt this analysis in the actual moment of 
 
 rabjectT"''""^ enjoyment would indeed often be quite useless, and would divert into 
 
 though an speculative channels the nervous energy necessary for apprehension and 
 
 ungrateful is -^ °-' n i i i i- i. 
 
 someiimes a appreciation. Nor in general is anything like detailed knowledge of the 
 '^ ^ ' technical structure of works of art helpful as regards appreciation, any 
 more than a knowledge of anatomy and organic chemistry is helpful for 
 the appreciation of human beauty. There are, however, certain obvious 
 elements common to all the arts, of which, obvious as they are, the existence 
 and the nature seem in many cases not to be very clearly conceived. And 
 of these broad elements, and of their relative place and importance in each 
 of the arts, I cannot but think that a clear conception is necessary, at any 
 rate for sound judgment, if not for vivid appreciation ; while a comparison 
 in respect of these elements between the various arts themselves with 
 which such a conception naturally connects itself, is by no means un- 
 fruitful in suggestion and interest. 
 
 The process of definition and distinction cannot, I fear, be made very at- 
 tractive. It is impossible to invest it with the charm of that higher criticism 
 whose function is, by dint of the author's wider grasp and keener apprecia- 
 tion, directly to enlighten and guide the perceptions of others in the actual 
 presence of the work ; and it is an ungrateful task to point out that this 
 higher criticism occasionally gets so high as to lose itself in clouds and 
 vapours, for the want of the ballast which a more rigorous definition of 
 terms might have given. In proportion, however, as a critic of art avoids 
 these dangerous regions, and really enlightens as well as delights his 
 public, he will probably be ready to acknowledge the humbler service, if, 
 in the more general and abstract region which surrounds the subject, the 
 air can be somewhat cleared of the barren verbiage and meaningless ana- 
 logies in which feelings of genuine admiration so often find vent. Few 
 perhaps fully realise the difficulty of defining at what point the core of a 
 true emotional experience begins to get involved in a subjective haze, 
 where indistinct ideas are apt to betake themselves to the refuge of high- 
 
THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 41 
 
 sounding phrases, whose reality and profundity it seems like profanation 
 to question. Thus we are told that all beauty is a series of variations on 
 one theme ; or that all the arts are reflections of a single ideal ; ox point- 
 blank that a musician is a poet. The oracular sound of such expressions 
 is conventionally held to exonerate them from scrutiny : the Ideal, like 
 Caesar's wife, must be above suspicion. In reality an emotional ex- 
 perience is seldom an isolated phenomenon ; it is commonly surrounded 
 by a swarm of accidental and evanescent images and verbal ghosts of 
 images ; and one who tries to demonstrate the adventitious character of 
 the swarm may easily seem to be calling in question the central ex- 
 perience, and to be impugning that which he himself presumably lacks 
 the faculty to discover. 
 
 Perhaps, however, seeing that it is so hard to dissociate our feelings from 
 our customary ways of regarding and expressing them, the question will 
 occur, is it necessary or important so to do ? What harm does the subjective 
 haze do, if it surrounds a solid nucleus of appreciative enjoyment ? Is it an 
 occasion for heavy logical artillery, if a young lady professes that the im- 
 pressions she derives from Wagner and George Eliot are precisely similar ? 
 If she can enjoy both, has she not in her the root of the matter ? And 
 truly, whatever the surrounding fog, it is undeniable that a natural capa- 
 bility for enjoying any form of artistic work is something incommensurably 
 more valuable than the mere faculty of perceiving extravagances and 
 absurdities in the way of describing it. But unfortunately the above- 
 quoted profession is hardly a caricature of views which are susceptible 
 of being wrapped round in clever language and worked up into- a very 
 respectable semblance of profundity ; and they act on production and on 
 the opinion which creates the atmosphere for production. So that there 
 comes to be real danger that valuable things and valuable instincts will 
 drop out of sight, and that the mass of those who are capable of deep im- 
 pressions from art, but lack strength and certainty of instinct, will be led 
 away on false scents, and mistake the nature of their faculties. 
 
 The word ' art ' has many uses. The most universal has probably been § 2. Uses of 
 that which distinguishes art from science as being concerned with practical 
 rather than intellectual results, with things done rather than things known ; 
 as when we speak of the art of medicine, and the science of abstract 
 mathematics. With this meaning we have nothing to do. In such terms 
 as ' high art,' however, the meaning is confined for the most part to 
 aesthetic productions ; nor is it always easy to realise how modern is the 
 idea of Art pav excellence, in the sense which restricts it to productions of 
 a certain kind, nor how various within this region are the manifestations 
 which have at different times assumed importance ; and this not only in 
 respect of detail and development, but of the main branches. For instance, 
 among the Greeks (whom we regard as pre-eminently the artistic nation 
 
 the word art. 
 
42 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 §3. Charac- 
 teristics of a 
 work of art. 
 It is made by 
 man out of un- 
 formed mate- 
 rial; 
 
 it is a source of 
 pleasurable 
 emotion, con- 
 sciously aimed 
 at; 
 
 it has perma- 
 nence : 
 
 of antiquity) dancing was fully as much of a high art as Music, and land- 
 scape-painting was unkaown. 
 
 It will be useful first to consider what is now involved in the current 
 conception of a ' work of art.' First we distinguish it from the works 
 of Nature ; it is a work designed and executed by man. And it must in- 
 volve more than mere arra/ngements of beautiful and complete natural 
 objects; for we should not, except in conscious hyperbole, say that a 
 choregraphist or a landscape-gardener has produced a ' work of art ; ' in 
 which some sort of domination of inexpressive and more or less intractable 
 material seems to be implied. Similarly in the non-material region, we 
 should never dream of applying the term ' work of art ' to a eollection or 
 arrangement of ready-made literary productions. 
 
 Next, it is through its beauty, or grandeur, or imp-essiveness of some 
 kinxi, a source of pleasurable emotion to those who contemplate it. But 
 nniany works of utility are this : an express train dashing by, or a vessel 
 under sail, or a contemplation of M. Littre's dictionary, may give rise to 
 STi'ch emotions. So we get another limitation : a ' work of art ' is a work 
 in whose effect (whatever else be included), at any rate pleasure is not only 
 present, but consciously aimed at. Apparent exceptions may be adduced 
 from the arts of Painting and Poetry. Pictures, for instance, have 
 been painted with the distinct object of inspiring horror and dread of 
 death : bmt just as there are people whose imagination is pleasantly 
 stimulated by hearing of the terrible future consequences of their 
 sins, so it is quite possible for horrible objects to produce pleasure, of 
 however debased and distorted a kind ; and these pictures would not have 
 been painted had they not been calculated to fascinate some gazers. 
 Again, the satires of Juvenal and of Hogarth might be quoted, and here 
 certainly the great aim was moral and not aesthetic. Still, even when the 
 humour is too grim for laughter, a certain glow from the perception of 
 the evil and the wish to trample on it mihgles with sympathy for the 
 similar perception and wish in the satirist — indignation itself, where 
 undamped by helplessness or hopelessness^ having a certain infusion of 
 pleasure : and this effect seems- to gain pungency from the very irony of 
 the employment of artistic forms. 
 
 Again, we attach to a work of art the idea of permanence. An actor or 
 dancer may delight us with performances in the highest degree artistic ; 
 but afterwards nothing remains to us but the impression, and no work has 
 been created which will endure unchangeably, and whose effects are 
 reproducible at will. It is hard to guard against all possible objections. 
 It may be-argued, for example, that an improvisation by a poet or a musi- 
 cian leaves no permanent work. But this failure is only accidental : the 
 work might easily be written down at the time, or remembered and 
 written down afterwards, and would then remain, quite independently 
 
THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 43 
 
 of the personality of its creator ; while a part like that of Eip van Winkle, 
 as complete a creation of the actor as any creation of any artist, must 
 necessarily cease to exist as an actual presentation with the cessation of 
 the actor's activity. 
 
 So far, then, we have got as our definition a ' permanent work designed 
 and executed by a man (or men) with a view to pleasure as at any rate 
 one of his (or their) aims.' 
 
 Now things produced with a view to pleasurable emotion are non- it is not part of 
 necessary. It will be remembered that, in speaking of the simplest of Ufe^ '"^'^ 
 pleasures of sense, we noticed the view that the enjoyable activity of the 
 higher senses had in it something of the nature of play, as compared with 
 that of the lower senses^ which had a special connection with life-serving 
 functions. Though we hardly saw how this was in itself so clearly a 
 suJ0&cient ground for the superiority asserted, the fact itself was undisputed s 
 and in the further stage at which we have arrived the non-necessary or 
 jplay element is more striking still. For we are not now, as then, com- 
 paring two sorts of admitted pleasures : we are seeking to characterise- 
 those productions which do, as contrasted with those which do not, yield! 
 conspicuous pleasure in connection with the employment of our higher 
 senses and our mental faculties. And we find by experience that suchi 
 productions are remote from the necessary and mechanical part of life,, 
 and from all that is broadly comprehended under the head of utility ; that 
 a good grammar is less delightful than a good novel, and an engineering 
 model than a statue. It may probably be a fact that our power to appre- 
 ciate the region of higher pleasures depends to a considerable extent on 
 the recognition of a region of work outsidte them, and on a certain sense 
 of contrast : but the question what the pleasure-giving productions 
 actually are is not thereby affected ; and the answer is they are means, 
 not of acting on our environment and adapting it to our needs, but of 
 obtaining new kinds and possibilities of consciousness and idieal activitiesi 
 
 And this direct effect in increasing the range of our inner activity it has vitality, 
 gives an impression of vitality in the thing which produces it. The irre- organism. 
 levance of the work to external and mechanical uses and appliances, the 
 sense that its great function is just to occupy our imagination, that an 
 additional element of emotional life has existed previously in the author 
 and has now become part of ourselves, react on our view of the work 
 itself. It seems like a living organism, not like a mechanical structure : 
 we attribute to it vitality, through its effect in stimulating our own. 
 This character is most closely connected with absence of utility, in the 
 narrower sense. For where utility has been the object, the motive power 
 in the author's mind has been directed to affecting our minds or bodies 
 in some way quite external to his own inner life, as when he has written 
 a book for our instruction, or invented a piece of mechanism for our con- 
 
44 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 § 4. Defini- 
 tion of an or- 
 ganism, 
 
 in Nature, 
 
 venience ; in the using of which things, however much we profit by them, 
 our experience bears no resemblance and gives no clue to his state of 
 feeling during the making of them. In the ease of the work of art, the 
 motive power in the author's mind acts by directly affecting and infecting 
 our own ; we do not just benefit by what he knew or did ; we feel what 
 he felt, that is, up to the measure of our appreciation we hve what he 
 lived. 
 
 In treating of the vital character of a work of art, I just now 
 spoke of it as constituting an organism. This statement needs some 
 further elucidation : and apart from its interest here, it is of great im- 
 portance to our subsequent enquiry that the central idea of the word 
 organi,sm, and its various appUcations in connection with art, should be 
 fully understood. A short examination of its meaning at this stage, 
 besides adding completeness to our conception of a work of art as already 
 defined, wiU lead up in the most intelligible manner to the next differen- 
 tiating element in the definition, the element of form. 
 
 First, then, let us enquire how we distinguish an organism in nature. 
 To begin with, it is something of which the parts present sufficiently 
 distinct and permanent relations for the sum of them to be thereby 
 recognised as an individual object or product. This provision excludes 
 such a natural object as a mountain, which is not recognised as an indi- 
 vidual thing by any essential relation between its parts, but merely by its 
 size : but it would include crystals, the parts of which are arranged in 
 definite manners with regard to the axis or axes, and each example of 
 which is known and named in virtue of this structural symmetry. To 
 proceed then, an organism is something which changes and developes 
 without losing identity ; which we regard as the same individual, in spite of 
 the addition to it of new material. But this, again, wouH include crystals, 
 which grow by the accretion of new matter, adjusted conformably to their 
 respective characteristics. Something, then, whose principle of being 
 lies in itself ; which, by the exercise of functions, can react on external 
 conditions without disintegration or loss of identity; and further — since 
 functions imply some differentiation of parts — something the relation of 
 whose parts is not one of mere local accretion or symmetry, but of mutual 
 interdependence. One further distinction may be made. The living 
 organism is something which, after a definite season of growth, ceases to 
 grow ; the cessation being due not to lack of fresh material, for this may 
 be daily supplied, but to the internal necessities of the system. Growth 
 and completion are governed, so to speak, from inside, inasmuch as nothing 
 can enter permanently into the structure which has not been acted on by 
 the inner digestive and assimilative processes; the material has to be 
 transformed, before it can be adjusted and locally arranged. It follows, 
 then, that an organism is something which reaches what is recognised as 
 
THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 45 
 
 its complete and perfect development. This entails in it an individuality 
 of a special kind, as regarded from outside. The correlation of its parts, 
 however complicated, is contained within a compass which is not only 
 easily grasped, but is familiar to our apprehension as part of the idea of 
 the object : whereas different specimens of the same sort of crystal owe 
 such individuality as they possess to the mere accidents of breakage, and 
 there is no stage in their magnitude which can be said to be more com- 
 plete and perfect, or more essential to our idea of the object, than 
 another. 
 
 Let us now see if we can profitably apply these distinctions to the and in human 
 products of the human mind. Among these we shall find, as among 
 natural prodiicts, plenty which we can isolate as distinct objects, but 
 which have no character of individual life. In many products of man's 
 labour and ingenuity, there is such a relationship and adjustment of parts 
 as results in a definite whole, recognised as a unity either in aspect or in 
 purpose ; and these individual products or objects we at once distinguish 
 from any purposeless and incoherent agglomeration of things which cannot 
 be co-ordinated under one idea. But however complicated be the structure 
 of these products, we should hardly think of calling them organisms merely 
 on the ground of that complexity, unless indeed our imagination was so 
 excited by the wonderfulness of the work as to justify a rhetorical exagge- 
 ration. We may say of Cicero's prose or of Mr. Tennyson's later blank 
 verse that it is written in a highly organised style, meaning that the 
 sentences are often complicated structures, in which many parts and 
 clauses are duly subordinated and interwoven : but we connote some 
 quality over and above this structural complexity ; we should not use the 
 term of even complicated sentences which expounded the state of the 
 share-market. Or, to take another example, a scientific treatise frequently 
 presents a most complex arrangement and interdependence of parts : how, 
 then, is this less organic than the arrangement of material in a work of 
 the imagination ? The answer is involved iii the special differentia of the 
 imaginative work, that its life and growth is from within ; that it does 
 not appear as an external result, bearing to its author's activities the re- 
 lation merely of a manufactured article to a machine ; but as an actual 
 picture of the activities themselves, of the author's living ideas and 
 emotions, whose only result is to be reborn as part of others' lives. A 
 scientific or mechanical work may, of course, have been laboured at 
 under the influence of ideas and emotions of a lofty and even of a poetical 
 kind ; but the result is a work of which, however much the excellence 
 may be due to such ideas and emotions, the object and nature are ex- 
 ternal to them : the author of a mathematical demonstration may be all 
 on fire for Truth, and worship her as a goddess, but the direct aim of his 
 work is to prove his theorem. In the imaginative work the ideas and 
 
46 THE ELEMENTS. OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 emotions are embodied as such, to be again and again reawakened as 
 
 such. 
 
 Application of And the application of this to the question of construction is obvious, 
 
 this to con- , ^^ ^ • • - 1 -i 1. j.i_ 
 
 struction. Ihe arrangement m a scientific treatise is imposed, as it were, by the 
 
 subject-matter ; it is at the mercy of unalterable and perhaps intractable 
 facts : while the dealings of the artistic worker with his subject-matter, 
 whether in invention, selection, or treatment, are determined by his 
 particular imaginative nature, and the whole fabric of his work is 
 suffused with elements which have made a portion of his inner life. The 
 development of the complete work of science or utility finds a true analogy 
 in the growth of the crystal. All the material that is to appear is in actual 
 existence, in the shape of facts and things already known or in process of 
 being disentangled and becoming known ; and the skilled arrangement of 
 it may be compared to the striking and symmetrical form under which 
 the material of the crystal is solidified and agglomerated. In both cases 
 the supplies of the material, whether large or small, are data, independent 
 of any individual activity or any modifying vital principle, and adjusted, 
 but not conditioned or penetrated, by the forces at work. An imaginative 
 product may also rest, it is true, and in many cases must rest, on a basis 
 of facts : but these are assimilated in the mind of the author under the 
 distinct influence of emotion, and the vital principle which governs their 
 selection and co-ordination is of a wholly individual kind. 
 
 The same comparison holds in respect of the individual and self- 
 conditioned completeness of the imaginative work. Any other sort of 
 production depends, as in structural arrangement, so in growth and 
 arrival at the final completion, on merciless physical and logical necessi- 
 ties. The size and scope of the whole are a result of these necessities, not 
 of vital processes in the author's mind : its material and conditions are 
 given it, and its completeness just means that it comprises and embraces 
 them, as a crystal will comprise all of its material that is there for it. In 
 imaginative production, the rounding into completeness, the conception of 
 the work as a whole, and the pervading influence of this conception in the 
 development of the subject-matter, are as much matters of internal and 
 individual activity as any of the separate ideal or emotional elements. A 
 true organic unity, not conceived as just comprising the parts or con- 
 ditioned by them, but as the natural form in which their vital qualities 
 find fullest realisation, is that towards which the whole process of develop- 
 ment tends : and the artistic faculty must find the secret of such unity 
 in itself. Slightness and fulness of detail are alike compatible with this 
 perfect and independent completeness. The one condition which we attach 
 to the scope of the imaginative work is one which, as it happens, we find 
 to hold in the organisms of Nature, in spite of her very common in- 
 difference to our comprehension and pleasure ; namely, that it shall not 
 
THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 47 
 
 be too vast, nor the relations of its parts too complicated, for the sense 
 and the mind to apprehend. 
 
 We may carry the analogy drawn from Nature one step further. § 5. Furtiier 
 Natural organisms seem practically infinite both in number and twe«fnaturai 
 variety. Scientific reasoning teaches us, indeed, that the variations are P^'S*'?'''™ and 
 intimately connected with environment, but the environment acts onlv by ^°'^'"' '" "'^ 
 
 •/ •/ filsniQnt of the 
 
 its suitability or unsuitability to modifications of structure which the unforeseen, 
 accepted doctrine of evolution does not profess to explain, modifications ' 
 which have and must have to us the appearance of accident. Given a 
 certain deviation from the parent type, natural selection steps in and pre- 
 serves it ; but what account can we give of the primary deviation ? We 
 do not even hope ever to reach such a stage of comprehension as will 
 eliminate this appearance of accident : our biological knowledge will 
 always include events the necessary relation of which to their antecedents 
 and conditions, however much we may believe in it, lies quite beyond our 
 faculties of discernment, and which themselves therefore lie quite beyond 
 our powers of prediction. Now with respect to those other natural 
 objects whose structure is a mere matter of symmetrical arrangement, 
 unconnected with function, as crystals, it is true that we equally little 
 know, or expect to know, anything about ultimate necessities ; the cause 
 of their taking their respective forms is as much beyond our ken as any 
 point in the history of organisms. But in their case the conditions, 
 whatever they are, seem fixed once and for all, and the possible varieties 
 of form are knowable. It is not only that the crystal which we find in the 
 earth's crust to-day has dwelt there unchanged for long ages, during 
 which organic Nature has been slowly modified : we do not need to 
 consider long ages, or to go beyond our own individual experience, to 
 appreciate the contrast. Thus we may observe the formation of crystals of 
 many substances in actual process, and we can prophesy with certainty 
 beforehand the exact shape they will assume ; whereas in the case of a 
 newly formed organism, all that we can prophesy with certainty is that, 
 in the midst of a general resemblance to its parents, it will present 
 differences which we oa/nnot prophesy. 
 
 It needs little straining of metaphor to connect these considerations 
 with the sphere of human productions. Imaginative work is continually 
 taking new and unforeseen directions, and producing new and unforeseen 
 combinations of material. Environment has of course an immense influ- 
 ence on the development of the author's faculties, and often on the nature 
 of his subject-matter ; but within a certain region which is conditioned 
 and marked out in this way, the play of originality has the air of being 
 unconditioned and having unfettered scope. The feats of invention and 
 expression seem like glorious accidents of individual imagination ; and the 
 modes of affecting us which a new genius reveals are often facts of which 
 
4:8 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 the possibility was undreamed of till the reality was there. Thus his 
 work presents to us a newness of kind which no previous experiences 
 could lead us to foresee ; it is in the most literal sense a creation. In 
 works of knowledge and utility, on the other hand, that stamp of indivi- 
 duality and fresh creation, which makes of the imaginative world a 
 perpetually new surprise, is necessarily absent. Not but that genius may 
 be at work here also, introducing its essentially indeterminate element ; 
 and surprises of a sort may abound, as each year brings to our store fresh 
 facts about the universe and fresh means of utilising them. But through 
 all we have a sense that the facts, however novel to us, were there, to be 
 discovered or not as the case might be. And this applies to the facts 
 which still remain for us to know ; others perhaps do already know them ; 
 many may give a guess at them which some new invention may give the 
 means of verifying ; at any rate they are already in existence : whereas 
 our future emotional experiences, and those of the perhaps unborn 
 author whose work will produce them, are simply variations in conscious- 
 ness which have not yet taken place, and are as little knowable and 
 predictable as the primary unselected variation in an organic type. 
 Moreover, in the case of unimaginative work, the objective conditions of 
 environment do not just mark out limits within which originality may 
 work, but themselves make up the whole gist and burden of the work to 
 be done; they are the very things which have to be found out and 
 explained, or it may be contended against or utilised. And much as 
 newly found substances are found to crystallise according to the old 
 recognised geometrical methods, so newly ascertained facts and laws take 
 their place along with the old in one consistent and impersonal body of 
 truth. Once there, they are out of the range of surprises, and science 
 can do no more with them than classify them and generalise from them ; 
 they themselves remain as persistent and unmodifiable as the recognised 
 crystalline types, and the ultimate generalisations which they yield are 
 perhaps almost as few. 
 1 6. The In this discussion of the organic quality of imaginative work, we have 
 
 work of art been doing no more than bring out what is involved in the idea of 
 prS^Tte'form, production with a view to delightful emotion ; and we have dwelt chiefly 
 either visual or gn the vital and essential spirit, not on the outward aspect of related and 
 
 audjtory, to a '■ ^ v^v.. i^i^-j. 
 
 aense. combmed parts. We must now proceed a step. Our definition, so far as we 
 
 have brought it, is of a very wide kind ; it will include, for instance, prose 
 works of fiction and oratory, among which we may undoubtedly find some of 
 the noblest and most artistic of human productions. If, however, we at 
 all try to follow the track of ordinary thought and language, we shall 
 have to narrow these limits, and mark off certain sorts of work as belonging 
 to the artistic domain in a more special and definite sense. For though 
 we may speak of the art of novel-writing, this is certainly not popularly 
 
THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 49 
 
 included among ' the arts ; ' no one, if asked which was his ' favourite art,' 
 would consider prose-fiction as on the list to be selected from. And the 
 differentiating characteristic, which marks off works of art in the stricter 
 use of the term, is that they appeal to a sense ; that they possess elements 
 whose combinations present objects to a sense. This they can only do by 
 dint of /orm, which, as we have seen, implies the special powers of co-ordi- 
 nating impressions, possessed by us in connection with two only of the 
 bodily senses ; so that the form required must be one which makes a direct 
 appeal to the eye or to the ear. The direct appeal is of course very dif- 
 ferent from a mere calling into activity ; for these two senses are, as we have 
 seen, channels for numberless things which make no appeal to them. Thus 
 a person reading a proposition of Euclid uses one of them, that of sight, 
 or having it read to him uses the other, that of hearing, and they are to 
 him the necessary doors through which he obtains his comprehension of the 
 proposition ; but the proposition is addressed not to them in the least,, 
 but purely to his intelligence. 
 
 Generally, then, we may say that works of art, in the stricter use, are 
 both imaginative works and objects of sense ; and as we formerly distin- 
 guished them from all other works, sensible or non-sensible, by their 
 vital emotional quality, so now' we distinguish them from all other 
 emotional works by their sense-quality. The notion of /orm supplements 
 the notion of organism in our definition ; or rather, as orga/nism com- 
 prised the ideas both of individual vitality and of combiaation of various 
 parts into a whole, form conveniently marks the essential feature of such 
 combination as falls under the cognisance, and affects us through the 
 medium, of a sense. 
 
 The necessity for both these elements, the emotional quality and the The above oon- 
 sense-quaUty, gives great distinctness to our definition, as it makes it ygj,y easj' of 
 easy to exclude in a moment the productions where one element is pre- application- 
 sent but the other absent. The main conceptions which have occupied us in 
 the preceding paragraphs are very readily applicable. For instance, a 
 monument, if its form presented to the eye a distinct and permanent 
 unity with some sort of pleasing symmetry, might be accounted a work 
 of architectural art, though it might be of the rudest and most embryonic 
 kind. But it is possible that a mere heap of stones might present an 
 equally symmetrical form, and might even give an equally striking impres- 
 sion of size and strength. In what then does the superior character of 
 the monument consist ? Its actual structure may hardly amount to more 
 than a conglomeration of undifferentiated material. But it carries an 
 idea ; its purpose lives in it ; it aims at awakening in others a certain 
 strain of feeling similar to that which existed in its authors. The mere 
 heap of stones, if put there for a purpose, is wholly external to that pur- 
 pose, the purpose being to build a house or mend a road,, while the heaping 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF AST. 
 
 § 7. Form as 
 perceived by 
 the ear. 
 
 In Music, 
 
 and in Poetry. 
 
 is a matter of convenience carrying no idea ; and this is jnst the sort of 
 externality which we identified with non-organic and non-artistic things. 
 Similarly, designs for mechanical and utilitarian purposes, or intended to 
 serve as types and symbols, though they may chance to present graceful 
 forms to the eye, will be excluded from the region of art. Photographs, 
 again, are a good instance of productions which cannot as a class be abso- 
 lutely excluded or absolutely included. One specimen may have been taken 
 wholly mechanically, with no sort of idea or emotion in the worker's 
 mind, and with a result therefore to which, though we might be able to 
 caU it a pleasing likeness, we should refuse the description of work of art ; 
 while another speciinen may have been produced with loving and discrimi- 
 native care in the arrangement of parts, over and above manipulative skill, 
 and to this we should not be inclined to grudge the higher designation. 
 It would be easy to multiply instances of branches of production where 
 art and no art stand side by side ; and also where they merge into one 
 another in the same production, through the operation of the true artistic 
 spirit in Work whose more obvious raison d'etre was utility. 
 
 The meaning of form is perfectly obvious in the arts whose channel is 
 the eye, as it is palpably involved in their very essence. The eye is 
 always seeing productions the form or forms of which it takes in ; and 
 among them, any which satisfies the other conditions of our definition, 
 which is a permanent work designed and executed by a man (or men) with 
 a view to inspiring pleasurable emotion, as at all events one of his (or 
 their) aims, is a work of art. That is to say, as the character of visual 
 form marks off the produetious of what are called * the fine arts ' from the 
 whole region of im.aginative work, so the character of imaginative work 
 marks off the same productions from the whole region of visual forms. 
 But in the case of the ear, form is not a matter of habitual experience, 
 but (as we have seen) is confined to the region of art, and many find the 
 notion of it here less easy to catch. 
 
 As regards one, indeed, of the arts addressed to the ear. Music, the 
 arrangement and combinations of sounds is too prominent and essential a 
 feature for the general idea of form and order to present much difficulty. 
 But in the case of the other art, where the sense-element is of the 
 auditory kind, Poetry, the place and scope of the form-element may seem 
 leas evident ; and it is important at this early stage to notice an ambiguity 
 in the word, or rather in the words order and proportion which are fre- 
 quently identified with it, and to forestall sundry objections. Among 
 what in the broader sense of art may be called arts of language, including 
 fiction, oratory, &c., we shall, by applying the criterion of the sense- 
 quality, mark off one as belonging to the narrow special category of 
 arts. Poetry possesses in metre, or in something analogous to metre, 
 an element of form or order which appeals with direct gratification to the 
 
fEE MeMMTS 0^ A WOM OP ARf. 51 
 
 ear. But it majr be objected that inette iB cofupai'atively a small thing; Possible objeo- 
 that the insistance on the pfeseiiee of a sense-eletQent is here ptedaiitic, 
 atld ■will exclude iiiuch of the loftiest poetic&,l writing ; that ofdef inay 
 indeed be an felement in art, but that it consists iii broad pfopctttioil and 
 harmony of parts or topics, ifl the ^M(igvtiMtiA)e structure ■which has to do 
 vdth ideas and images, and so on, and not in a matter so technical as metre. 
 Now Wai-ving for the present the question as to the value of metf e, ahd fully 
 admitting the extreme importance of the characteristics just addllfefed, I 
 must Still maintain that, given poeticEll subject-mattei* and sentitoent, 
 metre (of some equivalent for it) iS the felement of of der which makes poetry 
 poetry 5 that is, which makes one special art of Wofds an art in the strict 
 use of the term, Howevfe* essential be hafmony and proportion in the 
 enMeimble of a good composition, (and it is essential to a good sermon, and 
 to a good scientific treatise^ and to many things qUitg Outside the arts,) it 
 is in •virtue of sensible form, pervading the ■wholfe texture and substance, 
 that a composition is a ' wOrk Of aft ' in tke Ofdifiafy sense. It iS of 
 course perfectly legitimate to bfand, as UnWofthy of the name of aft, a 
 metrical or a pidtofial composition which is mean in BUbject of indohefent 
 in arrangement ; an e^^clUSiOn of this kind WOuld signify the absence of 
 those vital qualities on which so much stf ess has been already laid ; but 
 this in no way nullifies the advantage and convenience di getting a working 
 definition out of ordinary thought and language^ wTlich ceftaiidy bfing 
 v&rae of all kinds undef the technieal head of Poetry. Again, it may bfe 
 objected that -without any arrangement, eithef of Words in metre Of of parts 
 in a harmonious and organic ensemble, the conceptions which Wte- call dis- 
 tinctively poetieals,afe such-, independently of any work of aft into wMeh they 
 may eventually be Wofked Up. But they may feiiSt in the aftiSt's mind, 
 or be -vefbally Communicated by him to kindred spirits, without being 
 eonsidef ed to come undef the head of aft ; it is only through theit lUVestituf e 
 ■with fofm that their pSMtion as Works of art (or parts of Such) is 
 assured,' One more objection may be made ; the fhythm of fine pfose, 
 it may be said, gratifies the eaf ; how then c&,n ouf distifloiion be made 
 good ? But if we f ©ally isolate the effects of the rhythm, of the ffftm^O.e- 
 ment, in proSe, its appeal to the sense is extfemely faint | apaft from sweetf- 
 ness and feaonance of Voic& (that is, of tke oohW^elemeiA) and grade of 
 deliveryj the amount of Ratification to be gained from listening to pr oSe in 
 an unknown tongue can hardly be considered WOi?th reckoning. The proper 
 gratification of fhythm fealty depends on a feeling of continuous eSped- 
 tation continuously satisfied ; and the definiteness necesBary for this can 
 
 • The imposition of tie ioim on flie idea execution, the two will often well up to^tlito 
 aeed not be a Stibgequeut act ; in the case of in the inventor's mind, in a union iiiatantly 
 Poetry, which is independent of manual expressible. 
 
 E i 
 
52 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 only be sought in metre, or in some such substitute for it as alliteration 
 or the antithetical clauses of Hebrew poetry. 
 §8. Relation The words just put into the objectors mouth about the broad general 
 
 whiles in Order and arrangement of parts in poetical work, introduces a topic of much 
 
 works of art ; ^j^gj. application to the question of artistic organisms than appears in that 
 special case. We shall encounter in the course of our enquiry two quite 
 distinct sorts of combination of parts, two quite distinct relations of parts 
 or elements to wholes. 
 
 first use; If we use whole in its widest sense, signifying the entire work under 
 
 contemplation, the parts mean naturallj^ the main elements of which we 
 perceive it to be made up, as the topics or principal divisions of subject- 
 matter in a poetical work, the principal objects in a picture, the principal 
 motives or sections in a musical movement, and so on. We shall find 
 great differences in the importance of the relation of parts to whole in this 
 sense ; taking the word organism to express the mutual adaptations of the 
 parts in subordination to the total result, we shall find that some sorts 
 of work present a closer and others a looser organism, or (if we prefer the 
 phrase) that the structure is in some cases more, in others less, organic' 
 
 second use. In the second use, the parts, as they are in relation to the entire 
 
 work, are wholes in relation to their own constituent elements ; their com- 
 pleteness and individual character constituting them organisms on their 
 own account. The constituent elements here are not formed sections or 
 objects of any sort, but just crude unformed fragments, having no force 
 or purport apart from their due combination. Such a whole may be a single 
 stanza in a poem, made up of words ; a single figure in a picture, made up 
 of features, limbs, &c. ; a single melody in a musical movement, made up of 
 what in isolation are insignificant and unemotional sounds. Though second- 
 ary in a logical sense, in respect of their relation to a larger work, these 
 smaller unities may 'be primary as regards actual importance ; and that they 
 ; should possess complete and individual beauty is of course desirable in pro- 
 portion as they are less essentially interdependent, and as their combination 
 in a particular manner is less all-essential to the effect of the work. How 
 entirely they may give the sense of complete and independent beauty is 
 easily seen in the fact that in many cases, especially in the arts of Painting 
 and Music, they are successfully isolated and presented in detachment ; 
 photographs and engravings of a particular figure, special parts of long 
 •musical pieces, being frequently enjoyed not as quotations (so to speak) 
 from a larger work wherein their surroundings have been known, but en- 
 
 • In considering atructure, it should be ob- organism depends on its further connotation, 
 
 ^served that while the arrangement of various and rests tacitly in every case on the vital 
 
 elements into a complex unity is the part of and imaginative quality which has been dis- 
 
 the notion of organism which is naturally cussed above, 
 most prominent, our right to use the word 
 
THE ELEMENTS OP A WORK OF ART. 53. 
 
 tirely on their own merits. This of course implies that an entire work 
 may consist of one, and not more than one, of these forms or organisms ; 
 as, for example, a sonnet, or an ordinary portrait, or a national melody. 
 
 In all the arts except Poetry, the large arrangement of the parts and Exceptional 
 motives into a complete work, as well as the separate parts and motives where only the 
 themselves, falls under the cognisance of the sense addressed; our eyes nations can ' 
 endeavour to grasp even the largest pictorial composition as a whole : the ^r^^niji^to^^^ 
 last bars of a musical movement may have direct organic relation to the first, tiie sense ad- 
 In Poetry, on the other hand, it is the smaller combinations only that are- 
 perceived, in virtue of their seiise-element, as distinct organic unities. For 
 metre is not a thing which can embrace a whole long work in a svnyle com- 
 plex structure ; metrically, such a work is necessarily divided up into small 
 similar parts, either stanzas of some sort or merely lines of definite forma- 
 tion. So that while the work, as a whole, is an vmagi/native structure, 
 an arrangement and development of certain subject-matter, of certain 
 things to be presented — as for instance, in the organism of an epic, or the 
 organism of a five-act drama — the scope of the small constituent parts, on 
 the other hand, is naturally determined by ofnetrical structure ; and the 
 poet's skill is shown in so arranging his matter under the metrical form 
 that this shall seem its noblest and most appropriate investiture. 
 
 I have several times- had occasion to use two words which represent §9. Mate- 
 necessary, though not distinguishing, elements of works of art, and- ' 
 which cannot but continually occur in the discussion of such wbrks. 
 One of them is inaterial. There will be much to say of this hereafter; 
 meanwhile the primary meaning of the word is sufficiently clear, as denot- 
 ing the simple elements, whether material substances or physical units, 
 which the artist employs and from which he builds up his work. The 
 other word is subject-TrHtiMer.- The very fact of the unity of a work of art ^"'i subject- 
 might be taken to imply some underlying bond, some title which would 
 sum up and express its purport, and give the answer to such natural 
 questions as ' What is it all about ? ' or ' To what does it tend ? ' We might- 
 seek this unifying principle in some central conception or pujrpose, to the 
 carrying out of which the several parts were made to contribute, and 
 which we should call the subject par excellence ; but as a matter of fact 
 we often find that there is no such very comprehensible central conception 
 to be found, even in the arts where it is most natural to look for it; that 
 the bond is of a much looser kind, and that the scope depends greatly on. 
 the amount which it is agreeable and easy for the serose to grasp at a time 
 and to retain. In pictures, for instance, the only conceivable title would 
 often be the collective name, or even a mere enumeration of the objects 
 represented, as ' A group of three young women,' or ' A boy and girl in a 
 boat.' That it is sensory rather than ideal considerations which in such 
 cases impose the limits of a satisfactory unity, whether as to size or com- 
 
54 THM EMMmfS OJ^ A WORK OF ART. 
 
 plesity-, seems clesur if we consider what happens when we get beyond the 
 lusftits which the sen§e oan easily grasp. Thus, we inay contemplate a 
 pictwfe which covers a whole wall, which the eye has to take in and return 
 on bit by bit, and which we have even to wait about to realise ; yet we 
 fed nothing to complain of if only there be a central subject, if only the 
 ■whole scene haY© a meaning for us : while a group of three hundred or 
 eyen ^f thirty youn^ women, sitting looking at each other or holding- 
 musical inSitrumentSj, would be criticised as meaningless and absurd, though 
 it woTiiM be; hard to praye why in themselves they had not as much raiscyn- 
 (i'Mre ^s the foriner three. In landscape-painting, again, the unity is ofteni 
 pictorial ; it is addressed to the eye and recognised as satisfactory or fine. 
 coiftposition, but does not represent any central or combining ponceptioa 
 discoverable in. the aotnal things depicted. This is not. the place to, coa-- 
 sider whether a fine imaginative subject be, less necessary to the highest 
 pictooji^l art than fine composition ^ I am only pointing out that even in 
 painting-, beautiful and imaginative work may exist without it : and in 
 oeytain other branches of art we shall find that the very notion of such an 
 all-comprising subject is inadj|iissible. Every art, however, necessarily 
 d.eals; with a certain class of things, one or more of which will be embracedj 
 in each work ; and th^se parts or units must be in themselves, sufficiently 
 oomprehensible anqt interesting to ^riiest the attention. It is, difficult to 
 find, a single name fqr them: which will apply equally well to, all the arts : 
 l^iit s%bjeot-mct,Uer fairly answers the pnrpose. 
 §io.Taijuiai It will uow be advantageous to arrange in a tabular shape the five main 
 arts, in respect braggheg, <>£ art of which the work^s seem to be feiily emferaoed by our 
 elements™*™ 4*'feiti®iii Under the three heads of subject-matter, material, and formi, 
 jgientiomng in what each element consists. In m,os:t oases the. forms pre-r 
 ^nted to the sense naturally either convey or constitute the subject- 
 ijaE|,tter of the work j the, case of Poetiy being, as we have already seen, the 
 njarfe^ e;sc©ption. Many terms and remarks which are eonyeniently 
 inojuded in the table will be. explained and justified afterwards. 
 
 (Note to jp. 55.) 
 
 ■^ I have said that the subject-matter of tioual susceptibility. Ther«,is, moreGweTj that 
 
 J^oet]^ e^sts externaUj; to an^ ipdepend- -vrhiole class of luminous, cono.eptions,. wljiehi, 
 
 e:titly of rpm-ks of a/rt ; this must not be con- having already aiCted on subjectrmattei; 
 
 strued into meaning that it could in all drawn from the universe, may then be 
 
 cases exist externally to some wnaginatwj& worked up under artistic foims;. thus feeing- 
 
 fmntWy. S^icb a limitation -would be very made themselves^^ in a secondary sense,, s^b- 
 
 inqonvenient. We cannot but regard ap fit ject-matter for -works of art. So we, may 
 
 ' subject-matter for Poetry ' those many in- often distinguish two grades of subject- 
 
 -raaid experiences which admit in Poetry of matter : first, the crude subject-matter of 
 
 direct excaression with a but slightly reprsr f apts and things — for instance, th© phenor 
 
 sented framework of external circumstances mena of sleep and death ; secondly, this.crude, 
 
 and objects, and which could of course have subject-matter as penetrated and selected 
 
 no, existence independently of minds of emo- and correlated' by the imaginativje faculty, 
 
TEE MLEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 55 
 
 QQ 
 
 « 
 
 CM 
 
 O 
 H 
 
 « 
 
 o 
 
 M 
 
 H 
 
 !zi 
 H 
 aa 
 
 Pi 
 
 Eh 
 
 r POBTKY . 
 
 SCCLPTUBE 
 
 Painting 
 
 r ASCHITBimjlSE' 
 
 . Music , 
 
 jS(»J;eB*-OT<ij#»»'.i-ObJecti've and subjective phenomena of 
 many kinds ; arranged in groups, usually in subordina- 
 tion to some central conception or subject. This sub- 
 ject-matter exists externally to and independently of 
 works otart.' 
 
 Materiah-^'Wwdis; ddifering in various countries, and 
 changing slightly in every generation, 
 
 Wm-m,. — Metre, or soaiethimg amalogonsi to> it ;, in any case 
 
 abstiaict relations of sound. 
 ' Sitbject-'matter. — ^Visible objects belonging to the orgamic 
 world ; but especially the one clasSiof human forms j 
 represented- singly, or in groups usually with a central 
 subject.. (^Sctilpture of animal and vegetable forms he- 
 conies' pttilHinent ehiefly in eomieetion; with arohi'- 
 fecture, and in such branches of art as ivory- and 
 nietal-work.) This subject-matter exists externally 
 to and independently of works of a:pt. 
 
 MateHal. — Marble, brbilze, &B. ; constant. 
 
 Form. — fittpiied in the subject-matter. 
 
 SubjfiGf-maMer. — Visible phenomena Of many kinds ; repre- ■ 
 seuted singly or in groups with or without a cential' 
 conception. This subject-matter exists externally to 
 and independently of works of aj*. 
 
 Material. — Surfaces and pigments : theoretically constant, 
 though ffablB to change from invention and losses. 
 
 ^(WTOi^-lmplied in the subject-matter.*' 
 
 ' /S*!i^eet-*<»<te?'.-^'Visible forms and- eiriangements of form 
 of many kinds.' The central conception or purpose is 
 usually in great measure utUitaiian ;, and in many (not 
 all) o^ the subordinate combinations utilitarian pur- 
 poses, existing independently of art,, underlie the art- 
 forms which have no such independent existence. 
 MftteriaL-^Msxhle, stone, wood, &c., of various colour;, 
 eaeh country is in this respect, greatly dependent on 
 its own. products. 
 jRJrw.^^bstract lines and surfaces and their proportional 
 arrangements. 
 
 ect-matter. — ^Auditory forms, i.e; series and combina- 
 tions of sounds, wholly independent both of external 
 phenomena and external utility, arid haVikg no exist- 
 ence independent of art i^t/^cfs are the leading' 
 and recurrent phrases in a coraposition.'"^ 
 Material. — Some system of notes ; for us the notes of the 
 chromatic scale, susceptible of various colour or 
 quality according to the ipstrument by which they 
 are produced. This material had a slow development, 
 but has long been constant, and can hardly but reriiain 
 so, except in so far as the inyention of new instru- 
 ments may add to its colours. 
 „ Form. — Abstract proportions of time and' pitch. 
 
 p. 
 O 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 lie 
 O 
 
 00 
 
 H' 
 
 < 
 
 ' See pp. 54, 66,/<M- note to tliese words. 
 '"' Seep. 56 for notes to these words. 
 
56 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 and brought together under some distinct 
 idea, as when Sleep and Death are conceived 
 of as twins ; finally, when such an idea is ex- 
 pressed under the forms of art it becomes a 
 work of art or a part of one. But the mere 
 existence of an idea, as we saw above, does 
 not entail a work of art or even a fragment 
 of one : it is only through artistic form that 
 it obtains the stamp and seal of permanence. 
 So that though we may, or at aU events often 
 do, say .of a person to whom the world pre- 
 sents itself as a source of imaginative 
 activity, in other words, who is rich in poeti- 
 cal conceptions, that he is a poet, this use of 
 the word must not blind us to the fact that 
 he may have never produced, and very 
 possibly may be unable ever to produce, a 
 single satisfactory poem. 
 
 These distinct poetical conceptions may of 
 course occur to painters and sculptors- as 
 well as tp writers of poetry ; but as they do 
 not express them directly in words, but indi- 
 rectly through visible forms, which are selec- 
 tions and copies (however idealised) from 
 external realities, the description of their 
 subject-matter as existing externally to their 
 works can hardly be misconstrued. 
 
 ^ It would perhaps be more correct to say 
 arts of colow par excellence. For the colour- 
 quality is to some extent present in the .vowel- 
 sounds of Poetry, where, from the fact that the 
 metrical element makes the ear attentive to 
 the sounds over and above the sense, it is far 
 more prominent than it would be in the self- 
 same words unmetrically arranged ; and in 
 itg treatment here, though scope for skill is 
 much limited by tne actually existing words 
 from which choice has to be made, yet 
 general care is necessary, and special effects 
 aoe possible. "Works of Sculpture, again, 
 in the days of the art's greatest glory, 
 were fretjuently coloured, in fashions some- 
 what b^fSing to those whose ideas are de- 
 rived from isolated specimens in modem 
 gallepes. This, however, would hardly con- 
 stitute Sculpture an independent art of 
 colour : such works, however conspicuous 
 and important, were decorative, in the sense 
 of belonging essentially and inseparably to a 
 partijCular building; and the efEect of the 
 (Colour more especially must have been 
 entirely dependent on association with the 
 Borrounding coloured architecture. 
 
 "I The forms of Painting commonly repre- 
 sent things as they appear, by perspective 
 effects and the adjustment of gize to distance. 
 The forms of Sculpture represent things as 
 
 they a/re, in three dimensions, and can thus 
 be looked at from many points of view, so 
 that the greater simplicity of the work is 
 compatible with a multiplicity of effects by a 
 change of the spectator's position. The same 
 feature is prominent in Architecture, and adds 
 indefinitely to the effect of what, as unchange- 
 able abstract form, might be monotonous. 
 
 Painting and Sculpture can of course sug- 
 gest things and thoughts by something very 
 far short of accurate delineation of form. 
 There are, in fact, all degrees between such 
 accurate delineation and either abstract orna- 
 ment, or purely conventional symbolism acting 
 as visible words to enforce a fact or an idea. 
 
 ' For the sake of convenience, the sculp- 
 ture and sculptured or painted details in 
 which the chief glory of buildings may fairly 
 be maintained to Ue, will not be reckoned 
 under the head of architectural forms. 
 
 ' As regards Music, there is one misap- 
 prehension which is at once so common and 
 so fatal, that though it involves a question 
 which will be discussed in full later, a few 
 words of caution at this stage cannot be alto- 
 gether omitted. In cases where Music is 
 joined to something else there is a natural 
 habit of calling the subject of the something 
 else the subject of the compound work. Thus 
 the Messiah is called the subject of Handel's 
 oratorio, and the included topics may be called 
 the sylbjfict-matter of the special songs and cho- 
 ruses. This is intelligible and convenient : 
 only it is important to remark that the senti- 
 ments and topic? connected with the name 
 are strictly and essentially the subject of the 
 mm'ds, and only loosely and accidentally the 
 subject of the mtfsic. For however valuable 
 the union may be, and hoyvever inseparable 
 its factors may now appear to us, we must re- 
 member that if any one ignorant of English 
 heard the Messiah all he would infer would be 
 that the words must be of a generally lofty 
 character, with occasional bits of a more defi- 
 nite character, here pathetic, there jubilant. 
 But the music might of course h^ve been 
 united perfectly well with other words of 
 similar sentiment and rhythm. So the verbal 
 titles which aim at summing up the expres- 
 sion of certain compositions {e.g. in Mendels- 
 sohn's Isles of Fwigal overture, and many of 
 Schumann's pianoforte pieces), however in- 
 teresting, are so adventitious that they have 
 often been suggested by instead of suggesting 
 the music ; and a hundred auditors, if left 
 to guess the title for themselves, would 
 originate a hundred new ones. 
 
THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 57 
 
 There may seem to be a certain pedantry about <^abiilation of this kind ; § ii. Justifi- 
 as to this I can only here say that I hope to convince any reader who will tabie'by au^ 
 accompany me through the following pages of its usefulness for my pur- example of a 
 poses. But among other more specific objections which might be found, iasion -, 
 there is one against which, at the risk of forestalling subsequent topics, it 
 may be well briefly to guard; as it is connected with a very common 
 and mistaken method of approaching the main subject of this book, 
 and exemplifies the necessity for just such distinctions as the table 
 aims at supplying. It may be said, then, that all modes of using colour 
 for the sak;e of beauty should be included under Painting; and that 
 all fashioning of solid material into pleasing forms, whether imitative or not, 
 should be included under Sculpture ; and this may be even said with true 
 advantage, if it is desired to impress on people's minds that, e.g., so called 
 •decorative art is, or should be, art of a high kind, not mere manufacture ; 
 and that it implies faculties and instincts which cannot be dissociated from 
 those employed in the production and appreciation of the two great arts of 
 visual representation. Nevertheless even in respect of the visual arts, the 
 ordinary popular view, which wholly dififerentiates Painting and Sculpture 
 as representative arts, is in strict accordance both with the most valuable 
 factor in the impressiveness of beautiful specimens of these arts, and with 
 the formation and general nature of the faculties by which the apprecia- 
 tion of them takes place. Mr. Ruskin has said that ' Sculpture is essen- 
 tially the production of pleasant bossiness or roundness of surface ; ' that is, 
 of abstract and wwrepresentative form. Now rounded surface is clearly a. 
 necessary element in Sculpture : but to emphasise an abstract general 
 quality to this extent seems only to confuse the subject. Mr. Euskin's 
 own example will suffice to show this. He refers to two engravings of Grreek 
 coins, representing human profiles, but regarded as abstract conglomera- 
 tions of rounded masses made pleasant by gradation of light ; which masses, 
 he says, must be ' disposed with due discretion and order.' But in that little 
 word due lies the whole gist of the matter. The question is how much would 
 the discretion and order amount to on their own account, if presented, for 
 instance, to a person of cultivated seijsibilities, who had never seen a face ? 
 What is the order, apart from the combination into a face ? Mr. Euskin 
 refers to the bossy masses of a distant forest as similarly delightful in sur- 
 face, and to the spiral projections of a fir-cone as similarly delightful in 
 order : but these references suggest the exact point of difficulty.. A 
 pleasantness of gradated surface in all three cases may be readily granted; 
 but the forest-bosses have no order ; the cone-bosses have a most definite 
 geometrical order; what authority have we for saying that the profile- 
 bosses, regarded as abstract unrecognised phenomena, have an extremely 
 complex order, the same in kind but superior in degree to that of the 
 cone-bosses, rather than that they have mere relative sizes and proximities 
 
58 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 of an accidental and unordered kind, like those of the forest-bosses ? and 
 chance arrangements of bosses could hardly, as such, be matter for art. No 
 one could have authority to pronounce positively on the abstract order of 
 the profile-bosses, except a person to whom a profile was an absolutely un- 
 familiar object ; for familiarity makes its own order. The fact is (as will 
 be fuUy argued later on) that both the mode and the history of our ap- 
 preciation of faces are in the main totally distinct from the mode and^ 
 the history of our appreciation of bosses ; and if such terms as ' due discre- 
 tion and order ' above are not precisely and jealously scrutinised, there is 
 danger (not to Mr. Euskin, but to his readers) of confounding the scope 
 which the two elements respectively afford to the exercise of genius, and 
 the place they respectively hold in the value of Sculpture. 
 
 It is clear that for us, living iiot in a world of patterns or of mere gra- 
 dations of light and shade, but among definitely known visible objects, the 
 limits within which forms, and parts of forms, of objects can be regarded, 
 appreciated, and criticised in true abstraction from what they belong 
 to, must be very narrow : and to regard an art which deals with forms of 
 known and recognised objects, as comprising a science of ' abstract relations 
 and inherent pleasantnesses' of form, is to give a separate existence to 
 what, as art, never can be separately or exactly appraised. Bounded 
 surface in any object ipay be intrinsically pleasant ; a mere ball with its 
 gradated shading may be as beautiful an object as Mr, Euskin describes 
 it to be ; but the popular view would be right in not regarding a ball or an 
 arrangement of balls as Sculpture. And when we come to less definite, 
 figures and groupings the attempt at a separate abstract estinaate is still 
 more foggy. A painter may show consummate mastery in the arrangement 
 of his points of light and masses of light and shade ; but blur all the 
 forms tiU they are unrecognisable, and eliminate all the colours, and the 
 ' inherent pleasantness ' of the arrangement of points and masses will not 
 do much to console us for the change, 
 which is apt to • All this distinction, however, as regards visible forms, may seem very 
 on the idea of irrelevant to our main subject of sound : but in truth it is not so. For 
 "^"'' Art as a whole has been almost g,lways treated of by writers whose 
 
 speciality was visual art ; and whenever these persons, in the treatment of 
 their subject, come across abstract relations and proportions and fitnesses, 
 they invariably introduce the word musical, and other words connected 
 witL Music. Most rightly and legitimately, as long as the limits of the 
 application are kept in view : otherwise, the application reacts very 
 damagingly on Music itself, or rather precludes a true view of it. For 
 instance, Mr. Euskin, the author who of all authors that ever lived has 
 been the most effective teacher of men's eyes, speaks of Music as some- 
 thing essentially analogous to the harmonious adjustment of bosses ; * and 
 
 ' !ffusi'c is quite as often treated, among harmonious arrangement of tints ; and the 
 others by Mr. Buskin, as analogous to the very fact that writers on visible art are so 
 
TBli B'lUMMMTS OF' A WORK OF AST. 59' 
 
 as he certainly regards the liigtiest examples of form — beautiful faces, 
 for instance — ^as much more than pleasantly bossed surfaces, the sound-art 
 naturally falls, in his estimation,, to a, very subordinate position, as a, 
 sensuous delight, ■with a good deal of 'inherent pleasantness,' but oaly 
 capable of being eimobled by conjvjnction -with words. Apart from words,, 
 he holds, IMusic becomes degraded,, and its ' senseless melodies harden the. 
 intellect or demoralise the ear.' 
 
 Now this seems a very natural view, where a person has never received 
 from Music, pure and simple, more than a faint fraetion of the emotion it 
 is capable of causing ; and where the pleasure it has, given him is a mexe 
 drop in the ocean compared tO' the pleasure he has received through 
 vision^ As Music is undoubtedly an art of abstract relations^ he will 
 naturally refer the other abstract relations he knows to it, and it. to, them ;, 
 and will think the art sufficiently honoured by being put in the same 
 category as that general harmoniomsness of abstract visible elements, that, 
 ^ musical disposition' of masses an4 colours,, whip|i his eyes in certain cases 
 find so pleasurable. The great, arts of Painting ^nd Sculpture, he will say, 
 deal in such harmonious arrangements j and unless he clearly keeps in, 
 sfiev how entirely the distinctive qualities of Painting and Sculpture lie in 
 their reprgse'/itofweehairacter, it will naturally escape his notice- how entirely 
 his rapprochement lesiYes the distinctive quahties of Music, out of account. 
 The cardinal points thus ignored cannot be too early emphasised ; namely, 
 that Music, though dealing wholly with abstract proportions, is an art pre- 
 eminent for the: precision, individuality, and organic quality of its forms ; 
 that the component elements out of which the forms are built are not 
 only not beautiful units, like curves or bosses, but in.isolation are absolutely 
 uninterestingj and, moreover,, in mental reproduction may lose nearly all, 
 if not all,, of their timbre or sensuous colour-character ; while the forms 
 themselves present a vividness, a variety, and a depth of emotional impres- 
 siveness, unsurpassed in any region of beauty. 
 
 Jletuming now from this digression, if we exa,mine our table, we may §12. Varioa 
 find several wa,ys of subdividing it. Two of the arts. Poetry and Music, J^^g tt^ 
 address us through the sense of hearing, the other three through the sens© Mstofarts: 
 Qf sight : and this, distinction na(turally lies at the root of many points in 
 connection, with the main subject of our enquiry. Two again, Poetry and 
 Architecture, impose the art-element of form on things conceivable as 
 having a real, meaning and existence apart, from this element j. Poetry often 
 dignifying with it things expressible ijx prose, and Architecture things^ 
 
 little, carefpi^sibejihier it is, relations of coZflJM! ligbt-colpm; will, occupy us, lafeer: it is, 
 
 or of /wot, which, theythiog exemplify, might, enough, here to observe how specially wide, 
 
 put any one on his guard who realised thai of the- mask is, the comparison to arrang,e- 
 
 these elements are as wholly distinct in the ments of- colour,, of what is pre-eminently an. 
 
 realm of sound as, in that, Qt sight,. This dis- art of fopn. 
 tinotioB and the relations of souiidccolojij; to. 
 
60 THE ELEMENTS OF A WORK OF ART: 
 
 whose purpose is of definite prosaic utility, as of shelter ; while in the other' 
 three the element of form is essentially involved in the subject-matter. 
 Again, Poetry stands distinctly apart from all the other arts in its invariable 
 use of symbols : words, that is, symbols to be interpreted by the mind, are 
 its proper material. It is on this ground that Mr, Spencer has marked off 
 poetry as the sole re-presentative art, in contradistinction to the others 
 whose effect is so essentially bound up with the direct presentation of 
 phenomena to the senses. We have already seen, however, that the sense- 
 element, though external to the ideas conveyed, is necessary to a poetical 
 work of art ; and further on it will appear as a most integral factor of the 
 whole results attainable by Poetry. So that though a true distinction is 
 marked by Mr. Spencer's apphcation of the words jpresentative and 
 representative, I have used them as the only possible ones to express 
 quite another, and as it seems to me a more essential, distinction. Accord- 
 the arts of pirw- ing to my view, Architecture (so far as it is independent of other arts) and" 
 of"represeniia*- Music are marked off by a most important difference from Poetry, Sculp- 
 tion. ture, and Painting. These three latter represent in various aspects things 
 
 cognisable in the world outside them, and recognised on representation. 
 This is obvious in the case of the two latter; and in Poetry, however new 
 an idea may be, it deals with people or things that we have a knowledge 
 of, and seems to us true by dint of its accordance with or interpretation- 
 of this previous knowledge. For idealisation is not an excursion in the 
 clouds; ideal representation is of an imagined reality, and is founded 
 everywhere on facts, by the selection and rearrangement of which the 
 artist brings out fresh aspects and relations. Music, on the other hand, 
 and Architecture (in the artistic elements which differentiate it from mere- 
 building by having pleasure, not utility, for their aim), imply no external- 
 fact at all. Their function is to present, not to represent, and their message 
 has no direct reference to the world outside them. Their abstract forms and 
 arrangements of forms appeal, in the one case to the ear, in the other to the- 
 J eye, not as objects of recognition or as concerned with facts known elsewhere, 
 
 but as something wholly unimaginable apart from the special manifestation. 
 This last distinction is so important as to require a somewhat full discus- 
 sion ; the following chapters will therefore be occupied with the more general' 
 features of abstract form and proportion > in art, with the differences in- 
 
 ' It may be well to point out a certain principle. But surely he momentarily mixes- 
 ambiguity in the word proportion which up two difEerent notions of proportion in the > 
 tends to conceal the essential difference following passage : ' Painting, Sculpture, 
 between the two arts of abstract form and Music, and Poetry depend all equally on the- 
 the arts of representation. Mr. Ruskin has proportion, whether of colours, stones, notes, 
 poured scorn on those who would call Archi- or words. Proportion is a principle, not of 
 tecture an art of proportion, and in his Architecture, but of existence. It is by the 
 demand for noble and significant ornamen- laws of proportion that stars shine, that 
 tation he has asserted an incontrovertible mountains stand, and rivers flow. Man can 
 
THE ELEMENTS dF A WORK OF ART. 
 
 61 
 
 respect of this element between the two arts which are essentially con- 
 cerned with it, and with the statement of the main problems which these 
 very differences will help us to define. 
 
 hardly perform any act of his life, can hardly 
 utter two words of innocent speech, or move 
 his hand in accordance with those words, 
 without involving some reference, whether 
 taught or instinctive, to the laws of propor- 
 tion,' and so on. Now this is all very true 
 if proportion be taken merely in the sense 
 of general fitness, of general adaptation and 
 concurrence of means to an end, or of factors 
 to a result. This sense, however, exceeds in 
 -wideness and vagueness even the wider of 
 the two aspects of artistic structure noticed 
 above, namely, the harmonious arrangement 
 of integral parts in the production of a large 
 complex whole. But we find proportions of 
 .a very definite and peculiar nature, pertain- 
 
 ing to certain orders of impression in space 
 and time which appeal with a seemingly 
 direct and intuitive satisfaction to the eye 
 and ear respectively ; and which, since they 
 are representative of nothing in the external 
 world, we call abstract forms. In so far, 
 indeed, as Architecture depends wholly on 
 such forms and proportions, to the neglect 
 of noble representative ornament, it may be 
 as inferior as Mr. Buskin sometimes repre- 
 sents it to be : but the abstract element will 
 always be prominently present, contributing 
 its due efEect ; and Mr. Ruskin himself has 
 probably felt the effect more keenly, as he 
 has certainly described it better, than any 
 one else. 
 
62 
 
 CHAPTER IV, 
 
 ABSTRACfr FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE, 
 
 § 1, The 
 ^ou{>ing or 
 niiet peculiar 
 to \4sual and 
 auditory per- 
 ceptiOHs 18 
 either «f co- 
 existence or of 
 sequsaoe. 
 
 We found in the first chapter that^ out of all the aenses, those of sight 
 and hearing are the only ones which convey a sense of hecmtiji i and we 
 connected this distinction more especially with their perception of form. 
 To explain this latter peculiarity we dwelt, in the first instanoe, on the 
 immense complexity of the two sense-organs concerned j a eomplerity 
 which, in the ear, takes the form of an immense variety of actual 
 structural elements, differentiated as truly as the wites of a piano- 
 forte ; and which in the eye consists partly in differentiation of 
 elements whereby differences of colour are perceived, partly in an in- 
 definitely large range of muscular movements. And arguing that this- 
 complexity means, on the subjective side, sensitiveness to an immense 
 number of differences in the impressions received, we immediately con- 
 nected such highly discriminative sensitiveness with the power, possessed 
 in the case of sight and hearing only, to perceive an order in variety, and 
 to combine separate impressions, separate units of colour or sound, into 
 coherent groups or forms. We further found that such groups are pre- 
 sented to the sense of hearing only in the domain of art. 
 
 Order may clearly be either of co-existence or of sequence. In the case 
 of sight, by dint of the eye's immense power of motion and adjustment, 
 we can in an instant grasp and realise an enormous number of impressions 
 of phenomena in space; and we can also petceive such phenomena in 
 succession, i.e. perceive motion i in the case of hearing, we possess a very 
 limited power of grasping simultaneous impressions, but great retentive- 
 ness and power of perceiving the relations between successive impressions. 
 Both senses obviously have in common a susceptibility to one kind of order 
 in successive impressions, the effect of which, indeed, seems common to 
 the whole nervous organism, namely, rhythm ; the case where this is most 
 obvious to the eye being dancing. Dancing, however, does not rank among 
 our fine arts ; and in the three of them for which the eye is the medium 
 the impressions are all of phenomena in co-existence. As regards the two 
 arts addressed to the ear, in Poetry the order of the sounds is entirely one 
 of sequence. In Music, on the other hand, simultaneous sounds play a most 
 important part : for though, as just remarked, the number of simultaneous 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 63 
 
 impressions which the ear can appreciate is limited, the power to grasp 
 this limited number opens up a quite unique range of phenomena, com- 
 monly spoken of under the head of harmony. 
 
 Now we have not yet at all considered the question why, in the case of § 2. In what 
 each sense, certain forms afford such strong gratification ; whyihe arrange- thTadv^foed^' 
 ment of impressions in particular shapes or orders reveals a world the ™entai element 
 pleasures of which seem quite disparate with the pleasure of any sort of 
 sense-impression taken in isolation. We cannot here connect the en- 
 joyment with any directly sensuous basis ; the slight pleasure which may 
 in some cases be referable to specially easy movements of the ocular 
 muscles making (as we shall see later) an exception of small importance. 
 We lose the appeal to simple nervous stimulation, such as is always our ulti- 
 mate fact iu explaining enjoyment of colour : what do we get in its stead ? 
 It is easy to invoke, as in itself an ultimate source of pleasure, the sense of 
 relation in the perception of the arrangement. For certainly the co-ordina- 
 tion and combination of units into what are recognised as wholes or groups 
 involves a mental element over and above the instantaneous consciousness 
 of the sense-impression : and as apprehension of order of some sort or other 
 may be said, in a broad and general way, to be a characteristic of all 
 satisfactory mental activity, a fortiori, it might be argued, should we look 
 for it in the higher aesthetic pleasures. But this leaves us still in diffi- 
 culties : for while the combination of souTid-elements into coherent groups 
 may seem to afford the mental element tolerable scope in the way of 
 comparison and memory, the mental element involved in combining units 
 of sigr^f-impression into recognisable or recognised forms is, on the other 
 hand, so slight that it is well within the scope of the most ordinary 
 animal intelligence; for very stupid animals know objects and perceive 
 changes in them, while still we should not credit them with a sense of 
 beauty. And moreover we, who can perceive forms as beautiful, can also 
 perceive them as ugly. Although, theuj we cannot but still look to some 
 sort of infusion of advanced mental elements, having simply nothing else 
 to look to for an explanation of the pleasurable qualities of form, it is at 
 once clear, in respect of the visual region at all events, that such elements 
 must comprise more than is involved in the mere perception and re- 
 cognition of a form as a form. 
 
 A fresh consideration will now be necessary. Forms, being combina- § 3. Distin- 
 tions of an immense number of elements, are, unlike colours, as endless g<»i*abieform3 
 
 8X6 6I1CU6SS lU 
 
 as they are distinct in variety. The number of possible combinations being variety, 
 practically infinite, there is no assignable limit to the number of forms 
 which, if presented to us, we could distinguish ; and distinguish not in the 
 vague and approximate way in which we roay distinguish shades and gra- 
 dations of light, colour, and tone-quality (these being in many cases quite 
 iMidistinguishable except at the moment when they are actually perceived 
 in juxtaposition), but with entire and absolute accuracy, and with a very 
 
6$ ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 great power of accurate representation in memory. And the importance 
 of this power of distinction, which in itself has no direct bearing on 
 pleasure, is at once seen if we consider that it is the necessary basis for 
 variety of association and suggestion ; in other words, is the necessary 
 condition for phenomena to derive any lasting character from circum- 
 aud thu8 afford stances of whatever sort, or feelings from whatever source, which may 
 wide variety of accompany the perception of them. Wide range of association postulates 
 asaocia on. ^^^ wide power of distinction and comparison which only exists in rela- 
 tion to form. For the present we may be content with the most familiar 
 example ; namely, the immense variety of agreeable and disagreeable 
 impressions which we receive from human faces, by association of certain 
 qualities, events, and modes of behaviour with numerous slight, but per- 
 fectly distinct, variations of form ; so that even an infant will learn to 
 invest its mother's smile with the agreeableness of things which have 
 frequently accompanied it, such as food, soft touches, and cooing sounds, 
 and to attach a contrary character to a frown or an angry tone. Here, 
 then, in the principle of association (especially when extended to that of 
 inherited association) we get mighty aid towards solving the problem of 
 the pre-eminence of form. For in it is involved, not only the selection 
 from the shifting chaos of impressions and feelings of groups which, in the 
 very fact of their combination, become fixed as distinct and characteristic 
 qualities of things ; but the condition for those extraordinary transforma- 
 tions which are as real in the chemistry of mental as of material ingre- 
 dients. In the processes of association, feelings may often be wrought 
 into products whose simple elements are as unrecognisable as those of water 
 or of protoplasm; and the sense of beauty is none the less unique and 
 instinctive for having been built out of a variety of less ideal experiences. 
 §4. But how But again a difficulty presents itself. The example of faces just cited 
 be^presl^t in™ ^® °^ familiar objects, perpetually seen in connection with pleasing and 
 displeasing circumstances : and with objects like these we have, it may be 
 reasonably urged, daily and hourly opportunities of forming associations 
 of the most definite kind. But we are capable of deriving pleasure from 
 many visual forms whose power to affect us cannot be at all referred to 
 such daily and definite associations ; for instance, from a graceful spiral : and 
 as for sound, its combinations into forms are not material objects at all, 
 but things of wholly isolated experience, lying apparently quite outside 
 any definable circumstances of general life, and unable therefore to gather 
 character from their concomitants. Must we not, then, infer some other 
 and special sort of intuition to account for our pleasure in such cases 
 Mast not the as these ? Must there not be in abstract forms themselves, apart from any 
 thSe'hlveits assignable associations, some special possibilities of exercising our faculties 
 ent'^con^dT^"^' ^^^ appealing to our imaginations ? These questions will have to be sub- 
 tions ? sequently considered : meanwhile it may be here premised that the scope 
 
 the case of db- 
 stract forms ? 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 65 
 
 of association will prove to be far wider than might at first sight be 
 guessed ; that we shall find its influence extending more or less indirectly 
 over these remoter regions ; and that it will be part of our subsequent 
 task to examine, chiefly of course with regard to sound, in what ways the 
 pleasure of abstract forms can be connected with a special sort of mental 
 activity, and what parts of the whole ground are covered by this more 
 special element and by the element of association respectively. 
 
 We shall, however, best approach the subject of abstract forms pure § 5. The ab- 
 and simple, (that is, forms or combinations of elements designed and arti- in'^forms^of^b- 
 ficially produced by men, and presented on their own merits, without direct i®*^''' 
 external reference), by rounding off our enquiry as to the main elements of 
 effect, and especially as to the place of the abstract element, in forms 
 which are Tiot abstract ; and we could not take a better example than our 
 former one of human faces. For in these, as in all visible forms, there 
 must be (potentially at all events) an abstract element : we always possess 
 to some extent the power of representing to ourselves the lines in ab- 
 straction, of considering them simply as lines, without reference to the 
 particular object into whose form they enter. In the immense majority 
 of cases where we perceive objects with pleasure, it is of course the objects 
 themselves, with the various qualities which past experiences have woven 
 into our idea of them, which occupy our attention : the actual lines are 
 often little more than symbols to us, the means by which the presence of 
 the object is made known to us. But in the very notion of visible beauty 
 is implied some more special and direct effect of form on us than this : and 
 experience certainly seems to testify that forms may please us without 
 any very perceptible suggestion of agreeable qualities in the object. Thus 
 agreeableness ofexpressionisby no means synonymous with facial beauty; 
 and while, on the one hand, an ugly face may be agreeable to look at, 
 owing to association with agreeable qualities, it is none the less true 
 that an expressionless face is often described as beautiful. 
 
 Merely to recognise the frequent existence of an abstract eleraent in our 
 appreciation of the forms of concrete objects is, however, a very different 
 thing from ascertaining either how far it is effective or how far it is indis- 
 pensable. The attempt to isolate the effects by a simply mechanical isola- 
 tion of this or that portion of form yields most disappointing results. The 
 form of a beautiful cheek or chin, for example, may be thus isolated, and as of human 
 represented by a line on paper, or more completely by a piece of modelling ; 
 but though these representations when examined might reveal smoothness 
 and delicate gradation of curvature, this could hardly give us any vivid 
 sense of beauty, since we should perceive no special rightness or individual- 
 ity about it ; slight changes of the form, which would quite destroy its 
 possibilities of serving as a cheek or chin, would be perceived with 
 indifference ; which means that on its purely abstract merits it would have 
 
 F 
 
66 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 little chance of being picked out for special commendation. So of the 
 beautiful curves of the human figure at its best ; which, if represented in 
 an isolated way, would not be picked out from thousands of other abstract 
 lines which the anatomy of the human body excludes. Nor will the idea of 
 syniTnetry, though often adduced as an explanation of our pleasure in human 
 beauty, contribute much to a solution of the difficulty. For symmetry 
 really means only the similarity of two or more parts ; and an ugly face or 
 an awkward figure may of course have its two sides just alike, and so be 
 equally symmetrical with a beautiful one. Perhaps the easiest and most 
 striking way of realising how little abstract form and symmetry, taken alone, 
 can explain our feeling of beauty in faces, is to consider a beautiful face up- 
 side down ; to avoid any element of grotesqueness it will be best to lay a 
 picture of such a face naturally on the table, and then go round and look at 
 it from the opposite side. It will be found that though we may perhaps 
 perceive the features to be well formed and regular, and argue that the face 
 must be beautiful, scarcely any direct and pleasurable sense of beautyresults. 
 And this cannot be explained on the ground that the merits of the abstract 
 forms in themselves might somehow be greatly affected by the change, as if 
 we played a tune backwards ; since we can scarcely doubt that if faces had 
 always been naturally presented to us in that position, with the chin forming 
 an elegant apex, our sense of facial beauty and ugliness would have formed 
 itself quite regularly and completely on the given conditions, and the 
 reversal of that position would then have given the unbeautiful result ; 
 that is to say, the abstract lines flow as well one way as the other.^ Or, if 
 any one objects to this statement, it will be amply sufficient to bring the 
 eyes half-way down the cheeks ; which cannot possibly be supposed to 
 ruin the pattern as a pattern. 
 Influence of in- The fact is that association of an indirect kind is really latent here 
 tion J under a great part of what we easily take for pleasure in abstract form. 
 
 If pure boldly chiselled outlines, and finely gradated shades and curves, 
 are admired in a face in a way they never would be on their independent 
 merits, in a way they never would be, for example, if faces were quite 
 new phenomena in the world, it is mainly because the faces which possess 
 them appear to differ from the average in the direction of strength or 
 
 ' The advantage of this experiment lies of its being a face, and all associations con- 
 in its not being liable to an objeotion which nected with faces, to regard it as simply a 
 might be brought against the isolation of a pattern or congeries of lines : and as long as 
 single part of a complicated contour. A person the two factors of face and pat1 ern are in- 
 might conceivably maintain that the beauty of extricably interwoven, if any one asserted 
 a face is mainly of the abstract sort, but that that his pleasure was due to some superla- 
 the virtue of the abstract lines and surfaces tive quality of the pattern, his position 
 lies in the sum-total of their arrangement and would be as hard to disprove as to prove, 
 combination : and such a view might seem But dissociate the factors by giving him his 
 hard to dispose of. For it is impossible actu- pattern upside down, and he will pro- 
 ally to look at a complete face in the normal bably not even do it the honour of reoog- 
 position and, wholly eliminating all notion uising it. 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 67 
 
 fineness of type : and the very notion of sucli characters of type is due 
 to long trains of experience into which associated human quahties 
 entered. Delicate modelling on a lump of clay representing no known 
 object would mean almost nothing to us-; the delicate modelling on 
 human features, combined with a certain proportioning of them in matters 
 of size and distance, mean to us the realisation of certain ideals which 
 could never have been formed on abstract grounds alone. 
 
 This reference to types is exemplified in another way, which really 
 brings in a third element distinct both from abstract form and association, 
 the element of habit; the effect of which, however, is rather regula- 
 tive than positive. The most approved outline, the most refined mo- 
 delling, will not make up for even a slight overstepping of the limits of 
 that norm which habit has set up ; for all our judgments involve a latent 
 sense of this normal type. Thus disproportion will mar the fairest fea- 
 tures: the most beautiful adult nose on the face of a little child would 
 offend us to such an extent that we should probably call the face ugly.' 
 
 ' Such an instance as this, it will be seen, 
 implies the fact that ideal types may be of 
 features and parts of faces as well as of 
 whole faces ; and if this be so, the import- 
 ance of the controlling condition of a 
 familiar standard in matters of size and 
 arrangement is obvious. Perhaps, however, 
 the notion of idealising ^^wi* at all may, at 
 first sight, seem to ignore the harmony 
 which is admittedly a large element in 
 beauty. It is, of course, beyond dispute 
 that there is such a thing as a special 
 harmony pervading a whole face, that a 
 special combination of lines and modellings 
 may be accepted as a type en masse ; as 
 is sufficiently shown, for example, in the 
 great distinctness of the types for which 
 various painters have shown marked prefer- 
 ence : yet in a large number of instances, it 
 is easy to imagine such a harmony as more 
 essential and more positive in character 
 than it can be truly proved to be. Consider- 
 ing how many faces are called beautiful, to 
 which we cannot in reason assign a type 
 apiece, and yet which are too different and 
 individual to be easily classified under a 
 few distinct types, it seems that the process 
 of selection and idealisation which gradually 
 gives a stamp to our sense of beauty, must 
 act in relation to paarts as well as to wholes, 
 and lend itself to a considerable amount of 
 eclecticism. A certain degree of mutual 
 suitability must of course be postulated : 
 but the beautiful eyes of one face could 
 hardly contradict the beautiful mouth of 
 another ; and the same form of both features 
 
 of habit ; 
 
 can certainly co-exist vnth many various' 
 modifications of the less mobile parts of the 
 contour, vrithout destruction of beauty ; the 
 features when animated with one life, as by 
 the painter's art, will, in a way, make their' 
 own harmony. And if we so far take our 
 stand on parts as to look beyond the limited 
 number of what could be truly called types 
 of complete faces, we must admit, as clearly 
 indispensable, the adherence to a normal 
 and familiar standard in matter of the rela- 
 tive sizes and distances of the parts, under 
 pain of getting an ugly result from even 
 choice individual elements. It is easy to 
 distinguish what belongs to the norm from 
 the actual elements of beaiuty. Such factors 
 as relative size and distance of parts- are 
 clearly too negative, too much the same in 
 an immense number of cases, to be them- 
 selves the material from which ideal types 
 are built : thus, they may be found practi- 
 cally identical in ninety-nine! average faces 
 and one beautiful one ; a clear proof that it 
 is not they, but the actual individual lines 
 and modellings, which make up the positive 
 differentiating element. Given then the 
 requisite subtleties of form in these lines 
 and modellings themselves, and an absence 
 of such gross contradictions as a tip-tilted 
 feminine nose with a massive masculine 
 chin, the essential and suflScient conditions 
 of integration into, at any rate, some sort of 
 beauty seem to be the observance of normal 
 relations of size and distance, and the single 
 life which shall control the movements and 
 expression. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 and of contrast. 
 
 Direct associa- 
 tion. 
 
 In many cases the result of wide departure from normal types gives 
 the effect more of grotesqueness than of ugliness ; indeed we may say 
 that the slighter departure is the more general condition of ugliness, as 
 in the case of monkeys, whose pre-eminence in ugliness depends on the 
 approximation of their type of countenance to our own ; and that the 
 wider the departure, and the more glaring the incongruity, the more 
 likely is the result to be grotesque rather than ugly, as in the case of 
 centaurs. Our principle, however, of the limiting effect of habit on the 
 sense of beauty will not suffer ; for in the contemplation of the grotesque, 
 however pleasurable, there must be a large dilution of the sense of 
 beauty with other elements. Human limbs and equine limbs may 
 both be beautiful objects ; but the legs of a man on a horse's body, or 
 those of a horse on a man's body, would certainly not reap the full 
 benefit of their abstract grace of form and motion. 
 
 Habit tells on our sense of beauty in a quite different way through 
 its necessary connection with the correlative experience of contrast. A 
 meaningless fragment of delicately cut and shadowed marble conveys no 
 vivid sense of rareness ; but a beautifully chiselled mouth, for example, 
 gives the impression of carrying fineness into a position where in thousands 
 of cases it has been absent. Though a thousand mouths may all be 
 different, this one has a mode of differing from them all which is wholly 
 distinct from the modes in which they differ from one another, and makes 
 it an individual and them a crowd. And the same applies to all beautiful 
 things which are not isolated and unique, not too different in most of 
 their attributes from a number of other things to be at once recognised as 
 members of this or that class ; the perception of contrast in the midst of 
 general similarity being naturally most marked in connection with that 
 pre-eminence of discriminative power which we found to characterise the 
 perception of form. This half-latent sense of contrast, introducing a 
 large positive ingredient of surprise and wonder, is probably a very main 
 factor in a great deal of our delight in beauty ; and just so far as its 
 effects go, is it the icase that, e.g., beautiful faces would be considered less 
 beautiful had they been the universal rule. Contrast thus takes in some 
 measure the place with respect to beauty that the principle of intermittence 
 holds in the case of the lower physical pleasures. 
 
 To conclude our brief review of the elements which enter into our appre- 
 ciation of human forms and features : we shall probably find that after we 
 have a,llowed the greatest weight to the points just mentioned — after we 
 have demanded conformity to some ideal type or types in the fashioning of 
 the parts, and a certain measure of reference to the normal type, if not to 
 any special ideal, in their general relations to one another, and after we have 
 admitted the emphasis given to any perceptible superiority through a sense 
 of its rarity — still a very real and pervading influence must be commonly 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRBSSJiD TO THE EYE. 69 
 
 exercised by that simple and direct kind of association which connects 
 actual admired qualities with the actual object presented to us. In the 
 case of figures such qualities are strength, ease of motion, swiftness ; in 
 the case of faces, the various elements of what we call expression, such as 
 power, gentleness, dignity, and above all animation and mobility ; for the 
 admiration of barbers' blocks ought not to outlive childhood. If we call a 
 face beautiful which lacks one or more of these qualities, or exhibits theij- 
 opposites, we still are in all likelihood paying our tribute to others of 
 them which are present ; if, on the other hand, we prefer to call it dis- 
 agreeable in spite of crediting it with beauty, it is more probable that our 
 judgment of the beauty rests on an unconscious reference to admired types.' 
 
 It may be said, however, that in taking the example of human forms § 6. Abstract 
 we have chosen just the case where association and habit are bound to be mate Nature." 
 most prominent ; -that it is possible to grant the smallness of the part 
 played independently by abstract form in that case, and yet to find it 
 constituting a large factor in the effect of the contours of inanimate 
 Nature. And in Nature it certainly does seem that lines of curvature, of 
 beautiful force and flow, may be innumerable ; Mr. Euskin has givea, in 
 The Stones of Venice, representations of some specially beautiful ones 
 from mountain and glacier. But then in natural scenery they are of 
 course never seen in abstraction from the other elements of effect ; asso- 
 ciations of fertility or freedom, or ideas of size, strength, and distance, or 
 the extremely important element of colour, probably contribute by far 
 the larger part of the effect ; and the abstract lines on paper, seen by a 
 
 ' I have already pointed out how pre-emi- cal pain and pleasure ' by saying that colour 
 nently dwect association is connected with a«ii s«'eei«ess are inherently pleasant, and that , 
 form, as the constant and individualising no logic will enable a man to think the rain- 
 quahty of objects ; and the same remark bow sombre or the violet scentless. Of course 
 applies to habit. This point seems to be not. Colour and sweetness are matters of the 
 missed in Mr. Buskin's criticism of Reynolds direct nerve-stimulation of the moment ; and 
 as to the influence of habit on the sense habituation to darkness or to disagreeable 
 of beauty. Reynolds doubtless invites odours of course could not give to non-sti- 
 attack by the crudeness of his statement mulation or unpleasant stimulation the effects 
 that ' if we were more used to deformity of pleasant stimulation. But a form is not 
 than to beauty, deformity would then lose appreciated through its mode of stimulating 
 the idea now annexed to it, and take that of the nervous retinal elements ; a scowling 
 beauty,' which ignores the element of ab- face does not act in this way diiferently from 
 stract beauty and symmetry altogether, and a smiling one ; we like the one and dislike 
 also of association ; for however much we the other through experiences which have 
 were used to deformities, yet so far as they constantly connected the two with definitely 
 imply weakness and clumsiness, they could known qualities — that is to say, our percep- 
 not reap the benefit of association with those tion is steeped through and through with 
 pleasing and admirable qualities which per- the elements of association and habit. And 
 tain to the action of strong agile and sym- Reynolds is certainly so far right that, e.g., if 
 metrical frames. But Mr. Ruskin introduces the corners of the mouth had always gone' 
 illustrations which are quite irrelevant, when down instead of up in smiling, that down- 
 he supports his view that ' beauty and ugli- ward position would have given us. the' 
 ness are as positive in their nature as physi- pleasurable impression of a smile. 
 
70 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 person wko cannot associate them with the original, would hardly convey 
 
 a shadow of what Mr. Euskin felt in drawing them. 
 
 § 7. Excep- So far, then, our argument has seemed, if not to disparage the qualities 
 
 w ArSec. of abstract form, and the extent of their operation in our visual enjoyments, 
 
 *""• at any rate to throw great doubt on our power of estimating that extent. 
 
 There is, however, one region of visual phenomena which must strike 
 
 us as extremely exceptional in this respect: for abstract forms are the 
 
 very things wi-th which one of our five arts. Architecture, is concerned, 
 
 its distinctive element of form consisting, as we have seen, just in 
 
 abstract lines and surfaces and their relations; and the nobility of 
 
 this art, and its right to take rank with the others, are matters which 
 
 are never called in question. What then are the characteristics of such 
 
 forms in this special art? What sort of part does association play? 
 
 Architecture, if it present that element at all, must clearly present it in 
 
 its vaguer and less direct character ; in contradistinction to Painting and 
 
 Sculpture, where abstract form and direct association with the objects 
 
 represented cannot but blend their effects as we have seen them to do in 
 
 the actual objects. A brief examination of these points will prove helpful 
 
 to us (though by way rather of contrast than resemblance) in gaining 
 
 a clear conception of the special problems presented by the phenomena of 
 
 Music, a conception very necessary to attain before passing on to our 
 
 subsequent detailed examination of musical forms. 
 
 s 8. Eie- Deferring for the present the more special and difficult question of 
 
 ■" A*^iiiteTm:e proportion as such, of abstract relations of magnitude and direction, we will 
 
 Inadequacy of fij-st enquire what more general elements of effect pertain to the character- 
 any physiolOgi- ^ mi ■ n 1 CI 
 
 cal basis ; istic forms of Architecture. The recognised laws oi pleasurable nervous ac- 
 
 tion will do a little, but a very little, for us. Thus the actual ocular motions 
 are sometimes adduced as having an explicable pleasurable character ; and 
 certainly the easy sweep of the eye in following an architectural line whose 
 unbroken unity it can easily take in presents a quality which, in comparison 
 with the fatigue and strain of following out jagged broken and angular lines, 
 may be called positively pleasant. But then consider sin;iilar lines drawn in 
 chalk on a blackboard ; the actual sweep of the eye is the same in following 
 a curve on the board which is but a few feet from it as in following the line 
 of an arch at a distance of many feet. That the conditions of pleasurable 
 muscular activity in following lines maybe stated with considerable precision, 
 does not aiter the fact that the direct muscular pleasure, so far as it is truly 
 isolated from other elements, seems extremely slight ; nor have I en- 
 countered any account of the pleasurable conditions which would not apply 
 quite as well to an ordinary wall-paper as to the Doge's palace.' Moreover 
 
 ' It must be allowed, howeyer, that the element; directly, in the ease with which 
 
 more ideal pleasure in some of the points the eye travels over and grasps the combina- 
 
 which are to follow, as complexity and sym- tions ; indirectly, in the dim representation 
 
 metry, has a certain infusion of the physical of the many possible paths the eye could 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 11 
 
 it would seem that in the works of man we do not get the pick of even such 
 abstract lines as are to be had : Mr. Euskin himself has pointed out in 
 what slender degree the most beautiful of the ever-changing curves of 
 Nature can be applied to buildings. Grradations of light and shadow, it is 
 true, present means of enjoyment much more positive, and appreciable on 
 a much smaller scale, than that of mere lines : but still less than lines are 
 these amenable to the usual physiological considerations of nervous action, 
 as that the condition for pleasure is exercise of function keeping short of 
 fatigue, and with frequent rests and reliefs of the excited elements. For especially as 
 
 ° ^_ regards grada- 
 
 consider the pleasure in gradation of shade on a curved stone surface, the tioiis of ii^ht 
 brightest parts of which are of the most moderate brightness. The 
 nervous action at each instant, in such a case, is not like that involved in 
 the sensation of bright colour, but is altogether too slight to be an ultimate 
 ground of pleasure, and the eye could range for hours without discomfort 
 over a plane surface of equal brightness with the brightest part of the 
 gradated surface ; so that it would be absurd to base the pleasure physio- 
 logically on active stimulation relieved in appropriate ways, or on anything 
 but the special fact of gradual change. The principle of love of variation 
 from uniformity which is here involved will be more especially noticed 
 later ; but it is worth mentioning in the present connection, as the enjoy- 
 ment of gradated surface seems so simple and ultimate, that a priori it 
 might be guessed to be referable to some ordinarily recognised physiological 
 condition of pleasure : whereas so far as there is a sensuous element at all, 
 its physiological condition seems to be one utterly external to the ordinary 
 formulae about nervous wear and tear, and of a kind to which no such 
 easily apprehensible notions seem the least applicable ; while in all pro- 
 bability the pleasure has in its composition the most subtle and delicate 
 mental ingredients. 
 
 At present, however, we are concerned with less intangible elements of §9. Maiti- 
 effect : and, to begin with, in buildings we at any rate can have a great and shadow. 
 number of lines and shadows conspiring in ways which the eye cannot 
 fail to perceiye. To take one simple instance, the pleasure with which 
 the mere line of an arch might be regarded is not only enhanced, but in a 
 way transfigured, by manifold and deeply shadowed mouldings, where many 
 lines and breadths follow harmoniously the same curve. This manifoldness, 
 when it is so ordered as to occupy without puzzling or tantalising the eye, 
 gives the specific sense of richness ; one of the most general of the notions 
 involved in the admiration of visual abstract forms, and one which, since 
 it is formed by abstraction from a great multitude of phenomena of very 
 various kinds, reaps the benefit of vague emotional force due to many ex- 
 
 easily take, among a set of lines which it been extremely well treated by Mr. Sully in 
 may be dwelling on with very little active a recent article in Mind on ' The Pleasure of 
 movement. This, part of the subject has Visual Form.' 
 
72 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 § 10. Multi- 
 plicity of con- 
 spiring parts 
 in the larger 
 sense ; 
 
 periences. In the given case the effect may be easily connected with a 
 more general principle, which we shall encounter again and again— as a 
 perpetual factor (though not in itself a sufficient condition) of beauty — 
 namely, the love of the perception of unity, of a common uniting element, 
 in the midst of and including a variety of parts : and when the unity is appre- 
 hended mth ease and certainty, this principle in turn comes under the head 
 of another still more general than itself, the dehght, namely, in the exercise 
 oi power, in doing with facility a thing which seems to contain in itself the 
 elen;ients of difficulty. The repetitions in painted geometrical patterns, the 
 complex symmetry of elaborate tracery, afford other examples. We cannot, 
 however, confine the principle of multiplicity of line to cases which also 
 present a unity. With the proviso that the lines, or some of them, shall 
 have a look of regulation about them which is not just the mechanical regula- 
 tion of blank straightness and right angles, the mere multiplication of them 
 seems sufficient to excite the imagination. This would perhaps apply, for 
 example, to rapid glimpses of Gothic interiors when we are not symmetri- 
 ,cally placed, and cannot judge of the actual unity of the building ; side 
 .and fragmentary views comprising multitudes of crossing lines, which still 
 present in themselves, however confused be their relations to one another, 
 obviously regulated forms. Nor, of course, is it to mere hues that these 
 considerations are meant to apply, but to them and the surfaces and 
 openings which they bound and control, including points and breadths and 
 all sorts of gradations of rounded and receding masses. Such points and 
 surfaces and gradations, when multiplied and ordered in accordance with the 
 oidering and multiplication of the various main elements of structure, are the 
 most essential constituents in the impression of manifold richness, into the 
 service of which they press all the changing njysteries of light and shadow. 
 The moulded arch, which we just now took as our example of unified 
 variety, constitutes of course only a single fragment or feature, not merely 
 of the whole building but even of that possibly limited extent of it which, 
 owing to the special position of the observer, can be taken in at a single view. 
 But it is very noticeable in Architecture that the essential parts, however 
 symmetrical and complete in form, have as a rule a less complete and 
 individual effect, are more wholly subordinate in relation to the whole, or 
 to large and complicated portions of the whole, than in any other of the 
 works of art, whether pictorial, poetical, or musical, which present as parts 
 complete and distinct forms or sections. While Architecture is of all the 
 arts the one which most lends itself to ornament, to matter which, however 
 important as an informing element, is in some sense separately invented and 
 superposed, at the same time there is perhaps no sort of work in which 
 the organic combination of the more prominent parts is so close and 
 cogent. In recalling a picture we often recall first and instinctively a 
 particular figure ; in recalling a poem, a particular stanza ; in recalling an 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 73 
 
 overture, a particular ' subject ' or melody. But in recalling any building to 
 the memory, we naturally and primarily recall its whole aspect, its rows of 
 columns and pediment, or all the mounting pile of window, buttress, and 
 spire, or whatever the elements may be. However remarkable be the 
 details, and however lovingly we may think of their individual graces, it is 
 this larger aspect, or rather a whole set of larger aspects, which have made 
 up the great mass of our impressions from the building ; they are what the 
 building as an individual has primarily meant for us. (I am speaking, it 
 must be remembered, of the elements of abstract line and surface only, not 
 of sculptured or painted ornament, which, in proportion as it is less abstract 
 and more individual, may of course be naturally recalled in a more indi- 
 vidual way.) We have then, in this close and delicate organism of 
 buildings, an indefinitely various and glorified expansion of those character- 
 istics of which we were just now considering a simple rudimentary case : 
 the immense number of ordered lines may here raise the sense of richness 
 and intricacy to its highest possible pitch. 
 
 And with this we may connect a further point. Apart from the simplest and the result 
 geometrical regularity, it is practically impossible that a single abstract line eofe^nCT^in the 
 or surface should give a sense of cogency, a sense of special rightness in its ^™^'' 
 own particular direction or gradation of curvature : while as to position 
 there is of course no such thing as rightness in a line which is out of all rela- 
 tion to other Unes. But when a number of such forms are combined, all 
 sense of aimlessness in the individual elements is prevented ; each reaps the 
 benefit of the whole in which it is a necessary feature ; the fact of its com- 
 panionship makes it look definitely right, since a change in it would put the 
 organism to some extent out of gear. When a considerable proportion of 
 the forms possess independently whatever degree of merit their abstract 
 character permits, this added stamp of congruence and rightness may well 
 enhance the general efiect a thousandfold. And if we consider the enormous 
 number of abstract forms which are co-ordinated and interwoven in a large 
 Grothic church — beginning with the simple correspondence of the two halves 
 of the arch, fin-ther elaborated in trefoils and details of moulding and window 
 tracery, and so carried through the whole range of mazy order, where the 
 freeest Unes are obedient and the most tangled combinations harmonious, 
 on to the great fundamental features of structure — the exceptional effect of 
 the phenomena will seem, to some extent at least, to receive explanation. 
 
 All these elements of efiect are more clearly realisable by con- § ii. Con- 
 trasting the work into which they enter with some natural object. To naTnra/'objects 
 make the comparison just, we must of course avoid selecting an object 
 which has a number of exciting qualities over and above its particular 
 form ; as a mountain, in contemplating which the sense of its unmeasured 
 mass and strength is mingled with latent notions of its character as a 
 source of waters, as a barrier of peoples, as the lonely recipient of morning 
 
 in these re- 
 
74 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 and evening glows, as the home of mists and storms, and a score of others. 
 We must take an object whose character and limited size will exclude 
 these appeals to the imagination : we might, for instance, contrast a huge 
 rock, not an obviously broken fragment, but grandly cleft and seamed in 
 bold natural lines, with Salisbury Cathedral. In such a rock, though 
 boldness and ruggedness may give it a beauty of its own, we shall look in 
 vain for the qualities which we have seen that abstract lines may attain in 
 art. The Hues may be individually flowing and strong, but they are not 
 regularly multiplied so as to give the richness of detail of which we had 
 an example in arch-mouldings ; nor do the parts and divisions give more 
 than a faint impression of conspiring together, in the interests of a whole 
 to which each is not only subordinate but necessary. The extent of 
 the irregularity precludes any .vivid apprehension of unity, whether in 
 minor divisions or in the whole ; it means an extent of independence 
 which is inconsistent with mutual and harmonious action; and the 
 result is to preclude the special sense of cogency and of organic qualities. 
 There are not enough lines and parts alike, to gain from similarity any 
 objective character of rightness ; we have no sense that individually they 
 are exactly what they ought to be ; and in the lack of strongly marked 
 mutual control, of some decisive means to mark excrescences from 
 essentials, we naturally have an impression of accident, as if the whole 
 arrangement might be altered without paining us by the feeling that an 
 individual beautiful thing had so ceased to exist. 
 
 It is not improbable that this sort of contrast between Nature and Art 
 may serve as more than a mere means of making clearer to ourselves the 
 architectural effect : they may actually represent an element in that effect. 
 In other words, considering how fundamental a part the sense of contrast 
 continually plays in the perception of beauty, we may perhaps assume 
 that our pleasure in a large and imposing object, full of noticeably 
 controlled forms, owes something to our common experience of similarly 
 large and imposing objects which present no such special interest to the 
 eye. Conversely, it may be remarked that in occasional cases, where Nature 
 presents enough of order and seemingly purposeful arrangement of forms to 
 arrest the attention, we perpetually exclaim at the resemblance of natural 
 to human work in a way which imphes some exceptional element of 
 pleasure. Our eye dwells on groups of natural forms where it traces 
 suggestions of architectural structure, as in the rich forest of fantastically 
 moulded columns and groinings of a stalactite cavern ; or again, an avenue 
 is thought specially beautiful if it recalls a Grothic aisle : and though in 
 such instances the very act of association, and the sense of piquancy which 
 resemblance in the midst of contrast involves, make up a mental fact of 
 some complexity, we may discover a true element of added interest in the 
 forms themselves, merely from their presenting perceptible relations. 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 75 
 
 We have found, then, a certain measure of reason for the pre-eminent § 12. Further 
 position of abstract forms as presented in fine Architecture : but the reader effecU^Ai-chi- 
 may probably have felt, even in agreeing with what has been said, how ^^^^^^ ; 
 much of the effect it leaves unexplained. This is sufficiently shown in the 
 absolute inadequacy of even the most faithful pictorial or photographic 
 reproduction to convey the full emotional effect of great buildings, though 
 preserving with great completeness the forms and relations of line and 
 surface. This mode of demonstration, ruthless as it may seem, is certainly 
 justifiable ; as in a former case it showed the weakness of the physiological 
 explanation of pleasure in abstract architectural forms — inasmuch as the 
 physiological facts, the mere movements of the eye, remained identically 
 the same, while producing hardly any pleasure, when such forms were re- 
 presented on paper — so now it exposes the insufficiency of the ideal elements 
 involved in appreciation of richness, complexity, and harmony of lines, to ac- 
 count for the impressiveness of buildings. It moreover suggests at once that 
 the secret must be traced in great degree to actual mass, size, and space ; 
 elements in respect of which, as Mr. Kuskin has most successfully shown, 
 the effect of a mighty building on the imagination may rival even that of 
 Nature's vaster handiwork. And with these features are connected those 
 notions of weight and resistance, in virtue of which forms obtain aspects 
 beyond mere grace and flowingness, aspects of support and dependence, of 
 satisfying solidity and springing force : thus the deviation from straightness 
 in the lines is beyond doubt a main factor in the look of living and elastic 
 strength which characterises the Parthenon. 
 
 And throughout this region of conceptions association is at work, association 
 Something may be attributed to direct, though vague, resemblances to ^''^ Nature, 
 Nature. Thus ]Mr. Darwin has suggested to me that the sense of subUmity 
 excited by a grand cathedral may have some connection with the dim 
 feelings of terror and superstition, experienced by our savage ancestors 
 when they entered a great cavern or gloomy forest : to which might be 
 added the sense of mystery and freedom which more distinct references, 
 such as that of roof and aisle to forest-forms, may suggest. But it is 
 in less direct ways that the influence of external associations is most 
 important and pervading. It is indisputable that the effects on us of 
 mere mass and strength reg-p the benefit of conceptions chiefly formed in 
 the presence of Nature, and in connection with the daily exercise of eye 
 and muscle. And the notions of support and dependence, again, are an 
 abstraction from all manner of common experiences, where things have 
 withstood pressure and maintained their form, and have so fulfilled their 
 purposes, or else by yielding and falling have given us a shock, or at any 
 rate failed of their end.' 
 
 ' As to the general effect of environment views which, though perhaps not necessarily 
 on Architecture, there are two prominent inconsistent, are at all events so opposite as 
 
76 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO TEE EYE. 
 
 aud with 
 human skill 
 and labour ; 
 
 adaptation of 
 means to ends 
 
 and reference 
 to well-knc-wn 
 types. 
 
 But architectural works possess another element of association, besides 
 those of natural objects and events, which contributes largely to their 
 effect : they possess a truly human element. I am not referring here to 
 anything so wide and general as historical or religious associations, but to 
 characteristics more directly apparent in the actual forms which meet the 
 eye ; and among these must certainly be reckoned the incessant evidence 
 of elaborate and conscientious human labour. In no art is this element so 
 strongly and persistently present to the mind : owing to it there exists in 
 the imposing size, in the richness of detail, in the very weight and 
 hardness of the materials which had to be lifted and worked, a peculiar 
 emotional force profoundly affecting the whole nature of our admiration 
 and delight. 
 
 In another element of effect, the perceptiblpi adjustTnent of forms and 
 materials to certain ends, there is often a concurrence of several of the 
 elements already mentioned. A column, or a supporting element of any 
 kind, which looks neither unnecessarily massive for the work it has to do, 
 nor dangerously and affectedly attenuated, gives at once the impression of 
 enduring strength in the object and of skilful and accurate adaptation in 
 the workman. Such a simple instance shows how impossible it is in this 
 region of phenomena to isolate the effects of form from mechanical and 
 material considerations. 
 
 Nor is that reference to types, which we noticed in relation to faces, 
 absent from our judgment of buildings. Types of a certain kind are of 
 course necessitated by physical and utilitarian considerations, by the prosaic 
 realities of the builder's art, weight and thrust and so on, and by certain 
 objects to be fulfilled. A building cannot slope upwards from an apex, like 
 an inverted pyramid, nor stand on its pinnacles, nor take at will the shapes 
 of geometrical patterns that might be drawn ad infinitum on paper : and 
 purposes of utility demand in almost all buildings some amount of internal 
 -space and of protection from weather. But types of a more special kind, 
 
 to make their application somewhat doubt- 
 ful : for when we can draw at once on oppo- 
 site principles, it becomes a little too easy to 
 explain anything so as to suit our own pur- 
 poses. Mr. Spencer has ingeniously con- 
 nected architectural types with the external 
 characteristics of Nature in the way of re- 
 seiriblance ; alleging, for instance, that an 
 irregular and castellated style of building is 
 found appropriate in rugged mountainous 
 scenery, while in towns we prefer architec- 
 tural symmetry, because of the symmetry of 
 surrounding objects, as men, horses, and vehi- 
 cles. M. Boutmy, on the other hand, in his 
 excellent little book on Greek architecture, 
 has dwelt rather on the principle of contrast. 
 
 He connects Egyptian temples with oases 
 rather than with massive rocks ; and con- 
 ceives that when the natural environment is 
 repulsive and poor, or when it has extreme 
 and exaggerated aspects. Art tries less to re- 
 produce these qualities than to supplement 
 them. In his observations on the relation of 
 Greek landscape to Architecture, however, he 
 recognises in a very general way the pxinciple 
 of resemblance ; and in such characteris- 
 tics as he there dwells on, unbroken contour, 
 distinctness of line, smallness of scale, 
 moderation in style and in amount of orna- 
 ment, we find a subtler and perhaps truer 
 relationship than in more definite features of 
 actual shape. 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 77 
 
 connected with particular styles and particular classes of buildings, exercise 
 a very great influence on most minds. The great difference from faces is 
 that a degree of irregularity is common in buildings which is impossible 
 in faces, and most unusual even in the most bizarre of living organisms. 
 Whatever view we take of the irregularity, whether we refer it to associa- 
 tion with the aspects of Nature, or to mere dislike of constraint and for- 
 mality, or to both, the fact is clear that architectural types have a less 
 fixed and objective footing than those of living organisms, and all manner of 
 sentimental and historical associations colour the conception of them. 
 Doubtless, the accepted types of human beauty vary and have varied : but, 
 outside the savage preference for exaggeration of any feature which is 
 already by nature strongly pronounced, there is and has been a sort of 
 general agreement as to the elements which make up fineness of type ; 
 at any rate such types are not subjected to the tremendous reversals 
 of admiration and contempt, decline and rejuvenescence, which the 
 history of Architecture can show. It would be curious to watch what would 
 be the result, if a specimen of Queen Anne architecture, of a sort now 
 commonly and justly accounted piquant and picturesque, could be 
 suddenly presented for the first time, as a new thing, isolated from all re- 
 membrance of its fellows, or of the history of its style ; probably a storm 
 of contradictory opinions, and hardly a single very deep and instinctive 
 conviction. Comparatively few arrive at the power of j'udging Architecture 
 with a reference either to mechanical or aesthetic principles ; and many 
 never get over the stage of judging of fresh work by simple reference, very 
 likely unconscious, to familiar and approved types and specimens. In the 
 case of a monumental art this may be in the main natmral and right : it is 
 only noticed here as one of the conditions which affect the appreciation of 
 architectural forms. 
 
 And here it will be well to pause for a moment, to consider certain § 13. The 
 general principles which underlie some of the points already noticed. For characterktic 
 we have now arrived at the most convenient place for considering, in relation rfor^sensesTn^" 
 to sight, the second great characteristic which distinguishes the two privi- relation to 
 
 ° ' ° & r pleasure: the 
 
 leged senses with respect to the pleasure they can derive from phenomena, power of per- 
 The first great characteristic, it will be remembered, was the perception of siveness in cer- 
 form, with all that it involves ; this has been to some extent considered, as propCTte'^of 
 far as vision is concerned. The second is rather more recondite, and the 'I'^S^ : 
 actual statement of it was best deferred till some examples of its bearings 
 had been given. It is the power, which exists only in relation to the 
 two privileged senses, of perceiving a special impres siveness in certain 
 general qualities presented by many external things, such as size, mass, 
 complexity, force, swiftness. To understand how this is, we must 
 examine what are the exact conditions for impressiveness in these notions ; 
 what are their characteristics on the frequent occasions when they impart 
 
78 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 a distinct element of their own to the pleasure of our perceptions. For 
 the notions themselves could be formed to a great extent through simple 
 muscular and tactile experiences, unconnected with sight or hearing ; and 
 in all cases these muscular or tactile experiences play a most indispensable 
 part in their formation. Thus we could get some conception of the size of 
 a mountain, without ever having seen it, through ideas of distance and steep- 
 ness gradually acquired through simple muscular experience. A blind man 
 could realise the complexity of some elaborate piece of tracery by passing 
 his fingers along the several Hues ; he could realise swiftness by the action 
 of running, or by holding his hand in rushing water ; he could gain a perfect 
 idea of rapidity Of succession by passing his hand quickly along some area 
 tailings. But none of the imaginative pleasure in size or swiftness, or any 
 such general quality^ seems possible without the supervention of one of the 
 two superior senses. The case of hearing we will defer for the present : 
 its effects of this kind will prove to depend very gTeatly on association with 
 the phenomena of sight. It is in connection with sight, in the seeing of 
 vast things, or richly complicated things, or things in strong and rapid 
 motion, that we find the imagination most frequently and powerfully 
 roused. It would seem then that the required conditions must be closely 
 associated with some definite characteristic of the sense of vision. Now 
 what special characteristics do we find in the eye ? One we have already 
 considered ; namely, that power of discriminating an infinite variety of 
 impressions which was so intimately connected with the perception of form. 
 If we look beyond this, surely no characteristic is so prominent as the ease 
 and rapidity with which the eye does its work : the muscles which direct 
 it, so far as their normal use is concerned, seem almost absolutely untiring. 
 The condition required, then, may be surmised to be that we shall take 
 in and master with ease and rapidity and safety, as by the eye we are 
 enabled to do, a set of impressions which in other ways are associated with 
 exertion and physical stress, or even with pain and violence, as in the 
 ideas of such sudden shocks and catastrophes as are involved in falls from 
 heights and other rapid motion of external matter ; which ideas in their 
 turn owe their power over us ultimately to our direct physical knowledge, 
 acquired partly by sight, and partly by direct bodily experience, of falls, 
 resistances, crushings, and blows. 
 
 In this way we may connect our point with those two most general 
 nected with the and fundamental factors of our supersensuous enjoyments, both of which 
 and the sense have already been incidentally mentioned ; the sense oi power and the sense 
 of contrast. To recur to our example of a mountain : a man who had 
 never seen such an object would feel no imaginative glow from the mere 
 reaUsation of its size by tiring himself in walking over it ; but when we 
 experience a sense of expansion and delight in gazing up its side, the two 
 fundamental factors just mentioned are probably combined, in a pleasing 
 
 of contrast. 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 79 
 
 feeling that we are, so to speak, traversing and surmounting with facile 
 sweeps of the eye something the traversing and surmounting of which 
 might be, in another way, a matter of time, toil, and danger, and whose 
 very height suggests dimly the violence of a fall : while the very con- 
 sciousness of this other way, so far as it is observed lurking in our minds^ 
 brings with it a sense both of power and contrast in the ease with which we 
 avoid it. 
 
 That the eye can play the part here assigned to it, in the appreciation 
 of size and succession, is primarily due to that same extraordinary power 
 of distinguishing impressions which was involved in the appreciation of 
 form, and which we have already connected with the extremely complex 
 structure and action of the organ. In roving rapidly over a large space, 
 or marking the rapid motion of objects, it can realise without effort the 
 multitude and succession of the sensational elements. The tactile and 
 muscular senses, as we saw before, agree with those of sight and hearing in 
 possessing great power of distinguishing successive feeHngs, and we may 
 add of acting for a long time together without any deadening of sensation ; 
 but then in their connection with the phenomena which yield the impres- 
 sive conceptions we have been considering, the characteristics of effort and 
 even pain become prominent. And it is to the engagement on the self- 
 same things of one or other of the two superior senses and of the muscular 
 and tactile senses (these last acting of course as a rule through dim mental 
 representation), — it is to this interplay of feeUng, this double line of ex- 
 perience, this knowledge of the same external facts through such different 
 and indeed contrasted means, that I have referred those stirring and 
 impressive general conceptions which make so frequent an element in 
 Our aesthetic pleasiKes. 
 
 As regards Architecture, it is chiefly in relation to size and complexity Application to 
 that we shall find such an element prominent : but it probably would not ■'^''<''''*^°™''®- 
 be hard to extend the hst of the conceptions to which the above principle 
 will apply with more or less of explanatory power. We might connect 
 with it our instinctive delight in the menacing aspect of overhanging tiers 
 and frowning cornices. And in the mere apprehension of symmetry by the 
 eye, there seems to be some reference to it : though several other elements 
 of effect are certainly much more obviously present. Thus, symmetry is 
 the natural condition of strength and stability for anything which has 
 weight : in cases where this does not apply, mere habit has often an over- 
 powering force, as in the sameness of the two sides which we consider 
 normal in the human face ; and even where habit has no such irresistible 
 influence on our feelings, there is a sense of unreasonableness, when two 
 things or two parts of a thing are identical in purpose and function, and yet 
 different in size or form ; as if we had one door-post square and the other 
 round, or wore two boots of obviously different patterns These considera- 
 
80 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 § 14. Archi- 
 tectural effects 
 are, in a large 
 majority of 
 cases, rather 
 general than 
 individual. 
 
 tions, however, on their own account are rather negative than positive ; 
 they show rather why want of symmetry should offend than why symmetry 
 should please. Nor perhaps can symmetry be really detached as an 
 element of pleasure ; but where the elements of size and weight, and so 
 of literal balance, become prominent, as often in buildings, I think that, 
 combined with a latent consciousness that unbalanced things give way 
 and fall, the love of power and of contrast may again be traced, in the sense 
 of ease and rapidity with which we appreciate by vision facts otherwise 
 ascertainable only by long and laborious measurements. 
 
 On reviewing, now, our account of abstract forms as presented in Archi- 
 tecture, one result to which we are led, and which seems confirmed by 
 experience, is that effects of a somewhat general kind predominate. It 
 is, of course, not denied that hundreds of beautiful buildings may stand 
 out as individuals with as much distinctness as the beautiful productions 
 of other arts. But such works must be exceptional among the buildings, 
 whether really existent or ideally possible, from which the spectator should 
 be able to derive true pleasure. To the ordinary apprehension there must 
 always be many buildings which, however pleasing, will seem very like a 
 great many others ; and even in the more remarkable examples of buildings 
 similar in style and purpose, there will almost necessarily be many parts 
 and points of view which will hardly impress the spectator as belonging 
 to a new and individual utterance of the inventor. Not but that the 
 humblest dwellings may have individuality of a sort ; no building which 
 houses a human family should lack this ; but it must be rather in device or 
 ornament or minor arrangements than in characteristic architectural forms. 
 Such facts may of course be in part referred to the unchanging purposes of 
 convenience and utility which, in the main, give to the art its point d'appui 
 and opportunity ; a reference chiefly applicable of course to private build- 
 ings, where space and means are limited; but applying also in a great 
 degree to churches and more conspicuous buildings, the picked specimens 
 where the art has wider scope, and in relation to which it is principally 
 discussed. But the facts are connected also with the nature of the 
 actual forms which are our present subject of consideration. Even those 
 larger views which comprise at once a considerable portion of a beautiful 
 work, the rows of columns round a Grreek temple, the labyrinth of shafts 
 and arches in a Gothic interior, present features which are admirable 
 rather in their general effect of harmohy and majesty than because we 
 perceive in each particular case some altogether unique manifestation 
 of beauty. And still more must this restriction of effect apply to the 
 smaller elements and divisions : for according to our previous view as to 
 the relation of parts to whole in abstract architectural design, individuality 
 would be sought, if anywhere, rather in the complete than in the partial 
 aspects of the structure. 
 
ABSTliACr FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 81 
 
 To acknowledge this is not to charge even the subordinate parts or simpler 
 elements of buildings with any want of power. On the contrary, portions of 
 architectural design composed of the very simplest elements may be made 
 most imposing through the enriching and informing of them with ornament, 
 through the qualities of grand size and supporting strength, through the 
 filling out of the framework they offer with forms of freer character or 
 with noble masses of light and shadow. A simple form, such as a square, 
 may be eminently suitable as an exponent of space and surface ; the mere 
 breadth being made impressive either by the natural beauty of the 
 material or by the light of heaven and the ' wild signatures of time and 
 storm.' But these points have nothing to do with individuality of effect. 
 And it must be noticed that however much the formal elements of the 
 art may gain in emotional effect from the various sources we have 
 passed in review, they themselves are the objects actually presented to 
 the eye; so that the possibility of a great variety of individual im- 
 pressions from bits of architecture of at all the same kind would imply 
 a distinctly recognised variety, individuality, and newness in the forms, 
 or in their relative positions and proportions. And this is at any rate 
 sufficiently rare to be noticed as remarkable, when it occurs, even by 
 those most calculated to discern it. In the absence, indeed, of a definite 
 scale of proportions, such as we shall find presented in Music through the 
 element of pitch, abstract combinations seems to lack a main condition 
 for complete individuality ; since such a scale affords an obvious means for 
 a form or arrangement to differ distinctly from its fellows, and so to appear 
 spontaneous and free, while at the same time presenting recognised rela- 
 tions and limits which preclude any idea of chance or arbitrariness. Archi- 
 tectural structure comprises, of course, a number of most clearly marked 
 varieties of species in the elements which it combines ; but these will recur 
 in building after building, in aisle after aisle, in facade after facade, with 
 differences of form and arrangement which have to be regarded in their 
 larger combinations, before the impression gets even the chance of being 
 strongly individualised, for the majority at any rate of those impressed. I 
 must repeat that I am excluding all forms of ornament where the repre- 
 sentative arts, treated either in a direct or in a miore or less abstract 
 manner, are called into play ; these may give life and distinction to every 
 corner of the building, and are susceptible of any amount of variety and 
 individuality of design and workmanship. I am speaking of purely abstract 
 forms and arrangements. And though twenty different painted geome- 
 trical patterns, twenty different sections of moulding, may each be beautiful 
 in form, and though in each a trained and loving eye might detect a 
 quality which would escape the average admirer, each of them can hardly 
 cause in even the most discriminative observer that peculiar delight and 
 sense of possession which we associate with a new idea. 
 
 u 
 
82 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 Nor is there lacking a certain sublimity to these very facts when duly 
 considered ; as when Mr. Ruskin points out that for one man who could 
 compose first-rate foliated ornament, thousands could devise the abstract 
 figures which, cut through the stone, would strike from the light out of the 
 dark, or from the dark out of the light, stirring effects of power and majesty. 
 § 15. Pecu- With many of the points noticed in our sketch of architectural effects 
 
 deviio ment'of ™^y ^® connected peculiarities in the sort of training which the perceptive 
 the apprecia- faculties here receive. It will be readily granted, in a general way, that 
 o7arehYtectiia° the appreciative pleasure in buildings implies some considerable powers 
 jorms. ^^ perception and considerable training of the aesthetic sensibility. A 
 
 boor may be astonished at a very big building, as he might be at many 
 other unaccustomed sights, but his astonishment would have at best but 
 a faint trace of artistic delight. A child's first impressions of fine buildings 
 are generally merely of size and gloom, and of the colours of stained glass ; it 
 is only after an advance in perceptive power that the multitudinous order 
 and harmony of parts attract notice and admiration. This in a general 
 way may appear obvious and natural enough, but it is connected with 
 a further point in which architectural work seems peculiar. In the other 
 arts, parts are more obvious than wholes to the untrained mind ; they are 
 what are first picked out and noticed. Thus the child dwells on special 
 figures and incidents in pictures ; he has his pet verses in poetry, his 
 favourite and familiar bits of tune in musical compositions, and it is long 
 before he begins to take an interest in the organic union of these frag- 
 ments. In architectural work, on the other hand, if we exclude the repre- 
 sentative art used in its adornment, there is comparatively little of this 
 gradual training of the faculties from the interest in more or less isolated 
 bits to the more comprehensive appreciation of the whole. It is, in fact, 
 the smaller bits which need the greatest discrimination and the true 
 connoisseurship. Noble is a word which, as applied by Mr. Euskin to 
 the outline of a moulding or the proportions of a quatrefoil, must have 
 puzzled many who would themselves apply it with genuine feeling to the 
 majestic length of a Gothic nave. When the admiration begins, it begins 
 with the whole, or at all events with such large aspects of the whole as a 
 wide field of vision embraces. It is the effects where a number of parts, 
 each independently of small emotional power, unite to create the charac- 
 teristic impressions of multiplicity and harmony, it is these comprehensive 
 aspects of richly varied order, which primarily strike the imagination ; 
 primarily, not only in the sense of being absolutely the most important, 
 but also as being the earliest in their appeal to the individual. And their 
 power to appeal at all, in a way which shall involve discriminative appre- 
 ciation as distinct from mere vague wonderment and awe, depends on 
 faculties of co-ordination and balance of a comparatively advanced kind. 
 Nor is this all. The slow and hidden mental growth which leads to the 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 83 
 
 more complete appreciation seems, here, in its earlier stages at all events, 
 to mean less essentially an increase in the number of points on which the 
 imagination can dwell, or a process in which one thing noticed and learnt 
 acts as a stepping stone to the next thing noticed and learnt, than the 
 development of certain somewhat abstract notions, which inform and give 
 character to the lines and proportions, and which are gradually shaped and 
 refined from their first dim and rudimentary condition in the untrained 
 intelligence. In Modem Painters there is a surmise that changing gra- 
 dations of curvature may move us by latent suggestions of infinity; and 
 even those who may feel such lofty symbolism rather beyond them, must 
 still be conscious that in realising those mundane qualities of spring and 
 strength and adjustment of means to ends which were considered above, 
 they are drawing on conceptions which are the result of considerable 
 experience in comparison and abstraction. Thus scores will be at once 
 struck by the mere bigness of the dome of St. Peter's, for one who will be 
 keenly sensible of its superiority in form to the numerous other domes 
 which the Pincian Hill commands. 
 
 Thus far, it will be seen, we have been able to survey at some length § i6. Abstract 
 the more general sources and characteristics of impression, in the pheno- ?M°lThowfar 
 mena which we took as most prominently exemplifying abstract form, f™e'*™^°i™ 
 without dwelling on the most literally abstract element, the element of ">"<!« "'' „ 
 
 ° , •' intuition? 
 
 proportion as such, of actual relattons of magnitude and direction. This 
 more special element now claims closer attention. Our notice of it so far 
 has done no more than throw doubt on its individualising power in 
 respect of the smaller, at any rate, of the combinations Architecture may 
 present to the eye : but this of course in no way affects the position uni- 
 versally accorded to it, as at the very least a positive and indispensable 
 ingredient in architectural beauty. And it is naturally in relation to 
 this element that any special mode of intuition would be looked for, and 
 an answer be obtained to the question asked in the fourth section of this 
 chapter. The points we have so far chiefly dwelt on have not suggested 
 any such mode. Thus the elements of multiplicity and richness, though 
 very prominent in many beautiful buildings, are not specifically connected 
 with visual phenomena at all, being often admirably exemplified in the 
 complicated fabric of polyphonic music : and the elements of support and 
 strength, and the rest, we found to be distinctly associational ; that is, the 
 appreciation of their character is the result of manifold experiences in 
 the external world. What further facts, then, does the appreciation of pro- 
 portions in this rich and favoured region of abstract forms involve ? Do 
 we exercise in the appreciation of them any aesthetic faculty over and 
 above those which have been considered ? and if so, how far is the exercise 
 of the faculty peculiar to this range of phenomena ? 
 
 The most obvious way of realising the part our new element plays will 
 
 B 2 
 
84 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EVE. 
 
 be to take some case of beautiful architectural effect, to imagine some 
 distinct modification of the proportions which, as far as we can see, leaves 
 unaltered all the conditions previously enumerated, and then to ask our- 
 selves whether the beauty remains or whether some of it is lost. If some 
 of it is lost, our new element will be accurately identified, and the question 
 as to its general or special character will naturally follow. Let us take, 
 then, Giotto's campanile at Florence, which will serve the purpose very 
 well. It will be seen at once how many of the already mentioned con- 
 ditions are present in its effect: majestic height and mass, perfect unity, 
 rich elaboration of detail, signs of patient and loving toil, to which may be 
 added most dehcate colouring, and most striking and beautiful contrasts of 
 light and shade. And in its case, as it happens, we can specially easily 
 imagine a change which would leave every one of these elements intact, 
 though in itself most distinct: the separate segments or tiers can be 
 imagined equal instead of different in height ; with what disastrous result to 
 the beauty of the building is instantly realised. Here, it will be noticed, 
 we have not altered any harmony of curved lines ; we have introduced no 
 discordant element ; we have not attenuated anything so as to make it look 
 weak, or loaded anything so as to make it look clumsy or top-heavy, ot done 
 aught but just alter the abstract proportions of certain lines and surfaces ; 
 straight lines, moreover, primarily, and rectangular surfaces, that is, ele- 
 ments in themselves of the simplest and most mechanical kind ; though 
 naturally the relative proportions of the more complex elements con- 
 tained within the rectangular boundaries would have to follow suit. 
 Principle of Here, then, we have a specially perceptible case of a principle which is 
 
 iinifomity : exemplified in subtle ways throughout the range of beautiful architecture, 
 and which may be generically described as the principle of variation from 
 uniformity. This principle must be distinguished from that of variety 
 and multiplicity of parts perceived under an aspect of unity, which we 
 have considered above. There the mind was concerned with the number 
 of elements, many of which might be identical in form and size, and with 
 recognising the order which embraced them : here it is occupied with a. few 
 elements or parts, different but sufficiently nearly uniform and equal to 
 be comparable. The same principle is at the root of the pleasure given 
 by changing curvature in a single line or surface, where the degrees of 
 change are not so sudden but that the notion of uniformity may be con- 
 sidered latent in the very feeling of its being departed from ; in such a 
 case the variation occurs as free form,, while in cases like that of the tower, 
 where distinct and separate parts are perceived, perhaps it would be more 
 intelligibly described as free proportion. Taken in either way, few who 
 have received any sort of refined pleasure from buildings will doubt that, 
 whether consciously realised or not, this element of effect has been very 
 constantly present. Nor is it necessary or suitable to discuss here the 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 85 
 
 various applications of the principle, in the face of the masterly exposition 
 and exemplification of it in Mr. Euskin's chapter on the Lamp of 
 Beauty ; where, by the way, he describes the tower of Pisa as the one 
 thoroughly ugly tower in Italy, just because of its division into vertically 
 equal parts. At present oiu: less attractive task is to examine not 
 artistic details, but psychological facts ; to discover, if possible, whether or 
 not the application of the general principle to architectural forms involves 
 some distinct and peculiar mental process. 
 
 For it is clear that the principle itself is general ; that it admits of 
 much wider application than to a single art. The deadness of monotony 
 is proverbial : the idea of it is common to all manner of experiences; and 
 sameness of parts is not more alien to organic beauty than to all the higher 
 forms of organic life. We might even connect the appearance of the prin- 
 ciple in Architecture with the more prominent phenomena of organic life Hs application 
 
 * ^ . . - in Arcliitectnie 
 
 by something closer than the general agreement in differentiation oi parts, being specially 
 In both cases the variations from uniformity are in the elements taken in natural organic 
 the vertical direction, while the similar elements are horizontal : a tower or structure. 
 spire, like a man, or like a typical plant, is symmetrical horizontally, divided 
 into unlike parts vertically. Further, as eyes and limbs and various pairs of 
 similar organs are symmetrically arranged in animals, so in buildings those 
 parts are similar which have a common office. We may even trace an 
 identity of reason for this arrangement, where it is connected with facts 
 of what may be called horizontal occurrence. Thus a space enclosed by 
 walls or columns is usually wanted for proceedings which take place on a 
 horizontal plane, viz. the floor, and indifferently over the whole of that 
 plane, which is moved over in horizontal directions ; the parallel vertical 
 divisions, therefore, which all play an equal part in the surrounding of the 
 space, naturally present similar parts at the same horizontal level ; and 
 they have all another function in common beyond that of enclosing, 
 namely, to support the ceiling or roof, the weight of which is necessarily 
 distributed in a horizontal plane at their tops, just as a man's weight is 
 equally supported by his legs. So that over and above the fact that sym- 
 metry involves the notion of balance, and that balance is necessarily of 
 things placed side by side, not one on the top of another, we may connect 
 the relative positions of the unlike parts in the artificial works to some 
 extent with the habitual presentation of the same relation in natural ob- 
 jects: and the look of organic vitality in beautifully proportioned buildings 
 may thus be connected with our more general sense of organic structure. 
 
 Such grounds, however, as are thus established for the appearance of § 17. Reason 
 the element of variation in Architecture, are merely associational, as in so go^e more 
 many of the previous cases : they do not lead us a step towards any special Hg^^"^^^^^ 
 mode of intuition. And it may be asked. Why should we expect to find 
 any such special mode involved in our sense of architectural proportions ? 
 
86 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO TEE EYE. 
 
 Why should we not be content with recognising that sense as just a 
 delicate exemplification of the wider principle which connects a feeling of 
 deadness with utter sameness, and of life and interest with due variation ? 
 why should we seek to specialise it further ? The question is so natural that 
 it will be best to anticipate somewhat in order to answer it. We shall find, 
 then, that the other class of abstract phenomena which it will be our 
 business to consider, those of Music, present a unique and irreducible 
 character, and that in their case the appreciation of free form does involve 
 a special exercise, belonging to what I shall have to designate again and 
 again as the musical faculty. I call melodic form free,, meaning not that 
 it is arbitrary and capricious, but that it is spontaneous ; that no a jpnon 
 exercise of intelligence could have deduced from the general principle of 
 variation the smallest conception of what melody would be, and no clue is 
 afforded by that principle as to why any specimen of it is just what it is ; that 
 each presentation of it which seems right seems so in a way peculiar to itself, 
 and the sense of the Tightness appears strictly intuitive. I call it umque 
 and irreducible, because it is a matter settled, so to speak, between the 
 sense of sound and the sense of form by a collusion which, with our limited 
 intelUgence, we can but describe as just a perceptive faculty for this par- 
 ticular class of phenomena, and which gives no handle even for such sort of 
 explanation as analogies seem to afford. These statements will of course 
 receive their justification later : I am assuming here, for the sake of clear- 
 ness, and without argument, that whatever explanations of musical effect 
 turn out to be possible, the exercise of the musical faculty will present an 
 ultimate and inexplicable element. Now it cannot be considered unnatural 
 to ask whether visual forms and proportions can be free and unique in this 
 peculiar sense ; whether the appreciation of these, like that of auditory 
 forms, ever entails the special exercise of a faculty confined to that exercise ; 
 or whether, on the other hand, the general principle of variation from uni- 
 formity (supervening, of course, in the case of Architecture, on the 
 nvimerous other elements of effect which have been more or less described) 
 may be here regarded as a full and sufficient explanation. 
 § 18. Special The question presents peculiar difficulties. For it cannot be denied that 
 ^rnS^tht*' ^^ ^ g^^^* ™^^y specimens of architecture, and of good architecture too, 
 questioninthe ^^q ^^ variations from uniformity which are certainly not enjoyed by 
 tectuie: any special faculty for perceiving rightness of proportion, and where we 
 
 can directly apply the general principle of love of freedom and dislike of 
 formality. Such specimens usually fall under the category of what is 
 commonly described as the picturesque : Elizabethan manor-houses, bits 
 of street in Nuremburg, views in old cities at night with 
 
 Towers that, larger than themselves 
 In their own darkness, thronged into the moon — 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 87 
 
 these are things which most amateurs have enjoyed, and enjoy in retro- 
 spect, with a feeling rather of their fantastic, untrammelled, unconven- 
 tional character, than with a sense of cogent rightness in the proportions 
 of their parts realised by a special faculty. And a somewhat similar 
 remark seems to apply to such deviations from regularity in comparatively 
 regular work, as Mr. Euskin has described in his chapter on the Lamp 
 of Life ; for example, in the west front of St. Mark's. The effect in such 
 cases might, I imagine, be referable to the general sense of living free- 
 dom, as in the like yet freely differing members of a mighty forest tree : 
 though of course I should bow to Mr. Euskin, if he told me that his 
 perception of the actual proportions was of something too positively and 
 particularly right to be fully accounted for on such a basis. Again, the 
 very simplicity of the notion of relative size is an added source of diffi- 
 culty. Lines and surfaces are matters of measurement, and equality 
 makes a standard from which variations are naturally measured ; even 
 changing curves can be mathematically quantified : whereas we shall find, 
 when we come to melodic forms, that (owing to their resulting from two 
 heterogeneous factors, those of time and pitch) they are complex after a 
 fashion which precludes measurement or any quantitative notion of their 
 variation from uniformity. The facility of imagining simple relations of 
 form and size seems to create a constant possibility that what we call a 
 sense of proportion (as in thf^ case of the tiers of Giotto's tower) is 
 nothing more than a direct application of the general principle of varia- 
 tion, with just the added proviso that the variation must be large enough 
 to be qiiite perceptible, and not so large as to preclude all idea of com- 
 parison, not so large, that is, as to cease to be a true variation : while the 
 perceptive faculty may be conceived to owe its appearance of specialisa- 
 tion to the exceptional amount and variety of exercise and interest which 
 it happens to get in just this one class of phenomena, to the pre-eminence 
 of this one field for its practice and development. Once more, the fact 
 that the forms and proportions presented to the eye are grasped almost 
 or quite instantaneously, makes the perception of them specially hard to 
 examine, in contrast to the perception of melodic forms, which is a distinct 
 process extending over a definite space of time. And again, our life-long 
 knowledge of the external world, its lines, its weights, its mechanical facts, 
 its living organisms, cannot be eliminated from our appreciation of propor- 
 tions in buildings ; which are congeries not only of visible forms, but of 
 heavy and resistant matter. Equally hard is it, in many cases, to abstract 
 the actual proportional element from the other features which are present 
 to the eye without essentially entering into the proportional scheme, 
 including not only such general ones as majestic size, but all the wealth 
 of beauty in details of structure and in ornament and colour, which the 
 cojQtrolling proportions (of the ti«rs, for instance, in Giotto's tower) 
 
88 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 
 
 embrace without in any sense necessitating. It thus seems hopeless to 
 wonder what sort of power we should have of getting pleasure out of the 
 lines and surfaces by what we now call sense of proportion, apart from all 
 association and knowledge of these other elements ; but it would, at any 
 rate, be something infinitely inferior in distinctness of action and definite- 
 ness of results to the musical sense. For we might have exactly the 
 main proportions of Giotto's tower in a high and narrow set of book- 
 shelves, and prefer the variations in height of the perpendicular divisions 
 to sameness ; but the proportions would not impress us as unique, nor 
 strike us vividly as being the same as those in the tower ; whereas Rule 
 Britannia is recognised as Rule Britarvnia, as one unique set of pro- 
 portions, whether played on the tuba-stop of an organ or on a penny 
 whistle. 
 
 Nor is it only in these ways, in the general difficulty of isolating it or 
 of tracing its various concrete references, that a character of doubt here 
 attaches to the sense of proportion : there is also a frequent difficulty in 
 discovering how far its determinations are fixed for any special ease, and 
 with what degree of certainty and unanimity the feeling of peculiar right- 
 ness or wrongness obtains. We thus get back to the question of indi- 
 viduality which has already been to some extent discussed. It has been said 
 that all good proportions are unique ; but can they be said to be all felt as 
 unique ? How far is the impression individual in the sense that any change 
 would impair it ? Suppose for a moment that it were possible gradually to 
 alter, before the eyes of assembled connoisseurs, the sizes of the various sec- 
 tions of some building, say the heights of the several segments of a tower 
 and spire in a given position and of given material ; would every stage 
 seem wrong except at a few definite points in the change, at which all 
 or many of the spectators would suddenly exclaim ' Stop ! ' with a relief, 
 as from wrongness and ugliness ? and would they carry away in their 
 mind's eye a distinct vision of these few aspects as unique? Surely 
 the gradual heightening of the spire might take place, within certain 
 limits, without presenting a succession of aspects either so wrong as to 
 be felt like wrong notes, or so right as to be felt as wholly individual. 
 And, as regards the perceptions of the ordinary run of admirers, the 
 very notion of such certainty and uniqueness becomes ridiculous.' The 
 same applies to the forms whose abstract character is most unmixed and 
 marked, such as beautiful spirals ; many of which might be seen to be dif- 
 ferent from one another, but without creating the impression that each 
 has an unmistakable and unchangeable individuality; for instance, we 
 
 ' Even the much-quoted example of the tion, which might figure in countless build- 
 
 ' Golden Section ' has never received any ings, would of course only make it harder 
 
 sort of universal and intuitive recognition : to daim free individuality for the abstract 
 
 while to insist on such a feature of propor- element of each particular building. 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EYE. 89 
 
 might pull one of them into another by imperceptible stages ; but could 
 never so treat two melodies. And in accordance with these facts, the 
 number of harmonious visual forms and proportions in total abstraction, 
 which we could keep in our heads as individually distinct, would be 
 few indeed as compared with the thousands of musical motives which are 
 easily and perfectly remembered.' 
 
 I am inclined to doubt whether any precise discrimination of the which suggests 
 faculties we employ is here possible ; and I can easily conceive that the view^rfthe'"^ 
 very discussion of the question may seem a barren exercise in aimless and ™«iy8is of 
 tiresome distinctions. My defence must be that it is impossible to devote 
 any time and thought to speculation upon so unique a phenomenon as 
 melody, without craving to get some view of an analogy in another field of 
 experience, of some parallelism m mental process or mode of perception, 
 if not in the things perceived. Sight and hearing occupy together too 
 unique a position among our senses for a vista of comparison from the 
 experiences of one to those of the other not to seem possible. And 
 the possibility of the vista stimulates search : for that entirely ultimate 
 and unanalysable nature, which we readily recognise in the case of simple 
 sense-impressions, we find great difficulty in allowing to more advanced 
 mental phenomena. In their case a cul^de^sac has a specially dispiriting 
 effect ; so dispiriting that, could it be fully realised, it might be regarded as 
 complete punishment for impertinent curiosity, by those who hold as a 
 sufi&ciently ultimate principle in these matters Mr. Euskin's fundamental 
 doctrine ; namely, that we enjoy beautiful things because they have been 
 made beautiful and we have been made to enjoy them. If the further 
 analysis is fruitless and irreverent, these may say, it is well that it should 
 be irksome. Nor can I, at this poiat, even so much as indicate the ad- 
 vantage to our main subject of treading these perplexing paths. In the 
 face, however, of such statements as Mr. Euskin's, that Eeynolds, by those 
 
 ' On the whole, if the general feeling for inasmuch as before it was actually exercised 
 
 variation from uniformity be indeed special- in this quite new case, the effect of its 
 
 ised in some peculiar and inexplicable exercise could be realised. On the other 
 
 manner in connection with the eye, it is hand, I can hardly imagine making a person 
 
 perhaps easier to imagine the exercise of the who had seen nothing but uniform lines or 
 
 specialised faculty in the case of the chang- ungradated surfaces feel the character of a 
 
 ing curvature of lines and the gradated changing curve or a gradated surface till he 
 
 shading of curved surfaces, than in relative actually saw one : but then, here comes the 
 
 proportions of lengths and sizes. I could difficulty, that he might not enjoy it when 
 
 imagine that a person of artistic sensibility he did see it ; that enjoyment of such 
 
 who had always lived remote from buildings curves and gradations may be entirely bound 
 
 might have the Pisan tower with its equal up vfith the perpetual past experience of 
 
 tiers presented to his view, and might be them in the environment. And if this be . 
 
 brought to feel in virtue of the general in- so, most delicate and remote associational 
 
 stinctforvarietyratherthanmonotony,thatat references maybe supposed to be present; 
 
 any rate some difference would be agreeable ; as, for instance, in the connection of a look 
 
 that is, his faculty for appreciating variety of elasticity and spring with vital strength 
 
 of proportion would so far lack speciality, and growth in the organic world. 
 
90 'ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO TH1& EYE. 
 
 references to the influence of habit which were noticed above, betrays 
 
 ' a doubt as to the existence of beauty at all,' it is worth observing in 
 
 passing that the dully scientific procedure is truly not so much opposed 
 
 as supplementary to Mr. Euskin's principle ; and that to attempt to trace 
 
 the evolution of beauty is no more to deny or explain away its primary 
 
 mystery (much less its existence) than to trace the evolution of physical 
 
 organisms is to deny the mystery of life. 
 
 § 19. Confir- One positive result, at all events, from the foregoing argument con- 
 
 vioiis remarks nects itself with and confirms some of our previous remarks. Whether 
 
 ^vation^neces- ^^ ^o*^ ^'^ faculty for fully appreciating visual forms and proportions con- 
 
 sary for the tains a unique element, its exercise is at aU events a late result of practice 
 
 appreciation of ^ ' ~ 
 
 Architecture, and' culttire : an uncultivated eye would be as unlikely to appreciate the 
 portance of refined variations of height in the tiers of the Florentine campanile as to 
 pared with"™' ^^'^ delight in the moulding of an arch. We may go further and say that 
 parts. appreciation of the sorts of variation we have last considered is a more 
 
 refined and later product, involving a more delicate discrimination, than 
 the feeling of general majesty and of rich and complicated harmonies of 
 form. Wrongness and contradiction in the fundamental lines will often 
 distress the eye of the connoisseur, where that of the average observer 
 may be roaming with admiration over the spaces which they bound, re- 
 joicing in the expanse and the multitude of ordered forms, with the adorn- 
 ment perhaps of beautiful colour or the efflorescence of rich workmanship. 
 And if this be so, a further fact of interest is thereby indicated ; namely, 
 that as in the earlier appeals of Architecture to the imagination, so in the 
 last and most subtle appreciation of its beauties, it is on the whole, or 
 very large aspects of the whole, rather than on the separate parts, that 
 the faculties are principally and most effectively exercised. As we 
 formerly found that a multitude of conspiring parts conveyed impressions 
 the secret of which would be sought in vain in the forms and characters 
 of the separate elements, so now we find that where the delicate per- 
 ception of proportions becomes a prime factor of effect, it is pre-eminently 
 in relation to the great elements which constitute the main divisions of 
 the whole height and mass ; the very simplest members, it may be, in 
 actual form, but the controlling ones under the dominance of which the 
 eye takes in all the varied detail of the organism. The bearing of these 
 remarks wUl appear when we pass on, as we must now do, to the facts and 
 problems of musical forms, considered briefly in relation to those views of 
 abstract form which up to this point have presented themselves. 
 
91 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 The relation between architectural and musical forms is, as I have pre- § l- As to 
 
 T 1 ■ n r imi i i r form, Architec- 
 
 mised, chiefly one of contrast. The saymg that ' Architecture is frozen ture and Music 
 Music,' is, for all its prettiness, exceptionally misleading ; such resem- buTcontrast. 
 blances as may present themselves hereafter being between the two arts 
 just Tiot concerned with the elements of form and structure which seem 
 indicated in the word frozen. It may be said that such analogies are not 
 to be pressed ; that there is a certain absurdity in taking such a phrase 
 seriously and pointing out its deficiencies in detail. But in reality the 
 phrase expresses in a picturesque way the sort of views to which I called 
 attention at the close of the third chapter, and which are all included 
 under what may be called the external conception of Music. These views 
 are seriously and literally held by many to whom ' Music ' merely means 
 certain spaces of time filled with a large flow of agreeable and ordered sounds, 
 presenting certain impressive aspects of contrast and symmetry. They em- 
 brace all that mode of regarding Music which is apt to be impUed in the 
 common talk about ' musical disposition ' of Hnes or masses or colours ; talk 
 which is perfectly legitimate as long as musical is accepted, on the authority 
 of its Greek original, as meaning in the widest sense harmonious and 
 fairly fashioned; but which naturally runs on into conveying the im- 
 pression that the essential points in the phenoTnena of Music must be 
 connected with their kinship to these ' musical ' phenomena. The misconcep- 
 tion is fostered by the fact that there is in Music a definite element called 
 harmony ; and for that reason, if for no other, I cannot too early or too 
 emphatically state, what will become clearer as we proceed, that it is not 
 Harmony or notes in combination, but Melody or notes in succession, 
 which is the prime and essential element in Music ; nor for some time to 
 come shall we have anything to do with any other. 
 
 To begin with, supposing we are determined to find some visual § 2. Difficulty 
 analogue for melody, a diflSculty presents itself as to what is the right one ^here'aifana- 
 to take. Is it to be a line, or a combination of lines ? Melodies have often g^^en^o^theSt 
 been compared to arabesques, or wavy lines pure and simple ; not only does general sort, 
 their look on paper suggest this, but when heard they give an irresistible 
 impression of being things which we advance along steadily, of things 
 
92 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 . § 3. Melody 
 lacks simiilta^ 
 neous com- 
 plexity of 
 parts: 
 
 but is pre- 
 eminent in 
 tlie sense it 
 conveys of 
 cogent and 
 definite right- 
 ness in its 
 elements ; 
 
 which have to be followed from end to end, and whose nature prevents 
 their parts from being regarded in an arbitrary or zigzag order, as when 
 our eyes travel up and down and along, and glance and re-glance from 
 part to part of, some large architectural combination. But then, on the 
 other hand, in a melodic form the proportional element indubitably enters 
 at every single note ; every note-unit has definite relations of time and 
 pitch to its neighbours ; so that, reasoning on merely abstract grounds, 
 we should say the analogy would be to some complete proportional 
 arrangement of forms, rather than to a single line or surface, whose curve, 
 though its degrees are measurable, in no sense consists of separate and 
 distinct elements. As regards emotional character, again, we must cer- 
 tainly go to large and elaborate architectural structures before we arrive 
 at effects as overpowering and enduring as are produced by many and 
 many a melody only eight or sixteen bars in length ; and this fact at once 
 reveals the unreasonableness of connecting melody with some smaller piece 
 of design, through measuring it by the paper it covers or the time it occupies. 
 Here then the continuous line, or the minor arrangement of curves, seems 
 put further than ever out of court by its unemotional character, contrasted 
 with what is possible to melody ; but then if we go beyond abstract struc- 
 ture, and come to sesthetic effects, we shall find that the combination 
 hypothesis presents equal though different difficulties. This sort of 
 doubt, and the reasons for it, sufficiently show at the very outset how 
 empty and unsuggestive is either comparison, and how hopeless it seems 
 to know even where we ought to look for any subtler and deeper affinities. 
 Again, in a melodic form there is no multiplicity or thronging of ele- 
 ments, no impression of conspiring parts aU there at once. The elements 
 are units succeeding one another in time ; and though each in turn, by 
 being definitely related to its neighbours, is felt as belonging to a larger 
 whole, there is no simultaneity of impression. Thus the effect of a 
 melody pure and simple is not in the slightest degree one of richness and 
 number ; nor though the number of its elements may be actually very con- 
 siderable, do they exhibit anything analogous to the labyrinthine order pre- 
 sentable by a similar number of visual elements, which the eye would delight 
 to thrid and master with a conscious realisation of their complexity. 
 
 As regards exact Tightness and definiteness of the component units, 
 on the other hand, melodic forms stand pre-eminent. The rightness here 
 spoken of is of course not of that deeper sort which implies and is implied 
 in a good melody with impressiveness of a distinctly individual kind ; it is 
 a general feature of melodies, good, bad, and indifferent. What is meant 
 is that each unit falls definitely in its right place as an obviously essen- 
 tial part of the whole, such as it is ; strike out or alter a unit here and 
 there, and what was an organic whole is either broken into more or less 
 incoherent fragments ; or if in some exceptional instance it retains a satis- 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 93 
 
 factory coherence, it is by becoming something else, recognised as another 
 whole. If less marked notes be selected for omission, the melody may 
 indeed retain a coherence as the ghost of its former self; but it would 
 usually fail to give a notion of its true self to a person who heard it first 
 in the mutilated form ; and this last condition would afford the true test, 
 as the missing elements, if previously known, are easily supplied by the 
 imagination. Even in cases where the melody is previously unknown, it 
 often happens that certain notes follow so naturally on certain others (as, 
 for example, in a phrase where some of the adjoining notes of the scale 
 follow each other consecutively), that the supply of missing notes or the 
 correction of wrong ones would be easy to any person of sufficient ear to 
 catch a tune at all. But all who realise what melodies sound like, as 
 played on a piano containing one or two dumb notes, or with still more 
 marked results as played by a person who makes occasional wrong shots, 
 will admit that to perceive what must be right is something so different 
 from getting the appropriate effect of pleasure as to be compatible with 
 an extreme degree of worry and irritation. And that the units can so 
 easily be put so very definitely wrong implies that their Tightness is very 
 cogently and definitely right. The whole which they make up may 
 perhaps be weak and silly, as (to use a very loose metaphor) a series of 
 grammatical words may make up a weak and silly sentence ; but as in a 
 familiar sentence words cannot be omitted or replaced Cexcept by 
 synonyms, and in Music there are no synonyms) without obvious destruc- 
 tion or alteration of the sense, so neither can single notes in a familiar 
 tune be altered or replaced, except in very peculiar cases, without instantly 
 producing this feeling of wrongness. 
 
 It is true that melodic forms have been altered in the making, and 
 that the final result, though considerably different from its unelaborated 
 predecessor, may manifest unmistakable kinship with it. But such altera- 
 tions are of phrases or of bars, or at any rate of several notes together, most 
 exceptionally, if ever, of single notes ; so that though the family likeness 
 of the two forms, through identity of certain strong individual parts or 
 pivots, may survive throughout, yet in each stage the units are fitted in, 
 so to speak, and linked together in a close chain where each is indispens- 
 able in its place ; and when the tune is one on which the mind has 
 dwelt with pleasure, any conceivable change will be resented. 
 
 But, it may be objected, this is no more than might be said of a loved 
 piece of architecture : the eye, like the ear, would resent alteration in 
 forms on which it had dwelt with pleasure. Not quite in the same way, 
 however. The eye might resent the introduction of a downright wrong 
 line, cutting across and marring the flow of other Unes, somewhat as the ear 
 resents a downright false note : but suppose that we saw a tolerably exact 
 reproduction of a piece of architecture that we knew and admired, eon- 
 
94 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED' TO THE EAh'. 
 
 taining, however, certain differences not in themselves otherwise than 
 good and harmonious; we should probably mark the resemblance and 
 the difference, but should certainly not receive the shock of wrongness, 
 as of our familiar object of contemplation disfigured, which we receive 
 when we hear a favourite tune played with some new turn of phrase, or 
 say an alteration of the closing cadence. 
 
 which is due to The reason of this seems to be greatly due to the definiteness of the 
 
 time,' """^ " moment at which each element of a melody strikes the sense. The eye 
 receives its impressions by its own free will at its own time, and wanders 
 at its own pace over the parts of objects : whereas the ear is prepared for 
 each particular unit of impression at a particular instant, and in propor- 
 tion as the expectation is focussed on that instant, is a distinct jar felt 
 when it is baulked. 
 
 and of pitch. The other important cause of the definiteness of melodic form is the 
 
 definiteness of pitch in the notes which are its material ; and this is of 
 course directly connected with the existence of a fixed scale of notes, 
 deviations from which are instantly detected as errors of flatness or sharp- 
 ness. The impression of unique and exact rightness, which is entailed in 
 this peculiar power of notes to be out of tune as well as vti, is most promi- 
 nently brought out when a singer or player slides from one note through an 
 interval till the sound reaches the precise point of rest at the next note. I 
 will not anticipate the more detailed examination of melodic forms in a sub- 
 sequent chapter by dwelling on this peculiarity; but it may be well to point 
 out here that this actual division of the scale into elements at certain dis- 
 tances from each other, involves a definiteness quite beyond and distinct from 
 the definiteness of pitch which we found, in the first chapter, to differentiate 
 tones from noises. In that former sense we should have said that definite- 
 ness of pitch existed wherever at any moment a musical pitch could be 
 assigned to a sound ; wherever it would be possible to detect by examina- 
 tion, supposing the sound to be checked at any instant, that the last 
 impression on the ear answered to some real position on or between the 
 notes of a pianoforte. Definiteness in this sense is really tantamount to 
 perceptible existence : it marks off certain sounds which have, from the 
 general run of sounds which have not, a sufiicient element of certainty to 
 localise them in the scale. But sounds might be extremely definite in 
 this sense quite apart from the division of the scale into fixed degrees. 
 Thus a violinist who draws his bow across a string while he steadily moves 
 the stopping finger up or down it, produces a shifting sound which is every- 
 where in the truest sense tone, which, if stopped and examined at any 
 instant, would be recognised as having had at that instant a perfectly 
 distinct pitch, but which is quite continuous and undivided. 
 § 4. Definite- The extreme definiteness of the notes, and of their mode of adjustment 
 
 meToSc'forms: ^ o^^^ another, connects itself with the further fact of definiteness in the 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 :95 
 
 ■whole organic series which they compose. The one thing is really involved 
 in the other. It follows, from the peculiarity in the elements of melody, 
 as already described, that they present nothing analogous to an outline 
 or skeleton of lines, capable of being presented or imagined alone and 
 then filled in with siibordinate lines and dividing forms or proportions. 
 We saw that, if we consider the actual melodic notes (neglecting shakes 
 and ornaments, if such be present, as being not structur&l elements at all, 
 but pure excrescences), the structure or organism can only exist by dint 
 of their all being there in their right places. Thus the ideas of outline 
 and detail have no application : the proportions on which the form 
 depends have no degrees of scope and importance ; they are everywhere 
 essentially present, and everywhere interdependent.' And this entire con- 
 tinuity of structure, this necessity for identifying each particular element 
 as it occurs, under pain of missing any coherent conception of the form, 
 cannot but entail a peculiar definiteness of individuality in the form itself. 
 
 ' It is of course a frequent mode of pro- 
 ducing a ' variation ' to introduce unessential 
 and ornamental notes between the cardinal 
 notes of a melody ; but this is analogous to 
 dressing a complete figure in ornaments, not 
 
 to filling in an outline with essential form, 
 or filling out an inexpressive skeleton with 
 flesh and blood. Thus, a ' subject ' of Beet- 
 hoven's beginning 
 
 m 
 
 r- 
 
 --ti 
 
 ^. 
 
 E^=i3E^ 
 
 -P— Tt 
 
 &c. 
 
 subsequently reappears as 
 
 It naturally usually happens that such ad- 
 ventitious notes come ietreeen and not on 
 the beats of a bar ; but this fact must by no 
 means be twisted into suggesting that, in a 
 complete and unadorned melndic form, the 
 notes on the beats of the bar are more essen- 
 tial than other notes, in the sense of pre- 
 senting an outline from which the form could 
 be judged. To a person unfamiliar with a 
 melody, notes on beats of the bar, unless 
 
 they constituted a large majority of the 
 whole number of notes actually used, would 
 convey as a rule not an im/perfeet notion, but 
 no notion of the actual form ; while to a, 
 person who knew and recognised the melody, 
 the omission of the intervening notes would 
 convert enjoyment into annoyance. Think, 
 for instance, of ' I know that my Eedeemer 
 liveth,' as opening with 
 
 P^ 
 
 or of this, as a representative of ' Lascia ch'io pianga,' 
 
 Eousseau speaks of the notes sous-entendMes 
 in the Italian music of his day as not less of 
 the essence of the melody than the actual 
 written notes — which, so far as it was the 
 
 case, is the best proof that the melodies had 
 no true essence or coherence, and were a 
 mere series of pegs for vocal gymnastics. 
 
96 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 § 5. And 
 special import- 
 ance of these 
 as complete 
 and semi-com- 
 plete parts in 
 any larger 
 musical whole ; 
 
 I must again guard against a misconception. The individuality is not 
 necessarily at all of emotional and aesthetic character; but just as a 
 hundred faces may all be quite uninteresting to us, while yet each of them 
 is clearly perceived as a separate individual, so any tune, even a dull one, 
 is apprehended as a clearly distinguishable form ; identical, it may be, in 
 certain of its parts with another tune, as one man might exactly resemble 
 another in certain features, but individual in the sense that, after being 
 once known, it is recognised again as itself and nothing else ; and that 
 if an intelligible change is made in it, such a change is instinctively 
 perceived in relation to the whole ; somewhat as a new nose on a man 
 would make for us not so much a new nose as a new face, the change 
 in either case being noticed not in detail, but in connection with the 
 ensemble. 
 
 It must be especially observed what different things are involved in the 
 entire interdependence of effect in the component units of a melodic whole, 
 and in the fact which we noticed about buildings — that their parts are ex- 
 ceptionally subordinate to the whole, or to very large aspects of the whole, 
 and that it is these large aspects which make up the most prominent effects 
 of Architecture. If there is any liability to confusion here, it can only be 
 traced to that old confusion as to what there is in Architecture which can 
 be thought to represent a musical subject or melody ; and the point will 
 further show the futility of any attempt at such an analogy. For in Archi- 
 tecture the whole to which the parts were spoken of as conspiring with such 
 marked effect was really the whole work, or a very large proportion of it, the 
 eye being easily able to sweep round and embrace the larger aspects of a 
 building and a multitude of its larger elements in their relation to one 
 another. But the whole which the note-units make up — the only sort of 
 musical whole which we have as yet considered — is a Taelodic form ; and a 
 melodic form is probably only a small fraction in point of size of any long 
 whole into which it enters. No technical knowledge of musical structure 
 is needed to realise that a musical movement, if it exceeds a certain length 
 from beginning to end, is naturally divided into smaller lengths, with 
 some sort, at any rate, of beginning and end and coherence of their own ; 
 that music runs down, or partially runs down, at certain places. We 
 must defer the more detailed consideration of the varying looseness and 
 closeness of sequence in larger and smaller segments, and of the frequent 
 impossibility of marking a distinction between what shall be considered 
 forms and what shall be considered parts of forms. It is enough here to 
 realise in a general way that the amount which the musical apprehension 
 will perceive and grasp under the most cogent aspect of unity, as having 
 internal necessities of structure of the strictest sort, is limited in length ; 
 and though a close artistic coherence may pervade and bind together the 
 several successive segments of form, so that, when the movement is 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 97 
 
 femiliar to us, one of them may seem truly to necessitate the next, 
 yet, in proportion as the segments have their own unity, is it hard to 
 recognise this larger order as at aU parallel in kind to the order which 
 dominates the note-miits of the segments themselves, of the actual melodic 
 forms. We shall find later that there are conditions in musical structure 
 which cause one to shade into the other : but, broadly speaking, the 
 closer order takes effect in the strictest organic evolution of a form out 
 of mere sense-material, each unit of which in isolation is a nonentity ; 
 the laxer order of a longer movement is a series of parts which, whatever 
 interdependence they may subsequently prove to possess, are anything 
 but nonentities. Some of them may even be actually complete in them- 
 selves ; while others, which are not thus rounded off and separable, may 
 still often arrest the ear and haunt the memory in a detached and frag- 
 mentary condition. And, however organic the whole result may appear the parts being 
 when fully known, the parts may here be said, in the truest sense, to be gense^more'im- 
 more important and primary than the whole ; for the whole being a com- Pt"^^^' j*"*" 
 bination of parts successively (and many of them to a great extent inde- 
 pendently) enjoyed, can only be impressive so far as the parts are 
 impressive ; and the impressiveness can only be perceived by focussing 
 the attention on each of the parts in turn, and cannot be summed up in 
 rapid comprehensive glances. It would be unadvisable here, while we 
 are engaged only with certain of the most general characteristics of 
 melodic forms, to attempt to state or guard the above positions with any- 
 thing like completeness : as regards general character I hope they have 
 been made sufficiently clear. 
 
 One more feature of musical structure, comprehensible apart from § 6- Unique- 
 
 . . . 11. °^^* of musical 
 
 technical details, may be mentioned as quite unique ; namely, the exist- subjects, 
 ence and use of what are called subjects. These are leading musical 
 phrases or sentences which recur, either simply or with changes, giving to 
 a whole long movement a backbone and coherence which a mere string of 
 quite unrelated paragraphs would lack. We find them treated in a great 
 variety of ways — amplified, and subdivided, and inverted, and interwoven, 
 and so on — ^and each mode of treatment in turn may give a basis to whole 
 new members of the structure. This sort of recurrence with variations 
 is practically confined to the arts of the ear. Such recurrence with dif- 
 ferences as we may find in Architecture, if it is in parts seen simultcme- 
 oualy, is a matter of harmony and proportion which has no relation to the 
 phenomenon of musical recognition : when it exists in subordinate elements 
 which are examined successively, the differences are usually rather of small 
 detail and ornament than of dominant form, abstract visual forms having 
 too little individuality for one to recall another by being obviously a 
 fragment or modification of it. The refrains of Poetry present a sort of 
 analogy, but these are of course only occasional, and confined for the most 
 
 H 
 
98 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 part to short and simple productions ; whereas the use of ' subjects ' in 
 music is a perpetual feature, and becomes most prominent in large and 
 complex pieces, to which it is the great means of imparting organic unity. 
 This use of ' subjects ' may perhaps seem somewhat hard to reconcile 
 with what has just been said about the prime importance and frequent in- 
 dependence or semi-independence of parts in a larger whole. But, though 
 it is true that, when a ' subject ' is variously treated and developed, the 
 enjoyment of the resulting members of the composition involves the re- 
 cognition of the ' subject,' and is to this extent dependent on what has 
 gone before, this sort of retrospective and serial relationship is clearly 
 something different from the conspiring of mutually controlled parts to a 
 single large efifect. While our knowledge of the ' subject' enters essenti- 
 ally into our appreciation of the various uses made of it, at each fresh use 
 our hearing is concentrated on the special bit of form then and there 
 passing : and the relationship implied in recognition of our old acquain1> 
 ance under a new aspect, though of the closest sort, is still between two 
 parts (or, if two previous subjects be intertwined and developed together, 
 between three parts), not between a whole multitude of parts, as in an 
 elaborate building. 
 §7. In Music If we turn now from these more objective facts of melodic structures 
 effects are in- to their effect on ourselves and our ways of regarding them, we shall find, 
 ^rerah ' "°' while still confining our review to the most general characteristics, that 
 the contrast with the facts of Architecture is quite as marked. It follows 
 ' — partly from the extreme freedom and individuaUty of single melodic 
 forms, partly from the fact that, as they are successive, we must be mainly 
 occupied with one at a time — that musical effects are rather individual 
 than general. In Architecture we found the opposite characteristics con- 
 nected with the opposite result. Since the subordinate elements in 
 buildings are necessarily limited in variety, and many of them recur in one 
 building after another, we found, first, that it was rather to large combina- 
 tions of these, to comprehensive aspects of a whole work, that we must 
 look, as a rule, for strildng individuality of effect ; and next, that though 
 sublime invention might thus appear, the art was too much bound up 
 with unchanging external necessities and conditions, for genius to be 
 perpetually finding vent in combinations which could be vividly felt as 
 original and unlooked-for utterances ; and that many beautiful pre- 
 sentations were recognised and welcomed as very like many of their 
 fellows, and as belonging to a famiUar type. In Music, on the contrary, 
 the single pieces of formed .structure are unlimited in variety, and the 
 shortest motive may produce a strong effect on us,^ and stand out as a 
 
 ' When I say us, I mean — may be in common enough, but a multitude of tunes 
 some special way impressive to some human and pieces may be felt and spoken of as just 
 being or beings. Such motives are happily alike, as streets or people may be spoken of as 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 99 
 
 spontaneous and individual utterance ; while there are no necessities and 
 conditions external to the essential nature of the art itself, whose forms 
 in their free progress know no control save 
 
 Duty 
 To the law of their own beauty. 
 
 It is easy to see how the individuality of musical efifects is related to 
 
 the fact that musical forms present themselves one at a time, that the 
 
 parts do not conspire to a single effect, but have their own special 
 
 independence and unity. For parts must clearly be more numerous than 
 
 wholes ; so that the individuality of parts in larger wholes entails further 
 
 a corresponding multiplicity of individual effects. It was not till the 
 
 architect's plan was complete, till the last tier of Giotto's campanile 
 
 crowned his work, that a result was assured whose individuality of 
 
 beauty would cause it to be recognised as one of the exceptional buildings 
 
 of the world. It was only after the conception had received its fullest 
 
 due, and the vast and complex organism its perfect development, that the 
 
 certainty arose of an effect on human emotion comparable to that which 
 
 was born when the opening bars of the allegretto in Beethoven's Seventh 
 
 Symphony had been played for the first time, and the idea of them was 
 
 from that moment alive and abroad in the world. Nor of course need the 
 
 musical forms be parts of larger wholes at all : they can not only be 
 
 noticed and remembered on their own account, but they need have no 
 
 sort of connection with any other forms ; and many beautiful tunes of the 
 
 length of eight or sixteen bars have never led any but an isolated 
 
 existence. 
 
 It will be remembered that one of the considerations which led us to § 8- Refer- 
 ence to types 
 our view that architectural effects were, as a rule, rather general than is of an exter- 
 
 individual, was that of the very habitual reference to structural types, sentiaikind. 
 
 It will not surprise us, then, that here again Music presents a marked 
 
 contrast to the visual phenomena we have considered. Musical pieces 
 
 may of course be classed under various heads, with reference either to the 
 
 instrument or instruments they are written for, as a song or a string 
 
 just alike, where it is commonly implied that time that the aesthetic impression is on a par 
 
 they have been regarded with comparative with what has been produced in us by fifty 
 
 indifference, either through commonplaceness other equally meritorious and delightful 
 
 and poverty in themselves or want of appro- pieces of the same kind, none of which have we 
 
 priate faculties in the observer. I say sought to recall or in any way made our own. 
 
 commonly, not universally, implied, and the The larger class of march- and dance-melodies 
 
 restriction is necessary. Streets and faces, is rich in specimens which, without creating 
 
 even when they make no deep impression on pre-eminent or individual impressions, are 
 
 us, are not necessarily mean and uninterest- often listened to with passing pleasure. Nor 
 
 ing, and may be even pleasing ; and simi- am I saying that such experiences are not 
 
 larly, most of us will recognise the experience valuable and important ; only that they are 
 
 of listening to musical pieces with consider- not what I am at present concerned with, 
 able pleasure, but with a sense at the same 
 
 H 2 
 
100 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 quartett, or with reference to certain general characteristics of arrange- 
 ment of parts, as a rondo or an air with variations. But any one of these 
 heads may comprise any number of pieces, each so distinct and individual 
 as never to be thought of in relation to the others. Even in classes of 
 pieces which we find distinctly conforming to a general rule of arrange- 
 ment, as by division into several large sections connected with each other 
 in certain ways, the kinship so established between the pieces is of the 
 most external and nominal kind: the abstract type has no beauty or 
 meaning for us, no ideal place in our imagination ; it is nothing in favour 
 of any piece that the mechanical part of it, its skeleton, so to speak, 
 places it under one head or another. Our interest is in this, that, or 
 the other particular series of beautiful forms which are arranged after 
 this or that convenient and often conventional fashion : and the type 
 itself, though it may have been gradually developed by the instinct of 
 musicians and have proved its excellence as a mode of presenting musical 
 ideas effectively, has so little essential connection with the individual 
 beauty of the forms which it embraces and unites, that its nature and 
 merits could be made tolerably plain to a person who had never in any 
 single case had a clear perception of any one of the essential forms 
 themselves. It may be added that the typical arrangement has been 
 perpetually set at nought and defied by composers who still used the 
 typical names to designate their pieces; and also that a multitude of 
 pieces do not pretend to conform to any type of general structure at all, 
 and ramble at their own sweet will. So that while the types of Egyptian 
 beauties or of handsome Lombard peasants, of Greek temples or Eoman 
 basilicas or Elizabethan manor-houses, cannot but call up before us images 
 of certain distinct concrete sets of contours, the type of a sonata or of a 
 rondo represents not distinct concrete forms at all (for these could only 
 occur so far as we recalled particular instances), but only certain abstract 
 conditions for introducing and making the most of such forms. 
 
 There may be types of musical structure which have not reference so 
 much to arrangement of sections as to the metre or some other element of 
 structure, as if we speak of the type of a waltz or of a fugue. In such cases 
 the idea is rather less abstract, and the word probably recalls the swing of 
 triple time, or the sequence and winding in and out of parts. But here, 
 too, when we are occupied with an individual presentation, the emotional 
 effect owes nothing to any reference to the type. 
 
 The historical associations, again, which inevitably gather round types 
 of buildings, are palpably absent from musical types. When a historical 
 association does exceptionally attach itself to music in such a way as to 
 make some appeal to the imagination, it is in connection with some 
 particular piece of music, not with the class to which that piece may 
 happen to belong. When we hear Eine feste Burg, or the Marseillaise, 
 
ABSTRACT FOBM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 101 
 
 we do not feel, Ah ! that is a psalm-tune, or, Ah ! that is a march, and 
 what delightful and suggestive things psalm-tunes and marches have a 
 habit of being, with a rush of feeling such as we might experience in 
 suddenly encountering a building of some beloved type or period : if we 
 feel any associational interest, we say, ' Ah ! that is Luther's psalm-tune,' 
 or, ' Ah ! that is the French revolutionary march.' 
 
 The element of more individual historical association was not dwelt on § ?. Lack in 
 in connection with Architecture, as we were regarding only the general ricaUsfoc^^*"" 
 characteristics most directly connected with form. It will be enough here *'°°* ' 
 to observe that the contrast between the duration and the material of 
 their respective presentations would alone set Music, in this respect, at 
 the opposite pole from the great monumental art. Buildings bridge over 
 the ages ; while Music makes only occasional and temporary appearances on 
 the earth, and builds there no permanent habitations or temples ; being 
 literally the ' queen of the air.' 
 
 But there is another class of association which we noticed as making a and of vivid 
 large factor in the emotional effect of braidings, and which musical struc- wTthTuman 
 tures lack. The latter bear no evidence of mechanical and material i*'"'""'- 
 difficulties overcome by human skill, or of patient and multifarious 
 human labour. "We may admire the mechanical power of the musical 
 executant ; but his talent and practice are altogether unconnected with 
 construction, and the actual forms which they enable him to reveal to 
 us in a vivid manner, would have been there in the world independently 
 of him. As regards the composer, we may of course know, as a matter of 
 fact, that he found such and such difficulties in such and such parts of his 
 work, that particular parts were gradually and laboriously developed and 
 modified, and so on, and such knowledge may add the interest of personal 
 admiration and sympathy to our delight in his work. But as little can 
 any one contend that this chance knowledge makes up an integral factor 
 ■in the peculiar aesthetic effect of the actual musical forms produced, as he 
 can eliminate from the impressiveness of buildings instinctive suggestions 
 of their makers ; of the skill which has enabled frail men to rear on high 
 mighty piles of stone and marble, and of the careful and prolonged manual 
 labour which has gone to the fashioning of every part and detail. 
 
 The last two or three points of contrast we have considered connect § if. Early 
 
 I, . , 1 , ™ . *i<l instinctive 
 
 themselves naturally with a marked difference between the stage of de- appreciation of 
 
 velopment at which the forms of architecture and of music begin to strike 
 
 the attention and to be recognised with pleasure. As regards the former, 
 
 we found that they were only appreciated with anything Uke discrimination 
 
 after some experience and culture ; that a little child might be awed by 
 
 the size and gloom of a building, but would not be delighted with its 
 
 forms. This we referred more especially to two causes ; first, to the fact 
 
 that the component elements of the whole lack striking and independent 
 
102 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 § 11. So far, 
 no sort of ex- 
 planation of 
 melodic effect 
 has presented 
 itself. 
 
 interest, that such smaller and single parts as are not distinctly decorative 
 are not impressive objects to the uninitiated eye nor nuclei from which 
 appreciation gradually advanced to larger aspects, but that the admiration 
 begins to a great extent with large and complex views of an immense 
 organism, and in these such individuality as the building presents is 
 chiefly felt ; and secondly, to the fact that many of the conceptions in- 
 volved, as of mass and strength and support, or of historical interest and 
 human labour, are of a somewhat abstract character and are founded on 
 considerable range and variety of association. But a tune four bars long 
 is an individual : to an undeveloped ear, a mere fragment of a tune is 
 often a sufficient unity with no ulterior necessities : and it is simple 
 snatches of this kind which first appeal to the child, whose powers of 
 comprehension and appreciation spread quite gradually and normally to 
 larger forms. Children often show pleasure in music before they are 
 three years old ; and at four or five they will very commonly demonstrate 
 that it is not just the sound but the actual form which pleases them, by 
 pricking up their ears at certain tunes and not others, and very commonly 
 by humming and singing all manner of scraps quite correctly. These 
 phenomena are too common, even at that early age, to be justly accounted 
 a mark of particular talent ; and a few years later the total absence of 
 them would rank as a decided exception. This early manifestation of 
 pleasure in melody will prove later to have other much more fundamental 
 grounds ; but it is worth noticing here in connection with the individuality 
 of short tunes, and their effectiveness independently of cultivated percep- 
 tions and ideas. 
 
 Our review of the contrasts presented by architectural and musical 
 forms, so far, seems all to the bad as regards getting an explanation of the 
 aesthetic value of the latter. When we were examining architectural 
 forms, it will be remembered that certain grounds of explanation, in- 
 sufficient indeed but positive as far as they went, presented themselves, 
 before we arrived at association and the conceptions whose relation to 
 definite external experience and knowledge we were able distinctly to 
 recognise. But the views which we obtained of melodic forms on this 
 more circumscribed ground seem to yield not so much insufficient grounds 
 of explanation of melodic effect, as no grounds at all. In the other case 
 we at all events got the elements of multiplicity and richness, and of a 
 sense of mutually controlled rightness in the conspiring lines. But in the 
 case of melody the ideas of multiplicity and richness, as we have seen, do 
 not apply : and though we found the word rightness convenient to express 
 the definite character and position of the component units, and perceived 
 that this also entailed definite individuality in the resulting melodic 
 forms, it is difficult to see that such definiteness and individuality have 
 in themselves any necessary connection with beauty or emotion. And 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 103 
 
 when we passed on to conceptions which could only have been gained by 
 experience outside the special artistic naanifestation, whether in realisation 
 of size and distance • as displayed in the aspects of external nature, or of 
 the mental and manual qualities which have brought about the difficult 
 subjugation of matter by man, or of our kinship with past generations of 
 workers, the result was in every case to bring out emotional elements in 
 Architecture which are absent in Music. In buildings we found the 
 effect to be made up of a mass of association of which, even though to a 
 great extent latent, it is not hard to trace the existence, nature, and 
 history : in melody, association is so little perceptible that, for aught we 
 can make out by conscious analysis, the effect on us would be the same 
 if our only experience of sound had been just the music we have heard. 
 So far, therefore, the elements of melodic pleasure seem all to seek. 
 
 The search will prove a long one : but one element at any rate meets § 12. Sugges- 
 us at the outset. If any one thing is suggested by any other, physical movement. 
 mxyvement is continually suggested by melody. This doubtless looks at 
 first sight as if it might do a good deal in aid of our explanation of melodic 
 pleasure : for physical movement has admittedly agreeable possibilities. 
 There is an attractive air of certainty about it, too, from the very fact 
 that it is a thing which we realise as directly agreeable in ova own bodies ; 
 so that the suggestion of it stands on quite a different footing from the 
 highly abstract notions of height and mass and support and number, 
 which are too wholly ideal to have any direct physical effect on us. Those 
 notions have of course been formed in the world of physical experience ; 
 but we now habitually realise the height of a column without consciously 
 thinking of climbing up it, and its weight without any idea of its falling 
 on us or near us, and its supporting power without conceiving the notion 
 of applying our own strength to a similar task. In melody, on the other 
 hand, there is perpetually involved something more even than a suggestion 
 of movement, namely, a direct impulse to move ; which is not only felt 
 but constantly yielded to in varying degrees. We may notice by the 
 way how intimately this fact of direct stimulus is connected with the 
 early appeal of melody to the individual : it is in fact nowhere so con- 
 spicuously manifested as in young children, who are not burdened with 
 conventionalities of behaviour or with weight of limb. 
 
 The amount, however, which enjoyment of bodily movement can be f„^'„*^4°^^^[^ 
 held to contribute on its own account towards an explanation of the the muacuiar 
 effects we associate with melody rather dwindles on exammation. Inat carry us very 
 when we are pleased with melody we have an impulse towards movement 
 is clearly no proof that impulses towards movement or movements them- 
 selves are any sufficient reason for our being pleased with melody. The 
 inadequacy of such a cause will indeed be palpable if we recall what is 
 implied in the conception of beauty which we so instinctively connect with 
 
104 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 melody. Except in the minute movements of the eye, which in their mus- 
 cular aspect scarcely ever reach the stage of even being perceived, physical 
 movement is not a characteristic of the differentiated senses at all, and 
 a fortiori not of the two pre-eminently artistic senses. We do not conceive 
 of it as belonging on its own account to the aesthetic region at all, but, so 
 far as it is in any way pleasant, to that of the simplest and most universal 
 bodily gratifications, shared by us with the brutes. Nor, looked at in its 
 own simple character, does it seem as if either emotional or imaginative 
 elements could be got out of it. For, in the first place, the enjoyment 
 itisunasso- of it is of a kind specially unconnected with desire, selection, passion, at- 
 emotiond ta- tainment, wonder, or any sort of emotional interest, and specially little 
 terest; calculated, therefore, to supply the primary emotional factor of any 
 
 aesthetic phenomena into which it enters. Not but that physical elements 
 of the most pronounced kind, as we shall find further on, may lie at the 
 root of pleasures wherein they have been modified quite beyond recog- 
 nition ; but no pleasure could be thus modified into the emotional basis 
 of a special order of aesthetic presentation, which was physical after a 
 fashion so restricted and isolated, so utterly out of relation to definite and 
 desired objects, as this of miiscular sensation. Again, its physical com- 
 pleteness, so to speak, and the entire identification of the pleasure with 
 and does not ^^® moment, puts it for imaginative purposes on quite different ground 
 imply abasis of from those more complicated masses of experience which lend themselves 
 
 impressive con- -"^ -"^ 
 
 ceptiona. to ideal transformation. We have seen that transformed muscular asso- 
 
 ciations are intimately mixed up with the conceptions of size and distance 
 which we found so important in connection with our admiration of visual 
 phenomena : but this only warns us carefully to distinguish the part 
 played by muscular experience in preparing the necessary material for 
 those abstract conceptions, from any physically pleasurable character which 
 the movements may occasionally possess on their own account. However 
 true it may be that muscular movements have been at the bottom of our 
 conceptions of size and distance, and that these conceptions often take on 
 an agreeable imaginative character, yet for such an effect many mental , 
 elements of a subtle kind are indispensable. We may have formed our 
 sense of the size of a mountain-side through a multitude of muscular 
 experiences : but in our peculiar sense of expansion and delight in gazing 
 up it, we found that we drew, perhaps unconsciously, on mental elements 
 far beyond representations of crude physical facts. 
 8 13. Ideas ^^ Seems clear, then, that no mental chemistry can produce out of mere 
 
 pleasurable muscular experience any such imaginative elements as were 
 prominent in our enjoyment of height and size. But it will be noticed 
 that so far we have been considering physical movement purely in relation 
 to our own bodies, as a source of direct enjoyment to our own muscular 
 sense. We must pass now to another aspect of it, presented in external 
 
 of torce and 
 
 pace. 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 105 
 
 things and in our perceived relations to external things : and in connection 
 with this aspect certain general notions can be formed, which we shall find 
 are often, though by no means universally, suggested by Music. These 
 notions may be summed up under the heads of force and pace : and here 
 at last we seem to get well into the region of external associations, which 
 afforded such help in the case of Architecture. The power over us of the ideas 
 of force and pace is undoubtedly due to a multitude of past experiences and 
 associations ; either of our own muscular exertions, with the effects they 
 have had on the aspects and conditions of external things, which we have 
 in various ways encountered or opposed or overturned or escaped from or 
 caught, or of external strains and motions, with all their striking and some- 
 times startling or even catastrophic results ; these last, again, having been 
 realised either with a sense of compulsion and violence in our own persons, 
 or more commonly and on a more impressive scale in the vaster natural 
 and artificial phenomena of the outside world, which we have perceived 
 through the intervention of vision, not by direct contact.' 
 
 It will be remembered how, in the last chapter, we connected the im- impressiveness 
 pressiveness felt in certain general qualities of many phenomena, such as conceptioMTn* 
 size, force, and swiftness, with certain characteristics of the two superior relation to 
 senses, and specially dwelt on the point in relation to sight. We are now 
 on the same ground as regards hearing, and 'mutatis muta/ndis the same 
 remarks will apply. As in the former ease, the actual conceptions could 
 be to a great extent acquired through tactile and muscular experiences 
 only. Thus a deaf person could realise the rapidity of the series of im- 
 pressions caused by running a stick along railings ; or again, the extremely 
 quick succession of clicks in some mechanical apparatus where a toothed 
 wheel alternately retains and releases a spring, though normally perceived 
 by the ear, could often be equally well appreciated by the finger. It may 
 very probably occur to the reader that such things, even when heard, are not 
 particularly impressive ; and indeed it does seem to be the case that mere 
 rapidity, either seen or heard, without a very decided element of force, is 
 comparatively slight in its stimulating effect on the imagination. This, 
 however, is unimportant : we can easily have a sufficient body of moving 
 tone for the idea of force vividly to present itself. And now will appear 
 the importance of the suggestion by Music of motion outside ourselves, of 
 
 ' The notions of force and pace as com- moving sound is an impulse to move, 
 monly conceived in relation to Music, are addressed directly to our own muscular sys- 
 probably never so entirely removed from the terns : and though it certainly flows over and 
 primary physical experiences which lie at passes on thence without an effort to vaguer 
 their root as were the notions of height, size, and more general suggestions, we can hardly 
 and strength, in visible objects. For, how- be aroused and interested by any idea of 
 ever far abstraction and transformation may forceful movement, however remotely con- 
 have been carried, experience seems to veyed, without some sort of imaginary parti- 
 testify that there is always a distinctly cipation in it. 
 physical element ; that the first eSect of the 
 
106 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 motion of the sort that we realise by seeing (though probably with some 
 degree of identification of ourselves with it), over and above the sort that 
 we realise by feeling. For sound, as we know, does not give us a picture 
 of events, but only leads us to infer they are happening : our true channel 
 for knowledge of the outside world of matter is sight, not hearing. We 
 observed, indeed, in the second chapter that the hearing of some mighty 
 sound has an exceptionally strong effect on the nervous system : but so far as 
 it truly excites the i/maginfiation, it is mainly through the stage of association 
 with the phenomenon and its concomitants and effects as realised by sight, 
 as in the case of a torrent or a storm or an express train ; even the vaguest 
 sense of awe betraying, as we surmised, the influence of bygone events of 
 an imposing and startling kind in the external world. Now Music would 
 seem to have less direct power of this kind than the sounds, e.g., of thunder 
 or water, since it only accidentally and momentarily contains the slightest 
 suggestion of material things. But Music has the special character of being 
 distinctly moving sound : it is not like the single burst of a thunder-clap, nor 
 the continuous roar of a waterfall, but offers peculiar opportunities for 
 marked changes and contrasts. And in the suggestion of movement, not con- 
 fined to that experienced in our own bodies although not connected with any 
 distinctly imagined external events, we may readily allow it the benefit of 
 associations, powerful though vague and remote, with those mightier rushes, 
 stresses, and shocks of past experience, for the complete knowledge of which 
 in the first instance vision was indispensable, since direct tactile and muscular 
 experience of them would have been overwhelming to the body rather than 
 the mind. 
 
 Nor does it seem hard to imagine, in the case of such impressive 
 general conceptions as Music presents, similar mental elements to those 
 before suggested in relation to the expansive delight in a vast mountain- 
 side ; the sense of contrast and the sense oi power. We should expect this 
 similarity, since the rapid ease with which the ear does its work is com- 
 pletely comparable to that which characterises vision. There may be 
 greater difficulty in applying the notions in the case of hearing, owing 
 to the fact that the connection of sound with external facts, and with the 
 tactile and muscular experiences which have a necessary part in the 
 explanation, is indirect instead of direct. Still in any pleasure which is 
 given by rapidity, as perceived by the ear, there certainly seems involved 
 a sense of the facility with which, while sitting at ease, we take in and 
 as it were master a multitude of impressions suggestive of haste, effort, 
 or agitation : and a similar remark applies to the simultaneous grasp of 
 the complicated lines of sound in polyphonic music. As regards more 
 distinctly forceful sound, the sense of power in securely taking in a mass of 
 impression suggestive of external might and effort is, perhaps, rather merged 
 in direct identification of oneself with what is going on : and since, as a 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 107 
 
 rule, no material object or event is in the dimmest way represented (unless 
 it be through conscious subjective fancy), this identification goes to confirm 
 the idea that in the case of strongly moving sound the overflowing of the 
 effects from mere suggestion of muscular movement to the region of im- 
 pressive general conceptions must carry with it all along a definitely 
 physical element ; so that what has been described as suggestion of motion 
 outside ourselves is rather perhaps felt as suggestion of motion beyond our 
 own limited physical possibilities ; just as we might imagine flying through 
 the air or overcoming resistances in a manner and at a pace which we have 
 never actually experienced. 
 
 So far, then, our explanation seems progressing : for here in Music, as § 14. But in 
 before in Architecture, we seem to have got ideal elements which must have Music the idea 
 a large share in its impressiveness. But again a more attentive examina- anSicat^oM^^ 
 tion brings disappointment. To begin with, there is the fact already ■wMohmiMtbe 
 adverted to, that these ideal elements are of by no means constant occur- tinguished. 
 rence ; a great deal of enjoyable music having no striking character 
 of force or rapidity. But there is a more important point than this; 
 a point which, constituting as it in fact does, the most marked contrast 
 between visual and musical forms, will cause such analogy to Archi- 
 tecture as has so far appeared, in the frequent suggestion by Music of 
 certain impressive general notions, to sink into insignificance. It may 
 have been noticed that throughout the last section the word used was 
 music, not m,elody : and the word force, in connection with the art 
 of tone, has probably suggested to the reader some vast mass of sound 
 from an orchestra or an organ ; a perfectly legitimate application, so long 
 as there is some perceptible movement in the mass, that is, so long as 
 it is not simply continuous, in which case it might be deafening without 
 giving any distinct impression of force. But it will be remembered that 
 in this chapter we are not deahng with vast masses of sound, but with 
 melodic forms presenting one note at a time. Now these can clearly be 
 rapid, but can they be strong ? And, if so, what are the elements of their 
 strength ? Can they be strong without being rapid ? For force as conceived 
 in the visible world depends on the factor of mass as well as on that of pace : 
 it takes as much force to make a heavy thing go slow as to make a light 
 thing go fast. Now the idea of mass is excluded from single notes 
 produced with any moderate degree of loudness. Thus, as far as physical 
 associations go, no element of force, save rapidity, seems possible to a 
 melody. And yet the unhesitating answer of all who with any care 
 examine the character of some of the melodies they know, will be not only 
 that melodies may give the impression of force, but that they may do B„t in what 
 so while most moderate and unremarkable in pace ; that is, when rapidity ^atioM o?'"" 
 and mass are equally absent. And not only may melodies give the physical force 
 impression of force, but the impression of weakness, and that too m a melodic form ? 
 
108 
 
 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 manner equally unrelated to pace. Here, then, the door of explanation 
 which the notion of physical force seemed to open to us is suddenly shut : 
 in our very first reference to the special qualities of special melodies, we 
 have come across something which is outside the obvious range of associa- 
 tions founded on physical movement. Nor clearly will any other sort of 
 mechanical or dynamical facts help us here. In the world of visible 
 phenomena all our external experience, as derived through touch and 
 movement as well as sight, combines to explain the qualities we detect in 
 forms. Thus in the case of visible objects we found no difficulty in 
 connecting a look of strength or weakness with actual events ; weak things 
 cave in, lopsided things topple over, slender things give way : and as we 
 associate ideas of danger and weakness with top-heaviness or abnormal 
 tenuity, so we naturally perceive a strength in solidity and balance. But 
 consider two simple strains of melody each four bars long, one from Der 
 Freiachutz, the other from La Favorita : 
 
 i 
 
 m 
 
 q^: 
 
 jju^: 
 
 =P2- 
 
 r^<^; 
 
 *=^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 iai 
 
 i 
 
 iSE 
 
 ^ 
 
 zM±:J^ 
 
 m 
 
 *rtr^ 
 
 ^_^^_f 
 
 ]=== 
 
 1*:= 
 
 :i=3 
 
 to which I will add the opening of a well-known English waltz ; 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^m 
 
 *i==f 
 
 ^d=it=* 
 
 S 
 
 i 
 
 q=:t 
 
 =t 
 
 ?^ 
 
 ^F^ 
 
 :t^- 
 
 :i=*= 
 
 In four bars Weber has carried us into a region where we feel there are 
 forms as serenely and lastingly fair and strong as any temple of our outer 
 world : the flaccid feebleness of the other strains simply irritates us with a 
 sense that we cannot get substance into them or set them right, combined 
 in the case of the waltz with a fear, only too well founded, that we may 
 not for some time be able to get its deplorable existence out of our 
 heads.' But what will any physical consideration do for us ? What possi- 
 ble connection can the phenomena have with events ? Thus we see that 
 such a general idea as strength, which was a distinct aid in accounting for 
 the impressiveness of visual phenomena, since there it could be clearly 
 
 ' At this, the first instance in which any 
 particular music has been described in 
 special terms of praise or blame, I had 
 better premise that the general views set 
 forth in this book could for the most part be 
 held perfectly well by a person whose opinions 
 
 as to particular compositions were the exact 
 opposite of mine. However, writing as a 
 music-loving Englishman for music-loving 
 Englishmen, I cannot pretend that I expect 
 to have to fall back often on this apology. 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 109 
 
 traced back and connected with various sorts of past experience, becomes 
 in melody one of the things most needing itself to be accounted for. 
 
 There is yet another aspect of physical movement which, though not . § 15- Eeia- 
 concerned with things external to our own frames, carries us beyond various frames 
 mere sensory experiences. It is specially connected with degrees (,y ° ™™ • 
 pace. We have hitherto treated pace as tantamount to rapidity ; but 
 there are special characteristics of slowness as well as of quickness of 
 pace, and both have a bearing on Music quite apart from the associational 
 references of the last section. Everybody realises the extent to which 
 mental states react on physical, and how this is most prominently exem- 
 plified in the muscular system, and especially in the limbs. States of 
 excitement of various sorts cause an overflow of nervous stimulus which 
 results in rapid and agitated movements : states of dejection or of tranquil 
 meditation are usually accompanied by a relaxation of tension and a 
 collapse of muscular energy. Thus degrees of pace, as far as we connect 
 them with our own bodies, and so far as they deviate noticeably on either 
 side from what is in any case conceived as a sort of normal mean, have a 
 real connection with emotion. An obvious limitation of the effective part 
 due to this element in Music, similar to one we found in the case of force, 
 lies in the fact that a large amount of music is neither quick nor slow ; 
 while a large amount which is markedly one or the other has no emotional 
 impressiveness of any sort. Still the point could not be omitted in a list 
 of the more general elements of melodic effect. 
 
 To revert for a moment from these ideal and emotional regions, which § ig_ Rhythm; 
 so far seem only fraught with new difficulties, to movement in its more ^on'ofT^ch*' 
 restrictedly physical aspect ; there is one noticeable character it may take ^^re is a 
 on, which, though by no means pecuUar to it, is in its case especially seams of the 
 prominent. It may be rhythmical; that is, it may present sensations "'^san's'"' 
 at regular intervals of time : and in this is involved a perfectly new ele- 
 ment of gratification. The more complete discussion of rh3rthm will be 
 best deferred till we come to the detailed examination of melodic structure : 
 at present it is enough to notice that we possess the appreciation of it in 
 connection both with sight and hearing and with the tactile and muscular 
 senses. These last assume in this respect, as before in the aid they lent 
 towards the formation of general conceptions, a sort of importance superior 
 to that of the slow-acting senses of taste and smell, with their purely 
 sensuous and self-complete impressions ; not superior, of course, in the 
 amoimt of pleasure conveyed by the senses themselves, for as a rule the 
 smell of a rose would give greater pleasure for the moment than beating 
 time without music, or than mere rhythmical touches on the surface of the 
 body; but superior in that the multiplication of the channels by which 
 rhythm is perceived must enhance those aesthetic presentations of it which 
 concern one or other of the two higher senses. The pleasure in rhythm 
 
110 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 of the simplest kind, such as is sometimes experienced in tapping the table 
 with perfectly regular up and down movements of the hand, or in 
 swinging a foot to and fro, can hardly be said in itself to rise above the 
 simply sensuous and unsuggestive stage ; nor when this utter uniformity 
 is varied and the movement is broken up into little regular groups, as 
 again is frequently done in tapping the table, does the element of form, 
 though it is certainly involved in the recognisable combinations of impres- 
 sions, awaken any ideal or emotional interest. But for all that, any one 
 who watches himself or other people as they listen to Music will perceive 
 that the pleasure is often enhanced by the actual rhythmical movements, by 
 the actual series of tactual and muscular sensations, which accompany the 
 sounds ; and the implied concurrence of large tracts of the nervous organism 
 is not a matter merely of the moment, but must have tended through long 
 ages to increase the mass and strength of the sensations involved, and to 
 intensify the effect of rhythmical sound even where the rhythmic stimulus 
 does not go so far as to excite visible movements. 
 § 17. Total But after all, when we review such general elements of the effect of 
 
 inadequacy of , tiVi. 
 
 all the elements melodic forms as have presented themselves, their inadequacy in the way 
 tinned to'ex- of explanation is almost ludicrous. It is only in the more distinctly 
 efeS ™®^°'^'" physical characteristics, the elements of movement and rhythm, that we 
 seem to have found any point which was absent in visual phenomena ; 
 while Architecture, on the other hand, presented many sources of effect 
 apparently quite unshared by melody. And the degree to which rhythmical 
 movement in itself will account for melody is fairly enough measured by 
 the difference between our sensations if a beautiful tune is tapped to us 
 on a table by a person who knows it, but who by such means can of course 
 merely reproduce the rhythmic element of it, and our pleasure in realising 
 it in its complete form. And yet melody is a thing which is every day 
 giving varying degrees of pleasure of a most positive kind to thousands 
 and thousands of people of every conceivable variety of class, character, 
 habits, and mental and physical constitution ; a pleasure, moreover, which 
 is capable of seeming to many of these by far the most intense and perfect 
 that they can attain through art. 
 The problem is The very extent of the phenomenon, the very fact that from babyhood 
 re^ised!^ we have enjoyed and seen others enjoy tunes as if it were the most natural 
 
 thing in the world, prevents perhaps ninety-nine per cent, even of the 
 more intelligent of those who so enjoy from noticing the extraordinary 
 disproportion between the pleasure given and the amount of cause they 
 can show for it. Much careful analysis of feeling it would of course be 
 absurd to look for ; but when an ordinarily intelligent person of not too 
 philosophical habit of mind is asked why he admires a beautiful face or a 
 beautiful building, he will certainly give some true reasons. He will say 
 of the face that it looks strong, or refined, or kind, that the chiselling is 
 
ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. Ill 
 
 firm and clear, the eyes bright, the mouth and chin free from coarseness 
 and sensuality, the expression animated or kindly, and so on ; and he will 
 very probably realise some of the associational grounds on which a liking 
 for such quaUties to a great extent depends. About the building he will 
 probably say less, and the remoter psychological grounds for his pleasure 
 in it may never have occurred to him ; but he will at any rate point to its 
 size and height, its richness of decoration, its rows of stately columns, its 
 look of mellow age, its picturesque irregularities, its history, and so on. But 
 catch the same person whistling a tune of Mozart's with obvious gusto, 
 and ask him why he likes, it. Because it is sweet, he will say, or because 
 it is beautiful, and will probably think you a fool for your question : if it is 
 sweet and beautiful, why should he not like it ? it is an ultimate fact, 
 a matter of agreeable stimulation of his auditory nerves; you might as 
 well ask him why he likes sugar. And yet, without troubling our un- 
 philosophical friend with words like form, or with any abstract con- 
 siderations, we can prove to him from his own experience that the 
 problem presented by melody must be a very different one from that 
 presented by sugar. We can recall to him the fact that he gets scarcely 
 a vestige of pleasure out of sugar by merely thinking about it ; whereas 
 numbers of people, including very likely himself, can get the qiuntes- 
 sence of the pleasure of a tune by going over it in their heads quite 
 apart from physical stimulus. And considering the immensely large 
 ideal or emotional element thus left unaccounted for, it is surely odd how 
 little curiosity it excites. People speak of the ' mysterious effects of 
 Music,' much as they might speak of moonlight, meaning that the feelings 
 roused have a mysterious tinge, that we feel transported by them into a 
 new and unimagined world, and so on. But facts may be mysterious as 
 well as feelings : and in the case of Music, it is not to the character of the 
 effects, but to their existence, that the greatest mystery really attaches : 
 how come there to be any particular effects at all ? 
 
 The very form of the question suggests that we should go back as far § 18. Jur- 
 as possible to the origin of musical phenomena : association is the deus ex ment of the 
 Tnachina of too many psychological problems, and may be invoked from too °" ■'^ ' 
 remote a past, for us soon to despair of its aid. It may perhaps be 
 thought that the better course would have been to take the phenomena of 
 musical emotion as they are and as we know them, and to subject these first 
 of all to as searching an analysis as possible. And truly of the two questions, 
 how a thing came to be there, and what it is now it is there, the former can 
 hardly but seem of very subordinate importance. My reason for attack- 
 ing it first in this case is that to do otherwise would land us at once among 
 the widest possible diversities of opinion, and the most conflicting records 
 of experience; that in spite of the general agreement in indifference 
 as to the primary secset of Music's impressing us, there is a chronic con- 
 
112 ABSTRACT FORM AS ADDRESSED TO THE EAR. 
 
 troversy as to what the actual impressions are, and what they ought to be, 
 and what relation they hold to other experience, and what are the signs 
 and conditions of receiving them aright. It is hoped that by beginning 
 at the beginning some light may be shed on this confusion ; in what way 
 could only be here indicated by anticipating the course of the argument. 
 Plan of the The immediate enquiry divides naturally into two main questions: 
 
 nextfourchap- ., 1J p,ii iii, 
 
 tera. in what new manner, by searchmg further back, can we connect tne 
 
 great principle of association with Music ? and in what does the special 
 mental process consist, of the sort which was so hard to establish in 
 the case of visual forms, but to the prominence of which, in the appre- 
 ciation of Music, I then particularly adverted ? The subject of association 
 can be entirely comprised in the next chapter. But the consideration 
 of the special process, of the exercise of the special musical faculty, will 
 necessitate for its comprehension a careful scrutiny of the structure 
 of melodic forms ; and even after that, such is the uniqueness of this 
 peculiar faculty, that our comprehension of it will greatly consist in 
 carefully making out what it is not, and so removing some very general 
 misconceptions with regard to it. This will necessitate an enquiry into 
 the relations between the aesthetic faculties and Eeason ; elements which, 
 however much and however constantly combined in the appreciation of 
 Art, will need to be carefully distinguished. By that enquiry I shall hope 
 clearly to establish both the place and function of the musical faculty, 
 and to explain its obscurity— to show, that is, why its action cannot be 
 definitely described and illustrated nor its judgments accounted for ; while, 
 as a set-off against so disappointing a result, it may be claimed that the 
 case of Music will afford an exceptionally good means of estimating the 
 general question as to the relations of Eeason to Beauty. 
 
 In pursuing the plan I have sketched, we shall make sure first of the 
 more general ground, of the facts and processes which underlie aU the 
 distinctive pleasure of Music, and defer till afterwards the consideration 
 of such special characteristics, ideal or emotional, as can be rightly or 
 wrongly connected with it in particular instances ; and in this way we 
 shall keep clear of the most disputed topics till we have obtained all 
 possible data for attacking them. 
 
113 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 Association ia a word which is apt to be used with considerable laxity. § i. Assoda- 
 
 Thus people often speak of liking a thing from old association, when all not always 
 
 that they really mean is liahit ; the thing is hked through having been tinguihed.'*'^ 
 
 long familiar, not through having been connected with something pleasant 
 
 and different from itself. Association, strictly speaking, must clearly be 
 
 of two or more distinct things, whether objects or feelings ; and though it 
 
 is perhaps possible to defend the laxer use by saying that we can make 
 
 two things by separating the pleasure a thing has given from the thing 
 
 itself, and so speak of associating the present object with the past pleasures 
 
 it has yielded, the distinction should still be noted. The laxer association 
 
 of habit in each case concerns one thing, or things of one kind ; the 
 
 stricter association concerns things of different kinds. 
 
 Conversely, the word habit is continually used where the phenomenon § 2. with 
 is reaUy one of association. Thus people are often said to enjoy some dSiy tTa rer- 
 quality of their environment, very commonly its prevailing colour, or enjoynwnts^ 
 some form which has been continually before their eyes, from habit; what is taken 
 
 •' ^ ' 'for habit is 
 
 especially in cases where the quality or form does not seem sufficiently really asso- 
 striking, or the aesthetic sensibilities of the habitu6 sufficiently keen, 
 for the enjoyment to admit of more direct explanation. But in such 
 cases, what has really happened is generally that the environment, of 
 whatever sort, has been there as the constant background to a conscious 
 existence which has been in the main agreeable; and in this way the 
 true cause of its being enjoyed is association, only the association has 
 been with a whole indefinite succession of very various events and feelings, 
 not with some particular sort of experience. This view of association, as 
 the main source of the pleasurable feeling, seems confirmed by the fact 
 that when the conscious existence of any individual has been on the whole 
 disagreeable, the very environment which is enjoyed by others affects him 
 in the manner corresponding to his melancholy experience. Precise 
 experiments on such points are of course difficult to obtain, and the 
 essential facts hard to isolate. For, in the first place, much both of the 
 agreeable and disagreeable feeling will probably be connected with distinct 
 
114 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 objects, having special associations of their own, and not with any general 
 quality of the sensible environment : and, in the second place, such a 
 general quality in itself is an experience which falls as a continuancy to 
 the lot of comparatively few ; one would perhaps find it best exemplified 
 as regards visual colour in monotonous northern landscape or high moun- 
 tain scenery, and as regards sound in the neighbourhood of the sea or 
 of running water. But in a minor degree most of us can probably connect 
 vague likings and aversions, for things on which no special attention or 
 feeling has been concentrated, with the general emotional hue of some con- 
 siderable tract of existence. 
 
 That this sort of enjoyment, due actually to diffused association and 
 commonly referred to habit, deserves careful distinction, will be clear if 
 we consider what habit pure and simple really is in relation to sense- 
 enjoyment. Gain of sense-enjoyment by mere habit can only mean that 
 the organism has more and more adapted itself to a certain mode of 
 stimulus ; for there is nothing in mere repetition to increase the enjoyment 
 of a sensation, apart from such gradual modification of structure or 
 function as shall entail new and more refined modes of nervous action. 
 The habit here is a mere matter of past history, making the pleasure 
 possible but contributing no elements to it : and to habit of this sort all 
 primary sense-enjoyments might be referred ; though we more naturally 
 restrict the term to cases where a sense has been subjected, within our 
 knowledge, to some peculiar condition or set of conditions. Even in 
 somewhat more advanced cases, as where an individual receives gratifica- 
 tion from some familiar series of impressions, the habit, which results in 
 expectation of the items of impression in their accustomed connection, 
 does not imply more than extremely simple mental elements. The sort 
 of habit, on the other hand, which is truly associational in nature, involves 
 ideal elements and a large amount of self-consciousness ; for the enjoyment 
 This latter sort in its case is not merely a faint mental revivifaction of the various events 
 appwto Mii- "' ^^'i feelings which have stood out as enjoyable on a background of the 
 maJs. general sensuous impression, colour or sound, or whatever it may be, but 
 
 seems to involve in varying degrees a much more abstract and recherche 
 element, a vague suffusive conception of existence as on the whole good. 
 It follows that this latter sort of effect must be a matter of very late and 
 refined development ; for we certainly do not conceive brutes to have any 
 idea of existence as a whole, or any suffusive sense of enjoyment.' 
 
 ' Aniinals are, however, sometimes repre- cease ; and then enjoyment of the natural 
 
 sented as enjoying their general environment environment through habit is brought in to 
 
 through habit which, if it is to account for account for the enjoyment of existence in 
 
 the enjoyment at all, could only be of this general, which, as we have seen, is just what 
 
 kind. The primary assumption seems to be would be needed to account for it. Even if 
 
 that if existence were not on the whole en- we admit that the actual predominance of 
 
 joyable rather than the reverse, it would painful over pleasurable sensation would be 
 
ASSOCIATION, 115 
 
 In an early stage of development, then, habit and association are § 3. Diffi- 
 entirely distinct ; and we can imagine no other sort of association than rating the parts 
 that of a distinct impression, of whatever sort, with distinct concomitants. ^yX b^^'sm- 
 And this greatly simplifies speculation as to the dawn of association, sationandas- 
 
 , . sociation in 
 
 and its effect on the development of pleasure ; though the doubt usually early enjoy- 
 remains, throughout every region of sensory pleasure into which asso- 
 ciation enters, as to the amount of the respective parts taken by it and 
 by direct sensation. Thus we might imagine, as a simple case, that 
 enjoyment of the bright colours of berries and fruits might be sensibly 
 increased by association with the satisfaction of finding and eating food ; 
 but the sensation of brilliant colour can hardly but have been pleasurable 
 on its own account : or we might connect our own enjoyment of green 
 grass and green trees with the time when the one was the natural couch 
 of our ancestors, and the other their natural shelter ; but we cannot doubt 
 that apart from such elements the eye must have been gradually adapted 
 to dwell with ease and satisfaction on this most constant colour of its 
 natural environment. 
 
 A large part of early associations with sensory impressions would §4. in the 
 naturally relate to the phenomena presented by fellow living creatures ; association 
 and colour, so fax as it played a part in sexual selection, might obtain Seasurahiy^*" 
 thus an additional power of pleasing. Form, on the other hand, would '^2"*'l™®'^+u 
 stand on very different ground. In the first place, the amount of com- colour. 
 
 a sign of such hopeless want of adaptation high mental development ; that habit could 
 to enTironment as would involve the cessa- ever produce in an animal the enjoyment 
 tion of existence, the fact that any existence of some neutral and familiar element of 
 which ceased would cease as a whole does experience. For we have no grounds for 
 not imply that it is enjoyed as a whole. On making any assumption as to the nature and 
 the contrary, the pleasures which are ordi- existence of such enjoyment beyond our own 
 nary concomitants of advantageous activities knowledge of it — and that certainly seems 
 are of a quite intermittent and particular to tell us that a familiar and little-noticed 
 kind. And we cannot assume that any experience could not connect itself with 
 general sense of pleasure in existence is pos- a series of more or less agreeable f eel- 
 sible to a creature which has not arrived at Jngs in such a way as to reap by association 
 high powers of abstraction and self-reaUsa- the benefit of their common quality, unless 
 tion ; for such a sense seems to depend on the series were bound together by a common 
 continuity in the stream of association, which bond, that of the continuous individual self- 
 would be impossible in the absence of recog- consciousness, with its power of taking rapid 
 nised continuity in the stream of conscious- and highly abstract surveys of the general 
 ness. K, then, in animals this general sense stream of past existence. 
 of enjoyable existence cannot be assumed. The only fact I am aware of which can 
 so neither can the sort of habit which de- be adduced as shovring that animals enjoy 
 rives a pleasurable character from that any general quality of their environment is 
 source be called on to account for the their occasional assimilation to it in colour, 
 supposed enjoyment by animals of any where sexual selection might be supposed to 
 familiar features of their environment. If stamp the favourite hues. But even were 
 the present argument be correct, we have this ground less uncertain than it obviously 
 no right to suppose that affections not is, the objection as to the part played by 
 in themselves directly pleasurable could habit, in rendering enjoyable what would 
 ever become a source of pleasure apart from otherwise not be enjoyed, retains its full force. 
 
 1 2 
 
116 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 parison and abstraction which pleasure in form demands seems beyond 
 the power of animals. A dog which can feel varying and sympathetic 
 emotions at the varying expressions of its master's face may indeed appear 
 to have at any rate the rudiments of the necessary faculty ; but a vast 
 nimiber of instances must have been noted, and a large set of types must 
 exist in the mind, before the gap is bridged over between an emotion at 
 an expression and a disinterested pleasure in beauty. Still we might 
 assume that size and strength would tell advantageously in the ap- 
 pearance of an animal for purposes of sexual selection, and that to this 
 extent admiration of form might enter, quite apart from any sort of 
 minute discrimination or comparison. Even so, however, the contrast 
 with colour would be obvious. For colour has no operation except on the 
 eye, no relation to external facts except as seen^ in its passive appeal to 
 the eye would lie its sole chance of special selection and preservation, and 
 the conditions for that appeal are quite definite : whereas a multitude of 
 relations to all manner of external uses and conditions would rule the 
 preservation and development of the bones and muscles and various struc- 
 tures which take a perpetual active part in the struggle •©f life ; so that 
 form would present no sort of definite or continuous standard of pleasure- 
 giving quality in relation to a sense ; and in respect of it, till such time 
 as experiences were multiplied and the faculty of minute discrimination 
 active, association would be of a shifting and accidental kind. 
 § 5. Origin But any sort of visible superiority, whether of colour or form, would 
 
 featSionB"''"" ^s enjoyed in a passive fashion, with no instantaneous flash or stimulus, 
 and, m^oreova", would produce no special sensory excitement in the 
 possessor of it, but only in the eyes whose admiration he or she courtfid. 
 So that the effect of sexual association in respect of visual impressions 
 might be expected to be very slight, compared with its power of intensify- 
 ing the emotion felt in some active display of eagern-ess and rivalry, some 
 outlet of excitement involving strong and instantaneous stimulation in 
 the organisms both of producer and percipient. A mode of such active 
 display is provided in the voice : and the feet, noticed by Mr. Darwin, that 
 almost all male animals use their voices more under the influence of sexual 
 emotion than in any other circumstances, leads up naturally to his important 
 theory as to the origin of vocal, and so of musical, phenomena. First, as 
 regards the voice. To any creature which possesses a voice, utterance 
 of sound affords a most natural outlet for nervous discharge under excite- 
 ment. Mr. Darwin says that ' animals of all kinds which habitually use 
 their voices utter various noises under any strong emotion, as when 
 enraged and preparing to fight ; but this may merely be the result of 
 their nervous excitement, which leads to the spasmodic contraction of 
 almost all the muscles of the body, as when a man grinds his teeth and 
 clenches his hands in rage or agony.' Thus the utterance of sounds 
 
ASSOCIATION. 117 
 
 during the season of sexual excitement is quite in accordance with what 
 we might have expected ; and, with reference to the periodical swelling 
 of the throats of stags, at the commencement of the breeding season, 
 Mr. Darwin suggests as probable that the frequent use of the voice under 
 the strong excitement of love, jealousy, and rage, continued during many 
 generations, may at last have produced an inherited effect on the vocal 
 organs of the stag, as well as of other male animals. So that,, apart from 
 any pleasurable qualities, we might expect that any voluntary production 
 of striking sound, especially by a single individual, would reap the benefit 
 of the exciting emotions with which in past ages such a mode of mani- 
 festation has been perpetually connected. 
 
 As regards the effect on the other sex, it may be that the primary use 
 of the voice to the male would be to attract attention, to put himself 
 en emdence as much as possible ; and to this- effect it would especially 
 conduce from the natural effect of loud sound on the organism, and from 
 the raiity and individuality of the utterance. But if the female found 
 the sound pleasurable, it would naturally be tuimed to account and 
 modified with a view to pleasure ; and Lere we get beyond meie utterance, 
 to the dawn of musical phenomena. Mr. Darwin not only considers that 
 ' musical notes and rhythm ' (i.e. musical notes and the habit of making 
 rhythmical sounds) ' were first acquired by the male or female progenitors 
 of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex,' but even that the 
 requisite power of voice may have been primarily acquired with that view. 
 It will be best to give the theory as fer as possible in. his own words. 
 ' Although the sounds emitted by animals of all kinds serve many Mr. Darwin's 
 purposes, a strong case can be made out that the voeal organs were origin'of musi- 
 primarily used and perfected in relation to the propagation of the species, goun^g""™^"* 
 Insects and some few spiders are the lowest animals which voluntarily pro- ducedby ani- 
 
 mals during 
 
 duce any sound ; and this is generally effected by the aid of beautifully the season of 
 constructed stridulating organs, which are often confined to the males alone. °"' ^ '^" 
 Sounds thus produced consist^ I believe in all cases, of the same note re- 
 peated rhythmically ; and this is sometimes pleasing even to the ears of 
 man. Their chief, and in some cases exclusive, use appears to be either to 
 call or to charm the opposite sex. The sounds produced by fishes are said 
 in some cases to be made only by the males during the breeding season. 
 All the air-breathing, vertebrata necessarily possess an apparatus for inhal- 
 ing and expelling air, with a pipe capable of being closed at one end. 
 Hence when the primeval members of this class were strongly excited, and 
 their muscles violently contracted, purposeless sounds would almost 
 certainly have been produced; and these, if they proved in any way service- 
 able, might readily have been modified and intensified by the preservation 
 of properly adapted variations. The amphibians are the lowest vertebrates 
 which breathe air ; and many of these animals, namely, frogs and toads. 
 
118 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 possess vocal organs which are incessantly used during the breeding season, 
 and which are often more highly developed in the male than in the female. 
 The male alone of the tortoise utters a noise, and this only during the 
 season of love. Male alligators roar or bellow during the same season. 
 Everyone knows how largely birds use their vocal organs as a means of 
 courtship ; and some species likewise perform what may be called instru- 
 mental music* In the class of mammals, the males of almost all the 
 species use their voices during the breeding season much more than at any 
 other time ; and some are absolutely mute except at this season. Both 
 sexes of other species, or the females alone, use their voices as a love-call.' 
 Mr. Darwin quotes Mr. Waterhouse's account of the chromatic scale of 
 the gibbon, Hylohates agilis, and Helmholtz's observation of the auditory 
 hairs of crustaceans, which vibrate to particular notes ; and refers to 
 the well-known fondness of seals for music. He continues : ' With all 
 these animals, namely, insects, amphibians, and birds, the males of which 
 during the season of courtship incessantly produce musical notes or mere 
 rhythmical sounds, we must believe that the females are able to appreciate 
 them, and are thus excited or charmed ; otherwise the incessant efforts of 
 the males and the complex structures often possessed exclusively by them 
 would be useless.' 
 The musical After remarking that as neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of pro- 
 
 ifLcuitics in .| . , _ 
 
 man. ducmg musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in 
 
 reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked among the 
 most mysterious with which he is endowed, ]\Ir. Darwin goes on to ob- 
 serve that they are present in men of all races, even the most savage ; and 
 suggests that the faculties of producing and appreciating musical notes, 
 similar to those of the before-mentioned gibbon, may have been possessed 
 by our half-human progenitors. He then notices the capacity for musi- 
 cal development which the savage races, notably Hottentots and negroes, 
 possess (it may be added that the very lowest races, the Fuegians, Anda- 
 
 ' Mr. Darwin quotes from most careful teristics might have been expected to go to- 
 
 observers that ' the males of song-birds do gether, like decoration and pugnacity. He 
 
 not in general search for the female, but, on also notices the very interesting fact that 
 
 the contrary, their business in the spring is to bright colours and the power of song often 
 
 perch on some conspicuous spot, breathing seem to replace each other. The following 
 
 out their fall and amorous notes, which by observation by Mr. W. H. Hudson (in the 
 
 instinct the female knows, and repairs to the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, June 
 
 spot to choose her mate : ' and again, that 1876) may be added to the examples in the 
 
 ' the female canary always chooses the best Descent of Mati;—' Males and females of 
 
 singer, and in a state of nature the female many species, in which the sexes are always 
 
 finch selects that male out of a hundred faithful, sing and scream together in a jubil- 
 
 whose note pleases her most.' He remarks ant manner at intervals during the day. 
 
 on the 'intense degree of rivalry between This habit is most marked in the oven-bird 
 
 the males in their singing,' and adds that it (fwnarius); these stand together facing each 
 
 is not at all incompatible that birds should other, singing their shrill excited song, all 
 
 sing from emulation as well as for the sake the while beating their outspread wings in 
 
 of charming the female ; as the two charac- time to their notes.' 
 
ASSOCIATION. 119 
 
 mans, and Australian aborigines, are remarkable for their love of music) ; 
 and points out that though this cannot be reckoned a certain proof that 
 some rude form of music existed in semi-human times, since it is possibly 
 only an instance of the very common utilisation for one purpose of organs 
 and instincts acquired and adapted for another, yet in this latter case the 
 possession of some sense of melody has to be assumed ; and such a sense 
 seems to be possessed by many animals, as in marked degree by parrots, 
 which, though not belonging to the main order of singing-birds, can be 
 taught to whistle tunes invented by man. Mr. Darwin then remarks on 
 the power of music to excite emotions of tenderness, love, triumph, and 
 ardour for war, adding that ' these powerful and mingled feelings may well 
 give rise to the sense of sublimity,' and that ' we can concentrate greater 
 intensity of feeling in a single musical note than in pages of writing. 
 Nearly the same emotions, but much weaker and less complex, are probably 
 felt by birds, when the male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry 
 with other males, for the sake of captivating the female.' He quotes Mr. 
 Spencer's remark that music ' arouses dormant sentiments of which we had 
 not conceived the possibility and do not know the meaning,' and adds, ' the 
 sensations and ideas excited in us by music, or by the cadences of impas- 
 sioned oratory, appear, from their vagueness yet depth, like mental rever- 
 sions to the emotions and thoughts of a long-past age. All these facts,' he 
 continues, ' with respect to music, become to a certain extent intelligible if 
 we may assume that musical tones and rhythm were used by the half- 
 human progenitors of man, during the season of courtship, when animals 
 of all kinds are excited by the strongest passions. In this case, frcan the 
 deeply laid principle of inherited associations, musical tones would be 
 likely to excite in us, in a vague and indefinite manner, the strong emo- 
 tions of a long-past age. Bearing in mind that the males of some quad- 
 rumanous animals have their vocal organs much more developed than 
 in the females, and that one anthropomorphous species pours forth a whole 
 octave of musical notes and may be said to sing, the suspicion does not 
 appear improbable that the progenitors of man, either the males or females, 
 or both sexes, before they had acquired the power of expressing their mutual 
 love in articulate language, endeavoured to charm each other with musical 
 notes and rhythm. The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with 
 his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his 
 hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which, at an ex- 
 tremely remote period, his half-human ancestors aroused each other's ardent 
 passions during their mutual courtship and rivalry.' 
 
 These ideas may seem at first sight somewhat startling ; but when we ^^^^^^^^ 
 realise the extraordinary depth and indescribability of the emotions of it goes to the 
 
 , ./ JT r . 1. 1 J. • • • root ol tho cen- 
 
 music, the very remoteness and far-reachingness oi tne explanation is m trai character- 
 favour of its validity. Till we come to examine the actual phenomena of *^otro'iiT"°^ 
 
120 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 musical emotion, I cannot hope to show how admirably Mr. Darwin's 
 theory fits in with them; .and how it not only stands alone, among 
 theories as yet suggested, in resting on a broad ground of evidence, 
 but is apparently the only possible one which will the least account 
 for present facts. It must suffice here to mention in the briefest way 
 the prime characteristic of Music, the alpha and omega of its essential 
 effect: namely, its perpetual production in us of an emotional excite- 
 ment of a very intense kind, which yet cannot be defined under any 
 known head of emotion. So far as it can be described, it seems like a 
 fusion of strong emotions transfigured into a wholly new experience, 
 whereof if we seek to bring out the separate threads we are hopelessly 
 baulked ; for triumph and tenderness, desire and satisfaction, yielding and 
 insistence, may seem to be all there at once, yet without any dubiousness 
 or confusion in the result; or rather elements seem there which we struggle 
 dimly to adumbrate by such words, thus making the experience seem vague 
 only by our own attempt to analyse it, while really the beauty has the 
 unity and individuality pertaining to clear and definite form. Even 
 when the emotion takes on a definable hue, a kinship it may be to laughter 
 or to tears, it still has the character of directing down these special channels 
 a high-pitched excitement having its independent source at the general 
 watershed of unique musical impression. And it is just this characteristic 
 oi fused and indescribable emotion which, seems explicable on Mr. Darwin's 
 view : for a pleasure which was associated with the most exciting passions, 
 would have correspondingly large opportunities not only for increase but 
 for differentiation. As the power of differentiation is a most marked 
 characteristic of physical life, in contrast to inanimate existence, so we may 
 conceive that in proportion to the amount of emotional life with which an 
 experience has been charged would be its liability to be differentiated and 
 transmuted as the nervous basis of association developed ; so that those pri- 
 mary experiences in connection with which the sense of vitality in past ages 
 reached its highest point might prove susceptible, like primary physical or- 
 ganisms, of transformation into something unrecognisably high and remote 
 from their original nature. At any rate, without pressing the physical meta- 
 phor, we know from individual observation how easily the recurrence of one 
 element of an exciting experience recalls the intensity and general quality 
 of the excitement, without involving any detailed memory of the concomi- 
 tants ; and the stronger the excitement the stronger the aid which inherited 
 association would lend. And considering the strength of the passions in- 
 volved in the present case, and the enormous period of time which we may 
 allow for the supposed effects, we need scarcely doubt the power of Music 
 to have become sublimated, as it were, out of the coarse definite passions 
 and excitements, love, hope, emulation, hostile ardour, triumph, present 
 during its early stages, and so ' to tell us of things we have not seen and 
 
ASSOCIATION. 121 
 
 shall not see.' From its employment ' during thie season of courtship, 
 when animals of all kinds are excited by the strongest passions,' what was 
 primarily a simple ultimate pleasure which the organism was adapted to re- 
 ceive, might well become in time capable of opening the floodgates to mighty 
 emotions, which, by the very extent to which they baffle analysis, might 
 lead us to suspect their connection with the earliest and most universal 
 of instincts. 
 
 Whether or not the theory commends itself on its own merits, there is no and cannot 
 reason why it should seem derogatory to the art whose effect it would in some considered 
 measure explain : for at any rate the differentiation in question is so com- Musfc!*"'^ '" 
 plete that transcendentalists can easily afiford to ignore the early steps of it. 
 Surely, whatever Music is, they have only to suppose certain historical 
 conditions and processes to be as necessarily the antecedents to our appre- 
 hension of it as the formation of a sense of space to our apprehension of 
 geometry; and that, constituted as our race is, the manifestation to it in 
 one case of aesthetic, as in the other of abstract, truth may have been 
 possible only through the v\ij of various and comparatively insignificant 
 experiences. Those who believe in the expression of spirit through matter 
 need find no difficulty in the sublimation of a spiritual language out of un- 
 spiritual associations. 
 
 But fascinating as this theory is, it is necessary to mark at the very § 7. Mode in 
 outset exactly what it is we want it to do for us, and exactly what is a^eory musi be 
 involved if we are to consider that it does it. We do not particularly *PPi'"l- 
 need association to explain the vaguely pleasurable effect which may be 
 produced by a mere sequence of musical sounds : that might be sufficiently 
 accounted for by the direct effect of musical sound on the nerves, com- 
 bined with a sense of movement in its changing progress. What we 
 want explained is the indescribable and infinitely deeper emotional effect 
 of certain ordered successions of sounds, perceived as ordered ; and the 
 theory comes to our aid by showing that in a primeval stage of existence 
 successions of sound, containing presumably some rudimentary germ of 
 order, were accompanied by emotions capable of transmutation into those 
 we now experience. But then comes the fact that many ordered succes- 
 sions of sound yield us nno such emotions. However individual tastes may 
 differ, any one to whom Music is something more than mere vaguely 
 pleasing sound, any one who distinguishes the various forms it presents to 
 the ear, vrill recognise that he receives the indescribable and delightful 
 emotion from some melodies, while he hears others with indifference, or 
 it may be with positive dislike ; which latter sort nevertheless are quite 
 perspicuous to him, and as easily realised and recollected as the former. 
 This fact must be faced, if we are to claim the right of invoking the 
 associational element when we want it. 
 
 Admitting that, if all melody moved us in the same strong and 
 
122 
 
 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 The door is 
 opened to the 
 associational 
 element by the 
 exercise of a 
 faculty which 
 is independent 
 of it. 
 
 Difficulty in 
 this conception. 
 
 mysterious way, the theory might seem to afford a tolerably satisfactory 
 account of the effect, it certainly will not of itself explain the limits of its own 
 application — in other words, explain the difference between what a person 
 considers a good and what he considers a had melody — and the fact that the 
 one gives him extreme emotional pleasure, and the other none at all. For 
 this difference must be bound up with individual form, though entailing, as 
 will shortly appear, a complexity of proportion unparalleled in any other 
 region of phenomena, and quite beyond the reach of conscious analysis. 
 And it is impossible to suppose that of two modern melodies, each of which 
 involves this singular complexity, one more than the other resembles any 
 primitive succession of sounds : we might as well say that a beautiful 
 person's expression reminds us more of an ascidian than a plain person's. 
 Why, then, should one melody reap the benefit of primeval associations 
 more than the other ? What is it which limits and supplements the effect 
 of that element ? The answer is, that we must consider the. physical and 
 mental process, not any stereotyped successions of sounds, as at the root 
 both of the primitive associations and of their present transformed and 
 differentiated emotional result: that there is this fundamental dis- 
 tinction between the relation of association to enjoyment of form in the 
 visible and in the auditory regions, that in the former it is prominently 
 connected with special forTns (notably, e.g., with the contours of faces or 
 figures), while in the latter it is connected with a special mode of exer- 
 cise.^ The melodic satisfaction of our semi-human or savage ancestors 
 depended on some embryonic proportional and rhythmical element not 
 extending, perhaps, beyond a few short and familiar recurrences ; but I 
 believe that in the hidden and unique processes by which the modern 
 lover of music realises a melodic form, we have merely an infinitely 
 elaborated and complex development of the same proportional sense. The 
 startling difference may not seem greater than some which have been in- 
 dubitably worked by evolution in other mental and moral operations : and 
 it may appear quite legitimate to connect the present effect of the associa- 
 tions with the exercise of a faculty which, at the time the associations 
 were formed, must have been in the most embryonic stage. 
 
 But the difficulty must not be blinked. If it were just in connection 
 with the exercise that the associations were to be supposed to work, 
 the idea would present nothing very exceptional : but the exercise is 
 involved in the apprehension of the disagreeable as much as of the 
 
 ' "We have observed to what a compara- 
 tively late date the power of distinct enjoy- 
 ment of visual form (apart from colour) must 
 be referred ; as late indeed in the case of 
 abstract form as times of really high human 
 development — whereas, there being a germ 
 
 of form even in a series of rhythmical taps, 
 the enjoyment of auditory form in embryo 
 must be referred back to an incalculable 
 distance, and had as great a priority in the 
 evolution of the race as it so perpetually has 
 in the case of individual human infants. 
 
ASSOCIATION. 123 
 
 agreeable tune ; we want to draw on the associational element only for 
 the effects oi 'particular cases of the exercise ; while we have no way of 
 discovering or characterising the right cases (right, that is, relatively to 
 the musical faculty of the particular hearer), except through the very 
 qualities with which the associational element informs them. So that 
 the line of psychological facts with which the associational element 
 must be supposed to have remained actually or potentially united is 
 exceptionally recondite in nature and history. I seem driven to imagine 
 that I find the legitimate linear descendant of perfectly rudimentary 
 musical processes in the mental action by which I apprehend a melody of 
 Beethoven, but not in the mental action by which I apprehend a melody 
 of Claribel. Moreover, if the independent musical faculty ' opens the 
 door to the flood of associational emotion according to the amount of 
 satisfcictory quality it finds in what is presented to it, the ratio of the two 
 elements becomes very hard to determine : we are left to conjectiure how 
 much that satisfactory quality would amount to on its own account, if 
 there were no associational emotion to open the door to. Still, in spite 
 of obscurities, I cannot but fall back on the emotional facts which are 
 absolutely certain, and for the explanation of which the aid of the most 
 profound and far-reaching associations seems to me indispensable. So I 
 must assume that if the associations from the various passions were formed 
 of old in connection with the satisfactory exercise of a rudimentary faculty, 
 so with the developed faculty it can only be when the mind is satisfied 
 by its hidden co-ordinative exercise (not where the proportions are either 
 in some way defective or beyond the hearer's grasp), that the deep 
 emotions, distilled from these passions through ages of inherited associa- 
 tion, can be evoked. The special experience is bound up with an act or 
 process belonging to the domain of a unique faculty, and of extremely 
 variable nature : whence it is that to this day an Asiatic may enjoy a 
 
 • I must call special attention to the sense of perception of abstract form must be 
 
 in which (for want of any other term) I am to account for the extraordinarily deep 
 
 compelled to use the words musical faculty, and passionate emotions of music, and so 
 
 The words of course are often used of invert- are led to refer for those effects to the 
 
 twe power, or some special sort of musical most deeply seated elements of inherited 
 
 gift ; a meaning entirely distinct from that association. But this reference clearly 
 
 we are now concerned with, which is limited implies in the emotional experience, unan- 
 
 to the ordinary power of perceiving and re- alysable as it appears, a double psycholo- 
 
 coguising tunes, of apprehending a melodic gical process : and the difficulty is to realise 
 
 form as a whole by co-ordination of its parts, that in this double process the musical 
 
 Now most of us go through life recognising faculty has its own particular part, and 
 
 the existence of such a faculty, and vaguely admits of all degrees of satisfactory exercise, 
 
 supposing that somehow or other its exercise from the most rudimentary to the most com- 
 
 is independently enjoyable and able to pro- plicated, while at the same time that exer- 
 
 duce emotion, so that it does not occur to cise, wherever it is truly satisfactory, by 
 
 ns to separate the exercise from the enjoy- that very fact loses its separate existence in 
 
 ment : it is only after careful consideration emotion drawn from the other source, 
 that we perceive how inadequate any sort 
 
124 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 succession of notes which is hideous to a European, or (to take a case 
 which cannot be referred to difference of scale-system) one European may- 
 enjoy a succession of notes which is trivial or annoying to another European. 
 Analogy in the A rough analogy may be found in the pleasure of watching the move- 
 rCSS"^ ments of an active and beautiful human form. Here, too, we may 
 hnnian form, imagine for ages a rudimentary pleasure in mere symmetry of parts, and 
 ease of line, so that, apart from any association, to look at a body with 
 two arms would be pleasanter than to look at a body with one, and the 
 smoothness of muscles or of flowing movements would be preferred to the 
 angularity of bones or of jerky movements : still the pleasure we feel 
 certainly has a great part of its roots in association which dates back to 
 the primeval woods, and the days when bodily strength and activity were 
 prime factors in the struggle for existence. And here again we, with our 
 infinitely developed feeling for form, find the door unlocked to the strong 
 emotions dependent on such association only in cases where our abstract 
 sense of symmetry and proportion is satisfied : a very sHght deviation from 
 symmetry in the human form will so annoy us, as seemingly to close the 
 channel of emotion ; and we derive no aesthetic pleasure from the gambols 
 of a strong but clumsy creature, such as an elephant. The roughness of 
 this comparison lies in the fact, already sufficiently emphasised, that the 
 connection between proportions and physical properties and events is in the 
 visual region so close and constant as to make the presence and effect of 
 a strictly abstract element hard to fix and measure ; while this very 
 connection affords frequent grounds for discussing the merits of visual 
 proportions, which are lacking to the entirely and exclusively abstract 
 proportions of Music. 
 Importance of I ^^^J add that in assuming the original existence of some amount 
 
 ofarSment"-" °^ rudimentary musical faculty, independent of the intensification and 
 ary faculty. differentiation of the emotions by the means suggested, we are completely 
 borne out by Mr. Darwin himself; who does not profess to explain how or 
 why the opposite sex was charmed, only how, if the appreciation existed 
 to some extent, it might be gradually modified and enhanced. We may 
 make some attempt, when we investigate the elements of melodic form 
 in the next chapter, to conjecture in what the primary satisfaction can 
 have consisted : here I only wish to insist on the fact that, if it was the 
 necessary starting point for association then, its highly-developed descend- 
 ant is the necessary condition now, for the emotions which association has 
 bred — in other words, that the association-theory will do much to explain 
 "why melody ■is beautiful and emotional, but not why it so often is not ; 
 and that if that difference depends on the working of a special faculty, 
 it can only be to the working of the same faculty in a rudimentary stage 
 that we can refer the rudimentary satisfaction which lent itself to such 
 startling emotional development. 
 
ASSOCIATION. 125 
 
 There is another set of associations, the connection of which with §8. Associa- 
 musical phenomena is of great, though altogether secondary, importance, phenomena of 
 In anything which powerfully affects the organism through a particular ^*"^°"* • 
 channel, there will natiurally be an ingredient of unconscious reference to 
 other impressions received through the same channel ; so that in certain 
 qualities of musical effect we should expect to find a connection with 
 qualities presented by other phenomena of sound. I need not further 
 dwell on the very obvious occurrence both in Music and in Nature of 
 special effects, due to overwhelming mass, or to startling suddenness, of 
 sound ; it has been already pointed out that such effects in Nature owe 
 their power greatly to the rarity of impressive sound ; and the same fact 
 is exempHfied in Music, which wearies instead of impressing us, if it is too 
 lavish of its fortissimos. But we are at present concerned not with 
 masses or sudden bursts of sound, but with melody, or siiccessions of single 
 sounds : and there is one and only one phenomenon which exhibits here 
 the slightest parallelism, namely, speech. 
 
 The connection of speech with melody is only of the most general ^th^'P^l^!' 
 kind : apart from Mr. Darwin's theory, that the use of the voice for the bearing of 
 purposes of pleasure preceded its use as a means of communication, we Music, though 
 shall find, when we come to investigate the nature of melodic forms and general sort, 
 the nature of melodic emotions, how every argument based either on ?^oSe.""*^ 
 structure or on feeling confutes the idea of special relationships between the 
 actual progressions of sounds in the two cases.' But the general bearing 
 of speech on melody is none the less important ; to it is due the vivid 
 effect, which a fine melody produces, of being something said — a real 
 utterance of transcendent significance. So prominent is this characteristic, 
 that the instinct to project some sort of personality behind melodic strains 
 seems absolutely irresistible. Expressive and significant are doubtless 
 words which may be fairly called in question when the ideas and emotions 
 conveyed have no assignable existence external to the phenomena so 
 designated : however impressive a phenomenon may be, it may be said, 
 we have no right to call it expressive, unless we can say what it expresses ; 
 and to say what Music expresses except in music is essentially impossible. 
 I admit the justice of this argument, and own that the complete fusion and 
 transmutation of definable emotions in the most characteristic excitement 
 of Music leaves us without any clear defence against it— except, indeed, by 
 the adoption of transcendental formulse, which after all do not deal with the 
 peculiar facts of Music in relation to expression. Schopenhauer, for instance, 
 considered Music an immediate objectification or expression of that cosmical 
 wiU which he supposed to underlie phenomenal existence. But this has 
 nothing to do with expression in the common and literal sense of telling — 
 of utterance ; and the fact that I seem to myself to use that word in a 
 ' This subject will be treated in full in the chapters on Song and on the Speech-theory, 
 
126 ASSOCIATION. 
 
 literal and not a metaphorical sense in respect of melody, is an instinct 
 which I cannot get behind, and which can only be entirely realised by 
 those who share it. A splendid melodic phrase seems continually not like 
 an object of sense, but like an affirmation; not so much prompting 
 admiring ejaculation as compelling passionate assent. The delusion, if 
 delusion it be, seems quite explicable by the general association with 
 speech ; and as it certainly has a large share in the intensity and direct- 
 ness of melodic effects, the use of the terms expressiveness and signifi- 
 cance, as opposed to meaninglessness and triviality, may be allowed, 
 without the implication of any reference to transcendental views which 
 one may fail to understand, or theories of interpretation which one may 
 entirely repudiate. 
 
 We shall find later that there are other modes, besides this most general 
 one of all, in which the phenomena of Music owe something to speech, though 
 all are extremely general. For instance, features of pace, such as hurry or 
 solemnity, are so markedly characteristic of emotional speech, that the cor- 
 responding features in Music will naturally owe something of their quality 
 to the more familiar experience. Again, a certain pleasure in musical re- 
 sponse, as in an alternation of phrases, perhaps sustained by two instruments 
 of different timbre, may owe some of the interest with which it is followed, 
 and in many cases a certain air of humour, to experience of ordinary vocal 
 phenomena. And when several instruments are concerned at once, their 
 relations may similarly afford semi-humorous suggestions : the violoncello 
 may suddenly assert itself in the midst with what seems like a pertinent 
 remark ; a fliute may echo an oboe, and be commented on by a clarioneti 
 This sort of interest, however, the conditions of which may exist in the very 
 poorest music, has clearly no relation to the essential impressiveness of 
 melody with which we are at present concerned. 
 
127 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 Melobic forms consist of notes in succession : and the succession has two § l- Two 
 aspects or factors, one of tiTne and one oi pitch, which we will first examine melodic forms, 
 separately. 
 
 Strict rhythm in its simplest form may be described as the quality of Rhythm, 
 stimulation due to the production of a soimd or movement, or of a small group 
 of sounds or movements, at equal intervals of time. I say small group, 
 because the most highly developed sense of rhythm that we know of can 
 take in no more. If the group of sounds or movements to be repeated is 
 too large, it will be impossible to grasp and retain it as a whole, and to 
 expect its recurrence at a particular instant; and so the distinctive 
 sense of rhythm, which depends on continuous satisfaction of expec- 
 tation, cannot exist. And as the group must be small, so also must be 
 the intervals between its recurrences : the mere repetition of a particular 
 sound or group of sounds, even were it perfectly regular, might convey 
 no strictly rhythmical impression to a human ear; as the interval of 
 time before each recurrence might be too long for the memory accurately 
 to measure, and an expectation can only be founded on accurate measure- 
 ment. 
 
 It is worth noting that the general principle lies in getting a thing at 
 the right moment — that is, at the moment it is expected — and that strict 
 rhythm is a particular case of this, constituting the most obvious and 
 natural way of fixing what the right moment is to be. It is, indeed, the 
 only imaginable way of fixing the succession of right moments in connec- 
 tion with any wide variety of phenomena; but to creatures interested only 
 in a very small number of experiences, habit might fix the right moment 
 independently of rhythm. Thus very young children never tire of the 
 little games consisting in repetitions of the same form of words — a series, 
 it may be, of quite unmetrical clauses, accompanied by the same gestures, 
 and leading up to a foreseen fiTiale, which is received again and again 
 with explosions of delight. And the same principle may perhaps apply to 
 the notes and little subdivisions which make up the strains of birds' songs : 
 
128 
 
 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 § 2. Diffi- 
 culty ill deter- 
 mining tlie 
 nervous con- 
 ditions of the 
 satisfaction in 
 rliytlim. 
 
 the smallness of the variety in each case seems to show that the mere 
 repetition is agreeable ; and, owing to this very smallness of variety in 
 the strains, habit may well give to each element as it comes the cogency 
 of certainty. 
 
 Strict rhythm, however, stimulation at fixed degrees of time, is naturally 
 by far the most universal and important means for satisfaction of this sort. 
 What the nervous conditions of the satisfaction are, it is very hard even to 
 guess. It appears in connection with all the senses which are capable of 
 sudden and rapid action — with sight and touch, as well as with hearing 
 and muscular movement ; but the two latter present it in much the most 
 prominent form. Owing to this potential connection with a large propor- 
 tion of the whole nervous organism, rhythm presented through any one 
 channel has a tendency to excite an impulse towards the same rhjrthm in 
 other channels ; chiefly in those of movement and sound, which are not only 
 its most conspicuous means of gratification, but afford to the individual 
 specially natural and easy modes of self-stimulation.^ The hearing of an -ir- 
 regular succession of sounds creates not the slightest affection in any other 
 sense : but let the sounds become regular, and instantly the impulse comes 
 to tap the hand or move the foot concurrently with them. And we cannot 
 doubt that the pleasure of rhythm is due greatly to the wide range of the 
 nervous discharge, and also to the associations of life and expansion which 
 especially collect round the sense of muscular movement. But all this does 
 not touch the peculiarities of nervous stimulation with which the primary 
 gratification is connected. It may be suggested that the very mode of 
 life of a nerve-cell is rhythmic, seeing that in it exhaustion and nutrition, 
 waste and repair, succeed each other in regular order. But this order is 
 only regular in the sense that between two exhaustions repair must inter- 
 vene : there need be no sort of regularity of intervals ; a nerve may be 
 stimulated, exhausted, repaired almost instantaneously, then stimulated 
 again immediately, or after a minute, or after an hour, and will equally 
 respond in all three cases. The utmost this alternating mode of life would 
 explain is the negative fact that violent stimulation, even though rhyth- 
 mically repeated, might fail to give any satisfaction, through inability of 
 the nervous substance to repair itself between the stimuli — as, for instance. 
 
 ' The connection of rhythm with higher 
 nervous centres than the special ones of the 
 special senses, indicated by this tendency to 
 discharge into other channels, is further 
 shown by this fact, that a rhythmic character 
 may be perceived in a series of stimuli, each 
 unit of which is addressed to a separate sense. 
 A flash of light, a sound, a tap, and a move- 
 ment of our own, might by repetition be 
 blended into a, rhythmic series. Sounds and 
 
 movements are especially often actually so 
 blended, as we might expect from the gene- 
 rally close connection between the sense of 
 hearing and the motor branches of the 
 nervous organisation : thus in accompanying 
 a regular succession of sounds with move- 
 ments of hand or foot, it is as common to 
 make the movements come half-may between 
 the items of sound as ivith them. 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 129 
 
 if a 'prestissimo were played close to our ears on the bass drum : it does 
 not touch the conditions of 'positive satisfaction in regularity, and positive 
 dissatisfaction in irregularity, altogether disparate in character from the 
 units of sensation which make up the series.' 
 
 Whatever be the physiological effect of regularity of stimulation on § 3. The 
 the nervous system, the resulting satisfaction on the subjective side must though slight 
 be accepted as an ultimate fact, as must the converse annoyance produced overbaSnced ' 
 from the baulking of expectation by irregularity in stimulations which are i7thenile°°^' 
 sufficiently nearly regular to arrest attention. To us the satisfaction in 
 many cases is extremely sUght — so slight that it often does not counter- , 
 
 ' In connection with rhythm, the notion 
 of nervous waste and repair (with its sugges- 
 tion of that dangerous formula ' maximum of 
 stimulation with minimum of fatigue ' which 
 professes to sum up the conditions for 
 pleasurable nervous action) is so far from 
 being explanatory that it presents a most 
 special difficulty. We may certainly imagine 
 in the most general way that a periodic 
 mode of nervous action produces less wear 
 and tear than an irregular mode, and that 
 the failure of the stimulus or impulse to 
 nervous discharge to come at the expected 
 instant may cause the accumulated nervous 
 energy to force a channel for discharge 
 against some sort of friction or resistance, 
 while the regular recurrence of the impulse 
 enables the nerve-substance to discharge its 
 energy with the least resistance, and so with 
 the best chance of rapid repair ; somewhat 
 as we are able to impart the maximum of 
 motion to a heavy swinging body with the 
 minimum of resistance or fatigue, by timing 
 the impulses we give to accord with the 
 body's regular period of oscillation. Un- 
 fortunately, however, this is just one of the 
 tempting metaphors which fail as soon as 
 they are pressed in detail — ^for we are seek- 
 ing for the nervous conditions of satisfaction 
 in rhythm ; and rhythms of the viost various 
 perwds, belonging moreover to stimulations 
 which may widely diflEer in strength, are 
 felt as having precisely the same satisfactory 
 character. Thus the parallelism of the sub- 
 jective and objective events seems to fail. 
 A hitch or stop in an extremely gentle 
 rhythmic stimulation may produce annoy- 
 ance far more similar in amount to that pro- 
 duced by a hitch or slop in a far stronger 
 and quicker series than would be warranted 
 by the presumably large difference in amount 
 of nervous wear ; while a strong and rapid 
 series (as in swinging the foot) may go on 
 
 giving an even satisfaction without any of 
 the gradual and increasing discomfort which 
 might be expected, if the opportunity for 
 repair between the nervous discharges were 
 here as small as on proportional grounds it 
 ought to be, and the amount of repair there- 
 fore increasingly inadequate. As regards 
 repair after exhaustion, the one condition 
 on which the nerve substance could be in 
 the same state of readiness for stimuli of all 
 rates and strengths would be if it could 
 arrive at a state of com2>lete repair in a tinje 
 shorter than the shortest interval ; an 
 hypothesis which the fact of continuous 
 satisfaction seems truly to necessitate. But 
 then, on this hypothesis, it becomes hard to 
 imagine how a sense of rhythm could be 
 produced at all, if we are to recognise no 
 other objective conditions for agreeable sen- 
 sation than degrees of stimulation and of 
 repair — for one would naturally suppose that 
 for a succession of stimuli to produce a sense 
 of rhythm, each must occur before the effects 
 of its predecessor have quite disappeared, 
 that is, iefore the condition of complete 
 nervous equilibrium has been re-established ; 
 and on the theory we are discussing, com- 
 plete equilibrium seems unsusceptible of 
 any other meaning than complete repair. 
 On the whole, considering the sameness of 
 subjective character producible by stimula- 
 tions so widely differing in all those respects 
 which we can connect with the idea of 
 repair after exhaustion, we seem driven to 
 conceive that some form of variation from 
 equilibrium, or at any rate that certain modes 
 of nervous action, over and above mere 
 degrees of action and repair, may constitute 
 the line of events which is more immediately 
 connected with the character of the sensa- 
 tion. This subject is fuither discussed in 
 the Appendix on Discord. 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 § 4. Ehj-th- 
 mic movement 
 under the in- 
 fluence of 
 strong feeling. 
 
 § 5. Distribu- 
 tion of the 
 sense of rhythm 
 in the animal 
 kingdom. 
 
 balance the disagreeableness of having something forced on the attention 
 when we want to be quiet or to attend to other things. This especially 
 applies to sound, which we so often hear involuntarily ; whereas our muscular 
 movements are within our own control : thus the ticking of a clock is often 
 distinctly worrying. But such exceptions are clearly only apparent: 
 everyone would prefer to have the ticking regular than just irregular ; and 
 many lower animals, who are not liable to have their attention distracted 
 from more important things, betray a marked interest in rhythm. 
 
 As regards voluntary rhythmic stimulation, it is well known that strong 
 feeling is apt to vent itself in measured movements : and this has been 
 noticed as remarkable. Thus Mr. Spencer says that 'why the actions 
 excited by strong feeling should tend to become rhythmical is not very 
 obvious.' But if the principle of nervous overflow under excitement be 
 recognised, it does not seem hard to see why the consequent movement 
 should take the form most clearly adapted to enable it to continue easily 
 for some time, especially when this form is productive on its own account ^ 
 of a certain amount of satisfaction. The satisfaction must be recognised 
 as an element in all cases ; and Mr. Spencer appears to me to have been 
 misled by the examples he adduces of the swaying of the body to and fro 
 under pain or grief, and of the leg under impatience or agitation — both 
 instances of rhythmical movement under painful emotion. I cannot 
 regard these movements as expressive of or as excited by the emotion, 
 except indirectly : they are easily accounted for on the supposition that they 
 cause a slight pleasure and distraction, which acts as a relief to body or 
 mind. The need for some sort of extra nervous discharge which accom- 
 panies abnormal nervous excitement, the resulting effect on the muscles, 
 and the consequent diminution of the original tension and the accompany- 
 ing distress, have been admirably explained by Mr. Spencer himself; and 
 in rhythmical movements the same reHef is attained, phis the elements of 
 easy continuance and of positive, though faint, pleasure. It may be added 
 that on merely mechanical grounds a movement would often tend to become 
 rhythmical, since a natural momentum may be set up which swingings and 
 swayings, if irregular, would have to contradict. In cases of pleasurable 
 excitement, while great strength or suddenness in the feeling may, as in 
 the case of painful excitement, be accompanied by spasmodic and -un- 
 rhythmical movement, a continuous rhythmic mode of affection is the 
 natural concomitant of a steady and continuous emotional glow : and here 
 it is often easy to pass beyond simply physiological ground, and to connect 
 the phenomenon with mental conceptions — as, for instance, in the asso- 
 ciation of an idea of dignity with that of restraint, balance, and measure. 
 
 The distribution of the sense of rhythm in the animal kingdom pre- 
 sents difficulties ; nor can we say with certainty where it begins, since the 
 lowest animals cannot make voluntary noises. I have already quoted Mr. 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 131 
 
 Darwin's remarks that ' the perception, if not the enjoyment, of musical 
 cadences and of rhythm, is probably common to all animals,' and that in 
 the case of insects and some spiders the sounds made by the male to 
 charm the female consist of one note repeated rhythmically. Birds may 
 certainly be assumed to possess the sense, as some of them can pipe 
 artificial tunes. Now mammals, if they possess a sense of rhythm, still 
 do not seem to have any special enjoyment of it, as we may conclude 
 from their not voluntarily making rhythmical noises or accompanying 
 movements; for it is only with trouble and by adapting the music to their 
 steps that horses and dancing-bears are made to keep measure ; and pairs 
 of horses in harness seem to have no instinct to keep step. It is cer- 
 tainly extremely curious if insects and spiders possess a strong feeling 
 for rhythm in common with man, of which his fellow-mammals are 
 destitute. A possible solution of this difficulty is suggested by the 
 fact that many noises made by the lower animals are naturally 
 rhythmical owing to the special way in which they are produced. Thus 
 some insects make noises by rubbing the wing against the thigh, just 
 as a boy runs a stick along a number of railings ; when a movement of 
 this kind has reached its termination, the wing is naturally withdrawn 
 and begins again, and thus the sound will recur regularly. The same 
 applies to sounds made by the regular process of inhaling and ex- 
 pelling air ; just as with men the sound of moaning might become 
 naturally rhythmical, being made when the air is expelled. We are not 
 therefore compelled to suppose that the rhythm is the element in the 
 spider's performance which is specially attractive to his mate ; it may be 
 the mere sound which is primarily agreeable : at the same time it is 
 much more natural to suppose that the rhythm is agreeable, even though 
 undesignedly produced. 
 
 The extraordinary specialisation and development of the rhythmical sense § 6. Develop- 
 in man is a fact very hard to account for, but is doubtless connected with sense tn man 
 general development of nervous susceptibility, also (though these may be as ^rgaidi"ffJsion 
 much effects as causes) with the dawn of the practice of dancing, and with 
 the ptjwer of making and handling instruments of percussion ; which in them- 
 selves are far more suggestive of rhythmic use than the voice, owing to the 
 fact, similar to that just noticed, that a withdrawal of the limb is necessary 
 before a stroke can be repeated, and a to and fro motion is thus naturally set 
 up. The same to and fro or alternate motion is also the natural one in many 
 mechanical employments ; and the natural instinct to make the work as 
 easy as possible, through the utmost regularity of movement, would 
 prompt a vocal accompaniment to mark the time, and thus intensify the 
 association between rhythm and easy forceful movement. Thus in 
 Burton's description of the East Africans, we read that 'the iisherman 
 will accompany his paddle, the porter his trudge, and the housewife her 
 
132 
 
 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 § 7. Con- 
 Bection of the 
 dual basis of 
 rhythm with 
 bilateral sym- 
 metry. 
 
 task of rubbing down grain, with song ; ' and it does not surprise us to 
 find that such people will sit for long hours at night ' repeating, with a 
 zest that never flags, the same few notes and the same unmeaning line,' 
 or that in their dances ' a thousand heels strike the ground simultaneously 
 like one.' So again we are told of the Chibchas of Central America, a 
 people who delight in rhythmical performances, and whose 'music and 
 motions never disagree,' that ' the same measure is kept when they are 
 dragging wood or stones.' So again the songs sung by the New Zealanders 
 in their canoes are described as having various measures, adapted for 
 pulling heavy or for pulling light. The fact of the love of mere rhythm 
 and repetition among uncivilised peoples seems nearly universal, and re- 
 minds one of what has been above remarked about very young children. 
 The one artificial instrument is often some sort of drum ; and even where 
 a greater variety exists, the drum retains its independent effect. Thus 
 we read of the Grold Coast negroes, that ' however employed, whether 
 passing quietly through the street, or carrying water from the pond, or 
 assisting in some grave procession, no sooner do they hear the rapid beats 
 of a distant drum than they begin to caper and dance spontaneously. 
 The bricklayer will throw down his trowel for a minute, the carpenter 
 leave his bench, the corn-grinder her milling-stone, and the porter his 
 load, to keep time to the inspiring sound.' Similarly the New Zea- 
 landers are described as having a most accurate perception of rhythm ; and 
 ' while delightful music falls upon their ears without exciting emotion, 
 a noisy drum keeping time gives pleasure.' 
 
 There is, however, one fundamental characteristic of rhythm, espe- 
 cially marked in the superior musical development of man, which may, I 
 think, be accounted for on grounds which take us back to primeval 
 times ; namely, the characteristic of dual balance. As soon as any differen- 
 tiation at all supervenes on a simple series of equidistant accents, as 
 soon, that is, as such a series is divided off into parts, felt as having a 
 beginning and an end, the principle on which these parts are formed is 
 multiplication by two ; thus, to take the simplest case, in tapping a table 
 or beating some percussive instrument, when an undifferentiated series 
 like this 
 
 I 
 
 E^ 
 
 ;j_g-_p- 
 
 ^— ^-p- 
 
 -P^^— p-' 
 
 is at all developed, it becomes something like this ; 
 
 i*— 4-P- 
 
 &c. 
 
 or. 
 
 
 
 &c. 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 133 
 
 Melodic form of course involves such distinct and coherent sets of bars ; 
 and however simple or however complicated be the arrangements of the 
 notes included in the bars, the number of bars is two or a multiple of 
 two. To put it in another way, any complete melodic phrase stops 
 after two, or four, or six component bars, and so on, but not after one, or 
 three, or five.' A component phrase may consist of an uneven number 
 of bars, as three or five ; but then it will be answered by another of three 
 or five. Nor must this be understood merely of melodies and subjects 
 which can be reasonably presented alone; it applies to clause after 
 clause in the longest and most elaborate musical paragraphs, bar answer- 
 ing bar, and pair of bars answering pair of bars, though linked into a 
 series from which no independent bits could be detached. I am speaking 
 of course of truly melodic passages ; by which I mean not merely what 
 
 ' Even apparent exceptions are rare. No 
 one with an ear will need to be told thai a 
 bar of silence (filled up as a rule with ac- 
 companiment) may occur at the beginning 
 or end, as well as in the middle, of a melody. 
 For instance, the melody at the opening of 
 Schubert's Sonata in B flat apparently ends 
 at the seventh bar ; but the ear would resent 
 
 the idea of concluding there, or the starting 
 of a new melody or phrase in the eighth bar, 
 which therefore belongs rhythmically to 
 what precedes. The opening subject of the 
 overture to Le Nozze M Figaro is seven 
 bars long in a far more uncompromising 
 way : 
 
 -■^Tit- 
 
 ^Siiiig 
 
 ^i^^g ^^^^Egj:-5:w^ 
 
 here the odd thing is that the ear certainly 
 feels at the end of the third bar as if it had 
 had fonr, in the sense that it demands four 
 more to correspond ; and the extraordinary 
 energy and suddenness of the opening phrase 
 gives me, as far as I can analyse the experi- 
 ence, a kind of piquant satisfaction in making 
 the first bar do duty for two, a piquancy which 
 quite disappears if that bar be taken twice 
 over. There are also cases where the same 
 bar acts as a second term with the one 
 preceding, and a first term with the one fol- 
 lowing, the ear fully comprehending and 
 accepting the change of character. Again, 
 Engel has pointed out that in some national 
 songs one bar or phrase is repeated for em- 
 phasis, in which case the extra bar may be 
 regarded as a kind of pause, keeping the ear 
 a moment in suspense. Again, it may of 
 course often happen that the melody extends 
 into seven bars, while only six bars long. 
 Thus the curious Eusslan theme, taken up 
 by each instrument in turn in the trio to 
 the scherzo of Beethoven's quartett. Op. 59, 
 No. 2, has its first accented note at the be- 
 
 ginning of the second bar, and the two notes 
 in the first bar which make a sort of ' base ' or 
 'catch' occur, when Ihe repetition takes 
 place, on the second and third beats of the 
 seventh bar, whose first beat has just brought 
 the tune to a conclusion : so that these two 
 first notes and the last note of the tane ac- 
 count for just one bar between them, and 
 the number of bars in any amount of repeti- 
 tions of the tune will always be a multiple 
 of six. It seems hardly necessary to notice 
 such cases as where the dominant harmony 
 is continued to the end of, e.g., the eighth 
 bar of a melody, and the actually final note 
 delayed in order that it may coincide with 
 the tonic harmony and the commencement 
 of a fresh phrase on the first beat of the 
 ninth bar. 
 
 It is worth noting in this connection, 
 how habitually, in forms which divide them- 
 selves naturally into two main segments, if 
 the exact symmetry of response is departed 
 from, it is by the addition of ttvo bars, 
 not of one or three. As an instance of 
 the extremely common response of six bars 
 
134 
 
 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 would be ordinarily called tune or ' subject,' but passages where, however 
 full and important the harmonic element, the main and decided move- 
 ment is along a single line, and where the totally different interest 
 caused by counterpoint, 'repetition,' and sequence, is absent or sub- 
 ordinate ; though even in the most involved passages of ' carrying-out ' 
 and fugue, where these last elements are predominant, the dual basis will 
 be found again and again reasserting itself. 
 
 This characteristic must, I think, have its roots in the simple fact 
 of our being made symmetrically with two sides externally alike, which 
 results in alternate motions with each side. A sense of rhythm is so 
 essentially a sense of movement, that even without the evidence which 
 we have, we could hardly have doiibted the intimate connection of 
 Music and dancing in the early stages of art : and as the enjoyment of 
 rhythm must arise to a great extent from its association with the agree- 
 able sense of vitality caused by motion, and especially by locomotion, so 
 I think will the fact that all regular external movement is alternate or 
 double, explain the characteristic of melody which I have mentioned : 
 for naturally a series of alternate movements can only seem complete — 
 so that on repetition of the series, whatever member had begun is ready 
 to begin again — through an equal number of occurrences of each of the 
 alternating actions, right and left, or whatever they may be. Thus if 
 we had three legs and arms, our melodies would be based on the number 
 three. Of course an enormous majority of our conscious actions are irre- 
 gular, but just on this account they make no impression on the attention 
 or memory ; while the experience of regular alternate movement which 
 our ancestors have had, especially in walking and seeing others walk, is 
 surely sufiBciently large to account for the importance of the dual element 
 in our sense of rhythm. 
 
 in the second segment to four in the first, response of seven bars to five, the following 
 
 the glorious melody which opens the slow specimen from the minuet of Haydn's 
 
 movement in Beethoven's B flat Concerto qnartett. Op. 76, No. 3, is worth quoting : 
 might be given. Of the less common 
 
 Allegro. 
 
THE FAOTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 135 
 
 In connection with the wide distribution of the sense, and the fact § 8. Univer- 
 that it is in no way confined to alliance with sound, but is bound up with the fundamen- 
 large tracts of the whole nervous organisation, we may further notice that, *"' '"stmct. 
 whereas the arrangement of notes and intervals in the scale, and so 
 the faculty for apprehending the relations of notes in respect of "pitch, 
 have proved to admit of many varieties, the fundamental instinct of 
 rhythm, on the other hand seems one and universal. Thus while such 
 momentous changes as the invention of harmony and the development 
 of the modern scale-system might seem to have revolutionised the 
 very nature of the art, this one element of rhythm is as predominant 
 with us as with the Greeks, and the most beautiful music in the world is 
 written on a rhythmic basis as simple as that employed by the spider 
 during courtship. 
 
 But among the senses which take cognisance of rhythm, there is a § 9. Great 
 very wide difference in respect both of keenness of apprehension and of the ear?n'^ " 
 power of appreciating complexities. Ehythm in its outline or skeleton is, ge^g'tiUty 
 as we have seen, of a perfectly simple and unchangeable character, and 
 only means the occurrence of stimulations at equal intervals of time ; but 
 even in following rhythm of this most simple kind, the sense of regularity 
 in a series oi flashes, or of touches, is far less cogent and vivid and far less 
 easy to recall than in a series of sounds. As regards the eye, supposing its 
 muscles not to be called into play, and a rhythmic series of mere retinal im- 
 pressions to be produced (a case which could hardly happen except in an 
 artificial experiment), the sense of the rhythm might be tolerably distinct as 
 long as the rate was not too rapid. But even in this most favourable case, 
 the feeling would not be really vivid, and the passive way in which the 
 phenomena would be watched would offer a strong contrast to the impulse 
 which sound would cause towards some sort of accompanying movement ; 
 while if the rhythmic impressions were not specially brighter than the 
 general field of vision on which they appeared, then the eye, which would 
 not be shut or inactive in the intervals between the accents, but would 
 be experiencing its normal amount of stimulation, would receive no very 
 marked stimulus from the rhythmic impressions when they came ; and a 
 rhythm of this kind could not be observed, still less imagined or recalled 
 with any keenness of apprehension. 
 
 Supposing, on the other hand, that the muscles of the eye are called 
 into play, as in following movement, the very fact of having to follow 
 here and there, and to adjust and readjust the mechanism, precludes 
 absolute instantaneousness in the impression ; while even apart from want of 
 suddenness, the movements of the eye seem too deficient in strength to 
 give in themselves the specific pleasure of rhythmic movement. In prac- 
 tice, of course, the two elements are usually combined, as in following 
 with the eye a dancing figure, where the rhythmical stimulation is pro- 
 
136 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 duced on the retina by marked movement, or marked pause, or change of 
 movement at the accented beats; but even here, where the effect is 
 powerfully aided by the nascent stimulation in the spectator of bodily 
 movements corresponding to those observed, the actual sense of the rhythm, 
 as betrayed by an instinct to beat or stamp time to it, would, in the 
 absence of accompanying music, be far less keen than that produceable 
 by the music without the dancing. Again, dancing may be literally wrb- 
 rhythmical ; and it thus affords a good means of testing the comparative 
 want of keenness in the eye's sense of and demand for rhythm. For as 
 long as the eye is only watching the uninteresting vibrations of a pendu- 
 lum, its sensibility seems vivid enough ; but let it be interested in other 
 ways, as in watching graceful dancing unaccompanied by music, and it can 
 be well satisfied by flowing motion ' which, even supposing it to present a 
 series of distinguishable accents through steps or movements of the arms, 
 may present them at irregular intervals of time, thus lacking the true 
 rhythmic character which becomes essential as soon as a musical accom- 
 paniment is added, 
 especially in There is no doubt that one's own sensations of muscular movement 
 
 piex rhythm, come very much nearest to those of sound, as material for vivid impressions 
 of rhythm. And the superiority in these two cases is still more clearly 
 seen, if we introduce any complexities, by employing in our rhythm 
 intervals of various lengths ; as, in a simple form, by retaining the charac- 
 teristic of regular repetition of one element, but making the element 
 which is regularly repeated not a single unit of stimulation, but a group, 
 presenting some variety in the intervals of time between its component 
 single units. Clearly, if the steady repetition of such a group is to 
 produce a cogent sense of rhythm, the group itself must present enough 
 regularity to be grasped and recognised as a whole; and the natural 
 method of obtaining a variety of intervals, while ensuring this necessary 
 regularity, is to divide some standard interval into halves or thirds, and 
 these again into halves or thirds, and so on ; and an accurate instinctive 
 comparison of the various lengths which are used will result in a distinct 
 perception of the group as a whole. Now directly any very short intervals 
 are introduced, the eye is heavily handicapped ; since in the perception 
 of movement the speed with which its muscles will act is very limited : 
 and if we put movement out of the question, and imagine a mere series of 
 retinal stimulations, as in a series of flashes, the eye is still very inferior to 
 the ear in its power of separating very rapid impressions, and is so rapidly 
 fatigued by the attempt as to lose the power of instantaneous response. 
 
 ' It is singular that the original root of measured series : but I am not aware that 
 the word rhythm points more naturally to even in Greek the word was ever used with- 
 vmdivided flowingness of motion than to a out some notion of division by accents. 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 137 
 
 And even "apart from speed, if we try to realise such a rhythm as this, 
 
 i=i 
 
 
 -X- 
 
 
 
 : &c. 
 
 taken slowly, in any visual way, we shall find how little grip it gets on our 
 attention and memory. The sense of touch will reveal the same deficiency 
 in power to impress us with a particular rhythm, if we are careful to exclude 
 the sense of muscular movement by shutting our eyes and getting another 
 person or some external mechanical means to give the stimuli. And 
 when we come to complexities involving frequent and rapid change, the 
 ear outstrips even its constant friend and attendant, the muscular sense, 
 at any rate in the ease and freedom from fatigue with which it acts, and 
 the readiness with which its impressions are imagined and recalled, and 
 also, I think, in its real power of exact and complete grasp at the time. 
 One may, of course, exaggerate the superiority of the ear in this respect 
 from the constant association of rhythm with music and verse, where the 
 effect is indefinitely magnified ; but at the same time the sense of rhythm 
 may have been truly specialised in connection with sound by these very 
 means. 
 
 It will readily be understood that the complexities of rhythm in Music 
 are not only not incompatible with the simple regularity of the main rhythms, 
 rhythmic basis, but are really only possible through its existence. The 
 spaces of time during which any note in a musical paragraph lasts, and 
 the intervals of time or resfe often intervening between the end of one 
 note and the beginning of another, are proper fractions, usually quite 
 simple ratios, of a constant standard ; ' and this standard is the length of 
 the bar — that is, the length of time between two main accents, in relation 
 to which every other time-length is estimated, and without which a variety 
 of time-lengths would be perfectly vague and unintelligible. But though 
 the ordinary subdivision of the bar by multiples of two and three makes 
 the fractions as a rule tolerably simple, yet as, e.g., one note may last for a 
 
 § 10. Main 
 facts of musical 
 
 ' The constancy is of course for each hear- 
 ing or imagined hearing of the paragraph ; 
 the length of the bar is arbitrary to the ex- 
 tent that the composer may not have defi- 
 nitely marked it, and may be made slightly 
 to difEer according to different tastes. The 
 nature of the musical passage also often 
 necessitates slight changes of the pace, that 
 is, of the length of bar ; but the time- 
 values of the elements in each bar are always 
 of necessity definite fractions of the length 
 of that bar, and the hurrying or retarding 
 never obliterates the accents in such a way 
 as to make the actual length of any bar 
 doubtful. Liberties which, by suddenly 
 
 distorting the time-relations, bafile the 
 hearer's expectations, are always resented, 
 Ohe point Is noticeable in connection with 
 performance. A player who is quite sus- 
 ceptible to being teased by the nervelessness 
 and capriciousness of other people's tempos 
 will sometimes indulge himself in lallings 
 and spasms such as recall Schumann's simile 
 of the gait of a tipsy man : the reason is that 
 the performer naturally has a sense of pos- 
 sessing control, of knowing himself exactly 
 what is going to happen ; so that any modi d- 
 cations of strict rhythm which he introduces 
 keep in exact correspondence with his per- 
 petual adjustments of auditory expectation. 
 
138 
 
 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 whole bar and another for only the sixty-fourth part of a bar, we shall not 
 soon exhaust the possible arrangements. Thus, not to take an extreme case, 
 iV' il> ^^6 t^® ratios which the three notes sounded in this bar bear 
 
 32' 3 
 
 I 
 
 E 
 
 1^=:^ 
 
 -P2- 
 
 to the whole length of the bar ; and as the ^5. and the |-| could each be 
 divided up in any number of ways which would retain 32 as the denomina- 
 tor of the component fractions, while each unit of the division may be repre- 
 sented either by a sound or a silence, the range of subdivision is clearly 
 wide enough for a bar's length to give scope for an endless number of com- 
 binations ; and every bar of a series may differ in its internal time-arrange- 
 ments from every other. Such is the possible variety, that it scarcely occurs 
 to one to call either the bars or any of the subordinate groups by the name 
 of feet, which would seem to imply that the various sorts could be niunbered 
 and catalogued : at the outside, one would apply such a term to a few very 
 simple and common examples. Thus coTnplete musical rhythms — complete 
 series of time-relations — are not fixed and general things, like recognised 
 poetical metres, but infinitely various. The great distinction between 
 one musical rhythm and another has no reference to these endless com- 
 binations, but to rhythmical outlines, which again differ from poetical 
 metres in the other direction, of being far more general and less various. 
 These are concerned primarily only with the first division of the length of 
 the bar, which must either be into two parts or into three, giving respect- 
 ively two and three main beats for a bar : this division into double and 
 triple time is generic' The next stage consists in dividing the halves in 
 the one case, the thirds in the other, into two parts or into three parts ; 
 and this creates species for each genus, the original halves still consti- 
 tuting double time, even where subdivided into thirds, and the original 
 
 I^S.S^ 
 
 thirds still constituting triple time, even where subdivided into halves. 
 
 The main divisions being thus clear, the further subdivisions are readily 
 and accurately appreciated by the ear ; and even such exceptions as the 
 
 ' I allow this word to stand, as it simpli- be between those rhythms which admit the 
 fies the classification : at the same time an number t!a-ee and its multiples, and all 
 equally true generic difference would perhaps other rhythms. For though | time is double 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 139 
 
 subdivision by three (or occasionally by five, or seven,) of a time-length 
 which in the particular piece is normally divided by two and multiples of 
 two, are extremely easily caught, through the absolute certainty of the 
 simple accents which mark the first prime divisions of the bar. 
 
 It will be well to add that when in future I employ the word rhythm. Explanation as 
 I shall not confine it (unless expressly so stated) to the mere outline of words rhythm 
 main accents (double time, triple time, and their varieties), but shall use ^""^ «""^'''- 
 it in its fullest application to the value in time of every note and every 
 rest in a melody ; that is, as representing exactly what a melody becomes 
 if we neglect the pitch of the notes. Of a thousand waltzes, all written on 
 a common outline {i.e. with three beats in a bar), each in this sense might 
 have a distinct rhythm. The word accent, again, is ambiguous, being often 
 applied specially to those notes which, in any particular phrase, seem to 
 demand pointed emphasis, and which often fall quite irregularly, one bar 
 containing perhaps more than one of them, and others none at all. Accent 
 is, however, the most convenient term, and will often bejhere used, to express 
 the regular strong places which occur normally in all bars, the places at 
 which, in beating time, the marked down-stroke naturally comes. 
 
 The second factor of melodic form, pitch, presents the greatest § n. pitch : 
 contrast to rhythm both in nature and history. Ehythm, as we have seen, Jacitei'**aw re *" 
 is a phenomenon which can be associated with several sorts of sensa- gardspercep- 
 
 . 121 1 #-T *'<"' °^ distance 
 
 tions ; pitch is absolutely confined to the sense of hearing. And, among and direction. 
 the simple impressions of sense, differences of pitch present the absolutely 
 unique peculiarity, that they are neither differences of kind, as between 
 red and blue colours, or between bitter and sweet tastes, or between a 
 violin-note and a clarionet-note ; nor differences of strength or degree of 
 intensity, as between bright and moderate light, or between very sweet 
 and slightly sweet tastes, or between a loud note and a soft note ; but 
 they are differences of distance and direction, clearly and indisputably 
 felt as such, and susceptible of the most minute shades of discrimination. 
 The spectrum of visual colours affords, by contrast, the readiest means of 
 appreciating this peculiarity. When a spectrum is thrown on a screen, the 
 distances from each other of the various colours give no feeling of cogency 
 or necessity. Presented as they are, the space-distance of any tint from 
 any other could of course be mechanically measured for any particular ad- 
 justment of the screen and the prism : but such measurements would 
 
 time, presenting groups ^of three in pairs, ceptible, if we will, of as marked an accent 
 
 music written in it could not infrequently be as the first, and thus gives us the option of 
 
 written as in f time, which is triple time, by making an actual first beat of it by halving 
 
 simply drawing a line down the middle of the bar. In such cases | seems more akin 
 
 each bar, and so making each group of three to the class which comprises | and | than to 
 
 a separate bar — for the fourth quaver, being the class which comprises |. 
 in any case accented, may often seem aus- 
 
140 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 have no general or essential validity ; by imagining the spectrum indelB- 
 nitely lengthened or contracted at any point we can vary indefinitely the 
 relative distances of the colours, so that distance in space is clearly quite 
 irrelevant to their differences. The order of the spectrum^ moreover, is, as 
 far as our sensations go, perfectly accidental and arbitrary ; we can con- 
 struct or imagine other orders, presenting just as much, or rather just as 
 little cogency, and whose gradation would look just as natural ; for instance, 
 we might make blue shade into red via purple. Again, if a bright spot of 
 yellow (the middle colour of the spectrum) be thrown on a screen, and, by 
 the gradual intervention of coloured glasses between it and the source of 
 light, the colour be gradually changed to red, and a similar process be 
 repeated so as to change the spot from yellow to green, we have absolutely 
 no sense of having passed in opposite directions in the two cases ; nor have 
 we any sense of going further in looking from the leaves to the flower of 
 a scarlet geranium than in looking from the leaves to the flower of a 
 buttercup : whereas if we hear first a middle note on a piano followed by 
 a bass note, and then a middle note followed by a treble note, the im- 
 pression of opposite directions is irresistible ; as is the impression of going 
 further in the passage from a bass note to a treble note, as compared with 
 the passage from a bass note to a middle note. 
 lieaBon why It is worth while, in passing, to notice the curious question why up 
 
 of pftehtreftit "''^^ down is felt so instinctively as the natural description of the two 
 as up and directions which the scale of pitch presents. The reason must, I think, 
 
 lie in the fact that since higher sounds are more penetrating and more 
 conspicuous than lower ones, the higher register of the voice has been for 
 long ages employed in all circumstances where an effort has been made to 
 attract attention or to give force and wide reach to the utterance of vocal 
 sound ; and has thus become associated with elevation and dilatation of the 
 physical frame, which are not only, in the case of the head and chest, 
 directly connected with an upward strain of the voice, but are on their 
 own account the natmral movements, under the same conditions of desire 
 to attract attention or impress a spectator. Thus the arms especially, 
 which are ordinarily pendulous with the hands in a low position, are 
 instinctively raised in passion and excitement, since the nervous discharge 
 natural in such cases, if it is to affect them at all, can only do so in an 
 upward direction ; and similarly the head, which tends to droop forwards 
 with relaxation of muscular tension, is liable to be sharply raised under 
 sudden stimulus. To this we may add that bass notes have normally a 
 volume and fulness which easily associates itself with the idea of mass and 
 weight ; and the connection of weight with sinking and depth is obvious. 
 Unique charac- To return to the unique character of pitch. Fixity of order and 
 r^gards'reu-^ distance are not the only peculiarities of the scale of tone : another is 
 element "^ presented by the definite relationships existing between different points 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 141 
 
 on it, the recognition of which is as distinct as that of distance and direc- 
 tion. To take the simplest case, if we start at any point and proceed up 
 or down, we come in time to another point presenting a marked resemblance 
 to our starting point, of a sort which, from the very uniqueness of the 
 phenomenon, defies definition or description. This second point has the 
 relationship of an octave to the first, and physics shows us that the ratio of 
 the rates of aerial vibration for the two notes is two to one. Now the 
 visible spectrum of colour, physically considered, constitutes about an 
 octave ; that is to say, the rate of ethereal vibration for the extreme violet 
 at one end is about double of that for the extreme red at the other. But 
 as regards sensation this fact has no significance ; it is not represented by 
 the slightest resemblance or relationship between the two colours. The 
 only sort of resemblance possible to tints is that in which not any, or 
 hardly any, shades of colour could be interposed so as to lead from one to 
 the other ; whereas any distinguishable tones between which it would be 
 impossible to interpose any, or more than a very few, gradations of pitch, 
 would be at an interval of a semitone, or less than a semitone, apart ; that 
 is, at an interval involving such discrepancy as would be fatal to their 
 joint existence, or at best would constitute their relationship the most 
 distant possible, in any tolerably satisfactory scale-system. 
 
 The contrast presented by tone-relationship to any visual phenomenon 
 is more easily comprehensible, now that its physical and physiological 
 basis is known to have no analogue in colour. This knowledge is due to 
 the discovery by Helmholtz that on all satisfactory instruments each tone, 
 though apparently simple, is a compound of many tones, a 'prime one and 
 upper ones or harmonics. The various resemblances between notes 
 result from their possession of a greater or leas number of identical 
 harmonics ; or from common resemblance of this kind to some third note ; 
 and it is important to grasp the startUng fact, that our keen feeling of the 
 relationships is due to the presence in the notes of sounds which to most 
 of us never become objects of independent observation. 
 
 Before we proceed to the further consideration of relationship, and of § 12. The 
 
 . , , , fundamental 
 
 the actual fixed mtervals, one remark may be made as to mere change pleasure in 
 of pitch on its own account. We have seen how, among changes of rf^pHdi.™^* 
 sense-impression, this is unique in giving the impression of passage 
 from point to point. Ehythm clearly does nothing of that kind: how- 
 ever much it may suggest movem,ent, it does not suggest adva/nce: 
 whereas no change in pitch can take place without involving this 
 feature ; and the most formless fragment of transition presents this funda- 
 mental attribute of what will be afterwards described as the Ideal Motion. 
 To a developed musical ear indefinite transitions without the formative 
 element of fixed degrees are quite devoid of interest ; but in any embryonic 
 use of the voice for purposes of pleasure, as among young children or in 
 
142 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 the grown-up childhood of savage life, the mere change of note, differ- 
 entiated from other changes of sense-impression, e.g. of colour, by the 
 peculiar sense of advance, is very clearly enjoyable. The fundamental point 
 seems to be the change : that the change should very commonly be to 
 a related note, as the octave or the fifth, may be, in the earliest stage, a 
 secondary and negative provision, due to the fact that if it were to some 
 unrelated point of pitch, this last would be felt as disagreeably discrepant 
 and unexpected. And much as the more advanced stages of the Ideal 
 Motion may perplex us, this rudimentary pleasure in change seems specially 
 easy to understand in the case of tone, owing to the peculiarly exceptional 
 and intermittent, and therefore peculiarly exciting effect, of this form of 
 sense-stimulation, as sufficiently described in the second chapter. 
 § 13. Neces- To definite melodic form, however, fixity of degrees in pitch, as well as 
 
 degrees or in- in time, is of couTsc indispensable : and we may go further, and say that, 
 scale/ '" ' ^ without fijxity of degrees, changes of pitch if at all prolonged are positively 
 disagreeable to moderately cultivated ears, unless the shifting be so slow 
 that the ear has appreciable time to dwell on the various elements as they 
 pass. Such slow transition may be sometimes heard in a wailing wind, 
 and, where the timbre is not marked, may have a certain weird charm. 
 But the sound made by the best violinist on the best violin in the world, 
 if he passes by uninterrupted slides up and down the length of one of his 
 strings, will inevitably recall midnight cats ; thus exemplifying what has 
 been already said, that definite musical colour has its natural habitation 
 only in the sphere of musical form. Whether the disagreeableness in such 
 a case could be connected with any physiological grounds, or whether it is 
 rather due to a mental sense of aimlessness and fatuity through the 
 constant association of musical timbre with fixed degrees of pitch, is very 
 hard to decide ; the latter hypothesis seems somewhat favoured by the fact 
 that the slide, by a voice or on a stringed instrument, from fixed degree to 
 fixed degree, is felt as distinctly pleasant. 
 
 But further, the fixity of degrees in pitch is really necessitated by the 
 fixity of degrees in time, if time and pitch are to enter as factors into a 
 form. Since the parts of time cannot, from their very nature, be compared 
 contemporaneously, their variety would be chaotic but for a fixed scale of 
 subdivision. Now time is limited to one dimension ; and though along thig 
 dimension rhythm can certainly produce formed groups which may be 
 presented even in monotone, as on a drum, yet freedom and wide variety 
 of form or curvature (to use the one conceivable metaphor) are clearly 
 only possible through variations of pitch. Pitch, again, is only of one 
 dimension, up and down; and though in its case there are perceptible 
 differences along the line, and so possibilities of contrast by sliding 
 transitions apart from fixed degrees, yet as the changes can only take 
 place in succession, time cannot be kept out, and will appear as chaotic 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 143 
 
 unless regularly divided ; there is no via media. As, then, the changes of 
 pitch, up or down, are stopped at definite instants, definite points of pitch 
 must necessarily be presented at those instants ; and the actual points 
 employed in the music of any place or time constitute a scale-system. 
 
 Even in the rudest forms of Music, there has been universal agreement § i4. Forma- 
 as to the necessity of a separation, in some way or other, of certain degrees ""^ ° ^'^^ ^' 
 of tone from the range of continuous gradation ; but the separation has 
 been carried out in the most various methods at various times and places. 
 The obvious relationships presented by the octave and the fifth have made 
 them constant elements both of melody and of harmony, and the third has 
 had a natural charm for man as for the cuckoo. Thus the Sumatrans are 
 described as confining their harmony to the octave ; while they and other 
 tribes make more frequent use of the third in melody than of any other 
 interval. And in the monotonous songs of the Ostyaks of Northern Asia, 
 it is said that ' one hears little besides the fundamental note and minor 
 third, and more rarely the fifth also.' 
 
 In early stages the use of intervals less than a tone has often been ' Adoption of 
 avoided : but tones and semitones have been the prevailing steps of division tougg ^^ gteps, 
 in more civilised systems. By the adoption of these steps, the distance 
 between a note and its octave can be divided into intervals at points each 
 of which will present some perceptible degree of relationship with the 
 extreme notes. This may be immediately realised by any one who knows 
 the names of the notes, if starting on a piano with C, he will pass to the 
 next C above by tones only, without using any semitones, thus dividing 
 the octave into six tones ; he will then have to strike F sharp, a note un- 
 related to C, which by its odd uncomfortable sound, as contrasted with F 
 natural, will show clearly what relationship and its absence imply. By the 
 introduction of a semitone in each half of the scale, all such strange and 
 unsatisfactory intervals are avoided ; but even when this is done, a good 
 many varieties of arrangement are possible. For scales in which this con- 
 dition is observed will be produced by passing on a piano, hy white keys 
 only, from each white key in turn to its octave : and if these various 
 arrangements be compared, it will be found that the interval between the 
 starting note and the next note to it, the interval between the starting 
 note and the next but one to it, and so on, are each of them liable to difi'er 
 by a semitone from the corresponding interval in some of the other arrange- 
 ments. The same want of fixity affects the distance and relationship of the 
 component notes of every possible interval in such scales, and is of course 
 incompatible with the immediate and instinctive reference ' of each um't in 
 
 ' I have often found people professing a instances out of a hundred it is a mere 
 
 want of proper comprehension of Music, case of M. Jourdain. Any one who knows 
 
 because, e.g., they are unaware of referring two bars of ' God save the Queen ' refers 
 
 notes to a key-note, and do not know the notes to a key-note in the only way in which 
 
 meaning of 'modulation.' In ninety-nine it is possible to do so: that his 'apprecia- 
 
144 
 
 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 any series of notes to a certain place in an unmistakable scale. The result, 
 therefore, of having all these arrangements in use would be not only lack 
 of definiteness in the forms built on the notes of any svngle scale, but lack 
 of the wide variety which is only possible by change of scale ; that is, by 
 clearly felt transference of the notes from membership in a scale with one 
 starting-point to membership in a scale with another, 
 and limitation This defect, inevitable on a system which recognises a number of modes 
 
 of arrangement of scale-arraugemeut, has been obviated by discarding all of them except 
 *" *^°* two, the so-called major and minor ; the effect of the limitation being that, 
 
 whatever be the starting-point or key-note, the scale from it to its octave, 
 while identical as regards steps or relations with the scale from every other 
 note to its octave, contains two actual notes which exist jointly in no other 
 scale (F and B in the scale of C), and which therefore, when both have 
 been heard, unmistakably mark the key. The feeling for these two modes 
 has now become second nature to Europeans, though the process by which 
 they were estabUshed was a very gradual one. The history of this process 
 has been admirably explained by Helmholtz, and does not fall within our 
 scope : it wUl be enough to realise that the merit of the modern system 
 consists in the absolute definiteness it has given to the sense of key, taking 
 effect in the keenness with which not only notes in the key, but accidentals ' 
 or notes foreign to the key, and modulations or transitions from key to 
 key, are apprehended and remembered. 
 
 It is natural that people habituated to different scale-systems, especially 
 if the diversity extends to the actual intervals employed, and not merely 
 to their arrangement in the scale,^ should find each, other's melodies per- 
 
 § 15. Diver- 
 sity of scale- 
 systems. 
 
 tlon of that bit of melodic form depends 
 on the position of notes in the major scale 
 
 he may convince himself by getting some 
 one to play the two following strains, 
 
 and 
 
 P^^ 
 
 and seeing whether the latter seems to make 
 a satisfactory start for the tune. Similarly, 
 any one who knows and approves ' God pre- 
 serve the Emperor ' has quite sufBcient appre- 
 ciation of modulation for present purposes. 
 
 ' It is curious to notice the difficulty 
 which young and untutored ears, even dis- 
 tinctly ' musical ' ones, occasionally have in 
 realising accidentals. I have heard school- 
 children sing a glee beginning 
 
 ^^_^=^ 
 
 i= &c. 
 
 perfectly in time, but with the second G unsharpened ; similarly I have heard street-boys 
 whistle the waltz beginning 
 
 perfectly correctly, save that the C in the 
 sixth bar was unsharpened. This is a 
 different phenomenon from the frequent 
 singing out of tune (i.e. taking the right 
 note a little sharp or flat) by children ; and 
 
 is rarely met with, I think, in an adult who 
 can take notes true. It implies a certain 
 hesitation of ear or voice to launch itself 
 beyond the track of the normal key-steps. 
 ^ As regards scales which agree with our 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 145 
 
 fectly unintelligible. The merit of our system is that, while taking a 
 sufficient number of sufficiently varied intervals to admit of the production 
 of endless forms from the notes of a single scale, it has rejected the minuter 
 steps of subdivision; and by confining the notes comprised within an 
 octave to twelve, which will serve for a whole linked series of keys (seven 
 notes out of the twelve appearing in each), has opened out all the extraor- 
 dinary possibilities of modulation. Other peoples have had, to their cost, 
 an extraordinary sensibility to the minuter intervals, with the result that 
 in their formation of scales the feeling for propinquity of note has over- 
 balanced that of relationship. An Arab who derives keen pleasure from a 
 melodic form in which he uses quarter-tones, naturally strikes a European 
 as singing incoherent notes grievously out of tune ; but that would be 
 nothing against him if his system admitted of the abundance and variety 
 of beautiful forms to which ours has proved itself adequate. 
 
 To realise the complexity of proportion involved in any use of the units § le. Dis- 
 of pitch which scales comprise, it must be noticed that the factors of ti^^t^^\r&'^ 
 distance and relationship are not only disparate in nature, but are wholly "*'^^y ^^ 
 unparallel, so to speak, in the way in which their respective degrees appear 
 in the scale. Thus the note most nearly related to C is another C, a long 
 distance from it ; the next in nearness of relationship is Gr, a considerable 
 distance from it, while the nearest to it in distance is D, the relationship 
 of which is comparatively remote ; and the note between the two, D flat, is 
 still nearer ia distance and still more remote in the other sense. A priori 
 we should have been quite at sea on these points : we could not have told 
 whether it would not be necessary that order of propinquity should go 
 with order of relationship, e.g. whether we ought not to take for the second 
 and third degrees of our scale such notes that the former would be more 
 nearly related to the starting-note than the latter; this being indeed 
 
 own in the use of tones and semitones, but one another, which belong to them in their 
 
 differ in the arrangement of them, as in the own right without reference to any special 
 
 old ecclesiastic modes, the following facts scale ; and it is this fact which makes it 
 
 may be noted. The actual relationships of possible for music written in an old mode, 
 
 notes to one another are of course something especially with a certain amount of artifice, 
 
 distinct from their particular position in a in the harmonies, to seem intelligible to 
 
 particular scale, though the reference to a modem ears. For instance, we may take 
 
 key-note is now too instinctive for the other the old mode which is represented by the 
 
 element to be independently appreciable in scale of D, played all on white notes ; and 
 
 a melodic form. For instance, D, F, A, are though we could not refer the notes used in 
 
 notes of the scale of C, and when the inter- that mode to a key-note D in the way in 
 
 vals they form occur as constituents of a which we refer notes to the major and minor 
 
 melody in C, the position of the notes in scales which are, so to speak, in our inmost 
 
 that scale is involved in the perception of musical fibre, we may still find them conse- 
 
 the form into which they enter ; equally quent and even agreeable ; only not cogent 
 
 when the intervals occur as constituents of or possessing. Still even this much would 
 
 a melody in D minor, or in F, or in A minor, only be possible where, as in the instance 
 
 or in B flat, the position of the notes in those given, the scale differed but slightly in 
 
 scales is necessarily realised ; but they arrangement from our own major or minor, 
 possess certain independent relationships to 
 
146 
 
 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 bnt. do not in- 
 volve any 
 duality of cha- 
 racter in the 
 intervals as 
 melodically 
 perceived. 
 
 the condition we actually find to hold with respect to the fifth, sixth, 
 and seventh degrees, Gr being more nearly related to C than A, and 
 A than B. As a matter of fact, propinquity and relationship have both 
 acted in the formation of the scale : the remote B, for instance, was 
 adopted as the seventh degree of the scale of C in preference to the nearly 
 related B flat, owing to its propinquity to the C above it, which is so 
 naturally reached from it as to have obtained for it the name of leading 
 note. But though these elements are actually so distinct, their presence 
 does not involve any feeling of a double character in the notes, as presented 
 in an intelligible melodic series. 
 
 Though each note in such a series has the two things, its particular 
 degree of propinquity and its particular degree of relationship to any 
 other, this analysis is not involved in our melodic perception. The note's 
 value is as an element in all sorts of different forms, essential in each 
 place of its occurrence : but it cannot be used in virtue of degree of 
 propinquity without carrying with it its inaliena,ble relationships, or 
 vice versa.^ We find by experience that our scale-system affords a sufE- 
 
 ' Notes may be used, however, which of the truly essential notes, may in other 
 
 present no appreciable relationship ; as often cases be entirely essential to the form. To 
 
 in the case of 'accidentals.' Even in simple take a couple of instances, everybody who 
 
 melodies notes foreign to the key, and yet knows the opening of Spohr's ' Rose softly 
 
 not leading into a new key, frequently occur : blooming,' 
 and these, though sometimes mere ornaments 
 _*SZow. 
 
 or of the invocation to the evening-star in Tannhduser, 
 
 =:£j£;^-r^g - :pg^= 
 
 will recognise how impossible it would be 
 to dispense with the G sharp in the former 
 or the C sharp in the latter. Eelationship 
 in the case of such notes is in abeyance, and 
 their place in the form is wholly due to 
 close propinquity, since they are instantly 
 followed by one of the notes of the key from 
 which they are only a semitone distant. 
 As regards the true notes of the scale. 
 
 perhaps the easiest way of realising how 
 degrees of distance reckon, over and above 
 relationship, is to take a case where a very 
 distinct skip is made to a note as nearly 
 as possible identical, in point of relation- 
 ship, with a nearer note, which, however, 
 when we try it instead, is found to spoil the 
 form. For instance, in the second ' subject ' • 
 of Chopin's Fimeral Mmrch, 
 
 the interval in the second bar from B to the 
 A above clearly could not be replaced by the 
 
 smaller and more obvious interval to the A 
 below, thus 
 
 similarly the replacement of the tenth in the opening of Schumann's violin romance. 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 147 
 
 cient variety of elements, sufficiently numerous degrees of distance and 
 relationship, to make up by rhythmic adjustments of the notes, and by 
 transference of their allegiance from key to key, an infinite number of 
 distinct forms : but how far a note seems right and necessary in a tune 
 because it is at such and such a distance from the one before it, and how 
 far because it presents such and such amount of relationship to that note 
 or to the key-note, it is idle to enquire. We cannot alter one property 
 without altering the other. The note with those relationships is, and 
 cannot but be, at that particular distance : the note at that distance has, 
 and cannot but have, those relationships ; but it has no dual character as 
 regards the form, in which we feel its presence as that of a single un- 
 analysable unit. 
 
 The fact is that though in judging of note-material apart from form, § 17- Nafurai 
 
 ... . T 1 T f p 1 I 1 relationshiji in 
 
 It IS easy to realise the ' naturalness of the modern scales, and the compara- its deeper si nse, 
 tive strangeness of accidental notes (as any one may see by playing such a 
 series as this, 
 
 i 
 
 ^^^fe^M 
 
 =^= 
 
 and then trying to sing it from memory), yet when the notes take their 
 places in a melody we get a naturalness of quite a different kind. The 
 natural relationship of each note in a melody is to the note or notes next 
 it in the mslody, its proper and necessary associates at that particular 
 part of that particular form. As to what shall be accepted as natural in 
 this deeper sense, the musical faculty justifies itself to itself alone ; its only 
 interest is in the combinations it finds pleasant, for the supply of which, 
 happily, the variety of material has so far proved amply sufficient ; as, to 
 use the roughest of metaphors, a considerable variety of bricks might be 
 necessary for certain architectural purposes, since no curved form could 
 be constructed of simply square bricks : but the whole interest would be 
 in the form and its gradations, not in the bricks. A person ignorant of 
 written notes, and who had not studied singing, might encounter a very 
 well-marked interval, occupying the same place in the scale, in fifty 
 different melodies, of each of which he had perfect apprehension, without 
 ever noticing it to be the same ; and in many cases considerable attention 
 
 by a third, thus, 
 
 ^B^^^ 
 
 gives an odd sense of repression and tame- the tonic above, or by a descent from the 
 ness. Similarly we might easily exemplify dominant to the tonic below ; each seeming 
 the importance of direction, over and above right in its place, while in a form that was 
 relationship, by cases in which melodies end worth anything either would be resented as 
 either by an ascent from the dominant to a substitute for the other. 
 
 I. 2 
 
148 THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 and ingenuity would be necessary to enable him to realise the identity, 
 even after his attention had been drawn to it. It is amusing to play a 
 harsh detached interval to such a person, and immediately afterwards to 
 introduce it in its place in a form (for instance, the major seventh from 
 C sharp to D, in the second bar of the phrase to be immediately quoted) ; 
 he will almost refuse to believe the two to be identical, even though only 
 a few seconds has separated them. With chords the experiment is still 
 easier, as the harshness of a detached discord is more striking than that of 
 any melodic interval. Helmholtz says that thirds and sixths are melodi- 
 cally and harmonically the most attractive of intervals, and gives an in- 
 genious explanation in the fact that they lie at the very boundary of 
 those that the ear can grasp, and thus occupy a middle position between 
 the too obviously simple interval of the octave and the intervals whose 
 notes have the minimum of intelligible relation. But it is only when 
 the intervals are detached that such terms can be applied. Harmony 
 which dealt in thirds and sixths and avoided discords, would very soon pall ; 
 and a melodic phrase can only be judged as a whole. We may indeed 
 have our culminating and favourite points, buo they will not turn out to 
 be oftener connected with thirds and sixths than with any other interval. 
 And in no case can such single intervals have any independent value. 
 We may take a case where sixths are a very prominent feature, as in the 
 beautiful tune from Fra Diavolo, which opens thus : 
 
 but here each pair of sixths is separated by a seventh, and the sevenths 
 
 are of course a no less essential part of the continuous form. We do not 
 
 first enjoy one sixth, and then wait and enjoy the next; indeed, if we wish 
 
 to make distinctions, there is something in the sweep down to the seventh 
 
 in each case which makes that seem the more delightful interval of the 
 
 two. It is as impossible to pick out special intervals in a melody, and say 
 
 they are more attractive than others, as to pick out a certain square inch 
 
 in a beautiful face and say the same of it. The interval and the square 
 
 inch depend for their beauty and effect on the whole to which they belong, 
 
 in which every part tells on every other. 
 
 §18. Further Two more observations maybe made before leaving the special topic 
 
 tiTexcep«onai ^^ P^*'^^- "^^^ ^^^t merely expresses the exceptional definiteness of the 
 
 theavSif ^^^^^ P°^^*® •'^ *^^ ^^'^le which tone relationship involves; they permit 
 
 pomts on the absolutely no liberties. We have seen that liberties can be taken with the 
 
 time-element ; that rhythm is often to a certain extent elastic, and can be 
 
 varied in pace without loss of the underlying sense of its regular accents, 
 
 and regular scale of subdivision; but with the pitch-element such liberties 
 
THE FACTORS OF MELODIC FORM. 
 
 149 
 
 woTild mean the production of notes out of tune. The extremely slight 
 divergence from absolute truth of interval necessitated by equal tempera- 
 ment,' is of course a constant, not an arbitrary or occasional, feature, and 
 is perceived, if perceived at all, not as a liberty, but as a defect ; though a 
 defect which, on the pianoforte at all events, is scarcely noticed except by 
 very exceptional and unfortunate ears. 
 
 The other characteristic to be noticed is a result of the above-men- and consequent 
 tioned amise of advance, in combination with this extreme definiteness of feeling of satis- 
 the points to which the advance is made. By this means the feeling of uouf''''""^ 
 perpetually satisfied expectation gets a far keener edge than is possible 
 through the mere occurrence of rhythmic stimuli at the expected instants ; 
 and the excitement is heightened in the case of instruments which admit 
 of sliding from note to note, by the mere act of following the rapid but 
 gradual course of the transition. 
 
 • What this means, and how fortunate it 
 is that there is a slight willingness to yield 
 (or perhaps we should rather say a slight 
 obtuseuess) on the part of the ear, can be 
 made clear to any one who knows the names 
 of the notes and intervals. To take a case 
 on an instrument with fixed notes : if we 
 tune a note as a perfect minor sixth from C, 
 the sound made by it will be more than a 
 true major third distant from E ; so that if 
 we subsequently want to use the key of E, 
 this same note, which now represents the 
 third degree of the scale of E, will not bear 
 an accurate relation to its key-note. But 
 this, it may be said, is an imperfection of 
 the instrument; on an instrument which 
 will give all shades of tone, the note might 
 be a shade flattened, and the interval so 
 made true in the new key. Let us, then, 
 take another case. In this simplest of 
 chord- sequences, if the A and G are per- 
 
 ^^m 
 
 f eotly tuned as regards 0, then the D-A in 
 the second chord, and the G-D in the third, 
 cannot both be perfect fifths, and to make 
 them so by altering the pitch of the D in 
 the transition would be tampering with 
 the common link of the two chords. It is 
 easy to see how in modulation, when several 
 keys are used in succession, the occasions for 
 
 error which these two examples suggest are 
 multiplied, and how, if our ears were per- 
 fectly rigid in their demands, even perfect 
 instruments could only get out of the diffi- 
 culty by altering the pitch of some note or 
 notes common to two consecutive keys ; 
 whereby, so far as the ear noticed the altera- 
 tion (which, on the hypothesis that it is 
 offended by the errors when the notes are 
 wjchanged, it ought distinctly to do), the 
 very point which gives ease and naturalness 
 to the transition, namely, the marked posses- 
 sion of common notes by the two keys, 
 would necessarily suffer. The simplest way 
 of obtaining identity of interval in such 
 cases, as between any pair of keys, would be 
 to halve the ervor and share it between the 
 two keys ; a principle which, applied im- 
 partially to the whole range of keys, means 
 such a division of the octave as that from 
 any note we can take any interval, a third 
 or fifth, or whatever it may be, which shall 
 be identical with the same interval taken 
 from any other note : and this again clearly 
 involves identity in the smallest available 
 steps, or semitones, of which an octave con- 
 tains twelve. Octaves so divided make up 
 the material of modern music, which may 
 thus be said to owe its existence to a slight 
 imperfection or elasticity in our ears. I 
 may add that the case as regards modulation 
 has been put with admirable force and con- 
 ciseness by Dr. Stainer in the two prefaces 
 to his Theory of Hcurrmny. 
 
150 
 
 CHAPTER VIIT. 
 
 § 1. Fusion 
 of the two 
 heterogeneous 
 factors of time 
 and pitch. 
 
 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 So far we have considered the two factors of melodic form, rhythm and pitch, 
 separately : and we have seen that such pleasure as each alone can afford 
 is of a rudimentary kind, insusceptible of large variety or of development. 
 We now come to their combination, to the fact which makes possible a 
 seemingly infinite variety of form. The great cause for the uniqueness 
 and complexity of proportion in the simplest melodic form, is this, that it 
 is a resultant of two quite different proportional series, of rhythm and of 
 pitch, whose work is at every moment, and through every variety of swing 
 and poise, absolutely interpenetrative. The contrast with visual form is 
 manifest. The impressions on the retina are of space in two dimensions : 
 in these two dimensions all visual form is necessarily perceived, and, as 
 they are absolutely homogeneous, the eye is concerned only with perfectly 
 hoTUogeneous impressions of line and surface. But time, in which audible 
 phenomena take place, has only one dimension, capable indeed by metrical 
 division of exercising our powers of co-ordination and so presenting formed 
 groups, but groups which in isolation are of a very bald and unemotional 
 kind, and entail but a slight advance on the facts of mere nerve-stimula- 
 tion common to many of the lower animals : and what in Music takes the 
 place of the second dimension is a totally different and unique element — 
 the graduated scale of pitch. Thus the form of a melody is the product 
 of two lines of perfectly heterogeneous impressions, each empty and insigni- 
 ficant alone; a Hne of sounds and silences, each of a certain duration 
 (arranged on a framework of accents), and a line of tones each of a certain 
 pitch : ' and each note-unit, in its place and function, stands to its neigh- 
 bours in two totally heterogeneous ratios. The form is at every instant the 
 
 ' This, for instance, is the pitch-line, 
 and this the rhythm-line. 
 
 &c. 
 
 of the opening of a simple and most familiar melody. 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. . 151 
 
 resultant of the two factors, and, the dimensions (so t« speak) being incom- 
 mensurable, it cannot be strictly compared even to the most elaborate curve 
 with co-ordinates and an equation. Consequently no sort of true visual 
 parallel is conceivable, and such analogies of curves and loops as occasion- 
 ally suggest themselves merely tantalise by their feebleness. 
 
 This peculiarity of melodic structure is unaffected by differences in the § 2. The in- 
 history and nature of the two factors. The fundamental principle of irrompi'ete°iu 
 rhythm, equal measurement, is, as we have seen, common to all Music : ^p'** °f ^^^^' 
 
 •^ ' ^ ' ' ' ences in the 
 
 while a special rhythm may be common to several melodies, the identity nature and his- 
 being clearly marked and obvious to the ear. On the other hand, the factors, 
 systems supplying the note-material or available pitch-intervals have 
 been many; and confining ourselves to our modem scale-system, it is 
 but a mere matter of curiosity, in no way capable of striking the ear, if 
 we ever discover that some particular series of notes can yield two 
 intelligible melodies, by association with two rhythms differing in the posi- 
 tion of their main accents. Ehythm, again, when produced in monotone 
 (as on a drum), has a character, though quite a slight and colourless one, 
 of its own : and the fact that the rhythm of a tune is as clear and definite 
 in the complete tune as if it were isolated, and tapped or given in mono- 
 tone, will prove of great importance hereafter : whereas the notes of a tune 
 taken irrespectively of rhythm will be totally meaningless. But for melodic 
 purposes the interdependence of the two factors is entirely mutual : nor is 
 the rhythm in any sense a framework or mould to be separately appraised, 
 as the metre of a stanza may be considered the mould for the meaning to 
 be poured into. In virtue of its detachable character, it may seem that 
 the rhythm in a more special sense forfns the otherwise incoherent sequence 
 of notes, while the sequence of notes informs the rhythm : but both are in 
 reality elements of form. A proof how indissoluble is the union between 
 the rhythm and the sequence of notes into which it enters may be found 
 in connection with the very fact, just noticed — that one rhythm may be 
 common to several melodies, good and bad : for it is only from a melody 
 which in its total result strikes us as good that we get the specifically 
 and distinctively rhythmical pleasure, shown in an impulse to accompany 
 it with real or imaginary movements : a tune in the same rhythm, if felt 
 to be poor, awakens no similar impulse, or at best a very much feebler one. 
 
 The substitution of other notes in pitch for those which are found in instances of 
 any musical form so obviously leads either to incoherent absurdity, or to a '^^°f^'° 
 new form, that it is not worth while to give instances of such changes ; 
 but it will be well to give a few examples of the result to a musical form 
 of a change in the factor of rhythm. For this factor is constantly treated 
 as though it held in Music the position it does in Poetry, of something 
 wholly external to the subject-matter, or at best as just a convenient means 
 of supporting and exhibiting a melodic form, a set of suitable mechanical 
 
152 
 
 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 pegs for hanging the form out on to advantage ; ' whereas of course it 
 does not suit, but (with the other factor) constitutes the form, just as 5 
 multiplied by 6 constitutes 30. The following phrase, then. 
 
 1 
 
 L-t 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^&1 
 
 5!=a*?=r^z=?z 
 
 J --j 4- 5^ # * 
 
 
 Wz 
 
 L^: 
 
 with all the assistance of full harmony, and with the retention of the main 
 accents on the first chord and the last but one, does not give much notion 
 of the 
 
 
 -m- . -m- 
 
 ^■^si 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 EE 
 
 of the FatMtique sonata ; nor would 
 
 a^^^E^i 
 
 i^ 
 
 i 
 
 n=^^si= 
 
 ?=: 
 
 E 
 
 *^ 
 
 1 
 
 -p— ■ 
 
 It? 
 
 ^ 
 
 or 
 
 |ii=TM 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 5 
 
 ^-^^^ 
 
 i 
 
 piip: 
 
 ?z: 
 
 iE 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 :^- 
 
 have struck any one as a supremely beautiful subject, 'though the changes 
 from the 
 
 i 
 
 -^^^ 
 
 '^ 
 
 -p-— 
 
 -f'-— - 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^w 
 
 of the Leonora overture are very slight compared with what might easily 
 have been made. As regards more self-complete tunes it is really so easy to 
 make nonsense of any of them in a hundred ways by such alterations that 
 the experiment soon palls : it is more amusing to notice occasional cases 
 
 ' I need only quote two sentences from a described as the art of the versifier — 
 
 treatise published in the most popular series necessary, but yet only supplementary, to the 
 
 of music primers. ' Rhythm will heighten genius of the poet.' 
 the beauty of a melody,' ' Rhythm may be 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 153 
 
 where the notes of a beautiful melody may be made to yield a silly and 
 trivial, but still a coherent, melodic form. Thus few would recognise in 
 
 ^^^^S^^^i^ 
 
 7=^1 
 
 the beautiful subject of the well-known movement in Beethoven's Sonata, 
 Op. 90; 
 
 
 or in this wretched jig. 
 
 = y~Tn* 
 
 ifi: 
 
 (C) ft J 
 
 3^ 
 
 : J-J-J- 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 T^=<K=^^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^=3^: 
 
 SL^ 
 
 7=i-. 
 
 the fascinating opening of the rondo in the Gr major concerto ; 
 
 rj-^.gin^^^ ^ 
 
 l'^=0=^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 w 
 
 V 1 r 
 
 i 
 
 J=ls 
 
 ^ T r 
 
 ^S 
 
 *I*Z3I 
 
 s 
 
 ^ 
 
 or in this foolish ascent to the key-note, with no object but to come 
 equally foolishly down again. 
 
 t^^'^m^ ^^ 
 
 IPZL 
 
 H*=^, 
 
 ^P=F 
 
 ^bE 
 
 &C. 
 
 i£ 
 
 *j 
 
 the dainty melody of the Ruy Bias overture. 
 
 ^ 
 
 W^J-J^-^^\ 
 
 WF^^ 
 
 1 j L I.H - . 
 
 -F- fHVF- 
 
 nor wiU the phrase 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 t (# ^ a: 
 
 ^^ 
 
 :3=i^ 
 
 Z2I 
 
 
 gain much, even if its relation to J?m' feste Burg be perceived.' 
 
 ' The enormous number of perfectly dis- successive ascending or descending notes of 
 
 tinctive forms, good, bad, and indifferent— of the scale, are worth noting as illustrative 
 
 tunes just as different from one another as of the same point, or at all events as showing 
 
 tunes can be— which contain a number of how irrelevant such isolated facts are to the 
 
154 
 
 llELODIG FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 It may be well to give one example where the main accents and divisions 
 are preserved, and where the melody is neither destroyed nor burlesqued, 
 but is left in a perfectly recognisable and even agreeable form. Let any 
 
 ifej 
 
 ^W 
 
 3S3^Sg 
 
 4- *^ \ 
 
 PC 
 
 i£it-^--^5±g 
 
 =P2= 
 
 t-fcai 
 
 tJ^ 
 
 :S^ 
 
 ~ — ^— ^ 1 T O 1 1 TT o - 
 
 ffP^ 
 
 ^tr-^ji^r--^ 
 
 »pBp-_ 
 
 ;^=t« 
 
 ^ 
 
 -1 — I — «__ 
 
 ■^ 
 
 ^,UJ 
 
 i.^^5 
 
 T^ 
 
 ii 
 
 ^£^ 
 
 :ii--K^f?: 
 
 -■"■W- 
 
 wfrw^ 
 
 m^ 
 
 ^«=p= 
 
 
 fe 
 
 
 ?^1 
 
 &c. 
 
 -(*h 
 
 'Ef 
 
 -0^ -C^ ti 
 
 one play the following opening of a Barcarole of Eubinstein, and observe 
 how utterly any rarity in its charm vanishes, when the triple time is 
 altered to double, and the predominant pulsations cease to be distinguished 
 by the alternation of a one-beat with a two-beat length, thus ; 
 
 ifefe 
 
 ±!i 
 
 :fr 
 
 fe= 
 
 ^■ti-r- 
 
 *?^ 
 
 '-^, 
 
 *t 
 
 ?^^S-^ 
 
 
 i_-fczS— fS 
 
 -ff^Bf?. 
 
 c:u 
 
 '^ 
 
 tei 
 
 ^i^^lEi^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 '^ 
 
 :^ 
 
 character of the complete melody ; since the 
 same sets recur again and again, at the same 
 parts, beginning, middle, or end, of melodies, 
 while the fact, so far from being noticed, is 
 a matter of surprise when pointed out. The 
 following cases where six or more than six 
 such notes occur, not in a mere passage or 
 run, but as separate and distinctly substan- 
 tive units in the melodic form, have at once 
 suggested themselves : they are mostly 
 familiar and might serve as the nucleus 
 for an interesting collection : — ' Mandoli- 
 nata,' the opening melody of the adagio in. 
 Beethoven's fourth symphony, the second 
 melody in the allegretto of his seventh sym- 
 phony, the tune in his sonata Op. 31, No. 3, 
 quoted on p. 166, ' Kobin Adair,' ' Pop goes 
 the weasel,' 'Angels ever bright and fair,' the 
 deplorable ' Spring ' waltz quoted on p. 108, 
 
 the ' Blue Danube, ' the great tune in the finale 
 of Beethoven's first piano sonata, the second 
 ' subject ' in the first movement of his violin 
 concerto, the opening ' subject ' of his trio 
 in D quoted on p. 167, the music-hall horror 
 quoted on p. 220, ' Ein' feste Burg,' ' Tommy 
 make room for your uncle,' Schumann's ' Des 
 Abends,' quoted in chapter xiv., ' He shall 
 feed His flock,' Schubert's ' Des Miidchens 
 Klage,' 'Tom Bowling,' the second part of 
 the Tannhauser march, ' Duroh die Walder,' 
 ■ The Bailiffs daughter of Islington,' Men- 
 delssohn's andante in B preceding the 
 ' Kondo Capricoioso,' the leading theme of 
 the allegro movement in Beethoven's great 
 E flat trio, Ortrnd's tune ' du bist gluck- 
 lioh ' and Elsa's ' Lass mich dich lehren ' 
 from Loliengrin, Lord Momington's vulgar 
 chant, 'He was despised,' 'Rule Britannia.' 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION: 
 
 155 
 
 tedi^ 
 
 M^^-^. 
 
 Pit 
 
 ?:P 
 
 ■^*w- 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ;g- 
 
 S B 
 
 «P*P 
 
 1^ 
 
 ftfe 
 
 &c. 
 
 ^^^^^fefe^gie 
 
 52ȣzS-_ 
 
 "Ci-i 
 
 ■ci^ 
 
 
 It is true, as we shall see, later, that, owing to the development of § 3. Definite 
 another element of order. Harmony, coherence of a sort can be supplied less indiapensa- 
 to successions of notes even in the absence of distinct rhythm. But the than^yariety^of 
 point and importance of Music, with its power of getting into the blood and P^'** 
 clinging to the memory, are so dependent on the certain guidance of the 
 ear in its cardinal expectations, that occasions on which this can be dis- 
 pensed with must be comparatively rare : and when, as in an advanced 
 state of the art, the varieties of form are infinite, when Music no longer 
 consists of a limited number of strains endeared to childish or savage ears 
 by perpetual repetition, the constant sense of such certainty implies that 
 distinctness and completeness of melodic structure to which the factor of 
 distinct rhythm, based on an outHue of regular beats, is indispensable. 
 For all vivid pleasure, for any individual and possessing motive of what- 
 ever sort, this definiteness of time is (save in the most exceptional cases) 
 as truly essential as variety of pitch ; it is present in nine hundred and 
 ninety- nine parts out of a thousand of the Music which on any given day 
 gives delight to the human race ; and without it a prolonged succession of 
 the most beautiful sounds is no more melody than a block of Parian marble 
 is a statue.' 
 
 ' We cannot count such relaxations as, 
 e,g., ip the reciting note of the ordinary 
 English chant as true exceptions ; for here 
 the rhythm is quite strict as soon as it really 
 starts, and the ear is merely held for a time 
 in suspense, waiting for it to start. The 
 principle of a marked-pause is the same, the 
 ear being kept waiting in suspense for the next 
 phrase : and such relaxations could only occur 
 at the beginning or end of a phrase. The 
 suspense is- never so long that the ear loses 
 its sense of the strict time-relations of the 
 rhythm, of the exact satisfaction which is to 
 follow. Sometimes, again, even in instru- 
 mental works, short interludes of irregularly 
 accented strains occur, more or less resem- 
 bling irregular recitative ; but these are really 
 less marked instances of suspense ; no piece 
 could end with them, and the suspense en- 
 hances the enjoyment when the music 
 rsettles again into regular rhythm. 
 
 I must specially warn the reader against 
 confounding definite rhythm with anything 
 like metronomic and mechanical divisions 
 of the time. For when insisting on the 
 place of the rhythmic factor, I have been 
 sometimes met by such examples as per- 
 formances of national music by Hungarian 
 performers, which, it was alleged, are not 
 in definite rhythm. But definite rhythm, in 
 my sense, is perfectly compatible with a 
 large amount of swayings and humourings 
 of the pace. The sense of its strictness 
 consists, not in perceiving a mechanical 
 identity of length in the bars and in their 
 corresponding subdivisions, but in perceiving 
 that the music has ribs, and where they are ; 
 in the absence of doubt as to how the bars 
 and their accents lie, and mu-st be perceived- 
 to lie under pain of missing the form ; in the 
 clear assurance that the notes can be beat 
 time to in a definite way, and have, there' 
 
156 MELODIC :PORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 § 4. Speci- The entire essentialness of dejSnite rhythm to melodic coherence (which 
 
 reasoning means to the existence of impressive melodic form), needs to be specially 
 
 a SaJ^of th^ ^i'w^elt on, inasmuch as modern metaphysical speculation is by way of deny- 
 t^^^position of ingj and modern musical practice of ignoring it. It is disappointing to find 
 Schopenhauer's even Schumann, who certainly never ignored it in practice, writing that 
 ^' in a certain composition Music ' seems to have sought to return to its 
 
 origin before it was confined by the laws of time ; ' and quoting with ap- 
 proval anything so remote from truth and sense as this, — ' When it becomes 
 possible to render the tyranny of measure in Music wholly imperceptible 
 and invisible, so that this art is made apparently free ; when it attains self- 
 consciousness ' (whatever that may mean), ' then it will possess the com- 
 plete power of embodying lofty ideas,' and so on. As if the rhythmic sense 
 had not been interwoven in our very substance for ages, lying at the very 
 root, and alive in the very fibre, of melodic form. We might as reasonably 
 expect a higher enjoyment of Architecture if we could escape from the 
 ' tyranny ' of line and surface. But it is in our own time that the error 
 has assumed dangerous proportions ; and it will be well to give a specimen 
 of the sort of reasoning employed. To begin with, Wagner, as is well 
 known, adopts as the ideal basis of Music Schopenhauer's theory ; to wit, 
 that the ' Will of the World,' the real essence of existence, first manifests 
 itself ' in the ideas in Plato's sense, that is, in the archetypal forms which 
 fashion the cosmos.' (I quote from one of Wagner's ablest exponents.) ' It 
 is the aim of all arts to express the eternal essence of things by means of 
 these Platonic ideas ; only Music takes in this respect an exceptional posi- 
 tion,' being, in Schopenhauer's words, 'as immediate and direct an objecti- 
 fication or copy of the Will of the world as the world itself is, as the ideas 
 are of which the universe of things is the phenomenon. Music is not the 
 copy of the ideas, like the other arts, but a representation of the cosmical 
 Will co-ordinate with the ideas themselves.' ' The basis being thus given, 
 
 fore, a definite form independent of any faces or landscapes, but as parallel to the 
 
 swayings and humourings which may super- ideas of which such visual things are sup- 
 
 vene. That music may (suitably and beauti- posed to be the embodiment or raiment. I 
 
 fully in some cases, unsuitably and distress- should have thought that even a transcen- 
 
 ingly in others) be played with retardations dentalist would have to accept a melody, 
 
 and quickenings, in no way affects its objec- like a face, as a jphenom-enon ; it would 
 
 tive possession of ribs in the right places ; surely be rather crude philosophy to exclude 
 
 which implies similar definiteness in all the it from the sphere of phenomena on the 
 
 subordinate time-lengths. ground that it cannot be touched and 
 
 » The last clause might give one the im- handled : and I fail to see on what priu- 
 
 pression that this was merely a fantastic way ciple it is to be put, genealogically, a step 
 
 of expressing the difference between presen- further back than a face or a landscape, 
 
 tative and representative art ; at the same and why in the case of one particular order 
 
 time I cannot profess to understand it, even of beauty the intermediate step of archetypai 
 
 from the metaphysical standpoint. For ideas is to be dispensed with. Why should 
 
 Music is expressly treated not as a presenta- not a melody embody an archetypal idea as 
 
 tion, as something parallel to beautiful real much as a face t I suppose the reason would 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 157 
 
 what are the deductions from it ? I will quote from the same source as and Wagner'a 
 before. We start with a gem of a priori reasoning. Music, being of an f jg'^ft ""' 
 entirely supernatural character, ' ought to he ' likewise independent of space 
 and time. In an art of sound, space is altogether out of the question ; but 
 even time can to a certain extent be dispensed with ' in that which is most 
 musical in Music — harmony.' As if the commonest and most striking effects 
 of harmony (those of discord and resolution, where a desire is created by one 
 note and fulfilled by another) did not depend precisely on the succession 
 of notes in time : for in the sense of fitness with which we recognise the 
 correspondence of things simultaneously perceived (as by the eye) the 
 peculiar excitement of expectation and satisfaction, the importance of 
 which, whether in melody or harmony, it is impossible to exaggerate, can 
 have no part. Ehythm is naturally treated as ' an intruder in the realm 
 of absolute music,' and we are told that the essentially rhythmical nature 
 of G-reek compositions could not be favourable to the flow of melody : ' a 
 remark, I will add, which must in consistency be extended to the greatest 
 works of Beethoven, fathered by Wagner, with perfect justice, on the 
 dance-melody ; as indeed all impressive melodic form must be, seeing that 
 physical movement is the original and instinctive way in which the im- 
 pressiveness shows its effects. Wherever rhythm is perceived with enjoy- 
 ment, there is implied a nascent stimulation of the dance-instinct : and how- 
 ever much Music ought to be independent of time, I am afraid that in 
 listening to it, with our present physical organisms, we shall retain a pre- 
 judice for rhythmical phenomena in preference to unrhythmical noilmena. 
 To return to Wagner's views: 'compositions which, like dances, are exclu- 
 sively founded on rhythm must be of a lower order than where the melody 
 grows out of harmonious relations.' Now what is meant here by ' har- 
 monious relations ' ? If the harmony is to be understood in a non-technical 
 sense, and yet the relations are something external to rhythm, they can 
 only be the pitch-relations of the notes ; but then pitch-relations of some 
 sort are present in the poorest tune, for ' music founded exclusively on 
 rhythm ' could only be written for the drum ; and they can have no inde- 
 
 be that Music is a direct human creation, the arts, namely, that while imitative arts 
 while faces are natural growths ; but this represent things known outside them, Music 
 hardly seems a valid answer, for till we ob- ' presents things not so known — true and per- 
 tain some cognisance of archetypal ideas fectly phenomenal facts implying in Music 
 apart from phenomena, we have no right to the relation of a step fwtTim- haoh in the 
 say that they are not presupposed in human sense that melodic forms, like faces, are real 
 as much as In natural creations. And anyhow independent things, while sculptured forms 
 the melody once created, there it stands a are representations dependent on the prior 
 beautiful object made out of given crude external existence of real independent 
 material, just like any other presentation. I things ; and that this relation has been 
 cannot help thinking that my first impression shunted a stage further still, into a region 
 was right ; and that the confusion had its where its meaning disappears, 
 soutce in the very obvious distinction between 
 
ISa MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 pendent merit in the most beautiful tune, seeing that in the absence of 
 rhythm such a tune would fall into tuneless incoherence. So that we are 
 driven to ask why, in comparing a superior and an inferior form, each of 
 them the resultant of two essential elements, is the pitch-element, meaning- 
 less alone, to be credited with the superiority of the one, and the rhythmic 
 element, meaningless alone, with the inferiority of the other ? This very 
 common error seems due to the fact, already mentioned, that the rhythmic 
 element of a melodic form remains perfectly distinguishable on its own 
 account ; we can tap the rhythm of a tune in monotone : hence when 
 the form is silly and unemotional, the rhythm, being an obvious 
 thing, is blamed ; and it is forgotten that the very same rhythm might 
 be a factor in a divine form, and that rhythm just as absolute is a 
 factor in all divine forms. If, however, the above-quoted phrase is 
 technical, and relations of harmony are intended, the reply is obvious 
 that, however much melodies have gained in vividness and variety from 
 the development of harmony and its assistance in fixing the sense of key 
 and modulation, yet the cases where a beautiful melodic form has been 
 actually suggested by a chord-progression are quite exceptional ; and that 
 melodies which do not modulate, or where the modulation is simple (con- 
 ditions which include the vast majority of the best tunes in the world), do 
 not necessarily imply, for their invention or comprehension, any suggestion 
 from or reference to their harmonic accompaniment, beyond such reference 
 as is naturally involved in a sense of the modern key- and chord-system, 
 latent and presupposed, however little consciously recognised, in the most 
 untutored perception of music. We shall have to return to this point in 
 the chapter on Harmony ; a single example may suffice here : of the two 
 tunes quoted a little further on, beginning 
 
 i 
 
 ^^^^i^^ife^^^^ 
 
 IE 
 
 &c. 
 
 &c. 
 
 and 
 
 a^5EBE3^^^i^: 
 
 S=^ 
 
 ^-M^Ei^^^^E^E^B^ 
 
 s=iz 
 
 one from the Choral Symphony, the other from the London pot-houses, one 
 does not grow out of ' harmonious relations,' in the technical sense, either 
 more or less than the other. I need not enumerate, on the other hand, the 
 various beautiful melodic forms which have been known to grow out of the 
 rhythm, in the sense that the simplest rhythmic outline, often given by 
 some external accident, has set the melodic invention to work. The great 
 point is that in all impressive melodic form the rhythm is not something 
 superposed, or more or less consciously suggested or referred to, but is 
 essentially there. Few, perhaps, who see ' three elements, harmony, 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 159 
 
 irhythm, and melody,' assigned to Music as its ' means of expression,' would 
 at once detect in such a natural-seeming list the germ of a far-spreading 
 and disastrous error ; yet in this innocent-looking phrase, in the implica- 
 tion that melody can dispense with rhythm in the same sense that it can, 
 and till comparatively recently did, dispense with harmony, is involved 
 what if fairly pressed amounts to a denial, not only of the magnificent 
 achievements of modern music (including much of Wagner's own), but 
 of the facts of ages. 
 
 Wagner shows again and again in his writings how little he recognises wagner's con- 
 the deeply-seated nature and artistic place of the rhythmic impulse, recogniseThe'" 
 though too good a musician, or rather though too much made as other men deepiy-seateii 
 are, to act consistently on his theories. That he should consider Beethoven's rhythmic im- 
 symphonies limited by their being in what he calls idealised dance-form, is 
 of course in accordance with what has been already quoted. ' Dance-form ' 
 in an elaborate instrumental movement, merely means regularity of rhythm 
 and formation of phrases by multiples of two : I have tried to show reasons 
 for recognising, as Beethoven did, the musical necessity of such elements, 
 but the actual feeling of them is of course an unchangeable and incom- 
 municable instinct. Elsewhere, in a connection where it suits him to 
 refer to the dance for the sake of its dramatic element, Wagner actually 
 ignores that prime characteristic which nevertheless, since it alone originated 
 dance-form, must (according to him) be important enough to have cramped 
 Beethoven's symphonies. As the Sym^phony is a development of the dance- 
 melody, so he treats the original dance as nothing but the germ of the 
 dramatic action of the Opera, as if such a feature as rhythmic movement 
 had never been heard of in connection with it. ' The original people's 
 dance,' he says, ' expresses an action, mostly the mutual wooing of lovers.' 
 The original people's dance has nothing to do with lovers,' and is exempli- 
 fied every time a child of three years old nods its head or stamps its foot 
 to musio. 
 
 But among those who admit that for melodic coherence some continuous § 5. The idea 
 groundwork of satisfied expectation is a necessity, there are some who strict^rUythm" 
 maintain that new kinds of rhythm can be based on new elements, which a J"^ "° relation 
 
 •' _ ' to present tacts. 
 
 subtler and more specialised sense will apprehend. I have even been asked 
 how Music is to advance except by some such means. But why should 
 I or anybody else be bound to say how Music is to advance ? Who knows 
 if it is to advance at all ? And at any rate as regards rhythm, though 
 I can conceive that the limits of grasp and retentiveness of the human 
 ear might be increased, I cannot conceive, looking at the physical basis 
 and history of the instinct, that it can be altered in Jcind, unless we get 
 new limbs and modes of motion. Meanwhile, it is worth remarking that 
 
 ' It is curious how often among uncivilised peoples the dances of the men and women are 
 kept separate. 
 
160 
 
 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 § 6. The 
 melodic result 
 of the two 
 factors is per- 
 ceived without 
 analysis, but 
 with various 
 degrees of com- 
 pleteness. 
 
 the word specialised must be used with caution : for any clique, who 
 admired things not admitted as admirable by the great mass of those 
 interested in the subject, might claim to be the 6lite in whom a peculiar 
 exquisiteness of sensibihty had become developed. And specially in 
 relation to a quite unique range of impressions, appreciated through a 
 quite unique and very widely diffused faculty, such terms must be barren, 
 except where the verdict of the elite is in time endorsed by an ever-increasing 
 number, and the minority are as it were pioneers in sensation. Of course 
 those who differ from me have a perfect right to regard themselves in this 
 light, and to prophesy that in time the human race, when rhythmically dis- 
 posed, will forget that it has legs and arms and throw itself on the infinite. 
 The perception of any melodic organism as the fixed resultant of the 
 particular dual relation of each constituent note is, of course, a matter of 
 common musical sensibility, not of analysis. That it admits of great 
 varieties of degree is shown by imaginary resemblances found in melodies 
 where such coincidence as exists is confined to one of the two factors, and 
 the two results are therefore really quite distinct ; as well as by the fact 
 that melodies in which some find a strong and enduring charm are pro- 
 nounced commonplace by others, a criticism especially frequent in cases of 
 obviously catching rhythm. Correctness and dexterity of ear with respect 
 to the material employed in no way implies sympathetic apprehension of 
 the evolved form : and there are expert musicians in whose views about 
 ' transformation of themes,' identifying strains that utterly differ, and re- 
 placing simple and infallible art-perception by tortured and unnatural 
 ingenuity, a want of keenness and completeness of melodic sensibility 
 certainly seems to me to be implied.' At the same time, musical sensi- 
 
 ' I have known true lovers of Music 
 capable of saying that the two following 
 passages contain ' the same idea,' and that 
 
 one must have been copied from the other ; 
 the second ' subject ' from a well-known 
 movement of Beethoven, beginning 
 
 and the opening phrase of ' Eobin Adair,' 
 
 When one demurs, they point out that ' the 
 first six notes are identical ; ' identical also, 
 
 it might be pointed out, with the concluding 
 phrase of ' Tommy, make room for your uncle,' 
 
 The same persons might probably hold that 
 the two melodies for a bass voice, the prayer 
 
 in Mose in Egitto and the invocation to the 
 star in lannliduser, beginning respectively, 
 
■ MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 IGl 
 
 bility lends itself, as we shall find further on, to such variety of kind, and 
 to such vagaries of verbal ' expression, as to make judgments of this sort 
 dangerous. 
 
 Finally, it is most important to notice that the technical conditions 
 of melodic beauty are really as much to seek as a satisfactory analogy ; 
 and that fewer explanations would have been attempted had the absolute 
 interdependence of the factors of time and pitch been fully realised. For 
 instance, we see a characteristic of one of the factors — pitch — taken as 
 though it covered the whole ground, and we are told that good melody 
 depends on frequent use of the successive notes of the natural scale, or 
 that the skips are from one iiote to a nearly-related note. Now, neglecting 
 the continual exceptions and granting the perpetual occurrence of such 
 progressions, any musician will perceive, on reflection, not only that they 
 are as common in bad tunes as in good, but that for each intelligible melody 
 or succession of notes in which they are exemplified we can, while still 
 employing them, make a million of formless and meaningless ones. So 
 with the factor of rhythm : though metrical balance is as essential to a 
 tune as symmetry to a face, we see that notes may be metrically strung 
 together without presenting anything we could call a melodic form. 
 
 A few simple instances wiU again be useful. Perfectly formless speci- 
 mens would not be interesting ; but the following trivial and worrying 
 melody. 
 
 =K. 
 
 -fcm^^- 
 
 i 
 
 ■^^^- 
 
 -p^^ 
 
 sa 
 
 =r=^ 
 
 ±z±: 
 
 l^w^W^ 
 
 X=t=i^ 
 
 § 7. The 
 fusion of factors 
 explains the in- 
 adequacy of the 
 usual attempts 
 to tix the tech- 
 nical conditions 
 of melodic 
 beauty. 
 
 t=1=^= 
 
 -^-m- 
 
 :f=|t 
 
 -^-!«H«- 
 
 iprrjc 
 
 =^=P= 
 
 =P=t 
 
 :*=9=^= 
 
 mU ^ — 1 1 1 L| 1 1 i. L.| 1 ^ — K 1— i ' 
 
 might be compared with Schubert's wonderful Forelle, a tune whose im- 
 perishable freshness no amount of repetition can affect. 
 
 i 
 
 i«— I*- 
 
 -P—hk: 
 
 PS^§=^F^- 
 
 
 :^=tz= 
 
 :a=l=i^ 
 
 :i^ii: 
 
 iS= 
 
 S 
 
 {2=1*: 
 
 =^= 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ g^^^^^ EgEEg^Ef^j^E and p^ ^:^j^^Eg;^^] 
 
 m 
 
 conveyed in their opening phrase the same ' idea,' one composer having given it an npward 
 f.nd the other a downward ' expression.' 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 i 
 
 y-?«-=^ 
 
 g 
 
 i 
 
 -?=f=e^ 
 
 L* * > * g ^ 
 
 i^ 
 
 i 
 
 ll^E^ 
 
 ¥r 
 
 !:«t«t 
 
 F^-^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 The former tune keeps more to the successive notes of the scale than the 
 latter ; in simplicity of structure the two are about on a par ; not a single 
 point can be adduced as exemplified in the Forelle and other tunes of its 
 quality, and as absent in Kemo Kimo and other tunes of its quality : 
 yet the difference of quality may be fairly called infinite ; it is as marked 
 as that between the Blue Boy and a figure in a tailor's advertisement. 
 Or again, compare this sickly hymn-tune — 
 
 with Dove sono- 
 
 * -i- 
 
 i 
 
 w=^ 
 
 w-0-^~i 
 
 #-p^t 
 
 f^^^^ 
 
 f^r 
 
 rP-t^ 
 
 IS 
 
 ^-^t^±^^a^^^ 
 
 &c. 
 
 5 
 
 to which, owing to the fact that in both cases there is a circling round the 
 C for the first phrase and round the E for the second, many would doubtless 
 trace the origin of the preceding melody. Similarly the following tune. 
 
 im 
 
 
 -J 1 I I -t r 
 
 *^PP: 
 
 -f=^ 
 
 ^i. 
 
 ff=p: 
 
 r^ jL-M. 
 
 d^2=±^^ 
 
 ^^^P^^^^^^^^ 
 
 which used to be the nightmare of my childish Sundays, might be com- 
 pared with the ' subject ' of the glorious movement known as Le Retour, 
 
 ii 
 
 ;fi: 
 
 -I*- 
 
 W=P- 
 
 0^. r— ! !*- 
 
 .^-e.^--r- 
 
 ^^ 
 
 :PE^ 
 
 ^E 
 
 ^ 
 
 .e-i 
 
 
 or a quickened edition of the boring melody which has lately been so 
 much in the air, beginning, 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 163 
 
 P 
 
 S3 
 
 3 
 
 ^^ 
 
 &c. 
 
 &c. 
 
 with Beethoven's graceful 
 
 I 
 
 ^S 
 
 ?^ 
 
 ::P 
 
 istzfc 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 :i=*: 
 
 ^ 
 
 i^ -^-a 
 
 or the still more worthless 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 5^5 
 
 ^ 
 
 i^E 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 il: 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 IE 
 
 ?^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
 ?8=^ 
 
 ?^ 
 
 ? 
 
 ^ 
 
 the vacant impromptu of some vacant moment, with the still nobler 
 
 ^ 
 
 i=:q= 
 
 ^ 
 
 *i ^ 
 
 :-i=*: 
 
 :S:^ 
 
 » — *■ 
 
 i^^ 
 
 :it=*i 
 
 =^i^=3^ 
 
 ^=i=^ 
 
 :i:^ 
 
 i 
 
 is 
 
 ^ 
 
 S 
 
 --^- 
 
 ^ 
 
 -^ 
 
 -pK-L-*. 
 
 I 
 
 r^rij: 
 
 * — * 
 
 :i= 
 
 -■0 ^- 
 
 -»l S5^ 
 
 ' the result of years and years of search.' In this last case, when one has 
 the strong even rhythm of the second melody in one's head, the one-and- 
 a-half measure of the other may seem mean and jumpy ; but we have 
 seen the futility of trying to estimate a melodic form by looking at 
 either of its factors alone ; and in one of the variations of Beethoven's 
 tune this very measure is used, 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 :t 
 
 --r . -f ^ 
 
 &c. 
 
 which we may compare with Pojp goes the Weasel, dignified by trans- 
 position into minims and crotchets. Or this latter in its original form 
 might be compared with what is certainly its equaLin point of jumpiness, 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 §8. The Ideal 
 Motion ; 
 
 :P^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 V-Hggg^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 Ssp 
 
 i 
 
 
 E 
 
 =f;^E 
 
 S= 
 
 —I »« 1— -1--H- 
 
 : &c. 
 
 one of the numerous proofs that might be given that the greatest works of 
 Beethoven are the place to go to for ' catching ' and ' popular ' tunes. 
 In not one of these instances (and they might be multiplied ad infinitum) 
 is a single technical point presented which could be for a moment men- 
 tioned as differentiating the good from the bad, or forming the slightest 
 basis for any induction on the subject.' Nor are the words good and bad 
 here meant to refer to any acknowledged classification. Any individual, 
 whatever his taste, who among the tunes he knows discriminates those 
 which give him pleasure from those which do not, will find it entirely 
 hopeless to form any generalisation of structural features which are present 
 in the former and absent in the latter. 
 
 So far we have been occupied with the more external aspects of 
 melodic structure. We must now turn to the actual process by which 
 Music is followed, to the facts connected with the evolution of melodic 
 form moment after moment in time. The translation which this will 
 involve of the phraseology of form into the phraseology of motion will 
 make clearer the essential difference of this experience where form and 
 motion are blended — where form is perceived by continuous advance along 
 it — from perceptions both of visible form and of physical motion. It is 
 the oneness of form and motion which constitutes the great peculiarity 
 
 ' Even where it happens that a special 
 point COM be picked out as definitely bad, in a 
 particular melody, it will continually be found 
 that the self-same point may be perfectly 
 agreeab] e in another place, while no reason can 
 be assigned why it should loake a necessary 
 element here in a good form, there in a bad ; 
 so that even in these most favourable cases. 
 
 very little scope is afforded for generalisa- 
 tions as to melodic characteristics. Thus, 
 the interval F-B, known as the tritone, 
 has a bad character, and is often said to be 
 unsuitable to melody, and I have heard the 
 considerable spice of vulgarity and cloy- 
 ingness in the opening of the Guards' waltz 
 attributed to its presence : 
 
 but in the Leonora overture, the passage quoted above is immediately succeeded by 
 this series of tritones. 
 
 where the notes, for all they are supported arpeggio of the chord, but make an indispen- 
 by a single chord, are by no means a mere sable piece of genuine melodic form. 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 165 
 
 of melody and of the faculty by which we appreciate it. As we derive 
 our primary ideas of sensible form from visible objects, a form which 
 presents the character of motion in that it advances or is advanced 
 along, in one order at one pace from end to end, is a novelty; as we 
 derive our primary ideas of motion from physical motion, a Tnotion which 
 presents the character of form, in that bits of it separated by other bits 
 and by wide distances are yet felt as indispensable parts of one unity, is 
 a novelty. When a melody is familiar to us we realise it by a gradual 
 process of advance along it, while yet the whole process is in some real 
 manner present to us at each of the successive instants at which only a 
 minute part of it is actually engaging our ears.' Melodic form and the its oneness 
 motion in question are aspects of the same phenomenon ; and no confusion form, 
 need attend the use of the two sets of terms, as long as it is recognised 
 that our sense of the characteristics of melodic forms cannot be abstracted 
 from the continuous process by which alone we perceive them, or rather 
 which constitutes our perception of them. I can think of no better term 
 to express this unique musical process than Ideal Motion ; ideal not just 
 as giving a refined and idealised and glorified version of something already 
 known, in the sense that a painter may often be said to glorify and idealise 
 the objects he represents — not an idealised quintessence of any sort of 
 physical motion — but ideal in the primary Greek sense of ihsa, ideal as 
 yielding a, form, a unity to which all the parts are necessary in their re- 
 spective places. The common use of the term idea, in relation to Music, 
 to express some special bit of striking form is thus entirely accurate, in 
 spite of the extraordinary bungling to which it often leads, as though the 
 idea were one thing and the music another. 
 
 It may be well to give one rough specimen of a description of this Melody is as 
 process by which the course of musical forms is perceived, if only for the jjie iVtermrof 
 sake of reaUsing how essentially indescribable it is. The melody, then, Pj'[„''t^„r„r 
 may begin by pressing its way through a sweetly yielding resistance^ to a visible form and 
 
 • The indispensableness to one another of illustration ; mnsic-lovers will realise how a 
 
 the different and separated parts of a melodic perfectly familiar cadence, so ordinary as to 
 
 motion, essentially involved in all perception be reckoned the common property of com- 
 
 of coherent music, may be brought home at posers, may be entirely glorified by occurring 
 
 once to any one with ear enough to remember at the end of a fine melody, while capable of 
 
 a simple tune after sufficient repetition. Let sounding quite hanal elsewhere, 
 
 him hear some beautiful slow melody which '' Expressions of this kind are unavoidable 
 
 he does not know ; the first bar or two, heard in description, and I should think that most 
 
 for the first time, will probably be felt as lovers of melody would recognise the feeling 
 
 quite neutral by the waiting ear ; whereas, which the words represent. At the same 
 
 when once the tune is known and liked, the time different people may receive this and 
 
 ' full pleasure of its beauty will be felt in kindred experiences at quite different places 
 
 going over those very bars, so that the appre- in Music, and the same melody may certainly 
 
 hension of them must be entirely dependent be felt in different ways even by people who 
 
 on the consciousness of what is to follow, all keenly enjoy it. For instance, I myself 
 
 The concluding bars may afford a similar receive a certain amount of the impression ' 
 
166 
 
 MELODIO FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 gradually foreseen climax ; whence again fresh expectation is bred, perhaps 
 for another excursion, as it were, round the same centre but with a bolder 
 and freeer sweep, perhaps for a fresh differentiation whereof in turn the 
 tendency is surmised and followed, to a point where again the motive is 
 suspended on another temporary goal ; till after a certain number of such 
 involutions and evolutions, and of delicately poised leanings and reluc- 
 tances and yieldings, the forces so accurately measured just suffice to bring 
 it home, and the sense of potential and coming integration which has 
 underlain all our provisional adjustments of expectation is triumphantly 
 justified. One such piece of description (which to a person without 
 melodic experience means about as much as a description of the sensations 
 of figure-skating to a person who lacked the muscular sense) serves as 
 well as a htmdred, to show in what sort of remote way the Ideal Motion 
 lends itself to terms of physical motion; somewhat as we have already 
 described certain characteristics of melodies, regarded as forms, in terms 
 of physical bodies and forces, by the help of such words as strength, weak- 
 ness, balance, support, and so on. 
 § 9. Appa- There is one characteristic of melody which attention to its aspect as 
 
 of melody with- motion brings out with special clearness; and that is our sense of entire 
 in ourselves. oneness with it, of its being as it were a mode of our own life. We feel in it, 
 indeed, an objective character, inasmuch as we instinctively recognise that 
 it has for others the same permanent possibilities of impression as for 
 ourselves ; but our sense of it nevertheless is not as of an external presen- 
 tation, but of something evolved within ourselves by a special activity of 
 our own. Thus it would be a very fair description of this opening subject 
 of Beethoven's trio in D, 
 
 in question from the descending passage in 
 the second phrase of the following exquisite 
 tune of Beethoven's ; no distinct rallentando 
 would be possible in it, and yet each note 
 
 towards the close seems just too good to 
 leave ; but to many persons I have no doubt 
 the phrase would convey a sense rather of 
 grace and imoucia/noe than of intensity — 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 167 
 
 i a=s 
 
 &JeSe£^^ 
 
 ^^s^- 
 
 II 
 
 i 
 
 q=t 
 
 i 
 
 ^El 
 
 :fl=sS: 
 
 i 
 
 iff: 
 
 ^fe££ 
 
 d= 
 
 D=±: 
 
 IE 
 
 f=Pi^^^ 
 
 ffi 
 
 r-4fcq=g: 
 
 ^^=^ 
 
 ^= 
 
 12*: 
 
 to say that it was left poised in suspense at the end of the fourth bar ; but 
 the poising and suspense are entirely matters of our own experience ; it is 
 we who are momentarily left to hang, and we who come toppling gently 
 down again with the bass against us. 
 
 One more point, which was mentioned above, should be noticed again § lo. Dis- 
 in connection with the Ideal Motion, namely, that in it the characteristics rhythmic eie- 
 of T^xrcelj ^physical motion remain undisturbed. The fusion of the rhythmic "^^* towards 
 and the pitch-elements which is essential to the melodic form in no way accompanying 
 
 '^ , , , p movements. 
 
 disguises the rhythm pure and simple ; that is to say, the rhythm of a 
 melody is as marked as though the pitch-element were eliminated, and the 
 notes produced correctly in all that regards their time, but in monotone. 
 The result is that the physical stimulation, which one sees so perpetually 
 indicated during the performance of music in gentle tappings of feet and 
 fingers and unconscious swayings of the head, seems woven into the very 
 substance of the musical motive ; and a similar delight is given by watch- 
 ing good dancing (when it accompanies fine melody instead of being' 
 accompanied by trivial melody), the value of another sense here relieving 
 as it were the pent-up yearning for motion. These physical events of 
 course have not the slightest power to express melodies; precisely the 
 same movements may accompany melodies of the highest and the lowest 
 rank. Physical motion can no more express ideal motion than the move- 
 ments of a dancer or of a conductor as watched by a deaf person could convey 
 the individual impression of the particular music as heard. But when the 
 ideal motion is surging and swaying through one's head, the accompanying 
 of it with rhythmical physical motion, real or imagined, seems to fuse the 
 sense of the physical movement into the essence of the other ; the body 
 seems as if itself endowed with the power of expressing perfect beauty, in 
 a mode comparable to that experienced in the actual delivery of beautiful 
 music by the voice ; or, if a very risky expression may be pardoned in the 
 
168 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 description of what is indescribable, body and spirit seem literally one. 
 
 Owing to the physically stimulating power of musical sound and the 
 
 extreme distinctness and determinateness of the physical sense of rhythmic 
 
 motion, our corporeal Hfe is brought before us in the most direct and 
 
 striking manner, while at the same instant raised into a new region by its 
 
 fusion with a quite incorporeal activity. 
 
 § 11. Danger It is necessary now to point out a special danger which the very use 
 
 eLoS"nd''^ of the word motion in connection with Music involves. The danger is 
 
 to of mil^car of forgetting that the essential characteristic of the complete Ideal 
 
 forms, by UD- Motion is an absolutely unique beauty perceived by an absolutely 
 
 duly emphasis- •' ^ , i ± \ r • ^ 
 
 inK those ex- unique faculty, and of unduly emphasising the external aspects oi musical 
 ■which have'' ^ motion, the aspects of it which physical motion can follow and imitate, 
 inmoTCmeS's^ and which therefore may seem to follow and imitate (or, as it is 
 in space. jnQj-g usually put, to idealise and improve on) physical motion ; aspects 
 
 which include not only matters of pace and rhythm, but of range in 
 pitch, such as the steady and quiet keeping within comparatively narrow 
 limits, sudden changes and jumps over a wider space, and so on. In 
 other words, motion naturally suggests motion of bodies in space ; whence 
 people are led to attribute the effect of Music to those points in which a 
 parallelism to motion in space is undoubtedly presented, forgetting that 
 the complete Ideal Motion has nno parallel outside Music, and that these 
 points may be just as much presented in compositions which produce 
 no pleasurable emotion as in those which produce the maximum of 
 pleasurable emotion; that such features, indeed, are in themselves no 
 more adequate to account for the beauty of any particular music than the 
 possession of a nose and a mouth and two eyes to account for the beauty of 
 any particular face. Thus Helmholtz says, ' The incorporeal material of 
 tones is much more adapted for following the musician's intention in the 
 most delicate and pliant manner for every species of motion, than any cor- 
 poreal material, however light. Graceful rapidity, grave procession, quiet 
 advance, wild leaping, all these different characters of motion and a thousand 
 others in the most varied combinations and degrees, can be represented by 
 successions of tones. And as Music expresses these motions, it gives an 
 expression also to those mental conditions which naturally evoke similar 
 motions, whether of the body or the voice, or of the thinking and feeling 
 principle itself. Every motion is an expression of the power which 
 
 ' I am compelled to use the word external tioular music which presents features of 
 
 in a sense which can only be understood by pace, amount of range, &;o., suggestive of a 
 
 the reader's meeting me half-way. Nose, parallelism with physical motions and mea- 
 
 eyes, and mouth are not external to a, beau- surements, presents them as an inseparable 
 
 tiful face; but the mere fact that such part of itself; but the mere possession of 
 
 features are present is external to the quality such features, as in the other case, is external 
 
 of beauty, inasmuch as they are also present to, and in no way implies, the quality of 
 
 in ugly ajid unimpressive faces. So any par- beauty or musical impressiyeness. 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 169 
 
 produces it, and we instinctively measure the motive force by the amount 
 of motion which it produces.' The degree of truth in these remarks 
 makes them the more misleading if they are taken as the whole truth. 
 For they ignore the differentia of melodic form, the unique proportions 
 which are as remote from anything suggested by movements in space as 
 from anything suggested by forms in space, and which cannot be in the 
 remotest way penetrated by the finest appreciation of mere physical 
 motion, or of the external aspects of motion presented in Music: they 
 treat musical motion just as an idealisation of physical motion, as a more 
 delicate and manageable way of doing the same things, and as emotional 
 simply in virtue of those modes in which it resembles physical motion. 
 On this view, a set of flashy variations, of four octaves of scale played 
 fortissimo up and down with both hands on a grand piano, varied with 
 occasional skips over wide intervals, should convey the maximum of force ; 
 and that such melodies as the great subject of the adagio in Beethoven's 
 fourth symphony, or J?m' feste Burg, should seem the strongest and 
 most irresistible things in the universe, would be a simple impossibility ; 
 both these melodies being confined within narrow limits of pitch, and 
 consisting almost entirely of the successive notes of the scale, following 
 each other at a slow pace, and in the case of the former played jammssiino. 
 Again, what can be quieter, judged on any external grounds, than the 
 movement in the following paragraph ? If we ' measure the motive force 
 by the amount of motion which it produces ' we ought to perceive infi- 
 nitely more motive force, and so infinitely more emotional impressiveness in 
 a study of Czemy's, than in the following measured melody from the 
 Pastoral sonata; which, in spite of its simple progression of tones and 
 semitones and its perfectly deliberate and unbroken accompaniment, affects 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 p 
 
 ^ 
 
 1^ 
 
 I^E^^EJE^f^JE^E^^^ ^ 
 
 ' -A 
 
 :*=St 
 
 S^^^Sf^fe^^^^^ 
 
 
170 
 
 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 
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 ps^^s: 
 
 
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MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 171 
 
 ^g^^ ^^g ^^^^£E^ -g ^ i 
 
 // 
 
 S 
 
 i 
 
 Jsiizi 
 
 g= 
 
 3^: 
 
 j- 
 
 ^ ^^ Pi-frf J ^^? ^^? ^^ ^^^^^^Fp ; ^^^^^pg^ 
 
 I 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^i]i3^^ra-,^^,^^ 
 
 zp= E g=:Ep 
 
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172 
 
 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 t=^- 
 
 fi r r 
 
 j- 
 
 I 
 
 of 
 
 rp=?— e 
 
 m 
 
 A '^ fti 
 
 I pglggg^ 
 
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 r 
 
 
 the inner sense with a compulsion, a concentrated passion of movement, 
 so overpowering that 1 scarcely know its parallel in Music ; the four bars' 
 break in the middle making the swing of the motive as it recurs, seem 
 more than ever resistless.' 
 
 There is doubtless a physical reference in our measurement of the force 
 of a melodic movement, in the sense that the ictus of strong melodies 
 produces an impulse towards some strong accompanying movement: 
 there are tunes which I never think of in the street without wanting to 
 knock down a lamp-post at every accented note. But such physical sugges- 
 tion for our own bodies (which is an effect, not a cause, of the character of 
 particular Ideal Motions) has obviously nothing to do with ' amount of 
 motion ' as measured by pace, suddenness, width and variety of interval, 
 or any other of the external characteristics which Music itself may present. 
 
 I do not wish to trench on the topic of emotion as expressed by Music, 
 which will occupy us later. It is enough here to remark that while we 
 shall find that some of those external characteristics which we have just 
 noticed do connect themselves to a considerable extent with certain emo- 
 tional aspects of Music, they never truly do so, in the cultivated stage of 
 the art, apart from that beauty of form which they in no way guarantee or 
 constitute, and which may be at its maximum in their absence ; and that 
 there is no essential relation between amount of force as musically per- 
 ceived, and those features in which a parallelism to motion of bodies in 
 space can be traced. 
 
 ■ There is always a danger in giving 
 special instances, since they may always turn 
 out to belong to the oases, so numerous in 
 Music, where different people feel differently. 
 Thus some one may tell me that he agrees as 
 to the beauty of this passage, but does not 
 feel it as specially characterised by force and 
 passion ; I have no answer ; he may even 
 support his view (though to this argument I 
 should certainly demur) by pointing out that 
 a large part of the movement in which the 
 paragraph occurs is rather of a naive and 
 rustic character. Still the effect of the 
 paragraph on me is a fact which, so far as 
 
 any one believes I tell the truth about it, he 
 must accept as a true example of the prin- 
 ciple I wish it to exemplify. And as to the 
 principle, the non-amenability of the Ideal 
 Motion to such measurements as pace and 
 width of jumps and other analogues of mo- 
 tion in space may suggest, T am not afraid of 
 contradiction from any lover of Music who 
 vsdll think over some favourite passages. The 
 intensity of many chromatic passages, where 
 the motion is by the smallest possible steps 
 (as partially exemplified in the last four bars 
 of the above passage), would afford instances 
 in point. 
 
MELODIO FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 173 
 
 In this connection it is impossible to avoid some mention of a theory § 12. Criti- 
 "which has recently received some prominence, that the motion of bodies in id™ of visible 
 space can be so regulated as to create a sort of visible music. The idea **"*'" ■ 
 has long been entertained in relation to pyrotechnic displays ; but Pro- 
 fessors Perry and Ayrton have given it a new form by devising an ingenious 
 machine, whereby a round shadow cast on a wall may be moved at all 
 paces in all sorts of graceful curves, with all manner of variations of the 
 size both of itself and of its shifting orbits, while the wall may be coloured 
 and variegated with changing tints.' It is probable that a very attractive 
 and impressive spectacle might be thus presented ; the mistake lies in the 
 view of its relation to Music. The Professors conceive that though Music 
 has got a start as a means of producing emotion, the means they suggest 
 might in time produce a worthy companion-art. They treat the emotions 
 producible by art as existing in a kind of reservoir to which various taps 
 may be applied, with the same issue in each case. And in fact we have 
 certain broad and general modes of feeling to which this view applies: 
 there are many aspects of force, for instance, which give rise to the same 
 sort of wonder and awe ; and the emotions caused by the things which 
 the Professors adduce in illustration of their point, the rush of a train, the 
 rolling of waves, the rhythmic motion of a large engine, may find true 
 analogues in mighty moving masses of rich musical tone. But the 
 special and characteristic emotions of Music belong to special and charac- 
 teristic musical form. (The Professors seem indeed to have little conception 
 of the characteristic virtues of individual forms in other arts ; ' a piece of 
 sculpture,' they say, ' is but suggestive — it merely introduces some simple 
 emotion which acts in a controlUng way upon the human mind ; so also a 
 fine picture induces a dreamy state and sets one a-thinking.') The emo- 
 tional side of the subject as regards Music must, as I have said, be deferred ; 
 but it is little more than a restatement of what was said in the last para- 
 graph to remark how radically distinct are those aspects of changing sound 
 whose effect can be paralleled by that of forceful visible motions, from 
 the essential characteristics of individual objective form. The progressive which entirely 
 form,. the Ideal Motion, of which each step is necessary to the whole — n^Jurrotmusi- 
 which is organic by dint of the relation of each component part to others, '"'' *"""^- 
 some of them separated from it by a very appreciable interval of time and, 
 it may be, by a large number of intervening units of tone — is wholly 
 due, as we have seen, to the fusion with rhythm of the pitch-element in 
 which tone-relationship is the all-important feature. This is the sort of 
 form, unchangeable in each case, along which we pass in glad compulsion. 
 No similar necessity, no true organism, could ever be discerned in the 
 sequence of movements of the Professors' ball, however gracefril and 
 
 ' The paper on the subject by Professors ceeMngs of tlie Physieed Society, vol. iii. 
 Perry and Ayrton will be found in the Pro- Part I. 
 
174 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 various. The eye might have its negative requirements, and resent 
 irregular angularities of direction and violently sudden changes of pace ; 
 but the positive faculty of Unking a long series of the swiftly vanishing 
 impressions into a unity, that faculty which the unique sense of tone- 
 relationship alone makes possible in the case of the ear, has no possible 
 analogue in the case of vision, in the absence of any similar means of 
 correlating the elements of a visual series. 
 
 I need not repeat what has been said more than once about the fact 
 and the reasons of the cogent definiteness of musical forms, connected as 
 it is with the arresting power, the ease and exactitude of reproduction in 
 memory, and above aU the distinctness of individuality, which so completely 
 differentiate them from visual curves ; but I should have thought the mere 
 fact that the Professors' ball could be mechanically made, as they them- 
 selves say, to go through a million different graceful figures, would have 
 brought home to them the difference of such phenomena from beautiful 
 musical forms, which even to a Mozart and a Schubert were not by any means 
 matter of daily inspiration, and which Beethoven had often painfully to 
 fight towards, and to hew out like a statue from a rock. 
 The mistake is I fancy that the word harmonic has something to do with the notion 
 due't?'the wo'^ of visible music as a possibility of the future. The fact that the harmonic 
 harmonic ; cuTves traced by vibrating bodies are visibly graceful lines, combined with 
 the fact that the word is particularly associated with Music, suggests a 
 Pythagorean idea of a sort of parallelism in any phenomena into which 
 something ' harmonic ' enters. But in Music harmonics are of course a mere 
 matter of tone-material ; melodic form has absolutely nothing to do with 
 partly to ve- ' harmonic ' proportions. As regards Professors Perry and Ayrton, however, 
 as o/rMent'^"' the theory seems in great measure attributable to their view of Music as a 
 ongin. recently invented 'vehicle for exciting emotion in us.' They consider 
 
 that the special power of Music is the result of ' the accident that Western 
 nations have more assiduously educated the emotional side of their minds 
 in certain particular directions ; ' and that the differences in the music of 
 different nations prove Music, unlike Painting, to have been ' a creation of 
 each individual people ; ' they distinctly imply that the use of the ear 
 rather than the eye as the channel for the emotions which appear to us 
 characteristic of Music, is a conventionality parallel to the employment of 
 different scale-systems by different peoples. No reader who has accom- 
 panied me so far will need to be reminded that we traced the power of 
 Music in large measure to associations in comparison with which Painting 
 and the more distinctly intellectual arts are things of yesterday ; and that 
 the differences arising from variety of scale-system have absolutely no 
 bearing on the essence of Music and of the musical faculty. 
 
 We may now conveniently review our position. In the first place the 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 175 
 
 more general characteristics of melody with which we were mainly occupied § is. Review 
 in the fifth and sixth chapters may be better appreciated, and the list characteristics 
 somewhat extended, by the light of our recent more detailed examina- "^""^"^y 
 tion. They may be summed up as follows : 1. The mere material out of 
 which melodies are formed, i.e. musical tones, is unique in our experience, 
 quite apart from the use made of it. The sensation of musical tone 
 is not presented to the ear by any natural phenomena, even the 
 natural voices of men and animals containing but little of it: it is a 
 sensation produced on exceptional occasions by exceptional means (pri- 
 marily of course by the ' singing ' voice), and in early stages of develop- 
 ment is probably extremely exciting in itself. That is, the mere producing 
 and hearing of sounds and cries with some musical tvmbre would be excit- 
 ing and enjoyable, without any formal connection, or with the slightest 
 and most rudimentary connection, between them. 2. With Music, even 
 in its most rudimentary stages, is associated the sense of motion, with all 
 its powers of physical stimulation. These two heads alone do something 
 to explain the fact that, while anything more than the most rudimentary 
 enjoyment of abstract visual form is a late product, whether in the individual 
 or the race, keen enjoyment of successions of musical sounds is a firequent 
 characteristic — both of young children and of low savages. 3. Precision 
 and definiteness is a marked characteristic of musical forms: this is 
 due to the employment of fixed degrees both of time and pitch, and 
 makes possible an extreme distinctness of individuality. 4. The con- 
 tinuous looking forward and expecting (exemplified in a very simple 
 form in watching the approach to the key-note or some other landmark) 
 affords a partial explanation of the excitement of Music, as marked 
 off from anything: that could be given by the impressions perceived 
 avmulta/neously in space. 5. The forms, when they occur, and so far as 
 they are impressive, are each new and unique things, not like new ex- 
 pressions or postures, or alterations and reminiscences, of known things : 
 each fresh melodic presentation which is profoundly felt is felt as till then 
 wholly unknown. 6. There are the mighty associational elements con- 
 nected with the primseval use of musical sounds under the influence of 
 sexnal emotion; and (7) probably some instinctive reference to the 
 phenomenon of speech, owing to the identical feature of a succession of 
 changing sounds, contributes to the effect which melody produces of being 
 sovnethmg said, an utterance of imperative significance. 
 
 Subsequently we passed beyond these general grounds, and examined the and of the 
 special peculiarities of actual melodic structure, the special characteristics thrmuJoai 
 of those proportions which the musical faculty (active alike in the expert's ''"""^'^ ' 
 grasp of a symphony and the baby's recognition of some familiar ditty) per- 
 ceives and balances with such instinctive ease. We saw how great was the 
 complexity involved in the pitch^eleiaeut alone, through the joint features of 
 
176 MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 
 
 degrees of distance and of relationship present in the notes ; and we subse- 
 quently saw that the simplest melody throughout its course is the resultant of 
 two heterogeneous factors, rhythm and pitch, which further complicates the 
 proportions in a way quite unexampled in any other region of experience ; 
 in a way too which makes it impossible to refer degrees of pleasing or dis- 
 pleasing quality to distinguishable points of technical structure. And the 
 phenomena are of course neither more nor less peculiar than the faculty by 
 which we apprehend them. Eemembering what a marvel of cleverness the 
 ear is, both in its conscious and unconscious operations — how it appreciates 
 tone-relationship through harmonics which it does not separately detect, and 
 in distinguishing a chord as made up of component elements does unassisted 
 what the eye needs a prism to do for it — we may certainly feel that, if we 
 were to be endowed anywhere with a definite and perfectly unique sense of 
 abstract proportion, it might be expected to be in connection with hearing : 
 but no examination of the faculties of the ear apart from developed forms 
 could have revealed to us the possibility of such forms, and every fresh 
 application of the proportional sense involves a process which is a law to 
 itself. For such rudimentary facts as the change from a tone to a related 
 tone, the final rest on a key-note, the dual balance of phrase — the barren 
 elements or conditions which are common both to pleasurable and un- 
 pleasurable melodic forms — we can conceive such a justification as that 
 neglect of them would clearly lead to incoherence : but when we come to 
 actual forms, and to the starthng differences of merit which the very 
 simplest known to us present, the musical faculty defies all explanation of 
 its action and its judgments. The only conceivable explanation indeed 
 would be an analogy, and we know not where to look for it. Since sight 
 and hearing are the only senses by which we perceive abstract forms at 
 all, we are in speaking of either reduced at best to a single line of things 
 for illustration or contrast. If we had a few more senses, yielding such 
 impressions as could be co-ordinated and unified into wholly new kinds of 
 forms, so that the inadequacy of curves to express melodies was paralleled 
 by several other examples, we might find it easier to realise that the 
 contemplation of the various forms involved an exercise of faculties 
 special for each class of phenomena, irreducible therefore under any such 
 general rule as we could call an explanation ; and that what we loosely call 
 a sense of proportion is of a Protean character. 
 
 Finally, we proceeded to consider melody in a further aspect, not 
 merely as form or structure, but as formed motion ; and again we noticed 
 the peculiarity of the process by which the motion is followed, and how 
 little clue to it is afforded by the phenomena of physical force and motion. 
 Here again, too, in relation to physical force and motion, we encountered 
 a general theory of musical impressiveness, which betrays its failure really 
 to reach the heart of the matter in much the same way as did the references 
 
MELODIC FORMS AND THE IDEAL MOTION. 177 
 
 to more particular points of technical structure; namely, by proving 
 applicable to music which is followed with feelings of indifference and 
 annoyance as much as to music which is followed with delight. We are 
 thus amply warned against the common sort of account of musical effect 
 which ignores the simple fact that two series of notes, similar to one 
 another on all the adduced grounds, may present the whole difference of 
 possessing beauty and Tvot possessing it ; that the suggested conditions 
 of effect are continually present when there is no effect ; and that the 
 problem presented by this variety of quality is altogether distinct from 
 any general considerations of emotional power in Music. It was in our- 
 selves facing this problem, as the central one of the whole subject, that 
 we saw how unmistakably it points to a uniquely isolated faculty, whose 
 decisions can no more be justified than they can be impugned by any law 
 or from any standpoint external to the impression in each case. 
 
 We must now pass on to an idea, or rather a medley of ideas, which the scope and 
 
 relatioDS of 
 
 embraces and underhes an immense amount of the prevalent confusion on which need 
 this subject, and the consideration of which will, I hope, mark off still elucidation! 
 more clearly the true position and scope of the musical faculty. The 
 central conception is often held in the most unprecise way, and its appli- 
 cations are exceptionally hard to track out and examine : but, broadly 
 speaking, it is the conception of reasonableness, as a source to which our 
 feelings of beauty have essentially some sort of reference, explicit or im- 
 plicit ; the conception of order, which is of course the natural expression 
 for any combination of elements into a distinguishable form or series, as 
 connoting features which must be logically defensible and have clear 
 relation to the scientific (as distinct from the intuitional) faculties. The 
 analysis necessary for a due examination of these ideas and the deductions 
 from them must extend considerably beyond the sphere of Music, and will 
 take us back to topics which have already been to some extent discussed : 
 but the subject could only be made intelHgible by treating it as a whole, 
 and such treatment will not, I hope, involve any inconvenient amount of 
 repetition. 
 
178 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 § 1. Ambi- The words law, order, regularity, are the key-notes of all scientific dis- 
 
 worfs'iaw'or cussion ; and we naturally come across them whenever attempts are made 
 
 der, regularity, to treat sesthetic problems on a scientific method. There seem, however, 
 
 to be special dangers and ambiguities connected with their use in that 
 
 particular rfegion; special facilities for sliding imperceptibly from one 
 
 sense into another, and so adding extra confusion to branches of enquiry 
 
 which are in any case sufficiently obscure. 
 
 Beauty is said ' Beauty,' says Helmholtz in the last chapter of the Tori^Empfindv/ngen, 
 
 laws^ dependent ' ^^ Subject to laws and rules dependent on the nature of the human in- 
 
 on the nature telUgence.' This, though sounding most reasonable, is just the sort of 
 
 gence : in what statement which is liable to be misunderstood and misapplied: and some 
 
 true ? of the points I wish to discuss in the present chapter may be conveniently 
 
 introduced by enquiring in what sense and within what limits it is true. 
 
 That there are Umits is soon manifest. For instance, it is a law that 
 
 regular rapid stimulation of certain nervous organs produces the sensation 
 
 of a musical tone : in other words, the subjective impression of beauty of 
 
 tone is subject to a certain rule of nerve-stimulation which in no way 
 
 depends on the nature of human intelligence, and the relation of which 
 
 to the sensation of pleasure is an ultimate simple and non-reasonable 
 
 fact. So a piece of red coral presented to an infant, or a piece of blue sky 
 
 vacantly gazed at by an adult, affords a pleasure whose conditions may 
 
 certainly be generalised into a law, but a law expressed in terms of physics 
 
 and nervous organs, not of human intelligence. And a large part of the 
 
 beauty perceived in the colour-qualities of sights and sounds is clearly of 
 
 this ultimate character. 
 
 When, however, we pass on to forms, to regions of perception where 
 the mental faculties become active, Helmholtz's statement about laws 
 and rules seems at once applicable. But a confusion is still possible : 
 subject to laws and rules often slips into meaning consisting in sub- 
 jection to laws and rules, clearly a very different thing. For instance, 
 if we take works of art, with special reference to which Helmholtz 
 is speaking, we see that a painter must not represent in one picture 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 179 
 
 a number of heterogeneous and quite unconnected objects, because it is 
 
 a law that the mind is puzzled and distracted by total aimlessness and 
 
 want of unity ; a composer must not repeat exactly the same passage 
 
 twelve times running, because it is a law that the mind is wearied by 
 
 prolonged and objectless monotony ; neither painter nor musician must 
 
 introduce grotesque incidents or episodes into solemn compositions, since 
 
 it is a law that the mind resents pointless incongruity. But the laws and The laws are 
 
 rules which can be thus formulated have, so to speak, an external sort of ^^ the'^beauty 
 
 relation to the beauty : they are controlling conditions, not essence : no "kins of its moat 
 
 such formulae will account in the slightest degree for the central face in effective pre- 
 
 ^/-^Tl•T^ c< ■ ■ i sentation. 
 
 the Cenacolo or for Dove aono. So agam, it is qmte true, as Helmholtz 
 goes on to observe, that we may ' seek to enhance our enjoyment and in- 
 terest by tracing out the suitability, connection, and equilibrium of all the 
 separate parts ' in a work of art. But still we shall be dealing in great 
 measure with the conditions, the framework, the means of setting forth 
 and focussing the essentially expressive forms. The necessary regularity 
 of the composition in the Cenacolo would disappear, and we should instantly 
 see the mistake, if the divine face were in a corner instead of in the 
 middle, and an indispensable rule is observed by at any rate putting it 
 in a conspicuous position : but this is the arranging, not the informing, 
 element ; it is the expression that moves us, not the position. 
 
 Nor need we take such extreme instances. The selection and treat- 
 ment of the subject-matter may not be irrational, and yet may fail to be 
 imaginative or interesting ; and its success or failure in this respect falls 
 naturally under our intellectual cognisance. Thus a painter introduces as 
 many objects as he likes into a picture, and groups them as he pleases : 
 he could to a great extent verbally explain and defend his arrange- 
 ment ; and though the presence of an abstract or pattern element in a 
 pictorial composition, embracing objects which in themselves and in their 
 relations are independent of such an element, makes the appreciation 
 of the arrangement a very hard thing to analyse, still we can discover, 
 or a more appreciative spectator could discover for us, various ways in 
 which the eye is led and helped and the mind satisfied, aspects of order 
 both of the abstract and of the reasonable kind, and the various causes 
 why the arrangement was powerful and suggestive, or (it might be) 
 weak and theatrical. But it is not in any way demonstrable that one 
 nose is more orderly than two, or two eyes more conformable to reason 
 than four. The expression of a face, the strength of a mountain, and 
 freedom of Turner's clouds and waves, the magic of his distances, are 
 not revealed to us by any reasoning process. However characteristic of 
 the artist's genius, however necessary to the completeness of the effect, 
 be the features of rational or imaginative combination and arrangement, 
 they stand distinct from the qualities in virtue of which the subject-matter 
 
 K 2 
 
180 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 is primarily selected for development or idealisation : and considerations 
 which can be set forth to the intelligence in words cannot penetrate to 
 the essential forms and effects, whose appeal (as I hope further to show) 
 is to our immediate consciousness special and ultimate, and only present- 
 able in the pioper materials of the particular art. 
 § 2. Conside- The representative arts naturally give special scope to Keason, inasmuch 
 BourasappiTed as their subject-matter, in its selection and treatment, involves the con- 
 tiv^Tt by'*" st'^^t exercise of distinctly intellectual faculties, and admits the proposi- 
 Lessing; tions and arguments attaching to known objects and events. Thus 
 
 Lessing points out that ' Timomachus has not painted Medea at the 
 moment in which she actually murders her children, but some minutes 
 before, while maternal love was still struggling with jealousy ; ' and that 
 Ajax was not represented in the act of slaying the herds, but sitting 
 remorsefully afterwards. Many reasons could doubtless be given why 
 these were the wiser moments to choose : but how much does the mere 
 choice imply ? How much does it guarantee in the way of excellence in 
 the work ? The very fact that the intellectual side of the imagination is 
 so prominent, and reasoned criticism therefore so possible, in the case of 
 the representative arts, involves a special danger of substituting ingenuity 
 for intuition, and of evolving reasonable ' laws and rules ' which bear no 
 relation to the true differentia of beautiful works. There could not be a 
 more effective means of realising this danger than a perusal of the 
 Laocoon, where the whole merit of works of art is throughout found in 
 things which a person without the slightest artistic genius could and 
 would think of as naturally as an artist. A great painter is differentiated 
 not by common sense but by vision. 
 
 It is strange that while Lessing has been considered the special 
 champion of beauty for its own sake, his criticisms rarely or never 
 contain the slightest indication that he had used his eyes as eyes, or 
 received any thrill through so using them : if the fact was otherwise, he 
 certainly has done himself injustice by the frigid emphasis with which 
 he dwells on external conditions and considerations, and on general 
 to Painting; features in themselves quite empty of beauty. A few instances will 
 make this clear. Thus he says, ' Eubens in his Resurrection of Lazarus 
 has chosen the moment when Lazarus comes forth already alive from 
 the grave. I believe that this is the proper moment : it obviates the 
 necessity of holding the nose, for the stench could not have continued 
 with the living Lazarus.' His admiration of an Annunciation by 
 Tintoret rests on the fact that the angel is entering through a breach in 
 the wall, the painter being unable, he says, ' to express the spiritual essence 
 of the angel,' but having succeeded in showing ' that such a being cannot 
 be excluded by anything.' Again, ' the painter who, in imitation of the 
 description of a Thomson, has represented a beautiful landscape, has done 
 
THE EELATIONS OF BEASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 181 
 
 more than one who has copied it directly : the latter out of a lively im- 
 pression on the senses creates something beautiful ; the former out of a 
 slender and feeble representation of arbitrary signs produces the same 
 result.' We may grant that a beautiful landscape produced entirely in a 
 studio would be a very remarkable phenomenon : but in the imagined 
 relation between painter and poet we find the old mechanical and external 
 view. The points out of Thomson's description which could be transferred 
 to canvass might of course be enumerated in a dry catalogue which any one 
 with ordinary eyesight and observation could draw up, and of the like of 
 which any landscape painter could draw up a hundred a day. Yet a 
 painter who embodies them is said to have imitated Nature through the 
 mediixm of the poet : as if supposing a painter to be able to paint land- 
 scapes in his studio, such mediumship could be of the slightest use to 
 him ; as if an enumeration of objects could be the means by which in his 
 mind's eye he beheld, not the mere fact of their presence, but their 
 essential visual beauty and pictorial value ; as if the painter was enabled 
 to express distance and light through the mediumship of Thomson's sayinig 
 there was a distant sun-lit hill, or as if Thomson's saying that the sky was 
 mantled in fair and fleecy clouds gave the painter the clue to the expression 
 of cloud-beauty and fleeciness. We might as well say that Shakespeare 
 represented human nature through the mediumship of the authors who 
 suggested some of his incidents. How completely Leasing was satisfied 
 with barren reflections, and with characteristics in no way involving any 
 essential and informing charm, seems indicated by his being quite as 
 rapturous over pictures he imagines as over anything he has ever seen. 
 Thus he conceives a favourable subject for a painting from Homer : ' The 
 banqueting gods at council ; the open golden palace. Groups of the most 
 beautiful and dignified figures, placed according to the will of the painter. 
 Hebe, eternal youth, ministering with a goblet in her hand. What archi- 
 tecture ! What masses of light and shade ! What contrasts ! What 
 manifold variety of expression ! Where shall I begin ? Where shall I 
 cease to feed my eye ? ' It is of course easy to write and to understand 
 such a passage as this without knowing the diffrarence between the feeblest 
 daub and a Veronese j^ but to Lessing the mere mental survey of the 
 subject-matter seems quite sufficient satisfaction. It would be unfair to 
 infer absolutely that he would not have discriminated between a good and 
 a bad delineation of the scene he proposes ; but one cannot resist the im- 
 pression that he failed to see how little the charm of the picture, if it 
 succeeded, would lie in the mere fact that the subject-matter was such 
 and such. Only a born painter has a right to smack his lips over an 
 unborn work, the essential artistic excellences of which (as distinct from 
 the vague visions any of us can summon up at a moment's notice) are, for 
 all but him, non-existent till they are actually presented to the eye. 
 
182 THE EOLATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 to Poetry ; Nor does Poetry fare any better. With respect to the representation 
 
 on the Shield of Achilles of two scenes from the same city, one in the 
 streets and one in the market-place, Lessing laboriously argues, on 
 the ground that the laws of perspective could not be understood in 
 Homer's time, that Homer must in imagination have contemplated the 
 city ' from so raised a point of sight that he thereby opened a clear 
 view simultaneously both of the streets and of the market-place.' Hav- 
 ing been struck with a certain absurdity in pictures where the Homeric 
 cloud was introdiiced as a screen behind which the spectator saw the 
 hero lurking, he is careful to tell us that when Homer uses mist or 
 night to conceal his personages it is only ' a poetical mode of describing 
 invisibility : ' and again, when Poseidon darkened the eyes of Achilles, 
 Lessing warns us that they were not really darkened ; it was a meta- 
 phor to express how extremely swiftly ^neas was withdrawn from their 
 sight. He attributes Milton's more elaborate descriptions, as con- 
 trasted with Homer's single epithets, to Milton's having lost the power of 
 quickly imagining what things look like, through blindness : he surely 
 ought to have noticed the vulgar idea that Homer was also blind, if only 
 to confute it with the converse argument. Equally mechanical is the 
 chapter which professes to expound the beauties of the Philoctetes ; where 
 the proposition that screams are out of place in tragedy, put forth on the 
 very disputable ground that we do not adequately sympathise with physical 
 pain, is treated as constituting a difficulty which nothing but supreme 
 genius could overcome : and we are made to dwell on such points as that 
 Philoctetes had a visible wound in his foot (not a stomach-ache) ; that he 
 was solitary ; that, after all, people do sometimes scream without incurring 
 contempt, and so on. Supreme genius would hardly thank its expositor. 
 Nor are these occasional or isolated lapses : almost every page of the book 
 gives the same impression of a man laboriously striving from outside to 
 discover reasons for admiring approved works, 
 and to the reia- ^s regards Lessing's more general views about the relations and dif- 
 thTarts'^^^" ferences of the arts, it is but fair to remember when and where he lived : 
 and to give him credit for the discovery of such laws as that a sculptor 
 may not, though a poet may, represent a man screaming, because it would 
 distort his face. But in reality the famous dictum of Simonides that 
 Painting is silent Poetry, and Poetry speaking Painting, which it is 
 Lessing's chief aim, put in the forefront of his treatise, to expound and 
 modify, took him in not less fatally than other people. ' The poet should 
 always paint,' he says : and his cardinal thesis is that, as the poet has to 
 use words in succession, he must confine his painting to physical action, 
 the parts of which take place successively. It seems almost incredible 
 that a poet should have found the basis for an essay on Art in a doctrine 
 which debars Poetry, first, from attempting to describe external scenes 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 183 
 
 and objects, and secondly, from attempting to depict the inner life of the 
 soul ; a doctrine perhaps as radically delusive as any fundamental tenet 
 in any book of equal reputation. Lessing most characteristically supports 
 his view that Poetry cannot be effectively employed in the description of 
 scenes and objects, by quoting, as a reductio axi absurdum, a mechanical 
 and detailed description of a bouquet of flowers, and calling it a 'master- 
 piece of its kind.' How radically he confuses the functions and possibilities 
 of the very arts he is professing scientifically to distinguish is shown by his 
 expressly stating the poet's great business to be the creation of illusion : 
 and poetical descriptions of scenes and objects, he says, ' must necessarily 
 lack the power of creating illusion,' ' because the co-existence of bodies 
 thereby comes into collision with the consecutiveness of language.' Such 
 blindness in so honest a writer can only be attributed to an irrelevant 
 delight in mere schematism; to a feeling that it is Zogricai, if representation 
 of movements is forbidden to painting, that conversely representation of 
 objects should be forbidden to poetry. Equally singular is the absence 
 from the Laocoon of any hint that beyond material phenomena, whether 
 objects or actions. Poetry possesses, in large tracts of the inner world of 
 feeUng, an altogether special sphere, and a true monopoly of subject- 
 matter, since it is only by words that many inward facts can be expressed as 
 directly and definitely as any other ; and that in sounding the depths of 
 human experience, and setting forth in all its myriad relations and aspects 
 the image of the world on the individual soul, lies a mightier task than 
 in ' the invention of incidents,' which seems to be Lessing's one idea of 
 poetical imagination. 
 
 I have dwelt thus on the Laocoon because it is a typical instance of the Keason for 
 failure of logical analysis to penetrate to the essence of beautiful work ; Laocoon. 
 because, of all the books I have ever seen which deal with beauty, it most 
 constantly provokes the exasperated feeling that the points it lays stress 
 on might all be there, and all the given laws and conditions be observed, 
 and yet the beauty be entirely absent. Nor is the popularity of the book 
 hard to explain, when we remember how apt we most of us are, in reading 
 criticisms and explanations on matters which we have never independently 
 considered, to be extremely prepossessed in an author's favoiur if we find we 
 follow him easily. There is never a doubt what Lessing means : and it is 
 natural for those who are more readily appealed to by literature than by 
 art to repay such a writer for the pleasure of comprehending him, for the 
 glow that accompanies an easy dip into a great and presumably difiicult 
 subject, by accepting as luminous and profound anything that they find 
 at once new and intelligible. Perspicuity and erudition were certain, for 
 instance, to impress a mind like Macaulay's, in the absence of strong 
 artistic instinct ; but that such criticism should have acted as a powerful 
 intellectual stimulus to a man of Goethe's calibre might give one pause in 
 
184 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 §3. The laws 
 which generar- 
 lise the facts of 
 mental pro- 
 cesses are quite 
 different from 
 the imagined 
 laws to which 
 Beauty is said 
 to be subject. 
 
 attacking it, were it necessary to go much beyond quotations, and simple 
 statements of the leading views, which admit of no double meaning.' 
 
 But, it may be urged, granting that in some at least of the things pre- 
 sented or represented in a beautiful work there is an inherent impressive- 
 ness and significance, which no intelligent reasonings about the choice, the 
 conception, and the treatment of the subject-matter will penetrate — ^yet we 
 feel that impressiveness, we enjoy that instantaneous and unreasoning, and 
 yet thoroughly non-sensuous and ideal quickening, on grounds which may 
 surely be classified and defined : granting the general arrangement of the 
 subject-matter in elaborate works to be a more distinctly intellectual and 
 describable affair, still our knowledge of mental constitution should surely 
 afford us some principles about the more essential elements of beauty. 
 Certainly : such principles, so far as they go beyond the mere laws of sensory 
 stimulation and extend to the intellectual region, will be the general facts 
 of our mental processes, as regards, e.g., the pleasure of imitation, or the 
 love of type and metaphor ; but far above all, the laws of association, here- 
 ditary and individual, which are deeply involved in most if not all of our 
 enjoymentvof form. But here the ' laws and rules ' are of a totally different 
 kind from those we have hitherto spoken of: they are general facts about 
 the development and characteristics of mind itself, not about relations 
 which the mind desiderates in phenomena, and to which therefore beautiful 
 phenomena are bound to conform. They are general as applying to all 
 
 ' And surely reverence for a great name 
 may go a step too far. For instance, in the 
 preface to the translation of the Laocoon 
 from which I have quoted, a gentleman of 
 ability and eminence tells us of Lessing's 
 not being able to endure music, which 
 obliged him 'to rush out into the air in 
 order to breathe freely ; ' and naively con- 
 tinues, ' How far, if at all, this curious 
 physical fact might have influenced his 
 opinion on the subject we cannot tell. . . . 
 It is probable that a treatise by Lessing on 
 the science of sound and the art of Music 
 would have given us another occasion for 
 admiring his immense erudition, the vigour 
 of his criticism, and the clearness of his 
 conclusions.' There is an innocence in this 
 which disarms indignation ; but can the 
 same be said of the following? Lessing 
 'knew that from a keen perception and 
 critical observance of the mutual affinities 
 of the arts had been derived the doctrine 
 both of the beautiful and the ideal which 
 had animated the unrivalled creations of 
 the great philosophers, poets, and artists of 
 Greece.' To such a sentence as this a really 
 heavy responsibility attaches, inasmuch as 
 
 unsuspicious people who do not happen to 
 know anything about Greek literature and 
 art might naturally believe it. The next 
 thing will be to wonder how the sculptor 
 could have produced his Laocoon group, or 
 Virgil his description of the same scene, 
 without having had the advantage of study- 
 ing the true ' doctrine ' of such per- 
 formances under Lessing. It would of 
 course be equally untrue to find the secret 
 spring of the great artistic works of cmy 
 age in a doctrine based on critical analysis : 
 but the idea is peculiarly startling in con- 
 nection with the childlike growth, and the 
 utter spontaneity, free alike from self-con- 
 sciousness and from pedantry, which so 
 specially characterised the great art and 
 literature of Greece. It is to be doubted 
 whether any Greek before the time of 
 Aristotle would have had sufficient interest 
 in ' mutual affinities ' between the arts, to 
 detect even the amount of deficiency which 
 Lessing did in the above-quoted dictum 
 about silent Poetry and speaking Painting : 
 and we certainly have no record, among 
 their works, of S3Tnphonies in brown and 
 amber, or of facades in the Phrygian mode. 
 
TEE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 185 
 
 minds, not as applied by the mind to all phenomena ; their regularity is 
 not a logical order demanded by the mind, but the mere historical regu- 
 larity wherein the evolution of mind resembles all other gradual natural 
 processes. So that, if we try to apply this new conception to the quotation 
 from Helmholtz with which we started, its sense is wholly inverted and it 
 becomes a barren truism. From meaning that phenomena, to be beautiful, 
 must first prove themselves to be reasonable by subjection to general rules 
 of the intelligence, it would have come to mean merely that the mind per- 
 ceives and feels a particular thing, beauty of this or that kind, as it has 
 been by nature constituted to perceive and feel it. 
 
 In an artistic work, then, it seems as if we may perpetually discriminate § 4. The in- 
 an element of law and order, an element of reasonable, striking, and purpose- of artistic en- 
 ful arrangement, which can be formulated and recognised as within the oftenemedaiiv 
 domain of the general intelligence, from an element of beautv and impres- connected with 
 
 o o ^ J c such parts or 
 
 siveness which, in the case of form no less than in that of colour, is beyond units in a larger 
 the scope of reason and of reasoned analysis and argument ; and the intuitive most organic 
 perception of which in each special kind of presentation seems often con- t^^r own'°^ " 
 nected with some special range or ranges of association, dating back, perhaps, 
 to the very dawn of emotional life. This element is specially characteristic 
 of the units, which, while entering as parts into some larger composition, 
 are themselves more completely and essentially organic, inasmuch as 
 further reduction or analysis of them would mean absolute mutilation and 
 loss of all characteristic impressiveness ; as, for instance, if we divide a face 
 or figure into its separate features or limbs, or a theme from some musical 
 piece into detached notes or bars. At the same time it is impossible to 
 lay down hard and fast limits : we have already seen that different sorts 
 of work differ greatly in the extent to which they concentrate the chief 
 interest on any such complete or semi-complete units. We could not 
 isolate a piece of delicately gradated light as a form ; and yet the sense of 
 free and sunny space, or of endless aerial perspective, which it might 
 suggest, would come distinctly under the head we are considering. Both 
 in landscape and buildings shifting effects and general effects are often 
 more essential to the emotional result than the more permanent charac- 
 teristics of particular forms; and in landscape especially, the frequent 
 impossibility of the more definite references is easily explained, if we 
 remember that the various associations from which our enjoyment of 
 Nature has been evolved have had quite as much to do with broad qualities but often aiao 
 of views embracing a multitude of objects as with objects individually generT'^ 
 considered. Even in the case of Music, which does, as we have seen, in a qi^iit'es. 
 remarkable degree concentrate attention on each part in turn, and where 
 any melody or ' subject ' or phrase which can be thought of and enjoyed 
 in detachment has enough completeness to constitute a form in the sense 
 meant, we shall see in the next chapter that it is useless to attempt to 
 
186 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 §5. The 
 notion of sym- 
 metry is often 
 unduly pressed, 
 
 § 6. Exami- 
 nation of the 
 view which 
 identifies 
 
 draw any distinct line, dividing off what shall be regarded as complete 
 organisms from the clauses, themselves organic, which combine into larger 
 forms. 
 
 But, again, it may be urged that though there has been pointed out one 
 sort of law and order which does not explain or constitute beauty, we have 
 no right to assume that reason does not penetrate beauty in some other way. 
 Is not symmetry perpetually an essential factor in the individual and irre- 
 ducible forms ? and surely this commends itself as reasonable to the in- 
 telligence. Now the main source of confusion between general intellectual 
 processes and special perceptions of beauty, is the very fact that one of the 
 simplest relations which the mind perceives and grasps, is that of sym- 
 metry and regularity, combined with the further fact that this relation, 
 being often present in beauty, is often perceived with pleasure : whence, 
 by taking the factor for the whole, and then mixing up the ideas of regu- 
 larity and rationality, a sort of relationship seems to be established between 
 beauty and recognised laws of mental activity ; and such a statement as 
 that the reasoning mind requires and enjAys symmetry and order, becomes 
 one of the laws and rules to which ' beauty is subject.' In other words, it 
 sov/nds more rational to say ' the mind is so ordered as to enjoy order ' 
 than to say ' the mind is so ordered as to enjoy disorder.' And yet 
 the latter statement would serve quite as often as the former, if we 
 could at all rest in either as an adequate explanation : for if, on the 
 one hand, Westminster Abbey is beautiful, so on the other is the 
 tangled luxuriance of a tropical forest. But we continually find such facts, 
 for example, as that the human face is normally pretty symmetrical, and 
 in case of beauty often very completely so, and also that beautiful faces do 
 not present wide divergences from a norm, taken as a basis for an explana- 
 tion of human beauty ; which is referred to ' the mind's love of symmetry 
 and regularity,' and dislike of things exaggerated and abnormal. When 
 we examine such a particular case, we of course see at once that many faces 
 which are quite regular and have no exaggerated feature, have no beauty ; 
 and that beautiful faces and figures, seen in profile, have no symmetry, 
 which, had we always seen each other in that position, would never have 
 occurred to us as a necessary element ; so that, even when seen under 
 conditions of symmetry, the beauty must lie essentially in minute details 
 of free form and curvature, the unanalysable effect of which on us is 
 mainly due to vast hidden stores of association and an extraordinarily 
 developed power of comparison, regular only in the historical sense that 
 their existence is not an unconditioned ' fluke.' 
 
 The conception of regularity and conformance to reason as the primary 
 factor in beauty, if legitimately pressed, naturally leads on to an actual 
 identification of esthetic with scientific perception, of the intuitive with 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 187 
 
 the discursive action of the mind ; an identification which appears in the fflsthetie per- 
 ideal schemes of both Plato and Comte,' and which often turns up under scwntiflc cog- 
 some form or other in aesthetic discussions. While engaged on this chapter "•''°''' 
 I have been so fortunate as to find an especially clear and courageous state- 
 ment of this view in an ingenious paper on the ' Evolution of Beauty ' in 
 the Quarterly Journal of Science for July 1878, some sentences of which 
 I cannot do better than quote and condense. 
 
 ' Beauty,' says the writer, ' is an abstract idea of the same nature as 
 <TOodness, Truth, Power, Charity, &c., and that which causes this idea to 
 present itself in the human consciousness is \h.e perception of relationship 
 among a number of diverse sensations, of unity co-existent with variety. 
 When the attention of the mind is focussed upon a variety of points in 
 rapid succession, and the intellect is able to recognise relationship among 
 all these points as members of one group, there arises the idea of Beauty. 
 It can only present itself under the conditions of mental activity co-exist- 
 ent with the perception of relationship, proportion, unity.' Acts of atten- 
 tion, if absolutely repeated, are monotonous ; hence the primary condition 
 under which any object can appear beautiful to the human mind is that it 
 be compounded of sufficiently varied parts. ' Every object in nature is so 
 compounded of various parts, but human minds are not equally sensitive 
 to small shades of difference.' ' Every object in nature is a group of parts 
 related to each other in ways more or less complex and subtle. If any 
 mind were absolutely sensitive to all degrees of relationship in all its as- 
 pects, nothing would appear chaotic. A mind absolutely sensitive to all 
 shades of difference and to all degrees of relationship at the same time, 
 would see everywhere throughout creation variety bound up in unity, 
 would find neither monotony nor chaos, discord or ugliness, but only a 
 universal Beauty.' The mind, however, is ' sensitive either to variety or 
 unity only within narrow limits.' No difference is perceived between seeds 
 of the musk-plant, no relationship between the numbers 264, 330, 396, 
 462 ; whereas the stones on a gravel-walk present sensible differences, and 
 2, 4, 6, 8 are obviously related. ' The closer the relationship, the more 
 
 1 Plato considered that the wisest and mentally the same. Fortunately for the un- 
 
 cleverest people should not only be the best scientific and unspeoulative majority, the 
 
 judges of music, but the best performers of apportionment of the susceptibilities with 
 
 it. Comte did not demand that his direct- which human beings are actually born into 
 
 ,ing class should be themselves active musi- the world is more natural than any ideal ; 
 
 cians, though they were to supervise and we shall see more and more as we ad- 
 
 produotion in this as in other spheres ; but vanoe, how and why Music is pre-eminent in 
 
 he expressly held the separation of specula- setting at naught the laws and restrictions 
 
 tive and scientific from artistic activity to be which would connect it with intellectual 
 
 unnatural ; and that the faculties by which education and activity, including even edu- 
 
 problems are solved and art is enjoyed are, cation and activity of the imaginative facul- 
 
 and in an ideal state of things would prove ties in other directions, 
 to be, fundamentally united if not funda- 
 
188 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 easily is it recognised.' A pentagon, hexagon, circle, square, equilateral 
 triangle possess beauty ; a dodecahedron is scarcely beautiful except to a 
 mathematician. 
 The size of the Now here the identification of aesthetic perception with cognition is 
 number and SO fundamental, that all reference to our actual senses seems to be dis- 
 tS^art™ m*u^t pensed with. To see ' everywhere throughout creation ' beauty in plaee of 
 not be beyond chaos, a chansfe of eyes would certainly be necessary : for those we now 
 
 our powers of ° "' 
 
 perception. possess See, except in rare cases, only outsides. Moreover extent, as well 
 as opacity, would make universal beauty hard to get at. Suppose, then, 
 we give up such inconceivable regions and select some very large object, 
 say the desert of Sahara. It is probable that no two grains of sand there 
 are identical in size and shape, so that with sufficient magnifying power 
 we ought to get a splendid notion of unity under variety ; but then un- 
 fortunately the disproportionateness of the parts to the whole is so enor- 
 mous that the differences of the parts seem to have absolutely no relation 
 to the individuality of the whole, which would remain unaffected if the 
 position of every part were altered. 
 
 "We have, then, to come down with a run to limited and clearly defined 
 conceptions, and to what in the visual region we know as forms— to audible 
 phenomena the writer makes no reference — and in considering the view in 
 relation to these, we must do what he has not done, and carefully distinguish 
 Two modes of iwo moc^es of relation between the parts and the whole. (1) Definite points 
 tween the parts of identity are perceived in the parts, and the relation between the parts 
 an e w e. |g ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^f ^^^ explains our perception of the whole ; as, for instance, 
 in a geometrical figure, whose regularity and unity are perceived by a com- 
 parison of similar lines and angles, or in an arithmetical series, seen to be 
 a regular one by the perception of the common difference. (2) The sense 
 of the whole is the primary and fundamental fact, and the only point of 
 identity perceived in the parts is their common character of belonging to 
 the whole, the exercise by each of a function impossible to it in isolation : 
 as in the profile of a face, or in some irregular natural object, or in a line 
 of changing curvature. Often, indeed, the first of these modes of relation 
 seems partially present with the second, as in a human face and figure 
 seen from the front ; but here, though the relation of symmetry between 
 the two sides is perceived, the effect of this element is not so essential 
 but that it could and would have been dispensed with, if human beings 
 had been naturally and habitually unsymmetrical in some definite way; 
 In the first mode, pure and simple, the recognition of the common cha- 
 racteristics and the relations of the parts seems scarcely able to get 
 beyond the satisfaction of mere scientific cognition : and the writer I have 
 quoted would surely have to admit some such distinction as we have 
 drawn, if he would avoid the conclusion that a complicated but intelligible 
 geometrical figure is as beautiful as a statue ; since the perceptible 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 189 
 
 points of identity and relation in the parts of the statue might well not 
 exceed in number and variety those of the figure. And, indeed, though 
 most of his statements and examples point to the first mode of relation, 
 he does himself say that ' the point of identity which must be perceived 
 in order that the group may appear beautiful is that all those phenomena 
 belong to that group,' and take a necessary part'in its formation : which is 
 a statement of the second mode. 
 
 If, then, we examine his position on this side, it is of course obvious The perception 
 that the perception of beautiful form does entail the perception of unity form does entail 
 under variety. We have already dwelt on this point, and on the !^^ft°*undCT 
 fact that it is through the delicate and rapid sensibility of the eye vaaaety: 
 and ear to variety in the impressions they receive, and the consequent 
 opportunities for comparison and co-ordination, that seeing and hearing 
 are 'par excellence the aesthetic senses. For not only is the mental 
 activity, which is a necessary factor of the highest pleasure, intimately 
 connected with this exact and subtle sensibility to the arrangement or 
 order of impressions, but the immense variety possible in forms is the 
 necessary condition of any wide variety of association and suggestion. 
 Thus it is only in connection with forms that the higher and more com- 
 plex mental faculties come into close and habitual relation with sense- 
 impressions; whence their aesthetic superiority to colour, the purely 
 passive and sensuous enjoyment of which is shared with us by many 
 animals : for though an animal may recognise objects, may take this or 
 that shape as a symbol of known attributes, it lacks the mental develop- 
 ment necessary for aesthetic enjoyment of their form. 
 
 But the perception of unity under variety, merely as such, and failing but this charae- 
 any independent ground of interest whether in the elements or in their ^^fpecuilarto 
 combination, cannot make good its claim to a truly aesthetic character, beantifui form, 
 
 ' nil , the differentia 
 
 There are indeed instances of which some presented themselves when we of which must 
 were considering the sources of architectural effect, and others might be where. 
 found in polyphonic music, where the complexity and unity are both so 
 striking that the sense of ease and power with which we grasp them be- 
 comes an important element of our enjoyment ; but even here the effect 
 would be impossible in the absence of all other elements of interest in the 
 things combined, and such cases are quite exceptional. Unity under 
 variety is a characteristic, or rather is the definition, of all form, not 
 specially of beautiful form. On the above-quoted theory a prize-pig is as 
 beautiful as a peacock, the Wellington statue as the Venus of Milo. The 
 spectator is treated as though he were a sudden importation from 
 another sphere, gifted with the perception of relations of fact, but 
 without any emotional history or nature; not as the product of slow 
 ■development in a certain environment, a being whose perceptions in 
 certain directions are saturated with emotion, and whose feelings, how- 
 
190 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 §7. Helm- 
 toltz's view as 
 to the relation 
 of reason to 
 beauty in 
 ■worba of art ; 
 
 ever interfused and transformed, have their primaeval roots in simple 
 experiences, and in associations whose ingredients are usually easy enough 
 to surmise. I might quote Mr. Spencer's admirable divination of the 
 strains of experience which enter into the enjoyment of landscape ; or if 
 we want a case of more definite and self-complete unities, we may recur to 
 our former instance of the human face and form. Here the acts of 
 attention in which we and our ancestors learned the minute and 
 infinite varieties of shape and adjustment have been associated with 
 countless experiences of safety and comfort in connection with smiles 
 and kind looks, of strength and security in connection with healthy Hmbs ; 
 the qualities of power and gentleness would be sufiiciently manifest 
 even in the pre-human stage, and the eye would note their visible signs, 
 while such more complex qualities as dignity and refinement, or meanness 
 and vulgarity, would need more advanced powers of abstraction and 
 generalisation ; grace easily associates itself with the pleasure of smooth 
 motion ; the visible appearances of weakness and clumsiness have had 
 various failiu-es and discomforts as attendants ; and so on. Thus in the acts 
 of contrast and comparison characteristic of the sense of sight, differences 
 would be perpetually not only known but felt ; and the complete impres- 
 sion would be quite incommensurable with the perception that arms differ 
 from legs or a pentagon from a hexagon. 
 
 We may now pass on to the more important view refei-red to at the 
 beginning of the chapter, which seeks to establish a special relation be- 
 tween Eeason and Beauty in the sphere of art, and which we shall find to 
 be specially connected with our main subject of Music. The view in 
 question, while differing fundamentally from the one just noticed, in recog- 
 nising that our senses, with their given powers and limitations, are for us 
 the channels of beauty, still involves in a certain form the first mode of 
 relation above-discussed, though again it differs by representing the 
 rationale of relationship in the parts as something not consciously appre- 
 hended but instinctively surmised. It is the view drawn out at consider- 
 able length by Helmholtz in the last chapter of his Ton-E7npfindungen, 
 and it appears to me decidedly less sound than the masterly physical 
 exposition to which it is appended. His reason for its introduction is his 
 opinion that ' there are probably few examples more suitable than the 
 theory of musical scales and harmony, to illustrate the darkest and most 
 difficult points of general aesthetics.' Postponing the musical point, I will 
 briefly epitomise his statement of the problem itself. 
 
 Works of art (he says), though subject to laws and rules, must appear 
 undesigned : if anything proclaims itself a product of mere intelligence, 
 we refuse to accept it as a work of art. The very fact, however, that we 
 subject works of art to a criticaLexamination and trace out the suitability 
 and connection of the parts, shows we expect it to be reasonable, ' shows 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 191 
 
 that we assume a certain adaptation to reason in works of art, which may 
 possibly rise to a conscious understanding.' Yet the beauiy must be such 
 as to be recognised by the immediate taste without any such deliberate 
 reference to reasonableness. Nay, this unconsciousness ia essential : for it 
 is through the imperfection of our perception, 'through apprehending 
 everywhere traces of regularity, connection, and order, without being able 
 to grasp the law and plan of the whole,' that we get the ennobling concep- 
 tion of the existence in the work of a mighty permeating order, visible to 
 us only by fragmentary glimpses, and that hence we divine a something 
 infinite and transcendent by virtue of which a work of art seems to repre- 
 sent the infinite and ordered universe. ' It is precisely from that part of 
 its regular subjection to reason which escapes our conscious apprehension 
 that a work of art exalts and delights us, and that the chief effects of the 
 artistically beautiful proceed, Tiot from the part which we are able fully to 
 analyse.' The difficulty is to understand how, without consciously feeling 
 the regularity as such, we nevertheless appreciate by our own tact and 
 taste an amount of ' order, connection, and equilibrium of all internal rela- 
 tions ' as conscious thought could only accomplish with infinite time and 
 labour. 
 
 Such is the view : and, again, those unfortunate words order and which seems to 
 regularity seem to me the real culprits, leading on, as they do, to the oonSon be" 
 position that because beauty is ordered, it is order. The element of an ^litionlne 
 elaborate work which we are not able to analyse and reason about, the <"'^^'' *"'i *''* 
 
 111 essential 
 
 element which I have described as the inherent significance or impressive- beauty, 
 ness connected specially with the irreducible individual parts, is treated 
 as though it was a further and more complex carrying out of the same 
 kind of order as that which we are able to analyse and reason about, 
 which I have described as the general laws and features of composition 
 and congfuity in the whole. Helmholtz says that ' through apprehending 
 everywhere traces of regularity, connection, and order, without being 
 able to grasp the law and plan of the whole,' we get the idea that the 
 design is something transcendent, illimitable, and so on. That is, essen- 
 tial beauty is treated as continuous and identical in nature with rational 
 and striking arrangement; supposed conformity to general rules of 
 balance, variety, and coherence is credited with the vital beauty of a face 
 or a melody. This ' law and plan of the whole,' which is what Helmholtz 
 says we cannot grasp, represents to my mind the npcessary conditions, the 
 combining order, the rationale and significance of the general treatment, 
 which are, I hold, just what we can grasp and connect with recognised 
 facts of our mental operations : such regularity as is so presented is con- 
 sciously perceived as such, or may become so with further acquaintance. 
 What we ca/rmot logically grasp or analyse is not the plan of the work, but 
 the essence of the impressiveness and individuality in the forms, visible ' 
 
192 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 or audible, which make up its subject-matter. To this element law and 
 regularity can only apply in the barren historical sense that our percep- 
 tions of it came regularly about by natural laws : its nature is out of all 
 relation to regularity or irregularity, to reasonableness or unreasonable- 
 ness, and the intuition of it would not be reached by the most intimate 
 knowledge of ' equilibrium of parts ' and internal relations. 
 § 8. In re- No more need be said about this with respect to the imitative arts : 
 
 presentative but as regards the two arts of presentation, our discussion in the fourth and 
 se^^atS^ subsequent chapters may be usefully supplemented by examining them in 
 sight specially the light of Helmholtz's theory. It is to these arts that such a theory 
 would, at the first blush, seem specially applicable. However rooted m the 
 conditions of our environment be the enjoyment of the forms of concrete 
 objects, it may be said, must not the pleasure in abstract proportions and 
 forms be in some way a pleasure in order and regularity ? for, since they 
 are in their very nature representative of nothing in the external world, 
 it is not very obvious how their effect on us could have been built up out 
 of simple associational elements ; and does not the very word proportion 
 imply subjection to some reasonable law ? 
 In enjoyment Now as regards Architecture, we found that much of the effect produced 
 
 intellectual by impressive buildings could, after all, be very distinctly traced to asso- 
 !it'?o*^fto^f„°' ciational sources. Caves, for instance, and forest-forms must have been 
 abieness have connected with some of the deepest feelings of primitive man : and in the 
 
 an important '■ o j. 
 
 part : ornamentation which is often the informing spirit of a building, many of 
 
 the forms, though stopping far short of direct representation, are more or 
 less distinctly founded on those of organic nature ; so that the recognition 
 of their look of Hving strength and freedom clearly involves some element 
 of association with open-air life. In the pleasure given by mass, size, and 
 strength also, we found that Architecture owes its effect to conceptions in 
 the formation of which natinral phenomena have had a large share. At the 
 same time it is indisputable that in Architecture even the associa-tions are 
 often of a more reasoned and less immediate and instinctive kind than those, 
 for instance, which enter into our sense of human beauty or of natural land- 
 scape. We need only refer to the evidences of elaborate and conscientious 
 human labour, to the sense of historic interest and of the relation of 
 buildings to successive generations of men, and to other points mentioned 
 in the fourth chapter. And, over and above this more distinctly imaginative 
 exercise of the intellectual faculties (which clearly has nothing to do 
 with subjection of the work to reasonable 'laws and rules'), there really 
 are many points in Architecture, where our satisfaction, however instinctive 
 it may seem, may in great measure be traced to conformity with reason, 
 to a sense of adaptation of means to ends, and so on ; the notion of the 
 workman and his problems and difificulties being in this art so exceptionally 
 prominent. Thus, in the symmetry which is so prominent a fact of many 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 193 
 
 buildings there is a considerable element of external reference : for archi- 
 tecture rests on a basis of utility; and the end or purpose of the building 
 being apparent, as well as the amount and sort of material with which it 
 had to be realised, a large amount of symmetry seems both rational and in 
 many cases necessary, as in the arrangement of the walls and the propor- 
 tions of the roof. Similarly with the rule that equality is suitable to the 
 horizontal divisions but not to the vertical divisions of a building ; the 
 horizontal divisions standing in general on a par as regards the work they 
 have to do. Again, in Mr. Euskin's rule that, the smaller the building, 
 the more necessary is it that its masonry should be bold, we see reason 
 and adaptation : for a cottage, lacking in itself dignity of size, may gain 
 from huge stones what bricks could not give it ; while a building of im- 
 posing size would be to some extent dwarfed if built of obviously large 
 stones. So again with the rule that delicate carving should not be put 
 where it cannot be seen ; or that the bounding lines of spaces meant to 
 impress by their size should be distinct and unbroken. In these last 
 rules, however, we have rather simple recognition of the facts of visual ex- 
 perience than reasoned conclusions; and in every such case the true 
 element of pleasure, size, or ornament, or whatever it may be, is independent 
 of reason. The instances are, perhaps, more in point, where our conscious- 
 ness that the eye is being treated in a reasonable way is of such a kind as 
 to make the physical and mental elements very hard to separate ; as, for 
 example, in the easy leading of the eye by means of parallel lines, perpen- 
 dicular groovings in columns, and so on. It is this sort of reasonableness 
 which M. Boutmy expresses in a very French way by calling the Parthenon 
 ' une supposition de syllogismes.' 
 
 But giving its full due to the element of rationality, whether connected but free form 
 with orderly and perspicuous arrangement of parts pure and simple, or portion*»re*^ 
 with a further reference to convenience and mechanical conditions, we find theb soipe'"* 
 that when we trace down the complexity of forms to the simple con- 
 stituents, and arrive at such a fact as subtle curvature of line or surface, 
 in structure or ornament, we have passed the point where apprehension 
 of reasonable order can be at all adduced in explanation of beauty. 
 To the lines of nature Mr. Ruskin attributes ' the universal property of 
 ever-varying curvature in the most subtle and subdued transitions, with 
 peculiar expressions of motion, elasticity, or dependence,' and all beautiful 
 lines may be said in a sense to be borrowed from nature, though they are 
 of course fairly called abstract if they do not suggest any natural object; 
 just as, conversely, we may attribute to objects beauty of abstract line if 
 the lines are such as would appear beautiful even in abstraction. Constant 
 variation then, and not regularity, is the essential feature; otherwise 
 straight lines and circles would be the most, instead of the least, beautiful 
 of the lines which the eye can easily follow : and similar considerations 
 
 o 
 
194 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 apply to what, if we call the curves free forms, we may term free relations 
 and proportions of forms ; otherwise the absence of truly parallel per- 
 pendicular lines on the Acropolis, and the irregular angles at which the 
 buildings were placed, would be indefensible anomalies. I mentioned 
 Mr. Ruskin's suggestion that ever-varying curves are in a way typical of 
 infinity ; but it would be hard to lay much stress on this point, and their 
 expression of action or force is probably more truly at the root of the 
 matter. We saw in the fourth chapter how, in that case, subtle elements 
 of association would be involved : though the pleasurable effect certainly 
 presents marked differences from that produced by human and natural 
 beauty, in that, beyond a slowly gathering accumulation of simple ex- 
 periences, it involves advanced habits of observation and abstraction. 
 But it has the same negative characteristic — remoteness from any idea of 
 order or plan associated with processes of the discursive reason ; nor 
 could any rule about it have been suggested a priori by even the most 
 complete knowledge of those processes. 
 _ „ , If now we turn to the other sort of abstract forms, those presented by 
 
 gards melody, Music, the difficulty seems in every way greater, since for these not only 
 
 bnc picftsurG in t* n t ••it #■ 
 
 it has been is there no sort of foundation or suggestion m the phenomena of nature, 
 the exercise of but all reference to the external world in the way of utility and convenience 
 fMuitr'IcSng ^^ ^^^^ absent. What then is left, it would be naturally asked, except 
 as a nucleus for proportional relations ? and does it not seem that the secret of our pleasure, 
 
 extraordi- r r r ? 
 
 narily exciting SO far as it is more than simply sensuous, must be in large measure con- 
 
 ftSBoci&tiioiis * 
 
 ' nected with divining (or, according to Helmholtz, half-divining) the com- 
 plicated plan of their adjustment ? 
 
 As regards the fundamental fact of Music, the enjoyment of a series of 
 notes perceived as forming a connected group, those who have followed me 
 so far will have no difficulty in answering this question. We have traced 
 that enjoyment to the simplest elements, direct pleasure in rhythmic 
 stimulation and in change of tone in pitch, the two factors of melodic 
 form; and we have seen how the utterly unique nature of the forms 
 postulates a faculty equally unique and unable to give an account of itself; 
 but supposing that faculty to have existed in an embryonic stage and to 
 have given pleasure in the remote past, we have surmised how it became 
 linked with the deepest and strongest emotions ; the sublimated quint- 
 essence of which, so to speak, is evoked by the infinitely developed exercise 
 of the same faculty, now possessed in considerable perfection by an enormous 
 mass of mankind. And so far, in these all-essential and characteristic 
 forms, the general intellectual faculties, whether imaginative or logical, 
 seem to have no place at all : the unique faculty of co-ordinating the notes 
 and perceiving the group as a whole may be possessed by the most dunder- 
 headed boor ; whose pleasure in a melody which keenly touches him is 
 wholly impossible to distinguish in kind from that of a cultivated person 
 in the same or some other melody which keenly touches hvm. 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 195 
 
 Now taking part in these free and unanalysable musical forms there and the eie- 
 are present, as we have seen, the most marked elements of order and SrityinUare 
 regularity, analogous in some measure to those we noticed in human J^Joj' to^Mon 
 beauty and in Architecture. The ever-changing evolution of a melody takes 
 place on a basis of regular accents as natural as the two eyes, two arms, and 
 two legs of a human being, or as the symmetrical columns which support 
 a springing arch, and, apart from other elements, as little able as they to 
 account for the beauty into which it enters. For in Music, too, as in the 
 other regions, the self-same regularity is compatible with weak and ugly 
 forms : bar corresponds to bar, as eye to eye, but, whether it be face or 
 melody, the beauty essentially depends on gradations of form of which this 
 fact is no more than a single condition. The special varieties of the ele- 
 ment of regularity in Music may be resumed under three heads. They 
 are (1) fixity of degree in time and pitch ; (2) a regular succession of main 
 accents : (3) dual balance of phrase. And if the order here be thought 
 to have some connection with reason, some community with facts on 
 which our general intelligence is exercised, on the ground that equality 
 and regularity are things which in many kinds of experience are defensible 
 on reasonable grounds, our answer is plain. For we have seen that 
 pleasure in regularity of rhythmic stimulation is a most pervading fact of 
 nervous organisation ; as regards fixity of degrees in pitch, we have seen that 
 notes produced at a certain instant cannot help being at some definite pitch 
 or other, while as regards the actual degrees used, they are the empirical 
 result of shifting instinct, Helmholtz himself having struck the most 
 powerful blow at the Pythagorean idea that the connection of note-relation- 
 ship with simplicity in the ratio of the numbers of the vibrations rested 
 on the fundamental reasonableness of things ; and as regards dual balance, 
 we found that it resulted naturally from the facts of our physical sym- 
 metry. 
 
 When we go beyond single organic groups of notes to larger combina- And even in 
 
 tions of musical periods and paragraphs, advanced elements of memory combLadoM 
 
 and comparison become more distinctly involved; and in the sense of ?rationai°L- 
 
 balance and contrast of sections, of the economy of special effects, and of rangement 
 
 ' . . oome to very 
 
 the judicious disposition of the material which the various themes supply, little. 
 
 we certainly recognise mental action of a kind which is familiar to us in 
 
 application to other lines of experience. "We may perhaps consider, then, 
 
 that our general knowledge of mental processes might have suggested some 
 
 of the ' laws and rules ' to which long musical combinations are ' subject.' 
 
 Such negative conditions as that perpetual repetition without change or 
 
 advance, or that perpetual violent contrast, is to be avoided, naturally 
 
 approve themselves to the intelligence ; and we might go further and say 
 
 that the general arrangement of matter in, e.g., the first movement of a 
 
 sonata may be made to sound ' reasonable ' in description. But conformity 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 tn reason is here even more markedly of the external and conditioning 
 kind than in the case of the works of the representative arts noticed 
 earlier in the chapter : such ' laws and rules ' might be observed in the 
 dullest and most mechanical as well as in the most inspired composition, 
 and merely concern the most effective presentation of forms which must have 
 their own essential and independent freedom and beauty. In the mention 
 of these essential musical forms I am constantly sensible of a certain liability 
 to misconception, as a casual reader might take me to mean merely lengths 
 or phrases of eight or sixteen bars. I have already said that in Music the 
 line between subsidiary organisms and larger combinations may be, and 
 often is, a very indefinite one ; that cases are abundant of long paragraphs 
 or movements where independent or even semi-independent forms can- 
 not be marked off, and where the linking of phrase to phrase through 
 a whole series of periods is too close and organic for anything short of the 
 whole to give at all a satisfactory notion of completeness. But then in 
 such cases, at every point of transition, of contrast, of insistence, of repe- 
 tition with a difference, and so on, it is as distinctly the pure and simple 
 musical faculty which penetrates and perceives, as in the shortest melody. 
 Eeason might say, ' Follow a fiery paragraph with a calm one,' or, ' Follow a 
 major with a minor,' or, " Having invented a fine subject, introduce it on 
 various instruments and with various developments and accompaniments : ' 
 but the individual paragraphs, the individual instances of ' development ' 
 as much as of ' subject,' cannot be appreciated or criticised from any stand- 
 point external to themselves : and in proportion to the amount of organic 
 connection and continuity musically perceived, we may safely infer the 
 absence of any rule or order which our general notions of rational arrange- 
 ment could have enabled us to lay down. 
 § 10. Manner We do not, then, even prima fade, find much foundation for a theory 
 hoUz connects ^^^ ^^^ 0^ Hclmholtz, which tries to follow the ' order ' right down from 
 Jdera "the main *^® general arrangement of the work to where it is lost to view, and 
 sesthetic pro- divincs a ' plan ' pervading the domain which we have seen to belong to 
 
 blem with his '^ i- -n 
 
 discoveries free form. Ihe subject will receive further elucidation if we now examine 
 the special manner in which Helmholtz connects what he considers as the 
 main aesthetic problem with the results of his work on Sound. His diffi- 
 culty, we saw, was the supposed existence in a work of art of a reasonable 
 plan, which nevertheless eluded observation : he considers that this difficulty 
 is relieved by the fact that in the subordinate sphere of musical tones and 
 harmony the enigma is actually solved. The relationship of consecutive 
 tones has been found to depend on their possession of some common har- 
 monic or harmonics, not consciously perceived as such except by careful 
 scrutiny and practice ; and somewhat similarly the close relationship of 
 consecutive chords depends on their possession of some common note or 
 notes, which again may be quite unperceived by an uninitiated hearer in 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 197 
 
 spite of his perfectly apprehending the natural and easy sequence of the 
 chords. By the presence, then, of these links, essential though so commonly 
 undetected, ' the aesthetic problem is referred to the common property of 
 all sense-perceptions, namely, the apprehension of compound aggregates of 
 sensations as symbols of simple external objects, without analysing them.l 
 
 If, then, the ' suitability and connection of the parts ' were followed but this only 
 continuously down, as Helmholtz seems to imagine that higher perceptive relevance of the 
 powers would enable us to follow it, from the general plan of arrangement P™^'^™* 
 to the essential forms, we should arrive, in the case of Music, at the rela- 
 tions of tone in a melody ; and this Helmholtz thinks specially instructive, 
 inasmuch as here certainly the exact mode of relationship, presence of a 
 common tone-element, does escape notice and is in a way reasonable. But 
 unfortunately in the very act of throwing light on Helmholtz's ' aesthetic 
 problem ' as to the hidden ' order, connection, and equilibrium of all internal 
 relations,' this favourable instance reveals how irrelevant that problem is 
 to the real question of beauty. If this particular case of ' subjection to 
 reason which escapes our conscious apprehension ' is to enlighten us as to 
 the beauty of works of art in general — as, on the above-quoted view that it 
 is just from such subjection to reason that ' the chief effects of the artisti- 
 cally beautiful proceed,' it certainly ought to do — it ought at any rate to 
 begin by enlightening us as to the 'particular beauty, that of melody, into 
 which it immediately enters ; and this, as we saw in the last chapter, is 
 precisely what it will not do. 
 
 The rationale of relationship of notes in pitch is known, thanks The rationale 
 mainly to Helmholtz ; that is, it is known generally in what way notes tionsMp in no 
 present links of connection with other notes. But this goes no further in fteJSmT 
 accounting for the beauty of the free form than the possession of con- *'o'™- 
 venient stones and plenty of cement would go in explaining Giotto's 
 tower. The relation of note to note is parallel to the fact that one stone 
 rests naturally on or is firmly bound to another ; such facts of course make 
 the form possible, but they do not account for it. You may analyse the 
 structure of an arch or of a tune by pulling it to pieces ; but you cannot 
 so analyse its aesthetic character. The reasonableness which underlay the 
 gradual formation of our diatonic scales (and so gave us our stones of con- 
 venient sizes and angles) fails helplessly when we try to read it into a free 
 melodic form. We have dwelt sufiiciently on the all-important fact that 
 the notes-in-pitch would be formless if the lengths-in-time and the 
 rhythmic accentuation were altered; but even neglecting this, if we 
 look only at the pitch-element, no view of reasonable connections will 
 cover a single one of the existent melodic forms, infinite as they are 
 in number and variety of merit. Apart from the difficulty, which we 
 noticed, that degrees of propinquity are perpetually crossing degrees 
 of relationship, the degrees of relationship, if stated numerically, would 
 
198 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 present to the mind no kind of plan or order ; more and less distant re- 
 lationships seem (as far as i-eos^m goes) jumbled up promiscuously; and 
 till the unique phenomenon of the formed series, the unity, presents 
 itself to the musical sense, no guess could have been made as to whether 
 it would be sense or gibberish. We may exemplify this even with an 
 exceptionally regular melodic sequence, such as the series of ascending 
 sixths and descending sevenths in the tune from Fra Diavolo quoted 
 on p. 148 ; the one interval means a tolerably close relationship between 
 the two notes composing it, the other a distant one ; yet the sevenths 
 of course enter as essentially into the form as the sixths. If we make 
 each relationship nearer, and substitute fifths for sixths and sixths for 
 sevenths, it looks as if we ought to get something more reasonable : 
 but the beauty wiU unfortunately be foimd to have vanished.' The contrast 
 was essential, some one may say. Clearly it was here : but then we take 
 another tune and equally ruin it by just the opposite sort of change in its 
 intervals. Keason must give it up. The power and method of co-ordination 
 is not something abstractable from the phenomenon : we do not know we 
 can co-ordinate tones into forms till we perceive a melodic strain as a unity ; 
 we can make no prophecy about its composition till it is there; and 
 whether or not the problem of its impressiveness receives a satisfactory 
 solution in the theory of primaeval associations of an exciting kind, gathering 
 round a. particular order of exercise and impression, at any rate divinations 
 as to its structure, and surmises of relations and adjustments supposed to 
 be penetrable by a more complete and powerful intelligence (even sup- 
 posing we were generally conscious of such events), would do very little to 
 explain our pleasure. It is of course begging the question to call a form 
 reasonable because we first find it beautiful : that is an argument drawn 
 from our own sanity, not from the nature of the phenomenon. When we 
 examine the parts we may find reasonableness in the same sense as we 
 find it in a chemical formula, which we construct on paper so as not to 
 contradict the atomic theory ; and beauty of form is as little a necessary 
 result in the one case as an actually existent substance in the other : it is 
 
 ' It may perhaps be said that the latent 
 element of harmony cannot be here neg- 
 lected, and that the proposed progression 
 would suggest an accompaniment of consecu- 
 tive fifths, which, it may be urged, is just an 
 instance of what can be rationally for- 
 bidden ; seeing that the fifth is so prominent 
 and definite an interval, that a succession of 
 
 fifths might bQ expected a priori to be felt 
 as hard and oppressive. The fact as regards 
 modern European ears is undeniable, though 
 I cannot but regard it as purely empirical. 
 However, that point is not worth arguing : 
 the objection can be obviated by inverting 
 the accent of the suggested phrase, and 
 taking the notes as follows : 
 
 This progression would admit the very same accompaniment as Auber's, but nobody is likely 
 to be much impressed by it. 
 
foims. 
 
 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 199 
 
 in virtue of something beyond such conformances that a tune is a tune, 
 and sugar sugar. 
 
 The application of the idea of jplan to single abstract forms seems in . § ii- Confu- 
 fact to involve a radical confusion. A plan implies an end in view. An plication of the 
 architect plans the arrangement of his building with a view to certain Sngie^abstraot 
 effects, and ordinarily to certain uses. A composer, though untrammelled 
 by utility, has still his object : and in writing any composition longer than 
 a single melody, arranges it so as to introduce his themes with due em- 
 phasis and contrast, to develop and interweave them, and to round them 
 off into a larger sort of completeness. The end is to combine a number 
 of impressive things into coherence, so that each shall seem in its place 
 and stand out at its best ; but when we come down to the impressive 
 things themselves, the purely musical forms or ideas, no end can be 
 imagined until it has ceased to be an end and is there ; a thing which is 
 essentially new, free, and individual, is out of all relation to intelligent 
 adjustment of parts. A plan by which parts are grouped implies laws 
 with a generality of application extending beyond the particular art, or 
 at any rate beyond the particular manifestation ; it cannot underlie the 
 essential individuality of the parts, and all our efforts to penetrate this 
 only make it recur again and again to account for itself ; no fiction of 
 adaptation or conformity will turn it inside out for us. The same fact 
 appears in the process of invention of melodies ; if they do not suggest 
 themselves in a fiash, the struggle is towards the wfiole form, or at the 
 very least whole organic phrases of it, surmised as through a veil ; they 
 gradually clarify into distinctness and are seized ; but the process is not of 
 adding brick to brick, but resembles rather the freeing of a statue from a 
 rough semi-shapeless block. It appears to me, indeed, that if we ignore 
 the positive effects of abstract forms, and if, remembering merely their 
 negative character of not representing objects, we set to work to imagine 
 a priori some plan which shall underlie them and shall be justifiable to 
 the intelligence, we are tied up to symmetry more or less complex, and 
 nothing else. For symmetry is entrenched, as it were, and could call on 
 any divergence to defend itself; and if no intelligible end or aim is pro- 
 posed, divergence could never make good its cause to our reason. The justi- 
 fication of freedom, the certainty of the right irregularity or aavjiiiiTpeia 
 as distinguished from a million possible wrong irregularities or aavfju- 
 fieTpsiai, is only given in the particular non-reasoning act of co-ordination. 
 And though an invisible and transcendental plan pervading a work of art 
 is an idea that may momentarily pass muster, we can scarcely say the same 
 for an invisible and transcendental symmetry, in the face of the fact that 
 actual symmetry and sameness of parts is precisely what free form shows 
 its freedom in departing from. 
 
 If, then, we abandon the notion that the essential beauty of a work of 
 
200 THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 
 
 § 12. Such 
 reasonableness 
 as the facts of 
 tone-relation- 
 ship may seem 
 to present is 
 quite external 
 to beauty. 
 
 HelmhoUz's 
 comp.irison of 
 the resem- 
 blance of two 
 faces is delu- 
 sive. 
 
 art lies in conformance to an order which impresses us in spite of, or rather 
 because of, our only catching intermittent and imperfect glimpses of it, 
 we see that Helmholtz's comparison of the unperceived reason of simple 
 tone-relationships to the unanalysable element in aesthetic impressiveness, 
 instead of being an instructive analogy, is only the loosest of metaphors. 
 And even in those simple elements, though the possession by the notes of 
 a common factor does constitute a general rule of connection which may 
 be called reasonable, the reasonableness seems to stand outside aesthetics. 
 If the progression, e.g., from Gr to C does seem to possess any aesthetic 
 character, it is owing to its presenting the faint rudiment or suggestion of 
 a free form. The mere fact that two things possess a common element, 
 whether consciously apprehended or only felt, contains in itself no ground 
 of beauty. If we apply the same perception of relationship in some other 
 region of phenomena we get not the slightest sense of beauty — we receive 
 no satisfaction, for example, from contemplating a square on one side of 
 which is inscribed a triangle, though the two figures are similarly related 
 by possession of a common element. Nothing could a priori have led us 
 to expect that in connection with one set of sense-impressions a string of 
 such resemblances more and less distant would be a factor in an absolutely 
 new phenomenon — a free form. And if any further proof were needed 
 that the relationship of the notes is a necessary characteristic of the 
 material of Music and not an explanation of its beauty, it would be found 
 in this, that just as the same bricks may be used over and over again to 
 build many different forms without its ever being discovered that they 
 are the same, so instances of the same notes occurring in the same proxi- 
 mities occur in melody after melody, but the forms being wholly different 
 the fact never obtrudes itself. Nor can we feel the following illustration 
 which Helmholtz gives as anything but delusive. He says that ' when a 
 father and daughter are strikingly alike in some well-marked feature, as 
 the nose or forehead, we observe it at once, and think no more about it ; 
 but if the resemblance is so enigmatically concealed that we cannot 
 detect it, we are fascinated ; ' and that if a painter in drawing the two heads 
 combined a difference of expression with this indefinable resemblance, 
 we should prize the effect as a high proof of his skill. But here our 
 pleasure (1) would not be evoked if the faces were not intrinsically more 
 or less interesting ; (2) is dependent on most complex human emotions. 
 In the supposed case, not only would our imagination be occupied with 
 the human relationship of the persons, but we should be comparing two 
 highly organic forms or units, whose interest to us is connected with a 
 prolonged course of varied experience and association: and the right 
 musical analogy would be two organic melodies, different, and yet in- 
 tuitively perceived to be- by the same composer ; not two simple and 
 ultimate sensations, the perception of whose resemblance or relationship 
 
THE RELATIONS OF REASON AND ORDER TO BEAUTY. 201 
 
 involves the very minimum of mental elements. We seem, indeed, to 
 find in this rudimentary phase of co-ordinative action fresh support for our 
 main position. Just because the principle of tone-connection, the principle 
 of the perceptible connection of two things through their joint possession 
 of a common part, is reasonable — is applicable, that is, in many different 
 ways, thus implying some general mode and habit of apprehension — it is 
 easy to show from other instances that such a general mode of apprehension 
 no way entails aesthetic pleasure. Down in this elementary region of 
 what, to revert to our old metaphor, we must call the masonry, not the 
 architecture, of Music, as formerly in the symmetry which was seen to be 
 in so many directions a necessary and conditioning attribute of beauty, we 
 have found an element of order which is in a sense reasonable. But 
 underneath and compatible with such conditioning order and attributes 
 we have found everywhere an essence and a freedom inexplicable by and 
 unconnected with reason: the mental processes involved, whether con- 
 nected with imaginable and definable suggestions or with obscure and 
 transmuted associations, seem to lead us in every case into a sort of cul- 
 de-sac, where the phenomena, however linked together by their emotional 
 effect on us, appear in themselves as ultimate as the simplest sense-per- 
 ceptions ; and in the case of Music this aesthetic ' order ' falls under the 
 supreme and sole cognisance of a wholly isolated faculty. 
 
 In conclusion, I would suggest that the indefinable ideas of expansion § 13. Sur- 
 and infinity which seem so often to be a feature of the highest aesthetic potentialities 
 emotions do not necessarily connect themselves with the grounds laid |,°ing^^°^" 
 down by Helmholtz. It appears to me that the surmise is not of infinite 
 arrangement and order in the work contemplated, objective facts to be 
 more and more comprehended and appreciated by increased intelligence, 
 but of infinite potentialities in one's own being, subjective facts, to the 
 apprehension of which in special experiences the windows of the soul seem 
 momentarily opened. Such unity as is surmised in connection with the 
 subjective exaltation is not a unity of law or plan, supposed to lurk hidden 
 in the special work, but is a general unity in the whole range of the 
 phenomena which cause us lofty emotions, corresponding to the persistent 
 unity of our own ego ; for this ego is inevitably led dimly to divine hidden 
 relations between things which are akin in having deeply impressed itself. 
 
203 
 
 1 1. Some 
 fuither expla- 
 nations are 
 necessary on 
 the topics of the 
 last two chap- 
 ters. 
 
 The main prin- 
 ciple of two 
 sorts of unity 
 embracing 
 variety ; 
 
 which presents 
 certain special 
 difficulties in 
 application to 
 Music, 
 
 though in sim- 
 ple cases this 
 may not 
 appear. 
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 FUETHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 I WAS unwilling to encumber the exposition in the last two chapters with 
 subsidiary points, or with more than was absolutely necessary in the way 
 of controversial matter or of musical examples. As, however, the topics 
 there discussed constitute the most difficult part of our subject, it seems 
 better to encounter the charge of tediousness than of obscurity with 
 regard to them ; and there are still certain explanations and illustrations 
 which may, I think, help to define and support the positions laid down. 
 
 One of the main contentions of the last chapter which is not hard to 
 grasp, may be put in this way : that, while unity under variety is a con- 
 ception to which we are accustomed in relation to form and to works of art 
 dealing with form, and which at first sight seems simple enough, there are 
 in most works of art of any elaboration two sorts of unity under variety ; that 
 which is involved in the arrangement of independently impressive or ex- 
 pressive parts, and that which is involved in each one of these parts on its 
 own account. And these sorts differ i/n kind ; their nature and laws are 
 wholly distinct. Thus in a picture the conceptions which enter into our ap- 
 preciation of rational or artistic arrangement of figures and faces, could not 
 give us any clue to the essential beauty and expressiveness of a figure or a 
 face, nor any idea as to what figures and faces are superior to others in 
 these respects. We gain that perception by a process of experience and asso- 
 ciation in which no conscious reference to any sort of principle of arrange- 
 ment is made. Here, then, we have a principle of a general sort of rational 
 and artistic unity in variety, characteristic of large combinations, to be 
 distinguished from the unity involved in each of the independent essential 
 forms which constitute that variety. Now the application of this principle 
 to Music presents special difficulties ; while at the same time a failure to 
 perceive how and in what cases it can be applied, and where the difficulties 
 lie, may entail important misconceptions as to the nature of essential 
 musical form. 
 
 In a quite simple case the distinction may seem clear enough. Thus an 
 air of Handel's very commonly contains a major paragraph, then a minor 
 paragraph, then a repetition of the major paragraph. Here we have unity 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND ' SUBJECT.' 203 
 
 and variety, a pleasing sense of contrast in the minor bit, a pleasing sense 
 of recognition in the repetition of the major bit, and a more complete and 
 satisfactory piece of musical experience than if either of the bits had been 
 presented alone. Or again, the rondo of a sonata starts with a melodic 
 phrase which is repeated again and again at intervals throughout the 
 movement, the several departures and recurrences again producing a sense 
 of variety bound together under unity. As Mr. Sully has well expressed 
 it, ' provided only that a melodic subject is striking and worthy of the 
 prominence thus given it, the treatment of it as a central point from 
 which the successive waves of melody may all radiate, and to which they 
 may finally return, opens up possibilities of a high degree of pleasing 
 variation and of artistic symmetry.' This is the sort of unity embracing 
 variety which is rational and comprehensible ; it represents just what a 
 person without the slightest sense of music would admit to be a good way 
 of arranging certain beautiful things which have to be presented in suc- 
 cession ; though of course such a person could not enjoy the mere fact of 
 the arrangement, lacking the power to perceive that the arranged things 
 were beautiful. But when we leave this artistic and satisfactory method 
 of arrangement, and come down to the arranged things themselves, then 
 we can give our unmusical friend no rational account of their beauty ; we 
 find, moreover, often that they are not beautiful, but are thoroughly 
 weak, twaddling, or even ugly ; and, as we saw in the eighth chapter, we 
 can point out no objective characteristics of the beautiful ones which 
 may not also be exhibited in the unbeautiful ones. Here, then, in 
 these elements or forms which may be either beautiful or unbeautiful, 
 but whose quabties are detected entirely by a special intuitive faculty, 
 we have a unity under variety of a quite different sort ; we have not a 
 combination of impressive forms (supposing them to be impressive) into 
 an effective whole of convenient length, but a combination of sense- 
 units of next to no independent value into impressive forms. 
 
 But though this may seem pretty clear in a rapid survey of simple § 2. In 
 
 ,, ,. . . 1 ... .,, 1 Music complete 
 
 cases, a more attentive survey oi musical compositions will reveal a pecu- units of form 
 
 liarity which must be examined. In Poetry the formal element of metre ^ays'^arked 
 marks off a number of distinct and complete units, stanzas, or lines ; in off- 
 Painting we have no difficulty in deciding as to which are the complete 
 units of form, but perceive at once that this is a man and that is a tree ; 
 but in Music we often lack a criterion for this sort of completeness. We 
 may perceive form, and coherence throughout a long paragraph, but we 
 should often find it hard to regard the paragraph as in any way a series of 
 separate and distinct forms. Smaller combinations of bars often merge 
 into longer ones without presenting any marked sections with beginnings 
 and ends, while still the paragraph may hardly give the impression of a 
 sufficiently cogent sort of coherence for it to seem natural to call it a 
 
204 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 single form, in the sense we should apply the term to a shorter melodic 
 ' subject.' As a fact, however, a paragraph, if it is to be musically valuable, 
 cannot arrive at any great length without being provided with some clear 
 principle of unity ; for example, the frequent reiteration of a recognisable 
 phrase, as in the development of a ' subject,' or in the persistence of a certain 
 kind of figure or rhythmic group. A long succession of phrases which exhi- 
 bits nothing but perpetual differentiation will escape the grasp of the ear, 
 and will seem rambling and aimless. But whether or not unified in some 
 such special manner, any paragraph which is to be musically valuable, 
 must satisfy the test that each bit shall necessitate, as it were, and so 
 enter into organic union with the one next to it: a test which will be 
 found practically to necessitate reference at each point to parts consider- 
 ably further removed from it, whether behind or in front, than the points 
 which are absolutely contiguous to it ; and in proportion as this test is 
 unsatisfied, while at the same time we detect no bits of sufficient length 
 and coherence to be impressive as individual forms, is the music felt as 
 shiftless and unarresting. Nor, indeed, is the application of such a test 
 confined to long paragraphs : we can divide a more compact passage, with 
 its distinct beginning and end, into subordinate groups of notes ; and in 
 proportion as we feel nothing cogent in their union, and could hear 
 changes and substitutions in them with indifference, is the series one 
 which fails to give us the characteristic delight of a melodic form. If its 
 limits and self-completeness were obvious, we could not deny it the name 
 of ' a form,' which we should not apply to the shiftless longer paragraph : 
 but the point to notice is that the cardinal idea of organic form in any 
 musical sentence or paragraph is not to be connected with this length or 
 that length, but with cogency of sequence at each point : a long series of 
 periods may exhibit it throughout, and the shortest fragment may 
 lack it. 
 Various degrees f But there is a further point. Between the passages which have defi- 
 sequence. / nite beginnings and ends there are all degrees of cogency of sequence, 
 / which we might figure to ourselves as colons, full stops, divisions of para- 
 graphs, and so on. "We may go further, and say that the bond which links 
 together the shortest phrases capable of awakening any sort of interest 
 and desire to have them supplemented, admits of all gradations, of 
 stringency, down to the loosest and sometimes almost accidental conjunc- 
 tion of two elaborate and complete sections ; which is of course compa- 
 tible with absolute stringency throughout the whole of every one of the 
 . component parts or clauses. Moreover, beyond the loose sort of union 
 realised in the mere easy following of one larger section on another, there 
 Links of transi- are special sorts of connection which may also differ greatly in strength. 
 "° ' The link, for instance, may be a pure link of transition, an interposed pas- 
 
 sage pf more or less intrinsic interest, and perhaps containing references to 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 205 
 
 some phrase or figure in what has preceded ; but the far more important 
 case is where it consists in some such backward references in the new 
 paragraph itself, when we might call it a link of reminiscence. And these and links of 
 links of reminiscence may present every degree of closeness, from the ""'""^°°"™' 
 most obvious re-presentations of whole pieces of form, with, e.g., a new ac- 
 companiment, or with ornamental variations, or transposed into the minor, 
 to the mere recurrence of some single recognisable feature, some marked 
 fragment of rhythm, or a piece of melodic figure which is made to appear 
 with all sorts of developments throughout whole new reaches of form. 
 
 It is natural that this latter sort of link should play the most which last are 
 important part in prolonged musical structures; not only on account portar^e/" 
 of the aimlessness which might be felt in a mere string even of beautiful 
 sections, but because a sentence in music passes so quickly that it is • 
 natural to desire its repetition ; and because new forms in which some 
 previous form is recognised as varied and transfigured, or it may be only as 
 faintly suggested, constitute the most obvious mode of extending a move- 
 ment or combination of forms to a convenient length, while preserving a 
 marked element of unity. Convenient length, however, is clearly the 
 vaguest phrase, and there is the widest latitude as to extent and stringency 
 in the employment of this sort of unifying principle. As a matter of 
 fact, except in the very shortest and simplest pieces, we usually find 
 more or less recognition of each of the two plans under which musical 
 forms and sections can be put together ; that of quasi-independent and 
 serial juxtaposition, and that where different sections are distinctly con- 
 nected by the possession of recognisable common features. For even in 
 movements which are too extended to dispense with recurrences and 
 perceptible organic bonds, through a large part of their course, it is 
 common to find passages which are strictly episodes, and justify 
 their existence purely by their independent beauty ; and these too 
 present no fixed rule of length. On the whole then, in the conjunc- 
 tion of complete paragraphs as in the conjunction of smaller divisions, 
 we see that mere considerations of extent have very little to do with Considerations 
 organic unity. Quite short paragraphs in juxtaposition may have so little have little to 
 vital connection that one of them might be easily replaced by a kindred u^i^' <"^s*""' 
 paragraph out of some similar work, which to a new hearer would seem 
 perfectly in its place, as might be exemplified very often in the case of 
 minuets and trios, and in the paragraphs of dances ; while much longer 
 movements may be in a true sense organic throughout. 
 
 The various degrees of cogency with which musical segments are § 3. indis- 
 united are the more liable to escape due recognition, from the fact that of the word 
 the same word, ' form,' is indiscriminately used in relation both to the ^'""^' 
 closest and the laxest combinations. I have confined the word in the 
 previous chapters to such single organisms as are palpably grasped as 
 
206 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT: 
 
 unities whose elements are entirely interdependent, and in the strictest 
 sense necessitate one another; and I have explained in the present 
 chapter how the idea must be extended to include all true cogency of 
 sequence. But the word is often used (and it is hard to substitute any 
 other) for larger combinations or ' movements ' into which several of these 
 complete unities enter as parts, with often little of that strictly vital inter- 
 dependence which is tested by the ear's strongly and instinctively resenting 
 any change or omission. Thus we speak of minuet-form, rondo-form, 
 variation-form, and so on. It is even possible, though less accurate, to 
 extend the use of the term still further, so as to include a combination of 
 several of these movements ; the contrast between -form in this sense and 
 the essential form of a melodic subject being roughly comparable to the 
 contrast between the ' form ' of a five-act drama and the metrical form of a 
 sonnet. The reason that it is thus allowable to speak of the form of com- 
 posite instrumental works, such as sonatas and symphonies, is that the 
 severally complete movements are few in number and have each a more or 
 less marked and understood structure (the minuet-form, rondo-form, &c., 
 just mentioned), while the contrasts of pace and character by which they 
 supplement one another make a sort of bond of musical relationship, rapidly 
 tightened by association. A looser use is when the word is applied to some 
 more fortuitous or exceptional conjimction of movements ; as when people 
 speak of the form of the Choral Fantasia, which is simply a pianoforte 
 fantasia followed by a chorus ; or reckon as a case of inventiveness in form 
 the starting of a concerto with the solo-instrument instead of the orchestra : 
 while to talk, as is very commonly done, of the ' form ' of an oratorio, is 
 much like talking of the form of a ballad-concert, or a penny-reading, or 
 any other miscellany. 
 1 4. No gene- As the resiolt of these considerations, we may say that unity in variety, 
 bie as to what the combination of various elements into definite organic units or wholes, 
 cepteditt*Musio ^^^^ "^^^ i^ ^^ ^^^^ o^ Music admit of very distinct division into two sorts, 
 as self-complete ^s represented, e.g., in Painting by the combination of the elements of 
 feature, limb, &c., into one organic unit, a human being, and then the 
 combination of several human beings into a larger artistic whole, a pictorial 
 composition. Eather there are in Music aU degrees of closeness and laxness 
 in the unifying bond, all degrees of organic coherence, from that which may 
 bind two separately meaningless fragments into a division of a short melodic 
 * subject,' to that which may bind together two or three very complete sec- 
 tions into a movement ; and this implies the widest difierences in the degrees 
 of enhancement of effect afforded by one part to another.' It is impos- 
 
 ' The following melody from Schubert's to the apprehension of another; though 
 
 octett, if we imagine it heard for the first as it is really only a single form, all the 
 
 time, may afford a simple example of several parts are really essential, and when once 
 
 distinct degrees in the necessity of one part known can hardly be thought of separately : 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 207 
 
 sible to measure definitely the various strengths at different portions of 
 the thread of continuity, or to lay down any rules of general application 
 as regards the extent in length of the matter presented which should 
 be supposed to rank as a tolerably self-dependent section : but that 
 the extent does actually admit of enormous differences is shown by 
 our finding ourselves in some cases dwelling contentedly in memory on a 
 melodic subject of two bars' length, and in other cases being as it were 
 driven to reproduce, if we can, a whole long paragraph. It admits also 
 of very wide subjective differences, in accordance not only with varieties 
 of musical habit and facility, but with the changing extent of our in- 
 dividual acquaintance with an individual work. The more complete the 
 acquaintance, and the more vivid the association of the various parts with 
 their place in their relation to one another, the less power we have of 
 judging about such points. Nor is this shifting and uncertain character Reasons why 
 
 ° even our own 
 
 of our own experiences the only reason why they are here specially diflBcult experience is 
 to examine. The keen sense of that closest bond which unites the actual and difficult t 
 note, heard or imagined at this or that instant, with its more immediate «^*">™«- 
 neighbours, quite prevents us, at the moment when we are thinking through 
 the form, from analysing or realising the gradually decreasing ratio in which 
 the effect is due to continuity with further parts of the chain ; especially 
 since, as we have seen, degrees of organic union depend not merely on rela- 
 
 Here the first two bars are clearly nothing 
 in themselves, though they are over too soon 
 to cause any appreciable sense of waiting 
 for the beauty to reveal itself as the form 
 develops; the interdependence of this pair 
 of bars and the next pair is of the closest 
 kind, and these four together make a phrase 
 which already has true beauty. But when 
 once the succeeding phrase has been heard, 
 the effect of the difiEerence it presents in the 
 ascent to the A and the following bars up to 
 the close on C, so obviously depends on the 
 remembrance of the first phrase, and reveals 
 
 in that first phrase so much more purpose 
 and significance than at first appeared, that 
 the two become henceforth indissolubly 
 linked. The connection of this sentence in 
 the minor key with the following one, which 
 is nearly all in the major, is clearly less close, 
 since either could have existed in very com- 
 plete beauty without the other ; at the same 
 time the enhancement of the effect by the 
 contrast is so striking that after a little 
 acquaintance it is hardly possible to avoid 
 feeling it necessary. 
 
208 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 tive distances but on all manner of points of parallelism and resemblance of 
 phrase, so that our metaphor of a chain, stronger and weaker at dififerent 
 parts, is after all a most imperfect one. Again, music passes so quickly, 
 and the amount which can be grasped altogether in the closest way so very 
 quickly, that small bits, though they may be thought over and enjoyed 
 in detachment, may still seem too short to be able to be presented alone. 
 And in this way our realisation of the facts of set performance, together 
 with a natural desire for more, and in music that we know an inevitable 
 association between things which have always been presented to us 
 together, may give us an impression of actual incompleteness even in 
 units of form which are quite organic enough to recur to the memory in- 
 dependently, or accompanied by only the most shadowy reminiscence of 
 parts before and after. For instance, no pianist, still less a band, would 
 think of sitting down and playing the following passage from the overture 
 to Egmont, and then stopping : 
 
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 It 
 
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 i 
 
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 m 
 
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 EFE4 
 
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 5 -5 
 
 r¥S 
 
 ^^: 
 
 m- 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT: 209 
 
 te^ 
 
 f^^L 
 
 =i^= 
 
 3p: 
 
 ^ 
 
 s 
 
 f p ^ t*^"^ 
 
 /oco. ) 
 .id. . 
 
 fe^^ ^^^^ 
 
 S 
 
 Wi^ 
 
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 ^33^3i^E^3^g,^ 
 
 &c. 
 
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 A person who recalls this passage without exactly recalling its entourage 
 will still feel that it has an entourage, and that it is not and could not 
 be the opening phrase of the piece ; nevertheless, it is in itself a very 
 complete little bit of most beautiful form, fully enjoyable in detachment. 
 On the other hand, it is often extremely difficult to make sure of the 
 amount which we can at all thus enjoy in detachment ; since when we 
 once know a musical sentence, a phrase of it which suggests itself vividly 
 to the mind, as though on its own account, will as a rule entail some 
 faint ideal representation of the rest, and indeed could often not be at 
 all appreciated except as a recognised part of the form to which the 
 rest is indispensable. "We have a consciousness of the remainder, hidden 
 as it were behind a veil, but still there : and even when such positive con- 
 sciousness does not make itself prominent, we still have a feeling that our 
 phrase is a fragment and is bound to have some sequel, and we enjoy it 
 under that kind of impression ; as is shown by the fact that if we actually 
 heard it played and immediately succeeded by some other piece of tune 
 with which it had no organic union, we should at once resent the in- 
 coherence. For instance, after first hearing Lurch die Wdlder, all I 
 could exactly recollect was 
 
 It may easily 
 escape notice 
 how far a 
 phrase which 
 seems to be en- 
 joyed in detach- 
 ment really re- 
 calls parts be- 
 yond itself. 
 
 fe 
 
 w 
 
 feESEE 
 
 S 
 
 :p-^ 
 
 gpg 
 
 which haunted me for days ; but this bit of form could certainly not have 
 
 P 
 
210 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT. 
 
 impressed me as it did in the first instance had it not had its due pendant 
 in the 
 
 ^=^^ 
 fe^ 
 
 9 
 
 -e=^ 
 
 if 
 
 -J=tL 
 
 which follows ; nor could I have received my pleasure in the reminiscence 
 of it but for a latent sense of its being balanced in some such way. 
 And the same thing practically occurs with parts of much more extended 
 pieces of composition. A person of ordinary musical intelligence, hearing 
 the first movement of Beethoven's symphony in A for the first time, 
 might appreciate to some extent the grandeur and originality of the few 
 slow bars at the opening, and then the overpowering advance of the 
 ascending scales, but he would probably be only thoroughly arrested and 
 feel that he had got something to take away with him when the scales 
 lead on into 
 
 I 
 
 ^33J:3 
 
 «s 
 
 • Iff: 
 
 ?£ 
 
 ^1/i 
 
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 tzit 
 
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 E!3 
 
 This passage is really very much less self-complete than that quoted from 
 the overture to Egmont ; taken in pure isolation, its beauty is only half 
 apparent. Nevertheless its form is so tangible that to many hearers it 
 must have stood out prominently in recollection ; and if it has so haunted 
 them as to recall the full delight it gave in its place, there certainly must 
 have gone with it a latent suggestion of its mode of occurrence, of the 
 marvellous stir, the resistless measured march of sound, which ushers it 
 in, even though nothing outside itself can be remembered except as a 
 vague impression. 
 
 But though it is thus impossible, in treating of Music, to lay down 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 211 
 
 any general line of distinction, in kind or extent, between formed units 
 and larger arrangements of formed units, our own experience does enable 
 us to draw very clear lines in the large majority of particular instances ; 
 for the various coherences of parts may exhibit only a few of the possible 
 grades of strength, and those at the markedly opposite extremes of the 
 scale. Let us take the case of some movement which is divided off into 
 very definite paragraphs, such as the andante of the Pastoral sonata. 
 The three first paragraphs begin as follows : 
 
 § 5. Still we 
 practically do 
 continually 
 draw a line for 
 ourselves be- 
 tween single 
 forms of the 
 strictest sort 
 and looser com- 
 binations. 
 
 
 3. 
 
 
 
 plpz ££p 
 
 ^S^EgE 
 
 :^ 
 
 We see here a link of resemblance between the second section and the first, 
 a link of contrast between the third and the other two, and we feel that 
 
 F 2 
 
212 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 their juxtaposition much enhances their effect : but a man who said that 
 he could perceive no beauty in any one of the three independently of the 
 others — in other words, that he could not have seen any merit if his 
 iirst introduction to the respective sections had been through hearing each 
 played in detachment from the others, and that he is as unable to get 
 pleasure from realising one of them alone as he would have been if a single 
 note or chord or a detached half-bar here and there had • been all that he 
 had ever known of them — would clearly be talking nonsense. And this 
 .difference between the relation to one another of the small and separately 
 t formless elements, notes or half-bars, and the- relation to one another of 
 
 the formed sections, this difference between the presence and the absence 
 of absolute indispensableness and interdependence, may be said to con- 
 stitute a distinction in kind. Though chains of musical continuity may 
 present links differing merely by gradations of strength, we practically 
 make the difference one of kind and not of degree, so far as at certain 
 places and variously at various times we break the chain for ourselves, or 
 accept it as broken, and get enjoyment from detached pieces of form, in 
 every one of which the principle of the indissoluble coherence of its 
 elements is recognised. And the same fact must constantly characterise our 
 enjoyment of successive portions in an actual performance, however much 
 it may be there disguised, or reduced to mere potentiality, by the unin- 
 terrupted continuity of the whole presentation. 
 § 6. Appiica- The statement in the last chapter as to the extremely slight and 
 foregoing general nature of any general laws of rational arrangement that could be 
 
 generaUaws of ^^^ ^°"*"i ^°^ musical Composition may now appear in a clearer light, after 
 rational ar- ^]jj[g notico of the manner in which the unitv of a lone piece of composi- 
 
 rangeinent in _ .1 o r r 
 
 Music i tion is attained. We have seen that ' essential form 'is not connected 
 
 with the limitations of extent which the term might suggest, or with 
 special lengths of four, or eight, or sixteen bars ; but represents aprimciple, 
 that of close coherence at a very large number of points, as tested by 
 the feeling of resentment or of indifference with which the ear, after 
 suflBcient acquaintance, would receive changes or omissions at those points. 
 We have seen that this principle may be exemplified not only in a compact 
 melodic ' subject,' where we very distinctly recognise not only form but a 
 form, but throughout a long paragraph, which can only be keenly appre- 
 hended and enjoyed in proportion as its successive parts seem to necessitate 
 and justify one another. We have seen how the less extended forms and 
 their parts may merge, so to speak, into the more extended, persisting 
 and recurring at point after point in all manner of different aspects, and 
 often acting as starting-points and suggestions for new pieces of form, 
 the appreciation of which involves a recognition of their origin. Thus 
 the larger sort of organism often results less from happy juxtaposition of 
 smaller organisms than from the domination and penetration of a long 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 213 
 
 succession of periods by single threads or motives of ' subject,' which 
 present not rational arrangement but musical amplification. In other 
 cases where a ' subject' is not thus 'worked out,' the simpler juxtaposition 
 of formed and satisfactory sections may seem less alien to the notion of 
 reasonable rules of balance and arrangement ; but not only must the 
 number of such sections be very small if the series of them is to be 
 construed as a unity, but the links of purely musical connection 
 (whether consisting in points of parallelism and reminiscence, or in 
 the growth of one section out of another by actual steps of transition) 
 are still, like the amplification just mentioned, matters in which the 
 unique musical faculty acts with as sole and supreme an intuition as in 
 the appreciation of the shortest and simplest melody. 
 
 And, indeed, when things have to be arranged which not only represent ^^j^j^ reduce 
 no external realities, but conform to no external or mechanical facts, and g^^jg^g^^of 
 arranged almost entirely in a line of sequence, it seems hard to imagine any iteration and 
 
 . sufficiency of 
 
 rational laws of arrangement, bound to approve themselves to any person contrast, 
 with a general artistic sense, beyond such barren generalities as sufiSciency 
 of iteration and sufficiency of contrast. As to what shall be considered a 
 sufficiency of either, the musical faculty is again paramount, since the 
 decision entirely depends on the actual content, the actual things to be 
 disposed, which differ in each case ; nor will induction from any amount 
 of particular instances, or from the sorts of plan or order observed in 
 various classes of composition, land us in any less general or barren laws 
 than just these of iteration (including variations and reminiscences) and 
 contrast, which of course contain no description and imply no vestige of 
 beauty or vitality, and are as compatible with worthless and dreary 
 contents, and so with a worthless work, as they are conducive to the 
 highest effect of beautiful contents in an inspired work. 
 
 And this brings us back, with increased power of appreciating it, to a . § 7. Eeass«r- 
 point mentioned in the fifth chapter, namely, the all-importance of the importance of 
 parts in a musical composition. It will, I think, be clear how thoroughly musical compo- 
 this is enforced, and not contradicted, by our recent discussion of the ^^''°"" 
 extension of organic unity into a large movement. We have seen that 
 the central principle of form, entire mutual interdependence of elements, 
 admits of gradual relaxation as the size of the elements increases ; up to 
 the point where it becomes absurd to attempt to apply it, as when we 
 take as elements the separate movements of a sonata.^ And though the 
 
 • I lately saw in a leading newspaper the idea of its own design and merits, and no 
 
 following remark, a ^rojios of a new sym- idea at all of the design and merits of the 
 
 phony of which only one movement had other movements. One might as well say 
 
 been performed : ' The first movement of a that an acquaintance with one member of a 
 
 . symphony conveys but a vague idea of the family gave one but a vague idea of the 
 
 design and the merits of the whole work.' merits of the whole family. This, however, 
 
 The first movement conveys of course a^e?/«c< was probably only a convenient way of 
 
214 FURTHER REMARKS 01/ MUSICAL FORM ANt) 'SUBJECT: 
 
 question of this gradual relaxation is somewhat complicated by the variety 
 in the sorts of connecting links, transition, reminiscence, and so on, and 
 by the different sorts of completeness which we exact in actual perform- 
 ance and in mental representation, nothing touches the central simple 
 principle in its stronghold, in its typical and closest application, which is 
 to the successive notes and smallest fragments, as they turn up moment 
 after moment, throughout any piece of music which is keenly and charac- 
 teristically enjoyed. Thus the point I am urging does not merely mean 
 (what nevertheless is perfectly true and well worth dwelling on) that the 
 smaller bits — mere fragments, it may be, in relation to a whole long 
 structure — are in Music of quite exceptional independent value, as being 
 often the only things which an ordinary person can at all carry away from an 
 elaborate work, and the pivots on which his further acquaintance with the 
 work wiU have to rest. It is characteristic of the whole apprehension of 
 Music, of all grades of perception of it from the highest to the lowest, 
 that the attention is focussed on each part as it comes ; and that we 
 never get our impressions of a long musical movement, as we commonly 
 do those of a great architectural structure, through views which sweep 
 over and embrace the whole rather than dwell on the parts. Even though 
 one part of a movement may owe its point in great measure to 
 another, either through a contrast involving some faint sort of ideal 
 representation of the other, or through actual similarity and reference to 
 the other, that definite relation is at most to another part, not to the 
 whole, and its effect is to increase our pleasure at a part. The whole 
 may be, or may become through familiarity, so truly organic as to make 
 each part seem an unalterable phase of the continuous motion : but for 
 all that it is in our enjoyment of the parts, one after another, that that 
 quality of close and vital organism takes effect ; the subtle relationship of 
 part B to part A being one of the qualities of part B which makes the 
 moments it occupies peculiarly delightful. Thus pleasure in the whole 
 has no meaning except as expressing the sum of our enjoyments from 
 moment to moment ; a sum which will be increased in proportion as the 
 organic principle pervades the whole. In fact, to say that the parts are 
 all-important is merely to assert our inability to do what involves a con- 
 filling up a paragraph. But consider the whole placed in a perfectly new light' by 
 astounding impudence of such an assertion the detection of an ' identity ' between the 
 as that of Lenz, that the unity of the Choral following phrase in the first movement — 
 Symphony has been vindicated, and 'the 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 ^^^^^m^"- 
 
 with the theme of the last movement — 
 
 fe^^^ 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 215 
 
 tradiction in terms- — to enjoy something the essence of which is a succession 
 of impressions by a simultaneous review of all the impressions. We may 
 doubtless think through the work in much less time than would be needed 
 for its performance, but our thoughts are still of its successive portions. In 
 the representative art of Poetry, where, as in Music, the element of form Difference of 
 is realised in successive portions, but where the subject-matter and ideas poetical 
 are completely distinct from it, we can often take an almost instantaneous ' *° ••*""'■ 
 general survey, and omitting details can summarise the whole under a very 
 rapid concatenation of a few fundamental ideas; the subject embraces the 
 subject-matter and its relations as the general embraces particulars : but 
 in Music, though we may have our ' subjects ' or leading phrases, we 
 cannot summarise under them all the various matter which, though they 
 act to it as starting-points and supports, they in no sense embrace, and 
 into every part of which the element of measured duration essentially enters. 
 These last points, the slightness of rational rule or order, in the 
 absence of distinctly-outlined and discontinuous objects to arrange § 8. Undue 
 and of distinct mechanical and utilitarian problems to solve, and the often laid on 
 residence of the essential beauty in the successive parts, which make up tonic^'^aspects 
 a pleasurable whole by dint of the pleasure they each in turn convey, °' Muaic j 
 and cannot be embraced in a simultaneous view, may seem hardly obscure 
 enough to deserve such insistence. But they are really to a great extent 
 ignored in very much that is said and written as to the ' architectonic ' 
 aspects of Music, in vague references to the ' design ' of the composer in 
 this or that instrumental work, and in all phraseology implying the exist- 
 ence of some grand primary scheme, filled in with detail in the process of 
 production, and capable now of being abstracted and admired apart from 
 the actual bits of form which moment after moment engross the ear. It 
 is naturally to the larger combinations, which embrace a number of 
 parts, that such a conception would, if anywhere, apply : and phrases 
 about ' symmetrical proportions,' and ' manifold aspects of parallelism, 
 variation, and contrast,' and ' subtle harmonies of structure,' and the like, 
 are accepted, not just as descriptive, if anything, of the more or less 
 obvious aspect of unity under which the succession of various and 
 variously related parts presents itself, but as in some way expressing the 
 essential beauty of the work. One reason of this seems to be that we 
 only feel impelled to launch out into such language in cases where we 
 perceive a large amount of beauty, since we do not seek to justify en- 
 joyment till the enjoyment is there, and do not dwell on the features of 
 music we do not care about : and then the fact that the features described 
 are truly there, that the beauties of a movement reveal themselves in re- 
 cognisable modes under the general scheme of the movement, and the 
 convenient vagueness of words like harmony and proportion, are apt to 
 blind us as to where the essence of our enjoyment really lies. It is for- 
 gotten that such general characteristics as are described in the above 
 
216 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.* 
 
 phrases, the ' architectonic ' aspects of structure, the general plan on which 
 a number of parts are built up into a large movement, and the general 
 features of recurrence and development, may be common to a hundred 
 pieces of all degrees of goodness and badness, and are compatible with 
 the most barren and mechanical work ; just as in the last chapter we 
 found it was not always observed how in the visible world the ugliest 
 things may resemble the most beautifiil in the amount of variety they 
 present under an aspect of unity. In Music the notion of a larger and 
 more essential design, in reference to which shorter individual strains are 
 details in the sense of being less essential, has no application. The 
 scheme has no value apart from the bits. 
 
 Thus, while it may seem a matter of indifference whether we talk 
 of the beautiful proportion and symmetry of parts, or of the propor- 
 
 as though the 
 virtue of a musi- 
 cal work could 
 
 lie in any large tion and Symmetry of beautiful parts, yet really, so far as the former 
 
 general scheme, 
 apart from the 
 
 ten™f"the°s™c- tremely misleading. It conveys an idea that the composer's inventive 
 
 cessive mo- 
 ments. 
 
 phrase is meant to imply something different from the latter, it is ex- 
 
 Difficulty of 
 realising the 
 unique condi- 
 tions of musi- 
 cal structure. 
 
 act is primarily rather of some grand dominant scheme of combinations, 
 like the vaguely dawning vision of a cathedral, than of individual bars 
 and phrases. It suggests that a melodic ' subject ' is something parallel to 
 a single architectural element, a column or a buttress, right in its place 
 and serving to support and supplement other similar things by com- 
 bination with which it becomes an element in a large beautiful effect ; in- 
 stead of being what it is, a form bound to absolute beauty on its own 
 account, and constituting the gist and centre of growth of all manner of 
 further beauties. The word symmetry seems particularly inappropriate in 
 an account of the nature of the larger musical structures, as the utmost 
 irregularity of length and arrangement of sections may be and perpetually 
 is exemplified in the greatest and deepest works, the utmost regularity 
 in the poorest and lightest : nor can the word proportion be applied to 
 such structures in any way which will the least differentiate the good 
 from the bad, the living from the dead. 
 
 The difficulty of seeing this lies greatly in our familiarity with the idea 
 of proportion of entirely interdependent forms — of impressiveness due 
 to complex arrangements of comparatively unimpressive but distinct and 
 separate units — as applicable to the larger sorts of unity in variety which 
 delight our eyes in Architecture. But for this we should realise much more 
 easily that, while the abundant wealth of beautiful form in a movement of 
 Beethoven constitutes, on due familiarity, a unity of the truest kind, and 
 while association will soon rivet the connections in much less truly organic 
 structures, the significance belongs to each part of essential form in turn ; 
 that where the forms present recurrences and imitations and variations 
 and amplifications and all the interweaving and unifying features which 
 may be classed under links of reminiscence, they still do this by dint of 
 being just what they are, note after note, bar after bar, not by dint of 
 
FUBTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT: 217 
 
 carrying out any pre-existent or separable ' design ; ' and that the distin- 
 guishing point of Beethoven, as the great master of large organic struc- 
 ture, was not a power to conceive grand schemes or outlines, which could 
 have no grandeur apart from successive bits of content, but the extra- 
 ordinary manner in which one bit of form acted in his mind as a germ for 
 new but related forms ; so that his most characteristic movements are 
 often absolutely pervaded by the principle of reminiscence. The fact is 
 that the unifying bonds of large musical structure, especially as regards 
 this subtle element of reminiscence, though instinctively recognised by 
 the musical sense, are so unlike anything else as to be specially hard to 
 analyse from outside and describe in general and untechnical language. 
 And as the disappointing character of movements in which the parts 
 seem irrelevantly tacked together is patent, while yet the parts them- 
 selves in such cases may possess true beauty, it seems natural to lay 
 the blame on the whole as distinct from, the parts ; and to refer the 
 defect to the absence (and the converse merit to the presence) of some 
 grand general outline imaginable apart from details, of some large scheme 
 analogous to the first impression one might receive from some mighty 
 building, in which only general proportions and large features of com- 
 bination would find place. It doubtless requires some little attention to 
 perceive how those ordinary features of larger organic structure, those 
 various links of relationship which bits of form, perhaps at some distance 
 apart in different paragraphs, may so conspicuously present, are not 
 specimens of ' proportional arrangement ' or ' harmonious adjustment ' 
 supervening on or embracing the parts as units, but are as much a matter 
 of the essential form and the actual individual notes of the parts, of their 
 going just as they do and no other way, as the simplest presentation of an 
 isolated melodic ' subject.' 
 
 Thus however orgamic through and through a musical movement may 
 seem, so that every transition and every contrast comes as a divinely 
 ordained necessity, yet so far as the word architectonic suggests some 
 scheme to be more or less appreciated apart from the details it embraces, 
 or some large single aspect to which the parts are regarded as contribu- 
 tions, instead of being what they are (' subjects ' and links and transitions 
 and developments and all), the essential things on each of which in turn 
 the attention is engrossed, just so far is it misleading. The term ' essential 
 form,' then, has everywhere its most literal meaning ; the strictly essential 
 ' proportions ' in Music are none other than those of time and pitch which 
 belong to essential form; and the parts presenting them are none other than 
 the crude and shapeless elements of tone-material, cast by their means into 
 groups which, as we have suflBciently seen, are alike invented and appre- 
 ciated by a wholly unique and intuitive faculty. And we may here recog- 
 nise the full importance of our previous conclusion; that while objectively 
 complete organic units are often and in various ways hard to mark off in 
 
218 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT: 
 
 § 9. Many 
 describable 
 aspects of 
 variety in 
 unity are pre- 
 sented by single 
 melodic forms, 
 and equally in 
 the good and 
 the bad. 
 
 ParaVelhm in 
 the direction 
 of phrases. 
 
 Music, a true generic difference must be recognised between combinations 
 of such parts as are sufficiently organic to be beautiful even when heard or 
 thought of on their own account, and combinations of the unformed notes 
 and smallest fragments, which have absolutely no value till fused into a 
 larger and apprehensible form or bit of form. 
 
 We perhaps obtain the clearest view of the character of expressions like 
 those above, quoted, as mere descriptions of certain common aspects of unity 
 and variety, and not explanations of beauty, by noticing that they are in 
 great measure applicable to the separately insignificant and vmintelligible 
 clauses of those less extended themes, those compact melodic organisms, 
 whose enormous difference in merit is the most striking fact in Music. 
 That is to say, over and above the recognition of such entirely general 
 characteristics as the presence of bars of equal length and of the notes of 
 the familiar scale-system, we can often specify certain points which con- 
 stitute the unity in variety of single melodic forms, and at the same time 
 perceive clearly how utterly such points fail either to supply a clue to 
 their beauty, or to differentiate the beautiful among them from the un- 
 beautiful. In the case of such distinctly single organisms, the analogy of 
 the features in question to those points of structure which would be in- 
 cluded in the description of an antelope and a rhinoceros, of Hyperion and 
 a satyr, is markedly apposite. The parallelism really holds throughout ; 
 for the great general principle of organic development — -increased diffe- 
 rentiation of parts combined with increased integration and mutual inter- 
 dependence — applies to Music as much as to the organisms of the visible 
 world, and in both cases is equally external to aesthetic effect. Thus the 
 principle is as truly exemplified in the difference between a savage or in- 
 fantine chant, with its endless iteration of a single strain, and a developed 
 modem melody, as in the difference between an invertebrate creature, with 
 its row of similar segments, and some highly developed vertebrate struc- 
 ture ; but neither in the musical nor the visible region of form is it in any 
 way a principle of beauty. Where a high degree of beauty exists it will 
 naturally be in connection with the more developed organisms : but in both 
 ca.ses thousands of the more developed organisms may be found with no 
 beauty at all ; though in Music, where beauty is the only true raison d'etre 
 of the organisms, and has been the aim with a view to which the gradual 
 development of melodic structure has taken place, the fact is less strikingly 
 presented. 
 
 First, then, we may take the sort of resemblance of phrase to phrase given 
 by parallelism of direction. Mr. Sully, in speaking of what he calls the 
 geometric characters of Music, says that ' the ear is able to trace out a 
 number of half-hidden resemblances in the direction of a movement, to 
 note how a melody, amid all its seemingly free wanderings, moves through 
 a certain order of curve, alternately rising and falling through greater or 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT: 2l'9 
 
 lesser intervals in a graceful serpentine Une.' ' Our examination of the 
 factors and nature of melodic forms has, I hope, made sufficiently evident 
 the hopeless inadequacy of any visual analogue for them; at the same 
 time, as their clauses do exhibit these parallelisms of direction as a marked 
 characteristic in a vast number of instances, curvature of a more or less 
 orderly kind is a notion which may naturally suggest itself. But to intro- 
 duce this melodic curvature as an ' aspect of beauty,' and to dwell on the 
 
 ' Mr. Sully's chapter on ' Aspects of Beauty 
 in Musical Form ' in Snnsation and Intuition 
 seems to me an admirably clear description 
 and classification of the various ways in 
 which form or unity in variety is presented 
 by Music. My only dilference from it lies 
 in the fact that the features of structure 
 which are described are treated as though 
 they necessarily were ' aspects of beauty ; ' 
 that the title and mode of expression 
 throughout seem to show that the descrip- 
 tions are held to account for any beauty that 
 may be found in the forms, so that where 
 they are applicable, such beauty would be 
 bound to exist : whereas the actual account 
 of the forms, apart from adjectives, would 
 apply to all sorts of musical presentations 
 which I am certain Mr. Sully would agree 
 with me in regarding with indifference or 
 aversion. Mr. Sully says that ' the beauties 
 of musical form ' are susceptible of exact 
 study and definition ; but he would surely 
 admit that, as regards single forms or themes, 
 his account (where it goes beyond details of 
 mere anatomy to more general aspects) deals 
 only with features of coherence, one or more 
 of which must be exhibited in any sequence 
 of phrases which is to present any sort of 
 structural unity ; while as regards larger and 
 looser combinations, it at most describes the 
 conditions of effective presentation of sub- 
 ject-matter whose essential beauty mast be 
 presupposed. Such features as alternations 
 of prolonged and staccato notes, or a crescendo 
 rise to a climax and a diminuendo descent to 
 repose, may be quite worth pointing out as 
 general methods of variety, under which 
 musical form may be exhibited ; the former 
 may be pointed out as entering into 
 the constitution of this or that form ; the 
 latter may be essential to the effect of this or 
 that paragraph ; but both are features which 
 the poorest musician can introduce into the 
 poorest composition at a moment's notice. 
 Again, Mr. Sully says that passages from 
 perfect to less perfect accords 'afford ele- 
 
 ments of variety and artistic relief,' whereas 
 'sequences of chords of similar harmonic 
 character manifest a certain aesthetic unity.' 
 But such considerations would apply to 
 many quite formless, though very likely 
 harmless, groups. Any sequence of chords 
 which is felt as characteristically impressive, 
 is so felt by dint of presenting a certain 
 form, whereof the various elements (as in an 
 impressive melody) are important as elements 
 of a unity intuitively appreciated, not as 
 each affording ' artistic relief ' to the one 
 before it. Once more, he says that alter- 
 nations of lighter passages with sequences 
 of full harmonies ' impart a fine aesthetic 
 character to the composition ; ' but, again, it 
 surely all depends what the passages are ; 
 the mere alternation of lightness and ful- 
 ness contains no guarantee for beauty in the 
 forms which exhibit it. Again, Mr. Sully 
 remarks that ' amplitude, freedom, and 
 variety ' convey ' a rich picturesque beauty ' 
 to operatic arias. But amplitude, freedom, 
 and variety of what ? I do not see how 
 such qualities could be denied to many com- 
 positions whose contents are altogether un- 
 beautif ul ; or, if they were denied iecause 
 the contents were unbeautiful, all I am con- 
 tending for would be conceded. Thus modem 
 pianoforte music is rich in ' f antaisies ' where 
 little tinkling, tuneless tags of tune alternate 
 in the freest way with squirts and cascades 
 and trickhngs and skurryings of all varieties, 
 diversified with ample noise and extended to 
 ample length. From some of them I should 
 imagine that no one has ever received a 
 moment of characteristic musical enjoyment ; 
 but whether or not this be the case, it is 
 enough for my point that many, like myself, 
 perceive in them ' amplitude, freedom, and 
 variety,' and are wearied and sickened by 
 the lack (to us) of beauty. But though in 
 these respects Mr. Sully's expressions seem 
 to me unsatisfactory, my objections in no 
 way touch the real merits of bia, excellent 
 essay. 
 
220 FUBTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT: 
 
 gracefulness of the linear curve, is siurely to ignore the fact that any num- 
 ber of worthless and annoying sequences of notes could be made whose 
 linear representatives would ' tdternately rise and fall in a graceful serpen- 
 tine line.' So represented, the well-known bars which close a paragraph 
 of the andante in the Pastoral sonata — 
 
 3^ 
 
 ^3 
 
 ^l*!^! ^ fy 
 
 =st^:^ 
 
 =C=?B 
 
 ^3 
 
 ^ 
 
 cdTf 
 
 1^ 
 
 do not yield a ' serpentine line ' a whit more ' graceful ' than the following 
 horrible Music-hall fragment, ' 
 
 ^' 
 
 E^^ 
 
 :S=--^ 
 
 qj=i= 
 
 :C= 
 
 :^=^ 
 
 1^3= 
 
 ^-n 
 
 PE33 
 
 :^ 
 
 The grace of 
 the visual 
 curves adduced 
 in illustration 
 of melodies is 
 itselfextremely 
 questionable. 
 
 Even as regards the grace of the visual line itself, it is very delusive to 
 take a melody where the notes are all of equal length ; as in that particular 
 case the time-element in the musical proportions causes no trouble, and 
 since lines in space are competent to represent the lengths and directions 
 of intervals, a tune whose clauses exhibit a tolerable amount of parallelism 
 can be represented by a tolerably symmetrical and orderly-looking curve. 
 Even so of course the great differentia of the musical elements, tone- 
 relationship, is necessarily ignored, and the analogy of the line is totally 
 barren and uninstructive ; but neglecting this fatal objection, it is perhaps 
 worth while to point out what ugly and bizarre lines we get by merely 
 taking a melody where inequahties of duration in the notes force us to 
 take some account of them. This can only be done by such an artificial 
 convention as that horizontal length shall represent time-duration and 
 perpendicular length pitch-distance ; on which convention the following 
 clause from Batti batti, as sweet as it is simple — 
 
 fe^ 
 
 ■^- 
 
 :P5B 
 
 vs- 
 
 tit 
 
 ^B 
 
 ^^- 
 
 *^ 
 
 might be pourtrayed somewhat in this way by a line which looks like a 
 temperature-curve : 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 221; 
 
 It would perhaps be hypercritical to say that we really have no right to use 
 curved lines at all (unless indeed to express sound without fixed intervals, 
 as in the aimless and wholly unmelodious sliding up and down on a fiddle- 
 string), and that the literal representation on the above convention would be 
 
 though, after all, there is not much to choose between the two diagrams in 
 point of beauty. No one, however, will seriously contend that a curve 
 which has no definiteness or cogency, and may be just as well looked at 
 from right to left or upside down, can really represent the fixed and unique 
 proportions of music : the more important point is that the relation of 
 parallelism of different parts, which may be fairly held to go towards giving 
 to a changing line a character of graceful waviness, contains no guarantee 
 of grace or any other character in a melody. 
 
 The case with respect to contrast at different points and between Contrast \>r&- 
 different members of a melodic form is simpler still, so obvious is it that ferent pointa in 
 there is no merit in the point itself apart from the individual form in which * "'® " " "'■™- 
 it is merged : though, owing to this very fact, it is not easy to take what 
 would be admitted as the sawie contrast and exhibit it in a good and in a 
 bad tune, as we did with the more palpable feature of parallelism of phrase ; 
 for we cannot look at the contrast apart from our musical perception of the 
 form ; whereas parallelisms of phrase could be seen and testified to by the 
 eye. We may, however, take the common change from major to minor, or 
 vice versa, as affording a marked contrast which may obviously be a mere 
 tricky feature in a wretched tune, as in so many drawing-room ditties, and 
 may equally enter into the essence of a perfect form, as in the conclusion 
 of Schubert's Leiseflehen — 
 
 ^^^fc^ 
 
 ^=F 
 
 ^g=^»±* 
 
 fei 
 
 ^ 
 
 7m 
 
 ^r/E 
 
 ^= 
 
 SE^i^. 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^1 
 
 #* 
 
 ^-fc 
 
 ^^g^^gg 
 
 For an instance of a no less striking point of contrast, not describable 
 under any such general head as major and minor, we may take a form of, 
 if possible, still more transcendent beauty, the same composer's Du hist 
 die Ruh — 
 
222 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 i 
 
 a 
 
 ra=p=^ 
 
 ilES 
 
 ^ 
 
 > — bi»- 
 
 i-^^^S^^^ 
 
 :J=^=^^ 
 
 ^EpES^f: 
 
 :r=E=P 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^=0=?=^^ 
 
 - r^rf =f: 
 
 \ 
 
 I I I 
 
 laE 
 
 izp= 
 
 ^ m- 
 
 ?= 
 
 =^ 
 
 t^ — k ^- 
 
 £3^5^:^r2^^* 
 
 i 
 
 -ff _ ^" " V - 
 
 ^ 
 
 felFF 
 
 =^^?^=£SP^ 
 
 ■^ g 
 
 =^ 
 
 g k : 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^J ! J ! !: 
 
 m^ 
 
 ^r-i I : ! M. 
 
 ^■Jo«t 
 
 g' ^ #^ -i -^*. g ! :! r_ g -^g^l:|g==g|^- pt 
 
 =i=tit=«: 
 
 •^ff*' 
 
 
 4Pi 
 
 ^ ^. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 &z 
 
 g 
 
 l£^ 
 
 i^u 
 
 :te*- 
 
 :feti^t 
 
 ^- 
 
 S*SEEEESEg3535g= 
 
 ^^^m 
 
 h5^^m ^ ^^ii^^m\:ip^-.M 
 
 &c. 
 
 ^^^-Tf- 
 
 a^*: 
 
 '■&.. 
 
 ■^ 
 
 T' 
 
 If one deBired to direct attention to the special beauties of this melody, 
 so far as they can be separately dwelt on at all, the first item would natur- 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 223 
 
 ally be the simple intensity and intense simplicity of the repeated motive 
 at the opening ; and then in the following phrases one would point to the 
 contrast depending on the A natural key-stone of the one, and the A jlat 
 key-stone of the other ; the uncertainty and change of direction towards a 
 new landmark given by the A natural, with the diminished seventh and 
 modulation, causing an intensity of satisfaction when the A flat arrives on 
 a strong chord of the original key, and bears us on towards home ; while 
 the combined originality and simplicity of the final bars, as they swell on 
 into perfect rest, leave one marvelling whether any cadence as lovely yet 
 remains to be discovered. Now in such an account, anything that we say 
 about the beauty of the contrast is just as much descriptive, and just as 
 little explanatory, as all the rest, "We may direct attention to that point 
 as an item in the form, as an exemplification of variety in unity, as one of 
 the facts which constitute this whole series of notes a single intelligible 
 melody. BuEthe beauty is not a matter of contrast, but of that contrast, 
 of those two individual bits of contrasted motion. As far as harmomc 
 progression goes (and this is the only way in which the relation of the con- 
 trasted portions could be looked at apart from the actual melody) the same 
 contrast has been used in hundreds of cases without seeming specially in- 
 teresting or necessary ; and we can but accept it as a fact of musical 
 intuition that these two particular bits of melodic motion, resting on this 
 simple harmonic foundation, do by their mutual reaction merge into an 
 organism of incomparable beauty, in which, conformably to the true nature 
 of an organism, each of them is indispensable to, and each reveals the 
 necessity of, the other. 
 
 Another marked case of contrast on which no sort of judgment can be 
 passed apart from the motive into which it enters, is that which appears in 
 the repetition of a phrase with the tonality altered (or giving a momentary 
 impression of being altered) by a single step, usually upwards but oc- 
 casionally downwards. An example of the ' lifting of the musical horizon ' 
 by the raised tonality is afforded by the repetition in C minor of the phrase 
 just heard in B flat, at the opening of Schubert's trio in the latter key 
 quoted in Chap. XIV. § 6. This kind of contrast is specially susceptibls of 
 commonplace and vulgar use. The downward change is exemplified in the 
 effect of the chords of B flat in the well-known opening of the Waldstein 
 sonata — 
 
 gggffi 
 
 ^^ 
 
 5 
 
 t-55 *sw 
 
224, FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 I — I — I 
 
 -^^ 
 
 Modulation has Finally, the general phenomenon of noodulation may be adduced in illus- 
 and kide^'*' tration of the same point ; since such change constitutes one of the com- 
 pendent virtue, monest aspects of Variety, whether in a single melodic form, or in a more 
 diffuse paragraph, or in the conduct of the successive transitions in a long 
 developed movement. And in no case does the fact of the transition con- 
 tain the slightest guarantee for beauty. A modulation which strikes one 
 as beautiful in a melody does so not through any general virtue in the 
 passage from such a key to such another, but in virtue of using those 
 precise notes in that precise rhythm. I was once admiring the second 
 part of a melody where a beautiful sentence, already heard, was modified 
 on repetition by advancing into a new key : the composer remarked to me 
 that the effect, though doubtless good, was ' a trick ; ' but the point was to 
 have invented a sentence so arresting that the trick ' came off.' Exactly 
 the same modulation, qua, modulation, may occur as a constituent of 
 essential form in the best and in the worst melody : while the customary 
 formulae about natural and related keys are perpetually being set at naught. 
 We shall no more get a man to write us a Forelle by telling him it is a 
 good and natural thing to modulate to the key of the dominant, than we 
 shall get a genius to refrain from writing down passages like that from 
 the overture to Egmont quoted on p. 208, or that from Nell Gfwynne quoted 
 on p. 252, if they occur to him, by telling him that transitions to the har- 
 monies of ' remote keys ' ' are to be avoided in simple single forms. When 
 
 • It is worth noting that this phrase is key' sounds as if it ought to be either 
 apt to mislead an untechnical lover of music ; something very odd and startling, or some- 
 3 transition to the harmonies of a ' remote thing very scientific and esoteric. The tvpo 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 225 
 
 modulation occurs in longer movements as a mode of transition and 
 junction, it may either be purely transitional ; that is, whether presented 
 in a supplementary connecting passage or in the progressive direction 
 given to an integral division of the structure, its avowed object is to get 
 somewhere else for the sake of starting again in a new key ; or it may 
 present distinct and individual beauties of its own, either through links of 
 reminiscence or by the presentation of quite new matter. In the first 
 case, it is unnecessary to point out how mechanical and undistinctive must 
 be any rules laid down for it. ' To modulate,' as Piccini said, ' is not diflS- 
 cult in itself : there is a route for that as well as all other trades ; ' and the 
 lamest and feeblest movement may present such ' architectonic ' features as 
 are involved in progression through an approved cycle of keys. A scheme 
 of modulation is like a metre, ready for any one to use. But when a great 
 composer changes his key, whether by keeping to the beaten tracks of modu- 
 lation or by transitions and episodes which are a law to themselves, beautiful 
 Ideal Motion is apt to spring up along his path, just as in his more self- 
 complete single themes ; and as a theme is not good because it modulates, 
 so the whole work is good not through wealth of modulation in the abstract, 
 any more than through wealth of bars or wealth of crotchets, but through 
 sustained beauty and individuality of essential form. 
 
 We may conclude our review of the nature of essential form in Music § lo. Danger 
 by noticing two special dangers, the importance of which wiU be most mudcai' 
 evident in connection with the topics of the present chapter. The first is 's"''J««*«-" 
 of a decline either in the quantity or the quality of musical ' subjects,' of 
 short individually impressive pieces of tune ; the second is of a decline in 
 the impressiveness of those forms which are now felt as impressive. The 
 former danger is clearly peculiar to Music, among the arts: the very 
 isolation which is an advantage as regards perils from without exposes her 
 in an exceptional degree to perils from within. The subject-matter of the 
 representative arts is practically unlimited ; and architectural works can be 
 grasped in their larger aspects while the eye stiU embraces a multitude of 
 independent and semi-independent details, so that a vast amount of indi- 
 vidual characteristics can be seen if they are there, while, as has been 
 pointed out, very much less individuality is actually demanded than in 
 Music. We have seen that though minor points of individuality may be 
 
 instances quoted would alone show how cases referred to, the passage in A flat com- 
 easily such transitions may enter into prises harmonies belonging to the keys of A 
 forms from which the most na'ive hearer major and D minor, and the passage in E 
 receives a vivid and instantaneous impres- comprises harmonies belonging to the major 
 sion of perfectly unstrained and coherent keys of F sharp and D sharp), seems some- 
 beauty. I may remark by the way that what overlooked in the talk about ' cycles of 
 the constant occurrence of harmonies of keys ' and ' conduct of modulation,' so corn- 
 alien keys, with no distinct modulation or mon in connection with the ' temperament ' 
 view of staying in those keys (as, e.g., in the controversy. 
 
226 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 demanded in all buildings which claim to be works of art at all, the 
 most strikingly individual buildings must necessarily be somewhat few 
 and far between ; while the fact that two or twenty beautiful buildings 
 were extremely alike would not detract from their value if they were 
 suitably situated in different places, one of which could not reap the benefit 
 of a building in the others, and in buildings a very large amount of re- 
 semblance may exist without entailing any sense of dead and servile 
 copying. The primary reqmsite both in simple and elaborate musical 
 work, on the other hand, is that it shall contain motives of individuality 
 as well as beauty ; for of music more truly than of anything else may we 
 say with Bacon, ' there is no excellent Beauty that hath not some strange- 
 nesse in the proportion.' ' If the leading phrases are echoes of others 
 already known, annoyance and a sense of weakness rather than pleasure are 
 apt to result from the resemblance ; partly because a beloved motive will 
 so little suffer change that reflections of it are often as charmless as that 
 of a face in a convex mirror ; partly because in Music there seems no 
 reason for saying again what has been once said well, inasmuch as the 
 conditions of musical presentation oppose no barrier to the production of 
 the same work in a thousand different places. 
 
 The important bearing of the shortness of the successive bits which 
 the ear will grasp, illustrated in one way by the contrast in the im- 
 mensely rapid and comprehensive sweeps of the eye, may be seen in 
 another way by comparison with Poetry, the other art in which the sense 
 has to grasp bits in succession, and where the element of form must 
 be present in bits of a size suitable to being grasped. But in Poetry, 
 where the ideas and subject-matter are matters purely for the mind, 
 it is they which constitute the organism, it is in them that originality 
 and coherence are demanded. It is entirely in the relations perceived 
 by the intellectual faculties that the constituent portions must approve 
 their fitness and their bearing on each other and on the whole, under pain 
 of seeming rambling and nonsensical; while the metre or form which 
 
 ' I have found that the experience of to different people : I am at this foment 
 
 many others tallies with my own in the fol- being tormented in the way I have described 
 
 lovring respect: that a common (though very by the beautiful tune in waltz-measure in 
 
 far from universal) feature of a simple Auber's overtirre to Sa/ydee ; the notes seem 
 
 melody which is strongly approved on first all in my head, but when I try to whistle 
 
 acqiiaintance is that, while it seems perfectly them they wiU not come quite right. Some 
 
 natural and easy to catch, one cannot quite may perhaps recognise a shorter and more 
 
 get hold of it afterwards ; there is some point striking example in the subject of the Eondo 
 
 where it baulks one's efEorts, some special in Beethoven's G major concerto, quoted on 
 
 rarity in the Ideal Motion, any substitute for p. 153; it would argue no lack of ear, if a 
 
 which seems banal and charmless ; and this person to whom this passage was new failed 
 
 though the intervals may all be of a simple to whistle it through, even after it had been 
 
 kind, and the right notes when supplied are played to him half a dozen times ; yet how 
 
 often quite close to our futile attempts, so innocent it sounds I In this particular case 
 
 that when once the progression is familiar, the start on the subdominant chord makes 
 
 the only puzzle is how it could ever have an obvious little trap ; but as a rule no such 
 
 puzzled one. Different instances will occur special cause can be assigned. 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 227 
 
 addresses the sense is something in a manner superimposed, and the 
 same metrical forms may be used thousands of times. In a musical 
 presentation the whole substance is apprehended through the sense, 
 consisting as it does essentially of form ; and owing to this entire depend- 
 ence on a sense, the faculty of viewing as a whole the relations of affinity 
 or contrast which different parts of a musical movement ' present, has a 
 much shorter tether than the free intellectual faculty which is concerned 
 with literary work. One may comprehend the unity of a poem which takes 
 many hours to read ; whereas the furthest limits to which it would be 
 possible to extend the comprehension in the other case would be reckoned 
 by minutes. And the mode of structure within these limits entails, as we 
 have seen, organic forms very much less extended still, these last being 
 the elements whose character is all-important. Though the duration of a 
 complete musical paragraph may very considerably exceed that of any 
 verbal stanza or strophe, still the more extended and elaborate a movement, 
 the more necessary is it that it shall rest on shorter themes and pro- 
 gressions, which, though they pass too quickly to be actually pre- 
 sented alone, are in a way self- complete, and which will recur and be 
 recognised in various forms ; this perpetual reassertion of ' subject ' being 
 the cardinal feature of musical development. The very fact that the 
 organism of a long movement is loose enough to admit episodic forms, 
 whose raison d'Stre, provided they be beautiful and offer a pleasing con- 
 trast and relief to what surrounds them, is not rigidly enquired into, and 
 that a short acquaintance \*ith the resulting whole soon cements it into 
 perfectly satisfactory coherence and unity, exemplifies the same point, the 
 all-importance of the individual bits of form, the individual lengths of 
 Ideal Motion, or whatever we choose to call them. And a shorter work, 
 such as a song, often consists wholly of one or two complete pieces of tune, 
 and is really therefore all ' subject.' 
 
 Now the question presents itself whether the mine of good ' subjects,' is the mine 
 
 , . , . . I ■ 11 ■ 1 i-i 1 inexhaustible? 
 
 of beautiful short self-complete forms, is practically inexhaustible. 
 Though the length of each is very limited, still the variety rendered 
 possible by the two factors of time and pitch seems as if it might be 
 endless ; but experience alone can decide. As an answer to the assertion 
 that the possible combinations are to a considerable extent exhausted, 
 it is sometimes pointed out that, e.g., unpublished works of Schubert 
 come to light containing quite new and simple ones, redolent of the old in- 
 describable charm. But this is not an altogether conclusive argument. 
 For the feax of cessation in the creation of first-rate ' subjects ' depends, 
 perhaps, not so much on the actual exhaustion of the mine, as on the 
 
 ' I am perpetually obliged to avoid the sisting of several movements, or to an 
 word mark,- as this is very commonly applied oratorio, consisting of many distinct solos, 
 to a collection of the larger sort of musical duets, choruses, &c. 
 organisms, as to a symphony or sonata, con- 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 following consideration : whether the musical atmosphere in which a 
 composer is now necessarily nurtured is adapted to stimulate his actual 
 melodic inventiveness as distinct from his ingenuity ; whether the elabo- 
 rate involutions through which his faculty is always being led, may not 
 affect his direct and intuitive power of striking on combinations of materials 
 the simple arrangements of which have at all events been to some extent 
 used up. And no elaboration of treatment could make up for a decline in 
 this respect. Whatever the larger plan of the structure, whether con- 
 tinued on the accepted lines of chamber-music and symphony, or on any 
 other lines which shall embody the essential conditions of iteration and 
 contrast, musical composition can be rendered vital by new and beautiful 
 themes, and by nothing else ; failing that, it would lose the popular ele- 
 ment which is the mainstay of its existence, and would become the in- 
 genious amusement of a clique. 
 A composer's Nor is the outlook brightened by the following consideration : that 
 
 ventil'eness is ^^^^ Music enjoys the advantage of not being dependent on outside 
 s'15"i"iy currents of thought and feeUng, and so is unaffected by conditions under 
 influences of which other arts may languish, yet in the musical region itself the talent 
 already in of new-comers is in a pre-eminent degree subject to the influence of their 
 m^ con-' *" predecessors and elder contemporaries. A child of musical genius is 
 6wam*'^^d^b it absolutely impregnated with the music of his time ; the motives of elder 
 composers are perpetually going through his head ; and the greater abund- 
 ance of existing motives of very high quality may appreciably narrow the 
 field of remaining possibilities, not only because those particular ones have 
 been invented once for all and cannot be re-invented, but because their 
 number and variety may so possess musical minds, may so monopoHse the 
 springs of musical impulse, as to prevent any but the very highest genius 
 from striking out new paths of Ideal Motion, sufficiently individual to seem 
 in their turn first-rate. They may even be first-rate and yet lack that genial 
 quality, that extraordinary popular freshness, which is the very life-blood 
 of Music in its most import-ant aspects. Prodigious, for instance, as is the 
 genius of Brahms, simple and strong and magnificent as are many of his 
 melodies, no one, I imagine, can expect that a great deal of his work will 
 ever be anything like the tremendous popular force in the world that 
 Beethoven's is. 
 § 11. With There are many signs of a present danger that elaboration is tending to 
 
 rannectel^that swamp melody ; but in the opposite direction there lies perhaps a still greater 
 of incoherence, danger, that of simple incoherence, of a loss of the feeling for true unity 
 of sequence and development. If these isolated and irresponsible sound- 
 structures may, on the one hand, easily degenerate into complicated 
 patterns and ingenious mazes, stiU more easily, on the other, may they 
 dissolve into a formless chaos of flying fragments. And this latter danger, 
 like the other, is really connected with that of a lack of impressive themes ; 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 229 
 
 since if a theme be not in itself impressive, it will not be apt to lend itself 
 to noble and loving development, or to suggest new beauties. Links of 
 reminiscence fall naturally into disuse when there is nothing sufficiently ar- 
 resting to be particularly worth remembering : and the very lightness and 
 elasticity of the control which the laws of effective structure in long move- 
 ments impose, make it seem possible to discard them, and to put the ear off 
 with a phantasmagoria of restless and unrelated progressions, carried down 
 perhaps by the childish sop of some accompanying verbal programme. 
 Perpetual transition and modulation, perpetual differentiation without 
 integration, are the natural resources of uninspired ingenuity, which may 
 produce a thousand series of showy fragments, but never a single piece of 
 first-class form. The germs from which a large movement grows, as we 
 have seen, may be, in proportion to its length, the merest fragments ; but 
 they are centres of growth, not parts of a medley : and the fact that there 
 are ' subjects ' in the world whose magnificence is revealed in a very few bars 
 in no way precludes organic sequence and amplitude in the sections of the 
 subsequent development. It is an insult to the ear to treat it as if it 
 totdd not spread its perception over these more extended reaches of form, 
 and as if the only way to keep it going was to give it perpetual fresh 
 starts and jogs in unforeseen methods and strange directions ; especially 
 since it is the almost invariable rule that the greater the variety of modu- 
 lational twists and turns, changes of tempo and pace, and so on, the less 
 impressive are the individual fragments themselves; beautiful pieces of form 
 not being such everyday occurrences that a composer willingly leaves one 
 when he has got it, or breaks it off at the fourth bar with a diminished 
 seventh for fear of being thought vulgarly straightforward. 
 
 This fact is ignored in a retort which is very commonly made to com- 
 plaints of incoherence and formlessness in some particular composition. 
 People point to some fine melody, some piece of truly noble form, by the 
 same author, and say, ' See what melody he can write when he likes; ' im- 
 plying that since he hasn't liked in the particular case complained of, some 
 still higher beauty must necessarily be supposed to lurk there. The falleicy 
 is obvious. Schubert himself, whose productiveness in relation to the brief 
 terra of his activity stands wholly without parallel in the history of art, could 
 not write a noble melody whenever he chose. Such melodies are jewels, 
 which may indeed occasionally flash forth on the composer's path, but which 
 must often be long and diligently searched for ; and in neither case does 
 he command them at will. And apart from this, so unique and over- 
 powering is the effect of beautiful melody, that it is as little believable 
 that a person endowed in any abundance with melodic inventiveness has 
 ever refused to exercise that power and has wantonly chosen to write 
 unmelodious music in preference, as that any person, having actually 
 invented a noble melody, has cast it aside as a thing of no account. 
 
230 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 Tokens of the Nor is it Only among composers that tokens of the danger are to be 
 
 fo3'among''* fouTid ; a considerable section of the musical public evinces the same 
 tiie hearers tendency to accept strange and cloying sequences of tone in place of 
 as well as the definitely organic and apprehensible form ; as though beautiful tunes and 
 •omposers. j subjects ' admitted of any conceivable substitute. It is to be feared that 
 some of the present vagaries show the feverish craving for novelties which 
 is a sure sign of disease. I hear that there were members of the Wagner 
 Society in London who expressed a strong longing for quarter-tones. Now 
 as it is impossible to suppose that these persons want all existing music 
 to be suppressed, and as the relations of notes in modem European music, 
 depending on a system of tones and semitones, are even more definitely 
 fixed than the proportions of the human form, the desire shows as much 
 aesthetic imagination and perception as if a devotee of sculpture, in the 
 interests of his art, were to pray for a time when the arms and noses of 
 half the human race (say, the female sex) should be of half the usual 
 length. The fact that scale-systems are to a certain extent arbitrary, and 
 admit of many varieties, is quite irrelevant : for it is of course only in re- 
 lation to races and generations, not to individuals, that this is true. If 
 any tribe had been used to nothing but arms and noses of half the present 
 length, their sense of the beauty and expressiveness of the combinations 
 into which these elements enter would have been formed naturally on the 
 given materials ; but that noses and semi-noses should go together in any 
 individual's ideas of facial expressiveness is simply impossible ; and the case 
 of the elements of melodic form is precisely similar. Whether the disease 
 to which such signs point is chronic or acute it would be premature to 
 decide. Serious it undoubtedly is, as appearimg in just those sections of 
 musical society whose influence ought to be powerful in guiding and leading 
 on the popular taste : but its direct effects are not likely to spread far, and 
 we may rest secure that the musical perceptions of the majority are in- 
 capable of being permanently warped. 
 § 12. We As regards composition, it would doubtless be easy to point out that there 
 
 heritage in the ^^^ ^^^'^ '^^ interval of unproductiveness, and that plenty of beautiful and 
 music of the healthy music is perpetually appearing. But, after all, the question of the 
 ceotnries ; future of Music is perhaps too exclusively considered in reference to the 
 / production of new works ; and it seems to be sometimes forgotten that in 
 the truest sense the music of the future will be, to its hearers, just the 
 music that they hear and think about, whether written in their own time 
 or centuries earlier. Nothing can deprive them of their heritage ; in the 
 music now existing both we and they have an inalienable possession. The 
 education of the musical sense to maturity was a slow process, and in the 
 development of the art waves of indifference swept over many successive 
 strata of music whose effect in its own age was most fresh and powerful. 
 But much of Handel's work (to say nothing of many isolated productions 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 231 
 
 of much earlier date) stands out now as young as on the day it was 
 written, and was never so well known as in our own time ; and from him 
 and Bach onwards the chain of great composers much of whose work is in 
 the most literal sense popular is quite unbroken. 
 
 At the same time it .would be but a superficial view which refused to though it is 
 recognise within what limits these latter remarks are applicable. Even of n™Sce'the *° 
 the music written since the beginning of the last century, a large amount i™?'? within 
 
 . ° ° J ' & which this 18 
 
 which seemed firsfc-rate in its generation has become in a very real sense true, 
 obsolete ; not merely crowded out by fresh accumulations, but unable when 
 heard to give the delight it formerly did. Nor does this apply only to 
 operatic works, of which both the contemporary and the posthumous 
 popularity depends greatly on elements and chances external to the music. 
 This subject of obsolescence in Music is too intimately connected with 
 questions as to the future^ not to deserve special consideration ; and for- 
 tunately its wider aspects may be to a certain extent illustrated by re- 
 ference to individual experiences. In the absence of any reference to those 
 stable external facts to which the representative arts owe allegiance, the 
 history of the various fortunes of musical productions has been, in the 
 normal course of things, entirely controlled by that ever-alert musical 
 instinct, so wholly autocratic in its own domain, so willing to try, so 
 prompt either to accept or to reject, any new path which is presented to it ; 
 so irresponsible both in its fidelities and its infidelities. When the ear 
 tires of known forms, there is an end of them ; they have ceased to give 
 the pleasure which it is their sole function to give : when the ear accepts 
 and welcomes new forms, their position, for a time at least, is assured, 
 however much they may set previous theories at defiance. And that 
 perpetual demand, which has been already noticed, for individuality in any 
 new forms that present themselves, a demand which merely means that if 
 the individuality be absent, the forms will not impress people or stick in 
 their heads, has naturally occasioned great vicissitudes in the history of 
 various features of form as they have in turn presented themselves. Thus 
 when the feeling for the major and minor modes, to the exclusion of all 
 others, was in its earlier stages, and the fixation of key by the ' full close ' 
 of dominant and tonic chords was a comparatively new feature, neither 
 composer nor hearer could have too much of it, and in some of the music 
 of the seventeenth century half a dozen full closes may be found in a 
 single half-page. After a time this naturally palled ; an effect which was 
 everybody's property was felt to be cheap ; and its perpetual recurrence, 
 breaking up a movement into definite short lengths, was of course incom- 
 patible with prolonged development. Similarly the efi^ect of mere transi- 
 tion and modulation seems to have been much more decided in the last 
 century, before such things were so much a stock-in-trade. Eousseau 
 speaks with great admiration of the passing suddenly from one key to an- 
 
232 FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 
 
 The obsoles- 
 cence is very 
 real of much 
 even of this 
 modem music. 
 
 other, or from major to minor, in Italian melody ; features which to us, apart 
 from the motives involved, seem very cheap thunder. The same sort of 
 fact may be paralleled by many a childish experience, in which some sweet 
 cadence or effect of harmony has seemed, on first acquaintance, to reach 
 the very acme of beauty, and has afterwards come to be recognised as right 
 and necessary in its place, but not in itself an extraordinary piece of 
 musical invention. 
 
 Now, when we leave special points of this kind and come to com- 
 plete tunes, and when we consider what seem to us the less remarkable 
 specimens of some past generation of music, though here of course it 
 becomes impossible to put into words the reason of their seeming to 
 lack individuality and special charm, though in all the points which can 
 be examined from outside, they may seem as different from one another as 
 other tunes which have for us the necessary individuality, yet the inner 
 musical sense admits of no contradiction. The exquisiteness of those par- 
 ticular Ideal Motions has vanished for us, like the exquisiteness of perpetual 
 full closes ; and we may be inclined to call the melodies second-rate, 
 forgetting that they may have caused in their contemporaries the maximum 
 of melodic pleasure. And here again most of us will be able to parallel 
 the facts in the history of our own childish partialities. This sort of 
 obsolescence is less noticed than it might be, for several reasons. First, 
 the picked specimens from these earlier generations have not lost their 
 freshness and are always en Svidence ; but their survival is of course just 
 owing to the fact that they are the picked specimens. Secondly, different 
 sorts of music have had their pre-eminence at different times. Thus, not to 
 go further back than the last century. Bach preceded Haydn ; but while 
 the polyphonic music of Bach is still wholly unrivalled in its kind, the 
 instrumental works of Haydn, in spite of their marking one of the great 
 eras of music by their extraordinary advance on preceding examples, and 
 in spite of the wealth of undying beauties which ensure their continued 
 popularity, still contain scores and scores of melodies which no one will 
 maintain to be capable of giving the same pleasure now that they did at 
 the time of production. Thirdly, no generation of music-lovers is homo- 
 geneous : each contains, so to speak, representatives of several preceding 
 stages, and epitomises a variety of tastes which have had their day of 
 predominance. The truly predominant taste can only be roughly judged 
 by a very wide view of a very gradual process, and any generalisation about 
 it will always be open to a thousand contradictions resting on individual 
 cases ; thus there are still plenty of people, and very likely always will be, 
 who prefer the quartets of Haydn to those of Beethoven.' 
 
 ' It is a remarkable fact that musical 
 children of twelve years old will now so 
 commonly accept at once, as perfectly natural 
 
 and as profoundly beautiful, passages in 
 Beethoven's works at which some of the 
 trained musicians of his own day were 
 
FURTHER REMARKS ON MUSICAL FORM AND 'SUBJECT.' 233 
 
 But, it may be said, can this loss of power in so much music which § 13. This 
 has doubtless seemed imperishable to those to whose ears it was first ad- ominous' for 
 dressed, be other than a very ominous fact ? As long as Music was clearly *''® *^"'""® ' 
 advancing, and advancing not only in large development and elaboration, 
 but in the sense that the melodies and ' subjects ' invented during a space 
 of ten years seemed superior in beauty and vitality to those produced in 
 the same space of time fifty years earlier (as, for instance, if the period 
 about 1730 were compared with that about 1780, and the period about 
 1780 to that about 1830), the fact that much of the older music slipped 
 out of knowledge would not seem of much account : but the same fact 
 might weU appear in a different light to those who hold that from 1830 
 to 1880 there has been no such advance, and that in spite of the immense 
 amount of beautiful music produced in that period the greatest music in 
 the world by a good many degrees was written before the former date. 
 But there is really plenty to reassure us. Work which in the third gene- 
 ration remains absolutely pre-eminent has sufficiently proved its lasting much to re- 
 power ; and as regards the mere proportion of the part which lives and ^^^"'^ "^' 
 spreads to the part for which no genuine revival can be expected, the 
 music of the popular giants of the previous generations, Handel, Haydn, 
 and even Mozart, will stand no comparison with the achievements of our 
 own century. 
 
 It is an interesting question how far the decline in the charm of a good ^ isnotimpro- 
 deal of past music has been due to an inevitable though unconscious com- table that some 
 
 •^ "of the charm 
 
 parison of it with what succeeded it ; how far certain things would have which has 
 palled, or at all events got to seem a little commonplace, but for some ex- have survived 
 perience of new and profounder modes of Ideal Motion. That this has appearance of 
 been the case to some extent is certainly suggested by individual expe- ™"® stimng 
 riences ; ' and the fact would involve the comforting belief that we are not 
 likely to suffer any appreciable loss in what we have got till we get some- 
 thing better. 
 
 aghast : for the interval of time is of course or two of the movements from the earlier 
 
 far too short for any hereditary influences to sonatas. I fully realised, even at the moment, 
 
 have been able to act. The fact may perhaps that this was one of the most extraordinary 
 
 be taken to indicate that in some cases experiences that would ever fall to my lot : 
 
 training and perpetual practice of music but for about a fortnight I tried to keep up 
 
 tend rather to set and stereotype the percep- my belief in Ah ohe la morte as well ; and I 
 
 live faculty than to give it elasticity and have the most vivid recollection of the sort 
 
 .receptivity. of struggle that went on in my mind, till at 
 
 ' As an instance I may perhaps be allowed last I had to admit that, to me, the two things 
 
 to mention a personal incident. There was a were incompatible. I need hardly add that 
 
 time when, as a child, I thought Ah ohe la I attach no objective value to this fact. Ah 
 
 OTflrte a divinely beautiful tune. It happened che la morte is a melody which has been a 
 
 that when I was in a state of great rapture source of immense pleasure, and I should be 
 
 and excitement about it, I made my first nothingbut againerif Icould nowenjoyit as 
 
 acquaintance with Beethoven by hearing one I once did : it only happens that I cannot. 
 
234 
 
 § 1. Melody 
 only has been 
 hitherto con- 
 sidered, the 
 priority being 
 in every way 
 justifiable. 
 
 § 2. The two 
 heads of Poly- 
 
 fhony and 
 [annony dis- 
 tinguished. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 So far we have been engaged entirely with melodic sequences. Melody is 
 the fundamental fact of Music, not only in the sense that homophony, 
 or a succession of single unaccompanied notes, is the primary form in 
 the historical development of the art as well as in the tentative efforts of 
 every individual, but in the sense that throughout the most highly de- 
 veloped music the melodic element, however adorned and supported by 
 other elements, is displayed in full pre-eminence. (I need hardly explain 
 again what was made so abundantly manifest in the last chapter, that by 
 the melodic element is not meant lengths of eight or sixteen or any par- 
 ticular number of bars, with a distinct ending, but simply the phenomenon, 
 in whatever length of series exemplified, of continuous and coherent Ideal 
 Motion.) I am aware that in treating separately of one element, and 
 especially in illustrating the treatment (as one cannot but do) by examples 
 from music in which the other elements are also present, one runs the risk 
 of seeming to under-estimate the place of these last in the total effect. Not 
 only, however, did perspicuity absolutely demand this separate treatment 
 in the present instance, but in a general attempt to trace the sources of 
 the power of Music and the place and nature of the musical faculty, it can 
 hardly be deemed unnatural that the facts and experiences of ages should 
 take precedence of those to which, as in the case of Harmony, the most 
 liberal estimate could not assign a history of more than a few centuries. 
 Nor when we examine, as it is now time to do, the nature of the contri- 
 butions made by these more recent elements to the total of musical effect, 
 shall we find the melodic element to be at all disturbed in its position of 
 pre-eminence, however much its effects may have been enhanced and its 
 scope enlarged by the appearance of the others on the scene. 
 
 The elements in question may be classed under two heads ; Polyphony, 
 i.e. simultaneous presentation of two or more distinctly separate parts or 
 series of notes ; and Harmony, which in its most distinctive aspect is an 
 agreeable succession of chords, each regarded rather as a compound unit 
 in a single series than as a mere concurrence of superposed notes each be- 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 235 
 
 longing to its own separate series or ' part.' ' No distinct line can be 
 drawn separating these two modes of presentation from one another : 
 thus in harmonised chorales and many pieces of modern part-writing 
 the progression of the separate parts, taken by different voices or instru- 
 ments, technically the counterpoint, is quite distinct, while still their 
 combination makes a complete chord-series ; and even where no distinct 
 chord-series of this kind is presented, yet as every case of modern poly- 
 phony conforms to the laws of harmonic progression, it is based on an 
 outline which might be drawn up as a simple chord-series. But while 
 harmony in our day thus dominates polyphony, it has a domain of its own 
 where polyphony in the technical sense does not at all enter ; namely, 
 where in the course of a harmonic progression the ear recognises no series 
 of single notes, or only one such series, as specially prominent and con- 
 tinuous ; and thus receives the harmonies either as an agreeable succession 
 of compound units without reference to any separate voices or ' parts ' at 
 all, or as an agreeable support and adjunct to a svngle melodic voice or 
 ' part.' Between such a case where the polyphonic element is entirely 
 absent, and that of some distinct piece of four-part harmony where it is 
 prominently present, many degrees of prominence are possible to it : for 
 instance, an early stage of its appearance might be exemplified in a case 
 where a melodic ' part ' is accompanied by a set of chords the bass of 
 which forms a distinct ' part ' of its own, and has sufficient independence 
 of movement in relation to the melody to give ' contrapuntal ' effect. 
 Coimterpoint, the simultaneous appearance of parts whose motion relatively 
 to one another is distinctly singled out and watched, really enters to 
 some extent into the large majority of written compositions, down to 
 fragmentary bars and half-bars of it in the piano accompaniment of the 
 simplest songs. We shall find moreover that the principle of polyphony, The principle 
 the pleasure of hearing several distinct things going on at once, applies extends beyond 
 
 . 1 j^-L ' j_^ ±_ ' r e 1^ i * what is tech- 
 
 to many cases where there is no sort of separate progression of ' parts in nicaily in- 
 the technical sense. _ ttet™°'" 
 
 Polyphony in its more accurate and restricted sense need not detain § 3. Poiy- 
 
 us long. For though its place in musical effect is of the highest import- 
 ance, and though the account of the various forms of it and of the 
 devices used in its treatment constitutes a chief part of what is usually 
 called the ' science ' of Music, and though an enormous amount of in- 
 genuity was lavished on it for several centuries before true harmonic 
 
 ' It is sometimes said that in harmony it can only be exemplified in parts containing 
 
 is the perpendieular aspects of the notes a certain number of consecutive notes, which 
 
 concerned — in polyphony or counterpoint are therefore horizontal, the distinction is 
 
 the horizontal aspects, which are specially very inaccurate ; since all the power of 
 
 prominent. But though harmony can doubt- harmony depends likewise on mccession, on 
 
 less be exemplified in a single chord which a horizontal order of compound units, 
 is wholly perpendicular, and counterpoint 
 
 phony : 
 
236 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 Its principle ; 
 
 it produces a 
 pleasing sense 
 of power in the 
 perception of 
 unity under 
 Tariety. 
 
 § 4. The 
 chief features 
 in the early 
 history of 
 polyphony. 
 
 progressions obtained an independent footing, its effects (so far as we can 
 separate them from interest either in the melodic aspect of one or more of 
 the ' parts ' or in the harmonic basis of the progression) may be referred 
 to that general principle just noticed, the love of hearing and following 
 several lines of things simultaneously. This might seem to be just one 
 form of detecting unity in variety ; but it has clearly a speciality which 
 enables us to point to it confidently and without reservation as a source of 
 pleasure ; in contrast to those cases of unity in variety (comprising grace- 
 less geometrical figures, rhinoceroses, and ugly or trivial melodies) where 
 we have found the mere exemplification of that principle to be no guarantee 
 of aesthetic character. The speciality in the case of polyphony is obviously 
 that the variety is not of elements which have to be co-ordinated into a single 
 form, but of things having each its own definite completeness ; for even if a 
 separate ' part ' lack independent melodic impressiveness, it is still an inde- 
 pendently coherent series of notes. And here the sense of power which 
 was noticed several times in the earlier chapters, the pleasure of thridding 
 and unravelling with ease and certainty what nevertheless presents an 
 aspect of high complexity, comes distinctly into play. We remarked 
 how, so long as the forms had some independent aspect of strength or 
 grace, this easy grasp and mastery of a number of them at once entered 
 prominently into the pleasure derived from Architecture ; and though the 
 ' parts ' in Music are necessarily few, this fact is more than counterbalanced 
 by their precise individuality (so much emphasised on several previous 
 occasions in contradistinction to anything obtainable by abstract visual 
 lines), by their immense varieties of motion, and by the clearness with 
 which the common rhythmic outline, and in modern music the harmonic 
 basis, stamps and confirms their true union through all their meetings 
 and partings and fightings and embracings. This vivid sense of g^asp 
 and power has of course no place in the perception of unity under variety in 
 those cases where there is no sense of complexity, as where a number of 
 elements, insignificant or meaningless in isolation, make up a single 
 form, whether beautiful or ugly : we do not feel actively clever in per- 
 ceiving or appreciating a single face or figure, or a single arch or dome, 
 or a single series of melodic notes. These may give us their own dis- 
 tinctive pleasure, but not that particular glow of doing a thing easily, in 
 spite of its seeming to have the elements of difficulty, which we experience 
 as our eye sweeps through a complicated interior, or as our ear follows the 
 tangled order of a fugue. 
 
 Three points in the pre-harmonic history of polyphony should be 
 distinctly realised : (1) it started (about the commencement of the twelfth 
 century) with the discovery that two independent melodic parts could be 
 followed agreeably at the same time, provided their synchronous notes 
 were not harshly dissonant : (2) it led gradually to the important devices of 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 237 
 
 * imitation ' and * canon,' one part taking up what had recently been sung 
 by another, and thus originated in a way those ' links of reminiscence ' 
 which have proved so prominent a means of developing prolonged musical 
 tissues : and (3), though the interest centred essentially in the motion of the 
 parts, yet the perpetual concurrence of notes, producing chords so to speak 
 accidentally, ' accumulated,' as Helmholtz says, ' a mass of experiments ' 
 for the development of the true chord-connections of harmony. 
 
 Now the gradual development of the sense of harmony and of the 
 sense of key with which it was so intimately associated, naturally im- 
 posed more and more stringent conditions on the polyphonous parts ; for Noticeable 
 the negative condition that synchronous notes must not clash, or produce sense of strict 
 isolated disagreeable moments, was gradually substituted the necessity conneotkin on 
 that the synchronous notes should present combinations coherent in polyphony, 
 harmony and key with the neighbouring combinations. And there is 
 one result of this which has not been sufficiently noticed ; namely, that it 
 must now be an eaxeptional piece of good fortune if two melodies of 
 decided independent impressiveness can be directly combined as two 
 parts ; though when such a case does occur, our modern sense of actual 
 harmonic fusion, over and above that of independent motion in the two 
 parts, must produce a greater intensity of pleasure than could have been 
 felt in the much commoner combinations of well-known melodic themes, 
 possible to the Flemish burghers in the pre-harmonic days. This point 
 is worth noting as throwing some light on the confusion which has 
 existed respecting the relations and comparative merits of polyphony and 
 Tnelody. It reveals the germ of truth which lurked at the bottom of 
 Eousseau's absurd theory that several ' parts ' could not be enjoyed at the 
 same time, which he carried to the length of saying that a vocal duet 
 ought to be simply a dialogue ; an absurdity fully equalled by musicians 
 who, in moments of scientific enthusiasm, maintain the inherent supe- 
 riority of contrapuntal writing to naive tune, on the ground that it gives 
 two or three ' melodies ' to be enjoyed instead of one. 
 
 Very little analysis is needed to distinguish to some extent the place § 5. xhe 
 which independent melodic impressiveness of one or more ' parts ' holds in po^ph^nff to 
 various specimens of polyphonic composition, and the manner in which, melodic effects 
 
 '^ '■•''■ *' ' may be classed 
 
 where this particular featmre is more or less lacking, musical effect of in several 
 another sort is supplied. The different stages may be roughly classed ° '^*'" 
 as follows. 
 
 It occasionally happens that two motives of distinct independent 
 beauty admit of immediate combination without any change or compro- 
 mise ; with a result which, in amount of beauty, is more like the product 
 than the sum of the constituents. The trio in the Choral Symphony 
 affords a simple and splendid example, the effect there being heightened 
 by the inversion and different instrumentation of the two motives when 
 they are repeated : 
 
238 POLYPHONY AND HABMONT. 
 
 Obots ami Clarinets. 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 *E: 
 
 -SI- 
 
 ^=^f^= ^ ^^ 
 
 Bassoons. ^. 
 
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 'tSE^ 
 
 S^ 
 
 r~y 
 
 rpritfr 
 
 ifcfii 
 
 tt=^!^=d^^^^ 
 
 f=i= 
 
 ici: 
 
 fi^^^^ 
 
 SE^^^^^fe^ 
 
 "^ 
 
 trrrrqrr^: 
 
 :^=«i^: 
 
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 Bf 
 
 -^ 
 
 ■--d^-=^-- 
 
 r^^frg 
 
 &c. 
 
 ^i^ 
 
 :f-_^ 
 
 S=E=t 
 
 -r— j g 
 
 =ff==F 
 
 ^EP^ 
 
 -^:rz 
 
 and then later 
 
 ±=t 
 
 £ft^: 
 
 ggF^^^I^^^^^ 
 
 
 ^S^iic 
 
 i 
 
 Horns. 
 
 ^: 
 
 2:^ 
 
 -c^cr- 
 
 -c?- 
 
 r 
 
 •p — eye-"' 
 
 Wr- 
 
 ^f=F^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^^zSm=f: 
 
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 -=1= 
 
 •i=IC!- 
 
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 pl4~J— I- 
 
 IS^ 
 
 Stir 
 
 -c?- 
 
 a<-^-U 
 
 Eg 
 
 i 
 
 r 
 
 =f=^ 
 
 This stage may naturally be realised with varying degrees of completeness, 
 as when one of the motives has true independent impressiveness, while 
 the other, though complete and melodically coherent in form, is not auffi- 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 239 
 
 ciently striking to have been worth presenting on its own account ; a head 
 to which pieces of noticeably free and melodic bass might often be referred. 
 Schumann's little song, Wenn ich fruh in den Oa/rten geh', may serve as 
 an instance, though there a person who has heard the song once, and half- 
 unconsciously recalls it, is almost as likely to begin humming the bass as 
 the treble : 
 
 ^ &|=:fa^ab= g3: 
 
 
 r3=p; 
 
 Z2 
 
 i 
 
 IE 
 
 ' ^.S^S^ 
 
 zMzzM: 
 
 m 
 
 _p — I 1 — 
 
 £f-r=£rf% 
 
 -fc^ 
 
 
 -rx 
 
 ^^ 
 
 it=rfeJ-==zM^ 
 
 aifc 
 
 i 
 
 5=f: 
 
 ^ 
 
 P 
 
 ^E 
 
 3^=3= 
 
 i 1 1 1^ 1 H 1 
 
 m 
 
 $=^=^ 
 
 -^^^ 
 
 -f=^ 
 
 .bsr 
 
 Again, the primariness, so to speak, of one of the motives may often 
 appear mainly in its greater contvn/iiouaness : it may be perpetually fused 
 in effect with pieces of counterpoint which appear along its path, whose 
 independent merit as melodic strains may or may not be manifest, but 
 which would be but fragments alone. 
 
 Another class of combination is where a theme is Tnodified, whether by 
 actual alterations in its rhythm or notes, or by breaking it up into frag- 
 ments, so as to fit another theme or take part in a piece of more prolonged 
 
240 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 polyphonic development ; as continually in the interweaving of ' subjects,' in 
 the ' carrying-out ' of instrumental movements. 
 
 Next, we may have melodic motives, more or less completely appreciable 
 on their own account, ruling, so to speak, over the contrasted entourage or 
 support of some other ' part ' or ' parts,' which, as isolated melody, would 
 have Tw point or impressiveness : a simple example of this is supplied by 
 the ascending bass in the theme from Beethoven's trio in D, quoted on 
 p. 167. This stage is perhaps the commonest mode of the appearance of 
 counterpoint in Music. It includes a great deal of strictly fugal composi- 
 tion, where such melodic interest as is present attaches to single fine themes 
 given forth again and again, but where the interest of the surrounding 
 complexity, and the distribution of the themes among different ' parts,' 
 indefinitely enrich and vary the effect; while the harmonic progression 
 fills the interstices of the more prominent melodic motives, as well as 
 binding together the whole tissue by its own continuity. A similar en- 
 richment and support of melodic motive, with every shade of importance 
 in the less prominent ' parts,' may be traced through all sorts of composi- 
 tions, ranging from those written on the strictest conventional lines to the 
 freest movement in which a stream of dominant melodic phrases manifests 
 itself amid varying aspects of polyphonic dispersion. 
 
 The next stage will be where there is less independent interest in any 
 particular theme, or bits of theme,' and the ear is rather saturated with the 
 sense of a rich and changing concourse than arrested by individual beauty 
 of motion ; where therefore what has been described as the characteristic 
 aspect of polyphonic intricacy is presented in its most unmixed form. Not, 
 however, by any means necessarily in its most delightful one ; for prominent 
 melodic interest, when we get it asserting itself through the waves of poly- 
 phony, seems able, without in the least interfering with the stirring sense 
 of multitude, to lift the whole effect into the region of its own pecuUar 
 glory. 
 
 Finally, every one of these stages may be exemplified in a single page 
 of music. 
 
 This sketch, though necessarily very brief and general, could hardly be 
 made more precise without copious musical quotations, which after all 
 might only prove how widely modes of perception and appreciation differ 
 in this particular region : such as it is, it may serve to indicate the various 
 sorts of alliance and mutual accommodation to which melody and counter- 
 point lend themselves. That the two phenomena may appear as be- 
 
 ' The reader may recall Mr. Browning's ' First you deliver your phrase 
 
 most powerful and humorous picture, in — Nothing propound, that I see, 
 
 Matter Biigves of Sare- Gotha, of an organist Fit in itself for much blame or much praise— 
 
 whose faith in a fugue he has just been Answered no less, where no answer needs 
 
 playing needs confirmation ; especially the be : 
 
 passage beginning — Ofi start the two on their ways,' &c. 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 241 
 
 longing. to dififerent regions of effect, that there is a difference in kind 
 between melody and anything so remote from melody as part-writing in Melody and 
 which no separate ' part ' is individually impressive, may seem, when thus ^hiie capable 
 stated, to be a truism. That the difference in such cases does not mean °^ aratei"'m 
 natural antagonisTn between polyphony and melody is equally a truism to totally different 
 those who realise the width and importance of their common zone. But arenotautago- 
 for the sake of subsequent observations on the varieties of musical suscep- ' 
 
 tibiUty and of the practical necessity of recognising those varieties, the 
 fact that a sense of antagonism has been felt,* and the modes and reasons 
 of that feeling, are worth consideration. The divorce which existed in the 
 middle ages between the scientific contrapuntal compositions which had 
 degenerated into mere Chinese puzzles, and the popular music which never though they 
 was and never will be other than melodic, has still its lessons. We may peJred ao" "''" 
 smile at Eousseau's wild talk about ' I'usage des fugues, imitations, doubles 
 dessins, et autres beautes arbitraires et de pure convention ' with no other 
 merit than their difficulty, and invented in the infancy of the art to make 
 science look fine while genius was out of the question : but the most learned 
 musician would have no right to smile at Metastasio's less sweeping view, 
 that the music of the era previous to his own ' was in general too full of 
 fugues, of parts and contrivances, to be felt or understood except by artists,' 
 and that ' all the dififerent movements of the several parts, their inversions 
 and divisions, were unnatural, and by covering and deforming the m.elody, 
 only occasioned confusion.' Of all celebrated literary men Metastasio perhaps 
 lived in most intimate contact with musicians, and took the most intelligent 
 interest in their art ; and his opinion is thus the more valuable, as an em- 
 bodiment of the verdict which will always be passed by the great public, 
 cultivated and uncultivated, whom Music addresses, against the music 
 which only musicians can understand. That both during and after 
 Metastasio's lifetime all the resources of the art should have been blended 
 in a series of works of ever-growing popularity, may somewhat blind us to 
 the truth which was patent to backward-looking eyes in the still uncertain 
 dawn of those events ; namely, that the failure of melodic genius or 
 (according to the argument of the last chapter) of the opportunities of 
 
 ' A latent sense of this antagonism, at all the most complicated contrapuntal devices 
 
 events as between anything like strict coun- are being worked out with unfailing accu- 
 
 terpoint and tune, is often revealed by the racy.' No one can really complain of this 
 
 special welcome accorded to some piece criticism ; but it must be observed that the 
 
 ■where it seems to be overcome. Thus I combination in question is a single whole, to 
 
 read lately in a newspaper that in the be duly appreciated in proportion as the 
 
 iaa^jn.gal As Vesta was degcending,hy Thomas whole is (not technically but musically) 
 
 Weelkes, ' charming melodiousness is com- grasped ; not a mixture of ingredients, 
 
 bined with scientific depth, aU. the more re- ' graceful melodiousness ' to please the vulgar, 
 
 markable as it never intrudes upon the ' scientific depth ' and ' contrapuntal devices * 
 
 attention of the hearer, who may imagine he to please the learned. 
 is listening to the simplest harmonies while 
 
242 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 § 6. Har- 
 Tfiony. The 
 pleasurable 
 effect of coin- 
 cidence of im- 
 pressions is by 
 no means con- 
 fined to the 
 sense of hear 
 ing. 
 
 melodic genius, must inevitably leave mere ingenuity, as for centuries it 
 did leave it, in possession of a barren iield. 
 
 We have seen that Polyphony in modern music is entirely subject to 
 harmonic control ; and Harmony ' is really much the more remarkable 
 phenomenon, though its uniqueness in Music may not immediately appear. 
 
 ' The word Harmony, as used in the text, 
 includes both concord and discord : it is 
 sometimes rather unfortunately restricted to 
 concord, a usage due to the mode of its em- 
 ployment outside Music, and to the peculiarity 
 of Music in presenting discord as a prominent 
 feature of heawty. The physical and physio- 
 logical conditions of harmony lie outside the 
 compass of our general enquiry ; there are, 
 however, certain points in which the accepted 
 theory seems to me incomplete and mislead- 
 ing, and the discussion of these will be found 
 in the Appendix on Discord at the end of the 
 book. The great distinction between the 
 old and the new view of harmony may be 
 stated here in a very few words. It had 
 long been known that consonance is produced 
 by notes whose rates of vibration stand to 
 one another in a simple ratio, 2 to 1, 3 to 2, 
 5 to 4, and so on ; that the capacity of two 
 tones to flow on simultaneously without in- 
 terference or jar is connected in some way 
 with such ratios. This led to the view that 
 the sesthetio pleasure was essentially bound 
 up with the perspicuity and orderliness in- 
 volved in this simplicity, with the obvious- 
 ness in the mode of arrangement presented, 
 e.g. by the coincidence of every second vi- 
 bration in one series with every third in the 
 other. Now if sound- vibrations were things 
 present as sueh to consciousness, this view 
 might have been defensible, in so far as the 
 simplicity of the ratio would imply ease in 
 following and connecting the two lines of 
 sound : but as the vibrations are not distin- 
 guishable as such, and their effect merges 
 in what is felt as a perfectly continuous 
 tone-sensation, the supposed connection be- 
 tween the agreeableness which is perceived 
 and the simplicity or orderliness which is 
 not perceived becomes a palpable figment. 
 
 Helmholtz set the matter in an entirely 
 new light by an explanation in which dis- 
 cord is the prominent positive phenomenon, 
 and concord is the absence of discord. He 
 showed that discord -arises from a rapid 
 series of breaks in the even continuity of the 
 two streams of vibrations, due to the very 
 close proximity in pitch either of the actual 
 
 notes sounded or of some of their respective 
 harmonics ; that these breaks or ' beats,' 
 when rapid enough to merge in an appar- 
 ently simple sensation, produce the jarring 
 effect of dissonance, which disappears, how- 
 ever, when the rapidity passes a certain 
 limit. Notes which, when sounded together, 
 produce none of these breaks, are perfectly 
 concordant ; and the various degrees between 
 perfect concord and the harshest discord 
 depend, broadly speaking, on the varying 
 amount in which this feature is present 
 (though it should be noticed by the way, as 
 showmg how fallacious physical and physio- 
 logical explanations of jesthetic matters often 
 are even in the most elementary regions, that 
 the parallelism of the objective and subjec- 
 tive facts is here very far from complete, 
 and that the intervals which from the phy- 
 sical point of view are the more perfect, 
 fifths and fourths, are far less agreeable In 
 isolation than the less perfect thirds and 
 sixths). Remembering now that the harmo- 
 nics of any tone are the notes whose rates of 
 vibration are twice, three times, four times, 
 &c., that of the original tone, we easily see 
 that pairs of notes which stand to one 
 another, as regards vibration-rate, in a 
 simple ratio, are just those which will be 
 free or comparatively free from closely ad- 
 jacent harmonics. Helmholtz has thus 
 shown the precise point of connection be- 
 tween the capacity of two notes to flow on 
 simultaneously without interference or jar, 
 and the presentation of simple ratios by their 
 rates of vibration ; that it lies not in the ob- 
 vious positive fact which the simplicity of 
 ratio involves, viz. the repeated coincidence 
 many times a second of particular states of 
 one of the nerve-fibres concerned with par- 
 ticular states of the other ; but in the nega- 
 tive fact of absence, in these special cases, of 
 certain irregularities in the vibrations ; an 
 absence which could only be realised when 
 the presence of the said irregularities was 
 indisputably proved in all cases where simul- 
 taneous notes fail to produce a smooth con- 
 current flow, or, in other words, present the 
 phenomenon of dissonance. - 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 243 
 
 For the production of an agreeable compound effect through the coincidence 
 of several impressions on the same sense-organ is not a pecuharity of Music : 
 the ear is by no means alone in susceptibility to such a compound effect. 
 Thus the eye perceives colours in juxtaposition by what are practically 
 simultaneous impressions ; and finds them ' harmonious ' or ' discordant ; ' 
 the sense of taste can distinguish onion, celery, and turnip in a good gravy 
 soup, strawberry and vanille in a compound ice, and many more components 
 might be distinguished by a skilled person in a made dish ; and the sense of 
 smell possesses a considerable amount of the same power. The two higher 
 senses might indeed seem to be distinguished from the lower, with respect 
 to these compound effects, in that the elements of impression in their 
 case are not only different but outside one another, colours in space, tones 
 in pitch. This distinction, however, is by no means so invariably marked 
 in the case of the ear as in that of the eye ; and the actual individual ele- 
 ments of a compound are perhaps less often distinctly realised in sound 
 than in any other mode of sensation. If a person who had never heard and the percep- 
 tones except singly were listening to one continuous tone, and meanwhile a sidenesa of the ' 
 concordant tone were started so softly as to be all but inaudible, and then J^f^nother is 
 gradually increased in loudness till it equalled its fellow, the hearer would "»t always at 
 be very conscious of a new sensation, but I doubt if he could be at all the case of the 
 conscious of two elements in it, much less of an interval between the two. 
 This is of course an extravagantly violent instance ; but chords may be at 
 any rate perceived with comparatively slight consciousness of their present- 
 ing several points of pitch, by very many persons who are in the truest sense 
 musical, but whose ears have not received any special training. To analyse 
 a chord in the sense of picking out and singing its several notes is, it need 
 hardly be said, a matter either of exceptional acuteness or of considerable 
 practice ; but even the perception that several notes are present (unless they 
 are specially individualised by being taken by different voices) is often but 
 faint, and would be fainter still but for the external knowledge of the state 
 of the case, due, e.g., to habitually seeing several keys of a piano struck at 
 once. 
 
 Wherein, then, does the fundamental difference between a single chord § 7. The 
 and, e.g., an agreeable combination of tastes consist ? If we confine ourselves fSo ot sound- 
 to the impressions of a moderately trained ear, the answer is plain. The eienTentJhave 
 elements of the taste combination are perfectly simple things ; each of ^ o?e another 
 
 ^ . . . distinct rela- 
 
 them has one aspect or character and one only, ^iz. its own particular tions, owing to 
 taste, that self-complete unrelated aspect of sensation which is, according racterofthe 
 to the explanations of the first chapter, entirely analogous to coZowr-quality : ^""^^ °^ P''"'^ ' 
 whereas the elements of the sound-harmony have two aspects or characters, 
 that of timhre or colour-quality, and that of ^iicA, whereof the former may 
 be changed without changing the latter ; thus if we play a chord first on 
 the piano and then on the harmonium, the character depending on pitch 
 
 K 2 
 
244 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 remains and the harmony is thus recognised as identically the same, in 
 spite of a complete change of colour, while an alteration in either direction 
 of any of the pitch-elements at once alters the harmony. And there is 
 a similar difference between musical harmony and visual colour-harmony ; 
 as, though colours are external to one another in space, they have no 
 definite and unalterable relations of position identified with particular 
 harmonies. In a word, the musical chord is unique in having essentially 
 an element of form, however directly sensuous may seem the pleasm-e 
 which it gives. Whether or not this form can truly be said to be present 
 in the impression produced by a single chord on hearers who have never 
 specially marked the existence in such a chord of separate notes and in- 
 tervals, is perhaps hardly worth disputing : I myself should certainly say 
 it was ; that the difference to such hearers between a single note struck 
 and a chord struck is a difference of kind expressible in no other way, and 
 that the sense not only of the compound character of the chord, but of 
 distances or intervals in it, is practically seldom entirely latent in an atten- 
 tive ear.' This becomes clearer when we imagine, one chord struck after 
 and compared with another, provided they differ by more than the very 
 slightest amount of interval : thus the difference between 
 
 fe|= and gj 
 
 is, I find, naturally described by casual hearers as a difference in shape, 
 one such hearer adding that the second chord ' had a comer in it.' But at 
 any rate it is a sufficiently safe statement that the difference between the 
 sound of C and the sound of C E Gr is in some way generically distinct 
 from the difference between the taste of strawberry and the taste of straw- 
 berry vanille and cream ; whether we call it a form or not, the chord is 
 a new individual, not the mere mixture or sum of its constituents, 
 and these reia^ It is in Contrast to phenomena of visual colour, that the presence of 
 
 guish ton"" form eveu in a single chord needs emphasising : since the physical resem- 
 from colours as ^jiances between light- vibrations and sound-vibrations continually induce 
 
 mucn in bar- ° •' 
 
 mony as in an idea of some analogy between the spectrum of colours and the scale of 
 
 melody. 
 
 ' In noting the generic difference between ti.ce, and by the closest attention in the most 
 
 a chord even when not very definitely felt favourable cases, can even the more salient 
 
 as compound, and a single tone which is of them be detected. On the other hand, 
 
 definitely felt as simple, we need not fear the fact that chords are made of parts is 
 
 being confronted with the fact, that a single patent at once to everyone if the notes be 
 
 tone is really also a compound, depending as far enough apart, and can in all cases be 
 
 it does for its timbre on the presence of made patent instantly by playing the notes 
 
 ' harmonics ' of various pitches. For these one after another and then together. The 
 
 harmonics which accompany the fundamental faculty of realising chords as compounds lies 
 
 tone are so merged in the single effect that always as it were close to the surface, and 
 
 not only is special apparatus necessary to a very little attention establishes the habit 
 
 examine them thoroughly, but only by prac- of so realising them unchangeably for life. 
 
POLYPHONY ANi> HARMONY. 245 
 
 tones, and so between combinations of colours and of tones. The delusive- 
 ness of the idea will be sufficiently manifest after our observations on the 
 nature of the scale of pitch in the seventh chapter : ' if we want an analogy 
 to colour-harmonies, we must seek it in the coZott/"-region of sound, in the 
 various combinations and contrasts of timbre presentable by different 
 voices and instruments. 
 
 So far we have been considering a single combination of notes. It § g. Frag- 
 need hardly be said that in musical presentation chords do not occur in "mbinatlon' " 
 this isolated condition ; though, owing to that very multiplicity and rela^ ^ments'^raay" 
 tion of elements which makes of each chord a sort of form, the shortest also be more 
 
 , distinctly satis- 
 
 series oi chords may present a completeness unattainable by an equal factory or im- 
 number of single notes ; and as a chord may be agreeable or disagreeable than fragment- 
 in a way in which a single note cannot, so two or three chords may be ^Jl^^o^sJ 
 definitely right and satisfactory, or definitely wrong and distressing, in a way 
 in which two or three notes cannot. The specially unifying effect of 
 discord and resolution makes the dominant seventh and tonic of an Amen 
 as welcome as a pair of bald consecutive fifths on an accordion is the 
 reverse. We must now, however, pass on to the consideration of longer 
 series, and examine the mode in which harmony enriches melody, and the 
 various relations of the two elements. 
 
 This brings us instantly into the region of form. As long as we are §9. Effect 
 speaking only of single chords and single tones the harmonic superiority accompani- 
 may be argued to be a mere matter of fulness and richness of clang, a sort melody : 
 of colour-beau', y. But the effect of chord-accompaniment on a melody 
 clearly does not just consist in making each sound as it comes fuller and 
 richer,'' immense as is the service which is thus rendered : the harmony, 
 
 ' See also chap. xii. § 3, laat note. set the facts, statnd by Helmholtz, that the 
 * The point of sweetness and richness of chord of the dominant seventh with just in- 
 separate clangs is important in connection tonation is no more discordant than the 
 with the dispute about just and tempered common chord with tempered intonation, 
 intonation. The aspect of harmony which which means that by employing the just 
 would gain by increase of justness in the chord of the seventh we should sacrifice the 
 intonation of intervals is that which, though characteristic effect of the commonest dis- 
 the fact of independent parts (so far as pre- cord and resolution ; and that diminished 
 sent to consciousness) seemed to differen- sevenths, none the less a prime necessity of 
 tiate it from the class of simple sensations music that they are liable to abuse, are al- 
 analogous to colour, appears nevertheless most unbearable with just intonation. But 
 almost purely sensuous ; the aspect of chords in any case the superiority of the just inter- 
 as single individuals each making its own vals is comparatively of little importance to 
 sensuous appeal to the ear. It is true that chords qwd support and definition of melodic 
 just intonation has a certain effect on progression ; even as it is comparatively of 
 chords regarded as a connected series, little importance to melodic progression It- 
 and so on any melodic form they may self, a fact admitted by Helmholtz, and ex- 
 Bupport, through affording a more marked empUfied in the production of ill-sounding 
 distinction of effect between the various chords in a quartett by players whose inter- 
 positions or inversions of the same chord, vals heard melodically in solo-playing are 
 and between major and minor chords ; but never complained of. 
 against this improvement we may certainly Increased beauty of chord-clang is, then^ 
 
246 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 this is some- 
 thing utterly 
 beyond mere 
 enrichment of 
 clang ^ the har- 
 mony support- 
 ing and de- 
 iining the 
 melodic form 
 and Immensely 
 increasing its 
 organic co- 
 herence. 
 
 with its own varied and connected tissue, supports and defines the form, 
 and intensifies the sense of its coherence and the satisfaction in fol- 
 lowing it ; the difference made being really as unique as are melody 
 and harmony themselves, and defying therefore attempts to describe or 
 
 undoubtedly the great object of just intona- 
 tion. To call this beauty sensuous is in no 
 way to deny its desirability : and so far as just 
 intonation can be applied to chords without 
 Injuring their bearing on the connected series, 
 this increased beauty of clang is nothing but 
 an advantage, and any mechanical means for 
 giving keyed instruments the power which 
 voices have of producing it will be warmly 
 welcomed. But the truth remains that 
 Music has become what we now know it 
 through the ease and scope of modulation, 
 due to the use of tempered intonation j that 
 the element in Music which makes it some- 
 thing more than a series of sweet clangs, 
 something more than a mere sop to the ear 
 at the moment of presentation, the whole 
 World of form which exercises the active 
 musical faculty, and stores the memory with 
 undying treasures, has received its astonish- 
 ing modern development on that system. 
 And this fact, that the modern scheme of 
 key-relationship and transition depends on, 
 and supposes tempered intervals, would re- 
 main untouched even if mechanical facilities 
 for rapid enhai'monic change should enable 
 us to play with the maximum of justness in 
 .any key at which we had arrived. The de- 
 sirability of the added beauty so attainable is 
 'disputed by none ; but a protest is needed 
 against the notion that what Beethoven 
 readily dispensed with can be a matter of 
 cardinal importance to those to whom his 
 music speaks unchangingly ; and that such 
 loss as we have sustained in respect of this 
 sensuous feature can be named in the same 
 month or year with our gain through free 
 modulation and the use of ' doubtful ' chords. 
 On this point even Helmholtz seems to 
 give a somewhat uncertain sound. He 
 says, ' We cannot fail to recognise the in- 
 fluence of tempered intonation upon the 
 style of composition. The first effect of 
 this influence was favourable. It allowed 
 composers as well as players to move freely 
 and easily into all keys, and thus opened out 
 a new wealth of modulation. On the other 
 hand, we also cannot fail to recognise that 
 the alteration of intonation compelled com- 
 posers to have recourse to some such wealth 
 of modulation. For when the intonation of 
 
 consonant chords ceased to be perfect, and 
 the differences between their various inver- 
 sions and transpositions were, as a conse- 
 quence, nearly obliterated, it was necessary 
 to use more powerful means, to have recourse 
 to a frequent employment of harsh dis- 
 sonances, and to endeavour by less usual 
 modulations to replace the characteristic 
 expression which the harmonies proper to the 
 key itself had ceased to possess.' He goes 
 on to deplore the modern predominance of 
 dissonant chords, and of perpetual modula- 
 tional change, as threatening to destroy the 
 all-important feeling for tonality (a danger 
 which no reader who followed me through 
 the closing part of the tenth chapter will 
 accuse me of underrating), and argues that 
 tempered intonation has been a blight on 
 vocal writing, adducing the superiority of 
 Beethoven's instrumental to his vocal works. 
 It is worth suggesting that the whole bent of 
 Beethoven's genius was instrumental, and 
 that Schubert and Schumann, who lived no 
 less than he in the atmosphere of tempered 
 intonation, have left us an unequalled legacy 
 of song. But justness of intonation is truly 
 so indispensable to satisfactory part-singing, 
 where the music presents only few and simple 
 modulations, and indeed to any series of 
 tolerably slow chords with sustained notes 
 (to say nothing of the inspiring effect on 
 musical composers of habituation to the 
 sweetness of perfectly true intervals), that 
 every step towards facilitating that condi- 
 tion, compatible with preserving the music we 
 have gcft, is well worth making. I presume 
 the importance of the italicised words would 
 be admitted even by those who, like Helm- 
 holtz's English translator, look forward with 
 a light heart to ' great changes in the con- 
 duct of modulation from the acceptance of 
 just intonation by composers.' 
 
 This being granted, however, there remain 
 several points in the above-quoted view as to 
 the effect of tempered intonation on composi- 
 tion, past and future, which, to say the least, 
 suggest a confusion as to the relative import- 
 ance of ola/ng and of form. What is the 
 sweetness, the ' saturated harmoniousness ' of 
 clang, the pleasure which can only be en- 
 joyed when the sounds are actually in our 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY, 
 
 247 
 
 illustrate it.* This difference is of course due to the greatly increased 
 amount of tone-relationsliip which is introduced into the same length 
 of form, and the marking of various aspects presentable in various 
 conjunctions by one and the same melodic interval. In the key of 
 C, for example, Gr-A is always an interval of a tone at a particular part of 
 the scale ; as such it is capable of appearing in all sorts of melodies ; but 
 the respective parts it plays in them may gain indefinitely in distinction 
 and individuality, and the Ideal Motion at the point, if its occurrence 
 obtains a new choiceness and completeness, if its various appearances are 
 differentiated by other relations. Thus the A might be accompanied by 
 the same chord as the Gr, thus, 
 
 ears, compared with the wealth of form 
 which free modulation made possible ? The 
 new means were really the wings for un- 
 dreamed of flights of invention, without them 
 absolutely impossible ; whereas Helmholtz 
 seems to treat them as a pis alter to which 
 composers were driven in order to produce 
 the stvme effects as were previously attained, 
 by dint of just intonation, in a narrower 
 sphere. But so far as those effects depended 
 on just intervals, what kind of relation could 
 fhey bear — what relation can the very maxi- 
 mum of evanescent sensuous delight ever 
 possibly bear — to the impressions of a great 
 instrumental movement, impressions un- 
 paralleled in power and individuality, and 
 some measure of which all music-lovers can, 
 on sufficient acquaintance, revivify for them- 
 selves, while to many they are as much reali- 
 ties in silence and solitude as in the actual 
 hour of performance 1 So far, I say, as the 
 effect depended on just intervals : justness of 
 interval is of course no bar to beauty of 
 form ; but to suppose that this beauty of form, 
 this essence of the composer's message, can be 
 bound up with perfect justice of interval seems 
 to me like supposing that all sense of visual 
 form would be lost if the outlines were the 
 least bit blurred. Why, essential form can be 
 detected through an amount of dissonance 
 which is torture to the sense, as on a piano 
 grossly out of tune ; to say nothing of the 
 fact that the shades of difference between 
 just and tempered intervals sink into non- 
 existence while the act of invention is going 
 on in the head. That modulation and tran- 
 
 sitional harmonies may be abused is a point 
 I have sufficiently dwelt on, and a thorough 
 training in pure vocal music with just in- 
 tonation might be a very wholesome correc- 
 tive to some modern tendencies ; but surely 
 Beethoven and his great contemporaries and 
 successors have satisfactorily shown that the 
 abuse is not a necessary result of the means 
 through which they worked their wonders. 
 
 ' It is this indescribabUity which excuses 
 the habit of calling the effects of harmony 
 on melody eolow-eSects, as when it is said 
 that 'the same melody is presented with 
 different harmonic colouring ; ' colour being 
 naturally thought of as an element which 
 supplies various modes of enriching the 
 same form. It is useless to dispute over the 
 word, as long as the fact is realised that the 
 effect, like that of the melodic form itself, is 
 a matter of relation and coherence of suc- 
 cessive parts, by the evolution of which the 
 melodic form may be, in all degrees, defined 
 and supported. Two points may, however, 
 be speeially noticed as bringing out the cha- 
 racter of form in the harmonic support of a 
 melody ; first, the exactness and unchange- 
 ableness with which the chord-effect is per- 
 petually recalled with the melody, and often 
 must be recalled, with however various de- 
 grees of vividness, for the melodic effect at 
 all to recur : secondly, the fact that the 
 phenomenon of discord and resolution is 
 markedly alien to the immediate and self- 
 complete nature of mere formless sense- 
 impression. 
 
248: 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 or by a chord of which one note was common to the chord which accom- 
 panied the G, thus, 
 
 S^ 
 
 The right and 
 ■wrong of chord- 
 support is a 
 matter entirely 
 in the domain 
 of the musical 
 faculty. 
 
 There are, it is 
 true, far more 
 definite rules 
 for chord-pro- 
 gression than 
 for note-pro- 
 gression : 
 
 or by a chord all whose notes were different from those of the chord which 
 accompanied the Gr, thus, 
 
 
 or in other ways ; each of which would seem right in its place, and while 
 impressing its own characteristic difference on the interval, would multiply 
 the sense of cogency and rightness in the melodic step by the momentum, 
 so to speak, of its own contributions. That one mode of supporting the 
 melodic motion should seem right and another wrong is a matter for the 
 most part as outside explanation and argument as the motion itself; like 
 that it is a matter for the musical faculty alone to decide ; and as a melody 
 is judged, so its adequate or inadequate harmonisation is judged, in the 
 sense that the latter compared with the former gives an impression of 
 something amiss, by multitudes without a vestige of technical knowledge. 
 It is true there are far more rides as to the progression of chords than 
 of melodic notes. This is partly because, while there is no interval (within 
 ordinary limits of compass) which does not occur as right in its place in 
 melody, many harmonic progressions can be forbidden as invariably and 
 inherently disagreeable. But the chief reason lies in the very nature of 
 the two phenomena. Melody aims at individual beauty, and every suc- 
 cessful melody is a new free form which must be created, not manufactured ; 
 whereas, apart from rhythmic motive and in their merely harmonic aspect, 
 pleasing sequences of chords, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of 
 a thousand, aim at no individual beauty at all, and may be almost me- 
 chanical things. Nor does this lack of distinctive beauty apply merely to 
 students' sequences or the random modulations which are sometimes called 
 ' improvising,' but equally to the most beautiful works if their timeless 
 harmonic basis be presented alone. It is not of course meant that genius 
 cannot appear in the harmonisation of melody ; only that melodies can 
 be quite satisfactorily harmonised without it ; an d even in cases where 
 he melodic motive really needs and would not suggest itself without its 
 tparticular support, or where melody in the narrower sense is absent and 
 the motive consists essentially in the rhythmically arranged chords, the 
 harmonic basis in itself is perpetually such as any one who can string together 
 chords and modulations might have written down. The general rules for 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 249 
 
 smooth harmony, for attaining sufficient freedom and fulness while avoiding but the rules 
 over-rapid changes within too short a space, and so on, may in fact be learnt inadequate S** 
 and applied by any one with an average amount of ear. And a person who 'Jj® ^''fi^te °^ 
 wrote correctly according to the rules, as he would not produce anything musical fa- 
 impressive, like a good melody, so would not produce anything definitely 
 disagreeable and trivial, like a bad one. But no one could harmonise 
 tunes satisfactorily by the mere Ught of the rules. If we take a tune at 
 random we may probably find one or more modes of harmonic support 
 which violate no rule, are smooth and consistent in themselves, and intro- 
 duce no extraneous or preposterous notes, and yet are recognised by an 
 ordinarily good ear as wholly unsuitable — spoil the tune, in fact ; while 
 others seem to enrich it satisfactorily, and one in particular may fill up all 
 the gaps, so to speak, and stand out as pre-eminently right. And all this 
 is perceived by musical instinct alone ; so that the rules are not explanatory 
 even in that most external sense in which conformity to a general law is 
 an explanation of rightness, since they stop far short of discriminating what 
 satisfies from what irritates the ear in the actual cases : we cannot say 
 such and such is the right harmony because it obeys the rules, seeing that 
 what in that place would sound wrong may also obey them. 
 
 Before passing to the more detailed account of the relations of harmony § lo. Exami- 
 to melodic forms, it will be well to consider a phrase which is connected "o^caUed de- 
 with important misconceptions, the dependence of melody on harmony, p^"^"""^ °^ 
 The debt to harmony, the part played by chord-connections in the fixation harmony. 
 of the major and minor scales and in the development of the sense of key, 
 and their prime importance as a means of defining modulation, are well- 
 understood facts which in themselves lie outside our enquiry : the point 
 we have to notice here is that these facts do seem to imply, in a certain 
 sense, the dependence of modern melody on harmony ; while yet, as a 
 matter of experience, cases are frequent where melody appears truly as 
 independent of harmony a^ in the ages before harmony was ever dreamed 
 of. The nature and varieties of the dependence and independence, as 
 Blatters of actual musical experience, will occupy us in the next section : 
 but in its crude form the seeming contradiction may be at once cleared 
 away. ' Dependence on harmony ' may mean two quite different things, 
 and the trap lies in not distinguishing them. It has a true and universal 
 application to the part played by harmony in strengthening generally the 
 sense of melodic relationships, through heightening the feeling for key with 
 all that it involves, a part continued through the whole childhood of every 
 modem European's musical faculty. But the phrase is continually used 
 in a much more special sense, as though it necessarily included specific 
 reference to some set of harmonies (actually present or imagined) in 
 the invention and appreciation of modem melody : and the very fact 
 that such reference does undoubtedly take place in many instances only 
 
250 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HAEMONY. 
 
 § 11. The 
 various re- 
 lations of 
 harmony to 
 melody. 
 
 Cases where 
 the harmony 
 can be readily 
 dispensed with. 
 
 makes it the more necessary to observe that in many instances it does' 
 not. As regards the invention of tunes this may perhaps be for a moment 
 disputed, since most people who make set melodies possess enough 
 musicianship to imagine their accompanying harmonies almost mechani- 
 cally. Still there are plenty of exceptions, and the fact that Eousseau was 
 probably to a great extent one himself does not make his question to 
 Eameau at all less cogent ; ' cette basse fondamentale qui lui a sugg6re 
 son chant, et qui n'est ni dans son entendement, ni dans son organe, ni 
 dans sa m^moire, ou est-elle done ? ' And as regards appreciation of 
 melodies the facts admit of no doubt. Even where tunes have been first 
 heard with harmony (and very often this has not been the case, many a 
 tune passing from mouth to mouth without ever getting or needing an ac- 
 companiment) they are perpetually dwelt on and reproduced in their simple 
 melodic state, without the slightest power or wish to recall the harmony. 
 None the less has that important constituent of the modern musical sense, 
 the keen feeling for tone-relationships, which the hummers and whistlers of 
 such tunes inevitably possess, been formed, however unconsciously to them- 
 selves, under the guiding influence of chord-connections. Thus the prac- 
 tical independence of the particular melody is fully compatible with the 
 influence of harmony as a pre-existent and educating influence, acting 
 unconsciously on the hearer's faculty and conditioning the mode of his 
 perception. 
 
 The various relations of harmony to melody may be conveniently realised 
 by considering four cases : (1) When the melody can stand perfectly well 
 alone, however susceptible of harmonic enrichment ; (2) when the melody 
 is not only generally enriched by harmony, but demands a special harmoni- 
 sation, at least in certain places, to bring out its point and character; (3) 
 when the melodic progression demands a special harmonisation, at least in 
 certain places, under pain of seeming inane or incoherent; (4) when 
 the eS'ect, which in this case ought not perhaps strictly to be called 
 melodic, but which is at any rate distinctly included under Ideal Motion, 
 seems to lie in the chords themselves, rhythmically disposed, and not in a 
 special single set of melodic notes. We might find all these classes ex- 
 emplified within a very short space in a developed movement. Moreover 
 they do not represent precise distinctions, but shade into one another, from 
 the case where a child who has been perfectly content with humming a tune 
 to himself is gratified by hearing it played with chords, to the case where 
 the whole significance of some elaborate instrumental passage depends on 
 the definition of its modulations. 
 
 Under the first head, cases where harmony, though not needed, is more 
 or less desiderated and is felt as an improvement, might be distinguished 
 from cases where its addition would be more or less cumbrous and detri- 
 mental. A tune like the Old Hundredth perhaps sounds noblest in 
 unison. In such a theme as this, from Schubert's octett — 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 251* 
 
 W- 
 
 T^r^. 
 
 m 
 
 ,i=^ 
 
 -^— 
 
 -^■--^ 
 
 
 :^Bi 
 
 ^ 
 
 unison seems perfectly adequate to give its complete character, however 
 delightful be the filling in of the harmonies in the second clause. A good 
 many popular airs, new as well as old, would probably fall under the same 
 category : but in the written music of this harmonic age such cases are 
 naturally a minority, unaccompanied and unison-passages being as a rule 
 short and chiefly used as effective by contrast. 
 
 Even with regard to this first head, however, there are several reasons 
 why the classification must be of an uncertain and provisional kind. The 
 importance of harmony in relation to melody cannot be treated, even in a 
 particular case, as an altogether unchanging fact ; it depends partly on 
 degree of acquaintance. Thus on a first hearing one may quite fail to 
 catch a tune which lacks the advantage of harmonic definition ; and this 
 failure rightly to grasp the connection of the melodic relations is to some 
 extent answerable for a feeling with which many of my readers must be 
 familiar, a certain desire to get under the carpet when a fellow-creature is 
 singing an unknown song, or indulging in vocal reminiscences, quite out 
 in the open without any accompaniment. Yet on due familiarity the 
 strains in question may appear perfectly self-evident. 
 
 Another difficulty of judging how far a melodic form can dispense with 
 harmony lies in the fact that, after becoming familiar with it in its full 
 harmonised presentation, no one can quite decide how far some image of 
 the harmony may not be accompanying the re-presentation of it in its 
 simply melodic aspect. A skilled or practised faculty will indeed summon 
 up such images whether the melody has been actually heard with harmony 
 or not ; and the phenomenon admits of all degrees, from that where the 
 complicated accompaniment of a long melodic progression suggests itself 
 to the musician with irresistible clearness, down to the mere dim recur- 
 
 The effect 
 of the harmony 
 is to some ex- 
 tent a Bhifting 
 and subjective 
 factor. 
 
 It is difficult 
 to say how far 
 the sense. of 
 harmony may 
 not be latent, 
 even where not 
 particularly 
 observed. 
 
252 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 rence of the effect at some single salient point ; as, for instance, at- the 
 final cadence, where some shadow of the invariable dominant and tonic 
 chords probably recurs to many who whistle a tune through with no more 
 conscious thought of harmony than a parrot. Nor is technical knowledge 
 or skill necessary for a much more complete harmonic re-presentation than 
 this last : for we must remember that thousands fully appreciate the 
 effect of harmony on a melody, and would recognise and resent changes in 
 it, who could no more isolate and sing its component notes than fly ; and 
 as the effect is felt so it can be more or less recalled. All music-lovers 
 will testify to the addition which even imperfect re-presentation of 
 harmony may make to the enjoyment of melody in memory ; the imper- 
 fection consisting merely in dimness, not in any sort of wrongness. I may 
 give one instance from my own experience, useful also as an illustration of 
 the impossibility of knowing how far one has got a melody isolated from 
 the support which has once been associated with it. The following passage 
 is from a rataplan chorus in Mr. Cellier's Nell Owynne : 
 
 Allegro vivace, , 
 
 r-^J^-.^- 
 
 m. 
 
 ^ 
 
 W — » W »•- - *-; 
 
 i 
 
 
 iprrp- 
 
 f=P- 
 
 S^ 
 
 fit 
 
 fet 
 
 
 =Sig^: 
 
 :P:fl^: 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 253 
 
 This ran in my head for days without my being able to get exact hold 
 of what underlay the melody. The effect of the melodic progression, with 
 the beautifully free ascents to the A sharp and* B Jiharp in its second 
 division and the perfectly easy subsidence into the original key, could 
 hardly have been realised in the first instance, apart from the complete 
 harmonies ; yet afterwards, in spite of an am^ount of uncertainty as to the 
 harmonies which must have implied that my re-presentation of them was 
 of the faintest, I was deriving keen pleasure from whistling the melodic 
 notes, the special charm, moreover, lying in just that part of the motion 
 which without harmonic assistance presents some difficulty, the launching 
 oneself up and poising accurately on those audacious accidentals. At the 
 further point of transition to the original key, however, I discovered my 
 need of harmonic support by getting melodically lost without it. That en- 
 joyment of a melodic sentence containing so wide an excursion from its key 
 should be even to this degree independent of harmony (so that the case 
 falls rather under the second than the third of the above heads), may be 
 accounted for by the close resemblance in the movement of the second 
 clause to the first, whereby the points of contrast are easily marked. A 
 much simpler instance of the second head is supplied by the theme from 
 Beethoven's trio in D, quoted on p. 167; the opening phrase of which one 
 cannot imagine as entering any one's head without the point given by the 
 chord on the pausing note ; or as being recalled with any real satisfaction 
 without at any rate some revivification of that harmonic effect. Another 
 simple instance may be found in the familiar Leise leise from Der Fr^isckutz: 
 
 
 &c. 
 
 i 
 
 after one hearing of which, the third melodic note carries its diminished 
 seventh with it for the rest of one's life ; and does so even to the least 
 
254 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 instructed lover of the tune, in the sense that if he hears it with that 
 chord changed, he will be conscious of some distinct loss to his pleasure. 
 An instance depending less on a single point may be found in the splendid 
 ' subject' of the movement called V Absence, in Beethoven's sonata Op. 81 : 
 
 Cases where 
 the harmony is 
 more or less 
 indispensable. 
 
 i 
 
 .fc==^ 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 r^^-^-j- 
 
 1 — r 
 
 ^mm^^ 
 
 r-r-^ 
 
 g^^^jy^^ig^^ 
 
 &c. 
 
 ^Tz 
 
 i 
 
 i=;J= 
 
 The upper part of this can be perfectly hummed or thought through melo- 
 dically, and even so is truly impressive ; but no one who had only so 
 heard it could guess at the force of its complete motion, the reiterated 
 separation of the upper and lower parts making here a polyphonic as well 
 as a harmonic effect. 
 
 Instances of the third head, where the harmony, whether heard or 
 remembered, is most strictly and entirely indispensable to the significance 
 or coherence of the music, will naturally be found chiefly in more extended 
 .passages than definite single melodies, in progressions which entail nume- 
 rous or wide excursions beyond the notes of an established key and of 
 which the modulational course needs the most complete definition ; and 
 this might lead us on to the general sense in which all modern prolonga- 
 tions and developments of music beyond the limits of single well-defined 
 forms depend on the harmonic element, as making an extended ground- 
 work for the looser tissue of melodic phrases and responses, and affording 
 the basis of all polyphonic and contrapuntal effects. Here, however, we 
 are considering the more particular relations of harmony to special melodic 
 motions : nor is it hard to find, even in quite simple melodies, instances of 
 points which bring them at any rate upon the borderland between the 
 second and third heads. If any one unfamiliar with the following melody 
 of Lassen's, Mit deineii blauen Augen, will play through the melodic 
 notes, he will probably feel that at the point where an asterisk is placed, 
 the point where the ear naturally expects a climax of some sort, the 
 melodic motion becomes tame and pointless : let him play the chords, and 
 the climax will certainly not disappoint him. The example may also il- 
 lustrate the way in which harmony survives its actual presentation, even 
 in ears whose owners would disclaim the power of truly imagining chords : 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 255. 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 a 
 
 :*=£te 
 
 ^^P 
 
 33 
 
 P 
 
 ^= 
 
 i 
 
 ^-*-T-|^ 
 
 :p=^ 
 
 :&:ff^ 
 
 =»c: 
 
 
 z^=i: 
 
 3i: 
 
 lOaH-^ 
 
 |?J2p- 
 
 ^=r=e±±r±^=^: 
 
 :^=i^ 
 
 i 
 
 ^— 1 — ^- 
 
 
 ^^£^M 
 
 r 
 
 i 
 
 f^ 
 
 i 
 
 s 
 
 s^^jeJeeI^ 
 
 >_^L_^_^ 
 
 -t — I ' "^ 
 
 &c. 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 F=S^ 
 
 Ei 
 
 ■?^- 
 
 ■?='-• 
 
 The fourth of the above heads, where the Ideal Motion seems to lie in 
 the rhythmical series of chords as chords rather than in a single prominent 
 part which the chords accompany, is again difficult to divide off by any 
 hard and fast line ; so ready often is the ear to accept the re-presen- 
 tation of the upper line of notes as an epitome of the whole effect. No 
 better instance of this class of effect could be given than the passage from cases where 
 the overture to Egmont, quoted on p. 208, a perfectly complete and won- Motion resides 
 derfuUy vivid piece of Ideal Motion, but not presenting any detachable ^^^/^^y^},° *^^ 
 melodic part ; nor are chords necessary here merely to explain the transi- micaiiy dis- 
 tion to and from a remote key : the motion throughout is wholly bound ^°^' ' 
 up with them. The same may be said of the simpler and still more 
 magnificent motive of the allegretto in Beethoven's seventh symphony : 
 
256 
 
 FOLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 i 
 
 5z4E 
 
 ^^^m 
 
 ^^^^ffUlff^ff 
 
 i 
 
 s 
 
 ^: 
 
 
 i 
 
 ^=p 
 
 t:=1- 
 
 5 
 
 :SFi=i±i=it 
 
 :i=i= 
 
 ^'-f--^iTr 
 
 ti^^^: 
 
 ;»* 
 
 I^L^ — ' 
 
 ■I^-Pt 
 
 
 ^^3 
 
 :?= 
 
 s*- 
 
 ^"5 
 
 -i: 
 
 ^=^w^s»- 
 
 1 FH- 
 
 g^^trrr' Q'-^' 
 
 S=-^- 
 
 :i^=:ii 
 
 •SP'- 
 
 ^±^ 
 
 ?^-^ 
 
 ="£ 
 
 :^=a 
 
 ^^ 3 
 
 ■J-t.- 
 
 ±z=4:^ 
 
 :^- 
 
 ii 
 
 =3:-t.- 
 
 ?a-: 
 
 
 u2^r 
 
 
 S^ 
 
 ^"^ 
 
 P=F^ 
 
 -4=1- 
 
 :»|3t 
 
 =i^= 
 
 5i§ 
 
 :a|=a|:|; 
 
 
 5 ^ -s^r-||5 
 
 ^ 
 
FOLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 257 
 
 in the latter part of which passage the various lengths of the notes make 
 a distinction among the parts sufficient to constitute a polyphonic element. 
 Another beautiful instance may be found in the funeral march fr'om the 
 sonata Op. 26 ; or again in the following motive from the Eroica symphony : 
 
 ¥31 
 
 ii^itli 
 
 '-9-\ r^- 
 
 ■P4=;: 
 
 - I I I 
 
 W$r^ 
 
 
 - I L_ t: 
 
 
 In this class of Ideal Motion, which is of perpetual occurrence, the factor 
 of rhythm is of course as indispensable and unchangeable as in a purely 
 melodic progression, and the factor of 'pitch is merely presented in a 
 succession of chords or compound units instead of a succession of tones or 
 simple units. To the same head must be referred musical sentences and 
 paragraphs of all degrees of individuality and beauty, from the incompar- 
 able motives just quoted to the often agreeable, often neutral, but for the 
 most part undistinctive and unarresting passages of the rhythmical chord- 
 accompaniments to many vocal melodies. A good instance of a rhythmical 
 string of chords which it seems really delightful to play alone, though they 
 are only meant as accompaniment, is afforded by the two lower lines in the 
 passage from Schumann's quintett quoted on p. 266 : but in all such cases 
 any knowledge of the melody is fatal to finding out what the chords would 
 amount to in its absence. 
 
 Harmony then, so far, has appeared under the following aspects : — as 
 almost universally an invaluable means of enriching melodic form ; as very 
 frequently a necessary means of defining melodic form, and to be 
 considered a vital part of the complete form in so far as the particular 
 point and beauty would disappear, or could never have appeared, in an un- 
 harmonised sequence ; as able, hy metrical arrangement, to give rise to 
 what are in any case coherent chord-form^, and in such cases as the above 
 might fairly be termed chord-mdodies. The principles which have been 
 
 s 
 
258 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 § 12. None 
 of these rela- 
 tions have the 
 slightest con- 
 nection with 
 the false view 
 of the harmony 
 as containing" 
 the germ or 
 essence of the 
 melody, 
 
 or the primary 
 source of effect 
 in modern 
 music. 
 
 best illustrated with quite simple and definite melodies and motives, may 
 be easily combined and applied so as to cover (with certain exceptions to 
 be immediately mentioned) every sort of appearance of the chord-element 
 in music. Those clear and typical cases where it is possible to consider 
 that a melody (in the ordinary narrow sense^ has been harmonised in such 
 and such a way, or where a series of mere chords stands out as sufficiently 
 individual to constitute a ' chord-melody,' are constantly, of course, but 
 portions of developed musical movements, and may be interspersed with 
 all sorts of other portions to which such descriptions would be quite 
 inapplicable. But amid any amount of dispersion or attenuation of the 
 melodic element, from the elaborate evolutions of a ' carrying-out' to mere 
 passage -writing on a harmonic basis, the use of chords may still be referred 
 to the same heads : — enrichment of motions intelligible without them ; 
 participation in motions of which they have, from the first, been the 
 essential and inseparable foundation ; and production on their own account 
 of coherent chord-tissues, exhibiting all degrees of organic vitality. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to point out how entirely the relations we have 
 considered, even when the dependence on harmony has been most entire, 
 differ from that relation which is presumed in the theory that the harmony 
 contains in some way the essence or germ of the melody, and that the 
 melody is evolved from it. "We encountered this idea in the chapter on 
 melodic forms, where we noticed how a kind of opposition was set up by 
 certain writers between rhythmic melody and melody evolved out of 
 ' harmonious relations.' Three undoubted but vaguely apprehended facts — 
 the place of harmony in fostering the sense of tone-relationship and of the 
 modem scales, the place of harmony as the branch in which intervals and 
 their relations are chiefly studied (due of course simply to the possibility 
 in its case of a tolerably complete body of applicable rules), and the actual 
 omnipresence of harmony in modern music — have contributed to a not 
 uncommon notion that harmony is at any rate the most fundamental if 
 not the sole originating source of impressive musical effects in our age ; a 
 misconception far more disastrous in its results than the old idea of 
 phantom harmonies and basses as an essential ingredient of melody, to 
 which Helmholtz gave the coup de grace. A single example is really 
 enough to show the true state of the case ; the principle being identical 
 for any simple single form and for the most complex conjunctions of the 
 melodic and harmonic elements. Let any one play these chords : 
 
 i 
 
 a 
 
 ^ip^^^^Pl 
 
 a perfectly smooth and harmless progression, such as might be paralleled 
 from thousands of books of exercises written during the first month's study 
 
POLYPHOKY AND HARMONY. 
 
 259 
 
 of harmony. Now compare the opening ' subject ' of Beethoven's move- 
 ment called Le Retour, of which the above is the harmonic basis : 
 
 0t. .,«- 
 
 ^=l^^#f^^=^ 
 
 i 
 
 iz**: 
 
 '-^- 
 
 5-E*?EEEE 
 
 5 
 
 ^^^^^^ 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 rli 
 
 iE:3E 
 
 -^-p- 
 
 ^ 
 
 -^-ftsft^^P; 
 
 3-E^^^ 
 
 it 
 4r_ 
 
 :? 
 
 iji3*i: 
 
 
 ^t 
 
 mi -»w)*- J 
 
 cres. 
 
 &c. 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^fe 
 
 In what conceivable way can the harmony here be considered to contain 
 the source, or germ, or essence of the melody ? A germ developes into one 
 thing and one thing only ; but a single harmonic progression of this sort 
 might serve as a support for a score of perfectly distinct melodies, good 
 and bad. Call it essential to all of them, if you will; they may be 
 melodies which really need the support and definition of harmony ; but 
 how can the same harmony be the essence of all of them ? I have chosen 
 this melody purposely because it keeps quite close to the notes of the 
 chords, and is little more than the chords spread out in arpeggio, so that 
 if ever a tune sprang straight out of ' harmonious relations,' without in- 
 dependent melodic excursions, this does ; yet how much did the ' har- 
 monious relations ' come to, till seized as material and pressed into the 
 service of melodic form ? Numbers of melodies, again, admit of several 
 modes of satisfactory harmonisation ; and among them are naturally in- 
 cluded many of those which are appreciable apart from any harmonisation 
 at all, and which thus present what Schumann and many others have held 
 to be a marked characteristic of the highest class. In such instances the 
 
 s 2 
 
260 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY, 
 
 The vital dif- 
 ference be- 
 tween mere 
 lijivmonic pro- 
 ijression and 
 the Ideal 
 Motion, 
 
 The phrase 
 harmonic out- 
 line, though 
 perhaps un- 
 avoidable, is 
 misleading. 
 
 absurdity of the derivation-theory would be the converse of the previous 
 one : instead of different forms evolved from a single embryo, we should 
 have different embryos evolving a single form. 
 
 The case can really be summed up in a single sentence, which is but a 
 restatement of a point in the last section. Harmonies, which are as 
 wholly and restrictedly pitch-elements as single notes, are as unable as 
 they to make up striking and individual sequences, apart from the factor 
 of definite rhythin. Harmonic progression, as such, knows nothing of 
 rhythm, while Ideal Motion, in its arresting and possessing aspects, has 
 rhythm as one of its two essential constituents ; whence it follows that the 
 harmonic element, even where most indispensable, can never be more than 
 a single factor in such Ideal Motions ; that it in no way epitomises or 
 holds in embryo the complete forms, or evolves them as phases or manifes- 
 tations of itself; and that therefore the application to it of expressions like 
 gevTri or vital principle, or whatever other phrase or metaphor be adopted 
 to express such essential priority of nature, can never be anything but 
 misleading.' 
 
 Nor can we account as much more fortunate the phrase harmonic 
 outline, specially often used in respect of long pieces. For outlines in 
 
 ' This is equally true on a general view of 
 the phenomena, and in relation to the inven- 
 tive springs of a particular composer at a 
 particular instant. Cases where a melody has 
 had its start in a chord-fragment might no 
 doubt be found, though very far less frequent 
 than the case of direct rhythmic suggestion 
 exemplified in the story of the hammer and 
 Beethoven's violin concerto : the difference 
 being that rhythm by its very nature is prone 
 to run in the head, often in a most monoton- 
 ous and boring way, and the melodic invention 
 may spontaneously begin to work along the 
 given line ; while a mere harmonic fragment 
 has hardly enough individual force to run in 
 the head alone j and any chord-series which 
 has that amount of vitality will be found to 
 
 have fallen into some sort of rhythm, thus 
 owing its chance of becoming a true germ for 
 further melodic development to the super- 
 vention of the essential formative element 
 which it has in no way originated. And the 
 same remark really applies to the case of a 
 fragment which might be at first regarded 
 simply in its harmonic aspect — till melodic 
 motion begins, till the chords begin to be 
 thought of in relation to some sort of 
 rhythm, it would be absurd to say that even 
 the embryonic life of the future form had com- 
 menced. By way of example, let us suppose, 
 what is most unlikely, that in the composi- 
 tion of the opening theme of the overture to 
 Tann/tauser, the chords 
 
 m 
 
 ■=i- 
 
 m 
 
 l^E 
 
 It 
 
 =1=:: 
 
 a 
 
 suggested themselves first as a purely har- 
 monic progression ; but these chords are no 
 more than anybody who put his hands on the 
 piano in a moment of abstraction might natu- 
 rally strike : the origin of the melodic form 
 would be after, not in, the chords, its germ 
 would be created, not derived, by the accen- 
 tuation of the first and third chords, simul- 
 
 taneously with which an E would probably 
 flash to the top of the first. Again, if we 
 made the still wilder supposition with regard 
 to the tune of Lassen's, quoted on p, 255, that 
 the harmony of the marked transition was 
 the starting-point of the whole, still in that 
 mere point, in the simple 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 261 
 
 the visual region are generally conceived as giving some considerable 
 idea of the distinctive and essential form. But the harmonic ' outline ' of 
 an elaborate movement could be written in a string of rhythmless chords, 
 which, in the case of many most beautiful and original movements, might 
 contain not a trace of anything beyond the power of hundreds and thousands 
 of exercise-writers to concoct ; while so far as any rare and extraordinary 
 feature was there presented, it would be something which did not occur 
 to the composer, and will not impress us, as mere abstract harmony, but 
 in indissoluble connection with the Ideal Motions into which it enters. 
 
 The words m its arresting and possessing aspects, a few lines above, § 13. The 
 were used advisedly ; and it is in this connection that it will perhaps be ^^^maive'^ 
 best to consider the opposite case of music in which true strictness of H^ony in 
 rhythm is absent. The statement in the seventh chapter that, while no relation to 
 
 , ^ comparative 
 
 series of single notes could present a coherent series without the rhythmic laxity of 
 factor, harmony possessed a certain independent binding power, will at our structure, 
 present point appear plainer. Both the amount of binding and formative 
 power in the harmony, and the amount of departure from strictness in 
 the rhythm, admit of most various degrees. Rhythm may be perceptible 
 without being precise, and in the absence of compact metrical sections : 
 the overlapping of part by part, for instance, so common in the music 
 preceding the modern era, which precluded division into definite lengths, 
 was quite compatible with rhythmic motion in the individual phrases and 
 rhythmic balance in their adjustment. Thus some measure of the 
 rhythmic element is present in compositions of Palestrina, which are very 
 commonly called unrhythmical, though often certainly it is sufficiently 
 relaxed for these works to afiford the most notable examples of what har- 
 monic progression and polyphonic variety can effect between them. But 
 however enchanting to the ear be Palestrina's harmonic tissues, there are The music of 
 
 Palestvina. 
 
 many of them which it would be absurd to represent as arresting the 
 attention and haunting the inward ear like the more definite and closely 
 organic forms of later composers. So far as any one fails to perceive in 
 them some degree of connected rhythmic motion, so far as alterations in their 
 time-relations would pass unresented by him, if not unnoticed, so far will they 
 fail to haunt him save as the vague memory of certain minutes filled with a 
 rich stream of exquisite sound. Acquaintance and attention may often bring 
 
 there is no invention, no birth of anything, all to use. But let the six-eight rhythm begin 
 
 any more than in the strokes of the hammer to swing through the first chord and alight 
 
 heard by Beethoven ; such a progression is with an accent on the second, and the Ideal 
 
 really a piece of musical material ready for Motion is started. 
 
262 POLYPHONY AND . HARMONY. 
 
 out a greatly increased measure of definite melodic motion in the parts, 
 and reveal an individuality of beauty in many of the harmonic progres- 
 sions themselves : but still the element of appeal to the sense as sense, 
 to the ear as an organ for transient and indeterminate though exquisite 
 sensations, will remain a large one. Such strains were for special occasions 
 rather than daily companionship ; they were meant to be heard in their 
 place, sung by beautiful voices, and their effects, depending thus greatly 
 on colour-beauty, can be only faintly enjoyed in silent re-presentation. 
 How essentially their life was, and is still, bound up so to speak with the 
 actual moments of their presentation, is even indicated by a point which 
 has been regarded with special admiration — the delicacy of the feeling for 
 harmonic clang which they reveal, and the prominence in them of chord- 
 effects depending on the utmost purity of intonation. They were exactly 
 calculated to excite at the proper moment the general emotional suscep- 
 tibility appropriate to religious service ; and to say that they do not in 
 general present sufficiently distinctive forms to be utterly possessing, to 
 survive individually in all varieties of lengths and fragments in the 
 musical memory of hundreds of thousands, is merely to say that they are 
 not what it was impossible they should be and what they did not aim at 
 being. 
 Harmonic There are other harmonic progressions, very different from the rich 
 
 organic liind. tissues of Palestrina, which in various degrees lack strictness of rhj^hm. 
 Such are the chord-supports of recitative, which will be better considered 
 later, in connection with Song. We may, however, notice here the sort 
 and the amount of laxness which such a simple chord-series, free from 
 polyphonic variety and enrichment, may present. We have seen that a 
 pair of chords, partly by the independent fulness and agreeableness of 
 each of them as compared with a single tone, partly by the number of 
 their tone-relationships to one another, can give a satisfaction which is 
 perfectly impossible to a pair of tones ; and a longer series may in a similar 
 way present the sort of coherence which comes not from the perception 
 of the whole as organic throughout, but from a sense of pleasantness 
 in each chord as it appears in connection and contrast with its few more 
 immediate neighbours. Examples ad libitum might be given by any one 
 who possesses the trick of stringing chords together on the piano. If the 
 ordinary productions of that order could be thought of as having any 
 vital unity, it would only be in the lowest invertebrate sense that its parts do 
 just present themselves naturally one after another ; but their combination 
 utterly fails to satisfy the test of wide interdependence of effect and percep- 
 tion of each point as in necessary relation to other and distant points of 
 an extended form. This is the extreme case. Such series may of course 
 vary greatly in harmonic pointy from aimless fragments linked together 
 by diminished sevenths to a really fine progression. The absence of 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 263 
 
 rhythm, again, is, as before, a matter of degree. That element may suddenly 
 appear and bring a certain number of consecutive harmonies into a sort 
 of form ; melodic phrases and passages may likewise be interspersed, but 
 nothing which is rhythmic or melodic by fits and starts can make a 
 coherent whole. We shall encounter mongrel series of this kind, decked 
 out with instrumental ornaments, when we come to discuss a certain class 
 of modern recitative, where a string of formless vocal notes is supported 
 by them. The Wagnerian theory of derivation of melody from harmony, 
 may seem in such cases rather more applicable, since the vocal notes may 
 naturally be said to be derived from the only thing which seems at all to 
 account for their going one way more than another ; but then, unfortu- 
 nately, so far as they lack rhythm, they lack one of the two factors neces- 
 sary to constitute them melody. 
 
 To return to the relations of harmony to melody proper : one often § 14- it is 
 
 , , . . , impossible to 
 
 encounters expressions which, without implying the derivation theory, find a criterion 
 assume nevertheless a more general dependence of good melody on certain n"eifdy in cou- 
 points in the accompanying harmonies than experience wiU at all warrant. ^^j'^^^l"y^ "^ 
 On the other hand it is often said that the best melodies are those which 
 are apprehensible apart from harmony, a view which certainly needs 
 limitation. For the characteristic is of course not distinctive, since it is 
 found in no end of bad and vulgar melodies ; the more distinctive sign 
 would perhaps be that the good melody, though it can dispense with har- 
 mony, will yet, if it is susceptible of harmonisation, gain most from it ; beauty 
 being there, we get new delight from emphasising and enriching it, while 
 harmony cannot make an insignificant tune beautiful. But apart from this, 
 though the number of strong and beautiful tunes to which the remark 
 appHes is legion, it still seems too general ; in face of those other melodies either in tiie 
 of the highest class to which the definition at any rate of a chord or two nlXd/todis- 
 here and there is more or less indispensable. The statement would be garmonii'' 
 safer in the converse form, that the tunes which sacrifice stability of key support, 
 to a superfluity of restless and cloying transitions, and so demand per- 
 petual harmonic explanation, have their inferiority stamped thereby. 
 
 Another frequent characteristic of good melody, which is still less capa- or in special 
 
 ^ . . ^ 1 1 1 J • features of tlie 
 
 ble of being elevated into a criterion, is a free and more or less melodic harmony wiien 
 bass. This is just one of the cases where the presence of a thing is P"'^°'- 
 noticed, and not its absence : even three or four notes of melodic bass 
 in independent or ' contrary ' motion will arrest attention, and one feels 
 inclined to attribute the merits of the tune to this noticeable element. 
 The merits of that particular melody of course may not be abstractable 
 from that particular supporting and blending movement, but hundreds of 
 other beautiful melodies present no parallel feature. What are we to say 
 of that wonderful Forelh, with its simple alternations of tonic and domi- 
 nant, such as might support the feeblest drivel of a theatre-hack ? It is 
 
264 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 worth noticing, moreover, that these two criteria tend to be mutually 
 destructive, since a melody to whose effect the bass very appreciably con- 
 tributes ia to that extent not independent of harmony. 
 
 Similar considerations apply to particular single points of chord-sup- 
 port, where the chords are often held accountable for the beauty which 
 may seem to culminate at their occurrence. Thus when listening to a 
 song, people will say at a particular place, ' What a beautiful chord,' or 
 ' What a beautiful change of harmony ; ' allowable expressions enough, pro- 
 vided those who use them realise that what is really beautiful is the form 
 to which the chords at that point contribute, and that precisely the same 
 chord-progression might occur in a melody they did not care about, with- 
 out being admired or perhaps even noticed. The idea of the harmony as 
 having an independent beauty with which it illuminates and transfigures 
 the melody (an idea very common among those who have never themselves 
 harmonised melodies, and to whom harmony appears as an endless store of 
 magical effects capable of being turned on almost anywhere at a moment's 
 notice) is really an inversion of the truth ; for the melody being new and 
 the chords old, we must say, if anything, that the melody transfigures the 
 chords ; and indeed nothing in Music is more striking than the power of 
 a good melody to make a simple chord or juxtaposition of chords seem 
 utterly new.' 
 
 ' Almost equally noticeable is one's inabi- 
 lity to derive pleasure from an effect which 
 depends on some such harmonic feature as I 
 have been describing, if the melodic part in 
 some way annoys one. The prayer in Mosi in 
 
 Egitto, with the modulation into B flat at the 
 conclusion of the first part, and the subsequent 
 repetition in the major, is an instance in 
 point as far as I am concerned ; which I do not 
 regard as its fault, but as my misfortune. 
 
 NoDody will deny the striking quality of this 
 tune, or quarrel with De Stendhal's account 
 of its sending women into fits. Nevertheless 
 to my ears it has such a ring of coarseness 
 and pretension as to preclude any sense of 
 pleasure in it : consequently all I can per- 
 sonally feel in the vaunted resumption of the 
 strain in the major key, is how fine it would 
 
 be if the strain itself were finer ; and the 
 effect of the transition to B flat merely seems 
 trying by its indisputable cleverness to extort 
 admiration which — the melody being to me 
 what it is and this being only a point in the 
 melody — I cannot give. It is worth noticing 
 that the same transition to the harmony of B 
 flat (though with different positions of ihe 
 
POLYPUONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 265 
 
 Harmonic accompaniment perpetually assumes the shape of a ' figure,' § 15. a 
 that is, the extension of the constituent parts of the chords into a certain fScedly" 
 rhythmical form, sufficiently often repeated for its continuance to be a separation of 
 
 ,.,,_" ^ the harmonic 
 
 noticeable leature.' The groups may naturally take many varieties of noiesj 
 
 rhythmic shape ; 
 presentation of 
 
 —I ^J- 
 
 an instance of the very simplest kind would be the 
 
 w 
 
 .&c as 
 
 i 
 
 E 
 
 «:^-=U 
 
 mm^ 
 
 W\i&i can be done by such a figure, presented in the very simplest 
 rhythmic form, may be seen in the irresistible swing of the passage from 
 the Pastoral sonata quoted on p. 169. An example of a different kind, or by distinct 
 where the harmonies are not ' broken ' or presented in successive parts, groups"? 
 
 chorda. 
 
 chords) constitutes the remarkable feature 
 in Lassen's Mit deiTien bla/uen Atigen^ as 
 quoted above, where, however, its effect is so 
 different that one seems to recognise the 
 sameness only as a curious and irrelevant 
 fact. 
 
 ' The characteristic of a ' figure ' is this 
 
 repetition of a group of a certain shape : the 
 groups are not in any way confined to the 
 notes of a chord, and by the interspersion of 
 other notes may approximate more and more 
 to a true melodic character ; through a stage 
 like that exemplified in Schumann's Traumos- 
 tvirrcn — 
 
 '^^^^^^m 
 
 ^■m 
 
 
 
 where an outline of the melody is given by complete effect — to such a case as the second 
 the first notes of each group, however motive of Chopin's waltz in C sharp minor — 
 necessary be the notes of the ' figure ' to the 
 
 where every note is definitely melodic. ' figures ' are naturally more confined to the 
 When used as hairmonic accompaniment, notes of the chords.. 
 
266 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 but where the regular appearance of the chords in distinct and similar 
 rhythmic groups is essentially a ' figure ' effect, may be found in the 
 accompaniment to the beautiful motive in the first movement of Schu- 
 mann's quintett : 
 
 1^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 -ft=^W- 
 
 --r=-t^ 
 
 S 
 
 ^EE| 
 
 =f^l 
 
 riT=*: 
 
 W^ 
 
 - I 1: 
 
 ;£^E^E 
 
 er 
 
 ijr^r^ — -^-^-^-4- 
 
 l:3E3=^^; 
 
 « s 
 
 r 
 
 ^^-EEt 
 
 ■^r 
 
 :^=|: 
 
 i=i-fL-i: 
 
 SE£=s=::zS'-i-z=P::z:S= 
 
 tl 
 
 :n=^ 
 
 ±=^-m- 
 
 rp=itzi5)z 
 
 ^1-t 
 
 ^ 
 
 :p=e-Sp: 
 
 -pq=g= 
 
 - I — I- 
 
 i-t4=t 
 
 ^; 
 
 — p— zt: 
 
 ^ 
 
 =1=1= 
 
 =il=a==--3:: 
 
 -w- -*- 
 
 »^ >^ i^ 
 
 W: ^ 
 
 m^^ 
 
 -W>—Wl P *--T^- 
 
 jzrnl^^zz 
 
 F — a*— >-»'— »i — P — »- 
 
 ;ft^= 
 
 1" 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 ■ ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 =^- 
 
 
 
 -tr- 
 
 
 =F= 
 
 ^ r 
 
 —rr: 
 
 
 
 
 -—s^ 
 
 
 ^'-^^— 
 
 
 
 -i — 
 
 — 1 — 1 
 
 p=S- 
 
 zftz 
 
 -r-ff^?=- 
 
 
 =.*~r" 
 
 "" 
 
 F »— S - 
 
 S-: 
 
 ?;h^- 
 
 — 1 
 
 — 1 
 -*- 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 r.:pz 
 1 
 
 _E.JL^: 
 
 ■ • 
 
 » f 
 
 c 
 
 f^^^-^- 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 "^ 
 
 — 1 — 
 
 -*- 
 
 
 
 t- ■' 
 
 :=e= 
 
 =:p-+- 
 t- 
 
 1 
 
 ^-\ — r 
 
 — » 
 
 — 1 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 267. 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^:' -^ 
 
 ■--sL- 
 
 &c. 
 
 ^E 
 
 IJ3I 
 
 i 
 
 =^l*-«— p- 
 
 i 
 
 3 
 
 ^ii=:p: 
 
 :^=S^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 3^ 
 
 ita 
 
 @ 
 
 trfe 
 
 fei=t«=^ 
 
 ?^ 
 
 'Mr 
 
 fcte=e; 
 
 ?^ 
 
 -^»^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 &c. 
 
 r r 
 
 -•- r -,•- 
 
 These two cases are types of an immense number of accompaniments : 
 but of course the very nature of an accompaniment implies a second line 
 of sounds, whether it presents any noticeable feature of figure or not. 
 
 The principle here exemplified is in fact what, by an extension of the 
 term beyond its technical application, may be called the broad principle of 
 polyphony, the delight in tracing two (or more) distinct lines of sound agree- 
 ing amid their difference. But there is nothing to confine the application of 
 this principle, in a case of ' figure,' to a melodic part supported by an 
 accompaniment of ' broken chords ; ' the supporting ' figure ' itself may 
 assume a melodic aspect, while the other melodic part (which may be too 
 fragmentary to have been presented alone or with a more neutral chord- 
 accompaniment) mingles its contrasted stream. A magnificent example 
 of such fusion of a melodic figure with another melodic or harmonic 
 motive may be foimd in the finale of the Appassionata sonata : 
 
 This is really 
 an application 
 of the broad 
 principle of 
 polyphony ; 
 which may be 
 exemplified in 
 other ways 
 besides figure. 
 
268 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 W^^ ; ^^ 
 
 --w:r=-0 
 
 ■w--e:^=m 
 
 ^^. 
 
 i^=ff^ 
 
 i=^±: 
 
 =p=^r?^ 
 
 ^=^t 
 
 ^^- 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^: 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 3^^ 
 
 -5 
 
 ^S 
 
 --f=m=^j^J^ 
 
 ipl^ 
 
 --r^^rpi 
 
 :g=j^gr^-z ^rr:^ - 
 
 r|r^: 
 
 -^ttf' 
 
 it: 
 
 :b±£b 
 
 :b=E=i=t 
 
 zb 
 
 Efe^^ 
 
 M 
 
 S^E§^ 
 
 zg^-g 
 
 5Z^i:«!!iI 
 
 EiE 
 
 ^/' 
 
 */' 
 
 ^fe* 
 
 ^^^-=S^ 
 
 -' — ' ' ==^ "^ I III I iiiiii .ill I, 1 1 F— 
 
 j^B 
 
 sbads 
 
 ibi^Eb 
 
 i 
 
 ^^ 
 
 M 
 
 g^r 
 
 -^ 
 
 »f 
 
 -b^ -I I I I k__i^ E 
 
 
 ^-^- 
 
 .tsStS^t^: 
 
 &0. 
 
 ^^1 
 
 ^= 
 
 -±^E^-^-=t. 
 
 # 
 
 :r 
 
 -=r- 
 
 -^r 
 
 9 
 
 Another good example is Chopin's prelude beginning as follows : 
 
 Jr 
 
 ^ 
 
 2 
 
 "^ 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 fct: 
 
 269 
 
 i 
 
 3Z&: 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 I 
 
 :3=^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 y-^^pt 
 
 ^P^- 
 
 ^'■^m-^^- 
 
 />»4-:-g ;»-P^^ — H— 1 — p-i — te'^t-i — P-i— f— » 
 
 =?fT 
 
 
 ( 
 
 i^^-^ 
 
 
 fe 
 
 15 
 
 5 
 
 
 ^^^.-P 
 
 .I^T-I*. 
 
 Pft 
 
 &c. 
 
 i:*-P?«^^PP^-^:p 
 
 -+-m~ 
 
 — ^^ 
 
 The same principle of two distinct lines of sound agreeing amid their 
 difference has various other particular applications which deserve remark, 
 apart from its general application to part-writing. I may mention as 
 one salient example the use of ' pedal,' that is, of a single note, always 
 one of the most fundamental in the key, prolonged or repeated to such an 
 extent that its persistence becomes a noticeable feature, and often enables 
 it to be carried through harmonies in which it has no natural part, and 
 to justify the passing conflict to the ear.' 
 
 ' Under the same broad principle may be and of combination of parts. Such, for in- 
 reckoned all special cases of accompaniment stance, is the use of ' syncopation,' the oc- 
 
270 
 
 TOLYPHONY A XI) HARMONY. 
 
 % IG. An- 
 other rt lation 
 of harmony to 
 melody is as a 
 background 
 ratlier than a 
 dis.iiict line of 
 support. 
 
 One further mode of relation between harmony and melody may be 
 found in the class of cases, almost wholly orchestral, where the harmony 
 has the effect rather of a background of continuous and slowly changing 
 sound, on which melodic phrases are presented, than of a distinctly marked 
 line of support, rhythmical or unrhythmical ; though the difference after 
 all is only of degree, since where a melodic phrase appears on this back- 
 ground the chords necessarily have their proper relations to it. This 
 class of effect very soon cloys, and often owes its character more to the 
 beauty and mystery of instrumental colouring than to anything particular 
 in the actual harmonic progression ; but such spreading orchestral mur- 
 murs may give a peculiar charm to the entrance of a new contrasting 
 voice, where, for instance, some conspicuous solo-instrument presents a 
 melodic passage in marked relief against them. 
 
 § 17. Par- We pass now to a quite new topic, the peculiarities, namely, of par- 
 
 The Ji.stinction ticular chords ; and especially the great distinction between major and 
 between^maior ^'"^or. At the Opening of OUT discussion of harmony we noticed the 
 and minor. general modc in which a sound-harmony differs from a combination of 
 
 tastes or colours. This feature of major and minor marks a special and 
 
 equally striking difference. If the triad 
 
 HelmhoHz's 
 explanation; 
 the slight 
 obscurity of 
 clang in minor 
 chords : 
 
 i 
 
 wm 
 
 be struck after the triad 
 
 m 
 
 no one with any ear or any power of describing his sensations will describe 
 the first chord otherwise than as melancholy : ' and that single word sums 
 up one of the most puzzling facts in the whole subject of Music. 
 
 The account of the phenomenon given by Helmholtz presents very 
 decided difficulties. He attributes the veiled or sad effect of a minor 
 chord to certain notes foreign to the chord which physical reasonings 
 
 currence of one motive on the unaccented 
 beats of the bars, while the sense of the 
 accented beats is kept up by other parts 
 or by an accompaniment. A very pretty 
 effect of this kind may often be heard in 
 waltzes, where the melodic notes occur alter- 
 nately on the first and third, and on the 
 second, beats of bars, so that practically a, 
 melody in f time swings through an accom- 
 paniment in f time. Amateurs will recall 
 the magnificent instance of the kind in 
 Schumann's pianoforte concerto in A minor. 
 The various other ways of individualising 
 
 simultaneous parts by special rhythmic dif- 
 ferences, as in combining double time with 
 triple, fall naturally under the same head. 
 
 ' I may warn the untechnical reader to 
 distinguish between major and minor full 
 chords or triads, consisting of a note with 
 its third and fifth, and intervals containing 
 only tivo notes, to which the names major 
 and minor are also unfortunately applied. 
 For instance, the major triad of C contains a 
 ' minor ' interval, E-G, and the minor triad 
 of C contains a ' major ' interval, E flat-G. 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 271 
 
 prove to accompany it and which a skilled ear can in favourable circum- 
 stances distinguish. ' The foreign element thus introduced,' he says, ' is 
 not sufficiently distmct to destroy the harmony, but it is enough to give 
 a mysterious obscvire effect to the musical character and meaning of these 
 chords, an effect for which the hearer is unable to account, because the 
 weak combinational tones on which it depends are concealed by other 
 louder tones, and are audible only to a practised ear.' 
 
 But what is the direct effect of these foreign notes? Simply to and the 
 add a slight element of dissonance. Now degrees of dissonance are wWch'th^f, ex- 
 due to degrees of a certain kind of nervous disturbance ; and as on pianat'on 
 
 ,, 1 . , , , . T presents. 
 
 the physical and physiological side there is one gradual scale of 
 degrees for this disturbance, so on the subjective side there is one 
 gradual (though not absolutely parallel) scale of simple sensation- 
 qualities, from the agreeableness recognised when the disturbance 
 does not exceed a certain degree to the disagreeableness recognised when 
 it reaches an extreme degree. There is, however, nothing unreason- 
 able in saying that at certain points on the subjective scale other special 
 sensation-qualities, beyond agreeableness or disagreeableness, may present 
 themselves ; and obscurity may be one of these : but the theory that a 
 sense of obscurity, caused by a certain slight amount of dissonance, ac- 
 counts for a sense of melancholy, brings us at once face to face with a 
 difficulty. For the same slight degree of dissonance as exists in the 
 minor triad may be made to supervene on a Tnajor triad, by adding to it 
 a certain extremely faint amount of discordant elements : it would seem 
 then that this major triad thus slightly dimmed or confused ought to 
 sound melancholy ; but it does not in the least. So that instead of an 
 explanation, we merely have the old problem in another shape : why 
 should it be in the case of the minor chord alone, that the obscurity pro- 
 duced by a certain slight amount of dissonance is felt as melancholy ? 
 Dissonance, as Helmholtz has himself taught us, is the result of a par- 
 ticular mode of nervous disturbance ; a certain amount of this disturbance 
 sets up equal obscurities in two chord-sensations ; where does one of these 
 obscurities obtain a monopoly of stirring up the psychological connection 
 between obscurity and sadness ? 
 
 Nor can I think that the above theory would be satisfactory even 
 apart from the difficulty I have suggested. Let us treat that difficulty as 
 non-existent, and imagine the melancholy character which the minor 
 triad presents to be the constant result of a definite slight amount of 
 disturbance of consonance. But in the immense majority of cases where 
 the melancholy effect is felt, the disturbance does not reach consciousness 
 as disturbance at all, any more than the ' beats ' of which a rapid succes- 
 sion produces harsh discord reach consciousness as ' beats.' This is prac- 
 tically admitted by Helmholtz, when he says, ' Modern harmonists are 
 
272 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 Susgeslion of 
 another ex- 
 plana ion in 
 tlie cliaracter 
 of the charac- 
 teristic notes 
 of the major 
 and minor 
 scale. 
 
 unwilling to acknowledge that the minor triad is less consonant than the 
 
 major. They have probably made all their experiments with tempered 
 
 instruments, on which, indeed, this distinction may perhaps be allowed 
 
 to be a little doabtful. But on justly toned instruments, and with a 
 
 moderately piercing quality of tone, the difference is very striking and 
 
 cannot be denied.' Granted : but since Helmholtz can hardly mean to 
 
 deny that the melancholy effect of a minor triad, as compared with a 
 
 major, can be perceived on a tempered instrument, what becomes of the 
 
 theory ? How can the sense of melancholy essentially depend on the 
 
 sense of disturbance and obscurity, if it is present where that is absent ? 
 
 For I will undertake to say that the melancholy effect will be perfectly 
 
 well perceived by ninety per cent, of the children of any national school, 
 
 when the two chords are struck one after the other on an ordinary piano. 
 
 I have just tried the experiment successfully on a child of nine, with a 
 
 piano where the chords were not only tempered but very distinctly out of 
 
 tune into the bargain ; which would render it practically impossible to 
 
 differentiate the two consonances by the contrast in -their respective 
 
 amounts of disturbance. A single instance is really enough to prove the 
 
 point ; but as a matter of fact it is probable that to most ears a minor 
 
 triad with its melancholy tinge is, as generally presented, a perfectly pure 
 
 and unclouded sound.' This argument becomes still stronger if we remark 
 
 how easily and completely we recall the contrasted major and minor triads 
 
 in memory, and certainly should be able to do so if our only acquaintance 
 
 with them had been through a piano. Nor can I feel, even taking the 
 
 case most favourable to the theory under review, the case where a sensitive 
 
 ear does actually and clearly perceive the disturbances as obscuring the 
 
 consonance, that we have got a satisfactory explanation of the very decided 
 
 impression of sadness ; the psychological passage from obscurity to pathos 
 
 being very far from certain and self-evident. 
 
 A new and quite different sort of difficulty presents itself in certain 
 
 considerations which, though they concern melodic features, were best 
 
 deferred till the harmonic problem was before us. The features in question 
 
 are those of the chxiracteristio notes of the minor scale as compared with 
 
 the corresponding ones of the major : and their examination may possibly 
 
 suggest another explanation of the remarkable character of the minor 
 
 triad. We have sufficiently seen the impossibility of penetrating the 
 
 ' I need hardly point out what a totally For the unpleasant jar of discord is a simple 
 false analogy would be involved in the argu- 
 ment that as in discord we get a sense of 
 unpleasant jar from disturbances which we 
 do not perceive as such, but as a single un- 
 analysed sensation, so in the minor triad we 
 might get an impression of melaneholy from 
 disturbances which we do not perceive as 
 such, but as a, single unanalysed sensation. 
 
 sensation, the result of nervous processes 
 whose objective characteristics (intermit- 
 tence in this case) are not copied in the sen- 
 sation or reproduced as such in consciousness, 
 while melancholy is a recherche mental 
 state, to which disturbances and obscurities 
 would present no relation unless actually ex- 
 istent as such in consciousness. 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 273 
 
 dividual character of any complete melodic form by any analysis of its 
 structure ; but there are certain isolated rudimentary points where the 
 connection between structure and a rudiment or fragment of Ideal Motion 
 can be just traced ; some of which, since they belong to the notes of the 
 scale as presented in order, are more conveniently remarked in the bare 
 scale itself, in which the supervention of form on note-material is of the 
 most embryonic kind, than in actual melodies containing some of the 
 scale-notes in order, where the points in question would be minute and 
 inseparable constituents of a complete and complex whole. These points 
 are found where the se'mi-tones occur in the scale. We have already 
 noticed how the proximity of the leading-note to the key-note conveys to 
 the ear so decided an expectation that the motion will rise, that its fulfil- 
 ment is accepted as a satisfactory close. Let us now consider the other 
 semitones presented in the major and minor scales. If we ascend the 
 scale of C and strike E natural, its nearness to F gives the motion a 
 similar tendency to rise ; hence the E seems able to supply the strength 
 for the rise, to have got far enough from the D to be sure of its ground, 
 to have its own balance and the power of making an independent spring, 
 which naturally gives an impression of confidence. If, on the other hand, 
 we strike E flat, the sound keeps close to the D and seems dependent on 
 it and willing to sink back to it ; if we still advance to the F we seem to 
 press our way through the reluctant E flat, not to be sped onwards as by 
 the E natural ; and this dependence and reluctance to advance give an 
 impression of diflSdence, a character which at any rate seems more natu- 
 rally suggestive of pathos than uncertainty and obscurity were. Similar 
 remarks apply to the F Gr A as compared with F G A flat in the second 
 half of the scale : the A natural of the major scale is not quitted, it is 
 true, by the step of a semitone, but it leads on securely and confidently 
 to that step at the final stage ; while the reluctance of the A flat to 
 advance is even greater than that of the E flat, inasmuch as the instinct 
 to use the B natural as the seventh degree of the scale, in view of the 
 approaching keynote, is so strong that, if the A flat is used as the sisth 
 degree, the motion has to make the long and difficult step of a tone and 
 a half. The same considerations, mutatis mutandis, apply to the de- 
 scending scale, the pathetic character in the minor descent always at- 
 taching to the note which is only a semitone from its lower neighbour : 
 not of course that the pathos lies in the mere fact of the close proximity 
 (for at that rate C B and F E in the descending major scale would be 
 pathetic), but in the close proximity occurring in the two cases where there 
 is a choice ; where the confident and independent A or E might have been 
 used instead of the diffident A flat and E flat.' Descriptions of this kind 
 
 > The melodic passage containing the dis- in diatonic steps. In the opening to Ife was 
 tinctively minor notes need not of course be despised, 
 
 T 
 
274 
 
 POLYPHONt ANB HARMONY. 
 
 in relation to the unique and instantaneous musical experience, necessarily 
 seem the most ponderous and clumsy things, as though one were using one's 
 hands to unravel a cobweb ; and I can only ask the reader to take the 
 two scales and make an analytical effort of his own. 
 
 Now the fact of this melodic pathos is indisputable ; and the alternative 
 to such an explanation of it as I have suggested could only lie in at- 
 tributing it to the pathetic character of the two chords. 
 
 It seems im- 
 possible to ex- 
 plain these 
 characteristics 
 by the chords ; 
 
 s 
 
 w. 
 
 =s 
 
 and 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 It will probably not be disputed that an explanation of a pathetic effect 
 which would refer it to motion — to a process where our own musical activity 
 comes in, where the motion seems our own and the conceptions of re- 
 luctance and dependence our own, and the consciousness of those feelings 
 may lead on to that of pathos through natural though hidden associational 
 channels — offers in itself less difficulty than an explanation which would 
 refer the effect to a certain disturbance and obscurity in that which, like 
 a chord in its mere clang-aspect, is little more than a unit of passive 
 sensuous impression. And on examination the untenability of the latter 
 view becomes still clearer. It is impossible to imagine that an unsophisti- 
 cated ear perceives a sadness in these notes. 
 
 ^11^ 
 
 ^^^l 
 
 v^ 
 
 ^^ ^ 
 
 ESE^i^ 
 
 'm^^^H^^^^-^m- 
 
 ---,-,-1 
 
 -^^^^_j__ j= 
 
 ^ 
 
 d^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^^=^^^ 
 
 m^m 
 
 m^ 
 
 :SJ=?= 
 
 
 the pathetic eflfeot in the sixth bar, of the G 
 flat or minor third of E flat, as distingviished 
 from the major G natural which might have 
 been used, is instantly recognised ; and is not 
 aided by any minor clang, as the E flat which 
 would complete the minor chord is omitted. 
 
 Similarly in the first bar of Schumann's 
 Imploring Child, quoted in Chap. XIV. § 5, 
 the flattening of the B, the major sixth of the 
 scale, into' B flat has a distinctly pathetic ex- 
 pression though the accompanying chord is 
 not a minor clang at all. 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 275 
 
 ■f=ds^ 
 
 m^^^^^E^^^ 
 
 or in the introduction of the Gr flat in the passage from He was despised 
 quoted in the note, through a dim suggestion of slightly disturbed con- 
 sonance in an imaginary chord, even if we neglect all the previous diffi- 
 culties we found with regard to that disturbance and its supposed emo- 
 tional effects ; it is equally impossible to doubt that similar impressions 
 must have been produced by similar means in preharmonic music, though 
 the fixation of the two contrasted scales, and increased sense of key and 
 tone-relationship, has probably made them more distinct. 
 
 But the question now arises, since the chord-effect will not account and it therefore 
 for the melodic effect, is it not possible that the melodic effect may account to explain the 
 for the chord-effect ? for there is a oneness of character in the pathetic th* c''htrds''by 
 minor tinge which seems to preclude the idea of different explanations for '^f^'"- 
 the two cases. I cannot pretend that the view I suggest is free from 
 difiiculty. When we hear the minor triad, we certainly have no distinct 
 feeling of running melodically up and down the notes it comprises. Still, 
 must not the notion of a potential passing from one note to another lie at This view pre- 
 the root of the perception of dista/nce as a relation which they present, ties, 
 just as a similar notion of passage and movement is at the root of the per- 
 ception of two points as outside one another in space ? and some faint per- 
 ception of distance or interval we found reason to suspect was practically 
 always present in the impression of a chord. If this be so, the faint sug- 
 gestion might suffice to recall by association the feeling with which the 
 relations of the notes ' in actual melodic progression have been so con- 
 stantly and vividly connected. And it is much in favour of this view, and 
 an additional argument against the derivation of the melodic effect from that 
 of the chord, that while uncertainty and disturbance of consonance must 
 be felt, if at all, more prominently in the actual chord than in any mental 
 representation of the chord which we might supply to the melodic notes, but has much 
 the pathetic character (to my ears at all events) is decidedly more vivid in 
 the melodic than in the harmonic presentation of the intervals. 
 
 Another argument for the proposed view may be found in the following 
 fact. The minor triads of D and of A are of perpetual occurrence among 
 the harmonies of C major ; and yet they do not seem then to convey the 
 
 ' Neither In melodic progression nor har- provided only we feel ourselves to be in the 
 monio clang is the G necessary to the pro- C minor key ; if we once imagine B flat as 
 duction of the characteristic eflEeot, all that the key-note, the whole progression 
 the above description of the motion requires 
 being realised in 
 
 ■fe-r— ^^zr-p-- ^""^ ^ 2T ~~"p^r — presents not a shade of pathos. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 
 
 POLYTHONT AND HARMONY. 
 
 distinctly pathetic impression ' which we have been discussing, and which 
 is instantly produced by the appearance of the triad of C minor. Now if 
 the pathetic tinge were a mere matter of a slightly disturbed consonance, 
 how could it fail to present itself wherever that consonance occurred ? This 
 consideration seems clearly to mark the relations of the notes to the whole 
 scale, only ascertainable by motion within the scale, as at the root of the 
 phenomenon : we do not feel 
 
 i 
 
 or 
 
 as distinctly melancholy when we are definitely in the key of C, because 
 we do not feel the unbracketed notes here, 
 
 ^(=E)= 
 
 =|: 
 
 f^)i 
 
 or here. 
 
 J. 
 
 :t 
 
 l(^)i 
 
 as melancholy in that key. Finally, this limitation of the distinctively 
 pathetic effect to intervals (whether melodic or harmonic) occurring in 
 those positions in the scale where the corresponding major scale would 
 substitute the characteristic Tnajor intervals — that is, to places where an 
 implicit contrast with the major is involved — leads on to one more obser- 
 vation. For we see how infinitely easier it is to conceive of such an implicit 
 
 ' This may be disputed; and any direct 
 experiment on the point tends to defeat its 
 ■own object, since as soon as we pause on a 
 chord and begin to consider about it, it will 
 assume the most familiar and prominent as- 
 
 4 
 
 pect of a minor triad, just as it would if we 
 struck it in isolation. If, however, we play 
 straight through or recall our experience of 
 such a progression as this : 
 
 we shall realise that the second and fourth chords give us no such characteristic minor 
 effect as, e.g., the fourth chord in the following : 
 
 -I 1- 
 
 ■and that even here the effect Is quite changed 
 if we add the two concluding chords, and 
 play the series through again with the 
 knowledge that the fourth chord is going to 
 
 be understood, not as the characteristic triad 
 of the key of C minor, but as the chord on 
 the second degree of the key of B flat major. 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 277 
 
 contrast in respect of phenomena which are truly on the advanced mental 
 stage — as in the following of melodic motion, where opportunity is given 
 for expectation and doubt, and the remote sense of an alternative between 
 the confident and the diffident note, decided one way or the other — than to 
 conceive that one unmoving sensuous clang, owing its character ex hypo- 
 thesi to a definite disturbance of its consonance, can further owe its character 
 to the suggestion of a contrast which there is nothing to suggest, with 
 another unheard sensuous clang. 
 
 In discussing the ethical character of major and minor scales and § 18. The 
 chords, I have had somewhat to anticipate a subsequent branch of enquiry, ^fnor triads 
 which will deal with the whole subject of Music as expressive of definable chOTdTto"'^ 
 emotional states : and in that place, and later in connection with Song, wi>ici>, in jsoia- 
 
 '■ °' tion, a distinct 
 
 it will be seen in what further ways and senses harmony may affect ethical charao- 
 musical expression. Meanwhile, it may be safely asserted that the major attributed. 
 and minor triads (and these to a great extent only by contrast with one 
 another) are the sole chords to which a distinct ethical character can be 
 ascribed. We have just seen how completely, even in their case, the 
 character which is perceptible when they are heard and contrasted in isola- 
 tion may be swallowed up in a connected series, the critical question being 
 at what part of the scale their intervals fall ; while even the mode (major 
 or minor) which decides this, has, as we shall find later, but very limited 
 control over the character of the various Ideal Motions produced in it. But 
 other chords have in isolation no definable character at all : and in respect 
 of these the fact that definite musical expression does not, any more than 
 musical beauty, result from isolated units, but from whole pieces of Ideal 
 Motion into which they enter, is doubly palpable. So that Eousseau, 
 when he says that ' every chord has its distinct character, a manner of 
 affecting the heart peculiar to itself,' and then instances major and minor 
 chords, and adds that all others must obviously act in the same way, makes 
 a. double blunder ; first not perceiving the special peculiarity of major and 
 minor chords ; and next implying that the heart is touched by the 
 separate meaningless items instead of by the motive which results from 
 their combination in a series.' The latter mistake, which is a very common 
 
 ' Take the case of discords, which, by all resolutions of discords, could not di^Ieren- 
 
 creating expectation, may be said to have at tiate their characters into distinct ways of 
 
 any rate a definable sort of mental effect. ' affecting the heart.' Thirdly, the isolated 
 
 But first, even this is not a property of single mental fact does not reach the emotional 
 
 chords, but is dependent on our experience of level of affecting the heart at all ; as if it did 
 
 their resolution; for if discords had never a single harmonised melody might change 
 
 been resolved, they would have been simply its emotional expression at every half-bar of 
 
 more or less harsh sounds, rousing no expec- its course, and keep ' the heart ' in a perpe- 
 
 tation whatever. Secondly, if we waive this tual see-saw. Again, a, discord, say a dimi- 
 
 and consider the discord and its resolution as nished seventh, poises us in a sort of doubt 
 
 a single effect, still the mental fact of ex- from which we get relief : but the discord, 
 
 pectation and satisfaction, being common to carrying this character with it, may occur as 
 
278 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 Isolated chords 
 or fragmentary 
 groups of 
 chords can 
 scarcely have 
 more character 
 or value than 
 formless 
 groi^ps of 
 single notes. 
 
 one, is the more important, and is in fact a confusion of the heart with the 
 ear. Every chord produces of course a distinct effect on the ear ; but, 
 from an aesthetic or emotional point of view, we cannot go much further 
 in discussing single chords, or even, as a rule, isolated fragments of chord- 
 combination, than in discussing single notes or groups of two or three 
 notes together. There is more volume of tone and a larger element of 
 form, but scarcely more characteristic impressiveness, in 
 
 ^ 
 
 S 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^r^^= 
 
 than 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
 A person unused to chord-analysis might . learn this fragment by heart, 
 yet might listen with perfect appreciation to the adagio of the Pathetique 
 sonata — 
 
 ^1 
 
 
 %W-^-T-g- 
 
 ^^^^m^FMf 
 
 &c. 
 
 <^^. 
 
 ¥iz 
 
 m 
 
 I 
 
 ^ 
 
 and never perceive the progression in the sixth and seventh bars to be har- 
 monically identical with it. Why should he ? He might as well be bound 
 to recognise the tip of a particular nose cut out of a picture. Such absence 
 
 a constituent in the most glorious and the 
 most paltry form in Leise l-ei$e, quoted on p. 
 2S3, and in mio Fernando, quoted on p. 108. 
 The whole view is curiously at variance with 
 ' other passages in Rousseau's musical writings. 
 
 where he goes to the other extreme of re- 
 garding harmony as an unemotional sort of 
 decorative colour, and fails to recognise its 
 frequently essential relation to the signifi- 
 cance of melodic motive. 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 279 
 
 of recognition would only go to prove the most literal truth of what we 
 have already remarked, that it is the privilege of a fine motive to trans- 
 figure a special feature with its own individuality. 
 
 There are, however, certain single chord-effects which, while equally 
 able to enter as constituents into fine or indifferent Ideal Motions, strike 
 the ear so individually as to be much more generally recognisable by 
 ordinary hearers of Music. Such jpar excellence is the sudden occurrence, 
 in a major key, of the major chord borne by the note a major third below 
 the key-note, as of the chord of C major occurring in the key of E major, 
 or of the chord of E flat in the key of Gr. This feature is so easy of in- 
 troduction, and in its way so striking, as to be a sort of commonplace of 
 Music : and it is aU the more interesting to compare its conventional 
 appearance in the noisy wind-up of an overture, as thus — 
 
 § 19. Certain 
 chord-effects 
 have sufficient 
 individuality 
 of sound to be 
 very easily re- 
 ■cognised even 
 in very differ- 
 ent connec- 
 tions. 
 
 PSi? 
 
 i^^ElSi 
 
 t^^ 
 
 m- 
 
 M 
 
 i=^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 with its splendid effect, three times repeated, on the word Tremblez in 
 Auber's Voyes sur cette roche ; where the contrast it makes with the fresh 
 ThaiveU of the melody gives exactly the tone of alarm and warning needed 
 by the words, with a tinge of mock-heroic exquisitely appropriate to the 
 verse where the disguised Fra Diavolo takes up the air — 
 
280 
 
 m=pp 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 ■f=-f^ 
 
 r=^^ 
 
 r^r^f^ 
 
 ^^fl^ 
 
 ■MzatJ'Jti^ 
 
 1 1 f- H F-l P-- -I \ -i 
 
 •ti^^-^— ti>-^b»^ 
 
 
 1^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 V rr^- 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 =^=vPi 
 
 =?zi 
 
 =?=: 
 
 £ 
 
 fcssa 
 
 i=f:=^ 
 
 -V^ 
 
 ^-■z^=;j 3t^^r^ 
 
 i^g^^ 
 
 :« 
 
 ^ 
 
 K 
 
 ;^:Trii 1 I I I l "1 - I I I I - 
 
 ^s^^e^^sMe^^ 
 
 ^3^^lS^=3^^g=^ 
 
 fcii 
 
 I 
 
 i^^ 
 
 t:^! 
 
 ^— 3d=i 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^:i: 
 
 J^i=i 
 
 S^: 
 
 g 
 
 V V IV IVJV 
 
 i 
 
 E 
 
 -^P — =1- 
 
 The effect of this harmonic feature is entirely one of immediate con- 
 trast. Another sort of very individual and recognisable chord-fragment, 
 involving indirect rather than direct contrast, may be found in those frag- 
 ments of cadence which stand out, by their comparative rarity, in 
 marked distinction from the universal dominant-and-tonic cadence of 
 modem music. It is possible to regard these occasional cadences, from 
 their very shortness, as remnants of those older 'modes,' which gave 
 place to the major and minor owing to the impossibility of connecting 
 their chords in any prolonged and coherent series. Take the following 
 cadence from And with his stripes : 
 
 m 
 
 ^3^S^ 
 
 W 
 
 :izr5l-*i 
 
 cT 
 
 f 
 
 '?^~ 
 
 ~?r3- 
 
 ZZZL 
 
 _i_ l_^_ 
 
 .irz. 
 
 W^ 
 
 W^^^- 
 
 m 
 
 !SI 
 
 Helmholtz considers the real key-note of this chorus to be C^ and the 
 
POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 281 
 
 •cadence a Doric one,' with the D flat as a descending leading-note. I 
 should say that, so far as a piece which oscillates between several keys can 
 be said to have one ' real ' key at all, it would be better to select F minor, 
 in which it starts, and on the dominant of which it concludes : but dis- 
 putes on such matters are perfectly barren ; the effect of the concluding 
 chords is the same to aU, and is instantly recognised as a familiar one in 
 solemn music. 
 
 Another very special and noticeable chord-feature is the appearance of 
 the major chord of the note a semitone above the key-note, as of the 
 chord of D flat in the key (usually minor) of C,^ thus — 
 
 I 
 
 or with melody, as thus in the sextett in Don Giovanni — 
 
 • It should be noticed, even if we adopt 
 this nomenclature, that the notes of the 
 Doric mode in C, are C, Db, Eb, F, G, Ab, 
 Bb, C: so that the E natural, which the 
 modem ear absolutely demands in such a 
 cadence as the above, is not a note of the 
 mode. 
 
 ' I describe the chord by the sounds that 
 are in it. Harmonists may derive what 
 comfort they can from looking outside it for 
 its ' roots ; ' but to all ears it makes one in- 
 disputable sort of clang, which, in the case 
 fiientioned, is that of the first inversion of 
 the chord of D flat. 
 
 These two last cases are strongly confir- 
 matory of the view taken above, that the 
 primary source of mournful effect must be 
 sought in movement, in succession of notes, 
 and not in obscurity of harmonic elang. The 
 cardinal point in all the examples given is 
 the D flat, the occurrence of the degree next 
 above C at the distance from it of a semitone 
 instead of a tone ; giving a sense of lapse and 
 depression quite parallel with that which we 
 noticed in respect of the characteristic notes 
 of the minor scale. And in the second case, 
 which is much most distinctly mournful, the 
 D flat chord is a simple major, with no dis- 
 turbance of clang at all. It is true that 
 Helmholtz has, beyond disturbance of clang 
 in the separate chords, a second principle 
 
 for explaining distinctively minor effects ; 
 namely, the inferior power of the harmonies 
 in the minor scale to fortify the relationship 
 of the several notes to the key-note, and the 
 less clear and intelligible connection of the 
 chords ; inducing a less decided character 
 and an inclination to modulate. I doubt 
 whether these features would be at all ade- 
 quate to produce a melancholy expression 
 but for the character of the individual minor 
 chords, as to the source of which I have ven- 
 tured to dissent from the accepted view. 
 But in any case this principle of inferiority 
 of tonic predominance and obscure chord-con- 
 nection does not seem available for the cases 
 on which we are now engaged. The verdict 
 of direct consciousness is that the connection 
 of chords, in these mere fragments contain- 
 ing the D flat, is perfectly clear and natural. 
 When we come to analyse, we see that the 
 clearness does not indeed result from har- 
 monic connection, but from another equally 
 legitimate source; the close proximity, 
 namely, of the D flat (the 'descending leading- 
 note,' as Helmholtz has himself well termed 
 it) to the C in which it takes refuge. This 
 gives naturalness to the unrelated D flat, 
 just as, in the case of the ascending leading- 
 note, the step B-C is made natural by a 
 similar closeness of proximity in spite of a. 
 similar want of relationship. 
 
282 
 
 POLYPHONY AND HARMONY. 
 
 ^feg 
 
 S^ 
 
 -|«-^!— ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 2=P: 
 
 --^1- 
 
 s 
 
 Z?2= 
 
 ^ 
 
 l:fci 
 
 l^^-^-t^-f.-^^ 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 2^ 
 
 II 
 
 ffie 
 
 S 
 
 
 A striking example of this harmonic effect will be found in Schubert's 
 Bie hose Farbe, quoted on p. 323. 
 
 It would be possible to give other specimens of special chord-com- 
 binations, sufficiently distinctive to be easily recognisable amid very 
 various surroundings even by quite unpractised ears : but seeing that the 
 very point to be observed about them is that they are but fragments of 
 m^aterial, and that their value in any particular place can in no way be ab- 
 stracted from the larger form which they help to constitute, it seems 
 scarcely worth while to extend the list. 
 
233 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 MATERIAL AND COLOUE. 
 
 So far we have been dealing entirely with the element of Form ; with the § i. we now 
 pecviliar nature of those coherent groups of sounds which produce the ^fment'of*''^ 
 characteristic impression of melodic motion; with the manner in which Form to that of 
 the essential principles exemplified in the shortest and simplest piece of 
 intelligible tune are connected with prolonged organic development ; and 
 lastly with the phenomena of Polyphony and Harmony, and their several 
 relations to that great central fact which, in order to exclude the narrower 
 associations of the words melody and melodic, we elected to call by the 
 more comprehensive name of Ideal Motion, motion which is perpetual 
 foTTn by dint of the perpetual interdependence of its successive parts. 
 
 We now come to a quite new topic ; the variously coloured material, 
 the sound-quality or ti/mbre of the notes, in which the forms of Music are 
 presented. 
 
 And first, the relations of the various arts to their material present § 2. DifFer- 
 remarkable differences. Music has the special peculiarity that we must relations of 
 reckon under the head of its material not merely sounds in reference to to^theirmate^' 
 their colour-quaHty or their mass, but sounds in reference to their arrange- nai. 
 ment in a scale. The scale of available notes is ready for the composer's 
 invention to work on, simply in virtue of their pitch-relations, apart from 
 any colouring or weight of sound given them by particular instruments. 
 This bare material thus already comprehends elements of form and pro- 
 portion, and has arrived at the stage in which he finds it by the previous 
 working of these elements into true forms ; while we might regard in the 
 same light many ordinary fragments of combination and effect, susceptible 
 of use in all sorts of forms, I need not repeat how this peculiarity affects 
 the forms produced at various times and places ; so that they become to 
 alien ears not anything analogous, e.g., to buildings of timber and buildings 
 of marble, the varying characteristics of which a sympathetic knowledge of 
 the respective materials may soon enable an artistic eye to appreciate 
 equally ; but structureless and uninteresting juxtapositions of sound. 
 
 This peculiarity of musical material having been noticed, we shall for the 
 future be concerned only with its aspects of mass and colour. Under these 
 
284 MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 aspects it presents a decided resemblance to the material of Painting, as 
 distinguished from that of the other arts. Neither in Painting nor Music 
 is the mere material calculated to excite much independent interest : no 
 special associations or strong feelings of pleasure are excited by even the 
 fairest tints on a painter's palette, or by scales or fortuitous successions of 
 notes played on the most beautiful instruments. In the other three arts 
 the material has more independent importance. The verbal material at 
 the command of the poet is the partly spontaneous, partly artificial growth 
 of centuries, and he finds it ready charged with shades and associations of 
 all sorts. In Sculpture and Architecture the material, though not a 
 product of human development, is commonly beautiful in itself, and always 
 Characters of carries with it a delightful sense of obedient strength and durability, which 
 
 the nijrterial of , -. r ■ ■, ■,-,■, t ■ ■ ■ , 
 
 Scuipiure and makes & most sensible factor m the completed work. It is to its simple 
 L 1 c ure, ^^^ homogeneous material, to the elimination of the element of colour 
 and the imperishable aspect of the pure marble (features which to modern 
 eyes, used to seeing statues in detachment from architecture, become 
 specially characteristic of the art), that Sculpture owes much of its peculiar 
 dignity and its monumental character. In our latent consciousness the 
 expressionless block has lent its own endurance to the emotional image 
 which it seems to have had concealed within it. And this is in entire 
 accordance with the spirit of the art which, accepting a comparatively 
 limited range of subject-matter, attains extraordinary intensity within that 
 range by abstracting secondary and emphasising primary characteristics, 
 and, through the concentration of the beholder's attention on these, 
 presents him not more with individual objects of beauty than with eternal 
 types. The mass of association and sentiment which is summed up and 
 concentrated in the expressive aspects of ideal human or even animal form, 
 the feeling that in a single look and attitude our imaginations find 
 epitomised the attributes and essential spirit of a whole existence, seem 
 to demand inherent worth and dignity in the vehicle of representation. 
 And in all branches of the sculptural art, whether in the working of 
 rougher stone than marble, or in pottery, or in glass- and metal- and 
 ivory-work, the character of the material and the workman's loving 
 obedience to its conditions are essential features, to be recognised in any 
 true appreciation of the result. 
 
 With these features we may contrast the only possible analogue to 
 them in Music, namely, the composing with a just regard and skilful con- 
 formance to the special capabilities of special instruments, in respect both 
 of actual sounds and of mechanical difficulties. Here a person without 
 technical knowledge, though he may notice failures, as when an instrument 
 or a performer is set to do unsuitable and awkward things, will take no 
 particular account of successes. When the music goes all right, and the 
 instruments or voices seem perfectly adequate to present it, there is nothing 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 285 
 
 to suggest any special problems or niceties in the mere management of the 
 material : and while the most ordinary knowledge and intelligence will 
 reveal in great measure how the nature of stone or metal has been con- 
 sidered and conformed to, only connoisseurs will perceive the composer's 
 care and thought for the compass and tone and special mode of producing 
 notes of each of his instruments, and for the mechanical peculiarities which 
 make some sorts of passages suitable and effective in one case and impos- 
 sible or ineffective in another. 
 
 But it is in Architecture that the element of material assumes the 
 most prominent and independent position, and this in virtue of character- 
 istics peculiar to this art. We have already noticed the part played in 
 architectural effect by weight and mass, that is, by sheer amount of material 
 presented in a single effect, and instinctively contrasted with the feeble 
 physical strength of the men who nevertheless have thus reared it at their 
 will. Again, in the natural objects employed colour is given ready made, 
 and of a kind permitting extraordinary variety and latitude of treatment. 
 Mr. Euskin has said that he has scarcely ever seen an offensive introduction 
 of the natural colours of marble and precious stones, whereas he has never 
 seen a painted building which seemed to him quite right : and among the 
 natural colours of architectural material we may include the stains of time 
 and weather, with all their wealth of emotional suggestion. Besides this, 
 the material of magnificent buildings has also the strongest suggestiveness 
 in respect both of preciousness and of the labour of moving and working 
 it. The Eesthetic effects due to these two sources have been most lumin- 
 ously explained by the writer just named ; and everybody must have had 
 evidence of their reality, e.g. in the revulsion of feeling caused by learning 
 that some beautiful and delicately cut tracery he had been admiring was 
 only a sham. It is noticeable too of Architecture, that since in many 
 places magnificent material is supplied to it direct by the earth, the art in 
 its infancy naturally became a means of magnificent display. The decora- 
 tive art of Homer's poems consisted in casings of costly materials, silver 
 and gold and ivory and amber. And this exhibition of nature's treasures 
 remains a prominent feature throughout the history of Architecture ; con- 
 stituting a marked distinction from Music, whose fine and costly material, speciaiij' con- 
 in the shape of highly-cultivated voices and elaborate instruments, is an that*of Mu*ic. 
 artificial product and for the most part of very modern manufacture : nor 
 does our knowledge that many hours' work a day has given to a voice the 
 power and elasticity we admire contribute, except very occasionally and 
 indirectly, to our pleasure ; for the work was not devoted, like that of the 
 graver or inlayer, to the patient fashioning of the beautiful thing we see 
 or hear, but to wide practice on all sorts of matter, often of a quite neutral 
 and unbeautiful sort. A further contrast may be found in the nature of 
 ornament, which in Architecture often appears as colour, natural or 
 
286 
 
 MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 § 3. Confu- 
 sion between 
 musical colour 
 and form is 
 very common. 
 
 We have seen 
 that the use 
 of musical 
 terms in de- 
 scription of 
 visible phe- 
 nomena tends 
 to conceal the 
 essential pecu- 
 liarity of 
 Music ; 
 
 painted, not applied along the lines and over whole surfaces of the buildings 
 but in independent spots, lines, and patterns : whereas the only meaning of 
 ornament in Music is in shakes and turns and diverse variations and 
 eiHorescences of essential form ; and any; colour which appears can only do 
 so on the lines of a form, the form being necessarily presented in such and 
 such a colour, on such and such an instrument. 
 
 The subject of architectural material will recur again, in connection 
 with the ethical bearings of that art as compared with Music : but for the 
 present it is from the face of Nature and the art of Painting that we shall 
 derive most aid (though stiU rather by points of contrast than of affinity), 
 in the special consideration of coloured tone-material to which we must 
 now pass. 
 
 After our full discussion of musical form,, and after the definition 
 (which can hardly be simplified or amplified) of musical colour as consisting 
 in the various sorts of timbre or quality of tone which various instruments 
 can produce, it might seem hardly necessary to begin the detailed discussion 
 of the latter element by more particularly marking its distinction from 
 the former. As a matter of fact, however, the confusion in the use of the 
 words and in' the ideas connected with them is so common, and is so much 
 unconsciously fostered by the language of art-critics whose paramount 
 interest lies in the arts of the eye, that a brief notice of it, and of the sort 
 of expressions in which it takes shape, is unavoidable. 
 
 The confusion is only a special form of one which has been already noticed. 
 Eeference was made in the third chapter to the habit of using terms 
 derived from Music to describe visible phenomena ; a habit quite legitimate 
 for the purposes in view, but apt to react very unjustly on the art which 
 supplies the metaphors. We noticed how such phrases as the musical 
 disposition of masses, the harynonious ^ arrangement of, e.g., the leafy 
 bosses of a distant wood, are apt to induce the view that Music itself 
 just consists in pleasing arrangements of pleasing things, i.e. of agreeably- 
 toned notes or chords ; arrangements enabling the ear to trace a sort of 
 connection and balance in its various sensations, but capable of little more 
 decided individuality than is perceived in, e.g., several distant woods, in 
 each of which the fortuitous massings and bossings of foliage would of 
 course as a matter of fact be different, but without making any vivid 
 difference of impression. We saw later how little, even in more ordered 
 and deliberate combinations of lines and masses, the element of mere 
 abstract form and proportion could be thought of or estimated as an in- 
 dependent factor ; and how rich multiplication of line and feature, mass, 
 material, ornament, colour, breadth of light and shade, consciousness of 
 
 ' Music can of course claim no monopoly 
 of the word lia/rmony : still the word is so 
 prominently connected with Music that it 
 
 much facilitates sliding into the looseness of 
 view I am speaking of. 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 287 
 
 labour, and various other considerations, all inevitably entered into our 
 sense of architectural effect.* In contrast to which, we saw that a set of 
 musical proportions, making up a few bars of perfectly skinny tune, and 
 not only not presented in massive or beautiful material of sound, but 
 thought of in silence without any definable sound-quality at all, might 
 produce a sense of individuality as distinct and unmistakable as that of a 
 well-known face, and a sense of force and beauty as overpowering as any it 
 is given to man to know. That is to say, for a pleasing arrangement of 
 nicely gradated bosses we get a phenomenon with an equally small number 
 of ultimate elements, and yet bearing the stamp of the rarest and most 
 inspired invention no less than the roof of the Sistine chapel or the 
 Florentine campanile. 
 
 But we now go on to observe that the misconception frequently takes and the case of 
 another form ; and that it is not in the comparison of Music to arrange- prominent 
 ments of lines or bosses or any sort of proportional shapes, but in ihis?°™° 
 the comparison to arrangements and harmonies of colour, that its 
 essential character as a perpetual presentation of perfectly organic and 
 individual form is most apt to be lost sight of. And with the notions that 
 Music is a sort of kaleidoscopic affair is connected a converse notion that 
 kaleidoscopic or pyrotechnic effects might be developed into producing 
 ' the same sensations as Music ; ' ^ which they will do when they produce 
 
 ' As happily illiistrative of the way in ing the total irrelevance of the proposed 
 
 which the sense of visible proportions is in- visible effects to that which is the essence of 
 
 terfused and informed with all sorts of con- Music — organic form : the points now under 
 
 Crete associations, I cannot forbear quoting discussion, that there is such a thing as 
 
 some remarks of Mr. Ruskin's on Front's ren- musical colour, and that its distinction from 
 
 dering of the proportion and grace of Gothic musical form is absolute, may further illus- 
 
 spires and towers : — ' Everything in grace of trate that argument. 
 
 form depends on truth of scale. You don't A propos of colour, however, I must quote 
 show how graceful a thing is till you show one more passage from the theory I before 
 how large it is ; for all grace means ultimately examined. It is there said that certain per- 
 the use of strength in the right way, moral sons, when they hear music, ' see beautiful 
 and physical, against a given force. A swan changing mosaics, the patterns of which have 
 no bigger than a butterfly would not be definite connections with the musical chords.' 
 graceful — its grace is in its proportion to the Now I would ask the reader to turn to the 
 waves, and power over them. A butterfly as example on p. 278, of three chords first given 
 large as a swan would not be graceful ; its in a single group, and then as they occur in 
 beauty is in being so small that the winds a melody from the PatMUque Sonata ; show- 
 play with it, but do not vex it. A hollow ing how absolutely chords and fragments of 
 traceried spire fifteen feet high would be chord-progression are, like melodic notes, 
 eflEeminate and frivolous, for it would be subordinate parts of organic forms, apart 
 stronger solid — a hollow traceried spire five from which they have no artistic individuality 
 hundred feet high is beautiful ; for it is safer or significance. Therefore if (which one may 
 so, and the burden of the builder's toil take leave to doubt) anybody has a definite 
 spared.' change of mosaic patterns answering to 
 
 ' A sufficient criticism of this notion is these three chords on their own account, 
 
 contained in the remarks on the ' music of (and the ' definite connections ' can imply 
 
 colour and visible motion,' towards the end nothing less), the very fact would prove the 
 
 of the eighth chapter. I was there explain- entire irrelevance of the pattern to the indi- 
 
288 MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 the same sensations as the Venus of Milo, and not before. Further on 
 we shall see a good deal of the danger of analogies between the arts ; and 
 a considerable part of this danger lies in the loose application of terms 
 An example in which are common to more than one of them. The word tone is a notable 
 word tone. instance of the kind, and has a special connection with the present point. 
 In application to Painting, it refers to the preservation of the true coloiu-- 
 qualities of objects under the various degrees of illumination or shadow 
 which are produced on them by a homogeneous light. But in Music the 
 same word is used either of the quality of sound, the element of musical 
 colour (as when we speak of the tone of a first-rate violin or violinist), or 
 of the sound itself, regarded as notes capable of use in Music, the element 
 oiform without emphasis on quality (as when we speak of the tone-art), 
 or more definitely still of a certain accurately measured degree in the scale 
 of such notes (as when we speak of tones and semitones). The consequence 
 is that such a phrase as gradations of tone may lead to most important 
 misconceptions. I have heard an art-critic of the highest authority main- 
 tain that Painting has a superiority over Music, because its gradations of 
 tone are infinite, whereas those of Music are limited by the fact that the 
 degrees are at fixed distances. The question as to the superiority of one 
 art over another becomes worse than useless when involved with what is 
 nothing less than a total confusion between colour and form. The grada- 
 tions of tone which are infinite in Painting are of course gradations of 
 light and colour: we shall examine afterwards to what extent Music 
 admits of analogous gradations, but the only possible place to look for 
 them must be in quality and mass of sound — tone, in the sense that a 
 violin has a penetrating tone, or an oboe a nasal tone or a trombone a loud 
 tone — the varieties of which are called, even in ordinary parlance, musical 
 colouring.' The gradations of tone in Music which consist in fixed degrees 
 
 viduality of this melody of Beethoven, and red, i.e. that the physical relation is that of 
 to every other individual form which this an octave, has absolutely no counterpart in 
 special chord -progression helps to constitute : sensation ; to us the difference merely means 
 and in the same way the irrelevance of every two different colours. Differences and rela- 
 suoh colour- and pattem-efiE eot to eva-y actual tions in the elements of the spectrum are 
 and possible specimen of organic form in matters of colour pure and simple, and have 
 Music. no connection with fin-m ; the perception of 
 ' I may remind the reader of what has visual form being due to a process which is 
 been already explained, that no ^ Ay sicaZ ana- quite independent of the colour-sense and 
 logy between the coloured spectrum and the has no parallel in the ear, namely, the me- 
 range in pitch of musical sounds has any chanical shifting of the eye in rapidly carry- 
 bearing on our perception of the two sorts of ing it along the lines and over the surfaces 
 phenomena. The scale of notes presents in- of objects. Differences and relations in the 
 tervals and proportions of the most definite pitch of notes, on the other hand, are an in- 
 kind : the coloured spectrum presents not dispensable factor of musical /wm, in what- 
 a single definite interval, not the most rudi- ever colour presented, and the sensation of 
 mentary germ of proportion. The mere fact cofojw-quality in sound knows nothing of 
 that vibrations producing rays at the blue them ; the proportions present in the har- 
 «nd are about twice as quick as those at the monies which are the physical basis of such 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 289 
 
 are the notes of the scale, the formal elements of melody and harmony, 
 just as much as faces and limbs are the formal elements of figure-painting, 
 and lines and surfaces of Architecture. And this mistake led naturally to 
 a still more fatal one. Musical colouring having been confused with^ and 
 put in the place of, musical form or ' subject,' this latter had to be accom- 
 modated with some habitat ; and this was found by identifying it with the 
 verbal statements or sentiments with which the music might happen to be 
 connected — a confusion due perhaps in its turn to an ambiguity in the 
 word subject, and equivalent to identifying a Gothic cathedral with the 
 Apostles' Creed. As a legitimate consequence any music which is not 
 set to words was supposed to have no subject (all it had being colour), and 
 the enjoyment of it to be as purely sensuous as the enjoyment of mere 
 colour without form in the fold of a piece of drapery. It is this same 
 identification of melodic ' subject ' with mere sonorous and sensuous beauty 
 which we shall see implied in Wagner's view, that Music, to be complete, 
 must express some preconceived poetical idea. Fortunately, however, it 
 is a law of om: being that in the apprehension of form we find a sense of 
 active grasp and self-realisation entirely distinct from sensuous enjoyment : 
 while in form lies the possibility of a permanent and solid nucleus for the 
 associations, of the stuif of which our sense of beauty has been so largely 
 compounded, and the power of vivid and fruitful reproduction in memory. 
 The fixed degrees and proportions, which were objected to as limitations, 
 are of course as essential to form as they are alien to colour : to them is due 
 
 colour-quality being as little represented in course still more obviously identified with 
 
 normal sensation as the particular number form. 
 
 of physical vibrations which go to constitute One further use of the word colour in con- 
 
 a particular visual hue. neotion with Music is worth mentioning. 
 
 The essential relations of musical harnwny Music is often said to have some sort of 
 
 to form have also been explained. But it is national colouring, if it presents resem- 
 
 very common and permissible to speak of blances of effect to other music associated 
 
 harmonie coUwing, in reference to the effect with special localities. Thus, Hope the 
 
 on a melody of harmonising it, perhaps in Hermit might be said to have English 
 
 various ways. Even regarding harmony in colouring, through a certain strong and 
 
 this light, however, we should notice that it straightforward musical character which is 
 
 is quite unique, and presents a common common to it with many other of the older 
 
 difference from both pictorial and instru- English airs. Tunes, again, which, by avoid- 
 
 mental colour. In colouring subjects and ance of the seventh, are playable on the 
 
 forms with the two latter, considerable black keys of a piano, a well-known pecu- 
 
 variety of treatment is possible : but the liarity of Scotch music, will be said to have 
 
 ways of harmonising a melody are limited, Scotch colouring. When we come to such 
 
 and one or two are almost sure to be instances as Rubinstein's ' Persian ' songs, 
 
 decidedly better than others ; wl^ile often a and generally to music supposed to have 
 
 particular chord or set of harmonies appears, oriental colouring, it is not probable that 
 
 not as one of several possible adornments, there any particular resemblance is involved ; 
 
 but as an unalterable means of defining the but melodies may easily have that sort of 
 
 form, and a necessary element in its signifi- strangeness which gets considered oriental 
 
 cance. In contrapuntal writing, where the when once that convenient description of a 
 
 harmony is formed by several distinct and certain indefinite unusualness of character, 
 
 qontinuous voices or parts, it becomes of has been suggested. 
 
 U 
 
290 MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 the power of musical motives to exist and to be to us as divine utterances. 
 That musical sound of a formless and indefinite kind should give us this 
 sense of importance and individuality is as impossible as that we should 
 get the impression of a human face from something without definite or 
 recognisable proportions of line and surface, or that a picture should 
 strike us as religiously expressive which represented only clouds and jelly- 
 fish. 
 
 The colour-qualities of musical material are thus as entirely distinct 
 from musical form, as the redness of a cherry is distinct from its spherical 
 shape. We shall find in the next chapter that there are certain musical 
 effects of true value, where colour is completely in the ascendant, and 
 form hardly if at all discerned ; as is also the case in many impressions 
 In the auditoty received from Nature through the eye. Meanwhile we find that in audi- 
 region, colour tory exactly as in visible phenomena, form is the individualising ele- 
 quaiitv''of*^'^ ment by which things are known and recognised ; and that as in the outer 
 phenomena. world the same forms are perpetually invested with different hues, 
 whether by their own nature or by the hourly changes of Hght or by the 
 passage of years and seasons, and different forms with the same hue, so 
 in Music the same forms may be presented in many varieties of sound- 
 colour ; and one and the same sound-colour may invest any number of 
 forms ; in brief, that in Music, no less than in JSTature, form is a primary 
 and colour a secondary quality of phenomena. 
 § 4. The This being settled once for all, we may go on to consider the various 
 
 of visible and' related and contrasted characteristics of auditory tone and natural visible 
 aiiditoo' colour. lu the first chapter we saw that it was not easy to make out that 
 
 a perfectly simple ungradated impression of visible colour gives for the 
 moment a superior pleasure to a delightful taste or smell ; the standards 
 of superiority usually employed being external to the simple impression, 
 as, e.g., power to give pleasure to an indefinite number of people without 
 being possessed or consumed, or facility of being frequently repeated 
 without loss of effect or detrimental consequences. We might perhaps add 
 that pleasing colour reaps the benefit of its association with our whole ex- 
 ternal outlook on the world, in some power of vaguely stirring the imagi- 
 nation with dim suggestions of freedom and expansion. But in any case the 
 view has little practical importance ; for in our sense of the beauty of colour 
 in the visible world, such perfectly simple impressions have little part. 
 Various eie- The feature of large extent, or of large variety with many elements of contrast 
 stant^occur"" ^^^ harmouy, is very commonly present ; and above all, the element of gra- 
 rence in visible (Jation, necessarily involved in all curvature of coloured surfaces. There is 
 
 colour, ■■111 
 
 no greater mystery m that whole mysterious region where higher mental 
 elements begin to mingle with sense-impressions, than the extreme pleasure 
 producible by gradations of colour. We have seen that it cannot, like the 
 pleasure in complementary colours, be based on any physiological ground, 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 291 
 
 as that the change in the amount of stimulus, while the eye travels from and eapecinily 
 
 the lighter to the darker parts of the colour, relieves the nervous elements ^^^ ''*""'■ 
 
 employed and gives them opportunity for repair ; for the pleasure is felt 
 
 to the full in colours which, if throughout as bright as their brightest 
 
 parts, would not be sufficiently bright to cause any fatigue or need of quick 
 
 repair. Apparently we must be content, to accept this pleasure in mere 
 
 graduated change of sensation as an ultimate fact, parallel with the 
 
 equally ultimate pleasure in gradation of curved form : at any rate we 
 
 need not solve the problem in order to compare the experiences of the ear 
 
 with those of the eye in this respect. 
 
 As regards sound, then, gradations of pitch, which might have been The contrast 
 expected to present some analogy to curvature of visible form, do in fact sound in tbL 
 present the strongest contrast to it ; sUding changes of pitch being un- "^pect, 
 bearable in any strong and bright sound-colour, as on a violin, unless 
 the sliding sound passes swiftly from one perfectly definite point of 
 the scale to another intelligibly related point; and even with such 
 fortuitous transitions of pitch as have a certain agreeable character — 
 as, for instance, the shifting tones of a sighing and moaning wind, which 
 are naturally dim in musical quality and are further tempered to our ears 
 by the non-musical sounds of rushing and rustling — the association of cur- 
 vature is inexpedient ; since by suggesting form it tends to conceal the 
 cardinal fact that true melodic form depends essentially on fixed degrees. 
 In application to sound-coZowr, the general meaning of gradation would 
 be in reference to degrees of loudness and softness. For in sound no 
 merging of actual tints is possible ; the tone of a violin cannot gradually 
 shade into the tone of a flute, as blue into green ; and the modifications of 
 a single species of tone which are possible on the most perfect simple 
 instruments, and of which an exceptionally fine performer may make 
 very refined use, are too much bound up with variations of loudness 
 and softness, and features such as suddenness and shortness of note, 
 which do not strictly belong to timbre, to count as a separate class of 
 colour-gradations analogous to the merging of visual tints. Graduated 
 degrees of loudness and softness are of course often an immense en- 
 hancement of musical effect, and are very necessary elements in the pre- 
 sentation of certain forms ; but such gradations in Music have nothing 
 approximating to that universality of occurrence which is ensured, by the 
 very nature of Hght and shadow, to the gradations of hue on visible objects. 
 
 So much foi; gradation. As regards other features, our compari- 
 son of visual and auditory colour can, for the most part, only be an 
 extension of that general comparison of the impressions of th« ear and 
 the eye which suggested itself very early in our enquiry. The eat agrees 
 •with the eye, as opposed to the lower senses, in its clear appreciation 
 of quantity or mass of colour-impression, and in its accurate power of 
 
 V 2 
 
292 ■ MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 and in variius distinguishing many simultaneous elements. But we found sound- 
 ei ways. colour of a distinct kind to be impossible as a continuous feature of 
 daily environment, partly because it is naturally more wearing to the 
 nerves than the quieter pleasures of the eye, partly because it cannot be 
 shut out or turned away from : we may now give as additional reasons 
 that there are no complementary sound-colours, that is, various sorts of 
 timbre do not afiford to the ear the rest which the eye is perpetually 
 receiving from the variety of colours in its range ; ' and that musical 
 colour is the natural and perpetual investiture of forms, and of forms 
 which demand attention, so that it can never be musingly regarded like 
 the blue sky, purely on its own account. We found musical colour, 
 however, from the very rareness of our experience of it, to be of a particu- 
 larly arresting and exciting kind ; while the visible colours even of a 
 beautiful environment are often from their very commonness disregarded : 
 similarly we may consider that the exceptional occurrence and compara- 
 tively limited variety of distinctive combinations and contrasts of sound- 
 colours in an orchestral or choral performance is compensated by an 
 exceptional susceptibility in the ear to vivid delight from them. On the 
 other hand it may be said on behalf of the eye that it is people's own 
 fault if they neglect the beauties of visible colour because they are 
 common : against which again we may put, if we like, the point previously 
 noticed, that there is naturally a very far more general sense of fine 
 sound-colour than of fine visual colour ; partly as a mere fact of nerve- 
 stimulation ; partly because beauty of visual colour depends so much on 
 the subtler elements of gradation and harmony ; partly because beautiful 
 visual colour so often appears merely in a fragment or patch amid neutral 
 and commonplace surroundings ; whereas the sound of a beautiful voice 
 stands out in isolated and unmistakable predominance, and compels 
 recognition even from the coarse and careless. Unfortunately, however, 
 though the susceptibility to great beauty of sound-colour is common, the 
 beautiful sound-colour itself is exceptionally hard to get at and command ; 
 and a large majority of our people go through life without ever hearing a 
 perfect voice or a perfect instrument. 
 
 I have referred to the general agreement in appreciation of fine 
 sound-colour. This remark may be much extended in a way which opens 
 
 ' Change of colour pleases the eye by seems hardly diminished by the fact of this 
 
 giving comparative rest to one set of retinal variety : so that the fatigue must apparently 
 
 elements, and throwing the main work for a originate in some nervous centre beyond the 
 
 time on a new set. The most effectual source differentiated terminal elements of the ear. 
 
 of similar relief to the terminal nervous ele- Tone-stimulation, whenever so orderless as 
 
 meuts of the ear would be alterations oi pitch to preclude the relieving exercise of any 
 
 rather than of timbre : but formless succes- higher faculty, seems to have, in its purely 
 
 sions of tones, even when so varied as to sensory character, exceptional power both of 
 
 exercise different sets of terminal elements, compelling and wearying the attention, 
 will lapidly cause strong irritation, which 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 293 
 
 up a striking contrast between visible colour and sound-colour. For in § 5. The 
 
 sound the degrees of merit in each class of colour are in a very great mear- menTiu tuf^ 
 
 sure absolute : while as regards visible colour, though certainly the j^^n^^ofou" °^ 
 
 shapeless hues in a prism may be called absolutely good and the aniline apd the 
 
 •/ o &bdolttt6n6ss of 
 
 dyes absolutely bad, it is impossible in our ordinary visual experience better and 
 to separate the sense of mere colour-beauty from other elements, or to 
 compare colours in the abstract ; it is difficult perhaps even to determine 
 how much of our dislike of the cheap manufactured hues may not arise 
 from the way they are presented, from the ugliness of crude ungradated 
 and unharmonised masses of them. Of Nature's colours, at any rate, 
 which make up the enormous majority of our most delightful colour- 
 experiences, it is often hard to say with any definiteness that one shade is 
 inherently superior to another shade, this blue inherently more beautiful 
 or more right than that blue ; the beauty and rightness being so much 
 matters of place and harmony, depending on association with known 
 objects and conditions, and on the influence of surrounding tints. In 
 Music, on the other hand, the comparison is absolute : we can perpetually 
 assert with the utmost definiteness that one soprano voice is preferable to 
 another, that the tone of this violin or of this piano is superior 
 to the tone of that. Differences of taste doubtless exist in respect of 
 different classes of musical colour, some people preferring tenor to bass,, 
 or a clarinet to a flute, in the sort of way they may prefer blue to pink,, 
 or crimson to orange. In variety of susceptibility to these definitely dis-- 
 tinct qualities, the eye and the ear are pretty much on a par with the nose 
 and palate ; such general preferences seeming to be quite irrelevant to the 
 higher perceptions, and in sound, for instance, presenting no relation to 
 differences of musical taste or proficiency.' But in respect of varieties of 
 the same class, the scale from bad, through indifferent and pretty good, to 
 excellent, is exceptionally well marked, and the widest unanimity will be 
 found to prevail as to the various degrees. Hardly any one would fail to 
 tell the rounder and richer from the poorer or coarser or more wiry 
 quality : and though some ears seem little liable to suffer from harsh and 
 screaming tones, I have never heard of their really preferring such sounds 
 to sweeter ones of equal power. 
 
 Two more points may be reckoned to the account of sound-colour. § 6. Sound- 
 First, it is not dependent on accidents of light and climate, and is un- dependent on 
 dimmed by the conditions which starve the eyes of men; so that Music dkSls^chas 
 can find adequate presentation just where other beauties fail. Secondly, cUmate j 
 while a- new and beautiful visual colour, the like of which has never been 
 
 ' It is curious how taste alters with regard recognition. At the present time, so far as 
 
 to timlre from time to time. As lately as I have watched popular audiences, I should 
 
 the beginning of this century oontralto was say that contralto is perhaps the most natu- 
 
 not in vogue, and the mosit beautiful voice rally moving of all qualities of voice. 
 of that order passed for some time with little 
 
294 
 
 MATERIAL AND COLOUR, 
 
 and their 
 number, if not 
 absolutely very 
 gi'eat, is at any 
 rate unknown. 
 
 § 7. Visible 
 and auditory 
 colour in their 
 relations to 
 form. 
 
 Beautiful 
 colour is com- 
 patible with 
 neutral or 
 worthless form; 
 
 seen before, is an impossibility, new and beautiful sorts of timbre are per- 
 fectly possible, and, judging by the past, even probable. 
 
 This difiference is connected not merely with the fact that the most 
 beautiful visual colours are natural, and the most beautiful sounds artifi- 
 cial ; it depends on the fundamental differences of the two sense-organs. 
 For there being (according to the most accepted view) only three different 
 sorts of retinal elements, by the stimulation of which, in various degrees 
 and combinations, the sense of various colours is produced, the number 
 of actually distinct and independent tints is very limited, and the range 
 of colour-impressions is liwlimited only in the sense that the gradations, 
 and the varieties producible by degrees of light and shade and by texture, 
 are numberless. But the number of individually different nervous ele- 
 ments which tones affect is far greater ; and as varieties of timbre are due 
 to the simultaneous stimulation, in various degrees and combinations, of a 
 good many of these (being produced by the harTuonics which accompany 
 the vibrations of the fundamental note, and stimulate each of them a 
 distinct element of nervous structure), a large number of quite distinct 
 sorts of timbre are theoretically possible, and any day may witness the in- 
 vention of a new instrument with a new one. The course of improvement, 
 however, is more likely to take the form of enrichment and purification 
 of existing sorts of timbre (as notably exemplified in the recent history 
 of the pianoforte), than of frequent discoveries of novel sorts ; while it is 
 most improbable that the colour-quality of the best stringed instruments 
 or of the best voices will ever be surpassed. 
 
 This may conclude our comparison of the two sorts of colour, so far as 
 they can be at all considered independently. We have next to compare 
 them in respect of their connection with form, and of the degree of 
 necessity and importance attaching to that connection. Colour, it has 
 been said, is a secondary and more or less accidental quality. The first 
 consequence of this is, that beauty of colour is compatible, both in the 
 world of the eye and the world of the ear, with neutral and with low and 
 worthless forms. 
 
 First, as regards neutral form. There are plenty of things and frag- 
 ments of things in the visible world, which are what is called shapeless, 
 or at all events which lack individuality or beauty of shape, while covered 
 with lovely colour. I have seldom seen a more beautiful tint of blue than 
 in the gall-bladder of a frog ; and less bizarre examples, stones, bits of 
 lichened wall, low aquatic organisms, and hundreds of others will readily 
 occur to the mind. The only kind of musical parallel to such forms, which 
 we do not dislike or despise simply because they have not enough definite- 
 ness and individuality to pretend to beauty or expression, would be certain 
 exercises and study-passages ; which similarly make no pretence to beauty 
 of form, and yet may so bring 6ut the colour-genius of a fine instrument 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 295 
 
 as to produce, at any rate for a short time, a pleasing sense of sonorous 
 beauty even in ears to which the nugatoriness of the form is palpable. 
 
 Far more important is the case of shapes which may be said in a 
 positive sense to be worthless and despicable. In the visible world these 
 consist, broadly speaking, of two classes ; first, those which directly suggest 
 moral or physical degradation, as certain sorts of face and form in living 
 beings ; and secondly, artificial products, and especially those which have 
 aimed at beauty ; an ugly vase or an ugly piece of ambitious architecture 
 being more offensive to the eye than the ugliest square box or warehouse. 
 Both these classes are susceptible of the irony of beautiful colour ; the 
 second, or artificial class, permanently, by being made of beautiful natural 
 material ; and the first, or natural class, occasionally, by the impartial play 
 of warm light. In the case of the natural class, however, though debased 
 forms may take part in a scene of glowing colomr, it is not commonly as 
 themselves exponents of any specially beautiful tints. It is rarely, for in- 
 stance, that a despicable face arrests our attention by very great beauty of 
 colouring : and though Jordaens may bathe in sunny light a scene of low 
 revelling, the beauties of tint lie in the dresses and wine and fruit, rather 
 than in the bloated faces of the revellers. It is doubtless a fact of interest, 
 in connection with the primary and permanent chararacter of form, that 
 the glories of colour may impartially visit scenes whose true character 
 we find in the intimate association of their more noticeable forms with 
 conditions of vice and misery. But though the sun, with his transforming 
 hues, rises alike ' on the evil and on the good,' Nature herself is perpetually, 
 in a thousand directions, stamping the association between beauty of colour 
 and beauty of form. Nor is it common in Painting to find representations 
 of distinctly coarse and despicable forms in the midst of a wealth of beautiful 
 colour ; for a painter capable of producing the latter would naturally eschew 
 the former : though if his forms are simply poor and weak through bad 
 drawing and falseness to Nature, beauty of light and colomr will doubtless 
 sometimes get his work believed in. 
 
 On this head it is unfortunately not to the works of Nature, but in which re- 
 to those of man, and especially to the class of production which can gpecLnyUabie 
 present worthless and ugly abstract forms in porphyry and alabaster as *° s"'*'^''- 
 easily as in clay, that sound-forms must be compared. Music differs 
 from Nature and from Painting, first, in its arbitrary and unfettered 
 power over its tints; for whatever a painter's command of pigments, 
 and however much he may admire sky-blue, he cannot enlist admira- 
 tion for his faces and limbs by painting them of that colour, while a 
 composer may set perfect voices to sing what wretched melody he likes : 
 and secondly in the fact that vulgar forms cannot, like the faces of 
 Jordaens's boors, be made mere accessories in a brilliant composition, but 
 are necessarily brought out one by one in prominent colour. So that 
 
296 
 
 MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 Beautiful 
 sound-colour is 
 treated with 
 peculiar un- 
 fairness. 
 
 § 8. Colour 
 can be ab- 
 stracted from 
 visible forms. 
 
 and to a very 
 large extent 
 from auditory 
 f jrms when 
 they are re- 
 called to 
 memory. 
 
 while we cannot think of blaming sunlight and colour as delusive for 
 visiting coarse and squalid scenes, or feel that a painter gets vulgar forms 
 into repute by any hues he can shed around them, in Music we find the 
 actual bad and trivial forms themselves presentable in the most beautiful 
 sound-colour the world affords. And so far as they are accepted and 
 approved on that ground, so far, for instance, as shakes and flourishes and 
 roulades are applauded by people capable of appreciating tunes, and weak 
 tunes by people capable of appreciating strong tunes, on the ground of their 
 being presented by a beautiful voice, we must reckon that an absolute 
 wrong is done to men's powers of enjoyment, and that they are persuaded 
 to accept the less for the greater : and in a manner all the more deplorable 
 that the available stock of beautiful sound-colour is always limited. It is 
 hard, perhaps, after our recognition of the very general and true preference 
 for the purest and most beautiful sound-colours, to call any enjoyment of 
 such colours vulgar and vicious in the sense that such terms might be 
 applied to the eye which preferred crude tints and violent contrasts : but 
 it is none the less a fact that willingness to accept sound-colour at allj 
 even the best, apart from distinction of form, or to accept form merely on 
 the ground of the quality of tone in which it is presented, is a condition 
 as alien from deep and lasting artistic enjoyment as the preference of the 
 most glaring Manchester fabrics to a Titian. 
 
 The next consequence of the fact that colour is both to the eye and the 
 ear a secondary quality of phenomena, is that it can be by both dispensed 
 with ; representations of objects in white marble, or in black Hues on 
 white paper, being accepted with pleasure by the eye ; and musical forms, 
 though necessarily presented to the ear in some kind of sound-colour if 
 presented at all, being reproducible in memory with the very minimum of 
 realisation of any actual sound-quality. 
 
 It might seem, from the fact that there is no means of presenting 
 forms to the ear absolutely without timbre of some sort, that the colour- 
 quality of musical forms would be less liable to be abstracted in the mind 
 than that of visible forms. As a matter of fact, the reverse is the case. 
 Though the eye can rejoice in the uncoloured forms of things in works of 
 art, and certainly in the case of Sculpture never thinks of supplying in 
 imagination the natural tints, we never recall any objects or scenes of the 
 real visible world without recalling them in approximately their true 
 colours. With Music it is very often quite otherwise. People probably 
 vary greatly in the distinctness with which their memory of musical forms 
 carries with it the revivification of the actual timbre in which those forms 
 were presented ; but except with actual experts, the revivification is 
 commonly, I think, very slight ; so slight in pleasure-giving quality that 
 the crudest and most imperfect presentation, by humming or whistlingj 
 that is, with a perfectly different and most inferior timbre, is perpetually 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 297 
 
 preferred to mere silent imagination ; though it wouM seem impossible 
 but that such sounds, being actually there in the ears, should interfere 
 with rather than aid the imaginary sensation of the true sound-colour. 
 Thus if we compare visible colour and sound-colour merely as regards the 
 respective parts they play in the enjoyments of the inward eye and the 
 inward ear, the value of the latter sort sinks into comparative insignificance ; 
 the beauties of the auditory region being recalled, so far as they are re- 
 called, with perpetual elimination of distinct colour-qualities. 
 
 Again, so far as timbre is actually imagined, it will not necessarily be 
 the identical quality which has been actually heard in performance, but 
 very likely some shadow of the best imaginable quality of that order. Thus 
 while a person who recalls trees and flowers will not recall them in the 
 fairest greens and reds he can imagine, but as far as he can in their own 
 greens and reds, a person who recalls music, or who reads it by the eye, 
 may imagine it to himself in the best vioKn-sounds and the best voice- 
 sounds, and so on, that his imagination can command. While Music is Sound-coiour 
 far less absolute than Nature as to the connection of this or that colour ™^Z. abs^acted 
 with this or that form, we have seen that there is a quite unique absolute- j" imagination, 
 
 '■ ^ but changed ; 
 
 ness as to the degrees of merit in each order of musical colour-quality : 
 and no one would have music in the worse tone if he could get it in the 
 better, whether in real or imagined presentation of it. 
 
 We have seen, then, (1) that a special tvmhre or colour can be almost or 
 altogether eliminated in memory, and (2) that by experienced persons at 
 all events it can often be more or less replaced in memory by a superior 
 timbre of the same order. A third point is that it may be often effectively and may be 
 replaced, in actual performance, by a quite different order of timbre : so only fn ima- 
 that, e.g., orchestral music and vocal music can be presented on the piano- U"*^'^"?"' 
 forte or on the organ, or with various combinations and arrangements of 
 instruments, whereby the essential significance of the forms is preserved 
 in spite of a complete change in the colouring associated with them. 
 These statements must not be misunderstood. It is not of course 
 meant that, e.g., a pianoforte presentation ' of an overture chorus or sym- 
 phony can, as a rule, approximate in exciting quality to a complete per- 
 formance, nor that there are not often features in such works which the 
 best ' arrangement ' in the world would be incapable of even suggesting to 
 a person ignorant of the original ; but only that the mxiin portions of 
 works with strong motives and clear developments can and do stand such 
 treatment with success ; that the most valuable and enduring part, that 
 
 ' Pianoforte arrangements may fail to do perhaps impossible or indistinct on a piano- 
 justice to an orchestral work, not owing to the forte. Many difficulties arising from multi- 
 substitution of monochrome for varied colour- tude and complexity of notes may naturally 
 ing, but by simple inadequacy to present the be best overcome by eight-handed arrange- 
 notes ; certain passages which are easily ments. 
 playable on orchestral instruments being 
 
298 
 
 MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 Great import- 
 ance of this . 
 last point. 
 
 § 9. The 
 irony of the 
 comparison of 
 the real and 
 the apparent 
 success of many 
 musical com- 
 positions. 
 
 which must be justly called the essence, of the various beauties is so 
 presentable and recallable ; and that the special bits of instrumental effect 
 which present no charm or individuality of form, and are wholly lost in 
 abstraction from their particular colour-qualities, are, in great music, a 
 small minority. 
 
 But after all possible reservations have been made, the importance 
 of the main fact is difiacult to over-estimate: it simply means the 
 thousand-fold multiplication of the knowledge of musical works, and 
 the more than thousand-fold multiplication of the hours and minutes 
 during which they can be enjoyed. It is by foregoing special rights as to 
 colour that all sorts of beautiful music, from a simple chorale or canzonet 
 to whole large portions of oratorios and symphonies, can be brought home 
 to people's own firesides, and made a feature of ordinary domestic life.' 
 While good orchestral and choral performances are necessarily confined to 
 special times and places, a few early years of pianoforte practice, with 
 average musical taste, on the part of one member, or far better two 
 members, of a family, will give, not indeed great mastery over the instru- 
 ment, nor even the power of thundering and squirting at admiring friends 
 in the most approved and accomplished manner, but for aU that the key 
 to many chambers in the great treasure-houses ; opening them both in 
 the way of absolute enjoyment of many of their beauties, and not less in 
 the way of preparation for hearing occasional complete performances, and 
 of power to possess afterwards and perpetually the impressions there re- 
 ceived ; opening them not only to those whose fingers do the work, but to 
 all who care to hear, and especially to the unconsciously awakening ears of 
 children. 
 
 In the combination of two of the main points which have been noticed 
 as to the relations of musical form and colour, namely, the frequent associa- 
 tion of the finest colours with the poorest forms, and the power of recalling 
 forms either with some imaginary association of fine colour, or (as I think 
 is far more common) in the abstract notes, with a sense of any amount of 
 force and ictus but with little suggestion of definite colour-quality — in this 
 combination, I say, lies a curious irony, if we compare the real and the 
 apparent fortunes of various musical compositions ; from the point of view 
 that the real fortune and success of music is to be alive, and that its life 
 is to be measured simply by the keenness of the delight it can give and 
 the permanence which that delight can attain. An opera on which every 
 device of rare and expensive colour has been lavished, which fills the air 
 with its vibrations for four weary hours, and obtains favourable notices in 
 
 ' I am far from saying that fine colour is 
 not of extreme importance, even for the 
 popularising of Music. On the contrary, it 
 will be -seen later that I regard it as of great 
 
 importance to excite people's attention and 
 get them to hear beautiful forms by present- 
 ing them in as beautiful and arresting colour 
 as possible. 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 299 
 
 scores of newspapers, may enjoy an apparent success, without having really 
 
 lived for a single instant of its course, or done more for any ears to which 
 
 it may have proved acceptable than gorge them with hues which are as 
 
 little to them now as last year's rainbows. The motive which occupies a 
 
 quarter of a minute on a cottage piano, the air of Mozart or Schubert 
 
 played on a cheap harmonium or truly sung by an untrained voice, the 
 
 familiar chorus of Handel, snatches of which may be heard among the 
 
 din of a Yorkshire factory, the Volkslied, which three-fourths of the 
 
 children of a village may render for themselves without a bit of colour 
 
 worth the name, these act as ever-recurring source of pleasure and count 
 
 their life by hours and hours of happiness, the more precious that it may 
 
 mingle its stream with the most prosaic employments. And even in one's 
 
 own private experiences the irony I have mentioned may have a cheering 
 
 as well as a saddening effect. As one walks home, perhaps, sick and weary 
 
 with hearing brilliant sound-material and elaborate performance lavished 
 
 on uninventive and joyless work, where voices and instruments and trained 
 
 skill have been combining to persuade men's ears that the garment is the 
 
 reality and that richness of colour can dispense with beauty of form, the 
 
 sudden memory of some great melodic ' subject ' may oome across one with 
 
 an effect which is half-amusing : so easy and ample is the revenge which 
 
 form takes in that tremendous power of assertion when the voices and 
 
 instruments are silent and the trained skill at supper, and when a few 
 
 dumb bars of bare notes wiU swamp and wash away the sonorous inanities 
 
 of a whole evening. 
 
 We may now pursue our comparison of the colours of sight and § lo. Musi- 
 
 • 1 • , cal colouring in 
 
 of sound to the actual employment oi them by artists in their works, relation to the 
 
 And from all points of view the musical composer's colouring is evidently taierit^(ff"the 
 
 a less important and less difficult element in his work than is the composer. 
 
 painter's in his. In a painter's colour-art nothing is given him absolute 
 
 and ready made. In external nature he finds every conceivable gradation 
 
 of hue under every conceivable condition of distance and chiaroscuro, and 
 
 each tint he puts down must bear a relation to the truth of these external 
 
 facts and to the key into which he transposes them, and necessarily also 
 
 to every other tint in his work ; nor can he transfer a grain of colour in 
 
 careless independence from his palette to his canvas. A musician sits 
 
 down with no external nature to consider, and with a certain number of 
 
 absolute colours or qualities of sound, incapable of gradating insensibly one 
 
 into another. First-rate instruments and skilful playing may beautify 
 
 and clarify these colours ; but such modifications of tone as under a skilful 
 
 touch become in a sense differences of kind (e.g. between brilliant and 
 
 ccuntabile pianoforte passages) are not things invented by the composer, 
 
 or superimposed on his forms with a delicate perception of all manner of 
 
 relations, but are simply the well-known means of presenting certain forms 
 
300 MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 most effectively, and applicable alike to the best and the poorest. More- 
 over as the composer in writing may imagine ideal performance, he may 
 be considered to have all his tints at their very best given him ready 
 made. Very often he only makes use of one of them : long series of the 
 very greatest and completest works, as the forty-eight preludes and fugues 
 of Bach and the pianoforte sonatas of Beethoven, were written for a single 
 instrvmient : so that the greatest composers have not only asserted their 
 superiority, but have produced works which rank in splendour and perfec- 
 tion with any in the world, without any manipulation of colour whatever, 
 and, curiously enough, with far less notion of beautiful colour associated 
 with them than is natural to any concert-goer of the present day : Bach 
 especially would have been considerably astonished could he have heard 
 one of his fugues on a modern ' grand.' In other chamber-music there is 
 but a limited range of quality of sound and small scope for colour arrange- 
 ments. In the orchestra of course he has a wider field, and here he may 
 indefinitely heighten the effect of his forms by adaptations and contrasts 
 of colour.' But the looser and non-simultaneous connection of parts in a 
 musical work naturally excludes that pervading harmony of a painter's 
 colour which consists in the clearly-felt relation of every atom to the 
 whole ; a fact which alone would imply the subtler and less mechanical 
 character of this element in the pictorial art. And as the colours are 
 ready to the composer's hand, as their main relations to each other are 
 obvious and constant, as many beautiful combinations of them are a stock- 
 in-trade, and as the form of melodies and passages often suggests almost 
 inevitably some special mode of orchestral treatment, it would seem that 
 though supreme genius in this particular line may indeed make startling 
 revelations, these are not necessary features even of great instrumental 
 works. It is not too much to say that for every musician who could write 
 a fine symphony, there are probably a thousand who could score one from 
 a pianoforte arrangement with very adequate success : effective streaks 
 and masses of colour, and due balance, contrast, and emphasis, not exceeding 
 what natural taste and fancy and trained musicianship may be well ade- 
 quate to attain. 
 
 It is somewhat difficult to represent colouring as occupying a sub- 
 ordinate position in relation to the composer's genius without seeming to 
 underestimate the part which colour plays in the actual impression of 
 his work : but there need be no confusion between the two things. Beet- 
 hoven said that his melodies and motives naturally occurred to him in 
 some instrumental voice or other : but of course the great inventive fact 
 
 ' If we rank under the head of colour such softness, will continually almost suggest 
 
 qualities as the brightness of a higher register, themselves unsought when the forms are 
 
 fancy and ingenuity are of course concerned worth effective investiture ; and their special 
 
 in the most effective uses of them. But effect is, as it were, an absolute and perman- 
 
 these uses, like gradations of loudness and ent known possibility. 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 301 
 
 was the occurring to him of those particular melodies and motives ; the 
 occurring in particular colours is only what might happen in the case of 
 quite inferior melodies and quite uninspired composers, the available 
 colour-qualities being a limited set of known things. The wonderful en- 
 hancement of musical effects by fine orchestration and the manner in which 
 the various instruments and their groupings wed themselves to the forms 
 they present, so that special passages seem identified once and for ever 
 with special orders of timbre, still do not affect the fact that the essence 
 of music and musical invention lies in melodic and harmonic combinations; 
 that the instruments assume beautiful individuality through the beauty 
 and individuality of the forms they clothe ; and that the significance of 
 these forms is an unchangeable reality, which certainly did not depend on 
 the colour for its occurrence to the composer, which will in the majority of 
 cases be perceptible even with quite new associations of colour, provided 
 only the notes be duly rendered, and which may assert itself with over- 
 powering force to the inward ear where the memory of the actual colours 
 survives only as a dim echo. If, on the other hand, the forms are weak 
 and empty, no amount of attention to their coloured investiture will give 
 them importance or individuality ; except indeed in such a style as 
 Meyerbeer's, who seems always calling attention to his instruments by 
 making them attitudinise. But while the fuU glory of varied colour will 
 lend itself only to the composer who is capable of dispensing with it, and 
 whose forms can, to the extent described, survive its removal, to him it will 
 lend itself easily and lavishly. When we get a man whose invention is 
 adequate to the production of large and noble musical organisms, we may 
 be pretty certain, not only that he will apportion their colouring suitably, 
 but even that striking and magical effects of colour will, as it were, spring 
 up on his path : and it may be readily granted that just because musical 
 colours are artificial and only heard in Music, while each instrument has 
 its own definite and familiar colour-quality, the charm of a beautiful com- 
 bination may be felt, in its place, as more wholly distinct and arresting 
 than is perhaps possible in any minor group of the more relative tints of 
 Painting. 
 
 One point with respect to instrumental colouring, not always sufficiently §11. Musi- 
 noticed, constitutes a disadvantage which seems in great measure unavoid- specially apt 
 able. It is that colour, in the masses and varieties in which orchestras or ^° ^^^^ ^°"^- 
 organs frequently present it, is apt to swaTnp form ; in other words, that 
 the actual forms are often hard for the ear to discern, in the way that 
 visible forms are hard for the eye to discern when flooded with too dazzling 
 a light. This difficulty disappears when the music becomes to a certain 
 extent known, and is much diminished in the case of those who can follow 
 a printed score : but a very large number of persons genuinely capable of 
 appreciating a particular work may at first be completely unable really to 
 
302 MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 
 
 hear it, except in the most fragmentary way. Even on a pianoforte, where 
 the notes and passages are so clearly presented that there is no physical 
 difficulty in making out what is going on, the structure of an elaborate 
 movement, with ' subjects ' and ' workings out ' and episodes and aU the 
 rest, is not always immediately obvious, and such a movement on an 
 orchestra receives a new element of complexity from the mere multiplicity 
 of voices, now leading, now accompanying, interweaving with and echoing 
 one another in various ways ; but the present point is that, in addition 
 to all this, the actual passages in course of presentation are liable in 
 many places to get swallowed up in the general blaze of sound. For 
 instance, the central motive for some bars may be presented by a flute 
 or an oboe, with quite sufficient prominence for an ear which knows it is 
 there, but yet really so little distinguished in amount of tone from its 
 concomitants that it may easily pass unnoticed. Thus it may perpetually 
 happen that an average amateur, unless he has learnt what to listen 
 for, what to focus his attention on from point to point, quite loses sight 
 of the thread of development, and only catches occasional themes inter- 
 spersed among the sonorous waves; so that even in a well-constructed 
 movement, as clear as the day when once familiar, he may find a good 
 deal which, for aught he could tell at a first hearing, might be the mere 
 cloak of showy noise covering musical emptiness. It may be said that 
 an amateur who does not care to extend his acquaintance with a 
 symphony beyond a single chance hearing is not to be pitied if he 
 fails to get much out of it. But as a matter of fact many in whose lives 
 musical enjoyment is a most valuable feature cannot command either 
 their own time or the occasions of performance. Musical works are not, 
 like pictures, contained in a national gallery which, can be walked round 
 once a week, and it may be necessary to wait a year for a repetition. It 
 must thus be accounted a misfortune that when the real stuff is there 
 which, and the like of which, can address quite unskilled ears in the clear 
 monochrome of a pianoforte, the conditions of strong and varied colouring 
 are apt decidedly to increase the difficulties of true apprehension : and 
 this is one of the strongest arguments for giving orchestral and choral 
 works the advantage of domestic study. 
 § 12. Danger It is impossible to avoid adding that the habituation of a large number 
 ence of'coiour,' of coucert-goers to finding a good deal even in first-rate works which does 
 the^cimnce"ft ^°^ reveal to them its true beauties, and their failure to ensure any such 
 gives for im- adequate acquaintance with those works as should make the beauty mani- 
 
 position. ^ ^ . ■ . rm • p 1 T 
 
 fest, reacts very damagmgly on composition. The variety of ready-made 
 hues in a modern orchestra, and the natural desire to turn them to account, 
 are alone enough to offer strong temptations to abuse ; the more so that 
 the actual performers are likely to be unduly prepossessed in favour of 
 music which gives them, from a mechanical point of view, novel and 
 
MATERIAL AND COLOUR. 303 
 
 amusing work, and to find more entertainment, for instance, in Meyerbeer 
 than in Mozart. Mr. Prout, in his excellent little treatise on instrumen- 
 tation, says that ' it is at least an open question whether, with all our 
 modern fulness and richness, the science of instrumentation has made 
 much real progress since the scores of Figaro, Fidelia, and Les Deux 
 JoumSes were written.' But the opportunities, and I fear the taste, for 
 finely-toned noise have none the less increased and may yet increase ; and 
 it is, and always will be, infinitely easier to use any amount of such noise 
 than to write a single piece of noble tune. If, then, the majority of the 
 concert-going public have no safeguard against imposture, if they habi- 
 tually give such cursory attention to orchestral works as leaves them 
 ignorant to what extent fine motives are present or absent, and thus put 
 themselves out of court for demanding fine motives and refusing to be put 
 off with fine noise, the composer is only too liable to give them what they 
 will take ; to forget, in his search for novelties of colouring, how shallow 
 is its nature apart from, distinct and beautiful form, and, in his delight at 
 the kaleidoscopic effects which he commands, to be dazzled over the 
 boundary, in Music so dangerously indefinite, between sense and nonsense. 
 
304 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 § 1. The 
 definite and 
 indefinite ways 
 ofhearing 
 Music : their 
 relation to per- 
 ception and 
 non-perception 
 of form. 
 
 THE TWO WAYS OF HEARING MUSIC. 
 
 It now becomes necessary to define and distinguisii two ways of hearing- 
 and enjoying Music ; which, though they shade into one another, and may 
 each of them in various degrees be realised by a single individual in 
 listening to a single composition, are for all that in their typical states 
 radically different. They may be called the definite and the indefinite 
 way. Music may be described as having a definite or indefinite character, 
 for any particular person on any particular occasion, according as the in- 
 dividuality ' of what is presented is or is not perceived ; according as the 
 person does or does not grasp something which can be recognised as itself 
 and nothing else when the presentation is repeated, and can "be reproduced 
 in memory not as the mere knowledge of a past fact, but with some vital 
 realisation of the actual experience. This definition at once recalls the 
 distinctions already drawn between form and colour. It is indeed obviously 
 natural that any matter presented to the higher senses should exhibit the 
 definite aesthetic character just described, in proportion to the degree in 
 which striking form is perceived in it. It is only another way of stating 
 the same fact to say that the mind naturally assimilates and makes com- 
 pletely its own that on which it has brought its own activity to bear ; and 
 activity of mind, whether appearing as unconscious and semi-conscious 
 comparison, contrast, and association, or in Music as a unique process of 
 active co-ordination, demands an order of some kind in the matter on 
 which it works. And just as we have seen form to be a primary and 
 constant and colour a secondary and shifting quaKty of objects — for ' a 
 dahlia is a dahlia whether it be yellow or crimson,' and God save the Queen 
 is God save the Queen whether played on an organ or a Jew's-harp— so we 
 
 ' Deflniteness and indefiniteness of a 
 certain kind may of course belong to mere 
 species of sensation, under which head the 
 formless taste of a strawberry or the form- 
 less tone of a bassoon are as definite and 
 unmistakable as anything in the world. 
 But the deflniteness of individvAilUy de- 
 scribed in the text is confined to the domain 
 
 of the higher senses ; to the visible and 
 audible phenomena which axe peculiar in 
 constituting not mere sorts of sensation, like 
 strawberry-taste common to all strawberries 
 and bassoon-tone common to all bassjon- 
 passages, but an infinite number of separate 
 and persistent groups of coherent sensations. 
 
THE TWO WAYS OF HEARING MUSIC. 305. 
 
 may say that form or relation of parts gives permanence to our own im- 
 pressions of objects, and is the element which the mind makes its own 
 and retains ; while most people will find that colour (to which may be 
 added the qualities of size and mass ') demands for its appreciation the 
 actual presence of the object or scene, and is apt to become comparatively 
 ineffective in subsequent reflection. Thus for one person whose inward 
 eye can dwell with prolonged delight on a vanished sunset, a hundred will 
 find pleasure in recalling a face or even a photograph or engraving. The 
 rule, however, as we saw to some extent in the last chapter, applies very 
 much less completely to the visible objects of Nature than to Music ; 
 partly because the refined enjoyment of visible colour, being so much a 
 matter of harmony and gradation, often does demand a large amount of 
 the mental elements of comparison and co-ordination, and reaps the 
 benefit of these in memory ; partly owing to the constant association, 
 in the visible world, of the same familiar colours with the same familiar 
 forms ; but chiefly on the more radical grounds that visible colours are, as 
 a pretty universal fact, easier to recall, and also that they are very often 
 actually seen and enjoyed apart from distinct or noticeable form, which 
 facilitates the habit of recalling them on their own account. Sound-colour, 
 on the other hand, we have seen to be almost always presented in connec- 
 tion with form which at any rate claims attention as form, as having an 
 individuality of its own which is foreign to many fortuitous and unordered 
 contours of the outer world. And the mere musical colours are practically 
 never recalled by themselves with independent enjoyment, the enjoyment 
 of them, apart from the form they should clothe, being too purely sensuous 
 to lend itself to any sort of continuous after-meditation ; while a person 
 whose lack of musical ear leads him habitually to hear them as mere agree- 
 ably-toned sounds, with no perception of the form they invest, is if anything 
 specially incapable of reviving the sense of them. It is thus in the case of 
 Music that the two modes of effect, as above defined, connect themselves most 
 
 • Size and mass in visiHe things are struction to the essential value and signifi- 
 
 primary qualities, and are essentially in- cance of the forms. Loudness or mass of 
 
 volved in the impress iveness of any object clangbelongs, in fact, properly to the eolowr- 
 
 in which they are noticeable features, so region, excess of it overpowering the ear as 
 
 that a mountain or a pyramid would lose in disagreeably as excess of light dazzles the 
 
 proportion as these qualities were reduced : eye : and the nearer musical analogue tc 
 
 their effect, however, not being essentially impressions of visible mass and size, the 
 
 connected •mth./orm, is very hard to repro- musical experiences which prompt words 
 
 duce strongly in memory. The natural re- like vast and stupendoiis,lie far more in true 
 
 presentative of size and mass in Music musical magnificence, in some superb motive, 
 
 might seem to be mass of sound, amount of however presented or imagined ; but this, 
 
 sonorous clang filling the ear : but this, it being in its very essence form, is most 
 
 should be noted, is a gecondwry quality of vividly reproducible in memory, unlike the 
 
 Music, and one which, though often greatly vaguer impressions of glorious size in the 
 
 enhancing the splendour of presentation, visible world, 
 can be reduced or abstracted without de- 
 
306 
 
 THE TWO WAYS OF HEARING MUSIC. 
 
 % 2. Nature 
 of the indefi- 
 nite pleasure ; 
 
 its connection 
 with timbre. 
 
 and with 
 harmony and 
 polyphony. 
 
 clearly and conveniently with perception and non-perception of form ; the 
 definite character of Music involving the perception of individual melodic 
 and harmonic combinations, the mdefinite character involving merely the 
 perception of successions of agreeably-toned and harmonious sound. 
 
 This variety of kind in musical receptivity complicates the normal 
 relations of comprehension to pleasure in a very curious way. A ' musical 
 ear,' in the sense of an ear which distinctly grasps, recognises, and remembers 
 music, so that any particular music becomes familiar to it after sufi&cient 
 hearing, is a faculty so specially isolated and so easily tested that the 
 degree in which it is possessed might have been expected to afiford an 
 exceptionally good criterion of the value of the art to any individual. As 
 a matter of fact the criterion breaks down, chiefly indeed because quickness 
 of ear is no guarantee for keen emotional susceptibility, but partly owing 
 to the point now under discussion. While it is natural to consider as 
 unmusical those persons in whom a ' musical ear ' is lacking or is only 
 imperfectly developed, and who therefore cannot at all reproduce or 
 perhaps recognise melodies, such persons can often derive extreme pleasure 
 of a vague kind from fine sound, more especially when it rushes through 
 the ear in large masses. They will be apt to find their own meanings in 
 the music, which merely shows that the sound has a stimulating or a 
 soothing effect on their nerves, and acts as a congenial background for 
 their subjective trains of thought and emotion. The organ in particular, 
 with its great waves of sound and varieties of timbre, is a specially effec- 
 tive instrument in this respect ; a quality, by the way, which particularly 
 adapts it to places and occasions where the main objects are not artistic 
 but devotional or meditative. To a trained ear a rapid and loud fugue on 
 the organ, if previously unknown, is apt to be ' full of sound and fury, 
 signifying nothing,' and the same may often be said of elaborate poljrphonic 
 choruses : but to many persons who are capable of being strongly moved 
 by Music in a vague and mysterious manner it is a matter of indifference 
 what is being played or sung, so long as the volume of tone is full and the 
 quality agreeable. Apart from the fulness of timhre, the most fundamental 
 source of the indefinite effect is doubtless harmony. We saw in the 
 eleventh chapter how the richness of the separate chords, or single items 
 of harmony, and the mere sense of change firom one to another, may give 
 satisfaction from moment to moment to ears whose tether is too short, or 
 (as we may now add) which are too much overpowered by loud and in- 
 tricate sound, to co-ordinate prolonged groups of notes into coherent 
 motives and passages : so that to such ears the difference between a 
 succession of harmonies and a succession of single notes is like the differ- 
 ence between waves and pegs to a man who wants easy and encompassing 
 support. The dim sense of answering and interlacing parts, again, may 
 be a large ingredient in this indefinite pleasure ; so that the contrapuntal 
 compositions whose beauties few musicians would pretend to unravel or 
 
THE TWO WAYS OF HEARING MUSIC. 307 
 
 appreciate till after some little acquaintance, are often just those about 
 which others who do not profess to be extremely musical will go into 
 perfectly honest raptures at once. 
 
 That the pleasure arising from any series or combination of sounds § 3. Various 
 which conveys no distinct musical meaning should be lower and less than indefinite effect 
 that attainable through more definite apprehension, scarcely requires "^er 'than the 
 proof. First, there is the evidence of the majority of those who at all d^^^''^! 
 enjoy listening to Music, and who have experienced at different times both 
 sorts of pleasure. Next, we have the right to identify the higher pleasure 
 with the more specialised, that which is appreciated by the more developed 
 and differentiated sense; and which of course belongs to the distinct 
 exercise of the musical faculty, as opposed to the nearly universal nervous 
 susceptibility to the effect of rich and powerful sound. Next, while the 
 impression of mere beauty of sound-colour is exceptionally sensuous and 
 passive, not admitting of any of the indirect aesthetic effects given (as we 
 have seen) by the material of Architecture, nor of the associations of space 
 and freedom which a painter's most formless hues may gain from the blue 
 sky and the other coloured spaces of nature, the apprehension of musical 
 motives, on the other hand, constitutes a specially active kind of self- 
 realisation. And lastly, there is the point already suflBciently insisted on, 
 the power of, in some measure at least, permanently possessing forms which 
 have once become famiKar, in contrast to the utter transience of all form- 
 less sound-eflFects. At the same time, the indefinite pleasure is rarely or 
 never a matter of mere sensuous impression, like the quite unintelligent 
 enjoyment of a taste or smell. Even where the true melodic and harmonic 
 forms are not in the least discerned, either through lack of musical ear or 
 because the mass of sound really renders them undiscoverable, tangible frag- 
 ments of them may appear, and there is at any rate the perception of change 
 and movement, and constantly also of rhythm : so that the impression of 
 mighty waves of measured sound is often something much more unique and 
 positive than the general exaltation or the soothingand attuning of the organ- 
 ism, such, for instance, as the subtle formless influences of a summer-evening though it ia 
 or a dose of opium might produce. Under fortunate conditions the vaguer arousing a 
 emotions induced by Music may rise to extraordinary power, as when some s^at mass of 
 mighty polyphony, in its resistless blending of tumult and order, calls up 
 deep indefinable associations of the mightier stream of lives and fates. Still 
 whatever their value may be, such effects are obviously very indirect, 
 quasi-accidental, and subjective ; they are not the composer's message ; they 
 cannot be presented to the inward ear when the orchestra has vanished, 
 and though combinable with perception of form they can never replace it. 
 
 The effect described is naturally exemplified most typically in those § 4. The 
 who have not a ' musical ear,' but is by no means confined to them. "We ifconsti^t"y"' 
 saw in the last chapter how mere amount and sonorousness of clang often indefinite even 
 
 X 2 
 
308 
 
 mE TWO WAYS OF HEARING MUSIC. 
 
 to people who 
 have a per- 
 fectly good 
 musical ear, 
 though the 
 vaguer 
 pleasure is 
 often com- 
 paratively 
 small in their 
 
 Few ears can 
 really at all 
 master intri- 
 cate music till 
 it has been 
 repeated 
 several times. 
 
 interpose distinct physical hindrance to the clear discernment of form : and 
 apart from this, persons with plenty of ear may constantly fail to detect 
 the points of an elaborate composition with which they are unfamiliar, or 
 after a time their attention may flag ; so that either enforcedly or volun- 
 tarily they resign themselves to the indefinite mode of affection, catching 
 at any fragments they can, but for the XQOst part letting the stream of 
 sound flow by without seeking to individualise its parts.' The amateur 
 mode of listening to a fugue is very commonly a mixture of the indefinite 
 way with definite welcome of the returns of the opening ' subject.' But 
 though lapses into this passive attitude are common enough to all but the 
 exceptionally gifted, I fear that the power of deriving pleasure from it 
 must be rather in the inverse ratio of the actual amount of the special 
 faculty, and must recede as a more definite musical sense develops itself. 
 An ear which has become accustomed to searching for coherent melodic 
 and harmonic meanings cannot easily throw off this seeking attitude, or 
 make itself sufficiently passive to derive satisfaction from beauty or mass 
 of mere changing sound. Just as it will be soon offended by poverty and 
 -conventionality, however splendidly presented in the way of mass and 
 coloui-, so it will be wearied rather than delighted by Music which it fails 
 to penetrate and follow. And the result is often very literally that ignor- 
 ance is bliss, and that the non-musical hearer enjoys what puzzles the 
 ordinary amateur. The sense of bewilderment is indeed far more often 
 a sign of presence than of absence of ear, and it would be well if this were 
 more widely understood. If the real difficulty of many musical composi- 
 tions were more of an accepted fact, difficulty not in the sense that an 
 average ear cannot comprehend them, but in the sense that an average ear 
 cannot comprehend them at a glance, both sentiments and expressions of 
 
 ' The gradations from the indefinite to the 
 definite reception of Music are the same in 
 kind for the least and the most skilled ears, 
 though of course the immensely larger part 
 of what is indefinite to the former is clear 
 at once to the latter. The test of reproduc- 
 tion in memory may seem to press unduly on 
 quite unskilful ears ; but not that of recog- 
 nition ; if any passage, be it only two bars 
 long, be picked out as specially agreeable, 
 the very act of preference implies that after 
 a limited number of presentations the com- 
 bination of notes will become familiar. 
 
 It must be noticed that enjoyment is neces- 
 sary to the test of recognition. Music may 
 be so utterly commonplace, or so utterly im- 
 interesti.ig to a' particular hearer, that his 
 mind retains no traces of it even though his 
 actual perception of it at the moment may 
 have been clear enough ; just as a face in a 
 crowd may appear for an instant as an indi- 
 
 vidual, not quite the same as any other that 
 has ever met the eye, but would not be 
 known again on another occasion. The 
 analogy of faces may help in another way to 
 illustrate musical recollection. The memory 
 of some particular music is often even to a 
 musician too dim and fragmentary for him 
 to be able at all to get it right or piece it 
 together in his head, and yet may haunt him 
 persistently ; similarly a face which has been 
 once seen may haunt the memory, while yet 
 so dimly realised that no detailed descrip- 
 tion of its features could be attempted. But 
 in both cases the mental object is the dim 
 image of what has been definite, and is it- 
 self definite in the sense that the actual 
 phenomenon will be instantly recognised if 
 it recurs, and will stamp its image further 
 on the mind, while a false substitute would 
 be certain of detection. 
 
THE TWO WAYS OF HEARING MUSIC. 309 
 
 admiration would gain greatly in intelligence and sincerity. I do not 
 suppose that many of Billow's London admirers had any acquaintance to 
 speak of with Beethoven's great B flat sonata : and I u?ed to wonder, if, 
 instead of repeating the last movement, he had played something else 
 equally long, fast, and elaborate, what proportion of the audience would 
 have been the wiser. It is of course hard to certify such points by direct 
 experiment : but there are persons to whom enthusiasm about most 
 difScult works seems to come with such enviable facility, that it is impos- 
 sible not to wish occasionally to test it, by advertising a repetition and 
 having other music of the same external character substituted. 
 
 In respect of indefinite aesthetic effects, it "is impossible to help com- §.6. Com- 
 paring Music with Architecture. Such a comparison would be suggested ArcM"ecture 
 by the mere identity of place and occasion in which the service of religion ^ect"ofhidefi-" 
 associates the two arts, much at any rate of their value in that relation "iw effects. 
 being indisputably due to the more general sort of impressiveness which 
 does not concentrate or absorb the worshipper's attention. From several 
 points of view these two presentative arts are naturally the ones in 
 which indefinite and subjective effects might be expected to assume 
 prominence. In the arts of representation, persons who in various 
 degrees lack keenness of perception have still the definite stimulus and 
 interest of recognition, and their ideas are directed along the various lines 
 of thought which the subject-matter may open up ; but in the presence of 
 abstract form and colour, those who either habitually or temporarily are 
 not actively percipient have, from the nature of the case, no such special 
 guide to their thoughts, and may follow at will any fancies or meditations 
 in harmony with the exalting or calming influence of the impressions 
 which meet the senses. Again, Music and Architecture are the only two 
 arts which are able constantly to present any vast and overpowering rruias 
 of impression to the senses ; colossal pictures and statues being rare ex- 
 ceptions ; and mere mass and amount of impression is a quality specially 
 favourable to the suffusive feeling of awe and the vaguer imaginative 
 stirrings. And with the same feature of mere extent and quantity is con- 
 nected the power to encompass and affect large numbers at the same time, 
 by which again these two arts are peculiarly adapted to solemn cere- 
 monials. 
 
 If, however, the two arts be compared as to the place their less definite 
 effects can be held to occupy in the sum of their value, the comparison at 
 once becomes a 'contrast, and Architecture is left in a quite unique position : 
 for the indeterminate and subjective order of impression which is quasi- 
 accidental in the case of Music, and arises there greatly from a simple 
 failure to penetrate and grasp the forms, is connected with some of the 
 essential features of buildings, and the power to produce it must be esteemed 
 one of their most constant and substantive functions.. Music is x>^r excel- 
 
310 THE TWO WAYS OF HEARING MUSIC. 
 
 lence the art whose occasions are brief and definite, and its appeal to the 
 hearing ear arresting and peremptory : Architecture is as emphatically the 
 encompassing art permanently linked with human occupations, and to 
 which therefore we should especially look for such emotional conditions as 
 will mingle with and colour varied streams of thought and feeling. These 
 streams are often, indeed, less fortuitous and subjective than those which 
 the unperceptive hearing of Music sets in motion: nor, in the case of 
 Architecture, does the less determinate quality of impression fall altogether 
 under the definition given at the beginning of this chapter, since it does 
 not necessarily imply inability to recognise or recall what has been pre- 
 sented. Often it is rather the result of extreme famiharity ; buildings 
 being from their very nature so habitually seen and used that their actual 
 contomrs, for a large proportion of the time that they are in the field of 
 vision, are not specially noticed, while yet they may pervade the life they 
 shelter with a subtle sense of ordered grandeur or of quiet and abiding 
 harmony. But I am here not referring to effects so remote as this from 
 actual observation of the work, like the dimly felt influence of a cathedral 
 on an intent worshipper ; but rather to experiences in which the eye is 
 truly receptive and awake to any architectural beauty it may find surround- 
 ing it, like an ear truly listening to Music ; and it is in these circumstances, 
 in what may be called its normal impressions, that Architecture presents 
 the indeterminate sort of effect with such exceptional prominence. 
 The grounds of The grounds on which this character rests are not hard to trace. 
 in\he*^e"of ^^ ^^^^ abeady sufficiently remarked the less striking individuality 
 Architecture, and variety of abstract visual forms and proportions as compared with 
 those of Music : but while in Music, when once the element of individual 
 form ceases to be definitely and engrossingly attended to, nothing is left 
 to the account of less definite impression than so much moving and 
 coloured sound. Architecture, as we have seen, is specially rich in other 
 elements of effect. Not that the eye in ranging over a building can ever 
 fail to perceive form, or get into the mazed condition which we have 
 noticed as possible to the ear ; but though the other elements must thus 
 appear under the dominance of form, they are really what charge the 
 whole with its emotional character. The mass of matter and number of 
 features capable of striking the spectator simultaneously, yet allowing the 
 eye to grasp at the same time a multitude of detail, or to trace it at leisure 
 with the perpetual background of the larger magnificence, preciousness of 
 material, the signs of human labour, the look of strength, the look of age, 
 the sympathetic gloom and mystery in the broad massings of shadow, all 
 these are things which fit a great building rather to be an environment 
 for the musings and aspirations of individuals or for social or religious 
 gatherings than an immediate and overmastering object of attention. 
 They are conditions eminently fitted to encourage the widely diffused 
 
THE TWO WAYS OF HEARING MUSIC. 311 
 
 associations proper to a monumental art, and to give it a character which, 
 while often lacking strong artistic individuality, may be ethically and 
 socially most powerfully effective. For beautiful buildings are not like 
 other works of art, burning messages from soul to soul, too pregnant and 
 often too rapid to allow thought of other things : rather their office is to 
 lend grace and dignity to the outer uses of life while harmonising with 
 its varied inner phases, and to stimulate every strain of worthy emotion 
 by enabling men to breathe at times an atmosphere that belongs to other 
 generations, charged with the memories that turn to hopes or the hopes 
 that shall turn to memories. 
 
 We need not extend further our notice of the indefinite way of hearing § 6. There is 
 music. Though its existence, its commonness, and the sort of value toaayaLut 
 attaching to it, are extremely important points, there is from its very ^e indefinite 
 nature little to say about it. In the following chapters it will be imder- 
 stood that I am dealing entirely with the definite way, the mode of hearing 
 which follows and distinguishes the motives as they pass. 
 
312 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 § 1. The two We now pass on to quite a new branch of our enquiry. So far we have 
 presston°InT" t)een considering Music almost entirely as a means of impression, as a pre- 
 expression. sentation of impressive (or, as too often happens, unimpressive) phenomena. 
 We have now to distinguish this aspect of it from another, its aspect as a 
 means of earpression, of creating in us a consciousness of images, or of ideas, 
 or of feelings, which are known to us in regions outside Music, and which 
 therefore Music, so far as it summons them up within us, may be fairly 
 said to express. The chief difficulty in getting a clear view of this part of 
 the subject lies in the vagueness and looseness of thought which is apt to 
 run in the track of general and abstract terms : and this being so, I can 
 only make my argument clear by insisting on the clear separation of the 
 sets of conceptions which come under the heads of i'm.pression and ear- 
 pression respectively, or at any rate may be justifiably so classified after 
 due definition. 
 
 The distinction is made very simple by considering that expression in- 
 volves two things, one of which is expressed by the other. The expression 
 may take the form of imitation, as when an appearance or a movement of any- 
 thing is purposely suggested by some aspect or movement given to some- 
 thing else. Or the thing expressed may be an idea, as when a fine idea is 
 expressed by a metaphor ; or a feeling, as when suffering is expressed by 
 tears ; or a quality, as when pride is expressed by a person's face or demea- 
 nour. As regards expression of qualities, some preliminary explanation is 
 necessary. When a quality is so permanent and general and familiar an 
 attribute of anything that our idea of the thing comprises the quality, the 
 latter does not seem separable enough for us to conceive of it as expressed ; 
 and thus we should not naturally say that a tree expressed greenness, or a 
 dark night darkness, or a church-steeple height. In a word, a thing is ex- 
 pressive oi occasional attributes, not of the essential attributes of its class. 
 There is a doubtful region where such phrases might be used even of very 
 general quahties with reference to some special idea in the speaker's mind : 
 thus a Platonist might say that the face of nature expressed beauty, con- 
 ceiving of beauty as a single principle, which is one thing ; capable of mani- 
 
 Explanation 
 as regards 
 expression of 
 qualities. 
 
MTJSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 313 
 
 festing itself in this or that form, which is another thing : but we should 
 not, in an ordinary way, say that a flower expresses beauty, or a lion 
 strength, but that the flower is beautiful and the lion strong. So with re- 
 spect to musical forms or motions ; they are so familiarly conceived as aim- 
 ing at being beautiful and vigorous, such qualities are so identified with 
 our idea of their function, that we do not naturally think of them as ex- 
 pressvng beauty and vigour. So with qualities identified with the most 
 general effects of impressive sound on the organism ; we do not conceive 
 of any sounds, musical or non-musical, as expressing soothingness or 
 excitingness. But we do not quarrel with the description of music as 
 having a romantic or passionate or sentimental expression, even though 
 the analogy of the effect to modes of feeling known outside Music may be 
 of the dimmest and most intangible kind ; and when some more special 
 and distinctive quality appears, such as agitation or melancholy, when 
 a particular feeling in ourselves is identified with a particular character in 
 a particular bit of music, then we say without hesitation that such a par- 
 ticular bit eaypresses the quality or feeUng.' 
 
 It is true that there is a very important method of using words like § 2. Another 
 
 •> '■ ° mannerofusmg 
 
 expressive in relation to Music, in the absence of particular describable words like 
 qualities or particular suggestions of any sort ; a usage which has been significance, 
 more than once adopted in this book, and which it seems to me impossible 
 to forego. Thus we often call music which stirs us more expressive than 
 music which does not ; and we call great music significant, or talk of its 
 import, in contrast to poor music, which seems meaningless and insignifi- 
 cant ; without being able, or dreaming we are able, to connect these 
 general terms with anything expressed or signified. This usage was ex- 
 plained, at the end of the sixth chapter, as due to the inevitable association 
 of music with utterance, and of utterance with something external to it- 
 self which is to be expressed,^ as our ideas are external to the sounds in 
 
 ' The necessary connection of quality and elated with It. The feeling In ourselves 
 feeling should be noted : for there being no need not necessarily be the same as the 
 personality in music, the qualities It can be quality attributed to the music : the special 
 in itself expressive of must be Identified with feeling corresponding to melancholy music is 
 some affection of ourselves. Thus we should melancholy, but the special feeling corre- 
 not say that quick or slow music expressed spondlng to capricious or humorous music is 
 such Impersonal qualities as speed or slow- not capriciousness or humorousness, but 
 ness, but possibly hilarity or solemnity, surprise or amusement : clearly, however. 
 Music may present even decided qualities this mode of feeling is suflfiolently identified 
 which are not suggestive of any special and with the contemplation of the quality, 
 occasional mode of feeling in ourselves. Thus ^ Quite apart from the notion of such a 
 a melody may be simple, but as It does not something to be expressed, our habitual pro- 
 make us feel simple, and as we have no jectlon either of the composer's or of the 
 definite mode of feeling identified with the performer's or of some imaginary personality 
 contemplation of so general a quality, we behind the music we hear may naturally 
 should not naturally say that It eaypressed lead to such phrases as that some one ex- 
 simplicity ; unless there were some simplicity presses himself or expresses his personality 
 external to It, in some words or person asso- or expresses his soul in the music ; in the 
 
314 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 which need 
 lead to no con- 
 fusion. 
 
 § 3. Music 
 cannot be truly 
 expressive 
 without being 
 impressive ; 
 
 but a great 
 deal of impres- 
 sive music is 
 not deflnably 
 tfjpressive. 
 
 The foundation 
 of Music's in- 
 dependent im- 
 
 pressiveness. 
 
 which we utter them. But even those who take the transcendental view 
 that something is so expressed or signified by all beautiful music — whether 
 the something be the ' Will of the World,' as Schopenhauer taught, or any 
 other supposed fundamental reality to which our present conceptions are 
 inadequate — may still perfectly well accept the following proposition : that 
 there is a difference between music which is expressive in the sense of 
 definitely suggesting or inspiring images, ideas, qualities, or feelings be- 
 longing to the region of the known outside music, and music which is 
 not so expressive, and in reference to which terms of expression and signifi- 
 cance, however intuitive and habitual, could only be logically pressed by 
 taking them in a quite peculiar sense, and postulating an unknown some- 
 thing behind phenomena, which the phenomena are held to reveal or 
 signify, or, according to Schopenhauer, to ' objectify.' 
 
 The distinction as thus stated does not altogether coincide with that 
 conveyed by the words expressive and impressive ; since there is nothing 
 to prevent music which is etcpressive in the former and tangible sense from 
 being also impressive by its beauty. As the true distinction involved in 
 the words is between two different aspects of Music, both of these may 
 naturally be "presented bythe same specimen j and . indeed we- shall find 
 that no music is really expressive in any valuable way which does not also 
 impress us as having the essential character of musical beauty ; an un- 
 pleasing tune may be lugubrious but not melancholy. But the great point, 
 which is often strangely ignored and for the sake of which the distinction 
 has been thus pedantically emphasised, is that eojpressiveness of the literal 
 and tangible sort is either absent or only slightly present ' in an immense 
 amount of impressive music ; that to suggest describable images, qualities, 
 or feelings, known in connection with other experiences, however frequent 
 a characteristic of Music, makes up no inseparable or essential part of its 
 fimction ; and that this is not a matter of opinion, or of theory as to what 
 should be, but of definite everyday fact. 
 
 The immense importance of this truth, and of its relation to the facts 
 of expression, will further appear when expression has been separately con- 
 sidered ; but this independent impressiveness is so entirely at the foundation 
 
 same sense, e.g., as a theist may hold the 
 Creator to express himself in the beauties of 
 Nature : such a use need not at all confuse 
 the distinction in the text. The word ex- 
 pression, again, in such a general phrase as 
 'playing with expression' does not mean 
 the signification of any thought or feeling 
 external to the music, but merely the making 
 
 the utmost, the literal squeezing out, of all 
 the beauty which is there in the music. 
 
 ' It is hard to word this so as to obviate 
 all possible objections. In modern music it 
 may perhaps be the case, more often than 
 
 not, that some one out of the category of 
 descriptive adjectives may seem at any rate 
 more appropriate than most others : words 
 like energetic, peaceful, solemn, and so on, 
 may be made to cover an immense amount 
 of ground. But the qualities may be said 
 to be slightly expressed if they excite no 
 special remark ; if one's impression, if it 
 runs at all into words, is far more vividly 
 'how beautiful,' or • how indescribable, how 
 utterly a musical experience,' than ' how ex- 
 traordinarily solemn," or ' how exceptionally 
 peaceful.' 
 
MUSIC AS IMPKESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 315 
 
 of the argument that it will be best to start by briefly recalling its root and 
 groundwork. We found these, it will be remembered, in the fusion and sub- 
 limation of those strongest elementary passions and emotions which, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Darwin's view, were associated with the primeval exercise of the 
 musical faculty, the primeval habit of following tones and rhythm with 
 pleasure ; and in the light of generally admitted principles of hereditary 
 association, we found no extraordinary difl&culty in connecting what are 
 now some of the most profound stirrings of ovir emotional nature with those 
 crude elements which were ~yet the most profound emotional stirrings 
 possible to our progenitors. In this connection it is well worth noting that 
 at every stage which comes under our observation. Music seems capable of 
 stirring up the strongest excitement that a being who musically typifies that 
 stage can experience. This enjoyment to the utmost of the best that can The strength of 
 be got is exemplified equally in the case of singing-birds, and of the ""nrat very 
 gibbon, moved with rapture at his own performance of the chromatic scale, of^Yyeiop-**^^* 
 and of the savage repeating over for hours his few monotonous strains ment; 
 and maddened by the rhythmic beat of the drum, and of the ancient Greek 
 spellbound by performances for the like of which we should probably tell 
 a street-performer to pass on, and of a circle of Arabs sobbing and laughing 
 by turns in ecstasies of passion at the sound of their native melodies, and 
 of the English child to whom some simple tune of Mozart's reveals the 
 unguessed springs of musical feeling, or of the adult in his loftiest com- 
 munings with the most inspired utterances of Beethoven.' And it is 
 all-important to observe that these emotional experiences are essentially 
 connected, throughout the whole long course of development, with the and always in 
 distinctly 'melodic principle, with the presentation of a succession of single with the 
 sound-units ; such series being exemplified in the percussive drummings of ^p}°'^'° P""' 
 the spider and in the song of the gibbon, as well as in the distinguishable 
 lines of tune indispensable to the emotional character of modem composi- 
 tion. So that our general theory entirely bears out the view which in the 
 fifth chapter was deduced from simple musical experience, that the ground 
 for the essential efiiects of the art must be sought, not in any considerations 
 connected with large or elaborate structure, or with rich complexity of 
 parts, or splendid masses of tone, but in the facts of mere note-after-note 
 melodic motion. 
 
 ' What is said here may be connected pleasure we derive from Beethoven with that 
 
 with what was said in the tenth chapter as which me derive from, e.g , the earlier works 
 
 to the rapid obsolescence of music. The of Haydn. Evidence entirely confirms what 
 
 newer and apparently more original kinds of A, priori we might have guessed, that that 
 
 Ideal Motion often make older music seem earlier music stirred its hearers to the very 
 
 tame and trite. But it would certainly be depths, in a manner which we can only 
 
 most unfair to think of comparing, as re- realise by recalling some of the strains 
 
 gards amount of enjoyment, our own musical which have had a similar effect on ourselves 
 
 experiences with those of a person in the in childhood, 
 middle of the last century, by comparing the 
 
316 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 striking cor- 
 respouilence of 
 the theory 
 with the facta 
 01 masical 
 emotion. 
 
 § 4. The 
 activity of the 
 musiced 
 faculty, 
 
 And while the theory, in its invocation of the strongest of all primitive 
 passions, as germs for the marvellously sublimated emotions of developed 
 Music, seems not only adequate but unique in its adequacy to account 
 generally for the power of those emotions, it further connects itself in the 
 most remarkable manner with that more special peculiarity of independent 
 impressiveness which is now under review ; with the fact which attentive 
 examination of musical experience more and more brings home to us, that 
 Music is perpetually felt as strongly emotional while defying all attempts 
 to analyse the experience or to define it even in the most general way in 
 terms of definite emotions. If we press close, so to speak, and try to force 
 our feelings into declaring themselves in definite terms, a score of them 
 may seem pent up and mingled together and shooting across each other — 
 triumph and tenderness, surprise and certainty, yearning and fulfilment ; but 
 all the while the essential magic seems to lie at an infinite, distance behind 
 them all, and the presentation to be not a subjective jumble but a per- 
 fectly distinct object, productive (in a thousand minds it may be at once) 
 of a perfectly distinct though unique and undefinable affection. This is 
 precisely what is explained, if we trace the strong undefinable affection 
 to a gradual fusion and transfiguration of such overmastering and per- 
 vading passions as the ardours and desires of primitive loves ; and it is 
 in reference to these passions of all others, both through their own 
 possessing nature and from the extreme antiquity which they permit us 
 to assign to their associative influence, that a theory of fusion and trans- 
 figuration in connection with a special range of phenomena seems possible 
 and plausible. The problem is indeed a staggering one, by what alchemy 
 abstract forms of sound, however unique and definite and however 
 enhanced in effect by the watching of their evolution moment by moment, 
 are capable of transformation into phenomena charged with feeling, and 
 yet in whose most characteristic impressiveness separate feelings seem as 
 fused and lost as the colours in a ray of white light : but at any rate thd 
 suggested theory of association is less oppressive to the speculative mind 
 than the everyday facts of musical experience wduld be in the absence of 
 such a far-reaching explanation of them. 
 
 The more serious difficulty, we found, came later. When we merely 
 ask why are melodic forms emotionally impressive, and why are they 
 emotionally impressive after a fashion which defies analysis or descrip- 
 tion, the association-theory comes to our assistance. But the further 
 question, why one melodic form is felt as emotionally impressive and 
 another not, reveals in a moment how much any such general theory leaves 
 unaccounted for ; and our further examination of melodic forms showed 
 that the faculty of discernment, the faculty in which the cognisance of 
 them is wholly vested, is one whose natme and action have to be accepted 
 as unique and ultimate facts, and whose judgments are absolute, un- 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 317 
 
 reasoning, and unquestionable.' It is not necessary to repeat what has 
 been said in the preceding chapters as to this extraordinary and independ- 
 ent faculty of co-ordinating a series of time- and pitch-relations into 
 forms or notions, and of deriving various degrees of satisfaction or dis- 
 satisfaction from the proportions so progressively contemplated ; nor as to 
 the somewhat difficult but still warrantable supposition that the satisfactory 
 action of the faculty, the concentration of it on such proportions as give 
 it adequate scope and exercise, is the only mode whereby the flood-gates 
 of emotion from the associational region are opened, and the perception 
 of the form transfused and transfigured; the transfusion ipso facto 
 preventing our knowing what the mere perception, the simple musical 
 impression as it might be if the informing associational elements were 
 non-existent, would in itself amount to. 
 
 But we now come to the consideration of certain points in musical as connected 
 
 , with differ- 
 
 forms and m the exercise of the musical faculty which are new ; these ences of 
 being specially connected with Music in its exjpressive aspect. As long pression. ^ 
 as Music is regarded only as a means of impression, as productive of 
 a sort of emotion which, however definite and crude may have been its 
 unfused and undeveloped germs, has been for ages so differentiated as to 
 convey no suggestion of its origin, and is unknown outside the region of 
 musical phenomena — as long as the forms, however various and indi- 
 vidual to the musical sense, still present a musical character undistingiushed 
 and unpervaded by any particular definable feeling of joy, gloom, triumph, 
 pathos, &c. — no examination of their structure from outside (as we abun- 
 dantly saw in the seventh and following chapters) throws the slightest 
 light on that musical character and its varieties : no rules can be framed 
 which will not be so general as to include the bad as well as the good. 
 The exercise of the musical faculty on such and such a form is found 
 pleasurable and emotional, its exercise on such and such another is found 
 neutral, or unsatisfactory and irritating ; and that is all : a mode of 
 perception which is unique defies illustration, and on this ground the only 
 answer to the questions which present themselves is the showing why 
 they are unanswerable. But when we come to the expressive aspect of 
 Music, to the definite suggestion or portrayal of certain special and 
 describable things known outside Music, whether images of objects or ideas 
 or qualities or feelings, we should naturally expect to be able to trace in 
 some degree the connection of any special suggestion or shade of character 
 with some special point or points in the musical form and the process by 
 which we follow it : and we have now to examine the various modes in 
 which such connections may present themselves. None of them, it will 
 
 ' Absolute and unquestionable, not of the power of a particular bit of music to 
 course as final or competent judgments of affect a particular individual at a particular 
 merit or anything else, but in reference to time. 
 
318 MUSIO AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 now be evident, can be held accountable for any musical beauty which 
 may be present : a tune is no more constituted beautiful by an expression, 
 e.g., of mournfulness or of capriciousness than a face is. The impressiveness 
 which we call beauty resides in the unique musical experience whose 
 natmre and history have just been summarised : but in proportion as the 
 beauty assumes a special and definable character or aspect, it does so 
 in virtue of features in the musical form which are also special and 
 definable. 
 § 5. The It will be 'convenient to consider first the expression of qualities and 
 
 by which defi- feelings ; the suggestion by music of objects and ideas being of a much more 
 may b?pTO-'°" external and accidental kind. In our ordinary experience the natural mode 
 duced. jjj -^fliich qualities and feelings are expressed otherwise than by speech ' is 
 
 of course physical movement of some kind ; thus human beings express 
 confidence and good spirits by rapid and decisive movements, solemnity by 
 measxu-ed movements, agitation by spasmodic movements, and so on. Now 
 the Ideal Motion of Music gives us an aspect of physical movement ready 
 made ; the aspect, namely, of pace and rhjrthm ; which can be presented 
 without any sound at all by movements in space, and the correspondence of 
 which with movements in space we perpetually exemplify in our own persons, 
 as we follow and in any way keep time with Music. Moreover the Ideal 
 Motion regarded in its completeness, without such particular reference to 
 the rhythmic element, wiU be found to present certain faint affinities to 
 external movement and gesture. But while it is naturally in motion that 
 we should look for the signs of definite emotional states, or, as we com- 
 monly say, the expression of such states, in Music there are three 
 other features connected with expression, two of which belong especially 
 to the tone- or pitch-element apart from peculiarities of motion ; the use, 
 namely, of the major or the minor ' mode,' and of occasional noticeable 
 harmonies ; the other being timbre or sound-colour. And we may 
 take these first, as there is less to be said about them.^ 
 
 ' The relation of Music to Speech will be detect. The relations between the notes of. 
 
 discussed in succeeding chapters, with results every key being identical, every series of re- 
 
 which will supplement without otherwise lations presenting every sort of describable 
 
 affecting the arguments in the present or indescribable character will of course be 
 
 chapter. The emotional elements which accepted by the ear in any key, or if it is a 
 
 music may gain by association with deiinite series which modulates through a set of 
 
 words and scenes will also be subsequently several keys, in any set of similaily related 
 
 treated of ; and certain extensions of the keys. But as it must have a highest and a 
 
 senses in which Music can be considered ex- lowest note, it vrill be important, especially 
 
 pressive will present themselves in connection in writing for a particular instrument, to 
 
 with Song and Opera. choose such a key that these notes shall 
 
 ' Particular keys are sometimes credited not be inconvenient or impossible ; and also 
 
 with definable emotional powers. That the mechanical difficulties of an instrument 
 
 certain faint differences exist between them may make certain keys preferable for certain 
 
 on certain instruments is undeniable, though passages. Subject to correction from conside- • 
 
 it is a difference which only exceptional ears rations of this sort, the composer probably 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 319 
 
 The expression which can truly be attributed to mere timbre amounts First, timbre or 
 
 to much less than is generally supposed. When we consider the cases 
 commonly adduced, we shall find that it is the pace or the manner of be- 
 ginning the note, or something else beyond the mere colour-quality, which 
 gives the sound its peculiar character. For instance, when we speak 
 of the plaintive sounds of a violin, we are thinking of slow, long- 
 
 quality of 
 musical sound. 
 
 generally chooses the key in which the germ of 
 his work first flashes across his mind's eye j 
 and when the music has once been seen and 
 known, written in a certain key, the very 
 look of it becomes so associated with itself 
 thai the idea of changing the key may pro- 
 duce a certain shock. But the cases are few 
 indeed where, had the music been first pre- 
 sented to any one's ears in a key differing by 
 a semitone from that in which it actually 
 stands, he would have perceived the slightest 
 necessity for alteration ; and as a matter of 
 fact, when a bit of music is thought over, or 
 hummed, or whistled, unless by a person of 
 exceptionally gifted ear, it is naturally far 
 oftener than not in some different key to 
 that in which it has been written and heard. 
 Even the difference most commonly alleged, 
 between C major as bright and strong and D 
 flat as soft and veiled, comes to almost abso- 
 lutely nothing when a bright piece is played 
 in D flat or a dreamy one in C. The view of 
 Helmholtz, which seems unassailable, is that 
 the differences, so far as they exist, result from 
 features of certain instruments ; e.g. that on 
 the piano the method of striking the short 
 black keys produces a somewhat different 
 quality of tone, and on bowed instruments 
 the bright strong notes of the open strings 
 will distinguish the keys in which those notes 
 are prominent : and that thus this alleged 
 character of keys differs on different instru- 
 ments. He observes that on the organ and 
 with singing voices the differences are not 
 discernible, and even on the piano (it may 
 be added) they would hardly be discernible 
 except in chords. 
 
 That a variety of emotional characters can 
 be definitely attributed to the various keys is a 
 notion so glaringly absurd that I would not 
 even mention it, were it not that it is very 
 commonly held ; that I find it asserted and 
 exemplified in the gravest manner in a popu- 
 lar manual by a well-known musician ; and 
 that such doctrines are really harmful by 
 making humble and genuine lovers of Music 
 believe that there are regions of musical 
 feeling absolutely beyond their powers of 
 conception. What I shall quote may also 
 
 serve as a sample to indicate that, as regards 
 the whole matter of this and the following 
 chapters, I am not fighting the air, but that 
 the exactly opposite views to mine are what 
 are practically in possession of the field. In 
 the manual referred to, the following state- 
 ments occur : 
 
 ' C magor expresses feeling in a pure, 
 certain, and decisive manner. It is further- 
 more expressive of innocence, of a powerful 
 resolve, of manly earnestness, and deep 
 religious feeling. 
 
 ' O major, that favourite key of youth, ex- 
 presses sincerity of faith, quiet love, calm 
 meditation, simple grace, pastoral life, and a 
 certain humour and brightness. 
 
 ' Q minor expresses sometimes sadness, 
 sometimes, on the other hand, quiet and 
 sedate joy — a gentle grace with a slight 
 touch of dreamy melancholy — and occasionally 
 it rises to a romantic elevation. It effec- 
 tively pourtrays the sentimental,' &o. (An- 
 other author, quoted by Schumann, found in 
 G minor discontent, discomfort, worrying 
 anxiety about an unsuccessful plan, ill- 
 tempered gnawing at the bit. ' Now com- 
 pare this idea,' says Schumann, 'with 
 Mozart's Symphony in G minor, that floating 
 Grecian Grace.' He quotes from the same 
 writer that E minor is a girl dressed in white 
 with a rose-coloured breastknot.) 
 
 'A major, full of confidence and hope, 
 radiant with love, and redolent of simple 
 genuine cheerfulness, excels all the other 
 keys in pourtraying sincerity of feeling. 
 
 ' A minor is expressive of tender, womanly 
 feeling ; it is at the same time most effective 
 for exhibiting the quiet melancholy senti- 
 ment of Northern nations, and, curiously 
 enough, lends itself very readily to the de- 
 scription of Oriental character, as shown in 
 Boleros and Mauresque serenades. But A 
 minor also expresses sentiments of devotion 
 mingled with pious resignation. 
 
 ' B major, a key but seldom used, expresses 
 in fortissimo boldness and pride ; in pianis- 
 simo, purity and the most perfect clearness. 
 
 ' B minor, that very melancholy key, tells 
 of a quiet expectation and- patient hope. It 
 
320 MUSIC Is IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 drawn-out notes, taken very gently without percussion or anything to give 
 them a strongly-marked catch at the beginning. Nor does it occur to us to 
 call sound of the same quality plaintive when, instead of being divided into 
 these long gentle notes, it is produced continuously, nor when it is divided 
 into short notes begun with more sharpness and suddenness. Association 
 with particular sorts of Music and particular occasions may produce a 
 somewhat erroneous impression in this respect. Many people perhaps 
 vaguely regard the organ, which has an immense variety of timbre, as an 
 essentially solemn instrument, just as a Greek who had commonly heard 
 the flute in connection with pathetic and effeminate melody would 
 identify its natural tone with that character : but both the organ and the 
 flute will of course lend their colours to all sorts of music. Mr. Prout, in 
 his excellent primer on instrumentation, justly remarks that the oboe, 
 which has a very peculiar timbre, ' is equally useful for th« expression of 
 melancholy, tenderness, and gaiety ; ' and he might have added for the 
 colouring of music which does Twt particularly present any of these cha- 
 racters. The horn is described as having a dreamy or melancholy character ; 
 but is eminently suitable for lively and hunting strains. The bassoon, 
 which is unrivalled for hmnorous and grotesque effects, was described by 
 Piccini^ as sad and melancholy ; and, as Berlioz remarks, when Meyerbeer 
 
 has often been observed that nervoua persons 
 will sooner be affected by that key than by 
 any other. 
 
 'F sharp major sounds brilliant and ex- 
 ceedingly clear ; as GJlat major it expresses 
 softness coupled with richness. 
 
 ' F sharp minor, that dark, mysterious, and 
 spectral key, is at the same time full of 
 passion. 
 
 • A flat m/ijor is full of feeling, and replete 
 with a dreamy expression. 
 
 ' F major is at once full of peace and joy, 
 but also expresses effectively a light, passing 
 regret : a mournful, but not a deeply sorrow- 
 ful feeling. It is, moreover, available for 
 the expression of religious sentiment. 
 
 ' F minor, a harrowing key, is especially 
 full of melancholy, at times rising into 
 passion,' &c. &c. 
 
 These are but extracts, and a good deal of 
 the humour is lost by selection. For the 
 ' characters ' of several of his keys the author 
 gives a list of examples ; the choice of which, 
 inasmuch as every possible character might 
 be exemplified from compositions in every 
 single key, cannot have been very difficult. 
 It is something like proving that Monday is 
 a day ' especially full of melancholy,' on the 
 ground that some individual lost a relative 
 on it, or that the chaiact eristic of Thursday 
 
 is ' confidence and hope,' on the ground that 
 on it an individual came in for a fortune. 
 Subject to the above-mentioned qualifica- 
 tions, anything can happen in any key, as 
 anything can happen on any day, or as any 
 motion can take place in any part of space. 
 With a dim perception of this the author 
 explains it, and irmocently confutes his 
 whole theory by saying that ' one com- 
 poser detects in a certain key qualities 
 which have remained entirely hidden from 
 another ; ' so that one finds cheerfulness and 
 another moumfulness in the same key ; which 
 is like explaining the difference between a 
 joyful and a sombre picture by saying that 
 one painter detects in his canvas qualities 
 which have remained hidden from the other. 
 The author tells us that the German pro- 
 fessor on whose work his own is founded, 
 evolved his theory 'from, philosophical prin- 
 ciples ; ' some further principles might 
 perhaps have been obtained from the work 
 of the Chinese philosopher who traced the 
 five tones of the old Chinese scale to the five 
 elements, water, fire, wood, metal, and earth. 
 ' Piccini's views on instrumeDts represent 
 the sort of laxity which is still very common. 
 Thus he considered that ' the oboe has an 
 expression which does not belong to the 
 clarinet ; and it, in its turn, differs totally 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 321 
 
 ■wanted ' a pale, cold, cadaverous sound ' for the resurrection of the nuns, 
 he obtained it from this instrument. There are, however, less malleable 
 instruments with the timbre of which a particular emotional character does 
 seem more identified. It is something in the piercing and peculiar tone 
 of bagpipes, over and above association, which produces the stirring and 
 martial effect attributed to them in their native country : and among re- 
 cognised orchestral instruments, the sounds of the trumpet are too brilliant 
 and sudden not to occur more frequently and prominently in joyous and 
 triumphant strains, than in a peaceful or pathetic style of music. But 
 even here, if we consider a sufficient number of instances, we shall find 
 the only rule that can be laid down is too general to allow us very closely 
 to associate even a timbre as marked as that of trumpets with definable 
 expression : the most we can say is that they belong rather to the strong 
 and exciting than to the smooth and quiet passages. Trumpet-sounds 
 perpetually occur with splendid effect in most various motions ; often in 
 places where no particular emotional tinge of triumph or joy is produced, 
 and where brilliant and forcible colour seems entirely appropriate to the 
 musical passage without thereby doing more than make it musically more 
 arresting and exciting. 
 
 Mutatis mutandis, similar remarks would apply to other instruments ; 
 and also to the effects of marked fortes and pianos, which suit all sorts of 
 musical motions, without its being possible to class them as belonging to, 
 much less as constituting, separate and definable emotional characters. 
 Fortissi/mo passages may be sombre as well as gay ; and picmissimo is 
 often as appropriate to passages full of passion, hurry, and excitement as to 
 the gentlest lullaby. 
 
 The major mode demands no special notice. The expression of con- Secondly, 
 fidence usually attributed to it reaUy belongs to the cases where it is mSor^ode.' 
 contrasted with the minor. Major music is not perceived as confident in 
 virtue of its ' mode ' alone, or clearly more than half the music we possess 
 would have to be considered definitely expressive of this character. Music in 
 a major key may be profoundly mournful ; and it would often be impossible 
 for any description to touch the musically felt difference between such 
 music and mournful minor music. The minor mode has a somewhat more 
 constant range of effect. The main fact, the impression of melancholy 
 and want of confidence conveyed by the characteristic notes of the minor 
 scale, whether used melodicaUy or harmonically, was sufficiently dwelt on 
 in the chapter on Harmony. The character of the minor mode, as com- 
 
 from the flute. The horns change their cha- different states of extra-musicsal feeling, but 
 
 racter according to the key in which they not a word is said of the forms or motions 
 
 are employed,' and so on. Here not only presented by the various instruments ; so 
 
 does the unfortunate word expression tend that colour is represented as usiirping the 
 
 unwarrantably to identify difference of whole sway of the expressive element, 
 musical timbre with power to suggest 
 
322 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 Thirdly, 
 particular 
 harmonic fea- 
 
 tures. 
 
 pared with the major, must rest primarily on th6 melodic and harmonic 
 character of those particular notes : but it is very possible that the effect of 
 trouble or mystery is aided by the general want of certainty in the 
 harmonisation of the mode, as pointed out by Helmholtz. But in reality 
 the extent to which we can identify the use of the minor mode with 
 definable emotional experience is but slight. Out of a hundred minor 
 bits of music, only a few may be at all distinctly melancholy or elegiac. 
 Features of pace and rhythm may be connected in some with an agitated, 
 in others a majestic expression ; some may be marked by intensity, others 
 by inaouda/nce, others by caprice ; none of which characteristics have any 
 special connection with the minor mode. Many, again, may wholly lack 
 extra-musical character : or if even among wide and marked differences 
 of musical individuality a certain tinge of trouble, pathos, or complaint 
 may be traced (as compared, for instance, with the effect of similar motions 
 in the major), such a tinge is too intangible and general to be easily 
 thought of as definable expression. It is just in such a case that the 
 error would be made which we shall have to notice later as of very 
 common occurrence ; the error of supposing that because we perceive a 
 great variety of musical forms, of forms which in their musical aspect 
 are entirely distinct from one another and individually impressive, and 
 because a few of them correspond with or express some mode of emotional 
 experience known outside music, therefore the others must express shades 
 and varieties of such extra-musical experience. 
 
 The definable expression given sometimes by a single harmonic fea- 
 ture (apart from major or minor effects) is chiefly connected with the use 
 of discords. The effects of discords and resolutions, as of harmony in 
 general,' are generally, of course, bits of purely musical satisfaction, 
 occurring in their proper places as elements of all varieties of form, and 
 in music of all shades and no shades of definable character. But a par- 
 ticular expression may be occasionally traced to discords in marked 
 positions. Thus in Schumann's Implori/ng Child, beginning thus — 
 
 J- 
 
 ^ 
 
 e=^=^ 
 
 S 
 
 r'T^ 
 
 f^ 
 
 Eg 
 
 =3.: 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ° IS&o. 
 
 ' Harmony is so often called the great 
 ' means of musical expression ' (with perfect 
 truth in the wider sense, thatit euormouslyin- 
 tensifies and varies musical effects, making 
 them go further into us, so to speak, and tell 
 us more of those unfathomable things which 
 
 Music alone reveals), that we should the more 
 carefully note the limits of its expressive- 
 ness in the more precise sense here used, of 
 its power to bring musical emotions into the 
 definable zone. 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 323 
 
 the special accent of trouble is given by the unusual start on the ninth ; 
 it is increased by the flattening into the minor note, B flat, as was noticed 
 in the chapter on Harmony. Another simple instance of expression 
 conveyed by a simple chord may be found i'n the use of a diminished 
 seventh in the bar which immediately precedes the cadence of Auldt 
 Robin Gray, thus — 
 
 ^3^^a--^ 
 
 As this is the only place where the melody goes above C, the ascent to the 
 F would alone produce an expression of strain and yearning, to which the 
 troubled chord gives a strong additional shade. Such effects,, however, 
 easily get an exaggerated air ; and, in the present case, the unstable^ 
 imsatisfied sound of the chord of the dominant seventh without the domin-. 
 ant, thus — 
 
 ^m 
 
 -i-^— »—- — 
 
 :i=«t 
 
 r 
 
 :^i=^ 
 
 r^m^ 
 
 r^ 
 
 r 
 
 i 
 
 m 
 
 ^E 
 
 j2=3: 
 
 -I— 
 
 is all that is really wanted, and is on the whole preferable. A beautiful 
 example of distinet expression, from a single harmonic feature,! occurs in 
 Schubert's song, Die hose Farbe — 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 F=BS|=i=F 
 
 ^0- 
 
 ?c^=f=^ 
 
 1 — ^-^- - M r \ r—f 
 JEzzjE ,.'^ Mi l 
 
 ^^^^^ ^M^^^m 
 
 
 ei~~]T 
 
 5 — ^- 
 
 ■1^ 
 
 -?-i 
 
 "3 
 
 ^^ 
 
 T 2 
 
324 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 § S. Expres- 
 sion produced 
 by characters 
 of motion. 
 First, by pace. 
 
 the feature being one already noticed, on p. 281, as one of the most dis- 
 tinctive in music. In its present position, on the last syllable of the line, 
 * Ich mochte die griinen Graser all' weinen ganz todten-bleich,' it has a 
 most passionate accent of sudden wailing. 
 
 It is clearly impossible, however, to lay down rules assigning such and 
 such harmonies to such and such emotional efifects, as the same actual 
 harmonic features, in connection with different forms, may intensify quite 
 different sorts of expressiveness. Even when the harmony seems not so 
 much to intensify as actually to produce an effect, impossible without it, 
 it must still be in virtue of some relation to the general musical motion 
 into which it enters. Thus I described the E flat chord in Voyez sur 
 cette roche, quoted on p. 280, as suggestive of alarm and warning ; but 
 that character results purely from the sort of contrast it produces 
 occurring in the midst of a naive and debonair melody. In the crash of 
 the finale to an overture the same harmonic change, as we saw, though it 
 may be impressive, has no assignable expression. 
 
 When we come to considerations of m,otion, the ground is much 
 clearer. First as regards pace : the expressive character of anything 
 noticeably fast or slow is evident ; for pace, to be expressive, must deviate 
 noticeably one way or the other from some normal standard. If we see a 
 man running at the rate of nine miles an hour, we consider his movement 
 expresses eagerness or sportiveness ; if we see him walking at the rate of 
 one mile an hour, we consider his movement expresses solemnity or de- 
 pression ; but if we see him walking at four miles an hour, it does not 
 strike us that his pace expresses moderation. Similar remarks apply in 
 great measure to Music. It is impossible, however, to lay down any very 
 precise standard of moderation for musical pace ; partly because there are 
 no physical conditions such as correspond to three or four miles an hour 
 in walking ; partly because the outline of a slow or moderate tempo may 
 comprise passages formed of a number of short quick notes, which may 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 325 
 
 produce the most energetic effect. Pace, moreover, in musical as in 
 physical motion, is far too wide and general a feature to mark the character 
 ■ffith any certainty : but we may at any rate safely say that a very slow 
 movement is often solemn, and never gay or agitated, and that a very quick 
 movement is often gay or agitated, and never solemn ; and that unwarranted 
 liberties with pace are as destructive of the definable character, if such 
 exist, as of the essential musical beauty; witness Meyerbeer's treat- 
 ment of Evn^ feste Burg in the overture to the Huguenots. Positive 
 moderation and calmness may seem more distinctly expressible by Music 
 than by degrees of physical motion which are too habitual and unnoticed 
 to be thought of as expressive. In Music, however, the quality of calm- 
 ness is connected rather with evenness of flow, with the absence of strongly 
 marked groups and of wide variety in the time-values of notes, than with 
 mere moderation of teimpo : nor is the connection by any means constant, 
 inasmuch as we have already found, and shall find again, that extreme 
 musical passion is compatible with an even and moderate rhythmic flow. 
 And even in normal cases, when a musical motion is interesting us by 
 its beauty, the expression by it of anything so neutral as calmness, is hardly 
 calculated, as a rule, to strike us in a more positive way than the quality 
 of moderation in the average pace of a walker. 
 
 We find the connection of rhythm, as distinct from pace, with musical 
 expression chiefly in features of metrical outline and of strong marking of 
 accents : in the more detailed structure the rhythmic element presents no 
 features which can be dwelt on apart from the Ideal Motions into which it 
 enters only as a single factor. 
 
 The crowding together of strong accents, as in the ' subject ' from the Secondly, by- 
 movement L" Absence, quoted on p. 254, is connected with an expression strong accents. 
 of passion and vehemence, which we might compare with the similar 
 expression given by frequent strong gestures to passionate speech. We 
 see the essential connection of the ictus with the passion in such an 
 instance as that quoted, in that it goes to constitute, and does not result 
 from, the force and stir of the Ideal Motion. We do not conceive the 
 motion as passionate, and then put an ictus on such and such notes ; the 
 passion has no true existence imtil the ictus is there, and a person who 
 played the passage without the ictus, would simply show that for him 
 its passionate character did not exist. Similarly it would be impossible 
 to conceive the energy of the opening subject of Schubert's B flat trio — 
 
326 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 I 
 
 ■ rr^'r 
 
 m 
 
 -p— e 
 
 ^ 
 
 ¥^- 
 
 ■^ 
 
 :rr-H 
 
 B fe^^S 
 
 :^- 
 
 "i I .j — - 
 
 3^ 
 
 I 
 
 -fc 
 
 te 
 
 1— I— r— I — F=F 
 
 :l^=1: 
 
 i 
 
 =^^i^*^ 
 
 SSM:**:** 
 
 — «1 1 ' mmmm m 
 
 -m- I jI « 1 a ( 1 
 
 t^^t7777 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 ±& 
 
 ^^ 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 327 
 
 without feeling in it a tremendousness of ictus which would seem extrava- 
 gant in actual performance, and which therefore makes all earthly per- 
 formance appear inadequate. 
 
 An expression of confidevice, again, is very commonly connected with a Thirdly, by 
 strongly marked rhythmic outline at a certain somewhat quick pace ; and marked 
 especially in double time, since there we easily get an association with the j;^ ""^ °" 
 movement of marching, which is impossible in a measure where the bar 
 cannot be halved. Triiunph, again, of the clear, direct kind which may be 
 suggested by a firm and buoyant step, is similarly often connected with a 
 strongly marked rhythmic movement ; though naturally such expression 
 only rises into the stage of being noticed or defined in cases where the 
 music has beauty enough to be arresting and stirring ; as, for instance, 
 in the opening of Mendelssohn's Lohgescmg. It would be ridiculous to 
 attempt to extend to music in general the distinction between double 
 and triple time,' which the greater physical confidence of the former in 
 certain cases might suggest. But it is possible to trace in many simple 
 instances a certain very indefinable character which seems dimly to con- 
 nect itself with that distinction. Thus, if we compare a waltz with a 
 quadrille or galop, there is something in the triple beat of the former 
 
 ' The idea of forcing emotional character- 
 istics on things so empty in themselves, and 
 so capable of the most various sorts of con- 
 tent, as the several rhythmic outlmesot Music, 
 is not less preposterous than the notion about 
 keys discussed in a former note, I may 
 quote a few pieces of information from the 
 same source as before. 
 
 • The common time expresses the quiet life 
 of the soul, a solid earnestness, an inward 
 peace — but also strength, energy, and courage.' 
 It ' lends itself readily to the representation 
 of passion,' but ' is also expressive of quiet 
 meditation.' 
 
 'The three-eight time expresses joy, a 
 bright and sincere pleasure, which less affects 
 our feelings than it carries vis insensibly 
 along in an unpretending and agreeable 
 manner.' It is also, we are told, expressive 
 of suddenness and impulse, which are liable 
 soon to degenerate into the expression of a 
 frantic excitement ; but its best character- 
 istic is innocence and simplicity. 
 
 'The three-four time is expressive of long- 
 ing, of supplication, of sincere hope, and of 
 love. It lends itself also very effectively to 
 the description of sincere devotional feel- 
 ings. The six-eight time is the natural inter- 
 preter of a spontaneousjoviality and pleasure ; 
 but it also unites gracefulness with dignity, 
 and may sometimes be used as expressive of 
 
 a mournful sentiment ; yet the sorrow it 
 indicates is rather that of young persons.' 
 And so on. 
 
 It would be interesting to hear from this 
 writer what happens when any one composes 
 a piece in common time, which ' expresses the 
 quiet life of the soul and inward peace,' and 
 in the key of E minor, which 'represents 
 grief, mournfulness, and restlessness of 
 spirit.' 
 
 After the previous discussion of rhythm, I 
 need hardly warn my readers against the 
 totally false analogy of poetical metres, to 
 which, within very wide limits, certain cha- 
 racteristics "mat) be attributed ; in English 
 verse, for instance, anapaestic metres might 
 be said to be swifter and more stirring than 
 iambic. The difference between word-metres 
 and rhythmic outlines in Music is obvious. 
 In the first place the word-metre to a, great 
 extent controls the pace, while every rhythmic 
 outline is compatible with the most various 
 paces. In the second place, the word-metre 
 is tJie rhythm, the whole rhythm ; while every 
 rhythmic outline used in Music will embrace 
 an indefinite number of rhythms or sets of 
 time-relations, and a different set (the 
 number being indefinite it would be absurd 
 to call them feet) may occur in every bar 
 even of a single piece. 
 
328 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 ■wWoh, how- 
 ever, we must 
 not think of in 
 abstraction 
 from the whole 
 Ideal Motion 
 into which it 
 enters. 
 
 Fourthly, by 
 
 undecided 
 
 rhythm. 
 
 which seems to give more chance for delicate leanings and poisings in the 
 Ideal Motion, for movements whose half-tantalising caprice and grace is 
 shown in the way one wants to humour them, to dwell for an infinitesimal 
 time on this and that note, and so on. The outline of a galop or quadrille 
 seems less elastic and less adapted to such small impassioned impulses ; 
 and thus we often find in good waltzes a tinge of passion and romance, 
 which we do not associate with dance-music written in double time. 
 
 I have said advisedly that the expression of confidence and triumph is 
 often connected with strongly accented rhythmic movement: to say it 
 was given or ensured by such movement, would be quite incorrect. The 
 rhythmic element always remains a single factor of the form or Ideal 
 Motion ; and if the Ideal Motion in its completeness is not satisfactory or 
 striking, no amount of accenting of its rhjrthmic outline will redeem its 
 poverty, or make it seem expressive of any emotional quality. The bold- 
 ness of expression is bound up with the whole musical motion ; and it 
 would be easy to give instances where features beyond those of rhjrthm, 
 such as pieces of ascending and descending scale, might also be specially 
 associated with the bold effect: but such features could not really be 
 reduced, like those of rhythm, under any wide general head. 
 
 The opposite sort of expression, that of doubt and hesitation, is perhaps 
 even more markedly connected with features of time-relations and rhythm. 
 There could not be a better instance of this than the passage in Beethoven's 
 pianoforte sonata in E minor. Op. 90, which is said to have been humorously 
 connected by the composer with the indecision in the mind of a certain 
 noble lover whose passion for an actress had been expressed in a preceding 
 theme — 
 
 Sva... 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ■Mz 
 
 S 
 
 t: 
 
 it=t 
 
 ip sempre 
 
 dim. 
 
 
 r^ 
 
 
 
 loco. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 1 
 
 -p-p- 
 
 3S 
 
 M^- 
 
 zMz^. 
 
 5 
 
 pp 
 
 t-Tf=^ 
 
 £ 
 
 IE 
 
 -F-P- 
 
 :^; 
 
 ^. 
 
 1 — I' 
 
 Tx-'H^- 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AAD MUSIC AS E^FBESSIVE. 329 
 Swa... 
 
 &c. 
 
 Even tapped on a couple of drums, this, so far as it was not absolutely in- 
 coherent, would have an air of uncertainty, owing to the confused accents and 
 varying time-values of the notes ; but the effect is clearly a hundredfold 
 clearer and stronger when the actual phrases are heard, catching each other 
 up, and less and less able to get on, till at last they are mutually jogged, so 
 to speak, into making up their minds. The importance of not attempting 
 to detach the rhythmic factor from the whole musical motion is thus again 
 illustrated. But though the expression of uncertainty may be connected 
 in various cases with various melodic and harmonic features, we may safely 
 assert that the most general feature, the one which is almost essentially 
 present, is some pause, hesitation, or retardation in the rhythmic flow, 
 as the analogies of physical motion, gesture, and speech would have en- 
 abled us to predict. 
 
 Other special points of musical motion may be connected with the 
 rarer and more definite character of actual despondency, as expressed, for 
 instance, in the air He was despised, quoted on p. 274. The effect of the 
 minor intervals in this melody was noticed in the chapter on Harmony ; 
 but the character is really set in the opening six bars of the piece, before 
 any such interval has occurred. Here the motion, grave throughout, 
 owes its character of absolute dejection mainly to the two groups of three 
 descending thirds in the middle ; these receive a special intensity from 
 the accent's falling on the second of the three chords ; and the pause after 
 the first group emphasises the effect of the reiteration, as though the 
 power of movement were gathered together again only to sink to a still 
 lower depth of depression.' The effect is borne out further on in the 
 piece by the reiterated longer pieces of descending scale. These features 
 present a clear affinity to physical movements of drooping and collapse ; 
 and somewhat similar ones might usually be found in similar cases of ex- 
 pression. Such explanations, it must be again observed, are concerned 
 only with the special character the beauty wears ; they do not attempt to 
 
 ' JIM these points have to be considered 
 before the peculiar character of the motion 
 can be at all accounted for. The crude rop- 
 proeTiement made by a popular English 
 writer on Music, of mental elation and de- 
 pression to mere up and down in pitch, is 
 
 wholly unreal, and is in fact a mere verbal 
 juggle. Is the writer himself really kept in 
 a see-saw of elation and depression by all the 
 various ascents and descents of an ordinary 
 melody ? 
 
 to which a 
 similar Turn- 
 ing applies. 
 
 Example of 
 other special 
 points of mo- 
 tion. 
 
§ 7. Means 
 of expression 
 in the less 
 obvious pro- 
 cesses of Ideal 
 Motion. 
 Teaming and 
 Intensity. 
 
 330 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 account for the beauty, for the delight given by the exercise of the 
 musical faculty on the whole melody. A hundred melodies might be 
 written which would seem to embody the same features of motion, but 
 there being no special beauty in them, there would be no special pathos. 
 In the explanation of the expressive character of the phrases their 
 musical value is, so to speak, presupposed : the reason why they fill up 
 their place in the form to such divine issue lies hid in the instinctive per- 
 ceptions of the musical faculty. 
 
 In pace and rhythm, and such a feature as slow yet emphatic motions 
 of drooping, we have considered modes in which musical motion corre- 
 sponds in the most obvious way with expressive physical movements ; but 
 our search for the means of definable expression in Music may carry us 
 beyond these obvious features into the more inward processes of the Ideal 
 Motion. Consider, for instance, this tune of Schumann's, the opening of 
 a little piece called Bes Abends : 
 
 i 
 
 Slow. 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
 -£1^ 
 
 i 
 
 ^=^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 fe-Sii 
 
 
 :^^ 
 
 Wm 
 
 
 
 fe 
 
 e-T! 
 
 ii 
 
 m 
 
 -^^ 
 
 ^^=1^ 
 
 fUJ. 
 
 
 & 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 s 
 
MUSIC AS IMPBESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 331 
 
 i 
 
 p^±j^=^ 
 
 f^^E^i 
 
 
 which may be simplified as follows : 
 
 feg=g^^^%:gs ^7^g^ gi^ 
 
 w 
 
 fe^ - ^^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 fefit. 
 
 ss 
 
 E 
 
 The characteristic expression of this melody is certainly yearmmg and 
 i'm'plorvng ; and as it is in a major key, moderate in pace, and in perfectly 
 even rhythm, none of the more obvious sources of expression are present. 
 The general style of the harmony may perhaps be adduced in explanation ; 
 the accented notes several times constituting discords which are resolved 
 on the next unaccented notes, and the prevalence of diminished sevenths 
 aiding the expression of unrest. But these features, though they intensify 
 the effect here, occur elsewhere without any similar result; and, more- 
 over, the simple melodic form conveys the expression without any accom- 
 paniment at all. The yearning character can, I think, only be due to the 
 fact that, in a large part of the process of following this Ideal Motion, we 
 are yearning, not for inexpressible things, but for the next note, or at all 
 events for some foreseen point beyond. Take the place of junction of the 
 second and third bars ; in leaving the A (in the simplified version) we 
 seem to be stretching out for, straining towards, the F sharp, with a desire 
 which results in an almost imperceptible dwelling on it when we have once 
 arrived.' Then in the ascent to the upper F, we have a gradually grow- 
 ing excitement in the approach and the same final strain towards the 
 longed-for point, in arriving at which our satisfaction is again expressed 
 by a momentary dwelling, or as it might be on the violin by a thrill. The 
 
 ' Such nuances in the Ideq,l Motion are 
 to be remarked as very frequently connected 
 with the character of intensity and fervour in 
 Music ; and the connection is rather the con- 
 verse of what is generally imagined. The 
 general view would be, ' You feel the impulse 
 to dwell, to emphasise, to humour, to indulge 
 in slight hurries and retarda:tionB, because 
 
 the melody has emotional intensity. ' Rather 
 it is the fact that any particular specimen 
 of Ideal Motion makes these demands, that 
 the musical sense feels itself constrained in 
 these sorts of ways, which constitutes the 
 motion a yearning or passionate instead of, 
 e.g., a confident one. 
 
332 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 accessory C sharp and D sharp again yearn upwards, and the C sharp in the 
 final cadence downwards. Contrast this sort of motion with our activity in 
 following the Forelle (quoted on p. 161) or the Old Hundredth ; where we 
 feel no yearning or strain, but pass in easy confidence or in solemn confi- 
 dence from one note to another. The gesture and attitude of straining, of 
 stretching out towards a thing, is of course the common mode of expressing 
 yearning and entreaty ; so that we have here merely a subtler form of ex- 
 pression through the indication of known signs of feeling. It must be ob- 
 served that I am not attempting to explain why the musical process is of 
 the kind it is, why such and such a combination of notes makes one yearn 
 for such and such a starting point for such and such another, and so on, 
 matters which belong to the inscrutable musical faculty : I am accepting 
 this as a fact, and showing how it is connected with the particular ex- 
 pression of the melody, which in the above case many would describe as 
 shadowing forth all the indefinable aspirations of their lives.^ 
 Or take the first sentence of Schubert's Leise fiehen — 
 
 ^^m 
 
 ^-^ 
 
 ^5=3= 
 
 :i=i= 
 
 S 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^i^rJ^ 
 
 =3^^ 
 
 ^=1 
 
 ^=^F^ 
 
 -^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 -*- T^- 
 
 V' 
 
 *:5»:* 
 
 >•- 
 
 3 
 
 S 
 
 "S5^ 
 
 -=5l- 
 
 5 
 
 > There is always a danger in quoting ex- 
 amples, as one can but choose the things 
 which are powerfully affecting to oneself. 
 If any one does not appreciate Dei Abends, 
 he will not perceive it to yearn, or rather 
 will not yearn with it. As I was debating 
 
 this point, it happened that some one passed 
 the window whistling an Italian melody 
 which I especially dislike, with a certaia 
 manner of making his way to the notes, a 
 yearning 'expression,' which showed its 
 power over Mm. 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 333 
 
 ^^ 
 
 r^ 
 
 JT*^ ~"g^r^^ 
 
 3^: 
 
 -^ 
 
 fei 
 
 fejHS- 
 
 ^m 
 
 «:«:«:»: 
 
 &C. 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 Here the slightly troubled rhjrthm given by the triplets, the reitera- 
 tion of the movement of the first two bars, the falling back for a moment 
 with relaxed energy, and then the straining towards and attaining a point 
 beyond in the higher note, &c. &c., are features of melodic motion which 
 help to explain the passionate and yearning character of this serenade, as 
 compared with the more serene and confident flow of Handel's Love in her 
 eyes. And here again the facts of the motion and of our satisfaction in it 
 are the data on which the explanation proceeds. No amount of triplets 
 or reiterations or fallings back or straining upwards would have any emo- 
 tional result if the particular motion as a whole were not musically de- 
 lightful ; no description of such features would convey to any one who did 
 not know the melody the slightest shadow of its rare and individual 
 beauty ; but the melody and the musical beauty being there we can to 
 some extent connect the features with its more special emotional tinge. 
 
 Cases of expression depending rather on the general tenor of the Ideal Tendeiness. 
 Motion than on distinguishable points might be exemplified by such a 
 character as tefndemess, expressed by melodies in which (beauty again 
 being presupposed) the motion is smoothly and gently gradated. When, 
 again, the gradualness is connected with chromatic harmonies, which in- 
 troduce the feeling of uncertainty by suspending for a time the definite Mysterious- 
 sense of key, creepiness may be the word which the sort of groping motion "^^ 
 
334 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 suggests. I need only refer to the effect in its place of the famous passage 
 in the andante of Beethoven's C minor symphony — 
 
 Caprice with a 
 touch of sad- 
 ness. 
 
 
 -Wf- 
 
 p 
 
 ^^-• 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 ?P^ 
 
 --fn. 
 
 And a mysterioua character may often be connected with somewhat 
 similar features. 
 
 A somewhat different instance of definable expression may be found in 
 Carmen's song Presso il bastion — 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 m 
 
 SF=^"M-H^»^ 
 
 -irH*«- 
 
 Jt^ 
 
 i=F 
 
 Eggaw=afe£gg 
 
 =SH»- 
 
 :fP^ 
 
 *f-«r 
 
 ±=t 
 
 ^ 
 
 tsi 
 
 --^=^ 
 
 i^^=i2: 
 
 =^=S 
 
 :?S=il: 
 
 W 
 
 *^ 
 
 ti^ 
 
 The characteristics of this melody are undoubtedly melancholy and 
 caprice, of a sort which association with the person in whose mouth it is 
 put may readily enable us to define as girlish. The predominance of the 
 minor key, combined with the easy swing of the tune, may be connected 
 with the air of melancholy without earnestness. The caprice may be 
 traced both in the alternations from minor to major and major to minor, 
 and in the marked change of motion presented by the second phrase of 
 four bars, with its two emphatic little triplet groups, cHnched by the 
 delicate impetuosity of the octave-spring — features which have some 
 faintly perceived analogy with familiar gestures of wilfulness ; while in 
 the following part this character is further confirmed by the sudden 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 335 
 
 breaking off of the half-pathetic vein with the little upward rush and 
 final decisive step of the cadence. 
 
 In this last case we have traced the expression in great measure to Passion and 
 relations between parts ; and a peculiarity in this respect is not less fre- ''°™^"'"'- 
 quently at the root of it than some single pervading feature, such as minor 
 ' mode ' or strongly marked confident rhythm. Griven unity of beauty in 
 the whole, we shall continually find that aspects of passion and romance 
 may be connected with lapses and renewals of effort, and marked points of 
 contrast and climax. Even the strictest sort of composition may be thus 
 coloured with a romantic character, as, for example, the fugue in D minor 
 in the second division of Bach's Wohltemperirtes Clavier. 
 
 Humour is another quality in Music which is often connected with Humour. 
 comparison of parts and marked features of diversity and change. The 
 simplest possible case would be the slackening and pause immediately 
 before a cadence (as in the third figure of the Lancers'), succeeded by a 
 quick wind-up ; which is quite parallel to things that make babies laugh ; 
 and this tantalising and surprising of the expectant ear has many more 
 delicate varieties. Another sort of fun in Music depends simply on the 
 watching of a race, as in the minuet of Haydn's quartett. Op. 76, 2. But 
 there are also less simple effects, especially common in the works of 
 Beethoven, where the most comprehensive definition of humour is realised 
 in the simultaneous presentation of subtle aspects of congruity and incon- 
 gruity. 
 
 So far we have been able to connect the character with actual features § s. other 
 in the music which there was no difficulty in distinguishing. But it is gi'^whic?'"'' 
 not hard to see that in a world peopled with so vast a variety of very dis- «™not be con- 
 tinct forms as that of Music, varieties of character may arise which are per- such special 
 ceived in less special and direct ways than those we have been considering. Music. 
 and greatly by unconscious comparison of the phenomena among them- 
 selves; that is to say, by judging any special one in reference to its 
 fellows, and with a latent sense of a variety of effects which have made up 
 our previous experience, we are sensible of many qualities with which we 
 cannot at all identify any special peculiarities of the musical motion. 
 Thus one melody seems on the whole prononc& without being original, 
 and we call it vulgar ; another is pretty without being prononci, and we 
 call it i/n/nocent; or perhaps delicate, if its motion, while unemphatic, 
 strikes us as having a sort of indefinable rarity. Again, we have con- 
 nected humour with certain distinguishable features ; but if we take the 
 more intangible quaMty of quaAntness, all we can usually say is that cer- 
 tain bits of music present to our musical perception that amount of diver- 
 gence from familiar types, that sort of unexpectedness and oddness in 
 relation to their fellows, which is analogous to the character described as 
 quaintness in other regions of phenomena. Similar remarks would apply 
 
336 MUSIG AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 § 9. The 
 very act of 
 cataloguing a 
 few of these 
 definite emo- 
 tional cha- 
 racters makes 
 one feel how 
 transient and 
 uncertain they 
 often are ; how 
 little they sum 
 up the sub- 
 stance of the 
 thing which is 
 actually de- 
 lighting us. 
 
 to many other qualities which Music may occasionally present. But on 
 such ground we have evidently got beyond the characters which corre- 
 spond with any definite conditions of our own feelings, or in virtue of 
 which any value could be assigned to Music as expressive of our emo- 
 tional life : and once on this ground, we may give our adjectives the 
 freest play. In the attempt to describe music — an attempt as hopeless as 
 to write English with the letters x y z — we are often driven from the re- 
 cognised category of aesthetic emotions to terms such as tantalising, un- 
 compromising, persistent, insouciant, and even stranger expressions. It 
 would be hard, for instance, to describe, except as a piece of divine folly, 
 the ' Jill came tumbling after ' effect of the scherzo of Beethoven's 
 sonata in F for piano and violin : but it would be absurd to say it ex- 
 pressed folly or inspired the feelings with which we commonly regard 
 foUy. 
 
 It has been necessary to go through a certain number of samples of 
 the special emotional characters which Music may without absurdity 
 be said to express. But the very act of giving them this amount of defi- 
 nition oppresses one with a sense of unreality when one stops and realises 
 what the impression of most of the music one cares about truly is. Half 
 a dozen such tinges of expression may be presented by a single melody, 
 which, as musically apprehended, is a perfect coherent unity. And if one 
 forces oneself to try to give a name to the character of the successive sen- 
 tences or phrases in a page of a sonata, though this one as compared with 
 that may be more confident, or more relaxed, though we may find an 
 energetic phrase here and a pleading phrase there, a capricious turn in 
 close proximity to a piece of emphatic reiteration, and so on, our interest 
 seems to lie in something quite remote from such description, and it is 
 only by a sort of effort that we perceive whether or not the musical cur- 
 rent has been coloured by occasionally floating into the zone of describable 
 expression. The more general and undistinctive the character the more 
 chance is there of its being kept up for some time : and an air of cheer- 
 fulness or peace or solemnity may pervade entire pieces of a moderate 
 length. But we surely have only to look, to perceive that in hundreds of 
 the most emotional instrumental movements ' the effect is rarely, even for 
 so much as a few bars, the suggestion of a recognisable emotion, and is 
 
 ' Inetrumental music is of course the 
 ground on which the subject of Music as ex- 
 pressive must be first and mainly studied. 
 Till we have obtained perfectly clear views 
 on that ground, we have no power at aU of 
 fairly examining the nature of the expres- 
 siveness of Music as connected with words 
 and persons ; for in the music which is so 
 connected we cannot possibly eliminate the 
 
 factor of association, more or less unconscious, 
 with the sentiment of the words or the cha- 
 racter of the persons. Words and scenes 
 may seem to a dozen people to be satisfac- 
 torily and even remarkably ' expressed ' by 
 music of which, if they heard it first apart 
 from the words and scenes, they would have 
 given a dozen totally different versions. We 
 shall return to this subject hereafter. 
 
MUSIG AS IMPEESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 337 
 
 never essentially that, but rather like a revelation of self-evident and 
 wholly untranslatable import. 
 
 Nor is it only -with respect to this piecemeal and haphazard sort of 
 application that the suggestion of definable characters seems tantalisingly 
 remote from the essential effects of Music. If we take various musical 
 motions, the definable seems to pass into the purely musical and indefin- 
 able in the most impalpable and unaccountable way. For certain of the 
 features of musical motion which, when sufficiently prominent, may be 
 connected with definite character, such as yearning or triumph, are really 
 to a great extent present in all beautiful music ; or at all events there are 
 characteristics of the Ideal Motion which, if we attempt the hopeless task 
 of putting them into words, can only be so described. Thus to take the 
 word triumph. The deep satisfaction felt in winning our way from note 
 to note, or phrase to phrase, continually gives us a sense of inward Sensations of 
 triumph in music whose general expression, so far as it is describable, yearning aie 
 woiild not be called triumphant, but solemn it may be, or intense or pas- p™^en°in' 
 sionate. In poor music, note after note and phrase after phrase seem to "i"«i,o ^Mch 
 
 , , . .. ■"'« aliould not 
 
 present themselves trivially and pointlessly ; but in music we enjoy, as we dream of de- 
 progressively grasp the form, the sense of absolute possession, of oneness expressive of 
 with it ; the cogent and unalterable rightness of every step in our progress, *'^°^^ qualities. 
 may produce the most vivid impression of triumphal advance. If we 
 attempted in such a case to translate the Ideal Motion into terms of 
 physical motion (and this is allowable if we are careful to remember that 
 they are distinct things and that the result is the faintest metaphor) we 
 might say that we were inwardly elated at the certainty, strength, and 
 success of our steps, without at all feeling that our outward and obvious 
 gait and aspect were of a confident and triumphant character. Again> take 
 the word yearning. The points in the Ideal Motion which seem in some 
 way to suggest it, are found in all sorts of music quite outside the region 
 where, as in the Des Abends, quoted above, the quality of subdued yet 
 straining pathos seems predominant. The feeling of stretching out long- 
 ingly to a foreseen note, indicated sometimes by actual movements of the 
 hands, may exist in cases where the very slightest variation of pace or 
 attempt to give musical emphasis to the rendering would be impertinent 
 or impossible.' Again, the still more obvious feeling of passion, which 
 seems more or less a definable expression in cases where music presents 
 
 ' A faint sense of irony may often be felt the example will complain of the description 
 in passing by without special outward recog- as over-fanciful ; but I will risk some of the 
 nition or emphasis notes pregnant in musical inner notes in the latter section of the alle- 
 importance ; and to some performers it is a gretto of Beethoven's seventh Symphony, as 
 matter of real difficulty to play such notes quoted on p. Z'SG. The C sharp, for instance, 
 with the requisite ironical indifference, in the fifth bar ffom the end of the quota- 
 It is dangerous to attempt to exemplify so tion, could not possibly be in any way em- 
 delicate an effect from personal experience, phasised : yet one has a sensation of wanting 
 as any one who happens not to appreciate to hug it as it passes. 
 
338 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 § 10. The 
 definitely ex- 
 pressive 
 element is 
 far less con- 
 stant and es- 
 sential than is 
 usually ima- 
 gined. 
 
 marked features of agitated motion, is perpetually felt in music which 
 suggests no external signs of passion at all : and though we may excusably 
 call such music expressive of passion, by imagining it a vent for some external 
 condition of excitement and exaltation, we must still recognise that the 
 particular sense of excitement belongs to a state of consciousness known 
 only in the realisation of miusic, and not essentially referable to any mode 
 or exhibition of feeling belonging to times when music is not being realised. 
 
 Such descriptions as the above can only be arrived at by considerable 
 attention to one's own sensations : I can but hope that as they represent 
 my own experience truly, however inadequately, others may find them to 
 correspond in some degree with theirs. And the result is certainly to 
 relegate the definitely expressive element in Music to a much more sub- 
 ordinate position than that commonly assigned to it. 
 
 These words must not be misunderstood. The element of expression 
 is not subordinate in the sense that, when present, it is slight or shallow ; 
 on the contrary, it may reach the very extreme of intensity and profundity, 
 since the whole mass of musical feeling which is stirred up appears steeped 
 in the colour of any special emotion it may suggest. But it is subordinate 
 (1) in the sense that it is far from being a constant element ; (2) in the 
 sense that not in it, but in the independently impressive aspect of Music, 
 must be sought the explanation of the essential effect of the art ; and 
 that the very intensity of which musical expression is capable, so far fi:om 
 being explanatory, is one of the prime mysteries to be explained. Both 
 these senses are commonly ignored. In ninety-nine per cent, of the 
 current talk and writing about Music and composers, it is implied (even 
 where not definitely stated) that Music is primarily an art of expression ; 
 that it is ' the language of the emotions,' i.e. of modes of feeling familiar 
 in the life external to Music (which for convenience I have called extra- 
 musical modes of feeHng) ; and that its great function, either with or 
 without the association of some external words or subject-matter, consists 
 in the evocation of these emotions. And this view is connected, either 
 as cause or effect, with the idea that in mentioning the expressive aspects 
 the problem of Music's power has been solved. To many the question 
 never occurs why mournfulness or exultation should be held as any more 
 explanation or guarantee of overpowering beauty in a tune than in a face. 
 The chain of error may be traced partly to the fact that those who theorise 
 on the subject are apt to consider cases where Music is associated with 
 definite words or scenes, or at all events cases where definable characters 
 of feeling are more or less suggested, so that they do not feel driven to 
 look beyond for some more fundamental source of effect ; partly to the 
 natural difficulty of fully recognising the unique and independent impres- 
 siveness in Music, in the lack of some such expedient as the application 
 of Mr. Darwin's theory attempted in this book. But however the view 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 339 
 
 may be accounted for, its bearings on theories of musical art are none the 
 less disastrous ; and its importance must be my excuse for presenting the 
 various objections to it at some length and in precise order. 
 
 First, we have the fundamental fact that in an immense amount of Reasons why 
 beautiful music the element of definable expression is absent ; or present ail account for 
 only in such vague and fragmentary ways that, in describing the pheno- powef of*'*' 
 mena under that aspect, we seem to get about as near the reality as when J^™ic. 
 we attempt descriptions of things in the vocabulary of some unfamiliar 
 foreign language. The bearing of this on the cases which do present 
 definable expression is obvious. Taking a single specimen of music with 
 a definable expression, we might find a difficulty in proving to any one 
 that it did not owe its value to its expression, for the simple reason that 
 it is impossible to present that specimen without its expression. A 
 beautiful face can change ; it is capable of being neutral or of wearing 
 many different expressions, under each of which the form is so slightly modi- 
 fied that the face remains obviously one and the same : whereas a pathetic 
 melody, a triumphant melody, and an undefinable melody are necessarily 
 three and not one, and one of them cannot become either of the others. 
 But clearly if I find twenty bits of music beautiful and indescribable,' and 
 one bit beautiful and pathetic, it is unreasonable to say I enjioy the last 
 (which I don't enjoy at all more than the others) because it is pathetic. 
 
 Secondly, the very features which may be often indisputably connected 
 with definable expression are perpetually present in cases where, the 
 music not being perceived as impressive or beautiful, they produce no 
 effect on us. The essential conditions of musical beauty, of the satisfac- 
 tion of the musical sense, must therefore be quite outside these special 
 features of effect. On the other hand, if any music expresses distinct 
 feeling, it expresses it better, we say, the more beautiful it is ; that is, 
 the more profoundly it exercises that sense of musical impression which, 
 in the cognisance of all music, is felt as one in kind. 
 
 Thirdly, it is often foimd that music which wears a definable expression 
 to one person, does not wear it or wears a different one to another, though 
 the music may be equally enjoyed by both. For instance, the great 
 ' subject ' of the first movement of Schubert's B flat trio, the opening of 
 which was quoted on p. 326, represents to me and many others the ne 
 plus ultra of energy and passion ; yet this very movement was described 
 
 ' Indescribable must not be confounded from another, we can often feel in Muaio a 
 
 with indejUmte. However indefinite Music general character so definite as to make us 
 
 may often be in its eicpressive aspect, in its certain of the author of the composition, 
 
 iropressive aspect it shows its virtue in being But as this character, whieh is so certainly 
 
 definite. (Cf . Mendelssohn's remarks quoted perceived by the musical sense, has no sort of 
 
 in § 9 of the next chapter.) Apart from the extra-musical existence, it of course cannot 
 
 definiteness of individuality due to the actual be described, 
 perceptible dijBEerence of one musical form 
 
 z 2 
 
340 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 by Schumann as ' tender, girlish, confiding : ' and the reiteration of the 
 bass figure in the adagio of Beethoven's fourth symphony, which has 
 always seemed to me quite tremendous in its earnestness, appeared to 
 Schumann as a humorous feature. 
 
 Fourthly, take twenty bits of music, each presenting the same definable 
 character, such as melancholy or triumph. Now if the stirring of this 
 emotion is the whole business of any one of these tunes, how is anybody 
 the richer for knowing the other nineteen ? for in respect of this stirring 
 character they are all on a par, and one of them would do completely all 
 that could be done. In reality, of course, each of them is an individual, 
 with a beauty peculiar to itself, and each is, to one who loves it, a new 
 source of otherwise unknown delight. The mistake, as thus regarded, 
 connects itself with the inward nature of the sense of hearing : as we can- 
 not touch what we hear, the fact that we perceive a piece of music as an 
 individual object is apt to be lost sight of in theory, however universally 
 exemplified in the whole practice of musical appreciation. 
 
 Fifthly, even if definite bias of expression did reaUy belong to all 
 enjoyable music, there is the a 'priori impossibility that abstract motion 
 of any sort should produce the extraordinarily vivid and individual effects 
 of Music by the mere suggestion of emotions, apart from some independ- 
 ently based beauty, some independent means of powerfully affecting us. 
 Why should the mere expression of some mode of feeling by an abstract 
 musical motion be more adequate to stir us than the expression of it by 
 the gestures of some uninteresting concrete personage ? Apart, indeed, 
 from some independent source of impressiveness, it would seem far less 
 adequate. For a melancholy look, a pleading gesture, an energetic gait, 
 may set our imaginations coursing down a score of interesting avenues con- 
 nected with the subject or object of that particular human manifestation : 
 but in Music our attention is centred on forms which are for us the unique 
 inhabitants of a perfectly unique world, disconnected from the interest of 
 visible things. How should the mere suggestion of emotions suffice to 
 transfigure these abstract forms with individual life and beauty ? On the 
 contrary, it is the life and beauty which the forms draw from their own 
 peculiar spring in our organisation that enables them to transfigure any 
 definable emotional character they may perchance suggest. The extra- 
 ordinary intensification which known emotions undergo in musical 
 expression, the movingness of the pathetic, the jubilance of the exulting 
 strains, might alone suggest the problem how one method of motion should 
 possess such a monopoly of expressive power ; and might have led to the 
 answer that the particular expression is a phase in an independent mode of 
 deep and mighty impression, whose depth and might it thus makes its own. 
 
 One special form of the error we are discussing demands separate notice. 
 The question asked in the last paragraph, why is the effect of expressive 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 341 
 
 music so infinitely greater than that of the corresponding physical motion, § n. Nor 
 by resembling which ' it suggests definite conditions of feeling ? — why is l^a.t e^r^^n 
 the effect of an asfitated presto of Beethoven superior to that of a man '^ '•*'' source 
 
 o c r and secret of 
 
 excitedly waving his arms in the air ? why is Des Abends more delightful musical effect 
 than a series of imploring gestures ? why is Carmen's Presso il bastion port or reie- 
 
 T iiji •j.p'j.T. •• Vance in the 
 
 more pleasurable than any copy or accompaniment oi it by capricious number of 
 physical movements ? — such questions, I say, are often answered by saying ^°™'",*o ""^ 
 that Music presents an infinitely greater variety and more delicate nuances musical 
 of motion than physical movement. But this answer, when connected 
 with the theory that Music is effective by the expression of extra-musical 
 emotions, becomes absurd ; as will be obvious if the argument as to the 
 relation of musical to physical motion be briefly but connectedly restated. 
 The three main facts are as follows ; — 
 
 A. Musical or Ideal Motion has infinite varieties and nuances, which 
 constitute the whole body of musical forms. 
 
 B. Musical Motion may present a certain number of very general 
 features which resemble and suggest definite physical motions in space ; 
 sometimes presented in an obvious way by pace, rhythmic outline and 
 emphasis, and width of intervals ; sometimes connected with the more 
 inward processes of the Ideal Motion, as when the musical straining to- 
 wards a note dimly adumbrates some corresponding physical gesture. 
 
 C. Human or extra-musical emotions, so far as they are expressible other- 
 wise than by language, are normally expressed in a rough and general way 
 by physical motions : and musical motion, by its resemblances to physical 
 motion, can in an extremely general way suggest the conditions of feeling 
 with which definite features of physical motion are thus connected. 
 
 Now if Music's power consisted in the expression of extra-musical 
 emotion, the greater variety and nuance in musical motion could only 
 give it a superiority over physical motion by enabling it to express a 
 greater variety and more delicate shades of extra-musical emotion. But 
 such a theory (not to mention its inapplicability to the beauty presented in 
 single homogeneous passages of Kmited length) at once brings us into 
 collision with C. Musical motions express extra-musical moods and feelings 
 through their resemblance to physical motions : how then can it be main- 
 tained that an infinite superiority in variety and nuance makes them 
 infinitely superior in this power of expression to that, by resembling which 
 it is that they express at all ? ^ The varieties and nuances of course exist ; 
 but they belong to the essence of the Ideal Motion, as musically perceived 
 in its numberless manifestations ; which may reach the maximum of im- 
 
 ' For simplicity's sake I neglect here the ^ The criticism, in the eighth chapter, of 
 more occasional elements of expression found Helmholtz's view that the efEects of Music 
 in timbre, ' mode,' and harmony ; which may are sufficiently accounted for by mere con- 
 be done without injury to the ensuing argu- sideration of motion, may now be supple- 
 ment, mented and completed. He dwells especially 
 
342 MUSIO AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 § 12. Ex- 
 treme broad- 
 ness and gene- 
 rality of the 
 feelings Music 
 can express. 
 
 pressiveness in the absence of any features suggestive of extra-musical 
 moods and feelings. A single instance is stronger than any argument. 
 Take two musical movements, alike in agitated pace and ■ rhythm, and in 
 what we may call physical character : both equally express, if we will, an 
 agitated state of feeling : but will any one seriously maintain that the 
 varieties and nuances of Ideal Motion, which make every phrase and bar 
 of the one totally different from every phrase and bar of the other, corre- 
 spond with varieties and nuances of extra-musical mood ? Such an in- 
 stance is alone utterly subversive of the hypothesis that musical motion is 
 effective by doing more delicately and minutely what physical motion does 
 roughly and generally. 
 
 The theory about shades of emotion becomes doubly absurd when we 
 notice what the largest general qualities really are, which may be included 
 under some comprehensive mode of feeling, and how utterly any mode of 
 motion lacks the power of following and expressing even these broadest 
 distinctions. Under the general head of pathos or melancholy, for 
 example, may be included a multitude of large qualities, which can be ex- 
 pressed either by the verbal representation of persons and characters or 
 by visible forms, but which mere motion, musical or physical, could never 
 the least touch or suggest ; patience, for instance, and pity. Sculpture 
 can depict patience, because it can make a patient-looking figure ; but 
 what means has Music of giving us a patient-sounding tune ? Pity may 
 be itself subdivided into many kinds ; we feel one sort for Antigone, 
 another for Lear, another for Hamlet : but Music cannot even get so far 
 down in definition as the broad attribute of pity itself, nor differentiate it 
 from regret or any other of the qualities which a general pathos of expres- 
 sion might cover. Earnestness, agitation, are differentiated in life in a 
 score of different ways, not one of which can be marked out by any special 
 peculiarity in the expression of the general character by motion. And 
 indeed when we realise the essential distinction between presentative and 
 representative art, the wonder is not so much that the expression of 
 emotions by Music should be comprised for the most part under extremely 
 wide and general heads, as that even that amount of definition should be 
 possible.' 
 
 on the variety and delicacy of musical mo- 
 tions, and does not seem to perceive the in- 
 evitable dilemma, as stated in the test. If 
 the superior delicacy and variety of musical 
 motions involves no improved means of dis- 
 criminating and expressing extra- musical 
 feeling, that source, which is what Helmholtz 
 ultimately relies on for their effect, is un- 
 available to account for it. And since mere 
 variety of motions does not help us unless we 
 can say why any one of them should be su- 
 
 premely pleasant, it follows that their power 
 to awaken deep and unique feeling must be 
 derived from some other independent emo- 
 tional source ; the possibility of which, in the 
 coimection of the satisfied exercise of the musi- 
 cal faculty with hidden channels of primaeval 
 association, I have attempted to explain. 
 
 ' Some may find a certain difficulty in 
 catching the notion that many different and 
 individual presentations, each loved with a 
 special love, and all emotionally stirring, do 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 343 
 
 The want of definiteness in musical expression is sufficiently obvious to 
 have been recognised even by some of those who, with great inconsistency, 
 assign no ground for the power and value of the art save its expression of 
 extra-musical emotions : and the recognition usually takes the form of 
 saying that the expression is not of definite emotions, but of some general 
 TTiood, Gemuthsstimimmg, capable of taking many channels ; such a 
 general emotional disposition, for instance, as might equally appear in the 
 ardour of the lover and the ardour of the saint, and might therefore be 
 differently interpreted according to the subjective fancies of the hearers. 
 These emotional states seem to be just those extremely general ones ' 
 which we have noticed as corresponding with certain known physical con- 
 ditions and modes of motion, and so as naturally expressible by Music. 
 And as regards the question where the essential effect of Music lies, we 
 need scarcely fear that any sane person will seriously attribute it (however 
 much his language may imply such a view) to characters like these ; 
 characters so broad and undistinctive and which so little strike us as being 
 deliberately or definitely expressed, that one of them may pervade a 
 hundred different pieces without seeming to constitute the slightest kin- 
 ship between them. No one who has any musical appreciation is likely to 
 think that the raison d'etre of a tranquil or a lively piece is the expression 
 of liveliness or tranquillity, or to attach any vital importance to such 
 not awaken distinct sorts and shades of feel- characters possible ; and as if, on the other 
 
 ing. And especially when two bits of music 
 present a certain character, but a character 
 which cannot be described more particularly 
 than by saying, e.g., that both bits are melan- 
 choly, it is very natural to conceive that the 
 melancholy of the one is different from that 
 of the other. A moment's thought will, 
 however, show that the sense of difference 
 concerns the two individual forms or motions, 
 not the melancholy which they express ; just 
 as if two children of different physiognomy 
 be told a piece of bad news which affects 
 them exactly alike, the same sentiment will 
 be expressed by their totally different and 
 individual faces. 
 
 It is disappointing to find how loosely even 
 Schumann, whose position about the general 
 undefinableness of musical feeling is often 
 firm enough, can sometimes speak about 
 shades of emotion. ' Half-educated people,' 
 he says, 'are generally unable to discover 
 more than the expression of grief and joy, 
 and perhaps melancholy, in music without 
 words. They are deaf to the finer shades 
 of emotion — anger, revenge, satisfaction, 
 quietude, &c.' As if, on the one hand, satis- 
 faction and quietude were fine shades, in- 
 stead of the most general and undistinctive 
 
 Impossibility 
 that a Ge- 
 miithsstimmung 
 should be the 
 source of 
 definite musi- 
 cal beauty. 
 
 hand, Schumann or any one else could distin- 
 guish between anger and revenge as 'ex- 
 pressed ' in Music. Elsewhere, after dis- 
 claiming all artistic value for the titles of 
 his pianoforte pieces, he adds ' the different 
 soul-states only are interesting to me.' Now 
 the soul-states are either things possible and 
 known apart from Music, or they are not. 
 If they are wrt, the words used are very mis- 
 leading : if they at'e, how many of them are 
 there, and howmanypieces of music belongto 
 each 1 If each of them is only an extremely 
 broad Gemuthsstimmv/ng, like those treated 
 of in the following paragraph, how can it be 
 the interesting or distipguishing element in 
 a number of vivid and different individuals 1 
 ' It is strange that Helmholtz, after cor- 
 rectly pointing out the extreme vagueness 
 and generality of these states of feeling, and 
 how one of them, such as ' the dreamy long- 
 ing for transcendent bliss,' may represent 
 the broadest common element in a number 
 of more distinct feelings, such as love, piety, 
 &o., should in the same paragraph directly 
 contradict himself by adding that Music ex- 
 presses extra-musical emotions ' exactly and 
 
344 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 Moreover it 
 perpetually 
 happens 
 that not even 
 an assi^ 
 able Geinuihs- 
 stimmung is 
 present. 
 
 attributes. But though this Oemuthsstvmmung-theorj is thus less of a trap 
 than the theory of ' shades of emotion,' we must notice how far it is from 
 being generally applicable. For, in the first place, in hundreds and thou- 
 sands of eases it is as impossible to name any general mood as to name 
 any more definite emotions ; the mood is simply that unique one which 
 we can but describe as the mood of musical exaltation, by whatever music 
 produced.' And, in the second place, it is just in connection with a 
 Gemuthsstimmung that a difficulty already noticed is at its maximum : if 
 we try to assign corresponding moods to the passages of some long and 
 exciting instrumental movement, we often cannot stick to one for a dozen 
 bars together. So far as they can be conceived as existing at all, they are 
 perpetually changing, sometimes at a moment's notice. There is surely a 
 sort of unreality about the notion of playing football in this irresponsible 
 way with what are represented as very deep and pervading emotional 
 conditions ; and those who imagine they dignify Music by calling it a 
 reflection of life, forget that neither does life consist in pitching oneself 
 without rhyme or r-eason from one definable mood into another, and would 
 be very unpleasant if it did. 
 
 ' The customary phrases about depiction 
 of moods are deceptive only by their vague- 
 ness. To see what they come to, we have but 
 to scrutinise them in direct connection 
 with a few specimens o£ music we care 
 
 about. Take for instance the two following 
 beautiful tunes, each completely appreciable 
 in its unaccompanied melodic form : the first 
 is from Beethoven's Serenade Trio — 
 
 > ^^m^m^^^ ^^^^^f^ 
 
 the second is a song, WiUst An dein Herx, mir schenlten, attributed to Bach- 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 ^^jg^p^lg^^^^ ^^:^^ 
 
 In spite of a certain superficial similarity, 
 these melodies are to the musical apprehen- 
 sion as different as difEerent can be. But 
 any one who thought he could define the 
 difference as a difference of two particular 
 moods, might fairly be called on, within a 
 limited range of music, to find names for 
 many hundreds of moods, to correspond with 
 
 differences equally patent to the musical 
 sense and equally inexpressible in known 
 terms of emotion. The most conclusive ex- 
 periment would be to take twenty such per- 
 sons, if they could be found, and ask them 
 to write down the difference of mood in a 
 particular case like the above, and then to 
 compare their descriptions. 
 
MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 345 
 
 So far we have been considering emotions as awakened, or not awakened, § 13. Ex- 
 in ourselves. We may now briefly consider the same topic in relation to emotions in 
 the composer. Of course the doctrine that a composer expresses his the^ composer, 
 emotions is subject to all the modifications entailed by the absence of con- 
 tinuous and definable emotional expression in perhaps the greater part of 
 his work : on this we need not further dwell. But the doctrine is suffi- 
 ciently faulty even for the cases where definable expression is most clearly 
 present. Suppose a painter is depicting ' Night ' or ' Autumn ' as a melan- 
 choly female : is he expressing his own melancholy all the time ? if he 
 paint a death-scene, is he mournful during the whole of the working 
 hours of a month or six months ? Similarly a musician may be a month 
 in working up a funeral march, without at all losing his good spirits. 
 Indeed he would naturally be much less under the dominance of the 
 mournful emotion than the painter. For the latter has the middle term 
 of his own intellectual representation ; in depicting a scene of sorrow he 
 must constantly realise to himself the mood and its concrete embodiment ; 
 his own emotions may be only artistically pumped up, but still he is face 
 to face with mournful realities. But the musician is not kept in the 
 presence of external realities ; and no one can keep a mood going for the 
 mere purpose of expressing it. The painter again, having the world to 
 choose from, deliberately chooses such subjects as he prefers to dwell on 
 himself; and as many of the forms and objects which he depicts might be 
 known and imagined, and might show their beauty, in several moods or 
 aspects, his choice of a special mood may seem characteristic. The germ 
 of a musician's work is very different. His ' subjects ' are not aspects and 
 relations of things deliberately chosen, but fragments of musical inspiration, 
 independent of views of life and habits of sentiment. It may be readily 
 granted that if, without conscious aim, he sits down to his piano at one of 
 those times when there is a sense of pause in the more vigorous pulses of 
 Hfe, he is more likely to fall into a melancholy and rhythmically quiet 
 aTidante than into a tumultuous presto ; and conversely, when a mood of 
 confidence reflects the exhilaration of joyful surroundings, the humom* of 
 the moment may flash forth in more impetuous strains. But his longer 
 works, with their solemn adagios and sportive minuets and so on, can be 
 no sort of reflection of his from-day-to-day existence. His musical activity 
 may be to him the natural vent for (or refuge from) aU sorts of emotional 
 conditions ; but to suppose that it was bound to expression of those con- 
 ditions to us would be to suppose that sonatas and symphonies were short 
 gushes of impassioned impromptu, instead of works of prolonged labour. 
 The exciting music which is held to indicate the pre-existence of some 
 emotional storm in its author, may equally have been the result of the 
 most peaceful and ordinary work-day. 
 
 The history of musical composition is so clear on this point, that 
 
346 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 Belation of a 
 composer's 
 temperament 
 and circum- 
 stancea to his 
 work. 
 
 people can only have been driven to find in what they hear the ex- 
 pression of the composer's emotions at the moment, by supposing that 
 Music must express something and not seeing what else it could be. 
 For anything so wrapped up with the physical organism as Music, it 
 is rather in the physical conditions of the composer that we should 
 naturally look for some assignable connection with musical workings in 
 his brain. There is a most interesting account by Mozart of the manner 
 in which his music came to him, when he was comfortable after dinner, or 
 lying peacefully in bed : Auber's ideas were set in motion on horseback, 
 and Beethoven's in his rapid walks, enlivened by strange hummings and 
 shoutings, about the environs of Vienna. But emotions (real or imagined) 
 external to the music, though they may act generally and indirectly by 
 quickening and attuning the mind to a sense of beauty, are far oftener 
 wholly latent or irrelevant. A melody composed for an instrument in a 
 neutral frame of mind might afterwards be set to religious words, of which it 
 might then seem to breathe the very spirit; music written without a thought 
 of death or any solemn subject might turn out to make a first-rate funeral 
 march and be adopted as such ; and a gifted child who had never personally 
 realised the existence of such a feeling as mournfulness might appreciate 
 and even invent a deeply pathetic melody. We can yearn, triumph, and so on 
 in purely musical regions ; and where we find in music a mood describable 
 by some adjective thus drawn from the category of the emotions, to say the 
 music was composed as an expression of the composer's emotion would as 
 a rule be as true as to say that the interior of St. Mark's was designed 
 as an expression of a previous mood of gloom on the part of its architect. 
 
 When for special purposes, as in writing for occasions or for words, a man 
 has obviously turned his musical faculty into a special vein, as of tender- 
 ness, or sportiveness, or solemnity, it may seem cynical to imagine him 
 entirely absorbed in his unique creative region. But as a matter of fact, his 
 faculty may set itself on the inventive track, so to speak, in a slow rhythm 
 and a minor key, or in quick capricious snatches which gradually flash 
 into a vivacious ' subject,' without any swayings of his conscious moods. 
 
 It is of course quite another question how far a musician's permanent 
 temperament and circumstances, or some long and abnormal affection of 
 body and mind, may be perceptibly connected with his artistic work. 
 Different answers might probably be given in different cases, and we might 
 doubtless find instances where a predominant tone of struggle and de- 
 spondency or of serenity and gladness seems in sufficiently striking corre- 
 spondence with external characteristics and conditions.' The most general 
 attribute of physical intensity, so prominent in the organisation of many 
 
 ' Schumann says of his C major symphony, and by which I sought to beat oflE my disease. 
 
 ' I sketched it out while suffering severe The first movement is full of this struggle, 
 
 physical pain ; indeed, I may call it the and very peevish and perverse in character.' 
 
 struggle of my mind, which influenced this, We see here the same sort of connection 
 
MUSIO AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. U1 
 
 great musicians, is certainly often accompanied by strong affections and 
 emotional fervour. But it is dangerous to try to press more special points. 
 Nothing, for instance, in Beethoven's music is more striking than the 
 variety and delicacy of its humour : as a man, his sense of humour could 
 of all things be least relied on, and the jokes he preferred were of a very 
 rough-and-tumble description. And even oh the more general ground we 
 shall perhaps be safer in tracing the connection to the most fundamental 
 inborn bias of disposition than to the emotional conditions which special 
 circumstances might affect. I believe that Mendelssohn's work would 
 have remained in general flowing and rangi, through any amount of 
 external or internal tumult ; that the sublime pathos and stormy energy 
 of Beethoven would not have been stifled by comfort and happiness ; and 
 that as a rule the springs of musical creation, even where strongest and 
 most abundant, dwell singularly apart, and have for their very own the hues 
 they are thought to reflect. The fashion of imagining and overstraining 
 connections between a man's music and his life is due to a tendency, 
 amiable but in Music especially ill-advised, to- make heroes of artists. 
 
 In conclusion, I can imagine that a reader who has given assent to the § \i. Th^ 
 various propositions and arguments which have been presented in this ^hich Music 
 chapter, may still feel that, after all, there is a sense in which Music may "derea are" 
 be truly considered a reflection of the inner life. I am far from denying flection of the 
 
 •' . inner hie. 
 
 that such is the case : the error is in not seeing that so far as the idea has 
 any sort of generality of application, the reflection itself must be of the most 
 general and indefinite kind ; very different from the definable expression, 
 with its dubious and fragmentary appearances, which we have been dis- 
 cussing. Characters far too wide to be regarded, without absurdity, as 
 what the pieces were written to express, or as what their merit and indi- 
 viduality consist in their expressing, may still make a sort of undefined 
 hiunan atmosphere under which the distinct musical forms are revealed 
 and the distinct musical impressions received. Moreover, if the following 
 and realising of music be regarded as itself one coTnplete domain of 
 inner life, we may then perceive that it is large and various enough, full 
 enough of change and crisis and contrast, of expectation, memory, and 
 comparison, of general forms of perception which have been employed in 
 other connections by the same mind, for the course of musical expe- 
 rience, as felt under these most abstract aspects and relations, to pre- 
 sent a dim afl5[nity to the external course of emotional life. In this 
 way we may feel, at the end of a musical movement, that we have been 
 living an engrossing piece of life which, in the variety and relations of its 
 parts, has certain qualities belonging to any series of full and changing 
 emotions : and this feeling may impress us with much more of reality than 
 
 between physical states and musical stir- music which kept time to them in his head, 
 rings, between the restless, sudden, and im- as was less painfully exemplified in Beet- 
 patient movements of the sufferer and the hoven's striding walks and Auber's rides. 
 
348 MUSIC AS IMPRESSIVE AND MUSIC AS EXPRESSIVE. 
 
 any attempted ranking of the several parts and phases of the music under 
 particular heads of expression. It is easy to distinguish general affinities 
 of this kind from anything referable to the more definite categories. 
 Such qualities, e.g., as evenness and continuity, or interruptedness and 
 variability, of musical movement, may suffice to suggest a sort of kinship 
 between musical and other trains of feeling, while far too abstract to 
 define or guarantee the character of the pieces where they occur, and able 
 equally to cover the most various content : the slowness and sustainedness of 
 an adagio movement, for instance, often described as typical of a peaceful 
 flow of consciousness, we have found to be as compatible with the undefin- 
 able stirrings of musical passion as with the definable expression of calm. 
 Another instance of abstract relationship, equally remote from definite 
 suggestion and expression, may be found in the faint analogy of mingHng 
 currents of music to that mingling of various strains of feeHng and idea 
 which is so frequent a feature of our ordinary life : it would be absurd in 
 the vast majority of such cases to attempt to represent each musical 
 current as typifying some distinguishable train of known feeling, so that 
 here the quality common to the musical and the extra-musical experience 
 seems so abstract as to be little more than harmonious concomitance of 
 several elements in each : yet this mere parallelism of complexity seems 
 enough to open up in Music faint tracts of association with extra-musical 
 life. A similar affinity has been attributed to the predominance of a 
 single melodic theme in relation to its accompaniment ; where the mere 
 relation may possibly suggest our general experience of prominent strains 
 of feeling as standing out from the general stream of consciousness, whose 
 other elements make for it a sort of dimly-felt background. 
 
 And Music condenses a very large amount of inner life, of the sort of ex- 
 perience which might lend itself to such general associations, into a very 
 brief space of actual time. The successions of intensity and relaxation, the 
 expectation perpetually bred and perpetually satisfied, the constant direction 
 of the motion to new points, and constant evolution of part from part, com- 
 prise an immense amount of alternations of posture and of active adjustment 
 of the will. We may perhaps even extend the suggestions of the last para- 
 graph so far as to imagine that this ever-changing adjustment of the will, 
 subtle and swift in Music beyond all sort of parallel, may project on the 
 mind faint intangible images of extra-musical impulse and endeavour; 
 and that the ease and spontaneity of the motions, the certainty with which 
 a thing known or dimly divined as about to happen does happen, creating 
 a half-illusion that the notes are obeying the controlling force of one's own 
 desire, may similarly open up vague channels of association with other 
 moments of satisfaction and attainment. But these affinities are at any 
 rate of the most absolutely general kind ; and whatever their importance 
 may be, they seem to me to lie in a region where thought and language 
 struggle in vain to penetrate. 
 
34:9 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE SUGGESTION BY MUSIC OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS AND IDEAS. 
 
 In the last chapter we considered the subject of expression in direct rela- § i. The 
 tion to the feelings, to the perception of musical beauty as coloured by cSy'con-". ' 
 more or less manifest tinges of definable emotional character. We have neotedwithtiie 
 now to enquire into the power of Music to suggest external objects and 
 events and intellectual conceptions, and into the amount of value which 
 can be attached to such suggestions. This topic is naturally bound up 
 most closely with the other ; but may be much more easily and shortly 
 treated, owing to the precedence of the other and the recognition of its 
 more fundamental nature. Both the necessity and the difficulty of dis- 
 tinguishing definable emotional expression in Music from the aspect of 
 unique and independent impressiveness were due to the fact that in a 
 great deal of music such expression is actually present as an important 
 and inseparable feature. But the connection of suggestions of external 
 images and conceptions with the essential effects of Music will prove to be 
 of a much looser and more mechanical sort ; while inasmuch as the con- 
 nection is possible, for the most part, only through the medium of emo- 
 tional expression, the conclusions of the last chapter will be immediately 
 available without repetition of the argument. 
 
 The suggestion of objects and events, the awakening in the mind of § 2. The 
 definite concrete images, may take ,place in two ways. First, the actual obfTOts and" 
 sounds and motion of the music may perceptibly resemble actual sounds tJke piMe'by 
 
 and motions of other things. If we look down any list of titles of musical particular 
 
 ° "^ I'esemblauces ; 
 
 pieces, we are certain to find examples of this. Brooks, cascades, storms, 
 
 bells, hammers, rides, gondolas, sources of sound, and moving things of all 
 sorts are laid under contribution, while such titles as Restless Nights have 
 a more remote but still real connection with concrete images of movement. 
 This kind of direct resemblance, aided greatly of course by actual 
 association, has a place in dances and marches : and amid the variety of 
 scenes and objects which these words might suggest, the mind may be 
 easily led more or less to define the image either by the pervading cha- 
 racter of the music or by certain special points in it. Thus of two dance- 
 pieces, one might be appropriated to nymphs and the other to giants, by 
 
350 THE SUGGESTION BY MUSIC 
 
 flowing grace in the one case, and by more emphatic phrases and perhaps 
 bass effects, like heavy steps, in the other : and we can easily reahse the 
 quaintness of turn or the solemn advance which would indicate a marionette 
 or a hero as the subject of a funeral-march. Such features, again, as 
 blending or as hurry and confusion of strains easily suggest external ana- 
 logies. It is obvious that such resemblances as these may present all 
 varieties of closeness and remoteness, of reality and faneifulness. The 
 fountain may truly suggest itself in the trickling passages of the music ; 
 the confusion of the carnival, though not thus self-evident, may be accepted 
 as an image which at any rate keeps easily parallel with the changing maze 
 of musical sounds : Purcell's indication of the fall of Troy by a descending 
 scale, on the other hand, is not less uninteresting as illustration than as 
 music, 
 or by gemrai The second way in which images of external facts may be suggested by 
 
 character. Music is by general qualities. Here again we might procure our examples 
 
 from almost any list of musical titles : the sea, evening, moonlight, sunny 
 landscape, any scene or season with which we associate a distinct emotional 
 colouring, may find in Music its faint reflection. These more general 
 analogies are often combined with the more distinct resemblances ; as is 
 natural, if we consider that definable qualities in Music are mainly con- 
 nected with distinct features of motion : the same calm and steady 
 musical flow which might suggest a quiet succession of waves has natu- 
 rally an expression of tranquillity corresponding with the same idea. 
 § 3. The These suggestions, however, remain in almost all cases extremely inde- 
 
 fcnfiiemost*'^^ finite. This is sufiieiently clear when we have only some very general 
 definwr-' a°art 1^^^it.y to fix our image by : but even the more special points of motion or 
 from verbal sound leave almost always a very wide latitude of choice. Griven the title, 
 
 assistance the ni ii- ii- 
 
 same music of course all who are the least interested m havmg an image at all will 
 quL diflfrent have the same image ; but left to themselves they might each select 
 ferent^neorie • ^ different one. We will defer for the moment the disputed subject 
 of what is known as programme-music, where the musical illustration 
 which is attempted is of a much more elaborate kind, and where high 
 aesthetic value is claimed for the perception of the correspondences. As 
 regards the simpler suggestions which can be summed up in a title, there 
 can be little dispute. They belong naturally rather to the slighter category 
 of musical sketches and impromptus than to works of prolonged labour 
 and elaborate construction ; and however unessential, they are at any rate 
 convenient, inasmuch as the number of technical designations by which 
 musical pieces can be distinguished is small, and persons who do not them- 
 selves perform the pieces cannot be expected to burden their memories 
 with keys and opus numbers. The interest of the imagined resem- 
 blances, even where strong enough to be worth taking into account, is not 
 likely to be identified with the excellence of the work. The interest, for 
 
OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS AND IDEAS. 351 
 
 instance, which any one may derive from reading the remarks on Men- 
 delssohn's visit to Italy, often found in programmes as an introduction to 
 his Italian symphony, is the interest not of musical interpretation but of 
 personal sympathy with the happy composer of the happy music. At the 
 same time, the confusion of the essential and the accidental is so apt to 
 creep in, and to pave the way to further fallacies, that even on these out- and the con- 
 skirts of expression the independent impressiveness of Music is worth ytle'^or the * 
 defending. The very ease with which Music lends itself to subiective interest of any 
 
 , •' external asso- 
 
 assoeiation makes it the more necessary to notice how entirely subiective ciation con- 
 
 1 • ■ n ■ 11 1 • 1 1 1 nectedwitha 
 
 the association usually is : and when a composer lovingly or humorously piece, does not 
 connects some musical product with the outward occurrence or the inward matters of 
 vision which, acting through hidden channels, may have stimulated his fJJ,po'r^ncfc 
 fancy, he sometimes innocently gives a handle to a misconception he would 
 often be the first to disown. For instance, Schumann tells how a com- 
 poser had been haunted, while writing, by the image of a butterfly 
 floating down a brook on a leaf, with the result that his composition was 
 characterised by a kindred simplicity and tenderness. Very likely it was : 
 but Schumann would not have denied that in the range ,of Music hundreds 
 of equally simple and tender compositions might be found, written by 
 writers who, as it happens, had not any such particular vision floating 
 before their eyes ; and in conceding this, he would concede all for which 
 1 am contending. 
 
 Similar remarks apply to titles and pieces of suggestion of a less 
 concrete kind. Schumann's own works present many titles drawn both 
 from visible realities and from more abstract conceptions, which are con- 
 sidered most happily characteristic, but which were actually thought of 
 after the composition of the respective pieces. And his written criticisms 
 are specially emphatic in respect of this very point. His imagination, 
 indeed, suggested as humorous and interesting flashes of allowable sub- 
 jective interpretation as can be anywhere found ; and one is specially 
 tolerant of such fancies when they come from a master : when wine is 
 of fine flavour, one does not quarrel with the froth. But while his 
 images run riot in most graceful fashion, we feel that he is always 
 estimating them at their true value ; ' and he often puts in a word to 
 warn us against mistaking the dream for the reality, the dim mirror of 
 metaphor for the veritable region, ' which,' as he says, ' we have never 
 explored, and consequently can have no recollection of.' 
 
 As regards ideas unconnected with concrete ■ images and events, it 
 might be at once surmised that the only ones Music could be thought 
 capable of expressing or suggesting must belong in some way to definite 
 
 ' I have invariably found, in musical impromptu by those who are furthest from 
 discussions, that the most vivid and pene- taking them au sencux. 
 trating similitudes have been thrown out 
 
352 
 
 THE SUGGESTION BY MUSIO 
 
 § 4. Sugges- 
 tion of Ideas. 
 Barrenness 
 of analogies 
 which go be- 
 yond the de- 
 finable emo- 
 tional qualities 
 of the music. 
 
 § 6. The 
 ideas must not 
 lie outside the 
 field of defin- 
 able emotion : 
 but this field 
 may be con- 
 siderably 
 widened by 
 features of 
 relation and 
 contrast. 
 
 §6. Supposed 
 lixpression of 
 ' poetical ideas ' 
 03- Music. 
 
 qualities of the music and its emotional expression, such as were discussed 
 in the last chapter. For example, that while the idea of fervour and 
 insistence, which is a distinct mode of feeling associated with motion and 
 gesture, is expressible in Music by emphatic reiteration, there is no similar 
 way of expressing an idea so withdrawn in the abstract intellectual region 
 as perseverance. I believe that such is the case, and that any analogies 
 attempted outside this emotional class of ideas are of the most barren 
 kind. A single example of an attempt of this kind will suffice. Professor 
 Macfarren, in his critique of Brahms's Requiem, says that in a pedal bass, 
 continued with beautiful musical effect for a long period, we must 
 conceive the composer to have ' set down his thought ^of the Divine per- 
 manence.' Such a rapprocheTnent seems exactly as mechanical as that 
 of the fall of Troy and the descending scale, noticed above. The perception 
 of something going on for a considerable time neither makes us feel per- 
 manent, as, e.g., triumphant music makes us feel triumphant, nor wakens any 
 feeling which corresponds with it in the way that, e.g., the feeling of 
 amusement corresponds with the perception of caprice or pursuit. The 
 connection of the abstract quality of the musical featmre with the Divine 
 or any other permanence must be a totally irrelevant and deliberate 
 mental act : and Brahms here as much or as little expresses his 
 ' thought ' of anything beyond his splendid musical effect, as we should 
 express our ' thought ' of the bottomless pit by playing a shake on the 
 lowest notes of the piano. 
 
 It seems, then, that the abstract ideas which Music may naturally 
 suggest must not lie outside the region of definable emotion. We saw, 
 however, in the last chapter, what wide affairs the definable emotions 
 usually were : and as a pervading air of joy or peace or struggle left us a 
 wide choice among scenes and objects, so they will leave a wide field for 
 our subjective fancies in respect of more abstract conceptions. The field 
 too may be extended by combinations of two or more conceptions, corre- 
 sponding to relations of the parts of the music to one another ; and 
 expression or quasi-expression may thus be carried somewhat beyond the 
 stage we have as yet considered. For instance, two passages, neither of 
 which would suggest any particular extra-musical idea on its own account, 
 may present such a contrast that the idea of despair struggling with hope, 
 or of darkness dispelled by light, or of the subdual of death by life, when 
 once suggested, may all seem to have a vague sort of applicability. And 
 here we are laxmched on the region of ' poetical ideas,' which we are now 
 so authoritatively told that it is the great business of Music to express. 
 
 Perhaps the best introduction to the subject will be to see what the ideas 
 come to, in connection with some first-class piece of modern instrumental 
 music : and I will take as an example a short ' analysis ' of the first movement 
 of Schubert's unfinished symphony, from the programme of a Philharmonic 
 
OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS AND IDEAS. 353 
 
 concert. I select this analysis because it is not in any way ridiculous, and 
 
 does not contain specially overstrained and fanciful comparisons, or 
 
 expressions which did not strike one in following the music as sufficiently 
 
 appropriate. Disentangled from musical terms it stands as follows : — We 
 
 begin with deep earnestness, out of which springs perturbation; after 
 
 which almost painful anxieties are conjured up, till the dissolution draws 
 
 the veil from an unexpected solace, which is soon infused with cheerfulness, 
 
 to be however abruptly checked. After an instant of apprehension, we are 
 
 startled by a threat of destruction to the very capability of rest, which in 
 
 its turn subsides. From the terrible we pass to the joyful, and soon to -^^^^ {„ ^^ 
 
 playfulness and tenderness ; a placid character which is quickly reversed scriptions 
 
 r J ' sr 1 J ^ which are quite 
 
 by a tone of anger, continued till it leads up to a repetition of all that has free from absur- 
 gone before. Then comes the unfolding of a tale of passionate aspiration ideas do not the 
 and depression, which works up to a culmination; after which some into the'Ssenife 
 more repetition of the already twice-heard perturbation and what follows effect 'which 
 it leads us to the final part, where, after being led in an unearthly way to "^^^ ^j^" 
 abstract our thoughts from the present and its surroundings, we at last total independ- 
 conclude in the strange mystery with which we set out, though just at the 
 very end there is an effort to shut the mind against its incertitude. — Now, 
 the work in question (as was stated in the programme) is not more 
 remarkable for its beauty of detail than for its general structure, which, as 
 one follows it, impresses one with a cogent sense of coherence and com- 
 pleteness. Yet the verbal ideas seem to bear to each other the relation 
 of the events in the time-honoured tale of the ' old she-bear ; ' and surely 
 in seeing what an uninteresting and inconsecutive jumble this really 
 respectable piece of criticism looks, in the unfair light of a statement of 
 ' poetical conceptions,' we see how impossible it would be for a musician 
 deliberately to work it up, and in what total independence of it Schubert 
 must have invented and developed the music. As a figurative description 
 of certain effects and transitions (which was doubtless what the writer 
 intended), the remarks may fairly pass ; but as an interpretation or 
 elucidation of what Schubert had in his mind, they would be meaningless ; 
 for they as little reveal or explain the essence of his utterance as a heap of 
 loose garments on the floor reveals or explains the breathing beauty of face 
 and form. 
 
 It would be pedantic to quarrel with such descriptions : so far as they Danger of 
 assist and interest any auditor, they are worth having. But the danger objectivf value 
 of attaching objective value to them has been conspicuously illustrated in geript^ns^'and 
 these latter days. Those who agree with Wagner that henceforth every o( considering 
 
 ..11.1 . . 1 . 1 , t°^™ ™ son's 
 
 composer with high aspirations is ' to consider it his task to express a measure as 
 preconceived poetical idea by means of sound,' cannot of course ignore '" ^'''" * '°"'' 
 the past achievements of Music, nor their own reverent appreciation of 
 them : and the instrumental works of Beethoven are too gigantic a fact 
 
 A A 
 
354 THE SUGGESTION BY MUSIC 
 
 in the musical world, their beauty is too overpoweringly evident, for any 
 subsequent theory which proclaimed an absolutely new departure to have 
 a chance of acceptance. So the 'poetical ideas' have to be found in 
 Beethoven : and the only way in which this can be done is by giving 
 objective value to just such subjective and accidental associations as were 
 exemplified in the above description, and by proclaiming that the differ- 
 ence which indisputably exists between the music of Beethoven and that 
 of his predecessors is to be traced to this element. It appears to me that 
 the advocates of this view can be put at once in a dilemma. Suppose, 
 for instance, that I and a thoi^sand others declare to Herr Hiiffer, an able 
 and candid exponent of the modern theory, that the most exquisite and 
 overpowering effects we have ever experienced in Art have been through 
 music which conveyed to us no idea, poetical or unpoetical, external to 
 itself ; and in relation to which such descriptions as that above quoted 
 (though we perceive in what way they are appUcable, and may even take 
 occasional interest in them) contain for us no vital truth and suggest 
 nothing^^of what is really there. He would perhaps say that the music 
 we refer to cannot be that of Beethoven : but when we reply that, on the 
 contrary, it is the works of Beethoven of which we are specially thinking, 
 he would seem driven either to give up the objective value of the ' poetical 
 ideas,' or to maintain that he gets more out of Beethoven than we do ; 
 and as we have told him that Beethoven represents to us our very deepest 
 aesthetic emotions, he could only adopt this latter alternative by assuming 
 himself to be markedly superior to all of us in artistic sensibility. A 
 further point could be urged by those of us whose most rapturous musical 
 moments take place as often in silence and solitude as during an actual 
 performance : for Herr Hiiffer does not only deny the loftiest impressive- 
 ness to music which suggests no idea appreciable in other ways, but he 
 treats such music as presenting mere ' sonorous beauty ; ' that is, describes 
 it as I should describe a scale or a chord played on a beautiful instrument. 
 § 7. Con- As regards any conscious embodiment of changing ideas throughout a 
 
 menTof'extra^ long instrumental movement, no one perhaps will seriously contend for it. 
 musical ideas Even if a strain of analogy somewhere suggests itself, it has to follow Uke 
 long movement a shadow in the independent steps of the musical development ; and as 
 question ; musical development (especially in Beethoven's own beloved sonata- and 
 
 symphony-form) has organic necessities wholly of its own, the shadow is 
 apt to become extremely shadowy before long. In other words, ' poetical 
 conceptions ' imaginable in details do not penetrate complex musical 
 structure. Any one in listening to a symphony may invent his own 
 phantasmagoria, and the doing so may be as interesting to some people 
 as it is superfluous to others : but at any rate the notion of the composer's 
 sitting dehberately down to depict a shifting set of emotional ideas, un- 
 supported and unjustified by any nucleus or guide of external subject- 
 
OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS AND IDEAS. 355 
 
 matter, falls hopelessly to pieces. How little the best descriptive analysis 
 of Beethoven's instrumental music at all represents what he was aiming 
 at in the several parts of a movement, will be plain to any one who reads 
 his own account of the struggles with which he got his musical ideas into 
 shape : and to try to grasp the import of the work by such analysis would 
 be to apply a wrong and totally inadequate mental organ ; exactly as 
 though one who had never seen should try to judge of the beauty of a 
 face by passing his hand over it. The matchless structures stand out to 
 the musical sense as unalterably right and coherent, and any one who 
 musically appreciates them knows as much and can tell as little of their 
 secret as Beethoven himself. The process by which we foUow such music 
 as this is as different from that by which we follow the development of a 
 poem as from that by which we follow the steps in a proposition of Euclid ; 
 in fact, the three have nothing in common beyond the mere abstract sense 
 oi following. 
 
 But the reading of the ' preconceived poetical ideas ' even into single and the notion 
 features is hardly less opposed to reason and evidence. The typical }gg° unfortn- ^ 
 instance is the remark of Beethoven about the opening notes of the natem respect 
 C minor symphony, 'It is thus that Fate knocks at the gate,' often turea. 
 quoted as if it were a revelation ! No one would complain of the expres- 
 sion: such fanciful associations may be striking when thrown out in 
 conversation, or useful as safety-valves for excitement. But there seem 
 to be those who believe that Beethoven conceived a desire to ' express 
 Fate,' and then struck three quavers and a minim. If this is not beyond 
 a joke, the joke it is not beyond must be the late Mr. John Parry's musical 
 representation of a boot-jack on the pianoforte. I once heard a first-rate 
 musician say of the magnificent effect produced, at the opening of the 
 Waldatein sonata, by the fresh start in B flat of the phrase which has just 
 been heard in C, ' That B flat chord is like getting into a new world : ' one 
 may surely enjoy the happiness of the expression without perceiving in 
 the music a preconceived poetical idea of heaven or America. With 
 Beethoven in all his work, no less than with Haydn and Mozart, the 
 musical impulse came first ; the motive might or might not turn out to 
 present deseribable aflSnities, but it was first and foremost a musical 
 motive, and often of superlative merit, because Beethoven was Beethoven. 
 Nor would Wagner's own assertion make us believe that he was himself 
 dependent on pilgrimages and heavenly bodies for the Leitinotiv of 
 Tannhduser and the glorious invocation to the evening-star. 
 
 No reader who has followed me with assent through the main argu- § 8. The 
 ments of this book wiU find any difficulty in grasping the true relation of o^absenMof 
 the composer's inventive faculty to other things. As a matter of fact, relation, of the 
 certain people are so constituted that the germs of forms which strike ventive laculty 
 themselves and others as beautiful are continually occurring to tliem, things. 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 THE SUGGESTION B7 MUSIC 
 
 coming as it were unbidden and demanding presentation ; ' and a great 
 natural facility in developing and arranging these melodic and harmonic 
 ideas, so as to build them into an organic work, is commonly connected 
 with the gift of originating them ; though composers have differed greatly 
 in the ease with which the more mechanical work of setting and inter- 
 weaving their combinations has been done. The delight is so strong and 
 the impulse so overpowering that all sweet and noble emotion, and many 
 extraneous trains of thought, are likely, in one thus gifted, to connect 
 themselves subjectively and intangibly with the prominent train of ideal 
 conceptions. And it is by no means impossible that the composer may 
 himself be deceived as to the sort and amount of objective embodiment 
 which in one case or another he may imagine he has given to these : for 
 a person quite unused to psychological analysis may easily get confused 
 between the immediate cause and the actual result of his artistic impulse. 
 But it is a simple matter of evidence that the power of creating beautiful 
 music may be as independent of any conscious sense of these interactions 
 as of a definite prior and external aim or standpoint. And whatever be 
 the author's subjective state of mind, he is able to delight the world only 
 through the welling- up in his mind of forms of objective and self-evident 
 beauty, which may dimly reflect nationality and temperament, but which 
 convey by themselves no tangible reference to experience or environment 
 or external conceptions of any sort, and are in a quite unexampled degree 
 the simple result of a unique and self-absorbed activity. When once he 
 is engrossed in his work these musical ideas will have it all their own way, 
 and in proportion as the world is genuinely delighted, will it trouble itself 
 little about ulterior suggestions. The inventive faculty, once set, so to 
 speak, for a largo or a scherzo or whatever it may be, works on in the 
 given vein. Not in one case in a hundred has any definite image or con- 
 ception been suggested for the more important class of instrumental 
 pieces ; " and it would clearly be absurd to say that such indefinite ab- 
 
 ' Apart from questions of analogy and in- as no true musical form or idea is involved 
 terpretation, people often speak of a com- in those vague mists of imagined sound, 
 poser's musical thought or idea, and his ^ An amusing instance of the danger en- 
 presentation or expression of it, as different thusiasts for a theory run in catching at 
 things. This is either a truism or a confu- straws of suggestion from the original 
 sion. The musical idea in his head is source, is afforded in connection with Beet- 
 different from the notes written on music- hoven's sonata, of which the three move- 
 paper ; and the germ of the idea struggling meuts are entitled Leg Adieux, L' Absence, 
 into shape is different from the idea as com- and LeRetow. The work has been delight- 
 pletely evolved. But of course there is no fully commented on and gushed about as a 
 investiture of the idea in music : it is music pourtrayal of passages from the life of two 
 from the beginning. If a composer has in lovers. Unfortunately, however, on the 
 his head an impression of something musical original copy Beethoven wrote : — 
 which is yet totally destitute of shape, he ' Farewell on the departure of His Im- 
 merelyso far resembles the people who seem perial Highness the Archduke Eudolph, the 
 to hear beautiful music in dreams ; music ith May, 1809,' and ' Arrival of His Imperial 
 which is of course inexpressible, inasmuch Highness the Archduke Eudolph, the 30th 
 
 January, 1810.' 
 
OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS AND IDEAS. 357 
 
 stractions as tremendousness, or tenderness, or sportiveness, were what 
 any movement was written to express. Such qualities are not the result 
 of any conscious direction of the faculties, but are simply inherent in 
 forms which present themselves to the composer as independent and 
 ultimate phenomena: and in the working up of these there is a con- 
 siderably larger proportion than is commonly supposed of semi-mechanical 
 skill, acquired by sound musical education, not inspired by views of the 
 universe. 
 
 But the words of great composers are the best statement of the truth § 9. Remarks 
 here set forth. Beethoven's complaints of his interpreters and expounders posers on the 
 were frequent and bitter ; but it is naturally in the writings of the more '"°J®'"* 
 literary musicians, Mendelssohn and Schumann, that we should look for 
 coherent expressions on the subject. Mendelssohn wrote, ' "What any 
 music I Like expresses for me is not thoughts too indefinite to clothe in 
 words, but too definite. — If you asked me what I thought on the occasion 
 in question, I say, the song itself precisely as it stands. And if, in this 
 or that instance, I had in my mind a definite word or definite words, I 
 would not utter them to a soul, because words do not mean for one person 
 what they mean for another ; because the song alone can say to one, can 
 awake in him, the same feelings it can in another — feelings, however^ 
 not to be expressed by the same words ; ' a passage which pretty satisfac- 
 torily disposes of the essentialness of extra-musical ideas and feelings, 
 to Mendelssohn at all events. Schumann's position as regards verbal 
 readings of music may be gathered from such passages as the following : — 
 ' Critics always wish to know what the composer himself cannot teU them ; 
 and critics sometimes hardly understand the tenth part of what they talk 
 about. Good heavens ! will the day ever come when people will cease to 
 ask us what we mean by our divine compositions ? Pick out the fifths, 
 but leave us in peace.' ' Different ages select different bases for their 
 texts and pictures ; where the youth of eighteen hears a world-famous 
 occurrence in a musical work, a man only perceives some rustic event, 
 while the musician probably never thought of either, but simply gave the 
 best music that he happened to feel within him just then.' Speaking of 
 Bennett's Musical Sketches, he says that the composer himself might be 
 unable to tell whether the impulse came from within or without. And 
 again, ' Beethoven understood the danger he ran with the Pastoral 
 Symphony. How absurd is it in painters to make portraits of him sitting 
 beside a brook, his head in his hands, listening to the bubbling water.' 
 Once he even goes so far as to object to the very titles of the Heroic and 
 Pastoral Symphonies ; and there is one passage of special indignation at 
 a mob of' chatterers who, after a performance of the Choral Symphony, pro- 
 fessed to find in it 'all forms of poetry,' and interpreted it as the history 
 
358 THE SUGGESTION BY MUSIC 
 
 of the origin of man, containing the entire first chapter of the Pentateuehi 
 ' Must a great man always find a thousand dwarfs at his heels ? ' ' 
 § 10. Pro- Only one important paper of Schumann's shows a certain confusion 
 
 gramme-music, , 
 
 and inconsistency of thought on this head; and it is worth noticing, 
 as it introduces the subject of 'programme-music. In speaking of the 
 verbal programme which accompanied a symphony of Berlioz, he marks 
 the exact distinction between aesthetic perception and superficial 
 amusement, when he says that 'all Germany greeted it with the 
 declaration that such signboards have an unworthy and empirical air ; ' 
 but that 'a Frenchman, reading the programme as he listens, would 
 applaud the countryman who so intelligently treated the whole.' But he 
 seems to lose the point, and to confound essence and accident when he 
 goes on, evidently influenced by the beauty which as a musician he found 
 in the work, to find some defence of its plan in such obvious but irrelevant 
 considerations as the following : — ' Involuntarily an idea sometimes de- 
 velops itself simultaneously with the musical fancy ; ' and, ' Why is it not 
 possible that the idea of immortality occurred to Beethoven while extem- 
 porising ? Why should not the idea of a fallen hero excite him to compo- 
 sition ? ' Of course such things may and do happen, and the creative 
 activity is thereby quickened ; but creative activity may be quickened by 
 lofty thoughts in dozens of directions where the objective results of the 
 activity will still have no intrinsic connection with the thoughts : and, 
 moreover, an inspiring thought is not a programme. Schumann himself 
 suggests a doubt ' whether the listener, unaware of the composer's intention, 
 would see similar pictures in his mind's eye to those which Berlioz has 
 designated ; ' and this is really a complete admission of the vague and 
 
 ' My only defence for such prolonged in- pression nothing, though containing a per- 
 sistence on the argument of this and the fectly correct meaning, are apt to give 
 preceding chapter would be to increase their countenance to the fallacy. It may be true 
 length and tedium by copious quotations, that the works in question lack clear intelli- 
 showing the extraordinary prevalence of the gible evolution and connection of the parts 
 fog I am attempting to disperse. Such in the larger organism of a movement. It 
 phrases as that Music < is the reproduction in maybe also true that to many ears the 
 tone-language of the feeling in the mind of parts, the melodies and motives, the forms 
 the composer,' and that a composer has ' to in the stricter and more organic sense, appear 
 dive into the psychological mysteries of the incoherent, ireorganic, torra-less : but just in 
 human heart ' to get at the feeling, the de,- proportion as any individual finds this to be 
 soription of a movement as 'seemingly having the case must musical ideas be non-existent 
 nothing to do with the rest of the sonata, for him in what is presented. Every true 
 but doubtless having a prof oimd signification musical idea, to everybody who apprehends 
 in the mind of the composer ' (and these ex- it, is a form, an iSco, an organic piece of 
 amples might be multiplied by the thousand) Ideal Motion: and so far as any composer 
 — allpointtothesamefigmentof thenecessary presents pieces of motive in a germinal and 
 pre-existence of some extraneous and inde- informed state, so far are valuable ideas, 
 pendent feeling or idea for which notes have not loosely and ungrammatically e»j)res«e<?, 
 to be found. Even such expressions as that but not there in the notes, however much 
 with Beethoven in some of his latest works potentially resident in the future workings 
 the idea became everything, Reform of ex- of the composer's brain. 
 
OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS AND IDEAS. 359 
 
 subjective character of musical phenomena regarded in the light of symbols. 
 We have seen that the interest of some single simple suggestion may be 
 vivid enough to last through slight and short instrumental works, where 
 the whimsicality of the connection is often half the charm. Even in more 
 elaborate works, the fact that there is no evident cause for the order in 
 which movements of various pace and character succeed each other, gives 
 a certain raison d'etre to a few external suggestions in respect of the very 
 broadest attributes. The suggestion of Les Adieux, U Absence, and Le 
 Retour, for instance, over and above the convenience of a title, affords a 
 sort of completeness and justification to the succession of parts. No one 
 would complain of the adjunct of headings to the Pastoral symphony, as 
 long as it is recognised that the essential beauty and significance of the 
 work might be realised by a person who had never left the centre of a 
 city ; that if that beauty be truly perceived, the additional interest due to 
 having been in the country cannot be put at more than one per cent, of 
 the whole ; and that however truly the impression of the music, with its 
 calm and storm and rustic dance, may be said to ' resemble ' emotions 
 evoked by pastoral scenes, the emotions they far more vitally resemble are 
 those evoked by the other symphonies of Beethoven. Deliberately to force 
 a string of more detailed analogies on a long instriimental work is to trifle 
 with the sources of inspiration, and to endanger the musical ideas at the 
 risk of merely exciting after all an empty, transitory, and mechanical 
 interest. In proportion as the suggestions are minute will they become 
 childish or grotesque ; as when a midnight ride through a gobUn-haunted 
 forest produces a cantering figure in the bass and an orchestral cacophony 
 of cries, shrieks, and groans : while a parallelism which is loose and general, 
 and to that extent harmless, is still a snare in proportion as stress is laid 
 on it ; in proportion, that is, as persons are led by the programme to con- 
 centrate their attention on the sort of external characters the music ought 
 successively to present, and then to think it very clever if only it presents 
 them, forgetting that an appropriate air of solemnity or sentiment or 
 agitation is as easy to assume as ii is irrelevant to intrinsic coherence and 
 enduring charm. It is distinctly detrimental to the musical perception and 
 education of many hearers to have this obvious stage of extraneous com- 
 parison to take refuge in. They cannot all be expected to perceive of them- 
 selves with Schumann, that ' the main point is still whether the music is 
 anjrthing in itself without words and illustrations : ' that is what it is the 
 business of composers to prove to them by taking them captive. ' People 
 err,' says Schumann, ' when they suppose that composers prepare pens and 
 paper with the deliberate predetermination of sketching, painting, expres- 
 sing this or that.' But unfortunately this is just what Berlioz did do, and 
 what many would extol him for doing. 
 
360 
 
 1 1. The 
 view of the 
 isolation of 
 musical im- 
 pressions has 
 now to be ex- 
 tended in 
 several direc- 
 tions. 
 
 S 2. The 
 isolation is 
 foreshadowed 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 MUSIC IN EELATION TO mTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 In the last two chapters we have been considering the rationale and limits 
 of Music's power directly to express and suggest definite emotions, images, 
 and ideas, as exemplified in the best music of our own era. We must now 
 take a rather more comprehensive view of the position in which the art 
 stands, or has stood, to life in its various aspects, to the individual, and to 
 society. The central view of our discussion has been the uniqueness of the 
 impressions in which the essence of musical pleasure consists, and this has 
 been now presented both as a deduction and a fact. Our next task will be 
 chiefly to extend the conception of the uniqueness and its consequences in 
 various directions. I feel too strongly the general fascination of the ideas of 
 kinship and solidarity between lofty emotions, I realise too vividly how 
 delightful it would be if those who appreciate Shakespeare were ipso facto 
 in a condition to appreciate Beethoven, and vice versa, not to be aware of the 
 prejudice to which this idea of uniqueness and isolation is liable ; a prejudice 
 which is perhaps more likely to tell in connection with what follows than in 
 connection with the drier arguments on which the view itself was founded. 
 That Music should seem to lose in dignity by isolation is the result of 
 what to all non-musical and many musical persons is the natural way of 
 regarding the subject. Nor, on the other hand, is this independence and 
 uniqueness a thing which devotees who do not disown it can fairly appeal 
 to per se as a sign of the loftiness of their art ; for the high and the low, 
 the raptures of devotion and the taste of olives, may both affect us in very 
 unique ways. The appeal can only be to experience : when this is rightly 
 interpreted^ the incredulous will have no right to look down on impressions 
 as sensuous or trifling, which are declared to be something else by those 
 who show in other ways a capacity of self-analysis ; nor again will musicians 
 be reduced by jealousy for the dignity of their art to prop it up by unreal 
 supports and connections. And it is this latter tendency which I am most 
 concerned to resist, inasmuch as Music, like many other things, suffers 
 most from its friends. 
 
 The barest statement of the earliest facts of Music, as here conceived, 
 suffices to foreshadow the subsequent relation of the art to the world of 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 361 
 
 ideas and feelings outside itself. If its simplest elements can be referred in the earliest 
 to the mere functions of nerve-cells, and for ages before logical processes nmsioai phe- 
 were possible it was building up its groundwork in the organism and '"""™''- 
 summoning to its aid, through association, by far the most powerful and 
 exciting feelings of primitive times, we shall not be surprised at finding it 
 ruling mightily in a sphere whence we seek in vain to trace back the 
 infinitely long and subtle trains of past feeling ; or at seeing its emotions 
 swayed in apparent independence of the rest of our nature, and, if at one 
 time harmonising with other things, at another soaring ofi" among heights 
 and depths which are wholly their own. We see at once the distinction 
 between this art and the arts of representation ; and how completely 
 inapplicable to it, though true of them, are Comte's dicta that ' Art begins 
 at first with simple imitation, which becomes raised into idealisation,' that 
 * Art may be defined as an ideal representation of fact,' and that * the 
 contemplations of the artist begin with the simple objects of the external 
 world.' We see that Music Uved ages ago, as it lives now, quite aloof 
 from imitation, and how the germ of the aesthetic faculty, in the sense of 
 the association of order with emotion, existed independently in the 
 apprehension of its earliest and most rudimentary utterances : for while 
 the other arts find order in, and impose order on, external facts. Music 
 finds it in her own essence. It is curious to observe how the metaphysician 
 Wagner and the positivist Comte, who, though on different grounds, agree 
 in considering the germs of song to have preceded speech, have missed in 
 different ways the essentialness of form or order to the idea of art. Wagner 
 considers that man's first utterances came nearer to the noumenon or true 
 reality ; Comte that ' the first things we express are those which move our 
 feelings most,' so that primitive utterances were more aesthetic than sub- 
 sequent more conventional ones. The latter view is the more intelligible, 
 but equally with the other ignores the element of order: primitive 
 instinctive cries are neither more nor less aesthetic, in the accepted sense of 
 the term, than subsequent conventional ones, because neither are aesthetic 
 at all. Whether the waiUngs of an infant express noiimena, or (as seems 
 more probable) the infant's private feelings, they have no connection with 
 art: and the above views have as little meaning when applied to the 
 development of Music in the world as when applied to the vocal efibrts of 
 a future prvma downa at the age of three weeks. 
 
 No clear conception can be gained of the true relation of Music to the § 3. The 
 rest of our faculties, and no sort of explanation can be given of its position rMterlstics of 
 in the world, unless we are careful to separate what may be termed the SuuTdL^* 
 accidents of its history from its essential characteristics. As a matter of fi.°f^"j.^^'^^^jj 
 fact, its employment by civilised man was, till comparatively recently, ofitsWstori- 
 almost entirely in connection with words. This was to be expected, mentincon- 
 until the development of the art and its instruments should have reached "^^^^^^ ^"'' 
 
362 MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 ■which has 
 greatly misled 
 speculation. 
 
 § 4. One 
 may admit a 
 Urge amount 
 of subjective 
 analogy 
 between dif- 
 ferent orders of 
 impressions, 
 while entirely 
 repudiating 
 attempts to 
 give these 
 objective 
 value, and to 
 explain or in- 
 terpret one 
 order by 
 another. 
 
 an advanced point. The voice — man's first and most natural instrument 
 — is also the organ of speech, and speech arrived at high (in Greece the 
 highest) development while Music's full powers were wholly undreamed 
 of. What wonder that the hymn should ' rule the lyre ' — that speech 
 called on the budding art to add charm and emphasis to words and held it 
 under an imperious sway ? But the historical connection between Music 
 and Poetry has led many to suppose that this is the ideal condition, and 
 will be more than ever realised in the future. The view that Poetry and 
 Music should unite, each at its highest, and that the period of possible 
 independence is the passing and less valuable stage, is almost invariably 
 connected with the idea that the germs of the two arts started together. 
 My view is of course the reverse, that the musical instinct existed long 
 before coherent intellectual conceptions were possible, and that Music, 
 having passed through a long and imperfect stage of tutelage, breaks forth 
 in the fulness of her unfettered strength, still indeed a possible ally of 
 Poetry, but insisting everywhere on her own inalienable rights. I will not 
 trench here on the subject of the actual objective union of- the two arts, 
 which we shall consider in the chapters on Song and Opera : but this will 
 be the place to examine somewhat further the question of the general rela- 
 tionship between these so-called sister-arts. It is here I think that the 
 question of origin becomes of extreme importance. If the germs of 
 musical emotion are traced back through thousands and thousands of or- 
 ganisms to ages far beyond the more distinctly intellectual conceptions of 
 Poetry, we shall be led to regard very differently the attempted connections 
 and mutual interpretations of the two arts in their developed forms. I 
 am not claiming greater intrinsic value for musical emotions, only a longer 
 history ; and in this respect their position among our artistic feelings may 
 be compared to that of the deep sea-currents, part of the same ocean as 
 the waves above, but not in obvious close connection with them or a guide 
 to their pace and direction. 
 
 Not that I would ignore the immense scope of the sense of analogy 
 in the emotional region. Even in the absence of inherent connection, 
 the fuller vitality resulting from a powerful stirring of one part of 
 our emotional nature seems often to quicken all the higher faculties 
 and susceptibilities, and in this way might well give rise to associations 
 between them. But though subjective affinities of course exist between 
 many deep impressions and emotions of the same being, it is not enough 
 realised how different these are from interpretations or translations. 
 "Words are, in a general way, so closely interlocked with ideas, that it 
 seems a kind of necessity of thought to crystallise all impressions by 
 their means : and Poetry, being the art of words par excellence, is vaguely 
 regarded as a natural mine of conceptions and metaphors suited to all 
 emotional experiences, and able to embody all lofty reality. The very 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 363 
 
 attempt to express one thing in terms of another often seems to give the 
 kind of relief that one gets from bodily change of posture ; for the 
 dwelling on anything whoUy within its own region is apt to produce a 
 kind of mental pins-and-needles. But there is a distinct danger of mis- 
 taking this sort of mental relief for fresh knowledge, and of ignoring the 
 point at which impressions become ultimate through a true differentiation 
 of our faculties. A man who calls Milan Cathedral a marble poem, or 
 conceives of 'his Jianc^e as a female poem, does what is quite justifiable 
 but not instructive ; for he does not really judge these objects, either as 
 a whole or in detail, by reference to Poetry. The secret of the uni- 
 formities he is dimly conscious of lies in the furthest depths of his own 
 being, and is not penetrated by imaginary identifications of widely varying 
 impressions ; young ladies and cathedrals not being really poems any more 
 than cathedrals are young ladies. Similarly there is no harm in calling a 
 picture a symphony,' as long as it is recognised that such uniformity as is 
 
 ' A good deal of what one hears about 
 ' subtle affinities ' between the arts is con- 
 nected with the old trap, the failure to dis- 
 tinguish between Form and Colour. We saw 
 in the first chapter that between the nolowr- 
 impressions of the eye and the ear there is 
 an occasional affinity, extremely inferior in 
 degree but still remotely comparable to that 
 between the impressions of taste and smell. 
 The resemblance between trumpet-tones and 
 scarlet may be called subtle, in the sense 
 that the feeling of it, while perfectly dis- 
 tinct, is still very peculiar and indescribable. 
 Between a visual and an auditory /or?» there 
 can of course be no affinity at all, except such 
 most broad and wjsubtle ones as the being 
 both of them impressive and beautiful, or 
 unimpressiTe and mean. If any one should 
 assert an affinity between Painting and 
 Music on the grounds, e.g., that partial repe- 
 tition of line may be compared to parallelism 
 in the direction of contiguous phrases, or 
 that the principle of contrast is perpetually 
 observed by both arts in the arrangement of 
 parts, we may leave him to extract such illu- 
 mination as he can from his rapprochement ; 
 only remarking (what was sufficiently dwelt 
 on as regards Miasic in the tenth chapter) 
 that these features are as common in the 
 worst compositions as in the best ; and that 
 therefore unless he goes the length of com- 
 paring some actual embodiment of them in 
 a beautiful picture with some actual embo- 
 diment of them in a beautiful musical piece, 
 the abstract fact that they are presentable 
 in both arts does not seem charged with 
 mluch emotional power. 
 
 The representative arts naturally possess 
 more ground for affinities among themselves, 
 since they have a large amount of common 
 subject-matter, and may express common 
 ideas and sentiments. But even in their case 
 the agreement is often unduly pressed. A 
 poet indeed is not often called a painter, 
 except in relation to some special bit of de- 
 scription; it being pretty obvious that sensi- 
 tiveness to visible beauty is a quality which 
 even a great poet might conceivably lack, 
 and which several great poets have possessed 
 in no greater degree than many other persons 
 of artistic perception artd taste. But one 
 often hears a painter called a poet, in a way 
 which is misleading precisely in proportion 
 as a definite meaning is attached to it. We 
 cannot dispense with the word poetical, as 
 applied to that way of regarding things which 
 seeks to draw out from them such beauty 
 and emotional power as they possess. But 
 if every producer who delights in poetical 
 aspects of things is to be considered a poet 
 and a producer of poems, these words lose all 
 distinctive meaning. A poet is a creator of a 
 certain kind. And if a painter cannot create 
 after this kind, he is not at all differentiated 
 from his fellows in virtue of certain ideas 
 and sentiments which he shares with a poet, 
 this being broad common ground shared by 
 thousands of others : he shows his difference 
 from those others not by doing what a poet 
 does, but by doing what a painter does. That 
 is to say, as soon as poet and painter begin 
 to occupy the common ground of thought 
 and feeling, or to occupy new ground of their 
 own, with their own individual creations — as 
 
364 MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 felt consists in the most general attribute of harmonious beauty, the 
 manifestation of which in the one case throws no light on that in the 
 other, and may be fully appreciated by one who is totally blind or deaf to 
 the other. Though one hears people talk of such and such a picture as 
 being ' like music,' no one, I suppose, was ever so bold as to say that a 
 picture, or a part of a picture, was like a particular modulation from C into 
 E minor ; ' and it is this, and things like this (not technically known, but 
 felt), which give the true artistic musical pleasure, as distinct from general 
 and suffusive feelings of admiration, excitement, or awe. 
 The ' instru- And these remarks will apply at once to the ' instrumental poems ' 
 
 rf^Beethoven.* which we hear so much about. On this subject the modern theories, as we 
 saw in the last chapter, have made Beethoven the inevitable centre of dis- 
 pute. It is a real distress that the bone of contention should be the music 
 in love of which all are so profoundly one. When I read anything written 
 with so much insight and reverence as the paper on that music contributed 
 some years ago by Mr. Dannreuther to Macmillan's Magazine, I vividly 
 feel, ' Amicus Dannreuther ; ' but again some of his remarks in that very 
 paper — as that Beethoven's later music preaches ' depreciation of self and 
 negation of personality ' ^ — compel me to add ' major atnicus Beethoven,' 
 and to recognise that any attempt at mutual comprehension is hazardous. 
 It is not necessary to repeat what has been already said as to the supposed 
 poetical basis of great instrumental works. The ' poetical conceptions ' 
 have almost always to be guessed at ; for to say, as Mr. Dannreuther does, 
 that where not avowed they are implied, is simply to beg the question. 
 But even had Beethoven always, instead of extremely seldom, hinted at 
 such things, and even had he never, instead of frequently, complained of 
 the discovery of them by others, I should say the same. The reference to 
 some analogue in another region may, as we saw, have been occasionally 
 an interest and a convenient verbal outlet to Beethoven as to others : two 
 melodic parts may seem to sustain a dialogue or a dispute, storm and 
 struggle may yield to calm and sunshine. Fate may knock at the gate : but 
 the whimsical absurdities which result from attempts to press home and 
 
 soon as they set to work in the fashion which and oould no more himself produce, than any 
 
 constitutes them poet and painter instead of other true appreoiator of the poem, 
 
 poetical and artistic persons — their activities ' Perhaps, however, I underestimate the 
 
 diverge ; and the intellectual qualities called possibilities of human audacity : for since 
 
 into play are hardly if at all less distinct from writing this I have heard of a dispute between 
 
 one another than is the process of casting a master and pupil as to whether a particular 
 
 thought into metrical language from the modulation in a sonata of Mozart meant 
 
 process of putting colours on canvas. It is ' but ' or ' if.' 
 
 worth noting that this is the case even in ' It is curious to find this phrase quoted 
 
 places where the two sorts of art seem to vpith approbation by an able critic who him- 
 
 have most common ground. The opening of self truly describes Beethoven's later works 
 
 (Enone, for instance, differs from a mere as ' full of intense personality and a wild nn- 
 
 catalogue of objects by dint of something imprisoned spirit.' 
 which a painter no more keenly perceives. 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 365 
 
 follow out such fancies, even in the comparatively few cases where they 
 seem momentarily obvious enough to be interesting, show what an un- 
 essential luxury they are. And are we poorer instead of richer if our 
 worlds are multiplied ? Are we bound to catch the echoes of the visible 
 world in all we hear ? For it must be noticed that even such descriptive 
 analogies as can be plausibly adduced are not in any special sense poetical, 
 but only of some external or human significance : there is no poetry in 
 such isolated conceptions as grief and triumph, appeal and response, storm 
 and calm and moonlight, and the rest. And indeed the tendency I have 
 been discussing seems to me as damaging to the idea of Poetry as to that 
 of Music. It would almost seem as if those who so speak conceived of 
 Poetry only in unformed and unrelated streaks and patches, and not in its 
 truly artistic aspects. Poetry dififers indeed from Music in drawing its 
 subjects from life, but that does not mean that all life is Poetry, any more 
 than all sounds are Music : and the greatest poetical artists, in discovering 
 and drawing forth the latent harmonies of human and natural relations, 
 exercise an imaginative faculty as much beyond the crude suggestions of 
 programme ' analysis ' as the composer who draws forms of unparalleled 
 beauty from his meaningless six octaves of notes. 
 
 The idea that instrumental music is, or can or should be, a sort of § 5. Weak- 
 transfigured poetry, is too preposterous to be steadily and consistently attempt to 
 kept in sight by any one : but there is another common misconception as "og'^^^^'^e- 
 to the intellectual bearings of Music, of a quite different kind. And as finite corre- 
 
 1 • 1 1 spondence 
 
 the former idea seemed to be more or less vaguely connected with the between 
 long dependence of Music on Poetry, so the idea we are now to consider is and modern 
 connected with the complete breaking of that dependence, and the tre- *i">»sht- 
 mendous assertion of Music's unique predominance in the last century and 
 a half. The recession of that phase of Music in which its independent 
 emotional power was less recognised theoretically (though practically, of 
 course, exemplified in every case where any melody spoke to any human 
 being), and in which the great business of the art was supposed to be to 
 emphasise and beautify the enunciation of verbally-expressed doctrines and 
 sentiments, has considerably misled speculation on the subject; and we are 
 always hearing modern music, in its principal instrumental developments, 
 connected with the complexities of modern sentiment and the self-con- 
 sciousness and introspectiveness of modern life and thought, as though 
 the same causes had effected in both cases a gradual modification. 
 
 The synchronism can, I think, be shown to be of scarcely any real 
 significance. Nobody can have paid the slightest attention to the history 
 of Music without observing how entirely its advances depended on its 
 material, under which must be included both the instruments presenting 
 it a,nd the prevailing scale-system, the set of notes and relations out of 
 which its forms have to be constructed. As long as the presentation of 
 
366 MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 Music was almost confined to the voice, a musician would not be likely to 
 imagine forms which the voice was wholly incompetent to execute : and if 
 he had, his compositions would have had no existence except on paper. 
 Still more important and fundamental, in respect of musical possibilities, 
 is the scale-system. The actual set of notes, the uninteresting and un- 
 emotional stuff which lies ready for all to build from, differs from the 
 material of all other arts in that it is itself gradually modified and de- 
 veloped pari passu with its use. Each musician inherits a material which 
 has become what it is by being tried and worked up into forms, a set of 
 relations which have gradually established themselves in the very process 
 of artistic invention and success.' And any being born with any musical 
 facility, with any power, that is, of perceiving a succession of tones as a 
 coherent group, leaps straight into the conditions and possibilities belong- 
 ing to the system which prevails around him. The feeling for the modern 
 elements of tonality and harmony can be awakened in an organism which 
 has certainly not received them by inheritance : even were there not suffi- 
 cient evidence in the small number of generations during which the 
 modem system has prevailed, this has been abundantly proved in the case 
 of negroes and Hottentots, and (as regards melody at all events) of parrots. 
 A negro is not more complex or introspective than an Athenian of the great 
 age ; and it seems therefore pretty certain that our music would in a very 
 short time have been quite comprehensible and delightful to an ancient 
 Athenian could he but have lived among it. A Greek had the suggestions 
 for perfect sculpture in the forms he daily saw : and his marble lay ready 
 to his hand : his music was limited by the limitations of his meagre instru- 
 ments and of his system of notes and note relations, which afforded material 
 indeed for heart-stirring melody, but (in the absence of harmony and mo- 
 dulation) gave little chance for wide variety and development. The fact 
 that he did not discover anything like the modern system is precisely on a 
 par with the facts that he did not discover the planet Neptune, or the steam- 
 engine, or photography, or Cremona violins. Accident has always played a 
 large part in the history of discovery : and a single nation in a limited time 
 cannot do everything. The complete foundation of modern music was a very 
 difficult thing to arrive at, and required a long experimental process, 
 carried on by generations of writers, performers, and listeners. Once 
 found out, the coherence and variety of the structures based on it, and 
 the convenience therefore of the basis, commend themselves to the human 
 ear as readily as the adaptability and convenience of prominent architec- 
 tural elements to the human eye. Having obtained at last mechanical 
 facilities, and a suitable material in the tempered scale-system with all its 
 
 • This of coiirse applies to all manner of become as much the common property of 
 combinations and fragments of progression musicians as the notes and common chords 
 which are of perpetual occurrence, and have of the scale. 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 367 
 
 possibilities of harmony and modulation, Music advanced naturally and 
 rapidly to its great achievements; which, be it observed, are connected for 
 the most part with the names of singularly simple and one-idea'd men,' and 
 which in many cases have belonged to the very earliest manhood of artists 
 who had lived from babyhood absorbed in their one pursuit. 
 
 In speculating on this point it is beside the mark to argue from such Speculation 
 facts as the simplicity of Greek drama, or the absence from their literature ^'g Greeks, and 
 of analytical works of fiction ; for in accordance with our theory of Music's gonfiu'sfons™'^'* 
 peculiar history in relation to the organism, we constantly find persons 
 quite incapable of appreciating and unravelling complexities in other 
 regions, to whom in music the faculty is natural. Music is thus specially 
 calculated to illustrate the danger of over-centralising — so to speak-— 
 the springs of emotional enjojrment, and of forcing correspondences among 
 the aesthetic faculties for the sake of a factitious symmetry and unity. 
 The metaphors in which one line of perception is illustrated by another 
 are in this way often misleading. For instance, M. Boutmy, in his ex- 
 cellent little work on the architecture of the Greeks, illustrates by a 
 brilliant metaphor that especially Ionian dislike of marked contrasts, and 
 preference for flowing and easy transitions, wherein he thinks the people's 
 characteristic love of ease and calm, of an orderly and peaceful life, was 
 translated into their buildings. Consonances, he says, abound in this 
 architecture ; dissonances are almost unknown : the harmonies of Beet- 
 hoven, profound and mournful, with their resolution constantly deferred, 
 give place to the short and simple modulations which Cimarosa brings 
 perpetually to rest on the perfect concord. This illustration is admirable 
 for its purpose : but just because illustrations of the sort are possible, it is 
 important to beware of deducing any vital affinity between different orders 
 of impression from such extremely abstract principles as, e.g., dislike of 
 contrasts and complexities. Among the Greeks, for example, the archi- 
 tectural transitions might be simple and flowing ; so might the approved 
 dance-movements : but if we turn to poetry, the metrical structure often 
 presents most sudden turns and contrasts ; and in the arrangement of long 
 strophes and antistrophes, the ear is constantly kept waiting very long for 
 the resolution of its expectation by the symmetrical balance of the 
 answering verse. Again, it might be easy to argue from characteristics of 
 their sculpture that the Greeks lacked that special modern sense of melan- 
 
 ' It is odd to notice what minute things in drawing a little and excelling in dancing are 
 
 a man gifted with genius in one direction signs of special genius. So one has heard it 
 
 are taken as signs of genius in all. Mozart's said of Mendelssohn (who no doubt was a 
 
 widow said to some English visitors that man of more than average culture), on the 
 
 ' Mozart loved all the arts, and had a genius ground of his having made a little sketch on 
 
 for most of them. He drew a little and ex- one side of a leaf and written a few verses 
 
 celled in dancing. Indeed, he was an angel,' on the other, that had he taken seriously to 
 
 she added, ' and is one in heaven now.' We Painting or Poetry he would have excelled 
 
 may hope he is, without considering that in them no less than in Music. 
 
368 MUSIC m RELATION TO INTELLEC~r AND MORALITY. 
 
 choly which is connected with conflicts of material and spiritual forces and 
 a generally less harmonious life : but we know that they had pathetic 
 music, and in the opinion of Plato appreciated it only too well. 
 
 Whether or not the Greeks, as a nation, would have appreciated such 
 music as Beethoven's, had the modern scale-system and its results appeared 
 two thousand odd years sooner, is of course a doubtful question : but if not, 
 it would have been simply because their musical nature had not sufiBcient 
 vigour to lend itself to such mighty and often complex kinds of Ideal 
 Motion ; which is just what may be said of the Latin races of the present 
 day. To say they would not have liked it because of its passion and pro- 
 fundity would be quite misleading, if it were meant that they would have 
 found in it a suggestion of new and unwelcome conceptions or emotions. 
 Music among us is perfectly and profoundly appreciated by thousands of men, 
 women, and children whose habits of thought and sentiment bear no cha- 
 racteristic stamp of a restless and analytical age. A musical child may feel 
 the overmastering magic of Beethoven before the shadows or conflicts of life 
 have any existence for him ; and his circumstances and temperament may 
 be such that in point of emotional and imaginative experiences he remains 
 pretty much of a child in adult years, while Music retains the monopoly of 
 stirring him to the depths. The Greeks might not have apprehended 
 Beethoven : their musical faculty might have refused to grasp his forms. 
 But if they had apprehended, they would certainly have enjoyed : for 
 where the range of impressions is self-contained and there are no definable 
 external references, apprehension and enjoyment of beauty are virtually 
 synonymous. We may apprehend a poem, and while appreciating its 
 artistic merits may be pained by its images and suggestions : not so a 
 musical piece. Whether the Greeks would altogether have approved of 
 their enjoyment is another matter ; and here really lies the doubt as to 
 the value they might have assigned to our music, in its striking dissocia- 
 tion from politics and religion. Their intense feeling for apjjLovia in life 
 might have inclined them to be sceptical as to the goodness of a quite 
 differentiated range of emotion, however delightful ; and it would have 
 been extremely interesting to watch the ethical conflict which might have 
 ensued. But a radical misconception is involved in the attempt to connect 
 modern music directly with modem introspectiveness and ' subjectivity : ' 
 any beautiful musical form is as objective a phenomenon to the people 
 who care for it as a beautiful face, and probably produces on all of them 
 equally similar impressions. 
 The connection '^^ position of Music as the popular modern art can only be truly 
 between the connected with general facts of contemporary intellectual life in this 
 
 present position ^ _ , 
 
 of Music and negative way, that the uprooting of beliefs and blight of satisfying ideals 
 
 facts of tiie age has made many men the more thankful for a region of pleasurable emotion 
 
 one °^^*''^^ whose reality gives no possible handle for question or attack. This is a 
 
 reason for its being a specially fortunate circumstance that Music is now 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 369 
 
 what it is, but clearly is not at the root of its extraordinary and self-engen- 
 dered development. 
 
 We have really but to think of the people we know or have heard of, Argumentum 
 to realise the generally isolated and accidental position of musical suscep- 
 tibility among the mental faculties and habits. Music is no more loved 
 by clever people than by stupid ones; no more by the poetical and 
 imaginative than by the prosaic and matter-of-fact. Bentham loved it 
 deeply, Lessing was driven out of the room by it, and such instances 
 might be multiplied to any extent. The only set of people to whom the 
 taste has ever been attributed with the slightest plausibility is mathemati- - 
 cians. There can hardly be anything more in this than so far as a taste 
 for symmetry and neatness may give a person a certain pleasure both in 
 figures and formulae and in the more external aspects of precise and 
 symmetrical musical designs, as, e.g., a two-part invention of Bach's, or a 
 canon.' But the view, as usually stated, is always found to rest on a 
 certain number of known instances, which could be instantly paralleled 
 from any other class. As regards performers, again, to whom as a class 
 we should vmhesitatingly look for a special ' taste for Music,' how often 
 will Pomfret's couplet recur to the mind — 
 
 Melania dotes upon the silliest things, 
 And yet Melania like an angel sings I 
 
 a poetical exaggeration which needs modifying in the second line quite as 
 often as in the first ; and which at any rate suggests the truth in so far as 
 musical talent, being an isolated gift, may be possessed by the most or- 
 dinary people, and is a sign of nothing beyond itself. 
 
 Having considered Music in its relation (or want of relation) to the § 6. Music 
 intellectual side of life, we may pass on to the ethical. The second great by the an"ount 
 fact involved in the general view of Music's singularly independent ^visOT'is'* 
 nature is that what is partially true of all the arts is wholly true of this capable of giv- 
 
 t . . ingj and is only 
 
 one — that it must be judged by us directly in relation to pleasure, and indirectly con- 
 that pleasure is the only criterion by which we can measiu^e the relative morality, 
 worth of diiferent specimens of it. The pleasure, from its peculiarity, its 
 power of relieving the mind and steeping it as it were in a totally new 
 atmosphere, its indescribable suggestions of infinity, and its freedom from 
 any kind of deleterious after-effects, is of an extremely valuable kind ; and 
 moreover, since indirect effects may be to the full as strong and important 
 as direct, my argument would not affect the fact, but only the grounds, of 
 
 ' One of the most eminent mathematicians the soul of each the same I' It is not won- 
 
 xn England connects mathematical and mu- derful that the same writer should say 
 
 sical culture as ' similar in their habits and Horace would have been a senior-wrangler, 
 
 affections.' He calls 'Music the Algebra of on the ground of his having used the alcaic 
 
 sense. Algebra the Music of the reason ; stanza with metrical skill. 
 Music the dream. Algebra the waking life — 
 
 B B 
 
370 MUSIO IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 Thisisopijosite the connection of Music with morality. Still the view, as here stated, ig 
 view.^s^repre- ^-t palpable issue with that which is commonly maintained : and the oppo- 
 Piato!''^ sition to it is generally supported by references to Plato, the great 
 
 representative of the ancient view, who very rarely relaxes his tone even 
 to the extent of saying that he does not mean wholly to exclude pleasure, 
 and that ' songs may be an amusement to cities.' We cannot enter on 
 the subject better than by considering the grounds on which that ancient 
 view rested. 
 
 We find the reason of the difference in the extremely simple character 
 •and the completely subordinate position (already noticed) of Music as 
 conceived by Plato. In those times the true independent power of Music 
 was almost latent, and, as a mere accessory to other things, it might in 
 various ways receive an ethical import. How elementary was Plato's view 
 of melody, and how dependent on external associations, is shown in his 
 weighing the merits of rhythm, not in connection with the Tiotes of a 
 melody, but by simple reference to the kinds of physical Tnovement which 
 accompanied them in the dances he knew.' More important, of course, 
 would be the direct association with words and occasions, which in 
 the music described by Plato would always be present, especially as he 
 was exceedingly anxious to limit it in amount and to prevent novelties. 
 In the dialogue of the Laws, the Athenian stranger tells how in Egypt all 
 art has remained unchanged for 10,000 years, during which time the 
 ancient chants composed by the goddess Isis had received neither altera- 
 tion nor addition ; and remarks, ' How wise and worthy of a great legislator ! ' 
 while, on the other hand, he regrets that ' in other places novelties are 
 always being introduced in dancing and music at the instigation of lawless 
 pleasure.' The bard of versatile poetical and histrionic talent, who deals 
 in variety of melodic and rhythmic transitions, is to be anointed indeed 
 and crowned ' as a sacred, admirable, and charming personage,' but to be 
 promptly sent away to another city. It could only have been association 
 with the words of the song or the gestures of the dance, which made 
 Plato so invariably represent Music as simply representative and imitative : 
 for while he sees no difficulty in the analogy between the copy of a human 
 form in sculpture and the copy of virtue and vice in Music, and speaks, as 
 if everybody would comprehend him, of ' the natural rhythms of a well- 
 regulated and manly life,' he nevertheless expressly says that ' when there 
 are no words it is difficult to recognise the meaning of harmony or rhythm, 
 or to see that any worthy object is imitated by them.' Some of the 
 
 ' The dances of the Mexicans and Guate- ethical character which would intensify a 
 malians have heen described as having hundredfold their natural emotional colour- 
 always a, particular melody suited to their ing, and which would be confirmed on every 
 purpose, and as often becoming scenical. occasion of their use. 
 Such melodies would obviously assume an 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 371 
 
 lengths to which he pushed his views on the ethical bearings of Music are 
 very curious. No instruments of wide compass are to be permitted : the 
 lyre and guitar will be used in the town, the pipe in the country.' Not 
 only is the use of instruments otherwise than as accompaniment to be 
 eschewed, as leading to every sort of irregularity and trickery — ' for,' says 
 he, ' we must acknowledge that all this sort of thing, which aims only at 
 swiftness and smoothness and a brutish noise, is exceedingly rude and 
 coarse ' — but dififerent classes and sexes are to keep to distinct styles, and 
 the grave and wise elders will not only be the best arbiters of Music, but 
 the best performers. ' The Muses,' he says, ' would never fall into the 
 monstrous error of assigning to the words of men the gestures and songs of 
 women, nor combine the melodies and gestures of freemen with the 
 rhythms of slaves and men of the baser sort.' ^ Grand melodies are to be 
 sung by men, those which incline to moderation and temperance by women. 
 Judges of not less than fifty years of age are to make a selection from 
 ancient musical compositions and dances, and may consult poets and 
 musicians, but are not to allow them to indulge, except in some minor 
 matters, their individual fancies. But the most amusing notion is that 
 which concerns the chorus of elderly men ; these, by reason of their larger 
 experience and intelligence, have the greatest influence, and therefore are 
 bound to sing the fairest and most useful strains ; but as, owing to the 
 sourness of age, they may be expected to entertain a dislike to public 
 artistic appearances, they are to be made slightly intoxicated, in which 
 condition they will greatly edify the public by their performance. 
 
 It is of course hard to say how far, in many respects, Plato represents § 7. The 
 the ordinary Greek views ; but he fully corroborates the other evidence airtinctness of 
 which we have of the extreme simplicity of the emotional element in *bsenre rf*°'* 
 Greek melodies. We have proof of this in the very existence of several elaboration in 
 
 •■■ " (jreefc music 
 
 well-known styles of melody, each connected with a particular ' mode,' and mast have 
 so definite in character that the name of the ' mode ' was sufficient mated defin- 
 description ; somewhat as if we could sufficiently describe the expression gion^^wS' 
 of our music by saying a piece was in the major or in the minor, as though pg";j,g'{.„''^,iy 
 a special air of sladness or dolefulness were thereby implied as a matter of stamped by 
 
 ^ ° , T X. association. 
 
 course. They had also fixed themes on which different composers made 
 
 ' We may compare the remarks of Prynne is in proper harmony and rhythm, and what 
 
 in the Histi-io-nuuitix, to the effect that ' oym- is not, when they can only be made to sing 
 
 bals and dulcimers are instruments of fraud ; and step in rhythm by sheer force.' It is 
 
 that pipes and flutes are to be abandoned not wonderful that Plato should be ignorant 
 
 from a sober feast; and that chromatical as he was, of any musical perception in 
 
 harmonies are to be left to impudent mala- animals : but the above remark, at all events 
 
 pertness in wine.' in respect of marching in time, seems to 
 
 = There is one sentence in the Ltms which contradict universal experience, and inclines 
 
 fairly puzzles me. ' Common people are one to imagine that Plato was not himself 
 
 ridiculous in imagining that they know what musically perceptive. 
 
 B B 2 
 
372 MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 variations, and fixed melodies to which fresh words were from time to time 
 fitted ; all facts indicating what we should naturally have expected, that 
 the very smallness of scale and lack of large variety in their music 
 facilitated a very clear and definable expression in the different specimens 
 of it. And while this characteristic might probably be very perceptible 
 apart from verbal and other associations, the small number and the 
 definiteness of the styles would make it impossible but that such associa- 
 tions should always add their effect. The character of the music was 
 doubtless emphasised by the timbre and pitch of the instrument with 
 which it was allied : the effects, e.g., of the shrill Phrygian pipes might find 
 a modem parallel in the pibroch. Only those strains are approved by 
 Plato which represent the tones of men in a courageous or in a temperate 
 mood ; plaintive melodies are to be discarded, ' for they are useless even 
 to women that are to be virtuously given, not to say to men.' It is 
 especially forbidden to excite the citizens or make them weep with 
 sorrowful melodies during a sacrifice : such songs should be sung by 
 choruses of foreign minstrels on some polluted and inauspicious day. In 
 the age of subservience of Music to Poetry, as of Art in general to 
 EeKgion, it is easy to see how one single and obvious emotion at one 
 time, and another at another, would be definitely and deliberately appealed 
 to. Moreover, amid a greater simplicity of outward and inward life, all 
 emotion found much straighter channels to action, so that artistic as well 
 as other appeals to feeling might have far more visible results then than 
 now. We can readily imagine that the Achilles who wept and lamented 
 at an insult might be unnerved by a dolorous chant. If then Music had 
 remained in tutelage, a blighting effect might certainly have been pro- 
 duced on it by the greater repression of individual feelings, the increased 
 self-consciousness and artificiality, and all the restraints of a more complex 
 civilisation, and we might have had reason to lament both the ethical and 
 the aesthetic loss. Luckily, however (and as argued above quite inde- 
 pendently), the art itself has undergone still greater revolutions : and 
 melody nowadays, if through external conditions it has Httle opportunity, 
 so through internal transformation it has still less need, to act as a 
 nucleus of associations, and can pass into popularity without owing any- 
 thing to occasions or adjuncts. 
 8 8. Immense I would not wiUingly forego the advantage of Plato's authority as to 
 entaUed both the effect of Music On the masses ; for this has in no way ceased or 
 ""nditionfrf*^ decreased, nor have the endless elaborations of modern music by any 
 the modem means outstripped or rendered obsolete the simpler elements whose utter- 
 
 ■world, and by '■'■ i.tii -^ ■ 
 
 the develop- ance reaches at once to the comprehension and the heart. Even m 
 
 modern music, modem times Music has lent itself — not, however, by such definite ethical 
 
 influences as Plato imagined, but by its generally spirit-stirring power — 
 
 ' to iniportant ulterior purposes. We are told that in the German Eefor- 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 373 
 
 mation ' the people sang themselves into enthusiasm for the new religion, 
 and many who were hostile to the name of Luther were converted to his 
 tenets by the irresistible charm of the simple and touching Protestant 
 church-psalmody ; ' and that ' the first conversions of some of the Slavonian 
 peoples were due to the sacred melodies of the Chmrch of Constantinople.' 
 Parallel facts are recorded in connection with other missionary enterprises, 
 and with the Wesleyan movement in our own country. But the increase 
 in the population and area of states, and the thousand complexities of 
 modern life, preclude any connection between the popular benefits of Music 
 and the diseiphne of the Republic and the Laws. In relation to the sum 
 of Music's present value in the world, its importance in giving zest to the 
 harmonious movements of numbers, or in adding point, force, and una- 
 nimity to verbal sentiments outside the domain of artistic pleasure, 
 from which it in turn receives the benefit of association, has been 
 reduced to a minimum. Whatever ethical influence may still be found 
 in unanimity of movement or of verbal expression, such a result is usually 
 quite indirect and secondary as regards the actual music, not belonging to 
 the essence but to the adaptation of the strains employed. And owing to 
 the growth of the art in extent and intricacy, to its instrumental develop- 
 ments, and to the cosmopolitan character consequent on its release from 
 words in special languages^facts completely beyond Plato's power of 
 prevision — the portions of the whole bulk which carry permanent asso- 
 ciations or are pervaded, like ancient melodies, by a simple definite 
 character, plaintive, orgiastic, triumphant, or whatever it may be, have 
 become an insignificant fraction. Ethical interpretations appear as forced 
 and absurd as naturalistic ones, now that the time is past when Music can 
 be docketed off into a few classes, each connected with a special range of 
 emotion. Military music seems almost the only branch to which it can be 
 pretended that such a character attaches : and even here I for one feel 
 that, if T were inspired to bravery in battle by music, it would be not 
 because I perceived it to be martial, but because I perceived it to be 
 beautiful — in other words, because it gave me an indefinable sense of 
 exhilaration : there is a great deal of martial music which from its in- 
 herent dulness and triteness would make me much more inclined to run 
 away. And it is to be remarked that the very term suggests not a special 
 sort of melody, but a special sort of timhre, the penetrative and percussive 
 sounds of instruments adapted to the open air. The general effects thus 
 produced on the nerves are wholly different from special appeals to the 
 melodic sense, and belong really to what we have regarded as the in- 
 definite way of hearing music' Our previous discussion of that subject 
 
 ' I am inclined to think that such direet sought rather in the indefinite than the defi- 
 ethical influence as can be at all attributed nite mode of impression. The suffused feel- 
 to Music in our experience is truly to be ing which is perhaps best described as a se««c 
 
374 MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 suggests another category of a similar kind in what is often described as 
 religious music ; where the prominent motion is of slow and massive 
 waves of sound which float beneath a vaulted roof as sweetly and almost 
 as vaguely as incense. But in fact all occasional effects are now as nothing 
 in comparison with the permanent bearing of the art on those in whose 
 lives it forms an important element ; and I run no risk of contradiction 
 in saying that for these its value lies not in its sometimes soothing them 
 when they want soothing, or stimulating them when they want stimu- 
 lating, but in its own special and indescribable revelations. 
 Music has The case of Music may be compared to the instances, so common in the 
 
 passed from the i • , „ ./ j. 
 
 stage of drill history of organic life, where things once useful in the struggle for existence 
 of pure and have gradually become merely ornamental ; for it must be remembered 
 mait^"''"^ " ^^^^ ^^ ^^® chiefly as fostering warlike habits and aptitudes that Plato con- 
 sidered Music so important a branch of education. This utilitarian stage 
 stands, as it were, midway between the primary use of song as a gift of vital 
 importance to the possessor, calculated, like bright feathers, to allure the 
 opposite sex, and Music's present lofty aesthetic employment. Nor can 
 any but the narrowest view of life and progress conceive as a degradation 
 of the art a transition from the region of struggle and drill and use to 
 that of Oempia and pure enjoyment. All beautiful things and all healthy 
 emotions tend to dignify existence; and if such power as Music has 
 over life is not by direct suggestion and teaching, but by stimulation of 
 the vital powers which is bound up with the pleasure it gives, this in no 
 way interferes with the tremendous social influence which it can exercise, 
 through sympathy, in swaying a multitude with a common awe and 
 gratitude. 
 § 9. Failure Those who are unwilling to accept this hedonistic view should notice 
 
 to force moral that the acceptance of the criterion of pleasure will make little practical 
 moder^mi^e! difference, unless it is maintained that of two musical works one may be 
 in the sum of its effects the more moral, but the less pleasurable. I 
 think, however, that but for the fascination of the ancient view, especially 
 in its connection with Plato's general scheme of education, it would have 
 been more generally remarked how completely the relation of Music to 
 other things must change with its development, and with the consequent 
 cessation of the possibility of associations universally felt and known. It 
 is matter of the commonest experience that in listening to modern music 
 the complex process of attention and emotion perpetually raises the mind 
 to a state of elevation as remote from moral as from immoral suggestions. 
 
 q^mMfeiiofie, produced byvastmasses of sonor- the distinction from the ancient idea ; since 
 
 ous impression — especially in connection with the direct ethical influence, as conceived by 
 
 actual delivery by a multitude, as in a great the Greeks, was not a matter of overpower- 
 
 chorus — may involve true though very vague ing nervous stimulation, but of definite 
 
 and intangible social associations. But if melodic forms, 
 this be so, it only brings out more clearly 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 375 
 
 No amount of such analogies as, e.g., Mr. Haweis has attempted in Music 
 and Morals between Beethoven and morality, in point of balance, 
 restraint, reasonableness, and so on, will bridge over the gulf or turn 
 artistic impressions into ethical promptings. Nor even where certain 
 describable emotional states may be plausibly said to be produced by 
 special kinds of music, as the languorous, the triumphant, and so on, can 
 these be accounted less external to the general character of the hearer. 
 For while we can understand the relation of purity and humanity to the 
 appreciation of other arts — how pictures of carnage are likely to be 
 popular when a people are brutaUsed by much bloodshed, and how highly- 
 coloured literature may have a distinctly deleterious effect on the mind — 
 it is hard to see how that which only produces, according to Mr. Haweis's 
 description, a special emotional atmosphere, uncharged (according to his 
 own admission), either naturally or by association, with any idea applicable 
 to life, can in any direct sense have force to mould conduct. The emo- 
 tional states where a mind receives a bias are those which depend on some 
 working idea, and which can therefore be summoned up by recalling the 
 idea. An atmosphere can only permanently affect our moral and mental 
 habits when we can make it surround some more definite nucleus. How- 
 ever languorous music may be, its languors cease for the most part with 
 the performance : or, if it be objected that where it haunts the memory the 
 effect is more permanent, and that the prevalence of a particular stamp of 
 melody, like opium or a hot climate, might gradually enervate individual 
 or national character, we not only have an obvious appeal to the absence 
 of physical results, but it is easy to point out a clear difference, and a proof 
 of Music's independence of the movements of the practical reason, in these 
 two facts : that a person may be haunted by music in the midst of and 
 without interruption to the busiest and most opposite avocations ; and 
 that the musical emotion may actually produce a feeling of a character the 
 reverse of its own ; for the most mournful music, if sufficiently beautiful, 
 may make us happy, and the most jubilant mupic may leave us mourning 
 over its evanescence. 
 
 In contrasting Music with Painting and Sculpture in this respect, we §10. The 
 need not at all confine ourselves to questions of directly and deliberately ^ute^in this 
 elevating or debasing suggestions. We may easily see the entirely ^'rof Paint^ 
 distinct relation of the representative arts to regions of impression from ™^^^^^ ®''"'P" 
 which ethical ideas cannot possibly be excluded, by merely considering 
 what is involved in the daily experiences of the eye and the ear. As we 
 noticed very early in our enquiry, innumerable phenomena are continually 
 meeting both senses : but most of those that meet the eye, through pre- 
 senting many permanent distinguishable points, are forms, and an 
 immense number are the very forms which visual art uses ; while those 
 that meet the ear are formless, and have no relation to the definite pro- 
 
376 MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 portions on which the melodic and harmonic presentations of auditory art 
 depend. Thus, from the moment when as infants we smiled at a kind 
 face and cried at a cross one, association, entering into our experiences of 
 human expression (real or depicted), has largely identified beauty and 
 ugliness with a sense of right and happiness and with a sense of wrong 
 and wretchedness respectively, human beauty being in the main incom- 
 patible with surroundings of vice and misery; while musical forms, 
 inasmuch as they are artificial and wholly isolated exceptions among the 
 crowds of unshaped successions of sound (including even kind tones and 
 pleasant words) which our ears naturally receive, have an exceptionally 
 independent and direct relation to the organism, are wholly unconnected 
 with the stream of external life, and could only gather associations from 
 that life by conscious use in certain connections, never by inherent 
 and of Archi- necessities. Architecture stands, of course, on quite different ground from 
 the representative arts, but in other ways it has most distinct ethical 
 bearings. The power which ' oould not rest in the expression or seizure 
 of finite form,' and took its imagery ' from the shadows of the storms and 
 hills,' is a power inspired by sympathy with Nature and association of 
 man with his dwelling-place. The glooms and lights of Architecture are 
 literally sympathetic ; and they come not as the shifting characteris- 
 tics of transient and occasional sound-forms, but as belonging to that 
 which really encompasses and shelters our lives, as brooding companions, 
 the daily visitants of familiar spots. And apart from these and other 
 general means of influence which are noticed elsewhere, ethical ideas 
 enter in respect of many minor features. Thus it is the moral taste 
 which is offended by the falsifying of the qualities of material, as in 
 making stone look soft and flexible instead of firm and elastic, or by the 
 deceits of inadequate supports ; and in questions about the disguising of 
 material by paint or gilding, and many other points, there is a similar 
 reference to instincts of sincerity. And it is the moral sense again which 
 specially condemns slovenly workmanship, and is specially gratified by 
 signs of loving toil in that which is primarily meant to endure. All which 
 considerations are entirely alien to musical works. 
 § 11. The On this question of morality it is important to avoid confusion between 
 
 must no^t te"*'" the effects of Music when produced and the causes that bear on its pro- 
 confused with duction. Morality tells in the 'production of all work ; and of course a 
 
 the causes that - , . . . „ , 
 
 bear on its naturally-gifted musician is failing in duty if through a failure of earnest- 
 ness he shirks his responsibilities and writes down to his public, as though 
 a schoolmaster should bring up his pupils on fairy-tales : but the fact that 
 his public are satisfied is the result of their being children, not the cause 
 of their being naughty children. So again a deep moral fervour, as in the 
 case of Beethoven, may accompany and inspire the composer in his work ; 
 and it is doubtless the greater earnestness of character, as well as the 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 377 
 
 larger and stronger musical grasp of the Teutonic race, which has led to 
 the marvellous development of modern instrumental music in their hands. 
 But Mr. Haweis contends that the symphony of Beethoven stands in direct 
 relation to the morality of the listener ; while I maintain that it is in the 
 greater beauty of the work, and the consequently deeper and more enduring 
 ^leaawre of the listener, that Beethoven's strenuous labour, patient self- 
 criticism, and general moral superiority to Eossini (in combination of 
 course with his immeasurable superiority in genius), take effect. 
 
 If really legitimately pressed, the moral view would mean that if, e.g., § 12. Argu- 
 some Italian of strongly national musical taste received a sudden moral i^minan. 
 elevation, that is, if he became to-morrow more earnest and unselfish, he 
 would soon see the difference between Beethoven and Eossini in the light 
 in which Mr. Haweis sees it. It seems to me that any one might safely 
 contradict this from his own experience. I at all events have never found 
 a partiality for modern Italian, or modern German, or any other style of 
 music, to be at all more an indication of moral effeminacy, or moral gran- 
 deur, or moral anything else, than a partiality for mathematics or sponge- 
 cake. We see, as a matter of fact, all sorts of people, good, bad, and 
 indifferent, caring about all sorts of music; the good turn this, like all 
 other enjoyment, to good moral purpose, the bad do not ; but the morality 
 is concerned with the use that is made of the pleasure, not with the stage 
 of receiving it. Plato defines as the best music ' that which gives pleasure 
 to the best and most learned people : ' the converse view that to admire 
 Palestrina, Handel, and Beethoven is a proof of special excellence and 
 learning, though it might be very delightful to many of us, would, I fear, 
 hardly be convincing to our acquaintance. To me the hearing of a great 
 orchestral work may seem as bracing as a walk by the sea, and the endless 
 cadences of an Italian opera may rather suggest hours spent amid the 
 sickly fragrance of a hot-house : but there is nothing in either one or the 
 other to affect directly the current of my outside life ; and for a modern 
 being at all events it is quite possible to conceive noble designs in a hot- 
 house and mean ones by the sea. And as I know that in listening to 
 Beethoven I feel my moral inclinations and capacities enlarged and 
 strengthened only in the indirect ways I have mentioned, from the added 
 value and dignity given to life and from the glow of sympathy, so I con- 
 ceive I have no right to accuse one who admires what seems to me feeble 
 and effeminate music of having his moral nature enervated thereby : for I 
 do not beUeve in a direct effect, and the indirect effect in the shape of a 
 vital and sympathetic glow may be as genuine in his case as in my own. 
 I call my music better than his simply because I believe my pleasure to be 
 greater and more enduring than his.' Mr. Haweis is very happy in his 
 
 ' It may be objected that at any rate the ing to mere successions of sentimental strains 
 more sensuous and passive pleasure of listen- cannot be as bracing an exercise as the fol- 
 
378 MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 
 
 § 13. Music 
 must not 
 be judged by 
 association 
 with things 
 external to 
 itself, its con- 
 nection with 
 which is 
 accidental. 
 
 description of the spasms and languors and the want of middle-tints in 
 modem Italian opera-music ; but after three hours of them do I who dislike 
 or another person who likes them issue forth in a languid or spasmodic frame 
 of mind ? Such analogies are purely verbal. The view from the Gromer- 
 grat on a sunny day is utterly wanting in middle-tints, and is as violent 
 in its contrast of black rock and dazzling snow as can well be imagined ; 
 but would six weeks spent in pretty constant contemplation of it result in 
 violent and unmeastired habits of mind and conduct ? or would the daily 
 hearing of a rapid and crashing overture have a tendency to make people 
 loud and fast ? 
 
 Another common source of misconception is the very natural habit of 
 judging Music in connection with words and scenes to which it has been made 
 an adjunct ; and thereby dispersing through a thousand channels the same 
 faculty of association which, when concentrated, as in Grreece, by a whole 
 people on comparatively few and universally known forms of melody, pro- 
 duced the ancient ethical view discussed above. Without doubt the power 
 of Music to lend itself to the aid and adornment of the good and the bad 
 gives it still in such connections a strong ethical bearing ; but association 
 must be eliminated if we wish to judge whether independently it has 
 moral significance. And while we call certain tunes vulgar in the first 
 instance, perhaps, from their vulgar concomitants, and even after abstracting 
 them from these feel no inclination to recall the term, seeing how dis- 
 agreeable they are to us and how trivial and fleeting is any pleasure they 
 are capable of giving, we may still perceive that they often do give a 
 certain pleasure to children and to adults of small musical development, 
 who show no inclination to vulgarity in other ways. So that our con- 
 demnation of such music must rest on its vulgarising the musical taste, 
 and so tending to decrease the capacity and chance of superior pleasure : 
 but (apart from accessories) we have no ground to consider it vulgarising 
 to the moral character, any more than a taste for bad puns or for garlic, 
 which are relished by numbers of most moral people. 
 
 On these points I shall hardly be accused of special pleading or a wish 
 to undervalue the differences in Music, since personally I detest much of 
 the inferior music which Mr. Haweis in a modified way admires and 
 
 lowing of a finely-built movement, which 
 implies active grasp and memory. Certainly 
 not ; it approximates more to eating sugar- 
 candy, which we despise not as an immoral 
 but as a triffing pleasure ; and may doubtless 
 be considered on an i nf erior menta I (as distinct 
 from moral) level, in a quite comprehensible 
 sense. But as the mental act is too unique 
 and remote from any logical process for Music 
 ever to have been valued as sharpening the 
 
 pvirely intellectual faculties, this inferiority 
 may be at once expressed in terms of 
 pleasure : the sugary pleasure is not only as 
 a rule by far the less in amount at the mo- 
 ment, but even where it is eagerly sucked in 
 is apt to cloy and lose its power ; while its 
 almost invariable dependence on the adjunct 
 of voice-colour confines its very existence to 
 particular times and exceptional places. 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO INTELLECT AND MORALITY. 379 
 
 approves. I am still more anxious not to seem to ignore the indirect 
 moral and social power of Music, already enormous and capable of enormous 
 increase. I believe as firmly as any one that if in life we may promote 
 happiness through morality, in Art we may promote morality through 
 happiness : but this belief will gain and not lose from a recognition that 
 moral and aesthetic excellence are not Siamese twins, but ' twin-sisters 
 differently beautiful.' 
 
380 
 
 § 1. Certain 
 qualities of the 
 experience of 
 hearing music 
 which are in 
 intimate rela- 
 tion "with the 
 uniqueness of 
 the impres- 
 sions. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FURTHER PECUXJARITIES OF MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 
 
 The conclusions of the preceding chapters receive yet further illustration 
 from certain experiences in listening to Music which, though actually 
 within the knowledge of every attentive auditor, have received little 
 explicit notice. The message of Music is direct and unique. To the 
 auditor, then, it is a matter of hit or miss ; and, if it misses, there is no 
 intermediate range of ideas and associations to enlist his attention or 
 relieve his tedium or act as a buffer to his dislike, simply because he is 
 not made aware of any interesting impression or idea with which the 
 artist was pleasurably occupied and which his work has more or less 
 suggested. So that while in the case of a picture we may see all 
 sorts of imperfections, but may still be able to eliminate this element of 
 annoyance and take pleasure in the general spirit, or in the life depicted, 
 or in a variety of other things, in the case of a musical piece we simply 
 have a feeling of ennui, caused by looking for emotional beauty and 
 finding none. If we find nothing outside to help to explain the interest 
 Music often evokes, we equally find nothing to justify or excuse its im- 
 perfect and unimpressive utterances. It is inevitable that the mind, so 
 differently affected at different times within the same region of experience, 
 should ever and anon turn round on itself with the question ' Why ? ' with- 
 out being able to extract from the actual experiences any sort of answer. 
 This impossibility of getting any point of view from which to account for 
 the existence and purpose of the phenomena, and for such vividly felt 
 differences in their value, sometimes brings their unique nature home to 
 one with startling force. For in the case of no other phenomena entailing 
 anjfthing like the same amount of mental and emotional activity are we 
 thus helpless. Mere ultimate impressions of sense, a taste or a tone, may 
 be unique. Many very various aesthetic and emotional experiences are 
 unique in their way : a building is not a face, nor a face a landscape. But 
 in Music there is this unique sort of uniqueness : that its success means 
 to us a delight quite removed from mere sense-impression, a delight which 
 is felt to be bound up with very active powers of grasp and comprehension, 
 and to be stirring very deep depths of emotion, and yet totally, and 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 381 
 
 at times it may be taatalisingly, isolated from the facts and interests of 
 Ufe ; while, conversely, its failure means to us the weary watching of 
 phenomena which are in no relation to anything we know or care about, 
 and suggest no sort of reason why they should ever have existed. 
 
 It is not strange, seeing how little this singular aloofness from eixternal § 2. Wag- 
 regions of thought and practice has been realised, that its further bearings ceptio™ onThis 
 on the experiences of the auditor should have escaped due recognition. P""'- 
 The confusion on this subject is illustrated in rather an interesting way 
 by some remarks of Wagner's. In his letter to M. Villot — where he gives a 
 popular account, marked by great literary ability, of his theory of Opera— he 
 speaks of the impossibility that the hearing of a symphonic piece of music 
 should entirely silence the persistent and distracting question ' Why ? ' which 
 we are constrained to ask. When I first read this quickly through, it seemed 
 to me to express a view which might be entertained or rejected. For my own 
 part, though often finding the ' W^hy ? ' a most real and oppressive question 
 in some music where there seems no reason or necessity for the notes to 
 go one way more than another, I am not conscious of it in music which 
 seems to me utterly beautiful : but I thought Wagner's expeirience might 
 be different, and that in accordance with it he was perfectly right to 
 suggest alliance with drama as the way to silence the importunate question ; 
 because, in his own words, ' the dramatic interest raises the sympathetic 
 sentiments of the spectator to a state of ecstasy where he forgets that 
 fatal " Why ? " ' and so on. So far then, apparently, so good. But a few 
 pages further on I found the following paragraph : — 
 
 ' The interest in Lohengrin rests entirely upon a process in the heart 
 of Elsa, which touches all the secrets of the soul — the duration of a 
 charm that spreads with convincing truth a wonderful happiness over all 
 surroundings, depends entirely upon her refraining from the question 
 " Whence ? " — the question bursts like a cry of despair firom the deep 
 anguish of a woman's heart, and the charm has vanished. You divine 
 how strangely this tragical "Whence?" coincides with the theoretical 
 " Why ? " of which I have been speaking ! ' 
 
 I was somewhat staggered by this, as the comparison seemed to con- 
 found the discomfort caused by prolonged speculative failure in impossible 
 regions with that caused by unsatisfied curiosity about an external detail. 
 The ' Why ? ' which we may ask during an instrumental performance is a 
 continuous questioning as to the course and value and upshot of some- 
 thing which is not bound together and rendered intelligible by ordinary 
 laws of logical coherence. Now if Elsa were a profound psychological 
 study of a woman who, while in happy circumstances, was driven by hef 
 nature to be always examining and doubting the grounds of her happiness, , 
 and who was for ever attempting to read the riddle of her hourly life by 
 getting to some imaginary external standpoint, there might be some 
 
382 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 reason in comparing her to a person whose pleasure in a symphony is 
 dimmed and distorted by side-questions as to the secret of the charm and 
 the internal necessities of the structure, and by a vain longing to seize the 
 intangible or to get behind his impressions and see what they are made 
 of; and such a character, though impossible in an opera, might in itself 
 be interesting. But Wagner's Elsa has no secret self-questionings at all. 
 She simply wishes, with female curiosity, to know an external fact which 
 she has been told not to ask about ; and in the external fact itself and the 
 prohibition there is no more significance than if she had been told not to 
 look out a particular word in the dictionary. 
 
 So far this may seem rather a criticism of the dramatic qualities of the 
 particular play than of a confusion in thought about Music : but reverting 
 to the first passage by the new light (or darkness) cast on it by the second, 
 I found it had received my modified assent only because I had imagined 
 the subject of the 'Why?' to be something quite different from what 
 Wagner himself meant. I had thought the importunate question to be 
 the natural one in an art which is peculiar in dealing with no external 
 realities, and to be concerned with the points mentioned above and the 
 import of the presentation — to be, in fact, the hopeless attempt of an in- 
 dividual to analyse and translate in his own person, and with no appeal to 
 anything outside his own organism, impressions which to the conscious- 
 ness are ultimate, and whose depth depends on countless accumulations 
 of experience and association in the race. But I saw on reperusal that the 
 question was one we were supposed to ask ourselves in the presence of any 
 impressive phenomenon. Now I do not know of any such question, unless 
 it be the utterly worn and barren one (which after all is less liable to 
 distress the mind when occupied with impressive phenomena than at other 
 times) as to the meaning and object of existence. When the question 
 leaves the metaphysical region, and is changed from ' Why do I and this 
 object exist ? ' to ' Why does this object impress me as it does?' it can 
 almost always be approximately answered. In the case of Painting, for 
 instance, though there remains a large unanalysable element, still, as the 
 subject is independently comprehensible, and the elements in it are objects 
 independently known, the main interest presents no urgent problem to 
 the mind. In the admiration of a landscape, though distant ages have 
 doubtless woven into our organisms a number of strains of feeling which 
 we cannot disentangle, the main acts of imagination, the sense of freedom, 
 fertility and strength, the recognition of streams and mountains as im- 
 portant elements in the dwelling-place of man, and a score of others, are 
 quite simple and intelligible. And generally, in anything presented to the 
 , eye, the feeling of its belonging definitely to the world in which our whole 
 life is spent, and being related on all sides to things of which we have 
 familiar knowledge, makes its relations to our own senses and imaginations 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 383 
 
 seem too natural for the admittance of analytical perplexities. The 
 peculiarity of Music (as I must repeat ad nauseam) lies in the isolation 
 of the pleasure it gives from life and social conditions, and in the extreme 
 obscurity and remoteness of its first existence and gathering associations ; 
 the perception of it, moreover, not being a matter of rapid glances which 
 can be discontinued if not repaid by pleasure, but an orderly act to which 
 the ear is committed for a very noticeable time. This gives it a real 
 'Why? 'of its own, which happily is often and often swallowed up and 
 forgotten in the supremeness and completeness of its best utterances. 
 But Wagner's ' Why ? ' which he considers appropriate in the presence of 
 any impressive phenomenon, is a mere metaphysical puzzle, and has no 
 connection with the musical difficulty to which his proposed satisfaction 
 applies. Curiosity on such points may indeed be as idle and fruitless as 
 Elsa's ; but this was certainly not the rapprochement intended. I believe 
 that Wagner, like everyone who has thought about Music, has been con- 
 scious of a certain mental reaction involved in the exercise of following a 
 train of unique emotions, but that he has not perceived in what way it is 
 peculiar to Music, much less the rationale of the peculiarity ; so that his 
 mind has simply got into a fog over his ' discovery of causality,' till he has 
 confused the quite special feeling, which it is most desirable to recognise, 
 with a fruitless bewilderment as to the grounds of feeling and existence in 
 general ; the result being that his proposed solution of the difficulty in the 
 case of Music becomes entirely unmeaning. It involves no disrespect to 
 such musical beauty as Lohengrin possesses, if we connect these reasonings 
 with a mind likely to invest with factitious profundity and dramatic in- 
 terest the main incident of Elsa's history, and to imagine in a shapeless 
 and unsuggestive fragment of fairy-tale a deep and serious import. 
 
 The obvious conclusion to which these considerations lead is that in 1 3. The 
 
 perpetual pre- 
 
 Music the perpetual presentation of actual beauty is of the most prime Bentation of 
 importance, and that works which lack distinct individual charm, have less jav^iJoUn- 
 raison d'Stre, and less chance and claim to survive, in this than in any p^^™ import- 
 other branch of art.' We have seen that, the utterance being direct, if it 
 fails at all to . arrest and impress us by its immediate appeal, it simply 
 goes in at one ear and out at the other, without our ever wanting 
 
 ' This must be chiefly understood of works might so easily in many instances give place 
 
 of some constructive pretension, which to something infinitely more delightful. As 
 
 occupy time and claim attention on their a matter of fact, however, any music which 
 
 individual merits. It would seem, more- has the power to be in any true sense popular 
 
 over, very harsh to say that many 'popular ' has ipso facto far more ndson, d'etre than a 
 
 strains, even though they give but slight and vast number of more laborious works. The 
 
 shallow pleasure, have little raism d'Ure. I quite different sort of value pertaining to 
 
 shall explain further on why, so far as they vague and undistinctive effects of beautiful 
 
 are trivial and vulgar, they may be esteemed sound has been sufficiently dwelt on in the 
 
 of little account ; not because they are not thirteenth chapter, 
 much better than nothing, but because they 
 
384 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 to recall it. In these more barren tracts, if one cannot become 
 simply inattentive, one is apt to turn restive and ill-humoured. In 
 listening to works which, while musician-like and clever, nay even 
 perhaps while tuneful and well thought-out, nevertheless are in no sense 
 revelations, which we know we shall never either recall or in any way 
 live on, the utter separation of Music from the ordinary regions of mental 
 activity, and its independence of moral and social relations, seem to spread 
 a bHght over our views of the value and dignity of the art ; a blight which 
 is as rapidly dispersed when the right moment arrives and once more a 
 message is received from the mysterious infinite region which is Music's 
 own. 
 
 The absolute necessity for beauty, the necessity that the auditor 
 should be directly impressed, is of course not to be understood as meaning 
 that nothing but the loftiest and rarest impressions are valuable. On the 
 contrary, music may be what is called light, even lightest of the light, and 
 still be of complete excellence ; the test, as we have already seen and shall 
 further see, being the amount of delight produced or producible. But 
 the point is that elsewhere a layman may be strongly interested in various 
 ways by work which does not delight him with a sense of beauty : in 
 Music the only interest possible as distinct from perception of beauty 
 is, with very rare exceptions, of the purely technical kind confined to con- 
 noisseurs. 
 § 4. Review It is worth while to notice briefly to what extent the necessity for 
 
 arts^to^tiS™^ the actual exhibition of beauty applies in other regions of art. Poetry 
 respect. naturally stands pre-eminent, not only in being able to deal effectively 
 
 with themes which rather rotise intellectual interest than delightful 
 emotion, but in the power of presenting even ugly and mean subject/- 
 matter in such a way as to give keen pleasure. As a single instance we 
 may take the lines from Aylmer's Field — 
 
 His wife, a faded beauty of the baths, 
 Insipid as the queen upon a card — 
 
 where the power of the description delights us in spite of the absence of 
 any delightful quality in what is described. Such a power is naturally 
 much less prominent in Painting, where the eye is compelled to dwell 
 continually on objects, and where pleasure in the brief flash of poetical 
 description is replaced by a sense of the painter's having spent time and 
 pains on the minutiae of dull and ugly things. Aristotle's remark — that 
 ' provided objects be copied with extreme accuracy, the sight of the 
 copies delights us even in cases where the sight of the reahties would 
 distress iis ; as in representations of the meanest and most disgusting 
 animals and of corpses' — embodies a view so vulgar that few would 
 openly endorse it : and the difference here between Painting and Poetry 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 385l 
 
 is brought out by this very fact, that, represented in lines and colours,. 
 what is mean or ugly cannot do more than look exactly like ; and can be 
 suffused by none of that intangible atmosphere of association and sugges- 
 tion which words, subtly used in ever fresh collocations, will carry with 
 them. Sculpture, which represents not complicated scenes with a multi- 
 tude of objects of various degrees of prominence, but at most a few promin- 
 ent forms, can still less afford to introduce unimpressive or ugly objects. 
 Nor in these two arts can beauty of sentiment ignore the direct claims of 
 the eye : for instance, a young mother nursing her child may be taken as 
 a subject of wide emotional appeal, but the emotion will be but slightly 
 evoked if mother and child be both represented as ugly. But while 
 Painting and Sculpture (under which may be included all representation 
 in solid material) are thus in the main closely bound to beauty, or at any 
 rate to subject-matter which is in a literal and direct way agreeable to 
 contemplate, the beauty need not be of a striking and original kind to 
 have true artistic value. Work in these arts may fall so far short of lofty 
 and ideal excellence, as to display little more than average talent and 
 artistic pleasure in its exercise, and yet, in their suggestion of much be- 
 yond what they actually embody, may excite true interest and pleasure. 
 In Architecture, again, though the very name, as distinct from mere 
 building, implies the aiming at beauty, utility and economy will of course 
 justify innumerable works whose artistic features are of a very quiet and 
 ordinary kind. But in Music the value to any one of any particular speci- 
 men must be reckoned by his gladness to recall it or to have it recalled, 
 so that after sufficient recurrences he at least recognises and feels some 
 possession in it : and this impUes that it has for him some really striking 
 and individual motion ; having which, it approves its excellence as far as 
 he is concerned. We will not enter here on the question of differences of 
 taste. We may admit that much very inferior music is enjoyed, and still 
 see in the very fact of its b&mg enjoyed, of its having that amount of in- 
 dividuality, a distinct difference from the greater part of the music which 
 is and always will be thrown upon the world by craftsmen without genius. 
 It is depressing to think what an amount of this fifth and sixth-rate music, 
 whose analogues in Painting or Architecture may be pleasing features and 
 adornments of daily life, simply runs its feeble course of existence without 
 making any true impression on any single hearer.' 
 
 Nor is it only in respect of their most direct appeal to our senses and 
 
 ' It would be beside the mark to argue stant amount of quiet satisfaction, may be 
 
 that, e.g., at the present day there is as much produced by men, who, if endowed with a 
 
 bad painting or bad architecture as bad parallel degree of talent for music, might be 
 
 music. If so, it is a misfortune of the time : competent interpreters of the works of 
 
 but it cannot be denied that an immense others, but would never affect anybody's 
 
 deal of painting, and of architecture and de- happiness by their original creations, 
 coration, good enough to give a pretty con- 
 
 C C 
 
386 
 
 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 % 5. The 
 interest of the 
 other arts in 
 respect of 
 historical 
 association. 
 
 The contrast of 
 Miuic in this 
 respect. 
 
 feelings, that the other arts reap the benefit of their direct connection 
 with external realities. The distinction is equally manifest in respect of 
 a whole world of ideas which may be classed under interest of historical 
 association. The manifold interest of Poetry as a reflection of its age is 
 loo obvious to need a word. As regards Painting and Sculpture, a very 
 slight knowledge of the history and civilisation of various periods and 
 countries will enable an amateur to find a fund of enjoyment in early 
 works which make but little direct appeal to his artistic sensibilities. 
 Architecture is especially rich in this kind of interest, since the problems, 
 the struggles with material and mechanical difficulties, the adaptations 
 and triumphs, as well as more distinct records of national life, are 
 ineffaceably traced in it. In more general ways, too, and apart from the 
 direct contemplation of special works, these arts minister to our historical 
 interest and imagination. Thus we trace in the unmeasured towns, 
 temples, and pyramids of the East, in their immensity of scale and mass of 
 material, the same reflection of the external aspects of Nature and of 
 irresistible external forces as contributes so fundamental a factor to 
 Oriental religious conceptions. We connect the idealisation, ever repeated 
 and ever interesting, of corporeal beauty, and the change of Architecture to 
 make a shrine for a human god, not a temple that should cover a plain or 
 a tower that should reach to heaven, with the development of the Hellenic 
 spirit, joyous and harmonious, knowing nought of asceticism or mutilation, 
 and little oppressed with the mystery of the unseen or the deeper riddles 
 of existence. And so on, through all the changes of the nations and the 
 centuries. 
 
 The contrast presented by Music is here most striking. The history 
 of the art, is in itself by no means devoid of interest ; but the interest is 
 clearly not of a kind calculated to sustain enjoyment through the perfor- 
 mance of a special work of some former age in which no beauty is detected. 
 Practically such works are never presented, but are left to the musical 
 archaeologist : and even his interest must be very limited in range, unless 
 association with words or with traditions of usage external to the actual 
 music enliven the merely technical aspect of the study. In the first place, 
 the changes and varieties of Music in different epochs and countries are 
 perfectly distinct from those of any other art, owing to the fundamental 
 differences of scale-system. People familiar with music in one system find 
 music written in another (even though that other be the immediate pre- 
 cursor of their own), not odd or old-fashioned in any interesting way, but 
 simply incoherent and unintelligible. They can extract as little artistic 
 enjoyment out of it as out of literatmre in an unknown language. What- 
 ever may be our archseological knowledge about such music, we are power- 
 less to realise its original efiect : for purposes of musical comprehension, 
 our ears are simply different organs from those to which the music was 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 387 
 
 &st addressed : and it is just as well for our Hellenic enthusiasm that an 
 ancient Greek performance cannot be revived for our benefit. But even 
 apart from this special peculiarity, and supposing that we knew and could 
 appreciate all the work which the musical art has produced, what could it 
 tell us of its original surroundings ? What records could it give us of men 
 and manners ? No attempt at connecting the resuscitated strains with 
 the people who used them would take us beyond the emptiest generalisa- 
 tions — as that rude music appears normally amid rude conditions, and tends 
 to develope with civilisation — in contrast to the manifold and exact infor- 
 mation furnished alike by the archaic and the developing stages of other 
 arts. 
 
 There are indeed cases where Music has retained a strong element of 
 external interest, not by any information it could itself convey, but through 
 our historical knowledge of its original employment. The Gregorian chants 
 are still endeared to many, in spite of their uncouthness, by venerable 
 memories ; and the chorales of the Eeformation are specially interesting, 
 from the fact that the necessities of the time did actually in their case 
 exercise a direct and most beneficial influence on the development of 
 music. Now and then, too, a single melody, like the Marseillaise, has 
 had an historical existence. But such exceptions only make the rule 
 clearer by their rarity. 
 
 Other samples of the negations which leave Music in so singular a § 6. other 
 degree to its independent and immediate sources of impression have Music"SVoint 
 already been noticed in other connections. They are the negations in- "ndirectlnte"'' 
 evitable to the art of immaterial forms. Thus in the arts of the eye we "■««'• 
 have the sense that the works have been actually touched and moulded, 
 that they are the literal handiwork of the men to whom we owe them : 
 whereas some of Music's divinest utterances have never even been heard by 
 their composers except with the inward ear. But the distinction goes further 
 than this ; it involves in Music an impossibility of embodying sacrifice or 
 munificence, or of giving any outward symbol to social virtues. A rich 
 man may support a choir or hold a grand musical celebration ; but in so 
 doing he offers the performances, not the music. The material and the 
 labour, in the shape of the instruments used and the acquired skill of the 
 performers, are the transient means of presenting the work ; they are not 
 spent on the making of it nor embodied in its substance. So that in the 
 narrower as well as the wider sense, in reference to individuals as well as 
 nations, musical works lack the monumental character : lacking which, I 
 need hardly add, they belong not to a place nor to a nation, but to the 
 world. 
 
 There is no indirect way, then, in which Music can make good that 
 claim to our interest and attention which only its own actual beauty can 
 enforce. Compositions which lack or lose distinct individual charm may 
 
 c c 2 
 
388 
 
 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 But mediocrity, 
 though here 
 specially un- 
 iuteresting, 
 must he to a 
 considerable 
 *^tent en- 
 dured. 
 
 § 7. The 
 inhnite dis- 
 tance which 
 sometimes 
 seems to sepa- 
 rate the beat 
 and worst 
 work of a com 
 poser. 
 
 be galvanised for a season by fashion, but in the end die irretrievably : for 
 the fact that Music has to be deliberately performed, and is not put on a 
 wall and looked at from time to time, makes doubly sure the oblivion of 
 what has not true vital strength. And of too much which perishes it may 
 be affirmed that if it is worth forgetting it was never worth having : of the 
 music of oiur generation, at any rate, it cannot be said that it gradually 
 gets to look trite and obsolete owing to the perpetual advance of the art in 
 scope and resources. Inferior work simply takes the place of something 
 better, and is produced mainly because those whose ears require a little 
 pleasant tickling like to know that what tickles them has been recently 
 manufactured, for their especial benefit. Even in respect of compositions 
 of true artistic purpose, it must be admitted as unfortunate that, in the 
 very art where mediocrity is specially uninteresting, one work is, as far as 
 public presentation goes, exclusive of another, inasmuch as the two cannot 
 be presented simultaneously. And as there will always be a number of 
 works written with enough earnestness and technical skill to seem to 
 warrant production, as moreover composers would hardly write if their 
 works were not to be performed, and we could not get our occasional genius 
 except as the crown and crisis of considerable artistic activity before and 
 around him, we must just be content to be a good deal bored. Schumann's 
 remarks on a certain symphony, which had obtained a prize at Vienna, 
 while those of Schubert were lying on a shelf, will often recur to the mind : 
 ' If it contained grave errors, weaknesses of form, extravagances, there 
 would be an opportunity for improvement, encouragement : but, alas ! here 
 we can only say " Very good," or " It is rather tiresome," or sigh, or think 
 of something else.' 
 
 We may connect with the fundamental peculiarity of Music another 
 fact which must have struck many as remarkable ; the infinite distance, 
 namely, which may separate the best and the worst work of a particular 
 composer : so that sometimes we seem to find diamonds in the very gutter. 
 In arts which deal with life, the way of looking at life, and to some extent 
 therefore the way of living, must directly affect the art. As a rule, a 
 painter or poet will hardly do any first-rate ideal work unless he possesses, 
 if not elevated habits, at any rate a certain elevation of aim and sentiment ; 
 and this will so far act as artistic baUast that while at all the same man he 
 will hardly produce any quite contemptible work. This outer region of 
 mental habit in relation to the penetrating art-instinct might be compared 
 to the earth's atmosphere of air and vapour, suffused with warmth and 
 colour by rays which they in turn tend to preserve from dispersion: 
 whereas a melody of surpassing charm may dart into the mind without 
 affecting or being affected by any such conditions, or entailing any sort of 
 assimilation ; and from the relation in Music of ' theme ' to development, 
 such an isolated flash of melodic inspiration may act as the germ of much be- 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 389. 
 
 yond itself. But it is not necessary to enter on this debateable ground of 
 connection between artistic and other faculties and habits. The fact I 
 am noting follows sufficiently clearly from the general hit-or-miss character 
 of musical impressions. For this character may be exemplified as easily in 
 the works of one composer as of many ; and will often involve, as far as our 
 perceptions and judgments go, the whole ungradated difference between 
 what is quite delightful, and what we simply want to get rid of as occupy- 
 ing time in an uninteresting way. 
 
 There is one more point of musical experience which cannot be passed § 8. The 
 over. It is, I fear, a necessity of Music's independent position in ovs Music wiu 
 sesthetic life, that nothing in it will stand perpetual iteration. The jab^yntT means 
 frequent hearing of or continuous dwelling on a particular set of notes is «niimited. 
 too apt to sate the ear or dull the perception, so that we look in vain for 
 the old message. Those are indeed fortunately constituted who escape 
 this altogether. In one way the better the music the less the danger : in 
 fact, music that will last with him is the best subjective definition that any 
 one can give of good music. But on the other hand the keener the first 
 impression and the more haunting the first delight, the more chance is 
 there, in music which is short of the best, of at all events partial or tem- 
 porary failure. This may be called the defect answering to the quality of 
 unique and possessing interest, to the power of actually running in the 
 head over and over again without affording to the mind the scope of any 
 wide and general region of conceptions. A short interval may suflice to 
 restore the condition of receptivity, and in the case of the very best music, 
 from a perfect Volkslied to a Beethoven symphony, the impression is never 
 permanently injured. But in work of a just lower order, most of us know 
 the feeling of some particular music as being at its acTue at the second or 
 third time of hearing, when it is new enough still to surprise us, and old 
 enough for us to feel the triumphant sense of possession which is given by 
 recognition. Most of us know how for the moment composition after com- 
 position has appeared to eclipse its predecessors, and then has gradually 
 receded, till perhaps after lying dormant for a time it has resumed its old 
 sway : and it would be absurd to condemn the pleasure whose only fault is 
 to be somewhat intermittent and transitory. 
 
 So far the consequences which we have connected with the fundamental . § 9. In the 
 
 , J . , isolation of 
 
 uniqueness of musical impressions have seemed to be rather to the aisad- Mnsic lies one 
 vantage of the art. We should certainly be the gainers if Music could offts eLep™* 
 open a fresh channel to the past, and if mediocre music were less unre- 1*^^^^^ P"?''- 
 deemedly dull, and if aU the music which gave pleasure in its day could 
 give the same pleasure in ours, and if the freshness of individual beauties 
 could be to us unchanging and perennial. But there is a very different 
 side to the subject. When we turn to the actual position of Music in the 
 
390 
 
 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 § 10. The 
 relations of 
 the other arts 
 to their envi- 
 ronment. 
 
 Architecture. 
 
 present day, to the actual effect of those works, from a street-song to a 
 symphony, which have any sort of true vitality, we shall find that the 
 extraordinary power or popularity of the art is due to the very same 
 isolation of its sphere, to the very fact that its roots have their place apart 
 in our physical and spiritual nature, and know nothing either of the 
 interest or the disturbances of intellectual social and political life. 
 Taking the world as we find it, we must account it no less fortunate 
 than it is certain that an independent nature entails an independent 
 history. For that independence means that Music can flourish to the 
 utmost in an age of the most feverish speculation and the most prosaic 
 activities ; where the confusion of beliefs and aims, the want of an 
 atmosphere of outward magnificence and beauty, the lack of the very 
 conditions under which the other arts have chiefly flourished, only bring 
 into stronger relief the singularity of this one. It means that Music 
 owes no allegiance to intellectual minorities or to social aristocracies, to 
 the arbiters of thought or the arbiters of show ; and that even the ebb 
 and flow of national ideas and sentiments such as have often so powerfully 
 influenced Art, can have little bearing on works which are already and 
 increasingly cosmopolitan, and in their aloofness from views and creeds 
 affect equally and similarly men of all views and of all creeds. It means 
 that the art whose connection with social and political conditions Plato 
 considered vital enough for a change in the one to entail of necessity a 
 change in the other, can be connected with nothing less wide than the 
 whole relation of popular life, both as cause and effect, to the quickening 
 and diffusion of all healthy pleasures. 
 
 It will be impossible to enter at any length on so vast and complicated 
 a region of enquiry as the relations of the other arts to their environ- 
 ment and the public : but a brief notice of the subject is indispensable, 
 as the singularity of Music's present place in the world can only be 
 clearly marked out by contrast. The contrast will appear mainly under 
 two heads : we have (1) the point as to tirne, the fact that the art has 
 culminated in our own era, and flourishes to the utmost amid the con- 
 ditions of that era ; (2) the point as to range of influence, the enormous 
 width of the popularity which the art enjoys. The former point, as it 
 happens, can be best illustrated in relation to Architecture, which we will 
 therefore consider first. 
 
 The case of Architecture is specially striking, not only because a 
 comparison of its past and its present condition is of all such comparisons 
 the most discouraging, but because in its practice and history it presents 
 certain points of resemblance to Music, which only serve to strengthen 
 the essential contrast. Music and Architecture present a common social 
 aspect in that both give employment to large numbers of persons, in 
 addition to the composer or main designer ; and a common historical 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 391 
 
 aspect, in that both have been pre-eminently linked with public 
 worship. But the facts which have been of the very essence of the 
 one art, and which survive as living ideas and memories in its actual 
 products, have no sort of similar relation to the other. In the greatest 
 days of mediseval building the workmen were themselves in a measure 
 creators, and the complete work represented an extraordinary combination 
 of inventive faculty. Architecture of course owes the peculiarity that 
 its greatest triumphs have been civic and national rather than individual, 
 to its being the only art of which utility forms the basis. It stands in 
 direct relation to the practical facts of life ; and these facts being con- 
 tinuous, local and national history becomes embodied in the resulting 
 works, to which often the hands of many generations have contributed. 
 This gives the associative side to these works : as for their purely artistic 
 side, since the world is to the majority a place of toil, we should naturally 
 expect any strong popular artistic sense to manifest itself in the region 
 where practical and religious necessities made work and workmen abund- 
 ant, and in connection with things constantly presented to the senses 
 of every member of every community. And not only do single buildings 
 owe much of their beauty to the loving detail of the subordinate crafts- 
 men ; for a Gothic cathedral was a social product, crowded with expressions 
 of common religious beliefs and aspirations : but in Architecture, alone of 
 the arts, can a number of works form themselves into a still larger unity, 
 where, however loose the organism, part must most sensibly affect part ; 
 and in some rare instances a mediseval city, depending as it did for its 
 external aspect on a multitude of individual efforts under the guidance of 
 a common instinct, formed in its impressive enseinble and varied details an 
 ideal representation of the social organism which it environed. 
 
 In these modern days, amid the strife or wreck of ideals and creeds, when 
 the sense of civic life is feeble and towns are human hives full both of the 
 most dispersed activities and of the most monotonous labour, one need not in- 
 dulge in vain regrets or one-sided hopelessness, to feel that such art, for the 
 present at least, is impossible. We may doubtless see marked signs of pro- 
 gress and improvement ; but till there is a tolerably widely felt delight in 
 beauty and hatred of ugliness, till there is a wakeful instinct in thousands 
 and thousands of pairs of eyes. Architecture will remain the craft of a 
 comparatively few individuals whose inspirations must be strong indeed 
 if they suffer no bHght from the absence or anarchy of public taste. In 
 this art, of all others, the artist's heart and brain are at the mercy of 
 social and civic conditions: and if beautiful house-architecture comes 
 from ' the abiding wisdom of contented life,' if ' the architecture of a nation 
 is great only when it is as universal and as estabUshed as its language,' we 
 may have long indeed to wait. And moreover in this particular art the 
 sins of the fathers are terribly visited on the children. Buildings once 
 
392 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 put up remain en evidence ; and while beautiful structures could never be 
 multiplied beyond their uses, nor can Amiens Cathedral be pulled down in 
 order that CathoKc France may build another, so neither will Grower Street 
 disappear in our lifetime. 
 The contrast of And here Music reaps the advantage of its aloofiiess from the facts and 
 
 Music, in being r j. -j tj- -r^ t i. • x- 
 
 the very oppo- ^ses 01 outside uie. Demandmg for its execution only healthy appreciation 
 mentai°art™" ^"^^ technical skill, it depends for its invention on individual not national 
 genius — happily a less uncommon phenomenon in the world ; and having 
 no direct end but beauty, it exercises a social and uniting influence amid 
 any amount of industrial and speculative dispersion, and needs none of 
 the external concord and enthusiasm necessary for costly displays of civic 
 pride and religious zeal. It can live the most vivid life in the present in 
 virtue of the very facts which preclude it from being,' like Architecture, a 
 monumental art ; and the works we admire in it are none the less admired 
 because they are presented to us not by still hands of other generations, 
 but by living fingers of our own. The contrast is clearest of all in connec- 
 tion with religion. Architecture won its noblest triumphs in association with 
 public faith and worship ; and those triumphs cease in days when the great 
 temples are ready built, or when people do not care to build them. Music 
 went through a natural stage of religious tutelage during the time when 
 the Church was the chief patron of all the arts : but passing on from 
 strength to strength, it almost forgets, in its free and independent 
 maturity, the struggles and glories of its youth. Moreover the connection, 
 even when in full force, was often of a kind very far from vital. In the 
 later middle ages, when almost all serious music was written for Church 
 purposes, the liturgical phrases formed for the most part a purely mecha- 
 nical framework, often most strangely strained and distorted, for the 
 scientific ingenuity of the composer to build on. And in much later and 
 more developed music of this kind we continually find words of the 
 utmost significance and of the most diverse sentiments used with sublime 
 impartiality as so many vocal syllables, and doing duty for the exemplifi- 
 cation of the most abstract and complicated musical forms. 
 
 It is touching to see how this isolation of Music sometimes affects 
 those who, with a deep love for it, cannot bring themselves to face the 
 facts and necessities of its nature, or to see that its essential power, as 
 the great modem art, rests on its independence of the very conceptions and 
 Maszini'sidea tasks they would force on it. Mazzini, describing his sensations in stand- 
 ing at sunset before a Gothic cathedral, says, ' See how the very soul of 
 Christianity has inspired the whole edifice ; how the spirit of prayer bends 
 the arch, or threads its way upwards along the winding columns to mount to 
 heaven on the spire.' . . - ' I see the red blood of the martyr blended with the 
 hues of hope, offered up to God upon the lofty windows, and feel how the 
 aspiration of the belieyer's soul towards the infinite informs the ample and 
 
 of Music, 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 393 
 
 mysterious vault of the roof, whence the spirit of Christ, descending from the 
 huge cupola to the sanctuary, was diffused around the vast walls, surround- 
 ing and embracing in its love and benediction the entire church, which it 
 peopled with apostles, saints, confessors,' &c. And then he adds, ' What ! 
 shall an entire synthesis, a whole epoch, a religion, be sculptured in stone ; 
 shall Architecture thus sum up the ruling thought of eighteen centuries 
 in a cathedral, and Music be unequal to the task ? ' It sounds hard. But 
 what are we to say if, as a matter of undeniable fact, by far the greatest 
 music the world has known has appeared within the last two centuries, 
 and by far the greater proportion of it in the latter half of that time ; and 
 if that music, so far from telling us about the ruling thought of preceding 
 centuries, tells us nothing about the ruling thought of its own ? Does 
 not the fact contain its own consolation ? If, on the one hand, the 
 intricate Church-compositions which led up to the reforms of Palestrina 
 were as absolutely unrepresentative of anything outside their composers' 
 talent for putting together puzzles and labyrinths, as the glorious archi- 
 tecture of the same period was truly representative of the religious and 
 civic life from which it sprung, is that not due to the very causes which 
 enabled Handel in England and Beethoven in Austria to flourish amid 
 national circumstances the very reverse of glorious ? We may surely and the conso- 
 set thoughts like these against Mazzini's dream of a ' musical expression ceivlngTt 1^56 
 of all the passions in an ascending series of sublime harmonies, wherein * dream. 
 every instrument will represent an affection, every melody an action, every 
 concord a moral synthesis.' Parturiunt monies : and the maestro who is 
 destined to regenerate Music by the foundation of a European school is — 
 Donizetti ! 
 
 We turn now to the arts of representation. In days of transition and §11. The 
 scepticism, and destruction or dispersion of ideals. Poetry has, in the artsofiepre- 
 universality of its range, a decided advantage over the other repre- p"e\*y°°" 
 sentative arts. For Poetry takes for its subject-matter the emotional 
 aspects of all things, from the most abstract to the most concrete. 
 It can deal with the most various and complex conceptions, with the 
 intellectual and even the questioning view of life, as much as with 
 the most direct and simple facts. Poetry may have its great ages, 
 in the sense that only at a few points in history is a large amount of 
 poetical work produced whose objective excellence ensures its prolonged 
 survival : but as all the elements of life can be dealt with in words, and 
 all that present any sort of emotional interest in poetry, upheavals and 
 revolutions only multiply the facets in which this art reflects the world. 
 The result may of course be a very wide diversity of taste in the public, 
 and great uncertainty as to how much in the poetry of the age has the 
 enduring vital quality: but for all that a generation of intellectual 
 activity is likely to find for itself in its own poetry utterances as vividly 
 
394 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 delightful, and with perhaps as much of illumination in their broken lights, 
 as in those treasures of the past which were born of some enormous bias or 
 wide unanimity of life and thought, and have been carried down to us with 
 all the prestige of a more homogeneous age. From this view, especially 
 when thus briefly and crudely stated, there may be many dissentients : 
 dissent will only leave my main point of Music's exceptional position the 
 more impregnable. 
 Painting. I think, however, it must be clear that the relation of Poetry to a rest- 
 
 less and revolutionary age is at any rate very different from that of the 
 other representative arts ; of which we may take Painting as by far the 
 most prominent. The regions of landscape, genre, and portrait, it is true, 
 the painter has always at his hand : but in the selection and treatment of 
 subjects outside these classes, in what may fairly be called the more ideal 
 style of work, inasmuch as it comprehends the ideal and imaginative treat- 
 ment of the human form, it seems impossible that an age of scattered views 
 and complex emotions should not seriously cramp, if not his genius, at 
 all events its popular results. A picture cannot shift its points of view or 
 analyse its subject-matter ; it cannot extract interest or pathos from con- 
 flict, contradiction, and suspense ; its expression of ideas and emotions is 
 adapted chiefly to single and positive ideas, to simple and homogeneous 
 emotions ; where a massive background of belief or interest in the spectator 
 counts for very much, and more purely intellectnal habits and subtleties 
 for very little. While Poetry, with its rapid glances down countless vistas 
 of suggestion, image, and sentiment, easily fits itself to the intellectual and 
 emotional conditions of a shifting, many-sided age ; Painting, in its con- 
 spicuous and permanent presentment of the single imagined scene and in 
 the use of the noblest types of familiar visible forms, seems made for 
 adding glory and stability to men's deep pervading views of the universe 
 in which, be it chaos or kosmos, their own fates are bound up. While the 
 painter's intellect does not, like the poet's, grasp a multitude of subtle re- 
 lations, while he cannot, like the poet, draw innumerable separate threads 
 of interest into the tissue of his work, there seems a special fitness in his 
 more vivid, condensed, and objective exhibition of fewer and simpler 
 aspects of existence, to embody profound and abiding conceptions of it. 
 But in proportion as the vride prevalence of such conceptions may open up 
 to him such a mode of influence, does the absence of them mar his 
 chances. A painter desirous of making popular and effective use of 
 the noblest types of beauty, cannot now presuppose any sort of general 
 attitude towards any department of emotional ideas ; and missing the 
 chance of direct and simple appeal, either to belief in a supematmral 
 religion, or to such a strong body of feeling as was once the interest in 
 antiquity, is reduced for his ideal subjects to abstractions and allegories ; 
 in the investiture of which, though he may produce such loveliness as to 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 395 
 
 give to the few some of their very most exquisite experiences, he cannot 
 
 deeply touch the heart of his time. For the present, I think, it must be 
 
 admitted that the disagreements as to the very meaning of a spiritual 
 
 world, the clouding and confusion of those conceptions in the hght of 
 
 which the world we know is something more than a riddle, have thrown 
 
 an air of unreality over much in art which does not actually trench on 
 
 religious grounds. Painting, on the very face of it, so claims to be dealing 
 
 with what is, to ideahse not by deserting but by transBguring reality, 
 
 seeing into the heart of it and collecting its scattered beauties and fixing 
 
 its supreme moments, the highest imagination, in Painting as in Poetry, 
 
 rests so thoroughly on penetrating vision and not on irresponsible fancy, 
 
 that in so far as a painter's world is dreamland, men whose feet are on 
 
 the earth will be apt to pass it by. If dreamland is the best we can get, 
 
 that surely is the strongest proof that the time is unfavourable to great 
 
 popular painting. It is not the painter's fault if he cannot presume in 
 
 his public a large common fund of sentiment or interest : nor is it mere 
 
 blindness and crassness in the public if they feel a certain remoteness of 
 
 subject, and a want of adequate reason for the idealisation of human 
 
 beauty and for the expressions given to human faces and forms, in a good 
 
 deal of the best contemporary work. Painting can never truly arrogate to 
 
 itself a separate kingdom, like that of Sound, wherein it may withdraw 
 
 men and cheer their life in the world by the simple process of taking them 
 
 out of it ; since for that which, in its very visibility, suggests a real relation 
 
 to a real outside world of facts and feelings, one possible mode of failure 
 
 must always be the seeming unreal. 
 
 Nor can the responsibilities of representative art to its subjects be got The place of 
 rid of in the way which the modern advocacy of ' art for art's sake ' seems subjeot-mattw. 
 often to suggest. We hear it seriously stated that the subject of a picture 
 is to the essence of its effect as external as the words to the music of a 
 song. This of course can only mean that the essence of pictorial effect is 
 the production of a delightful pattern. But only through being naturally 
 short-sighted, or by more than half closing our eyes, can we get the effect 
 of a pattern without at the same instant recognising objects : the pattern- 
 lines cannot divest themselves of their character as lines of objects, and 
 the objects cannot be recognised apart from their associations and relations. 
 Even in work where the actual objects seem most accidental to the main 
 interest in the painter's mind, the effect is a far more complex one than 
 any mere pattern could produce. Thus a painter like Kembrandt, whose 
 main interest is often in the lights and shades he can throw around and 
 across his figures, might be said in a sense to care more for his pattern 
 than for his subject-matter. But he could never have moved us by the 
 pattern-element alone : the figures and natural objects have to be there, 
 if only for the sake of their quasi-ironical subordination to that brave im- 
 
vjew, 
 
 396 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 partial play of colour and shadow, which transforms and makes them what 
 it will, sweeping them into accidents of its own manifestation. And with 
 every increase in prominence of the forms, as a necessary part of the 
 pictorial composition, must come an increase in the proportion to the 
 whole effect of the ideas and associations they suggest : the more salient 
 their place in the pattern, the less can their significance as forms of known 
 objects be detached. 
 Mr. Pater's Mr. Pater seems to have at any rate skirted the edge of this fallacy in 
 
 his most interesting essay on the School of Giorgione. He says that 
 the essential pictorial qualities — ' the arabesque traced in the air by Tin- 
 toret's flying figures, by Titian's forest branches,' ' the magic conditions of 
 light and hue in the atmosphere of Titian's Lace-girl or Kubens's Descent 
 from the Gross ' — must first of all delight the sense ' as directly and 
 sensuously as a fragment of Venetian glass, and by this delight only be 
 the medium of whatever poetry or science may lie beyond it in the inten- 
 tion of the composer. In its primary aspect,' he adds, ' a great picture 
 has no more definite message for us than an accidental play of sunlight 
 and shadow for a moment, on one's wall or floor,' and so on. But there is 
 a great ambiguity in the words medium and 'primary aspect as here used. 
 The 'pattern is not really the medium for any further conceptions of poetical 
 meaning or anything else : no dwelling on the pattern qiia pattern would 
 ever give us any insight into such conceptions, which belong entirely to the 
 objects composing the pattern. It is true, of course, that the presentative 
 or ' essential pictorial qualities ' are the indispensable condition for the 
 objects and ideas to be wrought into a transfigured and illuminated pre- 
 sentment, a unique and untranslateable work of art ; but equally are the 
 representative qualities the indispensable condition for a colour-pattern to 
 stir in us depths of imaginative joy.' 
 
 ' Though I beKeve I comprehend and con- by Music. Identity of matter with form, in 
 
 cur with the pvirport of Mr. Pater's introduc- the sense that a painter's subject is saturated 
 
 tion to his essay, I cannot think he has well with the spirit of his handling, has clearly 
 
 summed up that purport in saying that ' all no logical relation to identity of matter with 
 
 Ar t, constantly aspires towards the condition form, in the sense of absence of any separably 
 
 of Music' He explains that the eilort of knowable reality from forms which are ab- 
 
 Art is to obliterate the disf.inction between si?'ffici just in virtue of that absence. So that 
 
 matter and form, a distinction which in though other art, where it presents a won- 
 
 Music has no existence. But when he goes derful fusion of matter and spirit, may per- 
 
 on to illustrate his meaning, we find he is haps be loosely and metaphorically described 
 
 using /(»■»* in a very wide sense, as mode of as ' aspiring towards the condition of Music,' 
 
 handling, mood, emotional and informing to call Music ' the true type or measure of 
 
 expression, which the artist infuses into his consummate Art ' seems to go beyond meta- 
 
 work, and which so penetrates his objects phor, and seriously to endanger the reoogni- 
 
 and incidents that they are thus stamped for tion of the insuperable distinction between 
 
 ever in their most imaginative aspect. Such presentative and representative art. How- 
 
 a use of the woxd form departs widely from ever much form and matter in a picture may 
 
 the accurate use of it in relation to the ab- be described as ' presenting, in their imion 
 
 stract shapes of sound presented to the ear and identity, one single effect to the imagin- 
 
MUSICS NATURE AND JPOSITION. 397 
 
 One further distinction is necessary to complete even the briefest com- c 12, The 
 parison of Poetry and Painting, in respect of their present chances of positions of 
 influence. The portion of the public in whose lives high imaginative work Painting com- 
 in either art holds a large place is a small minority : and it is only in ^*" 
 reference to such work, and therefore to the effect on a small minority, 
 that the above comparison of the scope of the two arts at the present time, 
 and the concession of a wider chance of influence to Poetry, must be 
 understood. As regards the mere sum of their appeal to the general 
 public, pictorial art should naturally have a great superiority. For a poet's 
 permanent audience consists, except in very rare instances, of the educated, 
 ■of those to whom, through a special though perhaps unconscious training 
 in thought and language, words Uve. Apart from questions as to con- 
 temporary production, Poetry may, in a sense, undoubtedly be held to 
 flourish in an age when it is more read and meets with more general 
 appreciation than ever before. But whatever its influence among the 
 educated classes, it scarcely touches the people. On the one hand, lives 
 which are too often starved of what is merely harmless and healthy, let 
 alone what is beautiful and refined, can rarely themselves afford to the 
 artist material by the poetical reflection of which they in turn may be 
 delighted and ennobled : while, on the other hand, those intellectual con- 
 ditions which give it.* chief interest to contemporary poetry are those 
 which set it most aloof from broad popular sentiment. For a large 
 majority of persons, then, it is not in verbal but in visible representations, 
 that the yearnings and gropings after such beauty and sentiment as life 
 and outward things can offer find their readiest satisfaction. So that it is 
 even common for people to arrive at their conception of poems through 
 pictorial representation of their scenes. In Painting consequently a large 
 amount of conscientious work which never becomes famous may and does 
 become a source of innocent though uncritical interest, in which enjoyment 
 of mere imitation is blended in various degrees with more ideal elements : 
 whereas a conscientious poem of parallel merit would be read by no one. 
 But it must be added that if poetical art touches the people hardly at 
 all, pictorial art touches them in great measure by its most prosaic and least 
 artistic examples. That any qualities by which fine contemporary painting 
 produces a sense of unreality in the educated must necessarily put it still 
 further from the appreciation of the vulgar is hardly worth saying ; so few 
 chances have the vulgar of seeing it. But most of the cheap contemporary 
 art they do see, even where true in sentiment and innocently pleasure- 
 giving, is still, after all, vulgar like themselves. And all this is the more 
 important in that representative art in general has its chance of reaching 
 
 ative reason,' that effect is a very complex gest are inevitably part of what the imagin- 
 one, and all the ideas and associations which ative reason is occupied with, 
 the represented and recognised objects sug- 
 
398 FURTHER PECULIARITIES OF 
 
 the masses mainly through contemporary productions, through the delinea- 
 tion of facts and ideas which are actually uppermost in men's thoughts and 
 aifections : this being the natural means of putting the less educated 
 portion of a community en rapport with artistic modes of expression 
 and idealisation. An uneducated and busy person who cannot understand 
 or finds little response to his experiences in the poetry of his own age is 
 not likely to cultivate much serious interest in earlier literature : and an 
 uneducated person with eyes fed perpetually on ' realistic ' pictures and 
 prints, and at the mercy of his natural surroundings for the chance even 
 of appreciating landscape, will not be likely to seek ideal beauty from 
 regions of the past into the atmosphere of which he could only bring him- 
 self by reading and thought, and will probably gaze half-doubtingly at 
 nine-tenths of the treasures even of a National Gallery. 
 § 13. The Jn the very terms of this last distinction between the two great repre- 
 
 far deeper con- •'_ or 
 
 trast presented sentative arts is implied the far deeper distinction of both of them from 
 
 ov I^usic 
 
 Music. The relation of Music to the public is so large a topic that I 
 reserve its more detailed treatment for a separate chapter. But what will 
 be there further illustrated may be here briefly asserted ; namely, that 
 Music not only speaks intelligibly to the masses, but speaks to them, 
 when the rare chance is given, by its very choicest and noblest utterances. 
 These are the facts which constitute the special uniqueness in its popu- 
 larity ; and which are the more interesting in that they could hardly have 
 been asserted with all possible confidence, or estimated at their true value 
 in the history of art, until the present era. It has been said that all the 
 greatest art is essentially popular : but in respect of Art in general, how 
 little in our day can such a phrase represent but regrets and desires ! 
 How little comfort can it have for us, now and here, save as a noble 
 aspiration ; a vision which at certain epochs has been so far realised that 
 we cling to it and trace in it a true and stimulating principle, but any 
 realisation of which must always depend on many currents and on varied 
 chances of inward and outward life, on harmonious conditions which are 
 rarely indeed thrown up amid the complicated developments of civilisation. 
 And these rare conditions for the popularity of great Art are, it is almost 
 a truism to say, conditions of the populus as much as of the art. For 
 Music, on the other hand, the one condition is that it shall be heard, and 
 the necessary education consists in reiterated hearing. 
 
 There is a danger of being misunderstood if one marks this distinction 
 by saying that appreciation of what is best in the other arts presupposes 
 education : since education is apt to suggest consciously acquired knowledge 
 rather than the spontaneous result of harmonious surroundings on habits 
 and sentiments. Not but that even the narrower use of the word has its 
 application : for in respect of works which extract relations and harmonies 
 from the external universe of facts and things, some knowledge of the 
 
MUSIC'S NATURE AND POSITION. 399 
 
 nature and significance of the subject-matter must underlie enjoyment of 
 the representation, and such knowledge must often imply a certain amount 
 of general culture. But putting this aside, any wide popularity of re- 
 presentative art must at any rate presuppose a less conscious education, a 
 natural training of the susceptibiUties and the emotions, through the per- 
 ceived presence of at least some beauty in the external aspects of 
 life, and of at least some clue of harmony among its discords. It is 
 not only that men's eyes, as mere percipients, are inevitably affected for 
 better or worse by what they daily and hourly see, and that the faculty of 
 observing depends on the presence of things which repay observation ; the 
 training we desiderate would extend to all modes of thought and feeling 
 which can find a body and a reality in the outward aspects of things, and 
 by the sap of which alone can visible art become vitally real to com- 
 mon men. In other words, the popularity of the representative arts pre- 
 supposes a set of conditions which need very much besides Art to bring 
 them about, and of which Music is markedly independent. Only by 
 realising these things can we realise the incomparable importance of the 
 fact that the art-kingdom of the ear is inviolate ; that not even the un- 
 avoidable sounds of life (naturally of course not one-milHonth part as 
 representative of its realities as are the sights) have or pretend to have 
 any relation to the forms which Music reveals. Without this independence 
 no art in the present state of society could be at once great and in the 
 literal sense popular. Music alone can take the world as she finds it, and 
 make daily advances in popular favour, unaffected by a state of life and 
 thought which she in turn makes no pretence of directly affecting ; though 
 ruling in right of her own beauty, she exercises indirectly a social influence 
 of the most far-reaching and salutary kind. She makes no complaint that 
 men's ears are unobservant and their hearts dead : she simply takes ears 
 and hearts by storm. 
 
 Nor need we dwell on anything so obvious as the connection of this Obvious con- 
 final peculiarity with the various topics of the preceding chapters. Our ^jth the aepa- 
 whole argument as to the nature of musical impressions and the roots of M^re'ff°mu°-'* 
 musical pleasure, with their deep and separate place in the human organic slous'"'''^^" 
 sation, our whole survey of that independence of intellectual, moral, and 
 external conditions which specially characterises Music, tend to the same 
 result, a unique width and depth of popular instinct for it. In its peculiar 
 isolation lies its peculiar strength : in the fact that its utterances pass 
 direct to the consciousness, without the chance of obscuration or distortion 
 from vulgarity, ignorance, or prejudice, lies its power to awaken in thousands 
 who are inaccessible to any other form of high emotion a mighty sense of 
 beauty, order, and perfection. 
 
400 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 § 1. The If we were asked a 'priori to imagine the characteristics of a ' people's art,' 
 racteristics of a ^^ should require (I) that some elementary instinct for it should be deeply 
 'people's art.' ingrained in the human organism, so that it should be capable of pro- 
 foundly stirring the most diverse natures ; (2) that it should be independ- 
 ent of logical processes and ranges of ideas beyond the ken of the vulgar 
 and uneducated ; (3) that it should be susceptible of cheap and to a great 
 extent of open-air presentation ; (4) that it should be capable of extremely 
 definite re-presentation in memory (because the majority have no time or 
 opportunity for perpetual firesh presentations); and (5) that it should 
 admit of wide, rapid, and cheap or gratuitous diffusion. It is surely matter 
 of congratulation that every one of these requirements is satisfied com- 
 pletely by Music. The last point includes facilities for obtaining both 
 published music and musical instruments : but it is weU worth while to 
 dwell on that more universal sort of diffusion which is independent of both, 
 and is a mere matter of common human faculties. This connects the fifth 
 head intimately with the fourth : for the power of a melody to get into 
 the air and traverse a country and a continent in a few months depends of 
 course on its being most definitely remembered. The ear will not suffer 
 the alteration of a note in a beloved melody ; and it may be safely aflBrmed 
 that no one ever possessed so definite an idea of any visible object, at 
 which he was not absolutely gazing, as thousands can summon up at 
 any moment of their lives in the case of musical productions. The very 
 word Volkslied bears witness to this definite knowledge, with the power of 
 transmission from individual to individual and from generation to genera- 
 tion which it implies : and it is a striking thought that while unpretentious 
 pictures of obscure authorship, however beautiful, might probably remain 
 for ever in private dwellings or in village churches, a short simple and 
 anonymous tune may become as widely known as the work of a world- 
 famous composer. 
 
 The above are the widest and most fundamental requirements for a 
 popular art, and the ones on which I would most insist. But, considering 
 that numbers must take their pleasure, if at all, after a long day's work, 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 401 
 
 ■we may further notice, in favour of Music, the state of complete physical 
 relaxation in which it can be enjoyed, and its total independence of day- 
 light ; to say nothing of the distinctly social characteristics in which it is 
 also pre-eminent, partly through the natural collecting of people both to 
 practise and to hear it, partly by the absolute simultaneity of the impres- 
 sions it produces, and the electric quality of the sympathy so evoked. 
 
 There is little fear that through a recognition of its ideal (and in great § 2. The 
 measure actual) extent the musical world will be divided against itself. ™Je people is 
 The influence of an educated minority must always be sufficiently strong : g°™4*!'^thoiigh 
 would that it were always rightly used ! The fact that an army of exe- it gets but little 
 
 J o •! ^ •' _ chance of true 
 
 cutants stands between the creative artist and his public subjects Music in cultivation, 
 one way to a special disadvantage ; for among these, in addition to many 
 of the rank and file who merely crave for the excitement of novel and 
 amusing work, there are always some, possessed of conspicuous talent but 
 lacking simplicity and reverence, who forget the true purpose of the 
 art in the opportunities it gives them for personal display, and who lead 
 away audiences capable of enjoying beautiful melody into applauding 
 mere show. Not that the love of witnessing performance need be silly 
 and low ; qualities of vigour and decision in an executant may be interest- 
 ing from a quite human point of view ; but these are just the qualities 
 which need some strength and body in the music to make themselves felt. 
 We may hope, however, that unworthy virtuosoship will be more and more 
 detected, and that the love of the art has its roots too deep to be per- 
 manently distorted or coerced. The people get few chances, but their 
 instinct, healthy even where lacking refinement, has served and will serve 
 as a sound basis for high and rapid development. Their verdicts do not 
 extend beyond the comparatively narrow limits of their comprehension ; 
 but the comprehension is most genuine, and their positive judgments have 
 been again and again confirmed and eventually taken up into the accepted 
 body of opinion. Music does not stand more apart in its cosmopolitan 
 character than in the excellence of its most distinctively popular examples. 
 The beauty of the Volkslieder of the European nations has been and still importance of 
 
 •^ , -^ . . T „ , , / the Volkslied. 
 
 IS universally acknowledged by the best musicians, and many 01 tnese (a,s 
 opposed to most early eflforts of other arts) may be fairly called perfect. 
 Persons who are beyond the reach of any cultivation are at all events safe 
 from false and superficial cultivation. Whatever be the strains they enjoy, 
 they at any rate set the example of applying real enjoyment, and not 
 supposed ' accomplishment,' as the test of what they will have : and such 
 fine melodies as the Marseillaise, the March of the Men of Harlech, and 
 the Blue Dcmube, which figure so prominently in the repertoire of the 
 streets, might put to shame the feebly pretty tunes and feebly ugly varia- 
 tions which so often do duty for art in the drawing-room. Nor is it the 
 least the; case, as is sometimes asserted, that the power to appreciate fine 
 
 D D 
 
402 
 
 MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 naive tune is something which has in some way to exist among the great 
 body of the people, and that genuine Volkslieder do not now appear. For 
 instance, many persons are not aware that almost the best-known melody 
 in Europe, and certainly one of the most beautiful, Ach, wie ist's moglich 
 dann — 
 
 S 
 
 4=*^- 
 
 
 m 
 
 q=^^ 
 
 m 
 
 ■m-=^=m 
 
 ^^SE 
 
 t=i 
 
 »F=J 
 
 -!«—(•- 
 
 E:^ 
 
 f—0- 
 
 1 1 i — 
 
 r 
 
 -3: — I 1^ 
 
 -^id- 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^±^Sr^z*-Ezt:^S:riEE* 
 
 — "1 1-^ « -H- 
 
 ^ifc 
 
 _«_,« 
 
 I 
 
 :e=^= 
 
 ^-i-« 
 
 S=i= 
 
 ^ 
 
 :ei;^-?!^ 
 
 fd^- 
 
 :*=p: 
 
 -JEZZ^— ^ 
 
 ^3 
 
 ^=^ 
 
 § 3. Scraps 
 of evidence of 
 the ■way in 
 ■which fine 
 melotly will 
 permeatd are 
 often strangely 
 neglected. 
 
 i 
 
 ^m^^ 
 
 :i«=S=iat 
 
 
 S*££E^ 
 
 ^ :r 
 
 V- 
 
 -» — »-»•- 
 
 .<^*- 
 
 -* — ^- 
 
 ?.^^' 
 
 5-^ 
 
 was written less than half a century ago by a composer of no lasting fame ; 
 and truly the happiness of having made such a tune, which can no more be 
 kept out of the air than sunlight, must seem something better than fame, 
 when one thinks of the number of hearts a man may so reach. Nor are 
 tunes of this quality confined to words or popular song-books. When one 
 marks the ease with which fine melodies are picked up in England in 
 whatever connection, if only they be properly heard, it is easy to feel that 
 a theme like the supremely beautiful second 'subject' in Beethoven's 
 violin-concerto, a Volhslied if ever there was one, is a greater possession 
 for mankind than all the elaborate development of that supremely beautiful 
 work. 
 
 I suppose that everybody who is much interested in a subject, and on 
 the look-out for scraps of evidence about it, is occasionally startled by 
 finding that these go for the most part quite unobserved, and that what 
 he thought commonplaces are received as paradoxes. Now at this very 
 moment a house-painter is humming sotto voce Mendelssohn's Wedding 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 403 
 
 March oiitside my door, a baker's boy in the street is whistling La ci 
 darem, and a German band a little farther on has just been playing the 
 march from Scipio, to the obvious edification of surrounding nursery-maids ; 
 yet I believe that at all events the first two facts would have gone unobserved 
 even by many of those who know the tunes. I would not say with Schu- 
 mann that ' the voices of the Graces cannot be heard by reason of the 
 multitude of fugues ; ' there is no incompatibility between the two things, 
 and I have no objection to ninety-and-nine just persons singing fugues in 
 nmety-and-nine parts (if they can get them written), provided they will 
 allow me to believe that when a street-boy is whistling a beautiful melody 
 in perfect tune and time, keeping step and swinging his basket in rhythm, 
 he is not doing so in sheer vacuity and vulgarity, but with bona fide 
 artistic enjoyment. Nor has the fact that such performances are often 
 displeasing and worrying to others, owing to the great imperfection of the 
 instrument, any bearing on the feeling in the performer which underlies 
 this very feeble means of expression. It is often Music's misfortune to be 
 overheard ; but it is certainly the good fortune of the human race that they 
 possess by nature the means, however imperfect, of reproducing musical 
 emotions for themselves. 
 
 But, it will be objected, there are also bad and vulgar tunes which ob- § 4. It is 
 tain the run of the streets. Doubtless : I admit of course a great deal of i^ard'the ° 
 low taste both in and out of the streets ; and I do so in complete conformity y°^gar"Snef 
 to the previous argument that pleasure must be the criterion of music : as an indioa- 
 using the word low to imply a feeble and transient enjoyment of things trary direction, 
 which are found, as a pure matter of experience, not to appeal to those chances are 
 accustomed to a greater and more permanent enjoyment. But I would f,Jg™p''good''" 
 observe that the people have to take what they can get, and that the re- "°«s- 
 pertory of tunes open to the poorer classes in England is extremely limited ; 
 if they catch up clap-trap, it is greatly because they cannot pick and choose, 
 and are at the mercy of barrel-organs : would that they got more chances, 
 and that one had not to walk through miles and miles of London park on 
 sunny Sunday afternoons without encountering a single band ! All 
 musicians must know the sensation of being haunted even by tunes which 
 they absolutely dislike : and though I do not pretend that street-boys dis- 
 like the bad tunes they mechanically whistle, no one with any experience 
 of places where the trial has been made (as in villages where the children 
 have been taught to sing the treble of good part songs or of the choruses 
 in the Messiah) can doubt that they would sing and whistle good tunes, 
 and do, when they get the chance of knowing them, infinitely more con 
 amove. If I seem to attach supreme importance to children, it is because 
 the organism naturally tends to become set and unreceptive after a certain 
 age : but Welsh mines and the great towns of the North could give a good 
 account of the art whose truest home is ' in among the throngs of men.' 
 
 D D 2 
 
404 MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 So that if we cannot quite feel with Sir Thomas Browne that ' even that 
 vulgar and tavern musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, 
 strikes in us a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the 
 first composer,' it is mainly because our contemplation finds freer scope in 
 the wide possibilities of better things. 
 In Music it is In this connection it is allowable to remark that, in proportion to the 
 
 cumbentfor lack of direct moral and intellectual stimulation in the subject-matter of 
 easy^chances*^* ^^ s^rt, the duty of not allowing enjoyment of it to sink into mere personal 
 to think'or* gratification seems to need enforcement. Many of those who have easy 
 those who have opportunities for enjoying Art are apt to nurse themselves with the belief 
 that they are doing something worthy and admirable in so enjoying it. 
 But what is the legitimate recreation of busy people may be the self- 
 indulgence of idle ones. The fashionable air which is thrown over many 
 art-gatherings has a specially dangerous tendency ; and the art where this 
 is most prominent happens to be the very one where philanthropy has the 
 amplest and easiest field. There is a deliberateness in the indulgence of 
 systematic concert-going which seems to demand as a counterpoise the 
 recognition of this fact : for while we feast in company, there are thou- 
 sands with ears to hear who starve outside. 
 §5. What As regards the mere fact that a person without refined ideas or 
 
 mM-rby atten- manners may possess a keen and discriminating feeling for Music, it is 
 8a°?sfac°orv* worth noting that a single instance is sufficient evidence. But as regards 
 result, but ia the extent to which the fact is exemplified, I am anxious not to overstate 
 
 preo-nant with 
 
 possibilities. my case. What one may perceive by keepmg one s ears open is to be 
 regarded not as a satisfactory and complete result, but only as a certain 
 indication of what might be ; and deeply unsatisfactory in so far as it falls 
 short of that. And to any reader to whom the present views may appear 
 exaggerated, I might point out that it is not necessary to carry their 
 application lower than the English middle class, in order amply to bear 
 out the positions of the last chapter as to the uniqueness of Music's 
 influence : for the superiority in the average middle class lot to that of the 
 poorer classes cannot be said commonly to take the line either of the 
 capacity or the reality of keen and refined aesthetic enjoyment. But 
 no one probably will press the attempt to distinguish the strata of 
 musical susceptibility by the test of a shilling entrance-fee or even the 
 possession of a cottage piano, any more than by guinea-stalls or Broad- 
 wood grands. Experience completely confirms what the argument con- 
 cluded in the last chapter would have led us to expect. Good music 
 seems to make its way like water wherever channels are open for it ; and 
 if I have dwelt chiefly on simple melodies, it is only because circumstances, 
 not necessity, have hitherto in great measure limited the people's chances 
 to these. We have seen that the greatest instrumental works have been 
 
MUSTC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. iOS 
 
 fathered by Wagner with perfect justice on the dance-melody.' These 
 works indeed, and their various movements, differ enormously among 
 themselves in the amount of the distinctly popular element ; the motives 
 are clear and continuous in some, interrupted and covered in others ; but 
 it is certainly a fair tribute to their parentage to say that a person who 
 appreciates Strauss's waltzes may as a rule be led by very easy stages to 
 appreciate, not indeed the Posthumous quartetts or the last pianoforte 
 sonatas of Beethoven, but the overtures, for example, to Le Nozze and 
 Leonora and Egmont and Prometheus and Euryanthe and Ruy Bias, 
 and large portions of most of the great concertos and symphonies. Suffi- 
 cient proof of this may be seen at the autumn promenade-concerts at 
 Covent Garden.^ Nor can any one who has watched on those occasions it rarely 
 maintain that the enjoyment is of a stupid and gaping sort: it is im- o^^eesthe' 
 possible to mistake the look of ioyful welcome on many faces, when, for experiment 
 mstance, the glorious themes of Beethoven s concertos flash forth again really striking 
 and again, now from the solo-instrument, now from the orchestra, and results are un- 
 insist on being heard and recognised. It is a peculiarity of Music, due ""stakeaWe. 
 both to its addressing numbers simultaneously and to its intimate con- 
 nection with the physical organism, that the effect it produces may not 
 only be judged of by the applause, but to a great extent actually seen at 
 particular instants : and if the Rosamunde ballet-music, which was wisely 
 played several times last autumn, did not give incomparably more popular 
 pleasure than the noisy ' popular ' galops which usually closed the programme, 
 I must be both deaf and blind. And it is to be particularly observed that 
 fine melody which really speaks to the unrefined and ignorant not only pro- 
 duces in them as great a mass of enjoyment as in the cultivated amateur 
 (for this might probably be said of the enjoyment of coarse food as com- 
 pared with the amateur's enjoyment of fine claret, and to a great extent of 
 the enjoyment of a glaring coloured print as compared with the amateur's 
 enjoyment of a dehcate engraving), but an enjoyment the quality of which 
 no criterion of higher and lower pleasures can make out to be inferior. 
 The word papular a few lines above brings into notice the singular 
 
 ' In connection with this remark, it is in- the fiction of ' dancing half-time,' nnless 
 teresting to note the people's vindication of through a failure to perceive that to spread 
 their own musical instinct, in respect of the three steps rhythmically over two bars of 
 fundamental and indispensable sense of waltz-measure is a feat only comparable to 
 rhythm. In the truly marvellous contrast be- the squaring of the circle 1 
 tween the waltzing in any common dancing- ' I heard surprise expressed at our most 
 garden, or on the deck of a German steamer, popular English musician's having ' eoude- 
 and that frequently seen in more fashionable scended ' to the conduotorship of these con- 
 quarters. It is not surprising that the certs ; condescended to conduct magnificent 
 couples of the upper classes should find it performances of the concertos, overtures, and 
 impossible to dance up to the time at which symphonies of Beethoven, and no end of 
 their waltzes are frequently played; but other first-class music, for the benefit of 
 why instead of checking the music, invent people who don't wear white gloves I 
 
406 
 
 MUSI'G IN RELATION TO TEE PUBLIC. 
 
 § 6. Com- 
 mon abuse of 
 the word 
 popuiar. 
 
 § 7. Fre- 
 quent repeti- 
 tion of the 
 same worlc is 
 indispensable. 
 
 manner in which that description is perpetually applied to music. The 
 term by rights ought as instantly to exclude, as it is actually apt to sug- 
 gest, the idea of those trifling strains, the hack-work of band-masters and 
 dance-writers, which are so common in theatres and places of public enter- 
 tainment, and which may often be said not to awaken one spark of interest 
 in any single listener. Popularity is not, as many seem to think, a spe- 
 ciality of strings of obvious phrases built on a simple rhythm. That music 
 is popular which arrests people's attention and, when heard again, compels 
 their recognition ; not that whose highest success is momentarily to tickle 
 their ears.' 
 
 But that great music should become popular in this sense, one con- 
 dition, not always suflSciently reahsed, may in many cases be indispens- 
 able ; namely, that the opportunity should be given, and taken, of hearing 
 the same work several times. We do not walk through the National 
 Gallery or the British Museum at five miles an hour : and if any consider- 
 able number of musical works are to become to the uncultured many what 
 the Elgin room is to the cultured few, they must have their fair chance. 
 I have sufificiently emphasised the fact that Music does not demand 
 external education, and that the point where the cultivated has the 
 advantage of the uncultivated hearer is not in being more refined or 
 imaginative or in having wider interests, but simply in having heard more 
 music ; I will now add, in having heard a good deal of it in such a way as 
 to become familiar with it. Eegular frequenters of performances in large 
 towns have abundant opportunities in this way : but for those whose chance 
 of educating their ears is in any case much smaller, and who know nothing 
 of printed scores or pianoforte arrangements, the point is doubly import- 
 ant, and there may be the whole difference between the second or third 
 hearing and the first." Nor is the topic less worth emphasising in the 
 interest of many who, through no fault of their own, lose opportunities 
 
 ' Solmiuann says of a gipsy-chorus in an 
 opera which had disappointed him, ' Euphony 
 and grace should never be found wanting, 
 even when gipsies are the singers : ' a sen- 
 tence which vividly recalls the tedious and 
 tuneless simplicity of many an operatic 
 chorus of hunters and villagers and other 
 such inevitable bodies of people. ' Weber 
 has done these things better in his Preciosa.'' 
 Truly he has. 
 
 ' I am of course measuring popular appre- 
 ciation not by an advanced musical standard, 
 but by the standard of the ordinary concert- 
 going public of a higher social grade. What 
 proportion of these, in a couple of hearings, 
 at all grasp the construction of a long move- 
 ment, in the sense that they would discover 
 much amiss if, the ' subjects ' and salient 
 
 points being retained, the plan of modulation 
 and many transitional and ' developing ' 
 passages were turned topsy-turvy? With 
 how many of them at first does the apprecia- 
 tion of the wider organic coherence amount 
 to much more than welcoming the returns of 
 the main themes, while the rest, so far 
 as it produces definite impressions at all, is 
 enjoyed in a very piecemeal way ? Nor, 
 again, am I by any means asserting that 
 music of a high class supplies an endless 
 number of specimens which will produce as- 
 tonishing popular effects ; only that when such 
 effects are produced in England it is normally 
 by music belonging to that class ; and that 
 in respect of popular susceptibility the con- 
 ditions are all there for multiplying the pro- 
 duction of them a hundred-fold. 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 407 
 
 which should easily be theirs. That music is now a perpetual feature of 
 private evening gatherings means often no more than that it has innu- 
 merable chances of going in at one ear and out at the other ; uncultivated 
 ears — those especially of the numerous class who ' like music ' but ' don't 
 profess to appreciate anything classical ' — being treated on that under- 
 standing, and naturally accepting the treatment to which they have been 
 accustomed. How often, in the society, for instance, of an Enghsh country- 
 house, which is pretty sure to contain some members of this class, is the 
 experiment tried of supplying for them the same conditions as are supplied 
 by the barrel-organs, and giving them the same tunes, say the allegretto 
 movement of Beethoven's sonata Op. 10, 2, on three successive evenings ? 
 Yet that simple experiment might teach them more about classical music 
 than attendance at a score of classical concerts, and more about their own 
 ears than an eternity of the strains adapted to their supposed capacity. 
 
 In connection with the popular element in highly developed music, it is § 8. import- 
 
 . , . , 1 ii . , ance of the faot 
 
 impossible to avoid recurring to the most prominent modern theories, and that rhythmic 
 pointing out how serious is the crisis threatened in them. Wagner, who fo"m'i?at"'^ 
 is entirely free from musical Pharisaism, fully admits that up to this point b^JoTthe 
 the art has sprung from the broad foundation of the popular feeling, more popular feeling 
 especially in respect of its fundamental mainstay of rhythm. If then it equally at the 
 ignores its basis, a tremendous catastrophe awaits it. And it is to that gives Music 
 catastrophe, in the lapse of all close and coherent melodic organism, that mo^t'di'stoc-'''' 
 Wagner points the way. His views on musical structure will be more *eco^fsedb 
 fitly noticed in connection with Opera ; but the leading fallacy can be Beethoven, 
 explained in a sentence, and is only a natural consequence of the curious by w^agner. 
 theory as to the relation of iime to Music, explained in the eighth chapter. 
 After describing the fundamental impression to be received from an ideal 
 musical work, by the metaphor of the hum of a forest on a summer night, 
 whose multitudinous and undistinguishable voices the hearer can in no 
 way repeat or recall, but must visit the woods again to realise, Wagner 
 actually calls this peculiarly formless effect melody; in an ' uninterrupted 
 stream ' of sound ' flowing through a whole work,' and not only (as is 
 natural in Opera) lacking the larger sort of organic coherence, but contain- 
 ing numberless passages and fragments which do not pretend to any sort of 
 true melodic form, he imagines the capacity of ' infinitely richer develop- 
 ment of melodic form than musicians have hitherto believed possible in the 
 symphony ; ' and while defining melody as ' musical form,' he calls such loose 
 conjunctions ' infinite melody,' without perceiving infinite form to be a con- 
 tradiction in terms. I need not repeat here in fragments the account of 
 musical organism given in the eighth and tenth chapters : if that account 
 be true, it is likewise true that Music attained to Beethoven's symphonies 
 in paths where the people could follow, because it was true to the instinct 
 which is in their very blood : through this it has been loved, dwelt on, and 
 
408 
 
 MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 § 9. Melody 
 of the most 
 direct kind, 
 irom ■whatever 
 source, should 
 be presented as 
 much as pos- 
 sible on orches- 
 tras and open- 
 air bands. 
 
 Objections to 
 such adapta- 
 tions are quite 
 indefensible. 
 
 remembered. That Wagner should perceive limitations in those sym- 
 phonies, owing to their metrical form and tvmidity (poor earth-bound 
 Eroica) in Beethoven's adherence to that form, may pass as a curious 
 aberration of musical sense or as a new revelation ; but that he should 
 glory in the notion of music which the hearer cannot at all recall, which 
 is doomed to non-existence for him except as the vague opiate of an occa- 
 sional evening, shows a curious perversity of view as to the ideal place of 
 Music in the world.' 
 
 Melody of the most direct kind, however, is so obviously and necessarily 
 the primary popular element in Music, that not only should works of 
 striking and unmitigated tunefulness, like Sterndale Bennett's lovely 
 Naiads overture, or the overtures of Auber, or the Tannhduser overture 
 and march, be well represented in every popular programme, but I cannot 
 help wishing measures were taken in England to introduce some of the 
 greatest vocal melodies oftener and in a more imposing manner. Voices 
 capable of filling vast buildings satisfactorily are very limited both in 
 number and power of work : but why should not many glorious tunes be 
 arranged to be played by orchestras, which waste so much time and 
 strength on mere displays of showy sound ? By such an adaptation the 
 tunes may gain even in beauty as much as they lose, and may gain in^ 
 definitely in the numbers they appeal to. I shall never forget the over- 
 powering effect of Schubert's Ave Maria, played by wind-instruments and 
 accompanied by strings, as I heard it in Dresden at one of the ordinary 
 nightly Grewerbehaus concerts. Do the conductors of English popular 
 concerts know the feeling in the air when a multitude is stirred ? If so, I 
 should have thought that, were it only to enjoy the sense of blissful ex- 
 pansion in swaying the beats and pulses of that wonderful life, a sense as 
 of controlling the powers of an invisible world, they would open more 
 freely the treasures which lie ready to their hand. 
 
 Nor is it only to vocal compositions that this treatment would apply : 
 chamber-music would afford plenty of popular beauties for the purpose. 
 Nothing can be more blindly pedantic than to object to transpositions of this 
 sort when judiciously made. Unfortunately, however, such objections are 
 often heard : thus an outcry was raised by some musical critics not long ago 
 at the idea of arranging for a string-band a movement from Mendelssohn's 
 octett, eminently suited for such treatment. I have already dwelt sufficiently 
 on the incalculable superiority in importance of musical form to musical 
 colour : and moreover here the change is not a matter of abstracting colour, 
 as in a photograph or engraving, but of giving it new body and magnificence. 
 And it is indisputable that while beautiful melodic forms have astonishingly 
 
 ' It Is superfluous to say that Wagner's 
 compositions present plenty of impressive 
 music, in which, it is equally superfluous to 
 
 add, the conditions of impresgiveness have 
 been duly reobgnised. 
 
MUSIO IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 409 
 
 rapid power of arresting the popular ear, in colour it is not delicate shades 
 and varieties but blaze and amount that the people appreciate ; and that 
 a certain force and brilliance of sound is often in the first instance neces- 
 sary to make the form palpable to their ears : so that the argument from 
 colour tends in the same direction as the argument from form. Get grand 
 melody known, quand mime. What sympathy is it possible to feel with 
 amateurs who enjoy all the refinements of delicate timbre and exceptional 
 individual performance at their exclusive concerts, and then object to the 
 obvious means of presenting the substance of the beauty in the most strik- 
 ing and penetrating manner to the ears of less favoured hearers ? 
 
 It may be observed that the truth and healthiness of the popular in- § lo. The 
 stinct in point of melody is the more in accordance with my general argu- stinct for Music 
 ment from its marked contrast with the feeble and debased aesthetic sense ^"hThe^ 
 in other directions. I was struck lately with a curious instance of the debased taste 
 
 •' m respect of 
 
 bUndness and vulgarity which an ordinary London audience may show dancing, 
 when appealed to through other channels, while evincing a perfectly true 
 and sound judgment in Music. Not long ago a piece called The Sultan 
 of Mocha was played in London with great applause, the beauty and 
 entrain of the music actually swamping and carrying down a plot which 
 in point of incoherence would hardly have disgraced one of the great 
 opera-houses. The gem of the whole was a series of short and simple 
 ballets, a beautiful instance of the power of motion to adorn melody, and 
 so graceful and refined in conception and detail that one felt at once how 
 hopeless it was that it should ' take ' with an Alhambra-going public. The 
 charm of the combination, appreciable only through the interplay of 
 delicate impressions received through two senses, was in fact quite lost, 
 and the whole scene fell utterly flat, coming in for no fraction of the 
 applause which was lavishly bestowed on most of the excellent melodies 
 and execrable jokes throughout the piece. Since this was first printed I 
 noticed the very same thing at the first performance of another opera of 
 Mr. Cellier's, when almost the only pieces not encored by an enthusiastic 
 audience were two beautifully refined little ballets. That the British 
 public are no quicker at perceiving what is bad, a proof was afforded about 
 the same time by the ballet of nuns in Robert le Diable as performed at 
 Drury Lane. The accompanying music of this ballet is indeed so utterly 
 weak and paltry ' that pains on the ballet itself must perhaps be poorly 
 
 ' I am anxious to avoid using strong ex- if I ever learn that any considerable number 
 
 pressions on mere individual bias; and of people have received at all a deep and 
 
 therefore hope to be believed when I say permanent impression, from, e.g., this ballet- 
 
 that I am careful here .to speak in complete music, or even that two or three have been 
 
 submission to my own criterion, and in ac- able to make it their spiritual food for any 
 
 cordance with my experience of the effect length of time, I will at once admit my 
 
 the music described has had on otters. My mist3,ke. 
 experience may of course be one-sided, ami 
 
410 
 
 MUSIC IN RELATION TO TEE PTTBLIG. 
 
 § 11. Mis- 
 conceptions 
 as to the true 
 and ideal 
 nature of the 
 popularit)' of 
 Music. 
 
 Schumann's 
 remarks on 
 amateurs. 
 
 bestowed : nevertheless some pains were certainly taken, and the result 
 was only not ludicrous because it was so exceedingly painful. From the 
 first moment when the nuns appeared with the enveloping mackintoshes 
 which represented cerements forced out into astonishing shapes by the 
 skirts underneath, till the final disappearance of those hideous horizontal 
 skirts with all the waddling awkwardness which they necessarily entail on 
 the human form, one simply felt inclined to sink into the earth ; and 
 whatever may have been the sins of the abbess in particular, she may 
 fairly be thought to have expiated them in condemnation to a brief 
 space of such unmeaning contortion and grimace. Not being able to sink 
 into the earth, I watched the audience ; and though few applauded, it 
 seemed to me that very few suffered. While on this point I may remark 
 that it is absurd to account for the shortcomings of the ballet in England 
 by a theory of some present dearth of special genius and of particular stars. 
 Even were particular stars necessary, which they are not, they cannot shine 
 without a firmament. The simple truth is that among us, who never even 
 had a national dance, artistic dancing is an exotic dependent on passing 
 gusts of fashion, and that the English as a people have ears but not 
 eyes.' 
 
 Leaving now special points of proof and suggestion as to the 
 extent or extension of the area of Music's ever-growing influence, 
 we may consider the subject of its popularity in a somewhat 
 more general way. It is a subject on which there have been many 
 misconceptions; and it will be by examining some of these that we 
 shall best proceed. 
 
 My first reference must be to the writings of Schumann. In these 
 there is little indeed seriously to cavil at : hatred of pedantry, contempt 
 of mere cleverness without inspiration, overflowing geniality and kindliness, 
 pervade them from end to end : and the one thing occasionally lacking 
 to our complete sympathy with their spirit arises from a vein perhaps 
 
 ' Another case came under my notice soon 
 after. Having seen in a small theatre at 
 Milan a singularly perfect performance of a 
 pantomimic piece, in which I do not think 
 the most censorious critic could have found 
 more to object to than in the spontaneous 
 dancing of children, I was surprised next year 
 to see the principal performer advertised to 
 appear at Covent Garden ; and I walked down 
 thither wondering which was the more im- 
 possible, that she should do anything inar- 
 tistic and ugly, or that any solo-dancing 
 which lacked those qualities shoulfi appear 
 in the present day in connection with London 
 Italian Opera. The result was a copipromise. 
 In the j}as seul she went througl) the usual 
 
 miserable business,, using her toes alternately 
 to walk on the extremest tips of, and to 
 describe horizontal semicircles in the air; 
 but she fell too far short of the British 
 public's standard in shapeless bulk of mus- 
 cular development to make the usual im- 
 pression with thesf! performances, and the 
 Morning Post did not talk next day about a 
 ' suavity and significance of motion charm- 
 ing to contemplate : ' which is a prerogative 
 of thirteen stone and over. Every now and 
 then, however, in the general medley, when 
 she was not supposed particularly to be 
 dancing, the instinct of spontaneous motion 
 was too strong for her, and one got a faint 
 whiff of the Milanese delight. 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 411 
 
 unavoidable in the writings of a man whose whole career lay in the 
 thick of musicians and musical discussion. One may feel in rising from 
 their perusal that one has been a little too much in the atmosphere 
 of professional orchestras and wonderful performers ; that if Music were 
 quite such an esoteric and hothouse affair, it would hardly occupy the 
 position that one hoped it might, and indeed that one sees it does, occupy 
 in the world. No one appreciated the beauty and value of Volkslieder more 
 than Schumann ; and it is disappointing, on the very next page to the one 
 where he recommends attention to them as ' a treasure of lovely melodies,' 
 to find such remarks as the following :— ' " Melody " is the amateur's war- 
 cry, and certainly music without melody is no music. Therefore you must 
 understand what amateurs fancy the word means ; anything easily, rhyth- 
 mically pleasing. But there are melodies of a very different stamp, and 
 every time you open Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, &c., they will smile at you 
 in a thousand different ways ; you will soon weary, if you know these, of 
 the faded monotony of modern Italian opera melodies.' And again : ' In 
 judging compositions, make a distinction between them, as to whether 
 they belong to art, or merely serve as the entertainment of amateurs ' — 
 as if the people among whom the Volhalied originates and lives were not 
 amateurs of the purest water ; and as if the names of Beethoven and 
 Mozart and of Schumann himself were not household words, and their 
 works household treasures, in thousands of homes whereof no single mem- 
 ber would claim the dignity of connoisseurship. I scarcely think it a 
 paradox to say that often it is the good music which is kept alive by 
 amateurs, and the bad (at all events as regards virtuoso displays) by con- 
 noisseurs. And the music which can only speak to Gewandhaus audiences 
 is not the music whose existence is a great fact in tl^e world. It is perhaps 
 allowable rhetoric on Schumann's part to say, in his first enthusiasm about 
 Schubert's newly-found symphony in C, that ' he who is not yet acquainted 
 with this work knows very little about Schubert.' But it is far truer to say 
 that he who knows and loves the peculiar quality of any one of Schubert's 
 melodies knows a great deal about him. Elsewhere Schumann speaks 
 with approval of the idea that progress in art ' can only be attained through 
 the formation of an intellectual aristocracy among artists.' But Music, 
 to be healthy, can never dispense with the broad support which comes from 
 true though fragmentary appreciation, from natures which greet and 
 cherish such beauties as they see, even if unable to grasp, like Schmnann 
 and his friends, the whole organism of an elaborate movement. 
 
 Not that though Schumann seems to have occasionally flouted amateurs 
 in a somewhat indiscriminate way, his remarks are as a rule less just in 
 their bearing on the hearers of music than on the makers and performers. 
 The burden of his advice is always to listen and enjoy, instead of talking 
 and carping ; and it might well be taken to heart by a certain class of 
 
412 
 
 MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 True apprecia- 
 tion of Music 
 is often un- 
 reasonably self- 
 distrustful ; 
 and to liout the 
 enormously 
 numerous class 
 of naive 
 amateurs is 
 most unreason- 
 able and mis- 
 Ibhievous. 
 
 concert-goers, who often seem mainly occupied in extracting the pleasure 
 of self-importance from having a view — pitting compositions against each 
 other as if they were fighting-cocks, or still more frequently ignoring the 
 fact that the music on its own account may have some significance worth 
 thinking about, in airing fads and fancies about particular performers. It 
 is obviously easy to pretend to taste and insight on such points without 
 much possibility of contradiction, and to pose when there is no danger of 
 being knocked over : but it is impossible to help wishing sometimes to try 
 the effect of concealing the players, and setting the critical ears which dis- 
 cover so much * soul ' in one first-class performance, and none at all in 
 another, to detect which is which. 
 
 But it would be as unfair to judge the large class of amateurs by these 
 specimens as by those whose definition of melody would be ' anything 
 easily, rhythmically pleasing.' My experience is that, of all sorts of 
 amateurs, musical amateurs, in the wide sense which would include all to 
 whom Music gives deep pleasure, stand oftenest in need of most definite 
 encouragement and reassurance. In a letter written three weeks before his 
 death, Shelley remarked, ' You know my gross ideas of music, and will 
 forgive me when I say that I listen the whole evening on our terrace to the 
 simple melodies ' (performed by Mrs. Williams) ' with excessive delight ; ' 
 never guessing that the sentence was a contradiction in terms. And this 
 is the attitude one is perpetually meeting with in people whom Schumaim, 
 after his remarks on the Volkslied, could not but have admitted to have 
 the root of the matter in them. Professing to understand pothing about 
 Music, they not only betray the sort of understanding which is worth more 
 than all the technical knowledge in the world, but often show unwittingly 
 a very marked amount of discrimination ; not of course in detecting every- 
 thing or nearly everything which is good, but in being attracted by little 
 or nothing which is not good. It may be that musical susceptibilities of 
 the kind Shelley describes are sometimes limited to the very shortest and 
 simplest specimens of the art : but the combination of ' excessive delight ' 
 in such melodies as Mrs. Williams performed, with inability to receive 
 as much and more from such works as the Messiah or at least half of the 
 movements of Beethoven's sonatas (with the one proviso that these also 
 shall have their fair chance of sinking in), is a phenomenon which one may 
 at any rate wait to believe in till one encounters it. 
 
 This estimate of the qualities of naive and self-distrustful appreciation 
 seems specially to need enforcing in the present day, just on account of the 
 prima facie air of difficulty which has increased with the modern de- 
 velopment of the art. One reads astonishing accounts of the way in which 
 audiences of the last century came heard and conquered music, greeting or 
 damning works with unanimity on the strength of a single performance : 
 and this ready apprehension and famiUar sort of treatment has a natural 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 413 
 
 relation to the smaller and snugger circles (and often, it must be added, 
 factions) in which the art was domesticated, and to stories like that of the 
 first production of Cimarosa's E Matrimonio Segreto at Vienna, when the 
 Emperor invited all the performers to a banquet, and then sent them back 
 to the theatre to do it again. The comparative lack nowadays of such 
 strikingly unanimous and spontaneous response is partly owing to the very 
 fact that the art has penetrated far more widely and deeply into the various 
 social strata ; but partly also, it must be admitted, to the characteristics 
 of a great deal of the music which has since been produced; A very slight 
 and superficial parallelism may be traced between the present state of things 
 and that which prevailed in the later middle ages ; slight and superficial, 
 because then the divorce between the scientific and the popular elements 
 was real, whereas now it is in great measure only apparent and partial. 
 Still the very appearance is a fact to be most steadily kept in sight. 
 So far as the naive class of amateurs have become used to hearing music 
 called very fine in which their ears do not catch and welcome the motives, 
 so far is there a danger and difficulty which cannot be reckoned with by 
 merely telling them, like Schumann, that they have low ideas of melody. 
 The more it can be impressed on any such amateur in any particular case 
 that the motives are there, if indeed they are there, and that — inasmuch 
 as the keen enjoyment of all musical motive is one in kind, which kind he 
 has himself realised on other occasions — there is a good chance that they 
 wiU reveal themselves after a few more hearings, the better the chance 
 that more and more great music will become popular, and that laboured 
 and tuneless work will be detected and discredited. 
 
 The next mode of misconceiving the facts and possibilities of Music in s 12. Comte 
 respect of popularity is largely referable to its historical connection with the pecuUa?"'^ 
 Poetry ; which has had a no less disastrous influence on speculation about Music's'wide 
 the subsequent position and relations of the two arts than we previously popular appeal, 
 
 ^ r ^ ^ i J partly owing to 
 
 saw it to have had on views concerning the essential nature and content of tie old mistake 
 the former. Comte,' for instance, makes a hierarchy of arts corresponding its subirdina- 
 to its hierarchy of sciences, arranging them in order of decreasing generality aa'an essential 
 as Poetry, Music, Painting, Sculpture, Architectture. He says that the *■»<='• 
 sphere of Poetry is wider than that of the other arts, ' since it embraces 
 every side of our existence, whether individual, domestic, or social.' And 
 this, so far as it goes, is true ; the wider scope of Poetry as regards subject- 
 matter admits of no doubt. But superior generality in this sense does 
 not in any way involve superior popularity : and in trying to make out 
 
 ' Comte 's views of Music are in some ways peudeut power. But it strikes one as odder 
 
 noble and interesting ; and in spite of his in a modern writer than in Plato to ignore 
 
 imagining it to be normal that Music should the fact that the faculty of apprehending 
 
 draw its subjects from Poetry, his apprecia- Music is a special and incommunicable, 
 
 tion of the value of Mozart's melodies seems though happily a very common, gift. 
 to show that he had truly realised its iude- 
 
414 MUSIC IN RELATION TO TEE PUBLIC. 
 
 that really quite distinct point, Comte sacrifices obvious facts to the sim- 
 plicity and symmetry of his hierarchy. He goes on to say that Poetry is 
 the most po-pular of all the arts, ' both on account of its wider scope, and 
 also because, its instruments of expression being taken from ordinary lan- 
 guage, it is more generally intelligible than any other.' 'Prosody,' he 
 continues, ' the only technical element, is easily acquired by a few days' 
 practice,' — that is, a quite uneducated Eoman might have acquired by a 
 few days' study the power of appreciating, perhaps even of reproducing, 
 the metrical refinements of Virgil ! Nor does the argument about words 
 express anything like the whole truth. To say that, because words are a 
 universal medium of expression. Poetry is universally intelligible, is some- 
 thing like saying that, because eyes and light are universal, the refinements 
 of Venetian or Turneresque colouring are universally intelligible. For, not to 
 dwell on the fact that verbal colouring often depends on an element of subtle 
 and complex literary association, it is the constant characteristic of intellec- 
 tual poetry that appreciation of it requires a cultivated faculty for perceiv- 
 ing deep and often difficult relations. Even had he said ' calculated to become 
 the most popular after the regeneration of society,' it would have been but 
 a guess, resting on a confusion between amount of sources of material and 
 amount of appreciative acceptance. In estimating the latter, we have no 
 appeal from facts whose origin dates back to the beginning of the history 
 of our organisms, and a change in whose nature we have no ground for 
 prophesying. But Music having been subordinated to Poetry in his classi- 
 fication, it was natural to Comte to stereotype it in this relation ; as when, 
 in his evolution of Art out of speculative and theoretic regions, and his 
 prophecy of its recombination with Science and its highest development in 
 the hands of philosophers, he applies to Art in general theories which, even 
 could we consider them sound, would apply only to Poetry, and are ex- 
 ceptionally inapplicable to Music. For Poetry, alone of the arts, has Pro- 
 tean power, and can comprehend and follow, in their widest extent and in 
 their minutest detail, the changing aspects and relations of life ; while 
 Music stands of course at the very opposite extreme. Comte has thus 
 illustrated the danger, already adverted to, of ignoring the distinction of 
 faculties and treating Art all in a piece. In his own words, ' Art yielded 
 to the specialising system, which, though normal for industry, is in its case 
 abnormal ; ' and ' Art detached itself from the theoretic system before 
 Science, because its progress was more rapid, and from its nature it was 
 more independent ; ' but ' ultimately all theoretic faculties,' whether 
 scientific or aesthetic, ' will be again combined even more closely than in 
 primitive times.' He supports this view by such statements as that ' the 
 greatest masters of Music, even in modern times, have shown universality 
 of taste,' and that ' the absence of this in the present day is but a fresh 
 proof that aesthetic genius does not and cannot exist in times like these ' 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. ' 415 
 
 (shade of Beethoven !), ' when Art has no social purpose and rests on no 
 philosophic principles.' I will not revert to the ' philosophic principles,' 
 nor to the arbitrary identification of scientific and aesthetic faculties ; but 
 the best answer to the supporting statements is flat contradiction : as it 
 happens ' the greatest masters ' of Music liave been in a singular degree 
 specialists, and Music does answer even now a most useful social purpose. 
 
 There is one other prominent writer whose views in relation to the § is. Wag- 
 popular character of Music cannot be passed over: for though springing coQcei^Jls both 
 from deep artistic enthusiasm, and intertwined with aims which command themeanfn'^of 
 respectful sympathy, the views themselves are none the less derogatory to popularity in 
 the real value of the art which they vaguely seem to glorify. In spite of 
 the wide difference of standpoint, Wagner agrees with Comte in wholly 
 ignoring that peculiar isolation of Music from the world of politics and 
 speculation which we have dwelt on at length in the preceding chapters, 
 and which will be further exemplified in the present connection. But 
 while the French philosopher would have Music connected with all the 
 other arts and sciences in a grand ' theoretic ' scheme, the Grerman musician 
 would have it represent a ' national idea : ' while one would fasten on it 
 intellectual and ethical bearings which are alien to its character, the 
 other, in pursuing a distant, and to a great extent an unreal object, is blind 
 to that wherein its truly popular character, whether national or cosmo- 
 politan, has consisted and will still consist. 
 
 Wagner has given his views in a succinct and interesting form in a His attempt to 
 recent contribution to the North American Review. He describes how MusiVtobe in 
 the wretched condition of German art early led him to a critical examina- ^^^^'^^ fP"^ "'Pf^ 
 
 •/ connection with 
 
 tion of German civilisation ; and how his conviction that the culture of his 'national ideas' 
 country was ' something unnatural, narrow, weak, incapable of producing porary inteiiee- 
 the true realisation of any great national idea, in a word, was something ' ^' 
 altogether itw-German,' suggested thoughts concerning the possibility of 
 essentially changing the existing order of things. ' The German people,' 
 he says, ' as it began to emerge from the long misery of the Thirty Years' 
 War, saw, at the courts of its many princes, the great waste left by the 
 death of its truly national life gradually hidden by an imitation of 
 the sumptuous splendour of Versailles. But all that was really German 
 seemed utterly buried beneath it, when suddenly the genius of the German 
 race awoke anew out of its stupor, in the persons and works of great poets 
 and musicians. Suddenly there sprang up the heroes of the great German 
 revival. This great reawakening is the only movement that can be placed 
 on an equality with the European conception of the Kenaissance, and 
 through it our Goethe and Schiller, Mozart and Beethoven, once more re- 
 vealed the great German elenient in their glorious art-creations. They 
 found no great public, no nation, to which they could speak in its own 
 language. But in themselves the great national spirit was aroused in re- 
 
416 MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 newed vigour, and only some important historical event was necessary to 
 make it take form in deeds,^ — a condition ' fulfilled in the great war of 
 liberation against the world-conquering French Csesar.' We need not 
 take exception to anything here except as regards Music. As far as Music 
 was concerned, ' the genius of the German race ' which ' woke anew ' was 
 the well-known genius of the German race /or rnusic, neither more nor less. 
 And this did not wake anew even in Mozart, much less in Beethoven ; but, 
 so far as an immense stride made by exceptional genius after a certain 
 interval of stationariness can be spoken of as waking, it woke primarily in 
 Bach and Handel, and was very wide awake indeed in Haydn, who all three 
 lived absorbed in their own world of creations, Handel moreover in England, 
 and Haydn under the wing of one of the princely families which went fur- 
 thest in initiating the splendours of Versailles : but even during the Thirty 
 Years' War it had not been by any means asleep, but had been sedulously 
 cultivated, though as it happens no supreme name is connected with that 
 which totally era.' And it would be pure nonsense to represent national life, in the sense 
 thrvery"in-" ™ ^^ Comprehensive patriotic and intellectual life, as ' waking anew ' in such 
 stances he .^ m^n as Mozart ; as though he had been a sort of Mazzini, instead of a 
 
 simple, through-and-through, lovable, and somewhat dissipated musician, 
 with a gift and a mission to delight the ears of men in a imique fashion 
 for as long as we can foresee. We bless Germany for having given him to 
 us, as we bless her for so many of his brethren : but we do not bring to or 
 carry from Bove Sono any realisation of the German spirit or the German 
 renaissance or national civilisation, things of which many among us have 
 never even conceived ; we simply bring the cosmopolitan power to appre- 
 ciate perfect melody, and we carry away the delight which perfect melody 
 can give. And it is precisely the same with Beethoven, though his syn- 
 chronism with the climax of the great literary revival makes the con- 
 fusion somewhat more natural in his case, and though in marking his 
 general contempt for trammels and traditions we may remember with 
 interest that he breathed the air of a revolutionary age. But he came 
 then, or rather coming then he did just what he did, because, Haydn and 
 Mozart having gone before, his unique and overpowering musical genius 
 found exactly the conditions for its freest scope. Beethoven's honesty and 
 independence, his warm heart and deeply philanthropic spirit earn him, as 
 a man, our deep respect : but his vague democratic instincts had nothing 
 to do with the work in which his whole life was absorbed, and were so 
 little a proof of political sagacity that he wrote his most epoch-making 
 work in honour of the French Caesar aforesaid, — (it is fair to add that he 
 tore off the title-page when Napoleon became emperor) : nor had his un- 
 
 ' Mr. Hullah has remarked how this disciplined geniuses, but a body of very 
 troubled period produced, not, as might have learned and skilful organists and theorists, 
 seemed natural, a band of inventive and un- 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 41 7- 
 
 defined spiritual aspirations any relation to contemporary intellectual life, 
 or to the Zeitgeist which Groethe represented. The result of course is, 
 that he is for all nations and all times which can appreciate the heights 
 and depths of Music, and will live concurrently with all sorts of Zeitgeist. 
 And the converse argument insists on suggesting itself, that, however truly 
 Wagner may have been ' precisely the one among his countrymen who 
 most vehemently felt the longing for a new birth of German civilisation,' 
 and whose ' peculiarly receptive nature ' was most awake to ' all the won- 
 derful impressions his age conveyed,' his wealth of speculative and political 
 interests has not made a Beethoven of him. 
 
 However, the patriotic spirit of a nation is doubtless fed by great 
 work of any sort produced in it; and though the popular influence 
 attributed by Wagner to Mozart and Beethoven would imply a depth 
 and universality of appreciation of music which even now, after the 
 enormous subsequent spread of musical knowledge, would be a mere dream, 
 such a piece of enthusiasm might be passed by if it were not a link in 
 what is meant as a continuous argument. We pass on to his description 
 of the period of reaction and the misunderstanding of the national spirit 
 by the restored princes. ' At such a time, just after the mightiest uprising 
 of the national spirit for the liberation of the Fatherland, we are confronted 
 with this picture of complete oppression of everything German, of the 
 entire destruction of every living nucleus for the development of a domestic 
 or political national life. The great manifestation of the national genius 
 in the works of those mighty masters remains without a trace of influence 
 upon the further history of the nation ; ' which may be marked by the way 
 as an admission completely on my side. ' Between the people and their 
 art, as between the people and their princes, a mutual misunderstanding, Wagner's con- 
 the German's misunderstanding even of himself, kept alive by fear and re- poiitic'ai'reac- 
 pression, has raised a barrier that shuts out light and air from both alike.' t'O".^''^ ,. 
 
 ^ ' ° _ musical declme. 
 
 Very interesting again, politically : but when one thinks about Music ? 
 Did any one raise a barrier between the German and his piano ? Did the 
 police interfere with choral societies ? Would Wagner seriously afiirm 
 that the sale of the works of Beethoven suffered a gradual decline, dating 
 from the Congress of Vienna ? Is it or is it not the fact, that the works 
 of Schubert, comparatively little known in his lifetime, which closed very 
 nearly at the same time with Beethoven's, have grown steadily in popularity 
 ever since ; national perhaps even more than Beethoven's, because many 
 are settings of German words, but for all that cosmopolitan and eternal ? 
 
 And now follows a signal instance of forcing unreal correspondences upon 
 the phenomena of musical history. Wagner notes the decKne of German 
 literature under French influence. ' The last vestiges of Germanic 
 character,' he says, ' were scoffed at and rooted out by the revolutionary 
 spirit that came to us from the west.' Heine had talent, but he was not 
 
 E E 
 
418 MUSIC IjST relation TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 of Grerman origin, and was a spreader of the international and un-Grerman 
 element. Works so utterly and delightfully musical as Masaniello and 
 Ouillaume Tell are described as the glorification of the idea of revolution. 
 But the downfall of Grermanic art was completed by the advent of 
 Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn. The description of Meyerbeer with 
 his 'misch-masch of all styles and methods in the form of the great 
 His view of the Historical Opera ' is extremely true, and in Wagner's best manner. ' From 
 Meyerbeer, Beethoven's symphonies to Meyerbeer's opera — what a fearful stride is this ! ' 
 Undoubtedly : if ever any one who had deeply cared for Beethoven's sym- 
 phonies came to think of Meyerbeer's operas as anything but empty and 
 pretentious stuff with a thin sprinkling of beauties, it would be a curious 
 phenomenon ; and so far as people are led away, like babies, by glittering 
 spectacle and glaring and attitudinising music, from what is capable of 
 giving them far greater and more enduring delight, it is a pity. But hear 
 what follows. ' How could the Grerman of that day fail to take it ' {i.e. the 
 stride from Beethoven to Meyerbeer) ' even with enthusiasm, after his whole 
 national character and being had been so utterly destroyed or taken away 
 from him during those years which had passed since the war of liberation, 
 that Beethoven's Grerman music must seem to him something entirely 
 foreign ; something without effect upon him ; the extreme extravagance 
 of an isolated man overweighted by his genius ? The Grerman mind de- 
 serted Beethoven, whom it pronounced a mere madman, for Meyerbeer, 
 whom it declared the greatest of modern geniuses.' As if people began to 
 and implica- be bom with ears of a totally new construction, owing to a decline of 
 people's ears 'national character' in their parents : and as if, again, the German popu- 
 mercy rf\heir ^^^ ^'"^^ ^^^ been flocking to hear Beethoven's symphonies, and then all 
 political in- turned their backs and flocked to the Huguenots instead. That a depressed 
 
 Btincta. , . ^ 111 
 
 political condition should affect the musical organisation, that those who 
 had loved Beethoven ' could not fail ' to prefer Meyerbeer, as soon as 
 political affairs got awry, is really a ludicrous notion, when one imagines 
 the case of a single musical individual, even of one engaged in the thick 
 of political life ; to say nothing of the tens of thousands, including of course 
 women and children, who lead a narrow civic and domestic existence with- 
 out more than distant and uncomprehending glances at politics, but taking 
 music as naturally as simlight. No less true is it, on the other hand, that 
 the musical signs of the times are even now not much more than signs, 
 that very much is still wanting, and a fortiori was more wanting at the 
 time Wagner is describing, to general musical culture, and that most people 
 are like sheep, and will go to any entertainment that is in fashion, and take 
 it as it comes. Great instrumental works have throughout worked down 
 to the populace gradually, as they are doing now in England ; and bright 
 lights and spectacle still attract thousands and thousands even amid the 
 strongest indications that the best music is daily gaining ground.. That 
 
MUSIC IN' RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 419 
 
 people * revelled in the revolutionary inusic of the Huguenots ' merely 
 means that the Huguenots attracted audiences then as now ; and the only 
 TTiuaic in the Huguenots which ever entered into the popular heart is of 
 course Luther's sadly abused and deformed, but still unspoilable chorale. 
 
 Nobody of course will dispute the advantage to Miisic of a free and 
 healthy social life : the gathering of people together with a common aim 
 is a necessary condition both for the actual presentation of many works, 
 and for any wide diffusion of the knowledge of them ; though even here 
 the natural relation of Music to desirable social habits might perhaps be 
 more justly conceived as cause than effect. But even were we to consult 
 common-sense by substituting ' a turn for innocent evening recreation ' for 
 Wagner's irrelevant postulates, the distinction would remain equally clear, 
 and the confusion equally indefensible, between the general external con- 
 ditions favourable to extension of the area of appreciation, and the indi- 
 vidual's direct experience of what he knows only as addressed to his own 
 ears. 
 
 However, while entirely repudiating Wagner's account of external 
 causes and results, we may readily admit the coarseness and triviality: of 
 operatic art as represented by Meyerbeer. But now, says Wagner, came a 
 finer taste and talent, and ' did its best to settle our account with the great 
 past, a past which it found rather uncomfortable to look back upon.' 
 Mendelssohn undertook ' to lead the educated classes of Germany as far His account of 
 
 iiiiT-1 T i-T)ii Mendelssohn, 
 
 away from the dreaded and misunderstood extravagances oi a Beethoven as 
 from those rude theatrical orgies which his more refined taste so detested 
 in the historical opera of his fellow-Hebrew. He was the saviour of music 
 in the salon — and with him the concert-room and now and then even the 
 church, did duty as a salon also. Amid all the tempests of revolutions he 
 gave to his art a delicate, smooth, quiet, cool, and agreeably tranquil form 
 that excited nobody and had no aim but to please the modern cultivated 
 taste, and to give it occasionally, amid the shifting and turmoil of the 
 times, the consolation of a Httle pleasing and elegant entertainment. A 
 new idea in art was developed, the embodiment in it of a graceful, good- 
 society element, quite foreign to the nation's character and social life,' 
 Strange : but stranger is to come. This kind of art, it seems, ventured 
 beyond its proper limits, and ' Kobert Schmnann, a tasteful composer of and of Sehu.; 
 
 r u mann. 
 
 little spirited and pleasant songs and pieces for the pianoforte, now began 
 to write symphonies, oratorios, and operas.' The educated German, who 
 no longer believed in a great living national art, saw in these works a 
 truly reawakened ' German art-spirit,' and contrasting them with the crude 
 realism and trivial sensuousness of Meyerbeer, ' felt himself bound to admire 
 them enthusiastically.' ' Thus the German intellect degenerated into a 
 condition of complete unproductiveness in art, severing the living and 
 active bonds that bound it to a great national past, and undertaking to 
 
 ■ B 2 
 
420 MUSIG IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 create, unaided, an art intended only for amateurs and connoisseurs.' 
 And then we hear how I, Deborah, arose, and all the rest. 
 In not recog- Now I hold it to be useless, and even foolish, to quarrel with a man 
 
 these com- because he does not admire any particular music as much as I do : but not 
 admired^and ^o realise, as a pure matter of fact, that the profoundest admiration for the 
 '"eo" k w"£i greatest of musicians is compatible with ardent love for the two composers 
 care (luite as who are thus set in opposition to him, to doubt or to ignore the depth of 
 lujven as he feeling for Beethoven in thousands who can only gasp at the ascription to 
 eittiCT igiorant Schumann of ' complete unproductiveness in art,' is either most wilful igno- 
 or impertinent, j-ance ormostgross impertinence ; while to blink the fact that Mendelssohn 
 and Schumann, who are represented as leading the public away from 
 Beethoven, were the two staunchest devotees and most powerful advocates 
 Beethoven ever had, and did more than any other men to advance the 
 knowledge of his music, is something very Uke disingenuousness. Of the 
 many hundreds of people in the world to whom the music of Beethoven 
 is as dear as it is to Wagner, I should doubt if half-a-dozen are so -unfor- 
 tunate as to be able conscientiously to endorse the above views ; and the 
 weakness of the attempted connection between the state of the ' national 
 character ' and the appreciation of Music stands deplorably confessed in 
 them. If the popularity of Mendelssohn and Schumann is a proof of 
 national degradation, England at any rate must be going rapidly to the 
 dogs. 
 
 Wagner gives a most interesting account of the miserably hollow and 
 unhealthy state of the operatic world at Paris during his early stay there ; 
 and of the dawn of his conception, a very good one, of presenting old 
 legends in an operatic form which was intended to reveal the most 
 characteristic elements of the ' primal Germanic spirit.' Then he describes, 
 again in a way which commands warm sympathy, his various efforts to 
 introduce reforms at Dresden, and explains the carping and wounding 
 criticism which he encountered on the ground that the German people 
 had not yet 'rediscovered its own natuxe.' Then follows some rather 
 windy talk, with a considerable substratum of truth, about the enslaved 
 and conventional condition of modern society, and about Art's not being 
 the free and natmral expression of national life. But again we feel the 
 unreality as regards Music. Instead of talking about ' some great revolu- 
 tion of humanity at large,' rt^hich alone ' could make the true liberty of the 
 individual possible,' and be ' of any saving worth to a true art, it is 
 surely better to recognise that one true art, at any rate, has become and 
 is becoming more and more a tremendous social influence and a means of 
 wide-spread delight and sympathy, even in this contemptible modern world. 
 And now we come in sight of the notion which, while laudable 
 enough in itself, seems greatly answerable for Wagner's misconception of 
 the truly popular function of Music. His aims for Music are always in 
 
MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PVBLW. 421 
 
 connection with the stage ; and he tells us how the Nibelungen perform- in taking his 
 ances were to exemplify what alone he ' understood by a truly universal from The'stond- 
 dramatic art in its noblest form.' In the new dramatic institution, point of the 
 
 ' stagCj and in 
 
 * masterpieces, degraded in the everyday public service into mere style! ess making ocoa^ 
 and tastleless performances,' and presented ' in a transient shape that performances 
 was devoid of any artistic value ' to ' a public made up of the most diverse h"^ite los™' 
 elements and utterly without artistic sense,' would be given in a befitting jes^ons'^where 
 form, and ' would awaken a conception of the true meaning of art among sood music is 
 
 ' _ '^ ° ° already and 
 
 all who could comprehend it.' Now no one can wish to depreciate the increasingly 
 value of occasional typical performances of the sort suggested. But to indeed forgets 
 represent an art which is called ' universal ' or ' national ' in this peculiar J^rj^y'truL 
 sense as being popular would be nothing but a glaring confusion of m«»"8. 
 words. How can the term universal, in the popular sense, be applied to 
 an art consisting in occasional performances to which only the minutest 
 fraction of the public can have access ? The art-life of a nation depends 
 on numberless ramifications, permeating cities and villages and homes, 
 which, if they do not come into being through the popular instinct, will 
 assuredly never be started from a distant fountain-head of choice per- 
 formances, however desirable that feature may be in other ways. 
 
 The very terms of Wagner's description reveal his utter want of faith in 
 the radical musical qualities of his nation in spite of all his devotion to the 
 ' national idea.' To talk about occasional and exclusive performances as 
 the means of ' awakening a conception of the true meaning of art among 
 all who can comprehend it ' has a ring of Pharisaism the more distressing 
 in that Wagner, as I have said before, is not naturally a Pharisee ; so 
 little so that a few pages earlier he has equally exaggerated on the other 
 side, and represented the arms of those who fought the battle of Leipsic 
 as nerved by strains which not one in a hundred of those who fought in 
 it can have known or cared about. Meanwhile a very large number of 
 this public ' utterly without artistic sense ' and, most fortunately, ' made 
 up of the most diverse elements' and not an artistic clique, are now 
 finding one of their most cherished enjoyments in the wealth of beautiful 
 music with which the skill of a single member may enrich a whole house- 
 hold or a larger social circle ; to say nothing of the innumerable choral 
 societies and musical gatherings in which it is the exception not to find the 
 highest class of music well represented. It is easy, of course, by totally 
 ignoring the home and the concert-room, to avoid acknowledging how deep 
 Music has got its roots in the popular life : but the specious-sounding 
 dictum that ' only through the stage can national art become truly the 
 property of the people,' will not prevent lovers of this cosmopolitan 
 art, and ' the people ' so far as they ever enter into that category, from 
 assuming as their property all the beautiful music they can get hold of, 
 and living on it in the most habitual and unrestrained manner. Music is 
 this very day far more the property of the English people through the 
 
422 MUSIC IN RELATION TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 works of Handel and Beethoven alone, constantly practised and presented, 
 running in thousands of heads, alive in thousands of hearts, than it could 
 possibly be in the most ideal future by anything which a much improved 
 Opera in a few great centres could do : and the stream of human happiness 
 will go on remorselessly swelling itself from these and other sources, in- 
 cluding even such despised tributaries as the oratorios of Mendelssohn and 
 the chamber-music of Schumann, without much care whether it embodies 
 a ' national idea ' or reflects the ' primal Grermanic spirit.' 
 § 14. The I hope that I have now sufficiently shown in what I hold the popularity 
 
 popularity of of Music to consist : and how so far from imagining that ' to awaken a 
 consoieM^^ conception of the true meaning ' of the art is an operation to be gradually 
 iso^ationft-om Performed by most exceptional means on a few picked individuals, I hold 
 other branchea that the conception — at anv rate of true meaning: enough to enrich and 
 
 of interest and . ,. ^ , -^ so 
 
 culture becomes irradiate many hours of life — may be awakened in qmte an easy and 
 oppressive. wholesale fashion when the means are given. That this should be so 
 may make one sometimes inclined to call Music the highest and sometimes 
 the lov est of the arts. There is really little meaning in calling it either : 
 but some of the foregoing considerations may at all events be capable of 
 affording a stimulant and solace against those times of reaction when the 
 absence of human associations in the perception of perfect beauty puzzles 
 and oppresses the mind. If any at such a season could find it in his 
 heart to envy those who do not breathe the rarer air of pure artistic 
 exaltation, and to whose spirit Music gives wings without bearing it beyond 
 its familiar atmosphere of meditation and fancy - for these at all events 
 keep their Pegasus where they can find him, which is a convenience for 
 denizens of the earth — yet against the isolation of the actual inward 
 experience he may set his knowledge of the art's wide and ever-widening 
 appeal, and may find in its results, though not in its essence, the living 
 interest of human sympathy. 
 
 It is very possible to generalise too widely on the importance of Art to 
 individuals. For activity is a more essential condition of our well-being 
 than beauty, and there are doubtless spheres where men may derive from 
 their mere activities a constant stimulus and satisfaction, and in 
 intellectual and spiritual conceptions may find an ideal life which leaves 
 no sensible void. In the present constitution of society, however, the 
 careers where a man may find himself thus situated must be acknowleged 
 to be a small minority. The activities of most lives are in themselves dull 
 and trivial, having little or nothing of vivid and changing interest, and no 
 power of satisfying the imagination, leaving the mind moreover but little 
 leisure to explore unknown worlds ; while on the spiritual side there may 
 be more of struggle than of peace. To such Uves love of beauty is like 
 water in the desert ; and among the arts it is more especially the privilege 
 of Music, that, penetrating where Nature's face is veiled, she can open the 
 springs of this love to the poorest dwellers in the dingiest cities. 
 
423 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 In considering a large and emotional subiect, it is often useful to leave § l- Th« "'- 
 - J , „ joyment of 
 
 the stand-pomt of our own experience, to look beyond the divisions which Poetry roughly 
 
 each of us might make for himself and the various values each might i^to (^o^kLds, 
 himself discover in the respective features, to the divisions and values 
 given us ready made by the sorts of hold the subject takes on different 
 minds, the aspects in which it is reflected from different mirrors. In 
 this way certain features are clearly distinguished which even those who 
 are alive to all of them do not always take the trouble clearly to dis- 
 tinguish in their own judgments. And in the case of Poetry, the most 
 marked fact so brought out is that many of the poetry-reading public 
 confine their interest, or at any rate believe themselves to confine their 
 interest, mainly to the more obvious substance of the poet's message, 
 to what he turns out to have said at the end, to what they can 
 remember he has said without recalling his exact words, to what 
 they would call j9ar excellence his ideas, with a kind of implication that, 
 compared with that everything else is subsidiary and quasi-accidental ; 
 while to others, who are no less awake to the poet's main ideas, the in- 
 terest is conveyed by what he is saying all through, by the whole tissue of 
 his work, the most distinctively poetical qualities of which would (they 
 feel) be absolutely unrepresented by the most literal translation or the 
 most accurate paraphrase. This division does not of course entail a hard 
 and fast line : no lover of Poetry belongs exclusively to the former class. 
 But there does exist a very real distinction as regards general habit and corresponding 
 tendency. And this corresponds to a real duality in the poet's function, duality in the 
 He really is perpetually doing two things, which can be to some extent with ft™fect of 
 separately recognised, however inextricably interlaced in an actual work. J^las'^^Tp^o^- 
 On jthe one hand he presents things which could be presented in prose, '\"Q™f A^^u-i^ 
 and by dint of presenting which in impressive language a prose-writer is conid(2)whioh 
 often said to be poetical, or even to be a poet : on the other hand he pro- presented and 
 duces impressions which can only be produced in verse ; he presents things ^roseT'* ^^ 
 of which a prose presentation is not inadequate but strictly impossible. 
 
 This distinction goes very much deeper than the obvious one so 
 commonly made between the matter which a poet has to convey, and the 
 
424 TEE SOUXD-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 This distinc- dress Or Setting which he finds for it. For consider a good prose-version 
 thTn^hlt ir^^"^ of a beautiful poem. In this shape, the matter, in the above sense, is very 
 st'an^e'andTh'e ^^""^^ S^'^^^ ' *^®^® ^^® ^^^^^ ^° whom it will strongly appeal, when so 
 setting ; presented, and who will actually get from it by far the greater part of 
 
 what they could have got from the original. The selection and treatment 
 of topics, the perception of the deeper relations of things, the sentiments, 
 the images, are all there ; and the result may be full and sufficient evidence 
 of high creative genius. But substitute the original ; and to the seeing 
 eye very much more has been done than simply to present these things 
 what is some- in a far more pleasing form. The change is not just a change of dress, 
 sented"l^"he ™^ improvement in the presentment of the old stuff: it is the presentment 
 indudes an'"^ °^ °®^ ®^"^' ^^^ ^°°'^ ^^^ ^^® ^i'ld 5 ^^^ new emotions evoked are reali- 
 eiementofnew ties which in the other case could never have been so much as guessed 
 at. No poem worth the name wholly lacks the latter kind of effectiveness ; 
 while on the other hand lack of power to produce it may prevent persons 
 richly endowed with all other poetic gifts from ever being poets. It may 
 be safely said that the power of making words, one after another, concen- 
 trate in themselves a force which seems incommensurable with their literal 
 and logical meaning, so that language seems not so much to be investing 
 thought as to be informing and transiiguring it, is a gift as rare as even 
 a very large measure of those more general poetical faculties which can 
 exist in its absence. 
 This point is It is necessary to emphasise these facts from the very first, just because 
 
 mistaken, ow- in Poetry, alone of the arts (as we saw in the third chapter), fi content 
 presentin'g a^ ° ^''^s exist independent of any sort of form addressed to the sense. An 
 independent f ^"^ °^ language represents, not like Painting and Sculpture by imita- 
 form. tion, but by symbols, which in our world, as it happens, are addressed 
 
 primarily to the sense of hearing ; and it is on these symbols as mere 
 sounds that the form-element of verse supervenes. So that here discussion 
 as to the relative value of content and form may have some meaning ; 
 whereas a picture with its lines smudged beyond recognition, or a sonata 
 with the notes or rhythms altered, would cease to have an intelligible con- 
 tent. Thus if we compare Poetry with the other most prominent art of re- 
 presentation. Painting, it is obvious that the poet may act on the mind 
 and win sympathy apart from merits and defects of form, and apart from 
 acuteness or obtuseness of bodily sense in his audience ; whereas a painter's 
 language is form, and to appreciate his drift and spirit a sympathetic sense 
 for his language as well as a sympathetic intelligence for his ideas and 
 feelings is requisite. But this very fact, I say, hinders the explicit recog- 
 nition that the presentation of poetic thought in poetic form is very much 
 more than a matter of pleasing investiture ; that the substance of what is 
 conveyed receives a new element ; in other words, that the sum of the 
 pleasure is infinitely greater than the pleasure of the mind in the content 
 plus the pleasure of the ear in a certain abstract arrangement of sounds. 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 425 
 
 To the abstract arrangements of sounds, the formal element which is in- § 2. Metre; 
 -dispensable to this wonderful result, it will be best to give some detailed at- "ai p"rindpie?' 
 tention before attempting to estimate its relations to the complete aesthetic 
 efifect. This element finds by far its most important and familiar develop- 
 ment in metre. The fundamental principle of verbal metre is identical with 
 that of the rhythmic factor of melodic forms, the recurrence of stimuli at 
 definite intervals. A metrical scheme marks out for the line (or, if the 
 metre is compounded of differents sorts of line, for each line) a fixed 
 number of stresses at fixed places, and in the vast majority of metres at 
 equi-distant places, equaKty being the most obvious and natural way of 
 ensuring and establishing the sense of fixity. The line must not be too 
 long to be easily grasped by the ear as a unit ; and metres which consist 
 in particular arrangements of such lines must, again, not be too complex 
 for the divisions or stanzas to be recognised as larger units. In modern Ti,g adjunct 
 metres, another extremely common feature is rhyme, or similarity of clang "^ ■'hyme. 
 at the end of lines. This feature, depending as it does on vowel-sounds, 
 might seem to be properly a colour-efifect ; but as a matter of fact, its con- 
 finement to one position in the line, and the manner in which the ear 
 reckons on it in co-ordinating the series of sounds into regular and coherent 
 groups, gives it a distinct place under tbe head of form : indeed, varieties 
 in the position of the rhymes are a great means of differentiating metres 
 which in point of rhythmic structure are identical ; aiid again, rhyme is 
 able to bring into metre lines presenting (as often, for instance, in French 
 verse) Uttle or no true regularity of accent. The same remark applies in 
 some degree to the alliterations and assonances which have in some cases 
 acted as substitutes for metre : though in their case the ear has not the 
 instant of its satisfaction so precisely fixed beforehand, and the satisfaction 
 can therefore hardly be equally definite and strong. 
 
 We have seen that the primary fact in rhythm, the perpetual satisfac- The nervous 
 tion of expectation, is represented in the nervous organisation by the ad- rhythm : 
 justment of nerve-substance in readiness for a discharge by stimulus at 
 certain instants. In any series of stimuli which is so irregular that no 
 set of such adjustments is established, and no certain expectations formed, 
 there can be none of the strict satisfaction of rhythm : there may be 
 pleasure of rises and falls, of a pleasing variety in the general stream of 
 sounds, but not the distinctive satisfaction belonging to a series which 
 entails such a set of adjustments, and which in the case of words is called 
 metre. Now if we regard this principle of rhythmic stimulation in the 
 most general way it does not matter what happens between the main 
 stimuli ; jbhpse spaces may be filled up with stimulation of a sort which 
 does not interfere with the main adjustments and expectation, or it may 
 be left destitute of any stimulation. As regards the special application of 
 the principle to words, however, since language is continuous and entails 
 in its habitual unmetrical use accented and unaccented syllables, the in- 
 
426 
 
 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 and the peculi- tervening spaces of time are, as a rule, naturally filled up in a metrical 
 plication of the Scheme by unaccented sound, consisting of one, two, three, or even four 
 general princi- gyHables. Exceptions of course produce feet of one syllable ; as, 
 
 pie to words. 
 
 Feet : simple, 
 
 Iidin,\rdin,\g6 a\mdy,\ 
 Come a|g4in an] other |(iay,| 
 
 or. 
 
 fn the pen|tdnieter|o^i?||failing in|m61ody|JacA.|| 
 
 Such feet constantly occur at the ends of lines, where the brief interval of 
 discontinuity serves distinctly to mark off the line. An accented sound 
 with the unaccented sound or sounds preceding or succeeding it ' is a 
 simple foot. As we can modify the pace with which we pronounce syllables 
 between very wide limits, two and three unaccented syllables are often 
 substituted for one, in lines where the metrical scheme only demands one ; 
 as, for instance, in the line 
 
 The intol|erable iiilfiiiite|desire, 
 where only the last two feet are normal. Feet with as many as fomr un- 
 
 ' In musical notation the bars are arranged 
 so that the note on which the chief accent 
 falls is the first note of a bar ; in the division 
 of verse into feet, the accented syllable is 
 often the last of the foot. There is no 
 significance in this difference, which in no 
 way affects the common feature of regular 
 accents ; and it would often be just as con? 
 venient to draw the dividing Unes in verse 
 one way as the other, and to regard any 
 short syllable or syllables which preceded 
 the first accent as an anakrusit or catch, 
 
 instead of as part of a complete foot. But 
 the difference is worth noticing, if only 
 because failure to notice it may easily cause 
 misunderstanding in nomenclature and de- 
 scription of metres, among persons whose 
 ears have precisely the same metrical sensi- 
 bilities and requirements, but of whom one 
 is used to the look of musical notation and 
 the other is not. The quotation on the next 
 page affords a ready instance. There is 
 nothing to my eye absolutely unnatural in 
 marking the stanza thus : 
 
 By the I waters of [Babylon we sat|d6wn and] wept. 
 
 Be I membering | thfie, 
 That for|%es of|%ony hast en|dlired and|sl^pt, 
 
 And|w6uldst notjs6e — 
 
 though in reciting the passage I should 
 make a quite noticeable pause at wept, and 
 should pronounce remembering tliee as two 
 perfectly even iambi. Here the combina- 
 tions \ivept, re\ and \thee, that for] and {slept 
 amd\ represent the principle of musical bars, 
 and if the poem were set to music (which 
 Heaven f oref end !) wept, thee and slept would 
 fall on the first notes of their respective 
 
 bars. Eyes accustomed to the look of music 
 will have no diificulty in perceiving, in the 
 stanza as here marked, that in the flow of 
 sound the re still belongs entirely to the 
 mem, and the that foi^ to the a ; It being 
 very common in music for a long pause to 
 occur in the middle of the bar, and for the 
 succeeding note or notes at the end of the 
 bar to belong, in the flow of sound, entirely 
 to the following bar ; for instance. 
 
 But in the absence of association with the 
 look of musical bars, the above method of 
 division might naturally suggest a complete 
 misapprehension of the metre. 
 
 The difference, I must repeat, is a mere 
 
 matter of the eye. Nothing can prevent 
 ictus from being iotus : nothing can prevent 
 our feeling an impulse to beat or stamp at 
 the first syllables of rooters and Babylon and 
 at damn and reept. 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 427 
 
 accented syllables are very rare : a splendid example of their employment 
 is afforded by Mr. Swinburne's Super fiurnvna Babylonia — 
 
 By the w4t|ers of B4|bylon we aat d6wn|and w6pt,| 
 
 Eem6m|bering th6e,| 
 That for 6|ges of &g|ony hast endiired|and sl6pt,| 
 
 And w6uldst|iiot s6e,|&c. 
 
 Even here it would be possible to avoid the actual recognition of five- 
 syllable feet, by marking thus : 
 
 By tho I waters of | Babylon | we sat d6wn|and w6pt — 
 
 but the peculiarity of the metre remains quite untouched by a change which 
 merely consults the convenience of the eye ; and may be equally well 
 described as the existence of four unaccented syllables between two ac- 
 cented ones. Y 
 
 It is sometimes convenient to have a name for particular collocations of 
 sounds in which more than one accent occurs : but this is a mere matter 
 of nomenclature, and in no way affects the principle ; such compound feet 
 being always resolvable into simple feet containing one accent apiece. 
 The Greek sense of compound foot, in application to a foot which is made and compouncL 
 up of two or more complete simple feet,' is one which we have no occasion 
 ever to think of in English verse : but the word may serve conveniently to 
 denote shorter collocations in which there is more than one accent. Thus 
 in a succession of cretics, as 
 
 Qa I qu'on sella, 
 
 Ecuyer, 
 
 Men fiddle 
 
 Destrier, 
 
 it is more natural to regard each line as consisting of a single compound 
 
 » The reason why writers on Greek metre it would be natural to carry classification 
 
 considered compound feet in the larger sense considerably further ; to have a name, for 
 
 lies in the close connection of Greek verse, instance, for such a collocation as 
 
 particularly lyric and choric verse, with / 
 
 musical performance, and the convenience of I L-J I L__r 
 
 regarding as a, foot the set of syllables which which is to iis simply one of the infinitely 
 
 coincided with a musical iar. We have seen numerous and unnamed arrangements pos- 
 
 how in modem music it would be absurd to sible under the head of J measure. This 
 
 attempt to classify the actual contents of fitting of words with notes measured on a 
 
 bars (looked at in the light of their complete strict scale of subdivision, adapted indeed to 
 
 rhythm) as feet, since the possible combina- the natural lengths of the syllables, but im- 
 
 tions are practically innumerable. We con- posing on them an accuracy of time-propor- 
 
 tent ourselves with classifying the outlines tions which is unknown to spoken prose, 
 
 or frameworks, as the f framework, the | most imperfectly represented even in the 
 
 framework, and so on. But with a, very strictest spoken verse, but entirely ohatac- 
 
 much simpler music, constantly associated teristic of melodic notes, explains how the 
 
 with and in a great measure subordinate to Greek ear accurately and instinctively 
 
 words, and vdth the notes largely adapted to grasped metres which we often find too 
 
 the natural time-relations of the syllables, complicated to realise without laborious re- 
 ference to a written scheme. 
 
428 
 
 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 Metrical 
 rhythm is im- 
 posed on, not 
 latent in, 
 Bpeech. 
 
 Irhe modes of 
 marking off 
 lines and 
 stanzas. 
 
 foot, accented on the first and last syllables, than to regard the metre as 
 an alternation of trochees and feet of one syllable : and again, in 
 
 Kentish Sir Byng\stboA for Ms M7ig,\ 
 Bidding the cr6pheaded|Pfi,rliament sning,] 
 
 the words Byng, king, swing, corresponding to the dactyl cropheaded in 
 the third division of the couplet, may be more naturally regarded as 
 making up compound choriambic feet with the three preceding syllables 
 than as monosyllabic feet on their own account. In both these cases, it 
 will be observed, the accents fall at quite regular distances. 
 
 It is obvious that no single word of average length can present accents 
 enough to give a notion of rhythm. IncoTnpreheTisibility makes a com- 
 plete iambic line ; but only a small minority of words have even two 
 accents. And as words normally follow one another for the sake of sense, 
 and not for the sake of sound, it is absurd to represent metre or poetic 
 rhythm as in some way latent, in an inchoate form, in natural human speech ; 
 for it does not result from the presence, but from the regularity, of accents, 
 and a foot has no meaning except as a unit in a line. ' Du bist wie eine 
 Blume ' is verse : ' thou art like a flower ' is not inchoate verse, but prose. 
 
 So much for foot-waits. The clear division of the stream of successive 
 feet into ^me-units may be effected in several ways, which however are 
 by no means all mutually exclusive : (1) by an actual difference in the 
 run of the contiguous lines, through a change in the feet which compose 
 them ; as in the alternating hexameters and pentameters of the elegiac 
 metre, or in the varying divisions of the alcaic stanza ; (2) by the constant 
 occurrence, at the end of lines, of some marked feature, such as the 
 dactyl-spondee of hexameters, or rhyme ; the latter feature, through the 
 variety of which it is susceptible, being the great modern means of 
 uniting small groups of lines into larger units or stanzas ; (3) by a slight 
 break whether of sense or sound, or both, at the end of a majority of the 
 lines, which may enable contiguous lines of most varying lengths to be 
 perceived as separate units, (4) especially in metres where lines of an 
 even number of feet alternate with lines of an odd number, by a definite 
 rest of about a foot's length at the end of the latter, observed even when 
 the sense would carry the voice on ; which not only introduces, in metres 
 of regular construction, the principle of regular recurrence for the rests 
 as well as for the accented sounds ; but exemplifies our further principle of 
 dual balance, in giving a counterpoise to the last foot of the odd-foot 
 lines, and thus enabling one to beat time to them just as evenly as though 
 another foot were actually present. For instance in the stanza, 
 
 Oft 1 1 had heard I of Lu|cy Gray,] 
 
 And, when|I crossed|the wild,| — | 
 I chanced|to see|at break|of day) 
 
 The sol|ita|ry child. |—| 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 429. 
 
 the voice would naturally separate wild from / chanced by (approximately) 
 
 a foot's length. In the same way, the lines, 
 
 Fe6,|f6,|Mm,|— I 
 I sm611|the blo6d|of an Eng|lishmiin, 
 
 will naturally be pronounced with recognition of the full rest of a foot, 
 to balance fum ; whereas if the nonsense-syllables were Fee, fi, fo, fum, 
 the voice would naturally go straight on to the next line. This feature 
 of balance, aided by rhyme, appears also in cases where there is no inter- 
 mixture of lines with an even number of feet, and where therefore it is 
 impossible to represent the rest after the shorter odd-foot lines as prompted 
 merely by an instinct of symmetrical conformance to the even-foot Hues ; 
 for instance, the three-foot lines, 
 
 T611|for the|brave,|— I 
 
 The brdve|that 4re|no m6re,| — |&c. 
 
 will take pauses about as marked as those of Lucy Qray ; and the same 
 principle may be perceptibly exhibited even in quite irregular measures 
 which present no set groups or stanzas. To enter further into the varieties 
 of line and stanza, would lead us too far ; and we must now return to the 
 more general and fundamental aspects of verse-rhythm. 
 
 Since actual stress or ictus is often, like the ticks of a clock, the § 3. Accen- 
 affair of a small fraction of a second, it will be seen that there is nothing d""a<L*of syi- 
 in the fundamental scheme to prevent an accented syllable from occu- laWes present a 
 pvinff the sTnaller portion of the space from ictus to ictus, and an un- stant but not 
 
 t^J ° ^ 1 -1 r -IT necessary cod- 
 
 accented syllable, or in exceptional cases silence, from occupying the larger nection. 
 portion. For example, in the words perished, caverns, balanced, each of 
 which might form a foot, the accented first syllable takes about half as 
 long to pronounce as the unaccented second. The whole amount of effort, 
 however, required to pronounce a long syllable being ipso facto greater 
 than that required for a short, it naturally happens that the accent falls 
 oftener on longer than on shorter syllables : the voice having a larger 
 task to perform, instinctively breaks upon it in a more energetic way. 
 In syllables, moreover, containing a naturally long vowel sound, on which 
 the voice will commonly dwell more in verse than in prose, the very act 
 of so dwelling instinctively impresses a certain emphasis and fulness of 
 timbre : thus the accent in a word like remorse lies rather in the emphatic 
 dwelling on the vowel, while in a word like revenge it results from the 
 forcible enunciation of the consonants. Thus there is a close, though not 
 a constant, connection between accentuation and duration of syllables. 
 We shall have to recur to this fact shortly. 
 
 But now comes a most important point. As regards the places where § 4. Verse 
 stresses of the voice actually come, verse often departs considerably from from its strict 
 its strict metrical scheme. Some feet (if we designate hy foot the set of ^*«™^! 
 syllables which, on the strict metrical scheme, would fill up an accented 
 
430 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 place and all the adjoining space up to another accented place) pass wholly 
 
 without accent, while in others strong stress may be laid on a syllable 
 
 which, according to the ideal scheme, is in an wTiaccented place ; and 
 
 there will naturally be many degrees of variety short of these extreme 
 
 cases. Without a certain amount of such departures, the rhythm of verse, 
 
 imposed on anything so naturally unrestrained and elastic as language, 
 
 would tend to a dead and sing-song monotony : for instance, it is just 
 
 because English hexameters have almost invariably been written to he 
 
 scanned, in exact conformity to the scheme of strict stresses, that the 
 
 metre has obtained such an unenviable reputation.' But for all that, the 
 
 underlying scheme must be recognised : and the effect greatly depends on 
 
 the instinctive sense of this scheme running parallel with the departures 
 
 from it ; which, though more frequent than is commonly realised, leave of 
 
 course sufficient landmarks — that is to say, stresses enough fall according 
 
 to the strict requirements of the scheme — to preclude any doubt as to how 
 
 the feet should be marked off for each line in accordance with the scheme. 
 
 The loose s,tructure of the French alexandrine may be taken as representing 
 
 the opposite extreme of fault from that of the English hexameter : for the 
 
 small actual difference in stress between the accented and unaccented 
 
 syllables of French words, tending to preclude definite feet, tends to 
 
 preclude, more especially in long lines, definite places of ideal stress. 
 
 accuracy, how- It is natural that deviations from the strict metrical scheme of accents 
 
 normally main- should take place normally rather in the earlier than the later part of a 
 
 Uter part rf* ^™^^ 5 the accuracy of the later stresses giving the final stamp to the line 
 
 the line. ^g ijelonging to such and such a scheme. Thus in hexameters the accent 
 
 on the first syllable of the last two feet is a fixed rule of the metre : and 
 
 the last foot in English blank verse, though not infrequently relieved of 
 
 a decided stress on its last syllable, is never reversed by receiving a 
 
 stress on the first. Greek iambic verse was less strict in this respect, 
 
 probably for the following reason : that lines of six feet, that is, of mul- 
 
 • It must be added — and this important viate from strictness by receiving a stress on 
 
 point is not enough realised— that the the first instead of the second syllable. But, 
 
 elasticity of language not unfrequently while laying the stresses on the first syl- 
 
 farours adherence to the strict accentual lables, it is not only possible but a natural 
 
 scheme. An example will make plain how instinct to bring them into strict accordance 
 
 the large amount of latitude permitted by with the scheme, and to make the six 
 
 speech, as regards both the time given to stresses of the line fall accurately at equal 
 
 many syllables and the pace at which one distances (the accuracy becoming obvious if 
 
 word follows another, may allow the perfect we beat time vrith the hand), by deferring 
 
 regularity of the stresses to be preserved to the fleo- till the instant of the beat, i.e. by 
 
 the ear, even where apparently infringed to allowing slight additional time on or after 
 
 the eye. In the iambic line, *e last syllable of ciKA-tS-as contrasted, 
 
 e.g., with our treatment of the concluding 
 
 4k tSiv KaKuv tuvS ew/cAeo flcfffloi ^lov, ^•^^^^ j^^j ^ ^^^ jj^^^ 
 
 the two last words, if we divide off each as ^„ j^v kokSc tScS' (IxXf^i yevhaoiuu. 
 
 a foot under the scheme, may seem to de- 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 431 
 
 tiples of two feet, flow on rapidly and naturally from one to another ; 
 whereas in the five-foot lines of English blank verse, a true though faint 
 recognition of the principle of dual balance noticed above, is apt to assert 
 itself in a slight pause between the end of one line and the beginning of 
 the next, the naturalness and frequency of which will be noticed if anybody 
 tries to ignore it in reading a passage of blank verse aloud. And the foot 
 before a slight pause is specially unable to admit liberties. 
 
 But other conditions besides position afifect the limits of possible devi- Limits of devi- 
 ation. Thus English trochaic metres, where single accented alternate ged ii/Engiish 
 with single unaccented syllables, and the first accent falls on the first trochaic verse; 
 syllable of the line, admit of far less deviation from the strict scheme 
 than iambic metres, where the first accent falls on the second syllable of 
 the line. It is quite exceptional in trochaic verse for some degree of 
 accent not to fall regularly on the odd places, according to the strict 
 metrical scheme ; while an actual reversal of a trochee into an iambus 
 may, I think, be said to be impossible ; as opposed to the distinctly 
 pleasing effect produced by the reversal of the normal iambus into a 
 trochee, in such a line as 
 
 The 16ne|coMcA of | his eT|erl4st|ing sl^ep. 
 
 It is possible in some measure to account for this peculiarity of English 
 trochaic rhythm. The commencing accent not only establishes itself by 
 the prominence of its position, as a very marked point on which the ear 
 gets to reckon with confidence, the more marked probably that in English 
 speech trochaic commencements of sentences and clauses are a small 
 minority, but it tends to produce a certain evenly-marked rapidity in the 
 subsequent movement, which any considerable change would tend to dis- 
 locate. Again, most English dissyllabic words are trochees, so that in 
 trochaic metres it is exceptionally frequent for a foot to comprise a single 
 word and not parts of two words ; which naturally tends to impart a certain 
 cut and obvious regularity to the motion. Thus in Mr. Tennyson's trochaic 
 poem The, Captaim,, out of eighty-four dissyllabic words, seventy-eight are 
 trochees and six iambi ; the first fifteen stanzas of Locksley Hall contain 
 seventy-eight trochees and seven iambi. While, then, these features 
 make trochaic metres in English seem too inelastic and monotonous for 
 constant use, on the other hand the very fact of the above-mentioned pre- where they are 
 valence of trochaic words, combined with the desirability, for the sake of ^"^ {„ [gmWc. 
 variety and elasticity, that a single foot should Twt continually coincide 
 with a single word, must count as a chief reason why iambic metres are 
 par excellence the metres for English verse. Thus opening a blank-verse 
 poem of Mr. Tennyson's completely at random, I find in two pages sixty- 
 seven words distributed over the last half of one foot and the first of the 
 next, to eleven corresponding with a single foot. 
 
432 
 
 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSW. 
 
 § 5. Varia- 
 tions in the 
 time which 
 different feet 
 in the same 
 line, and dif- 
 ferent lines in 
 the same 
 metre, take to 
 deliver. 
 
 Another source of deviation from exact conformance to the ideal metri- 
 cal scheme lies in the different times that syllables, and therefore feet, 
 take to pronounce ; so that even did the accents fall regularly in all the 
 feet, they would still not be equidistant from one another. It may 
 happen that a foot which lacks distinct accents may take longer in pro- 
 nunciation than one which has a distinct accent ; thus if the line, 
 
 Of man's I first dis|ob§d|ience, and | the fruit, 
 
 be read naturally, the fourth foot which has no accent will occupy more 
 time than either the third or the fifth. Far more usually, however, owing 
 to the connection between duration and accentuation, feet which lack 
 stress will occupy a particularly short, and feet which contain more than 
 one stress a particularly long time. Thus in the line, 
 
 Br6ught dedth|iato|the w6rld|'and 411|our w6e, 
 
 the first foot consists of two strong and emphatic syllables, and the second 
 foot of two extremely light and unemphatic ones ; the result is that the 
 line may be quite naturally delivered in such a manner that the first foot 
 extends over five or six times as much time as the second. In the line. 
 
 The 16ne|c6nch of|his Sv|erl^st|ing sleSp, 
 
 the second foot has a strong accent on the first, instead of, as normally in 
 the metre, on the second syllable ; and the disinclination of the voice to 
 pronounce two heavy and emphatic syllables rapidly one after the other, 
 causes the first three syllables of the line to extend over more time than 
 the five succeeding ones, fotir of which are light in sound, and are more- 
 over naturally given rapidly to make up for the time spent at the begin- 
 ning of the line : that is, technically, a foot and a half take up more time 
 than two feet and a half. The line. 
 
 Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, 
 
 has eight actual stresses, all on syllables which in any case require 
 some vocal effort., and takes at least twice as long to pronounce as an 
 average blank-verse line. It follows, then, that no sort of strict rule of 
 length, and no definite scheme of subdivisions, such as are entailed in the 
 accurate dividing of musical time-values by two and three, apply to the 
 syllables, feet, and lines of verse.' 
 
 ' It may be convenient here to sum up the 
 ways in which musical rhythms and de- 
 veloped verse-rhythms differ from one an- 
 other, while agreeing in the possession of a 
 scheme of regular accents. We have seen 
 that in verse (1) wide latitude is allowed in 
 the actual adjustment of accents to the 
 scheme ; (2) if we timed each foot as it 
 
 passes, we should find great variety in their 
 duration. In Music, on the other hand, 
 constancy of accent, and so of length of bar, 
 is a cardinal point. It is involved in the 
 very nature of melodic form that the per- 
 ception of the various relations of length 
 which the notes present is precise, and this 
 necessitates a standard afforded by a constant 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 433 
 
 But at this rate it would seem that quantity on its own account had 
 nothing to do with metrical scheme. And in modern verse such is 
 indeed the case ; for though quantity is a most important feature both in 
 the production of special effects, and in assisting to give variety of move- 
 ment from verse to verse, it has no essential connection with the scheme 
 of accents. In the classical languages, however, it is otherwise : and the 
 question of the difference is not free from difficulty, though the difficulty 
 
 § 6. Differ- 
 ence between 
 ancient and 
 modern verse 
 in tlie relation 
 of quantity to 
 the metrical 
 sclieme. 
 
 length of bar (the apparent exceptions caused 
 by such humourings and swayings as are 
 described in the note to chap. viii. § 3, de- 
 pending for their effect on the Iseen instinct 
 of the normal length which they slightly 
 modify) ; while in any music containing 
 more than one line of sounds, such precision 
 and constancy is the most natural means for 
 enabling the variously moving parta to pre- 
 sent distinct and organic correspondence. 
 We may add as a further peculiarity of 
 verse (3) the possibility of pauses in such 
 number as would dislocate the movement of 
 melody, while made natural in verse by the 
 natural requirements of sentences. These 
 pauses may occur regularly as a true feature 
 of the metre — thus if we expressed the metre 
 of the above-quoted Super flumina Baby lords 
 in musical notation, we should put a r> mark 
 at the end of every line — and to this, it is 
 true, an occasional parallel might be found 
 in melody : but a melody, though now and 
 then it may iea/r such treatment, rarely or 
 never regvAres it. (Such pauses, where in 
 beating time one would suspend one's beat, 
 must be distinguished from the complete or 
 nearly complete foot of silence — demanded, 
 e.g., at the end of the shorter lines, that is in 
 the place of the eighth and sixteenth feet, of 
 ' common metre,' as in the above stanza from 
 iMry Gra/y — to which one would give a beat. 
 In the latter feature no difference from music 
 is involved, beyond the fact that, though 
 music might introduce two similar bars of 
 rest, it would of course not repeat the same 
 measure for twenty consecutive periods.) 
 
 More special differences present them- 
 selves if we false our two time-units, the 
 foot and the lor, and compare either their 
 component elements, or the manner of their 
 combination into longer series. A poetical 
 foot is composed of syllables which, from 
 the nature of language, cannot be numerous, 
 five being the very outside, and of which 
 one is not normally more than two or tlvi-ee 
 tvmes the length of another : whence the 
 yariety of feet in any metre is very limited. 
 
 and the flow of sound is of a simple and 
 (between the natural pauses) of an entirely 
 continuous kind. In verse, again, the ear 
 is occupied with something quite apart from 
 the suund, namely, the apprehension of the 
 words as symbols of thought, this being its 
 normal hourly function : it therefore takes 
 such sops as it gets in the way of metre as 
 an assistance and gratuity fur which it is 
 grateful, without demanding anything like 
 strict symmetry and regularity in the 
 lengths of the lines. These may be ex- 
 tremely irregular, as in many odes, and 
 even where there is a principle of balance 
 and symmetry, as in strophes and anti- 
 strophes, the ear has often to wait a long 
 time for this to assert itself — so that verse 
 may present great irregularity in the main 
 metrical outline, combined with great regu- 
 la/rity and simplicity in the component feet. 
 Music is apt to reverse these characteristics. 
 Not only may a musical note have a far 
 longer or shorter absolute duration than the 
 longest or shortest possible syllable, but one 
 musical note may be tMHy-trvo times, and 
 is perpetually as many as eight times, the 
 length of another in the same bar ; and 
 moreover rests (which must be carefully 
 distinguished from pmises, and constitute, 
 like notes, strict fractions of strict bar- 
 lengths) are of constant occurrence, and are 
 as necessary to the form as the notes them- 
 selves ; so that the time-combinations of 
 sounds and silences which may make up a 
 bar are in number and variety quite beyond 
 reckoning : while, on the other hand, so far 
 as any symmetry of lengths is noticed at all, 
 it is in that simplest and most direct dual 
 balance of contiguous phrases or groups of 
 bars, which, as we have seen, may be found 
 pervading the most elaborate musical mo- 
 tions ; beyond this, the continuity of phrases 
 and the progressive combination of smaller 
 into larger ones preclude any suggestion of 
 their actual lengths as forming a scheme, 
 regular or irregular, such as is made possible 
 by the distinct separateness of verse-lines.. 
 F 
 
434 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 has been made out to be greater and more fundamental than it really is. 
 I must ask the reader to allow me to approach the subject in my own 
 way. 
 Places of A. school-boy who is just beginning the study of classical verse, and 
 
 ciassicaWerse, ^^"^ scans the lines aloud in order to get the metre into his head, will 
 r 'tiie°E^'^''r h invariably read each hexameter of Homer or Virgil with six regular 
 school-boy ; stresses at equal distances, the iirst falling on the first syllable, the sixth 
 on the last syllable but one, of the Une. Similarly in scanning the iambics 
 of Sophocles, he will give six regular stresses, of which the first will fall 
 on the second syllable, and the sixth on the last syllable of the line. He 
 can scan Milton in precisely the same way, giving five regular and equi- 
 distant stresses in each blank-verse line ; but in so doing he will find he 
 makes obviously unnatural departures from the normal delivery of the 
 words. Just so in the classical languages he is certain to have sufficient 
 conception of the way he pronounces the words when he meets them in 
 prose, instinctively to relax and abandon the strict stresses of his scansion- 
 lesson, when once he has got the metres into his head. And as, if gifted 
 with an average amount of ear, he will recognise that Milton's lines, when 
 naturally pronounced, are still lines having a distinct relation, and owing 
 a distinct allegiance, to the strict scheme of accentuation which he brought 
 into prominence when he scanned them, so will he be conscious of a 
 precisely similar fact in respect of the Greek and Latin lines. The one 
 set of sounds will still be to him a five-foot iambic metre, the other a six- 
 foot dactylic and spondaic metre, in a real and not an arbitrary sense. 
 And the parallelism between the two cases will be not only absolute in 
 principle, but very close even in detail. If any one will try the experi- 
 ment of reading fifty Unes of Sophocles or Virgil, laying the stresses on 
 those syllables where he would lay it if he met the word in prose, and 
 then treat fifty lines of Milton's or Tennyson's blank-verse in the same 
 way, he will find that the departures from what he would consider in each 
 case the strict scheme of stresses are about equal in number ; there being, 
 in fact, no choice between a considerable amount of such departure and the 
 sing-song effect of scanning, 
 •which places So far, then, so good. But now comes in the further fact, which the 
 
 cupied^bWong school-boy, if left to his natural devices, would probably never have even 
 syllables. noticed. The Greek and Latin syllables occupying the places where the 
 
 accents fall in the emphatic scansion of the verses (the places of ideal 
 stress, as we may call them for brevity's sake), are invariably long, the long 
 syllable being occasionally resolved into two short ones ; a single short 
 syllable never occurs in those places.' 
 
 ' Exceptions occasionally occur in Homer, vu'ws and Siscussiom, says that in these 
 Mr. Spedding, in his admirable essay on cases the short syllable must be abnormally 
 English hexameters, republished in his Re- lengthened. But surely the fact that in 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 435 
 
 Now we should be justified in asserting at once and a priori, that this As the coin- 
 coincidence cannot be accidental. An Englishman with his notions of possibly be 
 metre formed on the verse of his own language is able, by that light and ^'^^^^^'^^' 
 without any reference to longs and shorts as such, to pick out in classical 
 verse places of ideal stress, which hold precisely the same relation to his 
 natural delivery of the lines as the places of ideal stress in English verse 
 hold to the natural delivery of English lines. A school-boy who pronounces 
 longs and shorts no longer and shorter in Virgil than in Milton, finds in ten 
 lines of the ^neid a beautiful metre ; Virgil and his contemporaries found 
 in the same lines a beautiful metre ; a decisive peculiarity is in each case 
 connected with precisely the same places in the line : to suppose that 
 there are really hvo metres, and that the coincidence of the critical places 
 in the two is an accident, is about as reasonable an idea as that by accident 
 we happen to hear thunder just at the times when we see lightning. But 
 if the coincidence is not accidental, there must be some common fact at 
 the bottom of all the phenomena ; and this fact can only be sought in the 
 fundamental principle of rhythm and of its connection with the nervous 
 organism. That principle, then, if precisely stated, is more general than we are led to 
 we recognise it to be when we are thinking about stresses. It consists -nrhat the state- 
 simply in sufficiently regular recurrence of certain stimuli for their re- ftl^aimentai 
 lationship in an order to be recognised ; the recognition of the reqularitu, P"^'"?'?'? = J""* 
 
 ■^ o ' o a cr emphasis, but 
 
 is the one prime requisite ; that the stimuli in which regularity is recog- noticed re- 
 nised should be marked off (or at any rate should all be marked off) by stimuli is what 
 actually superior force, from the stimuli which may take place between 
 them, is not requisite. The fact for the occurrence of which at a par- 
 ticular instant the nerve-substance is adjusted, is a stimulus, perceived by 
 its occurrence at that particular instant to be one of an order ; not neces- 
 sarily an emphatic stimulus. 
 
 An analogy offered by Music may be useful. In Music, though the Analogy in 
 accents are so acutely felt that the stimulus often passes all through the "''"^' 
 nervous system and prompts us to keep time by some physical movement, 
 and though the instinctive adjustments of expectation never cease, the 
 accented notes are not necessarily at all louder than the unaccented. We 
 may go further and say that the first note of a bar, which falls in the 
 normal place of the chief accent, may be distinctly less loud than other 
 notes in the bar. In common time, for instance, if the first note is a crotchet 
 and the second a minim, the second note will often receive the greater 
 emphasis. In the first bar of the following melody — 
 
 English we perpetually accept a light sylla- other hand, complete reversal of the normal 
 
 ble in a place of ideal stress is enough to pronunciation of a word is a step that even 
 
 suggest that these Homeric exceptions are we lax moderns have never ventured on. 
 concessions of a like kind ; while, on the 
 
 F F 2 
 
436 
 
 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 ^^z 
 
 
 SEE£^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 t: 
 
 :i=a^- 
 
 t±.2-. 
 
 5=4£ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^iJ^- 
 
 &0. 
 
 tlie notes on the first and third quaver-beats, the normally accented places, 
 could hardly but be softer than those which precede them. But in all 
 such cases the first place in the bar is perceived as what it is ; the ear 
 does not lose count of it ; the note on it is a certain piece of stimulus, 
 equidistant from the first beats of the preceding and succeeding bars, and, 
 whether or not receiving a sound-stress, has its place in the order marked 
 In verse the by a downward beat (real or imagined) of the baton} Now in verse, a set 
 
 Jong sj'llables c ^ ^^ -it a j 5 
 
 taark points of 01 long syllables at equal distances is a set of regular recurrences which 
 comes under this principle, provided only the words be pronounced with 
 sufiBcient deliberation for length of syllable really to tell on the ear, a 
 condition which in the common English pronunciation of the classical 
 languages is far from being observed. The very attention to quantity, in 
 hexameters at any rate, would make the commencements of the long 
 syllables at the beginning of the feet far more truly, constantly, and 
 noticeably equidistant than is common in the greater latitude of English 
 verse : no case at all parallel to ' Brought death | into [ the world ' which 
 we noticed above, would be possible. The nature of language, no doubt. 
 
 regular recur- 
 rence ; 
 
 ' The same point may be illustrated by 
 a very simple experiment, the results of 
 which are to the full as curious as some of 
 the more familiar delusions of the eye. Let 
 
 any reader pay attention, next time his ears 
 encounter that most irritating phenomenon, 
 a chime of six bells playing six notes of the 
 descending scale — 
 
 the sounds following one another with me- 
 chanical regularity and being all of equal 
 loudness. The ear, as soon as it begins to 
 attend, will almost inevitably divide 'the 
 endless series by imposing accents at regular 
 
 intervals ; but the point is that it is per- 
 fectly easy to make the accentuation for 
 oneself in several different ways. For in- 
 stance, one can make oneself hear the series 
 as 
 
 or as 
 
 ^i^^^^^ 
 
 : &c. 
 
 and the impression that the notes which one 
 is accenting for the moment in one's own 
 head are actually more marked than the 
 
 others, that the ringer is feeling the par- 
 ticular rhythm which one has selected to 
 impose, is absolutely irresistible. 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 437 
 
 entails that the truly accented syllables are louder than the other sounds, 
 which the accented musical notes often are not: but for all that, the 
 places in lines which correspond to the strong places in bars, the places 
 which are accented in the typical metrical scheme as they are accented in 
 normal musical rhythm, may be recognised in the absence of such extra 
 loudness. And we have now to remember two additional facts, each of 
 the greatest importance in stamping the sense of regular recurrences. 
 First and chiefly, of the six long commencing syllables, at least three (the these points, 
 last two, and one or far more commonly two or three of the first four) ceived actual 
 received a true stress ; ' which fact alone brings classical hexameters about Jf^J ""'""* *^ 
 as near to conformity with conditions of ideal stress as English blank- 
 verse. Secondly, we noticed above the close connection between accen- 
 tuation and duration of syllables. This would take special effect in a 
 language and mode of delivery in which ' long ' syllables were really long, 
 really dwelt on after a fashion which we, with our different language, 
 constant short vowels, and clipping pronunciation, find it hard to realise : 
 and it would take effect not only on long syllables which were also the 
 primarily accented syllables of their respective words, but on other long 
 ' Mr. Spedding points out that Quintilian's that in modern Greek they do so fall ; 
 
 in classi- 
 cal as inmodern 
 verse : 
 
 rule assimilates the position of stress in 
 Latin words very closely to the English 
 usage, and adds that the question of the 
 position of stress in Greek is more uncertain. 
 But if ever a point may be decided by in- 
 ternal evidence, it is that the first syllable 
 of each of the two concluding feet in hexa- 
 meters must have received an actual stress 
 as a rule of the metre, these stresses being 
 so entirely the key-stone of the hexameter 
 that it is impossible to conceive the existence 
 and popularity of two metres, one Greek and 
 one Latin, agreeing in all other conditions 
 yet liable to perpetual difference in this. 
 
 The question of those marks over certain 
 syllables which are known as the Greek 
 ' accents ' is a very perplexing one. But even 
 if all authority were not, as it is, in favour 
 of regarding their ancient (in opposition to 
 their modern) employment as connected with 
 pitch and not with stress, we have only to 
 read twenty lines of Homer, treating them 
 as marks of stress, to convince ourselves that 
 the metre, which in more than half the lines 
 will be found to go to pieces just at its 
 ca-itical point, would on these terms be be- 
 yond redemption by the mere regularity of 
 the long syllables. 
 
 The argument most relied on to prove, 
 contrary to ancient authority, that in the 
 ancient Greek pronunciation the stresses fell 
 on those syllables which bear the marks, is 
 
 against which, however, must be set the 
 further fact that in modern Greek verse 
 these syllables occupy the places of ideal 
 stress in the metre ; that is, they hold to 
 modern metrical schemes exactly the re- 
 lation they did not hold to ancient ones. 
 Confronting these two facts, we are tied up 
 to one of two hypotheses ; either the pro- 
 nunciation has changed or the relation of 
 pronunciation to metrical necessities has 
 changed. Now having regard to the fun- 
 damental facts of hunlan ears, nay to the 
 single and simple nature of rhythmic stimu- 
 lation through the whole range of organisms 
 from the spider to Beethoven — if we find 
 the words and syllables of ancient verse 
 appearing in modern verse with complete 
 reversal of their relation to the metrical 
 scheme, it is surely more reasonable to argue 
 that the method of pronouncing them has 
 changed, than, on the mere presumption of 
 constancy in their pronunciation, to suppose 
 that ancient metre, in ignoring their stresses, 
 set at nought positive and prominent facts 
 of auditory stimulation; the positive and 
 prominent character of which — as must 
 surely be admitted even by those who do 
 not perceive metre to emist iy reeognisinff 
 it — would absolutely dislocate any regular 
 arrangement of sounds which attempted to 
 ignore or defy it. 
 
438 
 
 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 while the 
 slower delivery 
 would entail 
 more stress 
 even on unac- 
 cented long 
 syllables than 
 we give. 
 
 A Greek or 
 Roman must 
 have imagined 
 the scheme of 
 the hexameter 
 iu a way iden- 
 tical, in its 
 essential point, 
 with the way 
 of the English- 
 man ; and 
 would have 
 beat time to 
 actual hexa- 
 meters with as 
 much unction. 
 
 syllables, -which would thus obtain increased facilities for sometimes occu- 
 pying the places of ideal stress. Thus we can perceive how the second 
 syllable of ferunt or BUrjv would differ, as regards the amount of notice 
 the voice would draw to it in verse, from the long unaccented second 
 syllables oi perished and caverns. Even an Englishman can perceive the 
 line J^ft) h' sfiavrov iralBa ttjs 'Y!v-)(7js vijJiwv to be perfectly musical ; but 
 he would hardly feel a blank-verse line ending with Evans pSrished to be 
 satisfactory. 
 
 When these latter points are considered, we may safely infer that when 
 a Greek or Eoman imagined the metrical scheme of the hexameter in his 
 head, without thinking of any particular line, he imagined a scheme of 
 definite strong places in the bar truly and fundamentally resembling th*^ 
 scheme which the English school-boy would imagine, however much 
 differing from the normal school-boy scheme in the refined attention to 
 quantity. Seeing that the actual main stresses did in a majority of cases 
 fall on these places, T should probably be correct in saying outright a 
 scheme of stresses ; but I use the term strong places to express that par- 
 ticular sense of recognition which is felt, e.g., in music at the first beat of 
 a bar, whether the note receive the emphasis of extra loudness or not. 
 How thoroughly the differentiating quality of the stimulus which occurs 
 at that place and no other is recognised (and recognised, I think it may 
 be accurately said, as a sense of stress somewhere), though it may not be 
 brought out to the ear by extra loudness, is shown by the physical impulse 
 to mark it with a beat or a tap, just as much as if it were brought out to 
 the ear by extra loudness : and as regards verse, no one who has a typical 
 scheme of the metre in his head will find any difficulty in beating time, 
 e.g., to the pentameter — 
 
 Barbarous | experi | ment, 1 1 barbarous|hexame | ters, 1 1 
 
 and giving the normal down beat to the first syllables of each foot, even 
 though his voice makes the second syllables both of experiment and hexa- 
 meters louder than the first ; a departure from the scheme as great as 
 would be possible in any Latin Hne of the same metre. Thus my point 
 would be perfectly well expressed by saying that a Greek or Eoman would 
 beat time to the natural delivery of hexameters with just as much regu- 
 larity and unction as an Englishman whose ideal scheme is founded simply 
 on stresses, and who takes little or no account of longs and shorts as such ; 
 the difficulty in the most extreme case being no greater than in marking 
 the beats to a piece of ' syncopated ' music. 
 
 The great difficulty which has been found in this question of the rela- 
 tions of quantity to accent, a difficiilty which some have been driven to 
 solve by imagining what would be nothing less than a fundamental 
 change in one of the most fundamental facts of nervous organisation, has 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 439 
 
 resulted from taking the prominence of quantity, which is so marked a 
 feature of ancient verse, as the inost fundaimental fact about it : whereas 
 the most fundamental fact in all metre must be a fixed scheme of recur- 
 rences, underlying lines which are perceived as sufficiently congruent with 
 it for departures to be accepted by the ear with a pleased feeling that its 
 own intuitive sense of the ideal regularity is still in a manner dominating 
 throughout. This once granted, we may readily allow that the invariable 
 occupation of the places of recurrence by long syllables, though not the 
 main point, is a most important point. It must have added a delightful 
 feature of variety and complication to that elastic working of the ear 
 which is entailed in all enjoyment of metre ; the giving to the strong 
 places the invariable respect of a sound of some considerable weight was a 
 very delicate and pecuUar means of realising the particular regularity which 
 constituted the metre, in the midst of those various accentual departures 
 from it which impart elasticity to verse in place of sing-song monotony. 
 The delicacy of ear in this particular direction certainly seems to have 
 lapsed in modem times, or at any rate finds little opportunity in the 
 normal pronunciation of modem languages ; and even in the classical 
 languages one of the conditions for it must have been most deliberate 
 enunciation.' 
 
 The mistake 
 has been in 
 taking quan- 
 tity &» tlie 
 great /af<, 
 instead of only 
 as the great 
 difference^ of 
 ancient verse. 
 
 ' I heartily concur with almost the whole 
 of Mr. Spedding's remarks on this subject. 
 But I do not think he altogether recognises 
 that an Englishman enjoys classical hexa- 
 meters j^riTreaWZy by instinctive reference to 
 an underlying scheme of six stresses exactly 
 as he enjoys blank verse by instinctive refer- 
 ence to an underlying scheme of five stresses ; 
 and thatifhedoes more than this, and by really 
 dwelling on the long syllables obtains some 
 of the additional pleasure which Greek and 
 Latin ears received through their refined 
 sense of quantity, the essence of his rhythmic 
 instinct is still identical with what it was 
 when he pronounced the words in the most 
 uncompromising English way, making Tityre 
 a triplet, and so on. Mr. Spedding seems to 
 me entirely right in considering our pleasure 
 in the rhythm of classical verse to be a direct 
 and instinctive one, as opposed to Mr. Munro, 
 who considers that we attain to it by men- 
 tally superinducing our acquired knowledge 
 of the quantities which we have lost the 
 power of instinctively feeling ; ' that is to 
 say,' as Mr. Spedding well objects, ' we call 
 to mind that by the rule of the metre this 
 syllable must, in some inexplicable way, have 
 been felt by Virgil to be long, and that 
 syllable to be short ; and though we cannot 
 ourselves perceive that it is so, or understand 
 how it could be so, we take into considera- 
 
 Tbis being 
 granted, it is 
 easy to admit 
 its immense 
 importance, 
 and the lapse 
 of the delicate 
 sense for it in 
 modern times. 
 
 tion the fact that it was so. And the result 
 is " all that wondrous harmony which we 
 feel." ' But both critics seem to me inaccu- 
 rate in taking the sense of quantity, 
 whetherinstinctiveormentallysuperinduced, 
 as the fundamental point in the enjoyment, 
 instead of the sense of recwrrenoe ; and by so 
 taking it, Mr. Spedding has been further led 
 into what appears unwarranted scepticism as 
 to the modern decline in appreciation of 
 quantity. This additional refinement may, I 
 think, be to a considerable extent acquired 
 by a modern ear ; but the resulting quality 
 in the metre, however important, is a second- 
 a/ry one. In the fact that an Englishman, 
 without paying any more attention to actual 
 duration of syllables than he is accustomed 
 to do in his own language, finds the move- 
 ment of classical hexameters perfectly 
 natural and beautiful, lies sufficient indica- 
 tion that the sense of rhythm is one, not 
 two, and that the pi-vmwry fact in his appre- 
 ciation is identical with the primary fact in 
 the appreciation of the ancients ; namely, a 
 sufiicient degree of conformity to a regular 
 ideal scheme of recurrences, which in the 
 case of the Englishman may certainly be 
 called stresses, and which, by whatever name 
 we call them, did certainly in a majority of 
 places (an average probably of four out of 
 six) receive an actual stress. 
 
440 
 
 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 The mere plea- 
 sure to the 
 sense is very 
 slight, 
 
 § 7. The re- It was impossible to avoid noticing- with some care this large and 
 
 lation of metre ^ ° • r t. 
 
 to the whole Vexed question of ancient and modern appreciation of metre. But a 
 oe ry. (jg^g^jjg^j discussion of particular metres and particular examples, fascinat- 
 ing as the subject is, lies, as I have said, quite beyond our scope ; and it is 
 now time to pass from the consideration of metre in itself, to its place in 
 the specific delight of Poetry. 
 
 It is obvious, to begin with, how slight is the mere satisfaction to the 
 sense. The ' melody of verse,' though the term is perfectly allowable, is 
 wholly unlike melody proper. Melody proper, as we saw, is essentially a 
 resultant of two factors, that of rhythm and that of pitch ; and can no 
 more be produced by rhythm alone, apart from definite relations of pitch, 
 than water can be produced by hydrogen without oxygen. But a rhythmic 
 set of sounds without definite relations of pitch is just what verse presents. 
 Thus persons may have an exceptionally delicate sense of the ' music of 
 verse ' who entirely lack ' musical ear : ' for where the power to perceive 
 the relations of notes-in-pitch is quite irrelevant, the want of it can of 
 course be no disadvantage. The variety of vowels and consonants and of 
 the ups and downs of the voice may greatly assist the effect on the ear; 
 but however superior to the dead monotony of a drummer's practice, the 
 impression is not less remote from the melody of Music. A perfectly fair 
 measure, and indeed the only perfectly fair measure, of the amount of 
 satisfaction that the mere sound of verse can give, is found in melodious 
 nonsense--verses, or if the knowledge that they are nonsense be held to 
 interfere, by melodious verses in an unknown language. It is common to 
 consider that strikingly good verse is marked by much more independent 
 beauty in the sound-element than really exists. The experiment might 
 be tried, on a person with a good ear and ignorant of English, of introduc- 
 ing into a section of In MemoriaTn the following stanza, which I have seen 
 somewhere quoted from the prose of a mathematical treatise : 
 
 And so no force, however great. 
 
 Can strain a cord, however fine, 
 Into a horizontal line 
 
 That shall be absolutely straight — 
 
 The phrase and this stanza will be quite as impressive to him as any other. Again, 
 sense' tends to the Ordinary phrase ' sound without sense,' applied to musical but empty 
 verses, is delusive if it is meant to refer the pleasure simply or even 
 chiefly to the sound alone, as iu nonsense-verses. The most musical 
 collocations of words would not be tolerated for a couple of minutes by 
 the emptiest-headed person, unless a considerable number of the words 
 suggested comprehensible and pleasing images. Thus by sound in the 
 above phrase we must understand musical flow plus pleasing fragments of 
 image and association, and by sense dominating and connecting ideas. 
 The pleasure, then, producible by the mere sound of verse, though very 
 
 and cannot be 
 fairly tested if 
 the words are 
 understood. 
 
 conceal this. 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 441 
 
 appreciable, has no depth or individuality, and could only be produced in 
 an occasional way and for a very short period at a time. And we have 
 consequently to look far beyond the mere gratification of the ear by a more 
 or less agreeable set of sounds,' for the enormous effect of metre on the 
 presentation of thought in a language which we understand. 
 
 ' This gratification, such as it is, is of an 
 entirely positive kind, acting directly on the 
 sense. It would not have occurred to me 
 that there could be a doubt about this, had 
 not Mr. Spencer, in his essay on the Philoso^ 
 phy of Style, taken another view. He inge- 
 niously refers forcible style to economy of 
 the reader's or hearer's attention, and makes 
 out his point very successfully in many par- 
 ticulars ; but he seems to me quite to fail in 
 his attempt to bring the effect of rhythmical 
 structure in verse under the same rule. He 
 says, ' If , as we have seen, there is an expen- 
 diture of mental energy in the mere act of 
 listening to verbal articulations, or in that 
 silent repetition of them which goes on in 
 reading — if the perceptive faculties must be 
 in active exercise to identify every syllable — 
 then any mode of so combining words as to 
 present a regular recurrence of certain traits 
 which the mind can anticipate, will diminish 
 that strain upon the attention required by 
 the total irregularity of prose. Just as the 
 body, in receiving a series of varying con- 
 cussions, must keep the muscles ready to 
 meet the most violent of them, as not know- 
 ing when such may come ; so the mind, in 
 receiving unarranged articulations, must 
 keep its perceptives active enough to recog- 
 nise the least easily caught sounds. And 
 as, if the concussions recur in a definite 
 order, the body may husband its forces by 
 adjusting the resistance needful for each 
 concussion ; so, if the syllables be rhythmi- 
 cally arranged, the mind may economise its 
 «nergies by anticipating the attention re- 
 quired for each syllable.' 
 
 There is surely a confusion here between 
 the intellect and the ear, and between two 
 distinct meanings of perception, namely, the 
 reeognition of a syllable as a known word or 
 part of a known word, and the mere hearing 
 of it as part of a series of accented and un- 
 accented sounds. The ' least easily caught 
 sounds ' are those which, from softness or 
 indistinctness, it is hardest to recognise as 
 known words or parts of known words ; but 
 these are no less easily and completely heard 
 as belonging to the regular series of alternat- 
 ing sounds than the louder accented consti- 
 
 tuents of the series. As regards the mere 
 act of hearing, the perception of the series 
 is an affection which would be as easily pro- 
 duced by nonsense-syllables arranged in the 
 same rhythm : and as for attention, not less 
 but iiwre of it would seem to be involved in 
 the case of a regular accented series than in 
 prose. For against the supposition that the 
 ear is relieved at alternate instants from the 
 strain of its expectant attitude, through 
 foreknowledge of the place of the louder 
 syllables, we must set the fact that in verse 
 it is actively on the watch, and notices with 
 positive satisfaction the rhythmical succes- 
 sion as such ; while in an irregular series it 
 is not the least on the watch for the purely 
 sound-qaalities of what is going on, but acts 
 as the uninterestod and passive conductor of 
 symbols to the mind. The intellectual recog- 
 nition of the sounds, on the other hand, as 
 known words or parts of known words, is in 
 no way facilitated by their rhythmical suc- 
 cession. There are as many comparatively 
 loud and distinct syllables, and as many 
 comparatively faint and indistinct ones, in a 
 paragraph of prose as in an equally long 
 paragraph of verse : and the sum of mental 
 energy required to identify them is equal in 
 the two cases. The fact that in the verse 
 the ear is aware beforehand at what instant 
 the louder and fainter syllables are coming 
 cannot relieve the intellect of its labour of 
 recognition ; for difficulty or ease of recogni- 
 tion is simply a function of the distinctness 
 with which the syllable is heard when it 
 comes, and of nothing else. 
 
 Mr. Spencer's analogy of muscular adjust- 
 ment is misleading. For in a succession of 
 precisely similar bodily impulses, we are 
 aware of exactly what is coming, and so can 
 prepare for it before it comes : but in the case 
 of a mental effort we have no idea what it is to 
 be till the matter of it is presented ; and the 
 recognition of every syllable is a different 
 act from the recognition of every other, and 
 entails different tracts of association. The 
 fairer analogue would be a portrait, which 
 we certainly should not recognise any the 
 more easily for knowing that such an e^rt 
 would be demanded of us at some particular 
 
442 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 § 8. Metrical Before seeking a general explanation, we may glance at one or two 
 nected with Special points which, though subsidiary and of far from universal occur- 
 in the meaning ^ence, are of great interest and importance. To begin with, it is clear 
 oftheworda. xh&t any common quality or analogy between the sound of a word or 
 group of words and its meaning or sentiment is completely brought out if 
 semi-latent, or is then and there evolved, through metre and metre only ; 
 that is, through the presence of a norm of sound-arrangement, modifi- 
 cations of which will necessarily arrest attention. The stock examples — 
 
 aZOtSt eireiTa neSoySe KvKiv^eTO \aas ayatS^s, 
 
 and 
 
 Quadrupedante putrem tonitru quatit ungula campum, 
 
 contain something like direct imitation of phenomena in which easy regu- 
 larity of recurrence was actually a feature : but irregularity and effort find 
 equally ready means of expression in rhythmic features, which are only 
 brought into special notice by their contrasted and exceptional character, that 
 is, by their occurrence as part of and in the midst of metre. The line — 
 
 Long lines of cliff breaking have left a ohasm — ■ 
 
 is a less hackneyed example than some others. Nor are such effects at all 
 confined to pourtrayal of sensible phenomena : Pope's Hne — 
 
 And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year, 
 
 with its seven heavy accents, might attract attention even if it occurred 
 in prose, but gains at least nine-tenths of its point from its strong con- 
 trast with the normal movement of heroic verse. And we may refer to 
 the same head effects where there is no directly imitative quality at all, 
 but where a large and imposing fact or idea finds fit expression in an 
 accumulation of weighty syllables, or in words containing an imposing 
 array of strong and sonorous vowels. In this way the line — 
 
 Majus adorta nefas majoremque orsa laborem 
 Evolat — 
 
 makes a magnificent introd uction to the climax of Amata's frenzy. It is 
 through being marshalled in the unity of a measured line that an unusual 
 set of vowel-sounds is felt as intentional and effective : in a prose passage 
 such an amount of assonance as this would be almost as unfortunate as a 
 chance rhyme. So, again, the resolution of dissyllabic into trisyllabic 
 
 moment. In the case of purely physical discharge gives us annoyance. But an act of 
 
 stimulation, there is a preparation of a recognition is a mental process which begins 
 
 certain amount of nervous energy against a naturally at any moment on the presentation 
 
 particular instant when the repetition of of the symbol to be recognised': and what- 
 
 the stimulus leads to its discharge ; and if ever its objective nervous counterpart may 
 
 the stimulus does not come at that instant, be, it certainly cannot be amenable to 
 
 the closing of the expected outlet for the regular rhythmic discharge. 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 443 
 
 feet, which may have the more directly imitative force above noticed, as 
 
 in the lines — 
 
 The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine 
 In cataract after cataract to the sea — 
 
 is also a frequent means of marking some point of rapidity or intensity in 
 the sense. There could not be a more splendid instance than the itali- 
 cised words in the following passage from (Enone : 
 
 I wish that somewhere in the ruin'd folds, 
 Among the fragments tumbled from the glens, 
 Or the dry thickets, I could meet with her, 
 The Ahminable, that uninvited came 
 Into the fair Peleian banquet-hall, &c. 
 
 Again, metre has a most important bearing on the actual moulding of Metre as affeot- 
 the language, originating, as it were, and informing with unexpected beauty "(firf^wordT" 
 fresh structures of word and sentence. This is exemplified in the case of and of gram- 
 
 ^ _ matical and 
 
 words by the formation of striking and sonorous compounds in many Ian- rhetorical 
 guages. As regards sentences, the following example from Mr. Swin- 
 burne's poem Before a Crucifix may serve : 
 
 The suns have branded black, the rains 
 Striped grey, this piteous god of theirs ; 
 The face is full of prayers and pains. 
 
 To which they bring their pains and prayers, &c. — 
 
 where the rhetorical figure, the repetition and inversion in the last two 
 lines, is of course something quite distinct from the measure and rhyme, 
 but would have been impossible without them. Or as an example of a 
 still simpler figure, equally dependent on metre for its peculiar character, 
 we may observe the effect producible by mere repetition of a word or group and as permlt- 
 
 ..,.,,, i -u J. •j.i_ -L '™S striking 
 
 of words, not as a refram which the ear expects, but with a very much repetitions of 
 more subtle charm. A beautiful case occurs in the Holy Orail — phrase."" 
 
 And he to whom she told her sins, or what 
 Her all but utter whiteness held for sin, 
 A man well-nigh a hundred winters old, 
 Spake often with her of the Holy Grail, 
 A legend handed down thro' five or six. 
 And each of these a hundred winters old, 
 From our Lord's time — 
 
 and again in Guinevere — 
 
 For still at evenings on before his horse 
 The flickering fairy-circle wheel'd and broke 
 Flying, and link'd again, and wheel'd and broke 
 Flying, for all the laud was full of life— 
 
 in both which passages the point of the repeated words clearly depends on- 
 their occurrence in identical places of the metre. 
 
444 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 § 9. The These effects, however, though not uncommon, do not of course meet 
 
 more general i i ■ i 
 
 explanation of US at every turn. To obtain the more general explanation which we 
 
 The deiight^of" require, we must notice how often in Art the enjoyment must be traced 
 
 sepOTateiy" ^^ ^^® perception of one thing in two relations, or, if we prefer it, to the 
 
 pleasurable harmonious confluence of two different lines of thing's. In the union of 
 
 things fused in " 
 
 perfect coinci- words ajid music, for instance, we see syllables and notes dominated by one 
 d6nc6 
 
 rhythm ; in the apprehension of metre, we have sounds in a frequently 
 
 varied and elastic order recognised as still under the dominance of a strict 
 scheme of stresses ; in the complete effect of verse, we see the words 
 dominated at once by the idea they express in their grammatical con- 
 nection and by their metrical adjustment. It is the application of the 
 simple metrical form, with its comparatively slight power of independent 
 impressiveness, to material expressing a meaning totally independent of it, 
 it is this function of two disparate elements, which is at the root of the effect. 
 What that effect at its best can be it is as impossible for one who has not 
 experienced it to divine, as it would be for an uninstructed person to divine 
 the result of the combination of an acid and an alkali : or we might seek 
 our metaphor in that unique sensation of musical concord, whose physical 
 condition is that two different sets of stimulation shall flow on simul- 
 taneously, but without mutual interference, in the ear ; the result of their 
 joint action being something at which nobody who had only known them 
 in separation could have given the smallest guess. In the subtler mental 
 chemistry, to the subtler poetic perception, the combination brings a totally 
 new intuition of language, a sense of surprising and exquisite correspond- 
 ence, the union of two orders multiplying a thousandfold the vividness of 
 the delight either alone could give, and fusing it into a kind of triumphant 
 affection. That outflow of nervous energy which often gives to ordinary 
 emotional expression an expansive delight unknown to our silent medi- 
 tations, has its current filled, by means of rhythm, from the deeper and 
 wider sources of our whole nervous organisation. For once physical utte- 
 rance seems adequate to our emotions and cognitions : the ictus of the 
 verse strikes living fire out of the neutral symbols of thought, so that 
 hitherto undreamed-of qualities flash forth from common words. In this 
 glow, the separate verbal units seem able to focus all the scattered sug- 
 gestiveness of their associations into a single point, so as really to fuean 
 more than in other collocations : each word, as it has been well remarked, 
 seems 'raised to a higher power.' And we should notice the bearing on 
 this general explanation of the more special points of the preceding 
 section : for any structure or use of language which seems both new and 
 natural vivifies the sense of the tvin domination to which it so willingly 
 lends itself. 
 
 This general account of the distinctive effect of verse may seem, after 
 all, to be rather a statement or description than an explanation. But it 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT JN VERSE. 445 
 
 may not be amiss to point out that psychology presents a larger number This account 
 than is usually recognised of points where the chemical analogy becomes beTather' de- 
 something more than a metaphor ; where the product resulting from the exptoationT 
 combination of certain known elements is of a kind which nothing could ^^^ ^'^^° s"- '* 
 
 ^ . . . " illustiateB an 
 
 have led us a pnori to expect ; and where the explanation can only con- important 
 sist in clearly recognising the elements and the product, plus the fact that truth, 
 the result does belong to this inscrutable department of chemical trans- 
 formation, and represents no mere summation of the impressive elements ; 
 and that this region is no mere metaphorical conception) convenient in a 
 single instance, but truly embraces a considerable number of mental 
 phenomena, which are as real and as amenable to accurate observation as 
 physical substances. 
 
 One more possible difficulty suggests itself. As the pleasure in the The mode of 
 fusion of two lines of things, which is a fundamental point in this and the variety "which 
 following chapter, may be represented as exemplifying the principle of the above 
 unity in variety, while the result of our former examination of that prin- plifies. 
 ciple in the ninth chapter was distinctly to discredit it as an explanation 
 of beauty, it may be well to point out, somewhat more explicitly than has 
 yet been done, the difference in the two sorts of cases. Here we are 
 dealing with two self-complete lines of impression, united by possessing a 
 common element — in the case of verse and song the element of words, the 
 common means by which the totally different things, rhythm and music 
 on the one hand and poetical ideas on the other, are expressed. The uni- 
 fying fact is not the mere presence of relations whereby a variety of parts 
 are construed as a whole, but the possession by a substantive and single 
 phenomenon of two utterly disparate and independent functions or aspects, 
 each with its own power of appeal. That this sort of unity in variety, 
 where the unity is a surprising and gratuitous concordance of completely 
 disparate things, should possess extraordinary aesthetic power, is clearly 
 entirely compatible with our former view that the mere perception of a 
 unity comprising a number of parts, in the absence of any further source 
 of interest in it or them (whether the whole be intellectual, like an arith- 
 metical progression, or material, like a prize-pig), is no sufficient guarantee 
 of aesthetic character. 
 
 To return to our explanation of metrical effect : a further element by The effect is 
 which it is greatly enhanced is a sense of the uniqueness of the particu- °y"the umque- 
 lar expression. There is a latent consciousness of the difficulty of con- p^gg?^^''® '*" 
 veying thought in metre, connected with the fact that only once in a 
 million times is it so conveyed, which heightens the delight in its 
 apparently spontaneous welling forth. Like statues out of shapeless blocks, 
 Poetry's most perfect utterances seem struck by magic out of the ordinary 
 everyday mass of things said and things sayable. The very familiarity 
 of the verbal material makes the beauty the more startling ; for it seems 
 
446 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 in a way more wonderful that such unknown possibilities should lie in 
 words than in marble or in notes. And thus presented, what is said takes 
 on an imperishable character. It seems said once and for ever, as though 
 it had at last attained the expression which for all time had been awaiting 
 it: it seems to belong to a universe instead of to an individual. 
 The fusion of It is of course only to exceptional works, and exceptional parts even of 
 
 physical and i i i i_ 
 
 intellectual in- great works, that such a description will fully apply : but to whatever ex- 
 
 vitaipoint in ^^'^'^ ^^ description has to be diluted, the sources of the distinctively 
 
 poetica^eSf Po^tical effect remain the same in kind. As long as the matter of what is 
 
 however vary- said retains any independent quality of interest or emotion, its gain from 
 
 mgin degree of , . , .1 r -i j ,1, 
 
 excellence. metrical presentation is due to the peculiar fusion of physical and intellec- 
 tual ingredients, to an effect which is not the sum but the resultant of its 
 elements, and to some accompanying sense of rarity and permanence. And 
 any thought or fact which has any imaginative or emotional possibilities, 
 and this too though the immediate topic be indifferent or even ugly, will 
 if forcibly expressed in verse reap in some degree the benefits of this fusion. 
 The effect is felt even where certain qualities in the metrical element seem 
 somewhat incongruous with emotional work. Some of the rhymes, for 
 instance, in Mr. Browning's Flight of the Duchess produce rather the im- 
 pression of jokes made during the performance of a symphony : but 
 the work is still distinctively a poem, and a very good one. But 
 it is naturally only the best verse that reveals how deeply and subtly 
 the elements may from the first be blended, and how little the result is 
 described by the mere imposition of metre on poetical subject-matter ; a 
 fact best brought home to us by the sense of entire untranslateableness in 
 most of the poetry which seems just the best worth translating.' 
 § 10; Differ- Differences in degree of sensitiveness to the charm of this subtly woven 
 
 «f sensitiveness movement of thought are, of course, enormous ; though it is probable that 
 even persons whose misquotations of poetry betray the greatest lack of dis- 
 tinctive perception, and who are most contemptuous of others for what 
 seems to them an inversion of the values of sound and sense, are still un- 
 consciously under the spell of measured language when they hear it. It is 
 hardly necessary to add that, though a technical acquaintance with metre 
 may certainly faciUtate the getting into sympathy with new metrical effects, 
 the essence of the perception is entirely instinctive ; and that just as 
 persons are often keenly appreciative of Music, while professing total 
 ignorance of it, so persons continually profess ignorance of metre, and be- 
 lieve that a technical knowledge of it must reveal some quite unimagined 
 pleasure, who show themselves instantly sensitive to a false or halting 
 movement. 
 
 ' De Nerval's translation of Heine's poems translation. So much worse often is the 
 
 into French verse filled the author with spurious imitation of charm than the mere 
 
 droll despair : and he particularly stipulated loss of it. 
 for literalness and prose in the English 
 
 to the charm of 
 
 verse 
 
THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 447 
 
 But while differences in the degree of the perceptive faculty are natural and marked 
 
 enough, we should hardly have been prepared for the great varieties which pUces^in which 
 
 we find in its application. Two persons equally sensitive to the subtle of ""Mi^serSi- 
 
 charm will perceive it vividly in different places, and in places where tivenessfind 
 
 _ _ 1 1 • til61DS6iV6S 
 
 sympathy with the special subject-matter can m no way be adduced as a character- 
 reason. To such an extent is this the case that Poetry, where we should fect^ by*it ; 
 expect to find and where we do find wide agreement as to the truth and 
 general excellence of what is set forth, is the art in the appreciation of 
 which the indeterminate factor is often most prominent and most tantalis- 
 ing. The unaccountable power in special things of haunting special 
 people is a fact which is perpetually obtruding itself above conventional 
 agreements ; and this seemingly fortuitous appeal can only be due to the 
 subtlest variations in the interplay of intellectual and sensuous perceptions. 
 If this were more recognised, discussion as to the relative merits af different 
 poets and poems would assume in a much increased degree the form of a 
 record of individual impressions as such, to the great advantage of sincere a fact which 
 criticism. It is so natural an impulse to try to defend logically what gives '^'fantage be 
 one intense pleasure, that one is very apt to lay stress on its tangible ex- ^".^j^ j^ 
 ternal aspects as opposed to its inner essence and magic, and to claim criticism, 
 objective validity for intangible subjective preferences. Sooner often 
 than people are wilUng to allow, the point arrives at which it is best to 
 give up the attempt at explaining in words effects which cannot even be 
 penetrated in thought ; and also to concede to others what one cannot but 
 be goaded into claiming for oneself, the admission, namely, that a thing 
 seen goes for more than a thing not seen, and that a pleasure which 
 cannot be analysed can hardly be rationally called in question. Even the 
 objective test of durability may be pressed too far, if it be made the one 
 canon of high artistic value : for literary work may fail to satisfy it owing 
 to verbiage lying a little off the main current of the language, and entailing 
 new conditions and possibilities of verbal melody which are none the less 
 genuine for their comparative transience. 
 
 It is impossible to leave this subject of the metrical element in Poetry 
 without calling attention to the extraordinary way in which not only its 
 special nature and value' but its very existence, and the peculiarity of the 
 gift involved in its highest employment, have been ignored by writers of 
 
 ' Wordsworth, for instance, whose best point which lies in the rarity of metrical in 
 
 versification has probably never been sur- comparison with vmmetrical combinations — 
 
 passed in natural magic, ponderously argues and so in an intertexture of eato-a-ordinary 
 
 for the value of mellre on the ground that its feeling with the presentation of thought in 
 
 regularity, and our sense of having come language. So true is it, in Mr, Euskin's 
 
 across it on less exciting oocasinns, introduce words, that ' an artist may be unconscious of 
 
 what he calls ' an intertexture of ordinary the principles of his own work, and may be 
 
 feeling,' which dilutes and relieves the dis- led by instinct to do all that is right, while 
 
 comfort we might experience from the poet's misled by false logic to say all that is 
 
 more painful images : ignoring the vital wrong.' 
 
448 
 
 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 § 11. The 
 funotion and 
 the very exist- 
 ence of the 
 metrical ele- 
 ment in verse 
 has often been 
 strangely 
 ignored. 
 
 Lessing ignores 
 the extent to 
 which a poet 
 is differentiated 
 by the gilt of 
 Haying; 
 
 authority. Nor does this negligence of what is so characteristic of poetical 
 beauty appear only in those general phrases and descriptions where 
 accuracy would hardly be looked for ; as when Dryden says that ' the prin- 
 cipal end of Painting is to please, of Poetry to instruct; ' or when Eeynolds 
 remarks that ' Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the 
 mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event sus- 
 pended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe ; ' which is an 
 exact description of a sensation-novel. Such sweeping simplilScations of 
 the infinitely complex channels by which art addresses us are not likely to 
 do much harm : but the case is more serious when the criticism which 
 professes to be looking narrowly into the springs of artistic delight implicitly 
 denies them all magic properties. And it is in Poetry, just because its 
 medium is the common and universal medium of ideas, that the distinctive 
 magic properties are most apt to be lost sight of. The name of poet is 
 equally misused in being defrauded of what it does and credited with what 
 it does not connote. While on the one hand the natural and pardonable 
 habit of calling all sorts of imaginative and emotional work poetical, has 
 further led, as we have already seen, to calling people poets who could no 
 more have produced a stanza of poetry than flown to the moon ; on the 
 other hand, the very fact that the subject-matter of Poetry, in the univer- 
 sality of its range, embraces that visible world with which Painting and 
 Sculpture also deal, together with the natural love of exercising ingenuity 
 in marking similarities and contrasts, has often led to the most external and 
 mechanical treatment of the special poetic art. 
 
 Thus Lessing, who set himself in the Laocoon accurately to distinguish 
 the nature and functions of poetic from those of graphic and plastic art, 
 seems never to have been able to shake off the habit of judging them in re- 
 ference to one another ; and appears so haunted by his distinctions as to have 
 lost all sense of Poetry's possessing any charm beyond the crude substance, 
 which can be handled and argued about, or any special channel of emotional 
 and artistic utterance whatever. It might so and paradoxical to say that a 
 poet is more truly differentiated by the power of saying, than by any other 
 of his qualities ; though in truth a very large part of his highest function 
 does consist in crystallising into permanent beauty what numbers have 
 seen, thought, and felt : but that he is more differentiated by the power 
 of saying than by the sort of things for which Lessing applauds him, 
 is not a paradox but simple truth. After telling us that ' with the poet 
 the execution appears to be an easier achievement than the invention,' 
 Lessing adds that, had Virgil borrowed the idea of the entwining of Laocoon 
 and his children by the serpents, ' then that merit which, in his work, we 
 hold to be the greatest and most considerable, would be wanting, and the 
 lesser merit alone remain. For to create this entwining in the imagination 
 is a far greater achievement than the expression of it in words. On the 
 
THi: SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 449 
 
 other hand, if the sculptor had borrowed this entwining from the poet, he 
 would still in our estimation have attained sufficient merit, although the 
 merit of invention would have been wanting. For expression in marble is 
 infinitely more difficult than expression in words.' So Virgil's power of 
 verbal expression is, apparently, quite an everyday affair. The words, in- 
 deed, according to Lessing, best show their excellence, like a gentleman's 
 dress, by escaping notice altogether. ' The poet desires to make us believe 
 ourselves to be as conscious of his objects as if they were actually present 
 to our senses ; and in the moment of illusion we cease to be conscious of 
 the means, that is of the words, which he employs for this purpose.' ' And 
 clearly if we are to forget the words, a fortiori shall we neglect their 
 rhythm. We noticed before how Lessing's vaunted discovery that words 
 are successive and visible traits coincident,^ led him to the wonderful con- 
 clusion that Poetry has no business with description, except of physical 
 actions in successive parts ; but still more wonderful is the fact that his 
 perpetual dwelling on this successiveness of words has never once led him 
 to remark on their metrical adjustment as an element in poetic effect. 
 That is to say, a book which still enjoys the highest fame as a luminous 
 exposition of the nature and relations of Poetry contains not one word 
 which is not equally applicable to prose. 
 
 any two visions of it that I call up alike. 
 For visualising purposes I should be much 
 assisted by knowing how many windows the 
 cottage had, where the door was, how many 
 trees there were about, and so on. Never- 
 theless I would assert with confidence that 
 the stanza has produced in me, and doubtless 
 in many others, greater rushes of delightful 
 emotion than the sight of what is described 
 has ever produced in any human being. 
 
 ^ There is one point in connection with 
 this distinction Which is often not suffi- 
 ciently recognised ; namely, that in Poetry 
 the parts and details of a work may be more 
 dissociated from the main subject and 
 dominant ideas than in Painting, where 
 details are commonly regarded in intimate 
 relation and subordination to the whole ; 
 whence it follows that an inferior poem may 
 contain a great deal of very superior poetry. 
 Mr. Rossetti's warmest admirers would pro- 
 bably admit an instance of the sort in Jenny, 
 where the subject and tone are disagreeable, 
 without the excuse of high originality, and 
 the concluding bit of moralising, which gives 
 the idea of being meant for a justification 
 of the poem, is a weak and irrelevant ad- 
 junct; while of some of the beauties of 
 detail, both in thought and expression, it 
 would be hard to speak too higlily. 
 
 G 
 
 and consideM 
 the ideal state 
 to consist in 
 total uncon- 
 sciousness of the 
 poet's words, 
 and d fortiori 
 of his rhythm. 
 
 ' This creation of illvMon, on which 
 Lessing harps a good deal, is an obvious figi 
 ment. The faculty of sight is here in fact 
 as falsely glorified as that of hearing is con- 
 tumeliously ignored. The power distinctly 
 to visualise imaginary objects is one which 
 is possessed in most various degrees, but, in 
 the degree of perfection wnioh could give 
 rise to anything approaching illusion, is ex- 
 tremely rare. Happily it is quite unneces- 
 sary either to the production or appreciation 
 of poetical description ; the very point of 
 which is to seize on the /i?n) points which im- 
 press the imagination, and to omit the Truvny 
 which would be seen by the eye. I men- 
 tioned in a former chapter that Lessing gives 
 as a typical, and according to him excellent, 
 poetical description of an object, a minute 
 and laborious catalogue of a bouquet of 
 flowers. I hope he enjoyed the ' illusion ' 
 which the description produced : but it is 
 worth while to quote an instance of the other 
 kind. Take the stanza — 
 
 Fair is her cottage in its place 
 Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides. 
 It sees itself from thatch to base 
 Dream in the sliding tides. 
 
 I cannot call up any vision of this scene 
 which gives me any vivid pleasure, nor are 
 
450 THE SOUND-ELEMENT IN VERSE. 
 
 The above Qn this point it is easy to foresee, and equally easy to forestall, an 
 
 cnticiam can- . ^ -' t -i j j 
 
 not possibly objection, to the effect that any imaginative work in words, whether or not 
 
 into a mere possessing the form which makes it technically Poetry, is fairly included 
 
 irtoh^rmu"^ ^"^der that term, and that the Grerman Dichtung has no technical restric- 
 
 the'^tom"'* tion and naturally suggests the wider sense. The objection is quite ir- 
 
 Poetn/ shall relevant. It was fully recognised in the third chapter that the highest 
 include. ... jo j. 
 
 imaginative work might be presented apart from poetical lorm : and it 
 
 would be just as well if we had in English a generic term for all imagina- 
 tive work in words. But the dispute here is not a verbal one : I am not 
 so foolish as to attack a Grerman about the use of a Grerman word : what I 
 complain of is his professing accurately to describe and distinguish the 
 branches of Art, while ignoring the distinctive character of a most remark- 
 able branch, which was constantly before his eyes and from which all his 
 examples of the more generic Dichtung are taken ; a branch which atten- 
 tion to the emotions connected with it (unless this chapter has been pure 
 nonsense) will show to have as good a claim to be considered single and 
 unique as Painting or Music ; the branch, namely, which in English we 
 call poetry, in contradistinction to prose. The importance of this branch, 
 and of the peculiar emotions connected with it, cannot be affected by the 
 accident that the Grermans have no specific name for it : and indeed the 
 absence of the name only makes it, if anything, more incumbent on a 
 Grerman than on an English writer to bring out clearly the differentia of 
 the thing. 
 
451 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Suppose an intelligent and sensitive child to have been bom deaf, and § i- Imagin- 
 after arriving at an age of intelligence to obtain his hearing.' During a deaf chad who 
 week or two let him get accustomed to hear conversation around him, heari^. " 
 conducted by persons with sweet and gentle voices ; and then introduce 
 him into the society of persons with loud and grating voices: he will 
 without doubt be unpleasantly struck by the contrast. Now let him hear 
 a few good vocalists sing a series of musical passages. He will find the 
 sounds pleasanter than any he had heard in conversation, and might per- 
 haps find excitement in trying to imitate them with his own voice : also 
 he might reasonably ask why all the world, when they want to use their 
 voices in speech, do not employ these pleasanter sounds, and might be 
 told that only a minority of voices can produce them sufficiently well to 
 be agreeable, and that even they are rapidly exhausted by so doing'. The 
 point to notice is that in the second case equally with the first the pro- He will first be 
 
 , , ,. - , struck bv the 
 
 minent phenomenon to him at the first blush would be the quality of the quaUtt/ o"f vocal 
 
 sounds. But let him now get thoroughly accustomed both to speech and ' 
 
 singing, and two things will happen in due course. In the first place, as 
 
 his knowledge of language and his delight in comprehending it increase, 
 
 he will find that the singing delivery of words makes them decidedly harder 
 
 to catch, and will often make unavailing efforts to follow them. In the 
 
 second place, he will find that, even when he fails in this attempt, he receives 
 
 from the sounds new and increasing pleasure of quite a different sort both 
 
 from the intellectual pleasure of comprehension and also from his first 
 
 sensuous pleasure in their sweet quality : he will find that he is gratified by 
 
 certain successions, and that he gets to look out for these when the same 
 
 song is repeated ; and that even when the voice sings nothing to the tune 
 
 but the syllable la over and over again, this gratification remains unaltered. 
 
 He will also find that the pleasure in rhythm which he may have received 
 
 before he obtained his hearing, from seeing soldiers march past the 
 
 window or from watching his sisters dance, forms a most distinct part in 
 
 this new pleasure ; that he can stamp his foot to the music with even 
 
 ' If this supposition is too violent, vfe of reach of hearing either music or speech 
 may suppose the child to be simply kept out during his early years. 
 
 9 2 
 
452 SONG. 
 
 greater zest than he did to the soldiers. And, if we suppose hi ji to be 
 
 musically organised, another experience will follow. Some one may chirp 
 
 the tune of Rule Britannia to him, using absolutely the minimum of 
 
 but will vocal resonance and only just suggesting the notes, and if he is asked what 
 
 f/wnThat it is it was he will answer, ' Music : ' whereas if the same question is asked 
 
 /orm which g^f^gj. gQj^g oratorical effort delivered in the most resonant and beautiful voice, 
 
 conatitutris ^ 
 
 Music. he will answer, ' It was a speech,' or ' It was a sermon,' but certainly not It 
 
 was music' In other words, his sense of melodic /orm is now established, 
 
 and may go on developing uninterruptedly : so that looking back over 
 
 his experiences he will smile at his first idea that the mere sweetness of 
 
 sound which once so surprised him was what people must mean by music' 
 
 § 2. To such To a person in the circumstances we have imagined, the possession 
 
 "Ssi^n'bv ^y ^^^ ^^0^°® °^ two completely distinct faculties would be brought home 
 
 the Toice of" -with exceptional vividness. The voice in fact, alone among our special 
 
 two distinct 1 J. • 1 u j-1^ 
 
 faculties would Organs, exercises by itself, without the use of any external material, botn 
 brought'ou" ^ a function of utility and a function of art ; constituting on the one hand a 
 medium for the symbols of speech, and on the other a musical instrument 
 which, when in perfection, may seem preferable to all others, and even 
 when of quite inferior quality can still present melodic forms to our ears 
 with perfect clearness and intelligibility. Now for us, in our present stage 
 of experience, it is easy to see that the, voice may combine one of its 
 faculties with the other after various fashions and on various grounds. 
 It may use notes in delivering the words it has to say, as a means of 
 making them emphatic and widely audible ; or it may use words in de- 
 livering the notes it has to siny, in order to avoid the inanity of using 
 meaningless syllables ; for its normal • business being comprehensible 
 speech, this line of utterance is so associated with it that a protracted 
 absence of words would be noticed as absurd. Between these two extremes 
 there are, of course, all varieties of mean : but in the existence of the 
 extremes we see how radically distinct (though compatible) are the aims, 
 emphasis for words and expression for Music, to which the voice may direct 
 its more resonant utterance. We cannot, however, suppose that in the 
 early dawn of human history any distinct consciousness of the duality of 
 vocal function would present itself. We need not recur here to the in- 
 teresting question whether or no the voice was in a rudimentary way an 
 organ of Music before it was an organ of Speech, that is, whether it was 
 used to give pleasure before it was used to convey meaning. It is suffi- 
 
 ' It would be Interesting to discover how curious completeness in the silent realisation 
 
 far a sense of melodic form could be deve- of music in the head, that it would not at all 
 
 loped in a musical child without any asso- surprise me to learn that a love of fine 
 
 elation at all with beauty of colour or timbre melody could be formed on a course of the 
 
 in the sounds. The sense of beauty or of Jew's harp. But children so instinctively sing 
 
 any definite characteristic in the colour- and hum the tunes they care about that the 
 
 quality of notes is abstractable with such experiment cannot be considered practicable. 
 
SOJVa. 453 
 
 cient to notice that since to articulate-speaking men Speech is a most The two fuac- 
 constant and prominent fact of life, besides being both a chief result and early united in 
 a chief organ of development, if there be any other use of the vocal appa- s"n™''"'"^ 
 ratus which (however remote in origin and essence) is compatible with 
 the primary function, it is natural to look for the earliest and the closest 
 connections between the two. Now there is no doubt that as an instru- 
 ment of utility the voice early reached a comparatively high pitch of 
 development, while as an instrument of art it could not of course forestall 
 or outstrip the art to which it belonged ; and Music till quite modem 
 times was still, comparatively speaking, in its infancy. While, therefore, 
 rhythmic noises and excited cries may have been a natural joy and relief 
 to our ancestors during long prehistoric ages, still in the development of 
 Song in our present conception of it, as the meeting point of Speech and 
 Music, Speech — that is, the intentional utterance of intelligible words — -may 
 conveniently be looked on as the primary central factor ; and in its gradual 
 transformation by the other factor it will be interesting to note under what 
 kind of influence and in what kind of way the points which differentiate 
 Song from ordinary vocal utterances would naturally present themselves. 
 
 What, then, are these differentiating points ? Two of them will be § 3. Three 
 at once obvious even to a person with no musical ear : such a person differentiate 
 hearing an ordinary song will see that the sounds differ from those of Si'ngfnim 
 ordinary speech by being resonant, that is, produced by the ' singing resonance, 
 voice,' and by presenting a certain regularity of rhythmic accent. The ag^ent"'" 
 varieties of pitch which the tones present will not strike him as involving 
 a difference, since the tones of speech also vary in pitch, and without a 
 musical ear he will not detect any special reasonableness in the particular 
 succession of intervals presented in the song. But there is a third differ- 
 ence which can hardly fail sooner or later to strike him, and that is that 
 the song consists of sounds each single and definite i/n pitch ; that the and definite- 
 voice lands securely and keeps steadily on each note and does not glide and aound in pitch, 
 shift uncertainly up and ^own in undefinable stages. He might enquire 
 why this is the case, and whether it would not be possible to keep to the 
 natural pitch of the words as spoken, while giving them the added emphasis 
 and sonority of the musical timbre. We could give to him a more satis- 
 factory answer than was possible to the child whose sense of hearing was 
 quite new. We could show him by experiment that the attempt to imitate 
 the intonation of speech in song, to make resonant and bring out as a 
 distinct note each embryonic and imperfect tone of our ordinary sentences, 
 ludicrously fails. Even to discover what is the pitch of the main vowel- 
 sounds in a sentence requires a good ear and considerable practice, and the 
 glidings and transitions — occurring even on single syllables — are far too rapid 
 and spasmodic for resonant utterance, which in attempting to render them 
 falls into simple hee-hawing : moreover the sounds which are only noises, 
 
454 SONG. 
 
 and having no musical character have a fortiori no assignable pitches, form 
 prinoMe would ^^ "^^V^^ Speech a preponderating majority. To return, then, to our three 
 underlie the Settled characteristics of song, reffularitv of rhythm, resonance of timbre, 
 
 combination of j j c -^ ^ • , „ , , ,,t , i i 
 
 the rhythmic ^^'^ aetmiteness of pitch for each successive sound. We have seen how close 
 othe/two ? "** ^^ nature is the connection between the second and third of these factors ; 
 but clearly the second and third can exist without the first, as in the 
 rhythmless vocal deliverances of a town-crier; and the first can exist 
 without the second and third, as when we read John Oilpin aloud in an easy 
 unemotional way ; and we should not consider either case to be an ex- 
 ample of Song. It remains, then, to ascertain what fact or principle would 
 naturally underlie the combination of the factor of rhythm with those of 
 resonant timbre and definite pitch in early vocal manifestations. 
 § 4. Emo- To this end it will be useful to approach the subiect from another side, 
 
 tion, when not , , . ^ '^ •' 
 
 Violent and nn- ^na try to realise m what ways emotion acts on utterance. We perceive 
 on^utt«ra'nce ' ^^ °'^*'^ ^^^* violent. Undignified, and unrestrained emotion results in spas- 
 BeveraU^ortTof ^°'^^° irregular vocalisation, and in sounds containing less than the ordi- 
 regularity : nary amount of musical timbre, with a predominance of unmusical noises 
 and abortive Teachings at notes above or below the musical register of the 
 voice ; but that ordered and elevated emotion, on the other hand, tends 
 naturally to sonority and regularity of utterance. And the regularity may 
 take several forms, affecting both the pitch and the time of the sounds, 
 d **°d"te" ''■™' ^^^^^' ^® regards pitch, if we wish to give solemn and emphatic utterance 
 ate tones with- to a deeply felt sentiment, we increase the resonance of our voice and 
 limits of pitch, approximate to determinate musical tones; but what is more, the regis- 
 ter of our voices in such a case naturally confines itself within narrow 
 limits of pitch. For in using increased resonance we instinctively select 
 the few notes which try and fatigue our voice least ; and also since (as 
 already pointed out) the imitation of ordinary intonation, as it might be 
 used by a person saying the same sentence with no emotional interest 
 in it, is impracticable, and it never occurs to us even to attempt it, there 
 seems no object in using one note more than another, so that we instinc- 
 tively gravitate towards monotone. Secondly, as regards tiTne, all de- 
 liberate and dignified emotional speech aims at some sort of evenness and 
 and some sort balance of Syllable and phrase, or at any rate finds the imposition of such 
 
 of rhythmical , , . ,, . , / , , 
 
 balance. balance suitable to its character : and any utterance which was specially 
 
 intended to attract auditors, to arrest attention and gain permanent re- 
 membrance, would naturally clothe itself in some sort of verse ; that is, 
 would adopt metrical divisions presenting something that the ear counts 
 on, accepts gladly, and retains easily.' 
 
 ' It seems to be a natural instinct to im- was impossible for tbem to repeat a column 
 pose some certainty both of rhythm and of spelling or recite a lesson without chant- 
 pitch on words with a view to remembering ing or singing it. ' The same habit may 
 them. We are told that when the Sandwich often be noticed in children. 
 Islanders ' first began to read and spell, it 
 
SONG. 455 
 
 Here, then, in recitation of verse, we find a chance for all three factors Recitation of 
 
 and a natural stage in the evolution of Song. The wish to be widely gives a chance 
 
 audible would naturally limit the reciter to the register where his voice the^abo've-* "^ 
 
 was strongest, and also the emotion connected with verse would, as in the "'entioned 
 
 " ' ' points. 
 
 case of other deliberately emotional speech, tend to a limited number of 
 sonorous tones : and under the aegis of rhythm, resonance and certainty of 
 tone would pass out of the sphere of the town-crier's utterances and enter 
 the region of art. For here we have a departure from ordinary intonation 
 justified not only by emotional quality in the words but by a distinctly 
 musical pleasure, the combination of definite tones with regularity of 
 accent, that is, with a feature imposed on words by artifice. Even pure 
 monotone would often find itself in place : for wholly blank as it is of 
 emotional power when in an amorphous state, since the mere sensuous 
 pleasure derived from the most beautiful voice rapidly palls on the sense 
 in the absence of form, it may readily be vitalised and dignified by acting 
 as a substratum to the varied motion of metre. 
 
 It may be well to remark, by the way, what was made abundantly clear The mde ap- 
 in the chapter on the factors of melodic form, that the sense and enjoyment rhythm'to 
 of rhythm, of regular recurrence of stimuli, is something far more general ^^g^' j" not'^ 
 than this particular application to utterance : and the rhythmic sense, even '" ^^ ^''ken aa 
 
 •^ •■ •- ./ / implying any 
 
 in a very early stage of human development, is far truer and keener than want of acute- 
 
 Tipss in tjri6 
 
 would be perceived if we only attended to this single application. Early rhythmic 
 verse is metrically rude, not because the sense of simple rhythm is imper- '*°^*' 
 feet, but because the moulding of words into metre is a matter of advanced 
 skill, and doubly difficult with the unabundant words of a rude language ; 
 while a very slight admixture of the rhythmic element might be thankfully 
 accepted by ears which could not but perceive that it was an unwonted 
 gratuity in the domain of speech. Thus in the impromptu recitations, 
 narratives, and lampoons so common among barbarians, metrical features 
 may be present only in a very embryonic form : but this does not prove 
 that musical elements are being gradually evolved out of speech, but that 
 the process of application to speech of a musical element already deeply 
 rooted in the organism was necessarily a gradual one. Dancing, clapping, 
 stamping, use of percussive instruments, all those means of producing true 
 regularity of stimulation which present no intrinsic difficulty, are among 
 the most universal features of savage life, and the accuracy of their em- 
 ployment is a subject of perpetual comment. The full importance of this 
 point will appear in the next chapter. 
 
 In vocal utterances, the natural way for metre to make its first entrance 
 is simple repetition of phrase, either immediately, or at intervals in the 
 fashion of a refrain,' which would clearly gain much in efi"ect by appearing 
 
 ' Mr. Spencer's tables of Descriptive Socio- of the Tasmanians are described as all 
 loffy supply numeroue instances. The chants abounding in ' repetitions of words or lines 
 
456 
 
 SONG. 
 
 % 5. Mea- 
 sured intoning 
 would gra- 
 dually lend it- 
 self to melodic 
 formation ; 
 
 which would 
 more and more 
 assert its right 
 to subordinate 
 the words and 
 syllables to its 
 own rhythms. 
 
 on a more or less even and monotonous ground. And it is easy to see 
 how this measured intoning, which at first presents in respect of pitch 
 such negative characteristics, would lend itself to melodic formation. 
 The refrains and, as metre developed, the ends of the lines, would give 
 opportunity for recurrence of definite successions of notes, and these re- 
 currences and cadence.s might grow in number. Meanwhile the gradual 
 development of a feeling for regular ratios between notes, in other words, 
 the formation of a scale-system with fixity of intervals, would con- 
 tinue in connection with all musical manifestations, as the result of the 
 existence, in however rudimentary a form, of purely musical (as opposed 
 to poetical) instincts ; instruments with a fixed succession of notes would 
 guide and sustain the voice ; and as the combination of pitch-ratios with 
 time-ratios is the essence of all the endless combinations of melodic form, 
 the voice in its various trials was sure to break through the bounds imposed 
 by the normal lengths of syllables. We have seen how absolute and 
 accurate Music is in the employment of both its factors ; while words can 
 yield themselves to these strict requirements without any loss of intelligi- 
 bility. When, then, the power of appreciating more complicated melodic 
 phrases had been developed, the voice would naturally not debar itself 
 from delivering them by any sense of duty to the length of syllables 
 natural in the normal delivery of speech. One syllable might be held for 
 several notes, unimportant words and syllables might be held for as long a 
 time as important ones, words might be repeated. Glaring reversals of 
 natural verbal accents could be easily avoided ; but while avoiding them 
 the melodic rhythm might lift the words wholly into its own region, 
 justifying the transformation of their flow by the inherent agreeableness of 
 the resulting form. 
 
 in a monotonous but not inharmonious 
 strain.' They have a guttural termination 
 to all their songs, which is also a war-cry, 
 ' Balla ugh, Balla ugh, Ugh, ugh.' A more 
 developed stage is represented in Sandwich 
 Island poetry, where ' the chief art appears 
 to consist in the compilation of short metrical 
 sentences, agreeing in accent and cadence at 
 the conclusion of each, or at the end of a 
 certain number of sentences.' It is curious 
 to remark that the musical instinct often 
 carries the day over the meaning of the 
 words. The author of the League of the Iro- 
 qiuiis says, ' Their war-songs are in a dead 
 language, or at all events the Iroquois are 
 unable to interpret them. They are in regu- 
 lar verses, or measured sentences, and were 
 learned by them with the dance originally.' 
 So the songs of the Dafeotas are described as 
 consisting principally in the repetition of 
 
 unmeaning syllables. The Todas, a hill 
 tribe of India, have a gamut of five or six 
 notes, which they 'run through in a breath, 
 beginning with the lowest and ascending 
 to the highest, over and over again 
 without variation.' Among the Mandans, 
 ' every dance has its own peculiar song ; and 
 that is so intricate and mysterious that not 
 one in ten of the young men who are dancing 
 and singing it know the meaning of the song 
 which they are chanting over.' We are told 
 that among the remains of Mexican poetry 
 ' are some verses in which, between words 
 that are significative, interjections or sylla- 
 bles are interposed, devoid of any meaning, 
 and only made use of to adjust the measure.' 
 This is a remarkable instance of good ear ; 
 and it is satisfactory to learn of such a 
 people that ' on festivals they continued 
 singing the whole day.' 
 
SONG. 
 
 457 
 
 Any modern song, and almost any bar in it, will show the subnlission in modem 
 
 Song this right 
 is exercised in 
 
 of the syllables to the melodic moulding in the whole department of 
 rhythm. Take, for example, the two following simple melodic strains : 
 
 i 
 
 ii=p-?E=P: 
 
 5 
 
 : 4- | — r =t 
 
 rmt 
 
 ^ 
 
 :^- 
 
 q=]=t 
 
 qi=J=i^; 
 
 -A-- 
 
 "^^ 
 
 &c. 
 
 — I — 
 
 Go young man, let my heart a - lone, 'Twill be a pris - 'ner Unto none; 
 
 t 
 
 f^Z^ 
 
 Ifei 
 
 P=^=^ 
 
 ipzi«5 
 
 3Ft^-'^ 
 
 ^-- 
 
 :p2: 
 
 S=K- 
 
 l^-ifzir-^. 
 
 ^=^ 
 
 :*=i= 
 
 ' We noticed in the last chapter that 
 among the Greeks the far more careful 
 attention to quantity in the words as spoken, 
 and the far greater simplicity of musical 
 
 strains, made the close adaptation of musical 
 bars to verse-feet possible. Probably the 
 correspondence of word-rhythm and note- 
 rhythm was with them about as close nor- 
 
 its fullest 
 extent. 
 
 " While I lis - ten to thy voice, Chlo-ris, I feel my life de - cay. 
 
 In the first of these couplets, two at least of the syllables which, if the 
 lines are read, receive accents, heart and he, fall on an unaccented petrt of 
 the bar, and the small and unemphatic words my and "'twill on the accented 
 beat ; and of two lines of equal length one occupies four bars of musicj the 
 other only two and a third. In the second couplet, written by Henry 
 Lawes, who was noted for his natural and easy setting of words, the musical 
 rhythm is still more markedly independent. Yet both sound as right as 
 possible : the new rhythm (which of course would never be thought of 
 except in connection with the actual melody ) seems as natural to the words 
 as their own independent one. Far more violent instances are of constant 
 occurrence : thus in a song through the greater part of which the normal 
 verse-rhythm is retained in an exceptional degree, ruddier than the 
 cherry, there is a passage where the first syllable of the word bluster is 
 held for thirty-three notes, without seeming the least absurd. We naturally 
 find the proviso that accented syllables fall, as a rule, for the most part on 
 accented notes ; but, this one rule being observed, the melodically altered 
 rhythm of the words is so completely justified to the ear, that it is hard 
 to perceive, without deUberate examination, how completely in many 
 instances the normal spoken rhythm has been departed from, atid what 
 wholly new diorations and conditions are imposed on the syllables. Many 
 poems have been set again and again to music, the melodies differing 
 utterly in the details of their rhythm. It follows that under this handling 
 the peculiar charm of which natural verse-rhythm is a factor is very apt 
 to vanish ; whence the wrath we have most of us experienced at musical 
 versions of familiar and cherished lyrics : while, en revanche, the exquisite 
 sense of fusion when the flow and balance of the metrical lines is preserved 
 in the flow of a beautiful melody is quite unique in quality. It may be 
 added, that it is through the power of Music to impose its own rhythms 
 in perfect independence that prose as well as verse can be used fof 
 setting ; as, for instance, in Handel's oratorios.' 
 
458 SOJVG. 
 
 The voice's Of course the change whereby the voice, while acting as the organ of 
 
 itself as an developed speech, asserted itself as a musical — as distinct from a verbal — 
 musFo™ iMtru- instrument, must in early days have been very gradual, depending on the 
 very gradual ^^'^^ growth of the musical art. It had progressed far enough in Plato's 
 process. time to meet with his strongest reprobation ; and reached its climax in 
 
 some of the ecclesiastical music of the later middle ages, where all idea of 
 
 intelligibility for the words was lost sight of. 
 § 6. Sum- So far, then, our results are as follows. We found no basis for art in 
 
 maryot results. . 
 
 mere sonority, and we found it was impossible to sing ordinary speech : 
 but in the intoning of verse a common ground presented itself where 
 words were intelligible and audible and where elementary musical form 
 was possible ; and when the development of melodic structure involved 
 greater complexity of rhythm, the words could be made to follow, retaining 
 for the most part their main accents, but otherwise very malleable. Thus 
 in respect of pitch we seem to have passed from speech to Song by a kind 
 of tabula rasa of monotone or something approximating to it, on which 
 the various intervals of developing music gradually worked. But the 
 following question may occur : as there is, beyond metre, a second forma- 
 tive factor in developed melody, namely, the definite proportions of the 
 pitch-intervals, and as the metre has been shown to present an art-basis 
 while the other factor was absent or wholly inchoate, was it out of the 
 question that this other factor should also on its own account form a 
 WouIl' it have similar basis ? After finding reproduction of the shifting and indefinite 
 find a satisfac- sounds of Speech impossible in the singing voice, we immediately fell back 
 tfl-inoipleTn the ^^ metre for a formative principle, whereas (it might be urged) there 
 pitch-relations seems to be no a priori impossibility of finding a satisfactory formative 
 
 of notes, apart -^ r j a j 
 
 from musical principle iu certain ratios of intervals, while retaining the natural un- 
 measured flow of speech. 
 
 Now if we regard the historic development of Song, the answer is 
 this : that the feeling for regularity of rhythmic impression is a natural 
 fact of the organism, lying as deep in our natures as any instinct we have, 
 and traceable to ages long previous to the dawn of distinctly intellectual 
 processes ; while systems of pitch-intervals are numerous and empirical, 
 and have been gradually developed by conscious artistic efforts : so that 
 emotional and poetic speech found the sense for metrical regularity and 
 
 In historical recurrence ready to hand and i/nstinctively utilised it ; whereas the asso- 
 ciation of particular utterances with particular sets of notes would have 
 involved the perpetual artificial production of new forms from the 
 elements of some scale- system which in early times could only have an 
 inchoate or a potential existence, that is, the making of bricks without 
 
 mally as in the cases where it is closest with vocal music the notes often disregarded and 
 us. It is therefore the more noticeable that reversed the natural lengths and rhythm of 
 we are expressly told that even in Greek the syllables. 
 
 development, 
 nu 
 
SOiVG. 459 
 
 straw. And apart from historic development, if we regard actual subse- 
 quent possibilities, the question whether, given a complete and convenient and even after 
 scale-system, the ratios of the intervals afford material out of which beau- mento™a*scaie- 
 tiful melodic forms can be built independently of a strict metrical element, system, atiU no, 
 may seem still easier to answer, and indeed to be quite out of place at this 
 stage of our enquiry : so evident was it, in our consideration of melodic forms, 
 that as regards sequences of unaccompanied tones the answer must be no ; 
 that what is essentially a resultant of two factors cannot dispense with one 
 of them ; that a very small number of rhythmless tones may indeed form 
 a connected (and to quite undeveloped ears even an agreeable) group, 
 though in the very act of imagining them it is difficult to avoid investing 
 them with some kind of accent ; but that in a longer series the ear gets 
 quite astray and finds no organic coherence in the mere pitch-relations of the 
 constituent notes. Where attention is occupied with words, an occasional 
 breaking of monotone by such groups may be a relief to the ear, as in some 
 of the intoning and chanting one hears in foreign churches ; but we do not 
 find in them a true basis for the development of melodic organism any more 
 than in a succession of birds' calls, and no melodic faculty which had ad- 
 vanced beyond the embryonic stage could rest content with such fragments. 
 
 But there is a special reason for recurring to the point in connection 
 with Song. For, it may be urged, does not much of what is known in 
 modern music as recitative consist of such a rhythmically loose structure,' 
 while nevertheless it seems to justify itself to the musical sense ? Yes ; 
 but this is owing to a musical element the very name of which transports until we arrive 
 us at a step not only from savage strains, but from the most developed "jye ekmdlat of 
 music of antiquity, to the modern era, namely. Harmony ; in our discussion "*'™<«»y- 
 of which in a former chapter it may be remembered that the point of its 
 special relation to recitative was purposely, deferred. 
 
 We must now refer for a moment to what we found, in that chapter, 
 
 ' It should be specially realised that it is tions and necessities, no evident approxima- 
 
 in rhythm (or rather in lack of rhythm, ao- tion would be possible even to an intonation 
 
 cording to the use which restricts that word of the words which, by slow and disconnected 
 
 to a regularly accented series), and not (as utterance, was made as free as possible from 
 
 many seem to suppose) in ^iic7i, that modern the predominant unmusical elements. And 
 
 recitative conforms, more or less, to the though, from the negative and conventional 
 
 natural speech-delivery : for on this point character which is frequent in recitative, the 
 
 the ear is easily deceived by the famiUar notes may seem to present less marked difEer- 
 
 effect which the approximation to speech- ences from the tones of solemn speech than 
 
 rhythm produces. It is clear, in the first do those of a developed tune, any one may 
 
 place, that, while the natural s'peeah-rhythm find by trial that if he takes the words of 
 
 of a sentence is obvious and admits of com- a good recitative and speaks them with 
 
 paratively little variety, the same words may deliberate emphasis, and then compares the 
 
 be naturally pronounced with many different result with the musical notes, these go up 
 
 intonations, none of which can claim special where his went down and vice versa as often 
 
 validity. But apaTt from this, since the as not, and that they present no sort of 
 
 musical notes form intervals belonging to an certain resemblance in their intervals, 
 artificial scale, and have purely musical rela- 
 
460 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Effect of 
 harmonic ac- 
 companiment 
 on recitative. 
 
 § 7. Tlier6 
 are all degrees 
 between the 
 barrenest reci- 
 tative and 
 melody proper. 
 
 to be involved in a series of chords unconnected with melody and embody- 
 ing no rhythmic motive. We saw that in such a series, each chord, being 
 composed of parts, has what a single note can never have, a sort of form of 
 its own, depending on the simultaneously felt relations of the notes which 
 compose it ; and that if we take two in succession, we may get a decidedly 
 greater aesthetic effect from the changing harmony (e.g. in the resolution 
 of a discord) than is possible from the sheer emptiness of an isolated couple 
 of single notes. A longer series of chords may exhibit all degrees of firm- 
 ness or looseness of form : it may have a definite purport and structure 
 which may be grasped as a unity, in which case the ear probably insists 
 on hearing it in some kind of accented rhythm ; or it may have no such 
 organism, each transition or minor group being accepted as pleasing on its 
 own account, not as a necessary member of a whole. For one person who can 
 invent a fine melody, thousands, as we saw, can sit down and string to- 
 gether or ' improvise ' chords and piecemeal modulations of the latter kind, 
 which on a fine instrument may have an agreeable effect for a short time ; 
 while on an orchestra they may be embroidered with all sorts of instrumental 
 passages. And such series can and do stand in musical compositions as jus- 
 tification, support, and connection for notes and phrases which have little 
 or no melodic coherence of their own. Recitative so supported serves as a 
 specially convenient vehicle for the emphatic and intelligible declamation 
 of words, since the rhythm of the words as naturally spoken can be 
 followed in it. And as the old rhythmic chant, with its monotonous pitch 
 iand its few cadences, had formed a natural feature of recitation in the old 
 days of bardic poetry,' so this totally different modern recitative, with its 
 varieties of pitch and its relaxed rhythm, found in the church and in the 
 theatre plenty of scope for its services. 
 
 There are of course all degrees between melody proper and such 
 an extreme as the kind of recitative which serves no more artistic 
 purpose than to make words more or less pleasingly audible through 
 large spaces. Truly admirable proportions of melodic and harmonic 
 structure are compatible with a certain amount of metrical license : 
 to take the simplest possible instance, such a recitative as Behold, a 
 virgin shall conceive is really in the balance of its members a complete 
 organism ; and the works of Handel, Bach, and Gluck, would supply 
 numbers of more elaborate examples. The safe general test is the nega- 
 
 > The Ambrosian chanting probably ap- 
 proximated to this ancient sort of recitative, 
 being attentive to accent and quantity during 
 the prevailing monotone, and reserving 
 melodic adornment for the ends of phrases. 
 The later ecclesiastical ' plain-song ' seems 
 to have been deficient in rhythmic accent, 
 but here the lim-monic element appeared, 
 first in the barbarous 'diaphony' and 'des- 
 
 cant,' and with gradually developing variety 
 and refinement. With respect to the 
 rhythm, however, it must be borne in mind 
 that the actual mode of performance is lost 
 to us, owing to the extreme imperfection of 
 mediaeval notation, exemplified, e.g., in the 
 absence of bars and the omission of written 
 sharps and flats in places where they were 
 certainly used by the singer. 
 
SONG. 461 
 
 tive one : if, in a set of bars, the relative durations of the bars themselves, 
 or the relative time-lengths of sounds and silences which they seyerally 
 comprise, are susceptible of change, if no sense of dislocation results when 
 changes are introduced, there is present no motive sufficiently organic and 
 vertebrate to be capable of being dislocated. Abundant exercise in the 
 application of the test will be afforded by the quotations in § 3 of the chap- 
 ter on Opera. 
 
 But the actual place of recitative in modern music can only be un- 
 derstood by the light of a few historical facts. In the development of the art 
 through the course of the middle ages, the governing power was Polyphony. 
 The effect of the conjunction of two or more voices, blending and yet distinct, 
 seemed to open up a new world ; and the ingenuity of centuries was lavished 
 in the working out of contrapuntal tissues, inspired at first by the mere 
 enjoyment of watching the windings and meetings and passings of the 
 independent parts, and developed by slow degrees to accordance with a 
 definite foundation of true harmonic progressions. Since, therefore, the 
 attention of scientific musicians had been occupied by these matters, it was 
 natural that, when solo-singing made its entrance into their works, it 
 should be modest in its claims. The notes did not take possession of the Solo-singing 
 words and embody them in complete melodic organisms, but followed entrance into 
 them phrase by phrase, giving such expression as was possible in a more ^"iJyP*" 
 or less fragmentary way, and often retaining with but slight modification 
 much of the natural spoken rhythm even of unmetrical words, while the 
 musical intelligibility was in great measure sustained by the support of 
 the accompanying chords. This loose form of structure reached a higher 
 organic development and a perfection of its own in the aria parlante of 
 Carissimi and the recitative of Pelham Humphreys at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century. But the fixing of the modem tonal system,' with the 
 unmistakable definition of key by the dominant chord, was now practically 
 complete ; and in the contrasts and aifinities of keys and endless facilities 
 for modulation lay the means for that immense development in the treat- 
 ment of distinct rhythmic motive which makes it as cardinal a feature of 
 elaborate compositions as of popular song : and harmony, while losing none 
 
 ' It Is natural that melodic series of notes generally the non-soientific musicians, long 
 (in contradistinction to tissues of several before it gained acceptance in scientific 
 parts) should gain most in vividness from works. But solo -singing made its defiioite 
 the definition of tonality ; since in their case entrance into serious compositions, not by 
 the ear receives no specific gratification at adopting popular rhythmic tune, but through 
 each point from a rich .changing mass of the attempt of the Florentine school, at the 
 sound, but must perceive a number of shc- end of the sixteenth century, to create 
 cessive notes as a unity ; which, becomes musical drama by resuscitating (as they 
 easier, the more keenly the key-relations of fondly imagined) the old Greek declamation, 
 the component units a.re felt. In this con- The division between science and popular 
 nection, therefore, it is interesting to remark practice in the music of the middle ages is 
 that the instinct for the modern tonality had excellently treated by Jlr. HjjUah in his ex- 
 existed among the people, the trouveres, and cellent sketch of modern musical history. 
 
462 
 
 SONG. 
 
 but aa it has 
 grown to per- 
 fection, the 
 place' of reci- 
 tative has 
 tended rather 
 to decline. 
 
 The place of 
 strict rhythm 
 in very nearly 
 the whole of 
 the music 
 ■which is deeply 
 eared about 
 seems indis- 
 putable. 
 
 of its old capabilities, became also, by the same change, the minister of 
 melody, enriching its form and explaining its modulations. 
 
 And as this new wealth revealed itself, it was but natural that a sepa- 
 ration should take place, and that recitative should sink more and more into 
 poverty. It retained its uses indeed, the supply of melody not being end- 
 less, and some words seeming fitter for declamation than for definite song ; 
 as a relief or an introduction to tune, it may be most effective ; and masters 
 who have had fine melodic invention, and a firm instinct for balance and 
 coherence of phrase, have been able, while relaxing strict metrical condi- 
 tions, to produce results of high independent beauty, though lacking as a 
 rule that more distinct and rarer individuality which belongs to the most 
 clinching and organic sort of form, But it is impossible in Music to go 
 back on our steps; and with our present experience the musical attention 
 will rapidly weary in a prolonged recitative, from the apparent aimlessness 
 in the succession of notes due to the deficiency of one of the two formative 
 factors ; a deficiency which can only become aesthetic through the piquancy of 
 contrast in the re-entrance of rhythmic movement proper. Not but that 
 persons differ much in this respect. Some are rapidly tired by the 'un- 
 chartered freedom' of loosely joined and inorganic series of phrases ; while 
 there are others to whom fine declamation and a rich harmonic accompani- 
 ment, decked and complicated with instrumental variations, will be suffi- 
 ciently interesting to prevent this impatience. We have already remarked 
 how various, and how unrelated to musical development, are the degrees 
 of susceptibility to pleasure from mere musical tone or colour : nor is it 
 irrelevant to mark a similar fact as regards the mere enunciation of lan- 
 guage ; as, in the case of nations, a very little experience of the theatre 
 will show that the French and Italians, to whom the simple act of speech, 
 the actual movements of the tongue and lips, gives obviously a more posi- 
 tive delight than to us, take also a more general and positive delight in 
 watching the speech of others. But, not to go beyond modern written 
 compositions, it must be admitted as beyond dispute that nine hundred and 
 ninety-nine thousandths of the music from Handel to the present hour, I 
 wiU not merely say has been built on a framework of strict time-relations, 
 but has had strict time-relations as an element in its inmost life and sub- 
 stance : nor can Wagner's position as the prophet of a new revelation in the 
 light of which recitative, however amorphous, ig to be esteemed regenerate 
 and melodic, exclude much magnificent work of his own from the same 
 category. The course of artistic development has been entirely towards, 
 and not away from, the firm precision of form which is in no other way 
 attainable. Ehythmic melody lived long ago among the people while 
 contrapuntal artifices were dominating the churches ; and, indeed, it would 
 be absurd to treat a temporary and partial oblivion of metrical necessities, 
 excusable in scientific music after a first plunge into the rejoicing waves of 
 
SONG. 463 
 
 harmony, as involving an abrogation of anything so deeply implanted in 
 our organisms as the unchangeable rhythmic sense. 
 
 Eecitative in Opera has sometimes been defended as preventing a dis- Impossibility 
 agreeable and unnatural drop from music to plain speech. But this cannot redtativo eecco. 
 excuse an invention of such inconceivable barrenness and conventionality 
 as the redtativo secco of modern opera. It is a wonderful example of the 
 power of fashion and custom, that the points at which Addison tells us 
 ' our countrymen could not forbear laughing ' are now accepted as a matter 
 of course, and comparatively few will confess even to being bored with 
 them. Notes so empty could indeed never give artistic point or emphasis 
 to anything, which is perhaps fortunate, as the words are usually so silly 
 and so unsuited to be dwelt on that the less emphasis the better : still the 
 fact of their being sung instead of said consumes a wearisome amount of 
 time. And it is the fashion now to disfigure even such passably amusing 
 dialogue as that of Scribe's librettos with this dreary and alien feature. 
 Where the musical notes have no beauty of their own, and merely serve to 
 render tedious words and scenes which without them might pass quickly, if 
 not agreeably, no a priori view that the transition from melody to recitative 
 is more natural than to ordinary speech seems to have any weight. The 
 transition from what is a pleasure to what is a nuisance is surely in every 
 way less natural than the transition to what may be at worst pretty neutral. 
 
 The further notice of recitative, and the more detailed criticism of that 
 peculiar species of it which has made its appearance in our own time, must 
 be reserved for the chapter on Opera. 
 
 So much for the fundamental elements of structure, as affected by the § 8- Further 
 
 . questions con- 
 
 union of musical and verbal utterances. We may now pass on to some ceming the 
 questions of a less dry and technical kind, concerning the effect on musical speech on the 
 art of articulate speech in its domain, and to some further modes in which ™™'<'»i ^^'t- 
 the two factors of Song act on one another. 
 
 The general historical influence may be summed up in a very few The general 
 
 ° , ,11 historical influ- 
 
 words. The human voice was naturally the first instrmnent, and the slay- ence. 
 ing of the flute-player Marsyas by Apollo, the god of the lyre, represents 
 fairly enough the subordinate position of an ii^strument which from its 
 nature was dissociated from Song. One specially important and early form 
 in which musical elements lent themselves to the service of language was 
 in religious celebrations : for rhythm, cadence, and tone are the natural 
 means for enabling a number of persons to use language simultaneously, 
 and for converting into one united utterance what would otherwise be a 
 confusion of tongues. In its furthest ancient development, among the 
 Greeks, Music was still in a position of tutelage to its more developed 
 sister-arts, Poetry and Dancing; and independent instrumental music, 
 though asserting its rights, was quite subordinate. In the revival of 
 Music in connection with Christian worship, the voice was of course still 
 
464 
 
 SONG. 
 
 § 9. The 
 exceptional 
 character of 
 the voice 
 among instru- 
 mentB, 
 
 paramount. For long it was the only instrument which, judged by our 
 present standard, could be accounted satisfactory ; and by means of it the 
 art continued to develope both in theory and practice. When the germs 
 of modern Opera appeared in some of the miracle-plays of the middle ages, 
 Music had made great strides, the modern scale-system was beginning to 
 take shape, and the enormous invention of harmony and of different parts 
 sung at the same time had given the art totally new means of effect. But 
 it was still predominantly vocal : nor did the great instrumental develop- 
 ment assume importance till after the time of Handel. Church-music and 
 operas long held almost undivided sway, and it is only during the last 
 hundred and fifty years that the greatest writers have thrown their utmost 
 strength into instrumental composition. The nature of the change in- 
 volved in the modem development must be carefully noted; for the 
 historical union of words and Music, as we saw in a previous chapter, is 
 often treated as essential. The enormous variety of modern instrumental 
 forms, whether in chamber-music or in orchestral writing, presents countless 
 features utterly outside the scope of voices, as well as wholly inapplicable 
 to words. For the nature of the voice and the nature of words (if they 
 are to be audible and distinguishable) both demand that the structure of 
 vocal music should be for the most part broad and simple in its lines : and 
 even in more elaborate vocal writing each voice is bound to one more or 
 less continuous part of limited pitch, and greatly limited also in matter of 
 speed and difficulty. This comparative simplicity in the two factors of 
 Song may be associated with the further fact that in their more complex 
 developments Poetry and Music are not only different but opposite. 
 Poetry suggests and compresses, and goes on perpetually saying new 
 things; the musical organism presents, reiterates, varies, and amplifies. 
 
 Speech, however, still supplies, and always will supply, the basis and 
 starting-point for many sorts of composition. And though Music, in all 
 its branches, now has and claims its independent rights, the vocal and 
 verbal elements still necessarily present features and conditions of their - 
 own. First, then, as regards the voice. Quite apart from its history, the 
 voice is by its very nature unique among instruments. The obvious and 
 direct human character impressed on it by its mode of production, and by 
 its employment of language, gives it a certain emotional quality over and 
 above the mere musical quality of its timbre : and the fact that it is an 
 absolute physical possession, as distinct from a faculty for performing on 
 an external instrument, involves a quite special power of awakening 
 interest ; for everyone has a voice of some sort, in comparison with which 
 the gifted and trained organ seems to accomplish miracles. The conse- 
 quences of this supremacy of a special instrument, dating especially from 
 one remarkable epoch in its history, have not been an unmixed blessing to 
 art. In spite of the remote origin of Song, the systematic cultivation of 
 
SONG. 465 
 
 the voice with a view to solo-singing may be said to date (in the modern Its more sys- 
 era at any rate) from the foundation of the Neapolitan school of music by vation has not 
 the great composer and teacher Alessandro Scarlatti, towards the close of mfxedlenefit 
 the seventeenth century. At that time Italy was not only the chief but 
 the only purveyor of cultivated voices and a good method of singing. To 
 the intercourse which Handel enjoyed with Scarlatti and his pupils, during 
 his three years' visit to Italy at the beginning of his career, must be attri- 
 buted much of his subsequent success : to the same source also must we 
 attribute his having written so much music for the simple purpose of vocal 
 display. A composer of that time, to whom the beauty and capabilities of 
 the human voice were a novel and amazing discovery, a gift of Italy to the 
 world, was like a child with an enchanting new toy ; he could not make 
 enough of it, nor exhaust the passages adapted to show off its strength and 
 flexibility. But though it is perhaps fortunate for Handel's reputation 
 that his operas, in spite of the gems they contain, are never now heard as 
 a whole, we must in judging him take account of the novelty of the field 
 and the joy in extending it , and his achievements in the highest regions 
 of his art may well procure for some of his less worthy voice-writing an in- 
 dulgence which modern manufacturers of bravura passages can in no way 
 claim. 
 
 To us who have seen more of the barren glories and the paralysing in- 
 fluence of mere virtuosoship, passages written for the purpose of concen- 
 trating attention not on musical beauty, but on the mechanical capacities 
 of a performer, must appear entirely contemptible, and their prevalence 
 in modern days has simply been a blight on Song. It is saddening to see 
 the slender wealth of naturally first-rate and carefully cultivated voice- 
 power in existence, engaged so often in the brainless, soulless task of dis- 
 playing its resources as an instrument, its colour and its compass, to the 
 neglect of all its chances of art-presentation — sure enough of dazzling 
 feeble hearers into the belief that tinsel is gold. To see a set of hahitu&s, 
 especially in Paris, listening to a celebrated 'prima donna in an Italian 
 opera, is like seeing grown-up people sighing and palpitating with bliss 
 over bonbons. The interest evoked by the melodies is so far to the good, 
 for a love of melody of whatever kind involves a certain amount of active 
 apprehension and a possibility of healthy growth ; but this interest is faint 
 by comparison, and the palpitations only set in with the stage of trills and 
 cadenzas. Every formless group of sounds, every meaningless vocal trick, 
 every little sugared turn, is followed and sucked in with a morbid kind of 
 sensual abandonment and greeted with tumultuous bravos ; this is what 
 they call appreciating the Jewesses, which they consider a Parisian speciality. 
 It would be absurd to vent moral indignation on what certainly cannot be 
 plausibly connected with immoral results ; but this glorification of them- 
 selves as the supreme critical tribunal, on the ground that they purr when 
 
 H H 
 
4^6 
 
 SONG. 
 
 The extreme 
 distinctness 
 with which 
 vocal parts 
 stand out. 
 
 § 10. The 
 words : they 
 suggest the 
 rhythm and 
 general cha- 
 racter of the 
 Music ; 
 
 and in dramatic 
 writing they 
 supply a unity 
 and coherence 
 which the 
 stream of 
 musical para- 
 graphs on its 
 own account 
 would lack ; 
 
 and they may 
 even justify 
 more definite 
 peculiarities 
 in the music. 
 
 they are tickled, is a sufficiently exasperating piece of pretension, and one 
 unfortunately to which a certain class of dilettanti in every musical centre 
 supply a parallel. 
 
 Another noticeable peculiarity of the voice is the fact of its standing, 
 by dint of its verbal utterance, so wholly distinct from its instrumental 
 accompaniment, that the response and interplay between the two may 
 become quite a separate feature in vocal composition, leading to all kinds 
 of variety of treatment. In choruses also the special differentiation of 
 parts, which is involved in the assigning of different verbal groups or sylla- 
 bles of varying durations to different voices, affords peculiar opportunities 
 for imitation and response and for effective massings and contrasts, and 
 repetition of the same words often gives peculiar point and piquancy to the 
 entrance of the musical subjects. 
 
 Next as regards the words themselves. Not only may they suggest 
 the rhythmic outline and often the general movement and character of the 
 music, sometimes even lending themselves to spontaneous musical analogies 
 and something like definite illustration, but in a prolonged work they give 
 a basis and a raison d'etre to the succession of musical paragraphs. For 
 Music, though most precise in the form of its melodic organisms and au- 
 thoritative in its manipulation of the obedient verbal syllables, is most 
 ductile in the matter of the order, relations, and connections of these 
 complete or quasi-complete subordinate forms in a continuous series, and 
 will blend a stream of them with anything the unity and coherence of 
 which is justified on its own merits to the intelligence. Thus in dramatic 
 writing the melodic paragraphs and passages which are self-contained 
 enough to be susceptible of some sort of detachment in the musical 
 memory, may often be shorter and more numerous, and may succeed each 
 other with far less structural coherence, than would be possible where the 
 justification was not given in the natural length, order, and character of 
 the accompanying verbal sentences. A scene, as compared with an instru- 
 mental piece, admits of changes and counter-changes in pace and character 
 of movement which would sound wholly irrational without such justifica- 
 tion ; each musical sentence or section evidently having its accepted place 
 on grounds other than its purely structural and musical relation to ante- 
 cedent and subsequent clauses. In the binding of sections into a prolonged 
 series, the musical sense (which is busy with the notes) comes to a kind of 
 agreement with the understanding (which is busy with the associated 
 words and actions) as to the amount of change and laxity that it will 
 tolerate. It would resent, for instance, having the time altered every four 
 bars. There are, however, certain more definite peculiarities which may 
 occasionally present themselves in the union of words and music, the 
 criterion of such cases being that the exact reproduction of the notes apart 
 from the words would altogether lack point and intelligibility. These 
 
SOA^G. 467 
 
 features occur most naturally in comic writing ; where oddnesses and un- 
 expected combinations, waitings and tantalisations, dwellings on a phrase 
 or exceptional rapidity of utterance, echo and answer between voice and 
 accompaniment, whimsical attempts at real suggestions of external 
 realities, seem to find a reasonable place. 
 
 Whether the union with words, in relaxing to some extent the conditions Three charac- 
 of musical structure, relaxes also the conditions of musical beauty, will be verbareiement 
 more conveniently discussed in the chapter on Opera. But we may glance ^^ which the 
 
 •' ^ ^ •' ° charm or song 
 
 here at the terms of alliance, so far as they affect the verbal element, may suffer : 
 The charm of the union will be found, then, to be indefinitely lost, if (1) anceofatoo 
 the words are such as to demand a purely intellectual effort of apprehension, te'liectua^ el&. 
 or (2) are strikingly weak and foolish, or (3) are in an unfamiliar language. ™™'! 
 The first of these three suppositions is the least practically important. 
 The predominance of a reflective and argumentative element is too ob- 
 viously incongruous to song to be found anywhere, except in certain parts 
 of church compositions ; and no one is likely to think of putting notes to 
 Hamlet's soliloquy, or to a paragraph from The Ring and the Book. With striking weak- 
 respect to the second supposition, we may remark that music has rather ' 
 oscillated between two extremes in its connection with words. In the 
 later middle ages, when the best musicians wrote for Latin prose liturgies, 
 there was no vital union of any sort : the composer used his prose pegs as 
 he chose, and the performers took revenge on the ponderous scientific 
 compositions they had to sing by all sorts of irreverent variations of the 
 text. And when secular vocal music (which had of course always existed 
 among the people) was at last received and nurtured by scientific musi- 
 cians, the new and rapid development of its beauties seems to have had a 
 dazzling effect ; so that the words, as in the chmrch-music, though for a 
 different reason, received the most cavaUer treatment. Anything was 
 good enough that gave a beautiful voice the right number of syllables to 
 sing. Addison remarked, and Beaumarchais repeated, that people sang 
 what was too foolish to bear being said : and though exceptions were of 
 course abundant, the last century certainly produced no body of composi- 
 tion which, in the perfection of the alliance of music and words, can the 
 least compare with the songs of Schubert and Schumann. Theatrical 
 works, written as they have often been expressly for particular singers, 
 have naturally been the chief offenders ; one unfortunate result of which 
 (as we shall see later) is that in the reaction from this degradation, the 
 words are too often expected to supply sense and coherence not only for 
 themselves but for the notes they go with. 
 
 The third of the three cases suggests several considerations as to the and the bein^ 
 language of the words, and especially in respect of the unique prestige of n^^ language" 
 the Italian language in connection with Opera. Considering that both 
 
 H H 2 
 
468 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Words need 
 not be of high 
 independent 
 merit to be 
 very suitable 
 for song. 
 
 vocal compositions and vocal skill issued mainly fromi Italy at the time 
 when opera was spreading through Europe, we cannot indeed wonder that 
 Italian opera took root as such in foreign countries. The result, however, 
 has been to stereotype conditions most adverse to the development of art. 
 Though great rubbish may often be endured when delivered in English, the 
 hopelessly frigid and trivial dialogues and monologues so common in Italian 
 libretti would hardly pass muster in the native language of a serious nation ; 
 or at all events a larger number would protest against them, and we should 
 not see the points at which Addison's contemporaries ' could not forbear 
 laughing ' accepted as a matter of course. It is curious how faithfully 
 fashion and dilettanteism has favoured this Italian domination. To take a 
 single instance, it was with the greatest difficulty that even Weber, when 
 director at Dresden, could obtain a hearing for native works or for the 
 native language ; and his own music was steadily ignored by the upper 
 classes of society until its success elsewhere made the public energetic in 
 their demands for it. The rage for foreign artists, and the humiliating 
 fact that English ones find it expedient to adopt Italian names, are indica- 
 tions of the same tendency. Granting all this, however, it may be objected 
 that the southern tongue is easy and pleasant to sing : but in the face of 
 the singing one has heard of English, French, and Grerman, this will hardly 
 be accepted as a valid excuse for the wholesale translation into Italian which 
 has become a fixed custom. Every musician with a feeling for words will 
 write best for his own language ; and in the translator's hands any gpecial 
 point and freshness which the setting has is too likely to disappear.' 
 Translations into the native language stand of course on an altogether 
 separate footing : but the presentation to an English audience of a French 
 opera in an Italian version, with the vivacious dialogue in the spoken parts 
 represented by the dreariest and most conventional recitative, is an 
 absurdity as wanton as it is inartistic. 
 
 We cannot at all reckon as among the conditions which make words 
 suitable for alliance with music, that they should be of high poetical 
 character. While inferior music kills good words, and while many words 
 of highly poetical character are quite unsuited to musical setting of any 
 sort, rhythmical words of comparatively ordinary character may be emi- 
 nently suited to it ; and in contributing to the dual effect of Song they are 
 often themselves so transfigured as to seem to gain entirely new point and 
 significance. This very fact may naturally tend to conceal the smallness 
 of their independent poetical merits : for even when we try to think of 
 them independently, the glow from another region will be apt to cling 
 
 ' It would be diiEcult, for instance, for 
 English ears listening to Handel's setting of 
 Aleximdhr's Fsast, and familiar with the 
 line ' So -Love was crowned, but Music won 
 
 the cause,' to acquiesce in ' Dir, Toukunst, 
 Ehre und Dank,' as a representative of its 
 second clause. 
 
SONG. 469 
 
 about them. In throwing an indescribable romance over the most artless 
 expressions of sentiment and over employments of poetical imagery which 
 certainly could claim no attention on their own account, Music acts not by 
 delusion and jugglery, but by supplying a definite beauty, which gives a 
 substance, so to speak, in which the diffused associations suggested by the 
 words can rest and blend. 
 
 We have considered thus far the ways in which the two factors of Song § u. The 
 affect one another, and some of their mutual requirements. We have still express the 
 to enquire what is the fundamental nature of the aesthetic effect which the a wy tafa" 
 union produces. The ordinary statement would of course be that the and general 
 
 •^ •' sense; 
 
 music expresses, or should express, the words. After the lengthy dis- 
 cussion in the fourteenth chapter, it is hardly necessary to point out in 
 what a broad and general (as opposed to a detailed and exact) sense this is 
 true ; though it is naturally to melodies which have been deliberately 
 associated with the precise meaning and sentiment of definite words that 
 we should look for examples of the most definite and describable emotional 
 qualities that Music can possess. With a slight amount of external though a little 
 assistance we can really sometimes make pretty clear distinctions. Thus, sistance enables 
 given that the theme is love, the strains in which Polyphemus addresses gomerimesTo" 
 Gralatea might make us guess, apart from title and words, the fierce rol- ^eem pretty 
 licking nature of his passion ; we shall not confound the yearning passion 
 of Schubert's Serenade with the satisfied meditative rapture of Love in her 
 eyes, or with the half-gay, half-tender gallantry of the guitar-song in Don 
 Giovanni. But the majority even of beautiful vocal melodies will be 
 found, by any one who tries without any external knowledge to guess the 
 character of the words they go with, to be neutral in respect of describable 
 emotional suggestion, except within the widest and vaguest limits, while 
 in their own indescribable way stirring the very depths of musical feeling. 
 We should resent, of course, clear contradictions ; we should object to glad 
 and sportive words delivered in solemn numbers, and to excited and pas- 
 sionate sentiments linked to a serene or ingenuous melody. But given 
 the most general correspondence, the music, if really worth anything, 
 may be trusted to make it appear sufficiently definite : such is the power 
 of beautiful melody to wed itself to that with which it is associated that 
 the electrical union seems actually to represent an inherent oneness of 
 purport. 
 
 It is this power in Music to accaparer its concomitants, and to im- The power of 
 press the whole effect with the stamp of its own beautiful individuality, to^assoda™"^"' 
 which has led to the notion that the affinity of the notes and the words is J,'^a^t'f^i'°'^jjij ^ 
 primarily and naturally a delicate instead of a general one. The instan- concomitants 
 taneous closeness of the association makes it hard to prove, by particular feeling that it 
 cases in one's own experience, that the same words would link themselves and^deiioafeiy 
 as closely with quite another tune (as might be shown in fifty other expressive. 
 
470 
 
 SONG. 
 
 The same 
 generality of 
 expressive cha- 
 racter applies 
 to single 
 striking 
 features in the 
 music. 
 
 Mechanical 
 imitation, 
 admitting of 
 various 
 degrees. 
 
 settings), and the same tune with quite other words ; ' and when two 
 things go exquisitely together it is hard to help conceiving them as deli- 
 cately and uniquely akin. Even a composer may very easily think and say 
 that his music was suggested by the words. He sits down with the words 
 in his head, and his musical faculty ranges among phrases and shadows 
 of phrases, pervaded by a certain conformity of general character, plaintive, 
 impetuous, or whatever it be, to which the words will rhythmically go. 
 The words, then, having been there to begin with, naturally appear to 
 him as at the bottom of the result, and the music as in a way evolved out 
 of them. Had he been a versifier instead of a musician he might have 
 equally well vsrought out the words from the ' suggestion ' of the tune.^ 
 
 What has been said as to the expressive character of a melody or 
 musical piece, taken as a whole, applies equally to details. Points of 
 change and contrast, harmonic turns, striking features of any sort, which 
 would be really available for a very wide range of turns of sentiment and 
 for a great variety of suggestive single words, will seem actually made for 
 the particular verbal point which they emphasise. Take, for instance, the 
 point in the fourth bar on p. 324, quoted from Die Bose Farbe ; or the 
 notes to Virtue sickens on the next page. 
 
 No precise line can be drawn between this sort of expression and that 
 more mechanical suggestion which consists in more or less direct imitation. 
 The latter sort, while usually absurd, as we have seen, in serious music, may 
 be in place where intentionally comic. Thus in Pergolesi's La Serva Pad- 
 rona, when Uberto says to the maid, ' Troppo in alto voi volate,' there is an 
 upward flight on volate : and even the humour of such a concrete suggestion 
 may be delightfully mingled with beauty, as in the debonair hopping of the 
 accompaniment to the air Their land brought forth frogs. A good instance 
 
 ' The history of musical compositions 
 abounds with instances of adaptations and 
 changes in the connection of words and 
 music. An impassioned air in Rinaldo was 
 adapted to a bacchanalian song beginning, 
 ' Let the waiter bring clean glasses,' and was 
 long popular at festive gatherings ; and on 
 several occasions Handel even laid his operas 
 under contribution for the music of his ora- 
 torios. Berlioz used to amuse himself by 
 singing tunes with Italian words, and waiting 
 till his hearers had demonstrated how success- 
 fully the character of the Italian verse had 
 inspired the composer, before informing 
 them that the music was from a symphony 
 of Beethoven. Similar tricks might really 
 be repeated to any extent. 
 
 ^ There is no reason, in the nature of 
 thingSj why the setting of words to pre- 
 existent music should not be much more 
 
 frequent than it is. But poets, of course, 
 write normally meaning their productions to 
 stand independently, and introducing their 
 own metrical eflEects ; while musicians do not 
 write vocal melodies, adapted to be sung, 
 without intending that they shall be sung, 
 and so needing words for them from the out- 
 set. But in writing a joint work, for the 
 stage, for instance, a composer who had in- 
 vented a good melody, of a character appro- 
 priate at a certain place in connection with 
 certain sentiments, might fairly call on his 
 librettist to follow him to this extent. For 
 one and the same meaning can be conveyed 
 in a hundred ways in words, and set in many 
 sorts of metrical framework, which makes 
 it a comparatively easy task to accommodate 
 words to music ; while a melody, once there, 
 is a form which can only make compromises 
 by ceasing to be itself. 
 
SONG. 
 
 471 
 
 of expression which is in itself less mechanically imitative than this, and 
 enters naturally as an excellent phrase in an excellent melody, is the passage — 
 
 giEg^^^^£^ ^^gi #g^igi g 
 
 :£E£E 
 
 Yet hard to tame as rag - ing flame, And fierce as storms that bluster. 
 
 from ruddier than the cherry. An equally good case, depending on 
 harmony, is the passage from Envy, eldest born of hell — 
 
 ^d= 
 
 *'tS-- 
 
 Et 
 
 z^=zMj=z^z 
 
 i— r 
 
 '^r--,-^ '-^^ 
 
 Hide thee in . the black 
 
 est night ! Vir - tue 
 
 ?^ 
 
 ^EfeES 
 
 « — * — -J — I- — 
 
 =p±=pi 
 
 ^i^- 
 
 m 
 
 ~-r^^ 
 
 T 
 
 -\- 
 
 ft— 
 
 -Bi. 
 
 U-J^- a^::-fili— a 
 
 Si^zzi=i;i=S: 
 
 * s_ 
 
 sick - ens at thy sight ! 
 
 3^ 
 
 =|: 
 
 ■r 
 
 =5=^- 
 
 m 
 
 Vir - tue 
 
 pEfcE?£E 
 
 »w 
 
 :^-2-fel 
 
 r 
 
 sick - ens 
 
 L 
 
 -^- 
 
 thy sight ! 
 
 I 
 
 H— 
 
 -=i — .-q=»i: 
 
 -<p^ ^: -^ -*i- 
 
 But the attempt to produce such effects in an isolated way, without, as 
 here, embodying them as part of a fine form, is apt to degenerate into a 
 barren and unimpressive sort of emphasis. A leading newspaper remarked 
 lately, a propos of the Dido and ^neas, that it was interesting to observe 
 Purcell's attempts ' at illustrating certain detached words by musical phrases. 
 No sooner do such words as storm and fierce occur than a striking passage 
 of demisemiquavers is found to give them additional import.' The import 
 may be questioned. The same journal, in criticising another work, con- 
 sidered it a proof of intelligence in the treatment of the text that ' could 
 not be sufficiently praised,' that ' whenever a sentence or a single word 
 called for additional emphasis the composer was sure to have his forte in 
 readiness.' The worth of emphasis depends of course on the worth of the 
 music : it is easy to print the greatest rubbish in capitals. 
 
 It seems, then, that the singular charm which results from the union 
 of words and music must have some more constant and fundamental source 
 than such a character in the music as might lead us, if we heard it apart 
 from the words, to surmise in a very general way the character of the 
 words. And indeed it is obvious that something more than mere broad music 
 
 § 12. We 
 need some 
 more funda- 
 mental reason 
 for the charm 
 in the union 
 of words and 
 
472 
 
 SONG. 
 
 resemblances in the describable character of two things is necessary to pro- 
 duce a sense of definite objective union: for our broad impressions of 
 solemnity, peace, vigoiif , vulgarity, or whatever it may be, are common to all 
 manner of experiences due to all sorts of phenomena, without our thereby 
 perceiving the various sources of analogous impressions under the aspect 
 of a single compound result. What, then, are the conditions of such union 
 between the arts as results in compound works ? That this union is 
 desirable where attainable is clear on a •priori grounds : for two pleasures 
 fully realised cannot but be better than one, apart from the added pleasure 
 in their fusion. Art, however, makes so large a demand on the attention 
 that no two branches of it will be susceptible of simultaneous realisation 
 unless they present some distinct element in common,' In the case of 
 
 ' Taking the three elements of 
 matter, material, aaAform, from the tabular 
 statement in the third chapter, we may glance 
 at the chances they afford of organic union 
 between the arts. First, as regards subject- 
 matter, we can obviously, while looking at a 
 picture, think of a cognate poetical passage, 
 and enjoy each the more, feeling the kinship 
 in penetration of the two artists : but here 
 the union, though close, is a subjective one, 
 a result of our own making, not constituting 
 and presenting to us a compound object. On 
 the stage, indeed, the poetry and the painted 
 scene may be considered factors of a com- 
 pound result : the union here, however, seems 
 very mechanical, even if moderately perman- 
 ent ; we would sacrifice it in a moment for 
 a bare ham plus the rare and transient per- 
 sonality of a great actor. Moreover, while 
 the character of modern drama demands 
 accessories of which no need was felt beneath 
 the glorious sky of Athens, the artificial 
 lighting that belongs to late hours and 
 northern climates clearly prevents the exer- 
 cise of the highest artistic qualities in the 
 s.oene-painter. 
 
 Painting and Sculpture, again, can deal 
 with the same svAject-matter ; and the farms 
 of Sculpture are forms of the same objects 
 as Painting can represent, and can beicovered 
 with colour. But here difficulties in the way 
 of union are presented, partly by the nature of 
 the sculptured material, partly by the fact 
 that solidity implies perpetually shifting 
 light and shade, and a number of different 
 points of view, most of them close to the 
 actual object : so that the painter's art is pre- 
 cluded from all its finer qualities of cMaro- 
 scwo and tone, from all indications of light 
 and atmosphere, and is narrowed down to a 
 
 mechanical sort of tinting. And this tinting 
 seems calculated to emphasise the merely 
 imitative at the expense of the ideal qualities 
 of sculpture, and to be inconsistent with its 
 simple and typical character. Colour is 
 indeed conceivable when the work is com- 
 posed of its substance, as in the gold and 
 ivory statues of Phidias, where too the in- 
 dependent beauty and value of the material 
 would much enhance the sense of glory. In 
 connection with a large scheme of colour, 
 again, in the adornment of buildings, Sculp- 
 ture was very common?y painted by the 
 Greeks. But in detached works anything 
 like imitative colour seems tawdry and 
 ephemeral when laid on the surface and im- 
 pertinently hiding material whose simple 
 and imperishable aspect is precisely adapted 
 to set foixh the glories of form unobscured 
 by secondary qualities ; so that Mr. Euskin 
 has said, ' If we could cslour the Elgin 
 marbles with the flesh-tint of Giorgione, I 
 had rather not have it done.' In many other 
 branches of production which may be loosely 
 classed with sculpture, china and terra-cotta 
 and metal works of many sort s, an artistic 
 use of colour, natural and artificial, is an 
 essential element ; but it would be unnatural 
 to represent these as unions of the two main 
 imitative arts. 
 
 It is rather in the union of Architecture 
 with these two imitative arts that community 
 in the element of material (and to some 
 extent even of form) is available. First, we 
 see that, as Painting has for its material 
 pigments and surfaces, Architecture supplies 
 it with the latter ; and that the material of 
 Sculpture, stone and marble, is also common 
 to Architecture. So that these two arts of 
 rep^entation may become an organic part 
 
SONG. 473 
 
 Music and Poetry there is a community of material, in so far, at all events^ 
 
 as the words of the one and the notes of the other are given forth in a 
 
 single action by the same voice ; and also in rhythm a common element of 
 
 form, so far as the independent metrical flow of the verse makes itself felt ; 
 
 which it will do provided the normal accentuation and the prominence of 
 
 the rhymes be to any moderate degree preserved. But the union of these 
 
 two arts presents a quite unique vividness of effect, owing to their being 
 
 presented in time and not in space, so that their appeals to the ear are, 
 
 from moment to moment, fused in absolute coincidence, while at the samfe 
 
 time their ultimate appeal is to two totally distinct faculties, the musical 
 
 sense and the intelligence for verbally conveyed ideas. The result is that and find it 
 
 here we get in its most complete form that perception of two lines of things perception of 
 
 under an aspect of unity, which we have already several times encountered things^sepa- 
 
 in the separate domains both of Music and of verse. Where the natural ™'^iy ™teiii- 
 
 verbal flow is preserved we feel, in the set of common accents dominating an aspect of 
 
 unity. 
 
 both words and notes, a further perfection effusion ; but independently of 
 metrical conditions the words have always their own line of meaning. 
 And the melody apart from the words, like the words apart from the 
 melody, seems to be something which the voice, without metaphor, has to 
 tell us, beautiful melody being in the most literal sense eloquent. So that 
 when the two phenomena are combined in Song, the duality of utterance, 
 the expression in a single act of one set of things under the forms, 
 simultaneously revealed, of another, in throwing, as it often does, a romance 
 over the simplest words and subjects, gives to the indivisible effect a quality 
 which is attainable in no other sort of artistic presentation. How much 
 more fundamental this quality is than the adaptation of the general 
 character, or of certain characteristics, of the particular music to cognate 
 qualities in the particular words, is sufficiently seen in the fact that the 
 mere union in vocal expression of the two distinct lines of utterance begets 
 an altogether peculiar and indisputable charm in countless cases where no 
 such adaptation can be adduced. 
 
 One or two less vital and universal points are still worth mentioning, § 13. Less 
 as entering at times into the total aesthetic effect of Song, and as made ^" ^°'° ^' 
 possible by the peculiar conditions of that one mode of performance. 
 
 Words can be dwelt on in Song and emphasised not only through 
 musical resonance of voice, but by actual pronunciation and gesture, with 
 
 of buildings, and even their informing in respect both of material and form, is men- 
 spirit ; Sculpture especially, through its tioned in the text. A more constant and 
 ability to follow the lines and angles of the perfect community in the rhythmic element 
 structure, coptributing expressiveness and is presented by the alliance of artistic danc- 
 symbolism to every nook and corner, and ing with Music ; and, as they address different 
 ranging from more or Jess abstract ornament, senses, their union may give at its best an 
 founded generally on vegetable forms, to extraordinary richness of pleasure ; but we 
 direct representation. have seen that dancing ,cai;not be jreojioned 
 The community bgtjyeep M,i;sio ^n^ Poetry, a§ a ' \yoj:k of art. ' 
 
474 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Opportunities 
 in Song for 
 emotional 
 gestures and 
 modes of 
 enunciation. 
 
 The oneness of 
 a voice with a 
 personality. 
 
 Singing com- 
 pared with 
 Dancing. 
 
 a force and passion or some kind of emotional variation which in unadorned 
 speech would seem ludicrous, owing to the extreme divergence from the 
 ordinary conventional standard. For accents and gestures which are as it 
 were on the same plane as that standard would be inevitably referred to it, 
 whereas the allied music conveys all the phenomena of utterance into 
 another region beyond risk of comparison. 
 
 Again, the absolute oneness of a voice with a personality gives to Song, 
 in one aspect and in rare instances, a pre-eminence among all kinds of 
 artistic performance. In itself it seems so wholly a natural endowment 
 that we instinctively feel in it an ideally fitting emotional outlet for any 
 being in whose nature lies the secret of expression, and in such a one other 
 gifts seem to associate their charm indefinably with this one. Dancing 
 alone (if we neglect considerations of education and concomitants and the 
 extreme rareness of perfect solo-dancing) could be compared with Song in 
 this respect. But apart from the great difference in the range of the music 
 connected with the two manifestations, the singer is naturally more wholly 
 a living part of the melody which she ' reveals than the dancer can be of 
 the music by which she is accompanied, or (as it should be) which she 
 accompanies : so that the singer, in far greater degree than the dancer, is 
 glorified by association with the supreme, independent, and permanent 
 world of beauty with whose very essence she seems instinct. I am not 
 comparing the whole effects of the two presentations, but a single factor 
 only ; and in the one case it seems possible for intelligence and inspiration 
 to stand confessed in a degree to which no grace of bodily form or 
 rhythmic movement can absolutely testify. Beautiful music is of course 
 quite essential to the total result in dancing, but, from its externality to 
 the dancer's actual part in the result it cannot be charged and moulded by 
 her comprehension or emotion, and cannot in turn invest her individuality 
 with its most ideal halo. And in feeling that her whole connection with 
 the world of high art is perhaps confined to the mere moments of perform- 
 ance, we may experience a half-latent but tantalising impression of 
 transience and accident, and a doubt as to the actual relation of physical 
 to spiritual endowment ; while in imagination we picture the singer as 
 speaking a language of which at all times, speaking and silent, she has 
 inspired intelligence, to be showing us the forms among which she has her 
 being, and in the love of which we joyfully recognise a common bond, so 
 that idealisation passes readily on from the gift of the individual to the 
 awakened and awakenable sensibilities of the race. 
 
 ' I say she, not because I at all hold the 
 view of Artemus Ward as to male performers 
 that they ' orter lead armies on to Battel 
 instid of shoutin in a f urrin tung ; ' bnt Ipe- 
 cause it must be admitted that where the 
 most perfect success is due to the unjo^ of 
 
 charm of person and personality, with an 
 emotional activity wholly removed from the 
 stem world of aption, the implied faculties 
 and attributes lend themselves to idealisation 
 most naturally and spontaneously in tjie case 
 Qf a woman. 
 
SOJVG. 475 
 
 One more remaxk may be made as to the combination of the gift of The subjection 
 song with genius and other endowments. In analysing the delight we the^eUvery^ 
 derive from the singing (with or without a fine voice in the ordinary sense) "f set notes 
 of a person whose nature is vividly interesting to us, we shall find, I think, charm of a 
 that it is partly due to a perception of the voluntary subjection of freedom viduality. 
 and spontaneity to law, of the singer's obedience to a definite order of pre- 
 sentation imagined and set forth by the genius of another. Somewhat as 
 the essential force of words gains instead of losing by its restraint within 
 the forms of metre, so all independent individuality seems to gain 
 piquancy from the sense that in one direction its possessor is self-controlled 
 into being the medium and channel of an ordered beauty existing outside 
 the personality of this or that performer, and appealing on its inherent 
 merits to the emotions of the listeners. 
 
 Finally, it is curious to think % what a mechanical accident, as it were, § 14. Fine 
 the ideal power of Song over the feelings of men exists, and how easily one Jufficientiy 
 might conceive it eliminated from the world. For voices are not like ™retomakeit 
 
 o seem singularly 
 
 fingers : the cases are certainly a small minority where the vocal cords are fortunate that 
 
 ° ,111 , ^'^^y ^*^s' a* 
 
 so constructed as to be able to produce musical notes of sufficient merit all. 
 
 strongly to gratify the ear, and so to serve as adequate qiusical material. 
 Had such cases been considerably rarer still, while we should have been 
 just as we are for all practical purposes, and while speech would have been 
 just what it is now, this one unique phenomenon of Song could never have 
 attained high development. It is true that peculiarly gifted persons may 
 delight us by singing even with very little ' voice,' but the place of the 
 vocal element in Music must be admitted to be dependent on the existence 
 of fine voices in the world. The chances are, of course, tremendous against 
 the combination in one person of exceptional vocal cords with musical and 
 other endowments ; and it is just the possessors of the most exceptional 
 physical gifts who are most tempted to prostitute them, But given fairly 
 adequate conditions, the immediate power of one being over the feelings 
 of another seems at its maximum in a case where no cisternal tools or 
 appliances are involved, where nature and art appear one, where phenomena 
 of absolute beauty can be presented as though part of the normal communi- 
 cation of man to man, and where in addition the use of the familiar words 
 heightens this naturalness of address, and completes the directness and 
 spontaneity of the effect. Many will attend when addressed in this way The unique 
 whose lives would otherwise lie wholly apart from the influeijce of beautiful singTns over 
 and pure emotion. In the midst of this normal sad remoteness the effect *^ feeimgs. 
 of Song on the masses is like a glimpse of infinite spiritual possibilities ; 
 and owing to the fewness of the moments where even the suggestion of a 
 universal kinship in lofty sentiment appears possible, such occasions seem 
 to have a very singular and impressive significance in human life. 
 
476 
 
 §1. The 
 tlieory of the 
 derivation of 
 Musfc from the 
 cadences of 
 emotional 
 speech. 
 
 Mr. Spencer's 
 view that the 
 peculiarities of 
 emotional 
 speech are 
 exaggerated 
 in song. 
 
 Objections to 
 that view, as 
 regards 
 quality of 
 sound ; 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 THE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 There is a certain theory of the influence of speech on Music which could 
 not be conveniently noticed till we had discussed the subject of Song. It is 
 a theory so directly opposed to the whole exposition of this book that my 
 answer to it has practically been already given, especially in the chapters 
 on Association, on Melodic Form, on Expression, and on Song : but it 
 is so important both in itself and in its corollaries, it has been so widely 
 held in a more or less vague way, and has lately found such explicit and 
 able advocacy, that it needs a separate survey. The theory, as put 
 forward by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his essay on the Origin and Function 
 of Music, is, briefly, that Music has its essential source in the cadences of 
 emotional speech, and that it reacts on speech by increasing the variety, 
 complexity, and expressiveness of those cadences. 
 
 Mr. Spencer founds his theory on the view that the vocal peculiarities 
 which indicate excited feeling are those which especially distinguish 
 Song from ordinary speech, and sums them up under the heads of 
 loudness, quality, or timbre, marked deviation from an average level of 
 pitch, width of interval, and rapid rate of variation. He considers that 
 Song arose from emphasising and intensifying these peculiarities. 
 Deferring the question as to how far this view, if accurate, would support 
 the theory of derivation, we may first notice how far it is from being 
 accurate on any one of the heads. Loudness though a frequent is by 
 no means a universal or essential element, either of Song or of emotional 
 Speech. Still less is musical resonance an essential element of the latter. 
 Many of the tones of excited speech are even more removed from musical 
 quality than those of ordinary speech, as containing a greater number of 
 spasmodic noises and of the high harmonics which produce what we call 
 harshness : and this must have been especially the case among our remote 
 ancestors when the savage emotions were in the ascendant. The large 
 part held in the emotional colouring of speech by elements which are 
 pointedly unmusical will appear in several ways, but this of quality is a very 
 important one. For the emotional colouring is, of course, largely con- 
 nected with the broad distinctions between the agreeable and disagreeable 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 477 
 
 classes of feeling : and this distinction is mainly expressed in speech 
 through the quality of the sound used, if we include under that term 
 particular modes of attacking and bringing out the words. That increase 
 of muscular effort on which Mr. Spencer lays stress may take effect quite 
 as easily in increase of the harsh qualities of sound as in increase of the 
 musically resonant qualities. Music, on the other hand, even when 
 attempting to suggest disagreeable feelings, has never emphasised or 
 exaggerated the harsher kinds of timbre or more spasmodic modes of 
 utterance : and Wagner himself has not required that Ortrud's music 
 shall be sung by a woman with a cracked voice, or accompanied by a cat 
 obbligato. Even if we take the residue of tones expressing pleasing 
 emotions and having increased resonance of an agreeable kind, and if we 
 accept Mr. Spencer's view of such emotional speech as being prior to 
 Music, the fact remains that agreeable sounds are only the material of 
 Music 5 and it is open to us to suppose that our human or semi-human 
 ancestors, having been naturally moved to desert the region of neutral 
 ton-es in order to be pleasingly emphatic, may have utilised for independ- 
 ent musical purposes the material of increased resonance so discovered 
 and developed, in accordance with the well-known fact that ' organs 
 originally adapted for one purpose have been utilised for some quite 
 distinct purpose.' It is of course equally open to us, if we accept Mr. 
 Darwin's hypothesis that the power of making musical sounds was acquired 
 for sexual purposes in the pre-human stage, to suppose that the more re- 
 sonant sounds, first developed in this elementary love-music, were subse- 
 quently employed where emphasis was required for purposes of emotional 
 speech. And, looked at in the light merely of musical material, I can hardly 
 imagine that certain vocal tones are regarded by Mr. Spencer as owing their 
 agreeable quality simply to association with kindness and pleasing emotions. 
 Yet he says, as though it were a reductio ad absurduTn, that if the con- 
 clusiveness of his reasoning is not admitted, it must be supposed that 
 vibrations causing soft sounds are intrinsically better than those causing 
 harsh. Why of course they are intrinsically better as far as our ears are con- 
 cerned, in precisely the same way as an octave is intrinsically a more 
 agreeable chord than a sharp seventh, or a feather-bed a more agreeable 
 couch than a heap of stones. The ear objects to the irregularities and 
 roughnesses present in harsh sounds just as the body objects to the contact 
 of rough irregular surfaces. 
 
 In dealing with the three remaining heads of what he considers com- and as wga^ds 
 mon characteristics of emotional speech and Song, Mr. Spencer's state- , of''pitc™and'°" 
 ments seem to me even more open to exception. In the recitative which y^^^^ °^ 
 he himself considers naturally and historically a step between speech 
 and Song, the rapid variation of pitch is impossible, and such recitative 
 is distinguished from the tones even of common speech precisely by 
 
478 THE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 being more monotonous. To suppose with Mr. Spencer that the four- 
 toned recitative of early Greek poets was the slightly exaggerated emotional 
 speech natural to them, would imply a poor idea of their emotional speech.' 
 Nor does this apply only to recitative : the use of extremely few degrees 
 of the scale is, as Helmholtz has remarked, an almost universal character- 
 istic of all early melody. Mr. Spencer himself notices the monotony of 
 savage dance-songs and ancient Eastern chants, and says that hence we 
 may infer the divergence of vocal music from emotional speech to have 
 been gradual and unobtrusive. Surely, if one thing differs from another 
 in a special way from the very first, the theory that it diverged from it in 
 the exactly opposite direction is not much helped by calling the divergence 
 unobtrusive. And though it is true that developed Song and excited 
 speech often do agree in the mere fact of deviating from an average level 
 of pitch, the deviations, even in the most favourable instances for a com- 
 parison, are of a totally different kind ; those of speech being sudden and 
 spasmodic, ranging rapidly up and down in a series of mere see-saws, 
 perpetually taking very wide intervals even on a single syllable, and 
 making nothing of a twelfth or a couple of octaves, in a way which Song, so 
 far from exaggerating, would find it impossible and absurd even distantly 
 to emulate. And it may be noticed, too, that even a considerable range 
 of the voice in Song does not imply emotional conditions the least resem- 
 bling those of excited speech. For speech obeys instinctively the physio- 
 logical laws of emotion, which entail under excitement a larger discharge 
 of muscular energy, and so larger vocal activity : while Song demands per- 
 petual conscious efforts, and may bring the extremes of the vocal register 
 quite as much into play in an adagio movement as in a presto ; so that a 
 melody may be a considerable strain to the voice while presenting the most 
 peaceful character. 
 
 But the objection may be brought to a more definite issue. Even 
 in perfectly developed modern melody large intervals and extremes and 
 rapid variations of pitch are in a very small minority as compared with 
 their opposites. Hundreds of well-known melodies, thousands of fine and 
 stirring melodic themes, are comprised within the limits of an octave or 
 less; limits which, if suddenly imposed on the speaking voice, would check 
 emotional speech nearly as much as having one's hands tied behind one's 
 back would check emotional gestures. Again, if musical composers had 
 begun by expressing their feelings in more extreme intervals than those of 
 speech, and had gone on, as Mr. Spencer supposes, increasing this peculi- 
 arity, why is a semitone often the keystone of a melodic passage, and how 
 
 ' Since more developed Greek music is points out and illustrates the absolute irre- 
 
 often spoken of as though it were a kind of levanoe of the course of the notes, in vocal 
 
 idealised declamation, it may be mentioned melodies, to the pitch-inflections of the 
 
 that Dionysius of Halicarnassus expressly words as spoken. 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 479 
 
 is it that a vast, number of the most emotional melodies in the world 
 proceed almost entirely by the smallest possible degrees? In modern 
 music, which has the assistance of harmony, the most exciting melodic 
 passage may even consist of mere monotone. There are few things 
 in Music more passionate than some bars in Schubert's AddAo, where 
 the voice repeats the same note sixteen times, and the effect is pro- 
 duced purely through the rhythm and harmony. On the other hand 
 any one may convince himself that not only are the intervals used in 
 emotional speech very large, twelve diatonic notes being quite an ordinary 
 skip, but that he uses extremes of both high and low pitch with his 
 speaking voice, which, if he tries to dwell on them and make them re- 
 sonant, will be found to lie beyond the compass of his singing voice. In 
 saying ' I never heard of such a thing ' in a tone of strong excitement, I 
 find that I use the high tenor B for the word I and the first syllable of 
 never, a note far above any that I can sing, and go down for the second 
 syllable of never as far as the low Gr or F, which is the extreme of what I 
 can sing in that direction. 
 
 But the mere presence of these general characteristics in the succes- § 2. irreie- 
 sion of sounds in a melody and the succession of sounds in emotional speech, paraUeiism'of 
 even if the parallelism were such as Mr. Spencer conceives, would be en- f™tgjf yj)'^ 
 tirely insufiicient to establish any sort of true kinship, whether of origin even if it were 
 or of nature, between the cadences of speech and those of music. For in- Spencer ima- 
 stance, in delivering the word 'heigh-ho' with the expression one would ^'°*^' 
 naturally give as one leans back and stretches one's arms with a sense of 
 relief and relaxation after some tedious piece of work, the voice may natu- 
 rally begin at a somewhat high pitch and descend slowly and gradually over 
 the interval of an octave, thus — 
 
 i 
 
 w 
 
 Heigh ■ ho 
 
 The sounds may be delivered loudly, with a good deal of singing resonance ; 
 the range of pitch is large, the combination is particularly simple and dis- 
 tinct, and generally the conditions for conveying a distinct emotional ex- 
 pression are present. Now we will take a melodic combination which 
 keeps quite exceptionally close to the same ' cadence ' — 
 
 
 The gradual descent from C to its octave may be made to occupy just 
 the same time in the case of ' heigh-ho ' as in the case of this final Hne of 
 Evn! feste Burg ; and this single comparison will, I think, suggest how ir- 
 relevant the general traits of loudness, resonance, &c., are to the essence of 
 
480 THE SPEECH THEORl. 
 
 the musical effect. We may play the melodic phrase on a penny whistle 
 or a double-bass, loud or soft, and even with very considerable variations 
 in pace, and its musical essence and individuality is perfectly distinct and 
 unchanged ; while its expression, so far as it is describable, is of strength 
 and confidence, and at the very extreme pole from that of ' heigh-ho.' 
 
 We may take one more instance. If some one came to me and said the 
 weather was uncertain, when I particularly wanted to start on an excursion, 
 I might answer, ' No, is it going to rain ? dear, what a dreadful bore ! ' in 
 tones which as musically represented might approximate to 
 
 No, is it going to rain ? dear, what a dread - ful bore ! 
 
 making a considerable descent on the syllable dread-. Does the emotional 
 effect here so strikingly resemble that of the following motive — 
 
 i 
 
 ^^^^5=5=^ 
 
 ^^^=^^^^£§iS 
 
 from the march in Weber's Ccmcertstuck, that we should feel impelled to 
 affiliate the latter on the former ? 
 
 It is obvious, moreover, that the landmarks and directions, which the 
 course in pitch of a single sentence may happen to trace out, may be taken 
 possession of by the elements of melodic form with many different results. 
 The course over the descending octave of ' heigh-ho,' for instance, is the 
 course adopted by a large number of melodic phrases, as different from 
 Ein' feste Burg as from one another. Are they all the natural progeny of 
 ' heigh-ho ' ? 
 § 3. Exaini- The essence of a melodic form being independent of register and 
 
 "radences of timbre, it is clear that in considering melodic formation and its supposed 
 speech.' They (jerivatiou from the cadences of speech, the whole point lies in the pitch- 
 uncertain and relations of the successive sounds in speech, the tune-element, if such 
 innumerable, there be. How completely this ground fails beneath our feet the above 
 examples will have sufficiently shown : but it will be well to examine a 
 little further into the so-called ' cadences of speech ; ' for the very phrase 
 tends to suggest a sort of definiteness in the various series of sounds pro- 
 duced in speech which is quite unreal. No one who has not tried carefully 
 and repeatedly can tell the difficulty, or rather often the impossibihty, of 
 discovering, from the infinitesimal portion of musical tone present in the 
 ordinary intonations of speech, what actual point of pitch he uses in the 
 successive sounds. Especially when any large interval is used, the shifting 
 is so rapid that even this minute modicum of tone has often no certain 
 pitch, even for a small fraction of a second ; and, moreover, in repeating 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 481 
 
 the same word several times over, one may vary the size of the interval 
 ■within very wide limits and still convey the same ethical impression. The 
 voice is not the least bound down to clean intervals; the common inter- 
 vals of the octave and fifth may be flattened and sharpened or changed 
 into intervals differing from them by as much as two or three tones, in- 
 cluding all the intermediate degrees of distance, and still sound perfectly 
 natural ; ' and twenty people might say the same few words with what 
 would sound like similar intonation, that is, going up and down at the 
 same places, yet differ altogether in the actual intervals. Nor is it even 
 likely that they will at all accurately agree in the places where they go up 
 and down. It is unfortunately impossible to convey the intonations of andthevaria- 
 speech on paper ; but I would undertake in a three minutes' interview to pieteiy°dude 
 convince any one that even a quite short sentence may be naturally spoken "■"'«' «i^«° '° 
 
 •' ^ J u r respect of ao 
 
 by one person with half-a-dozen entirely distinct intonations (to say general a 
 
 nothing of the infinite number of minor modifications which might super- direction up or 
 
 vene on each of these if others imitated them), while involving hardly any °^''' 
 
 variation in the sort of ethical expression intended. I have seen it 
 
 stated that there are opposite sorts of cadence assigned to opposed sorts of 
 
 ethical intention, as that the intonation naturally ascends in supplication 
 
 and descends in command. We have only to try. ' Please give it me ' is 
 
 most naturally delivered with a markedly heightened pitch on the please,, 
 
 and the other three words considerably lower. The command ' Go away ' 
 
 may be given (Juite as naturally with a sudden rise on the last syllable as 
 
 with a sudden drop. 
 
 The few rules which can be laid down are of the most general sort, and § 4. The 
 apply merely to direction and not to interval. In one case of opposites, in aiTextremely 
 the broad classes of emotions distinguished on the one hand by a character J,^Y *"*' se^e- 
 of effort and excitement and on the other by a character of relaxation and 
 depression, there is naturally a corresponding tendency in the voice to rise 
 or to sink. Thus a child will cry out, ' I am going to the pldy,' with a rise 
 
 ' This is very little realised, but I am en- speaking voice at about the same low pitch 
 tirely persuaded of its truth. In making ex- as the ver. It will be found easy, on repeat- 
 periments on the subject, the best way is, ing this several times, to reduce the amount 
 not first to take the sentence as spoken, and of musical timbre gradually, till the eftect is 
 try to fix the intervals, since it is impossible simply of excited utterance, while the inter- 
 to be sure of producing exactly the same in- val can still ^'ms^ be recognised as an octave, 
 tonation twice running; but to take first Now repeat the experiment, taking the ne a, 
 some fixed musical intervals, and distinctly tone higher, and preserving the same pitch 
 sing them, and to work gradually down to for the ver, and again reduce the effect to 
 the less distinct speech-tones. Thus, in the speech-intonation. The effect is still per- 
 instance above given, 'I TO^ver heard of such a fectly natural. All that is wanted is that 
 thing,' begin by taking the Jon a high part the interval shall be a markedly wide one : 
 of the speaking voice, and then sing the two given that, any notes will serve. The ethical 
 syllables of never, the first on a note near effect intended increases in intensity as the 
 the highest limit of the voice, the second an interval increases, and vanishes as the in- 
 ootave lower, finishing the sentence in the terval is gradually diminished. 
 
 I I 
 
482 
 
 THE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 The natural 
 rise to an 
 emphatic syl- 
 lable ; which 
 may occur as 
 a feature in 
 many quite 
 different in- 
 flexions. 
 
 English sen- 
 tences without 
 special em- 
 phasis nor- 
 mally descend 
 at the end ; 
 
 while sentences 
 which are 
 emotionally 
 delivered con- 
 stantly ascend. 
 
 to the emphatic word ; while ' dear, dear,' delivered in a tone of de- 
 spondency, will sink all the way. Even here the irrelevance of the rule as 
 regards the actual ' cadences ' can be easily shown. For the tendency in 
 the voice to drop after a raised emphatic syllable may make any excited 
 sentence in which the most emphatic syllable is not the last, assume at the 
 end exactly the same sounds in pitch as the depressed sentence. In the 
 sentence, ' I am going to the play to-morrow night,' the last three words 
 may be naturally delivered in a series of sounds whose relations of pitch 
 are indistinguishable from those of ' dear, dear.' The more constant 
 difference between excited and depressed sentences is the pitching of the 
 one altogether in a higher and of the other altogether in a lower register ; 
 but this point is of course wholly irrelevant to melodic formation, which 
 depends not on absolute height or depth but on relations of pitch. For an 
 emphatic syllable in the middle of an English sentence the pitch is com- 
 monly heightened, with often the hint of a very long drop just at the end 
 of it. For example, the words, ' I can't understand your saying so,' might 
 be delivered with an emphatic and annoyed expression by treating can't or 
 stand in the way described. The sentence, ' Then you ought to have told 
 me,' will grow in exasperated character the more the pitch of the told is 
 heightened. But in both these cases stand and told might be given with 
 the same emotional significance by being emphatically pronounced on a 
 lower note than the preceding syllables. In unemphatic and unemotional 
 speech it is only at the extreme close of sentences that we can discover 
 any sort of definite rule. The rule for English sentences, delivered with- 
 out any special ethical emphasis, is that they descend at the close by in- 
 tervals of which the average would be about a fifth, but which may be con- 
 siderably more or considerably less. The descent might be accounted for 
 by the natural relaxation of effort when the voice feels itself just at the 
 end of its task ; but such physiological rules do not seem to have any 
 universality of application, for in French the voice perpetually ascends at 
 the close by a similar interval, in a manner which it is easier for English- 
 men to appreciate than to imitate. Compare, for instance, the normal 
 Enghsh delivery of ' It is incredible ' with the normal French delivery of 
 ' C'est incroyable.' On the other hand, in em^onal and poetical utter- 
 ance English voices perpetually reverse the characteristic, and go up in- 
 stead of down at the end. A single instance will show the contrast. Let 
 any one read the sentence, ' Mill's treatises are most interesting reading, 
 especially that on Liberty : ' his voice will be sure to drop on the two last 
 syllables. But in reading the lines- — 
 
 Now high on waves that idly burst, 
 
 Like Heavenly Hope she crown'd the sea, 
 
 And now, the bloodless point reversed. 
 She bore the blade of Li'ber'ty'— 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 483 
 
 with any sort of emotional emphasis, it is almost impossible to avoid rising 
 at the close. 
 
 The general rules which apply to ethical variations of intonation may interrogative 
 
 be best exemplified by taking an interrogative sentence. Interrogative empiifyin/^' 
 
 sentences which simply ask a question, without any expression of a bias of ^IJ^^ion ae- 
 
 idea or sentiment in the speaker's mind, normally rise at the end, the ac- ending to the 
 
 ^ . ■' idea in the 
 
 cented syllable before the rise being a little depressed. A very marked speaker's mind, 
 rise will give the ethical colouring of surprise : on the other hand a marked 
 drop at the end vsdll imply that a certain definite and foreseen answer is 
 bound to follow. For instance, if we agree that, of the following marks, 
 ' shall mean heightened pitch, " markedly heightened pitch, ^ lowered and 
 " markedly lowered pitch, the sentence ' Did he give them liberty ? ' may 
 be enunciated in at least five very distinct ways. First, ' Did he give 
 them libber' ty' ? ' would be the tone of quite unemotional interrogation, 
 expressing just an ordinary desire to be informed on this particular point. 
 ' Did he give them li"ber"ty" ? ' will imply that such a proceeding was 
 certainly not what the speaker would have expected. ' Did he give them 
 li'ber^ty^ ? ' implies that the speaker feels he may have done so, but has no 
 strong expectation of it, and attaches some value to having the point 
 cleared up. ' Did he give them Ifber^ty" ? ' implies very decidedly that 
 the answer must be no ; and if did he be heightened, and the whole range 
 of pitch in the sentence increased, an expression of excited argument will 
 be produced. Finally, the words may be spoken in pure monotone, which 
 will give the impression that the question is one of a necessary series, and 
 that the speaker has no personal interest in the answer ; a historical ex- 
 aminer might adopt this tone to a candidate. Unemotional questions 
 are very often asked in monotone with a pitch a little heightened above 
 the average, and if the answer exactly follows the lines of the question, it 
 is commonly given in monotone with a pitch a little below the average — 
 thus, ' I's there anything kndwn About it ? ' ' No, there's nothing known 
 aboiit it.' The effect of giving the answer here on the same note as the 
 question would be very absurd.' 
 
 In the fact that such extremely loose and general rules as those I have 
 exemplified are the only ones we can arrive at concerning the actual pitch 
 
 ' The theory mentioned in the chapter on not a word in English, of two syllables and 
 
 verse, that the so-called Greek accents were over, which does not alter the relations-in- 
 
 in classical times indicative of pitch and not pitch of its syllables, according as it occurs 
 
 stress, will be seen now to be not without at the end of an affirmative or of an interro- 
 
 difficulties of its own, which do not seem to gative sentence, to say nothing of other 
 
 have been enough recognised. Fixity of re- more emotional conditions of inflection: and 
 
 lative elevation in pitch for the syllables of even monosyllables, pronounced in isolation, 
 
 a word is an unknown phenomenon in begin and end on distinct points of pitch 
 
 modern languages, and seems incompatible which similarly vary their relations under 
 
 with what we are accustomed to consider various emotional influences, 
 necessary conditions of expression. There is 
 
 I I 2 
 
484 
 
 THE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 § 5. If we 
 confine our- 
 selves to eases 
 of truly emo- 
 tional expres- 
 sion, the 
 * cadences ' are 
 still more 
 variable and 
 indefinable, 
 and the rules 
 still more 
 limited. 
 
 The gliding 
 transitions in 
 speech, and 
 absence of 
 fixed steps of 
 pitch, is the 
 exact opposite 
 to one of the 
 prime con- 
 ditions of 
 melody. 
 
 of the sounds employed, it is sufficiently shown what an infinite and in- 
 definite medley are those ' cadences of speech ' which we find talked of as 
 though they were a set of universally recognised successions of tones, 
 appropriated, one apiece, to every shade of feeling we ever experience. It 
 is to be noticed, moreover, that several of the examples given, where a 
 certain cadence was natural, were not cases of emotional expression at all, 
 hut only of a certain opinion or expectation in the speaker's mind which 
 was not the least connected with feeling : and if we endeavoured to extend 
 our rules we should find that it was chiefly to cases of that class that some 
 comparative certainty of intonation could be attached. If we confine 
 ourselves to truly emotional expression, the assignable rules for the pitch 
 of the sounds will be found almost entirely lo resolve themselves into the 
 rise and fall for effort and depression, and the greater width of interval 
 and more violent changes for greater intensity of emotion. Nor will this 
 latter characteristic express the quality, but only the quantity, of the 
 emotion. It will even do duty for exactly opposite emotions : thus pre- 
 cisely the same sounds in pitch may be used for the excited delivery of 
 the words ' I love you ' and ' I hate, you,' where the difference is conveyed 
 entirely by the different timbre and mode of production of the sounds ; 
 and timbre, I need hardly repeat, has nothing whatever to do with cadence, 
 and offers no sort of basis for musical formation. If we seek for some 
 other general rule of pitch for excited utterance, beyond width of interval 
 and suddenness of change, we shall only find it in a point which is exactly 
 opposed to a fundamental characteristic of Music. All speech, emotional 
 and unemotional, is marked by an immense amount of gliding transitions 
 of pitch, and certain emotional expressions of complaint and entreaty 
 particularly emphasise this peculiarity : while Music, as we have seen, has 
 fixity of degree as a constant characteristic through all the numerous 
 embryo and developed scale-systems -that have been used ; ' and when 
 instruments, such as the singing voice or the violin, glide from fixed 
 degree to fixed degree, the pleasure is caused by the arrival at the 
 fixed note, after the ear has been momentarily excited by watching the 
 course of the sound towards it : that is, by the satisfaction of an expecta- 
 tion which entirely depends on fixed degrees. Thus the gliding and 
 uncertain transitions of speech supplement its lack of rhythmical division 
 in producing an exact opposition to the two essential factors of melodic 
 forms. 
 
 In connection with the points urged so far, I would now ask the reader 
 
 1 Many early and rude scale-systems have 
 even avoided the smaller fixed intervals and 
 have contained fewer steps, and some of 
 them longer, than our developed scale of 
 tones and semitones. So here again, as in 
 the former point of limitation of melody to 
 
 a very few tones, we find the earlier music 
 presenting, in respect of just those mechani- 
 cal considerations which Mr. Spencer con- 
 siders relevant, an even more marked 
 difference from its putative parent, emo- 
 tional speech, than the later. 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 485 
 
 to recall what has been said in previous chapters as to (1) the neutral § 6. These 
 nature of detached musical intervals and rhythmless note-fragments, and certain pre- 
 the occurrence of the same intervals and fragments in all sorts of musical confronted 
 forms of the most diverse characters ; (2) the close organism of musical ™'*'' '^^• 
 
 ' ^ ' o Spencer s 
 
 forms, the impossibility of getting any impression of them from isolated theory. 
 intervals and fragments, and their distinct and indescribable musical in- 
 dividuality ; (3) their frequent lack of any expressive quality describable 
 in terms drawn from the recognised category of the emotions ; and (4) the 
 extreme width and generality of such descriptive terms even when they 
 can be applied. Let him then compare Mr, Spencer's explanation of 
 Music as we know it ; that the passionate and susceptible temperament 
 of composers causes their tones and changes of voice in speech to be more 
 marked than those of other people, and hence they are led in their music 
 to express emotions which all feel by ' extremer intervals and more marked 
 cadences ' than others would use ; and moreover that they are susceptible 
 to compound emotions from things which do not affect others, which 
 compound emotions they express in involved phrases, by combinations of 
 the intervals and cadences in which their conversation and music is wont 
 to express the simpler emotions. Finally, as a commentary on the com- 
 parison, I would ask him to play over the passage quoted on p. 256, or 
 gently to whistle Du hist die Ruh, quoted on p. 222, and ask himself 
 how far in either case Music owes its effect on him to ' exaggerating 
 the loudness, the resonance, the pitch, the intervals, and the variability, 
 which are the characteristics of passionate speech.' 
 
 The theory may be as easily attacked on the score of its assumptions The theory 
 
 „ , „ . ,. -j-u- attacked on 
 
 about Speech and Music separately, as of its conclusions concerning tneir the side of 
 relations. First as regards Speech, it being steadily kept in view that Speech; 
 relations of sounds in pitch are what we are concerned with, I need hardly 
 point out how entirely Mr. Spencer's conceptions are opposed to the view 
 I have sketched above. In place of an infinite and indefinite medley of 
 sound-combinations, the correspondences of which with emotion are subject 
 to only a few extremely lax rules, and this really only in respect of such 
 general points as width of interval and direction up or down, he seems to 
 find a set of numerable and detachable units of tune or ' cadence,' each 
 with its known definite expression ; a phenomenon for which I look as 
 much in vain as I look to the clouds outside for a detailed panorama of 
 the room I am sitting in. The most definite and assignable cadences I 
 can find are at the end of sentences and clauses,' and of unemotional 
 
 ' It is in the closing cadences, far more and consonants, and the delivery of them 
 
 restrictedly than is generally supposed, that may differ also in gmeral qualities of pitch, 
 
 national differences of intonation are promi- such as tending to monotone or travelling 
 
 nent. Languages may of course differ infi- frequently over a large range : but actual 
 
 nitely in timbre and pronunciation of vowels sets of intervals having enough certainty to 
 
486 THE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 rather than emotional sentences. If we go further back we are at once 
 lost. Sentences, having to begin and go on as well as to end, do so by 
 perpetual irregular alternations of monotone and see-sawing over intervals 
 roughly approximating to fifths and octaves, with often much wider skips 
 for emphatic syllables ; and precisely the same idea or emotion may, ac- 
 cording to the particular words employed, be expressed, qua pitch, in a 
 hundred different series of tones. On this head I will add but one more 
 argimient, which further affects also the supposed connection between the 
 * cadences ' of speech and those of Music. We find that the nuances of 
 inflection and expression in speech are appreciated and used to perfection 
 by persons who not only cannot tell one tune from another, but cannot 
 approximately follow a single musical interval with their voice. The 
 absolute lack of definiteness in the intervals of speech could not receive a 
 more clinching proof. 
 ofMulic^^ Next as regards Music, Mr. Spencer position seems remote from facts 
 
 equally in respect of expressiveness and in respect of structure. The 
 'involved phrases,' it must be observed, however much their intervals 
 may be ' combined and complicated,' can still only mean some sort of 
 sen-ies of clauses, since it is only notes in succession that supply any con- 
 ceivable parallel to the sounds of speech. Any eight-bar melody is such 
 an ' involved phrase,' and is bound, on Mr. Spencer's theory, to express 
 a complex web of emotions compounded of simpler emotions, and gene- 
 rated in the composer (who, poor man, has just been blest by the melody's 
 flashing across him as he lies in bed) by his contemplation of ' events, 
 scenes, conduct, and character ; ' an idea which is quite on a par with 
 supposing melodic construction to consist in piecing together ' intervals 
 and cadences,' each taken from some pigeon-hole where it is kept for the 
 special service of some simple emotion.' 
 and in respect Lastly, as regards the supposed derivation, it is superfluous to point out 
 
 of the supposed •. , , i • j.-t.-i-j ■ i 
 
 deriTation. its total incompatibility With our previous account of musical notions. We 
 may forego all reference to form ^ or to any part of our own enquiry, and 
 
 give sentences a sort of characteristic tune, wonderfully yearning and pathetic opening 
 
 occnr normally at the chse, chiefly of melody of the andante in the Pastoral 
 
 sentences, but to some extent of subordinate sonata. 
 
 clauses. 2 Mr. Spencer is unable, of course, wholly 
 ' The same bugbear of perpetual definite to ignore the element of forvi in a melodic 
 and detailed expression leads Mr. Spencer to series of notes ; he himself describes the sup- 
 assign independent emotional meanings to posed modifications of the speaking voice 
 various modes of performance, each of which under emotion as the ' raw material ' of 
 may really be applied to music of the most Music, and says that the traits in question, 
 diverse characters. For instance, he de- ' systematised,' are the traits of Music. But, 
 
 scribes xtaceato as essentially appropriate to even if the traits were as accurately and 
 
 the expression of exhilaration, resolution, and constantly present in Music as he supposes, 
 
 confidence. I need hardly point out how a we must surely enquire how much still lies 
 
 view of this sort breaks down to any one who in the systematisation : the distinctive traits 
 
 remembers the bass accompaniment to the of a marble statue or a marble cathedral are 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 487 
 
 merely confront Mr. Spencer's theory with two simple facts of musical expe- 
 rience ; that the musical effect (1) may be absent in the presence of all his 
 conditions, and (2) may be present in their absence. Thus, iirst confining 
 ourselves to the cases where all the traits he considers distinctive, loudness, 
 large range of pitch, and so on, are as far as possible present, we may still 
 show how utterly their presence fails to account for the musical effect, by 
 the argument which we formerly applied in the same sense to force and 
 suggestions of physical motion ; viz. that the traits in question may all 
 be equally there in the case of two musical pieces, one of which makes a 
 powerful impression on us, and the other none at all. That is to say, two 
 bits of -music which equally resemble emotional speech in all the points 
 on which ]\Ir. Spencer founds his explanation may differ from each other 
 by the whole amount of that emotional effect for which the explanation 
 is wanted. And secondly, taking a melody which, so far from presenting 
 in its succession of tones resemblances to those ' cadences ' of speech on 
 which Mr. Spencer lays stress, presents the exactly opposite qualities, if 
 by its appeal to our melodic faculty we get from it in perfection a unique 
 and indescribable emotional pleasure, we are certaiply justified in regard- 
 ing that faculty and that pleasure as in nature and origin independent 
 of speech, however much associated with language and affected by vocal 
 and verbal conditions in the course of their development. 
 
 How close Mr. Spencer considers the parallehsm and connection to be §7. Mr. 
 between the actual phrases of Music and those of speech, is shown again theory as to 
 in his further view that the function of the former is to facilitate the Music."''*'"" °^ 
 
 simply traits of the raw material, e.y. white- of the successions of tone in the one to those 
 
 nessandsolidity,S2/si«)»a<is«<^, that is wrought in the other, is of course quite compatible 
 
 into a form which appeals to the higher with the subsequent use, as material for 
 
 human faculties. And we see at once that musical purposes, of some few and simple 
 
 Mr. Spencer's convenient and ambiguous phrases of speech of a comparatively definite 
 
 ' systematisation ' really stands for the whole and non-gliding character. Such instinctive 
 
 form-element in what is poA- excoUence an modulations of speech as could be selected 
 
 art of form. It is no mere matter of modern and adapted to Song would be mainly found 
 
 improvem ents, such as harmony, tonality, and in short exclamations and in closing cadences ; 
 
 modulation, which have clearly been de- in elements, that is, which readily admitted 
 
 veloped in obedience to artistic sensibilities of recurrence, and so of the appearance of 
 
 and in no way from sounds due to the proportion and balance; for recurrence is 
 
 physiology of speech or in imitation of obviously the stepping-stone to rhythm. The 
 
 instinctive vocal cadences : it applies to the regular repetition of the same phrase or cry 
 
 very foundation of melody, to the sense of comes nearer music than the most excited 
 
 rhythm, the priority of which to any sort of utterances of fluent speech. A war-cry 
 
 emotional speech Mr. Spencer would doubt- might be of such a nature, where an aid 
 
 less admit; and this independence should to the development of rhythmical cadence 
 
 surely have suggested that in a more de- might be given by the accompanying move- 
 
 veloped stage abstract forms might have an ments, such as the step or the swinging of 
 
 independent appeal for the ear, as well as a club : and we noticed, in the last chapter, 
 
 for the eye. the natural effect on Song of the closing 
 
 The priority of rudimentary music to cadences of lines or approximately equal 
 
 emotional speech, and the general irrelevance lengths of speech. 
 
views. 
 
 488 THE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 development of emotional and sympathetic expressiveness in the latter. 
 He says that ' the complex musical phrases by which composers have con- 
 veyed complex emotions influence us in making the involved cadences by 
 which we convey our subtler thoughts and feelings.' Now the incoherent 
 ' cadences ' of conversation are, as we have seen, infinite in number, and a new 
 one is probably invented every time one of us says ten consecutive words. 
 The coherent phrases of musicians are practically also infinite, as the com- 
 bination of the pitch- and the time-factors multiplies indefinitely the pos- 
 sible arrangements of notes. We have seen on several grounds what a fruitless 
 task it would be to search for definite melodic resemblances between frag- 
 ments from these two infinites. We are thrown back on such occasional and 
 general characteristics as loudness and rapidity ; and I cannot think that any 
 of us will talk louder or quicker when excited, because we find these qualities 
 in some exciting passages of music. The argument that individuals with no 
 sense or enjoyment of music talk as loud and excitedly as other people might 
 perhaps be met by saying that their ancestors had enjoyed music, and 
 transmitted the characteristic mode of utterance. But we should certainly 
 find that a child of a savage tribe, none of whose ancestors had heard 
 varied and rapid musical cadences, would talk just as loud and fast as 
 English children if brought up among them. Nor do we conceive the 
 Greeks, whose music was so much less elaborate and complex than ours, 
 to have been on an average very inferior to ourselves in their powers of 
 expressive utterance, and to have posseased much less developed vocal 
 cords. 
 Cruder It will not be necessary, after considering Mr. Spencer's theory, to 
 
 spend much time on cruder and less explicit views of the relations of speech 
 and Music. The remark of the Abbe du Bos — one of the earliest pieces 
 of musical criticism in modern literature — that 'just as a painter imitates 
 the forms and colours of Nature, so the musician imitates the tones, the 
 accents, the sighs, the inflexions of voice, in fact all the sounds by means 
 of which Nature herself expresses her sentiments and passions,' only ex- 
 poses in its baldest form a principle latent in all the modern phraseology 
 which implies such a continuity and connection between speech and Music 
 as would just constitute them means of graduated strength for expressing 
 the same things. Nor would some of the more modem statements of that 
 principle at all yield the pahn in point of baldness ; as, for instance, the 
 thesis advanced not long ago by an eminent mathematician in an address to 
 the British Association, that ' no essentially new melodic themes can be 
 invented until a social cataclysm, or the civilisation of some at present 
 barbaric races, shall have created fresh necessities of expression, and call 
 into activity new forms of impassioned declamation.' Every original 
 melody is of course an essentially new melodic theme in one sense : in 
 any other sense the possibility of essentially new melodic themes has one. 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 489 
 
 and only one, condition — a new scale-system. That such a system may be 
 in store is quite conceivable : what is inconceivable is that it could have 
 any reference to speech. Scales consist of fixed steps : and that they will 
 be developed from that which is distinguished precisely by the absence 
 of fixed steps is precisely as likely as that we shall find neatly-made fire- 
 escapes growing in the woods. 
 
 Eousseau's views on the present question derive an interest of their Rousseau's 
 own from the fact that he was in the curious position of having, as a musician, rfSon^due'^ 
 a keen appreciation of strong rhythmic tune and a keen dislike of unmetrical Jween wrL^ 
 recitative, while at the same time far too much possessed by the idea that stincts and Us 
 language must be essentially at the root of melody — which otherwise 
 would not have been ' in conformity to Nature ' — to recognise the true 
 character of melodic form and the true place of rhythm as one of its two 
 factors. He is thus in a perpetual state of uncertainty and compromise. 
 He seems to connect even the rhythmic sense itself with speech : he at 
 any rate attempts to derive musical rhythms in detail from verse-feet, 
 and thus confuses the mere metrical outline of the bar with the infinitely 
 various combinations of time-relations which may be included within this 
 outline. He is always showing his sense of the indispensableness of firm 
 rhythm by complaining of the lack of it in the contemporary French 
 music ; and yet he falls into the ordinary bungle of considering the notes- 
 in-pitch of a melody as something which can be detached and judged 
 apart from the rhythm. He never brings himself explicitly to recognise 
 the power and right of Music to take possession of speech, even of prose, and 
 to mould its flow ; and denies that good melody could ever be associated with 
 French words ! It is true he knew Eameau and not Auber : but had he never 
 heard a Volhslied f He says of all modern languages that as they are the 
 productions of barbarous peoples, and therefore not naturally musical (an 
 admission which cuts at the very root of the supposed connection), if music 
 is to be added, great precautions must be used that the union may be 
 sufficiently natural to produce illusion ; not perceiving that the imposi- 
 tion of musical form on the words of speech must always be, from the 
 speech point of view, uwnatiu-al. And so little notion had he of what 
 the voice really does in speech, that he considers the ideal recitative 
 would deceive the ear into thinking it wa^ speech — which certainly would 
 leave nothing to desire in point of naturalness. Finally, his identification 
 of minute shdings of the speaking voice with ' enharmonic ' changes of 
 pitch is an almost inconceivable piece of muddle : for he is speaking of 
 such changes in connection with European music, in which they never 
 occur as a melodic feature, and are only produced occasionally and onB at 
 a time on certain instruments, for the sake of perfect purity of intonation 
 in harmonic progressions. 
 
 There is, however, one theory as to the connection between speech and 
 
490 
 
 THE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 § 9. The view 
 that primitive 
 speech con- 
 tained a sort 
 of embryonic 
 
 which stands 
 in intimate 
 relation to the 
 whole concep- 
 tion of Music 
 most opposed 
 to the central 
 conception of 
 this book. 
 
 Final summary 
 of the difficul- 
 ties which that 
 central concep- 
 tion has to 
 encounter. 
 
 General diffi- 
 culties. 
 
 Music, which claims more particular notice. It might seem indeed only 
 a form of that already criticised ; but is far more insidious in that, while 
 explicitly relating only to the ■primitive stage of utterance where many 
 will carelessly grant it, it none the less enters into the whole conception 
 of the permanent nature of the sound-art. I refer to the widely spread 
 notion that the speech of primitive man had a special relation to Music ; 
 that his direct and normal expression of his intuitions and feelings con- 
 tained the essential germs of Music, or was actually ' a sort of music' ' 
 The essential distinctness in nature of the musical element even in 
 embryo was perhaps sufficiently insisted on in the last chapter ; but the 
 supposed musical character of early speech rests on such an easy mis- 
 reading of facts, and introduces the whole false principle under so conve- 
 nient a cover of remoteness, innocencp, and vagueness, that it holds a very 
 chief place among the difficulties and prejudices which the central con- 
 ception of this book has to encounter : and the reference to it here affiards 
 a good opportunity for embracing those various difficulties in a connected 
 and final summary. 
 
 The central conception itself, I need hardly say, is that the primary 
 and essential function of Music is to create beautiful objective forfns, 
 and to impress us with otherwise U'^known things, instead of to induce 
 and support particular subjective mQods and to eaipress for us known 
 things. 
 
 There is, then, (1) the initial difficulty, sufficiently exemplified in the 
 above remark of the Abbe du Bos, and obviously due to the general 
 association of the idea of Art with the definite representation so palpable 
 in its poetic, plastic, and pictorial branches — the difficulty of conceiving 
 an art as preventative, as primarily bound, by presenting its own things, 
 whether in harmony with other things or not, to stir up its own indescrib- 
 able emotions. Examining further the way in which the subject is likely 
 to present itself to the mind, we find that (2) the habitual experience of 
 forms which can be seen and touched is an obstacle to clearly conceiving 
 as sensible forms phenomena which cannot be seen and touched ; and 
 (3) the character of the lines of sound of which we have incessant expe- 
 
 ' It is curious to observe that Wagner, 
 much of whose work might seem, from its 
 efforts after detailed an^ impossible ' expres- 
 sion ' and from the violent and extended 
 intervals of its recitatives, to be an outcome 
 of Mr. Spencer's theoify, yet takes a view 
 exactly opposite to Mr. Spencer's as to the 
 course which the history of the musical 
 element in human speech has taken. Hold- 
 ing the earliest efforts of speech to have 
 come nearest to Music, he suggests that 
 probably the first language of human beings 
 
 bore a g^eat resemblance to sipging : and in 
 speaking of Beethoven's symphonies he dis- 
 covers 'the metaphysical necessity for the 
 discovery of this completely novel means of 
 expression in our own times, in the more and 
 more conventional development of modern 
 speech ; ' that is, speech, in spite of the 
 enormous increase in the variety of its 
 intonations, which he would hardly deny, 
 has become, according to hiijj, less and less 
 musical. 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 491 
 
 rience, those of speech, being primarily and for the most part exclusively 
 expressive, is an obstacle to recognising the character of " certain 
 occasional lines of sound as primarily impressive. These obstacles may 
 disappear, indeed, in the very act of being explicitly noticed ; but in 
 escaping notice, they suffice to turn speculation at the ve^y outset into 
 the wrong channel. The mistaken view of the essence of Music seeks and 
 finds a natural support in the mistaken view as to its essential connection 
 with speech. While, on the one hand, the primary aspect of melodies as 
 forms, as unique pieces of formed or Ideal Motion, is lost sight of — the 
 very sound of the phrase ' abstract form ' seeming, on a casual view, to 
 have some kind of incompatibility with profound emotional appeal — on 
 the other hand, the instinctive sense that melodies differ from visible 
 forms in being not only forms but utterances, often deeply expressive 
 utterances, and perpetually delivered by the human voice, has naturally 
 led on to the notion that what Music represents and imitates, or ex- 
 aggerates and idealises, can only be the other and commoner phenomena of 
 expressive utterance, those, namely, produced by the voice in speech. 
 But inasmuch as experience has habituated us to large organic structures, 
 in which the artificial and separate character of Music is overpoweringly 
 evident, those who desire to establish the connection naturally turn to 
 savage nations and primitive times ; neglecting the suggestive fact at 
 their very doors, that the six or eight wordless notes which a child of four 
 wiU croon over to itself with never-ceasing delight are, both in themselves 
 and in their emotional effect, as truly and absolutely remote from speech 
 as is the Eroica symphony. 
 
 And then come in the more specially misleading facts, that (4) primi- More special 
 tive speech, in its direct and vivid contact with concrete reality and fusion, in ae' 
 remoteness from abstract conceptions, is doubtless in a way more poetical of speech**'™' 
 than the later lanffuage where reflection has to a great extent replaced poetry, and 
 
 ° ° . o r music. 
 
 intuition ; and that (5) primitive poetry did appear in intimate associa- 
 tion with sonorous recitation and song ; — two considerations which, taken 
 together, seem made to create a confusion between the nature and attri- 
 butes of the totally distinct elements which Song presents. Seeing that ■ 
 speech was often rudely poetical, and that rude poetry and music found 
 often simultaneous utterance, how pasy to slip on without analysis into 
 the hazy notion of Herder and Comte, that the ' soft of poetry ' character- 
 istic of the primitive expression of feelings and ideas involved also a ' sort 
 of music ' ; and that it is in speech (albeit essentially formless) that the 
 essential germs of Music (albeit essentially form) are to be sought. The 
 error is further facilitated by (6) the rudeness in inchoate song of the 
 distinctively musical element, the element which is not given in but 
 imposed on speech. The rude utterances which contain the musical 
 element are so much less 7n,arkedly different from the amorphous cries 
 
492 TUE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 which do not contain them than is, e.g., a modern symphony from a modern 
 conversation— ^especially to our ears, who often find savage music and 
 savage speech alike barbarous and ugly, and forget that we cannot judge 
 music with the savage ear till we can remake ourselves into savages — that 
 the separate existence and origin of the musical element may naturally 
 fail to suggest itself, and the relative importance of the expressive and 
 the impressive or distinctively musical aspects seem so far inverted that 
 the very existence of the latter is ignored. 
 
 As a matter of fact, we have seen that the savage himself conveniently 
 supplies the evidence we want in his instrumental performances, whose 
 rhythmic and often purely percussive nature presents the distinctively 
 musical element in undiluted purity. And the idea of rude melodic forms, 
 developed gradually in obedience to the musical instinct (though doubt- 
 less affected by their associated words in such general features as length 
 of phrase, pace of movement, and so on) and instinctively imposed on 
 words as more developed melodic forms are now more consciously im- 
 posed, may perhaps be best caught by going back to the very earliest 
 stages, where melody was hardly represented by anything beyond its 
 single factor of rhythm. For we have seen that it was by passing through 
 the interlude of monotonous but rhythmical chanting, and so discarding 
 or limiting instead of exaggerating the characteristics of emotional 
 speech, and imposing a totally new element of form, that recitation be- 
 came a basis for the development of Music. Here, then, in the action of 
 the single factor, supervening on and not evolved from speech, may be 
 found an illustration of the action of developing and developed melodic 
 forms ; the only difference being that the simple sense of rhythm is so 
 simple that this factor might be introduced early in great completeness, 
 even as it is presented in most complete accuracy by savage dances, 
 clappings, &c. ; while with the entrance of the pitch-factor begins the 
 extremely slow and uncertain development of melodic form proper to what 
 it has now become, with the perpetual chance that, through developing 
 in association with language, it shall seeni to owe to language the details 
 of its successions-:in-pitch or ' cadences.' 
 Final restate- To pursue the subject on the positive side would, however, be merely 
 
 Mp»ate*source to repeat the substance of the chapters on Association, Melody, and Song. 
 '°t rt**T^ °^ ^^ ^^ enough to recall how every consideration tended to the same result ; 
 that the oak grew from the acorn ; that the musical faculty and pleasure, 
 which have to do with music and nothing else, are the representatives and 
 linear descendants of a faculty and pleasure which were musical and 
 nothing else ; and that, however rudely and tentatively applied to speech, 
 Music was a separate order, an adjustment of proportional elements of 
 which speech knows nothing, introduced in conformance with the instincts 
 of a pleasure to which the organism had been through long ages more 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 495 
 
 and more adapted ; a pleasure greatly associated with speech, because the 
 voice was the naturally available instrument, but which would have 
 been in essence the same had words had no existence and visible signs 
 been the ordinary medium of communication on this planet ; even as it 
 would be in essence the same to any one of us who, living in solitude, 
 had had the music he has actually heard in his life conveyed day by day 
 to his ears. 
 
 There is one more restricted application of the speech-theory which § lo. The 
 claims a moment's separate attention, and with which we may close the national aira 
 topic ; the view, namely, put forward long ago by Addison and very generally affec°e™by1he 
 accepted without question, that national melodies are intimately affected pdigenous 
 
 '■ . . *' intonations of 
 
 by the natural intonations of speech common in a country. In the speech, 
 case of European nations we cannot doubt that their widely differing 
 speech-intonations, the prevalent cadences of their sentences, are the 
 amorphous result of all sorts of physical and linguistic differences. 
 Melodies, on the other hand, whether characteristically national or not, are 
 made from the intervals of one scale-system, the universal adoption of 
 which in itself implies the widest agreement in the special order of sensi- 
 bility addressed. We might forego all the preceding arguments, and rely 
 simply on the contrast of these facts, to show how impossible it is that the 
 series of notes in definite tunes should have any more connection with the 
 definite national peculiarities of speech-cadences than with the national 
 dress. The question of definite melodic formation must here again be care- Here agaiii 
 fully separated from any general characters.' Mr. Spencer is right in re- die formation 
 marking that the ItaUans, who have varied and expressive speech-intonation, Anguished" 
 have also been distinguished for free and flowing melody ; and that the g^MarfrrisMcs 
 Scotch, with a more monotonous (not necessarily, however, an inexpressive) such as 
 mode of speech, have also had limited and monotonous tunes. It would monotony, 
 be a sufficient hypothesis that the same natural causes which have led to 
 a limited range of tones in speech have Umited the voice as an instrument, 
 that is, have limited the material for musical forms of which the voice is, 
 for popular purposes, the prime repository. But even if the analogy be 
 
 ' Even as regards general characters, the Spencer's theory, be the more remarkable in 
 contrast between the speech and the music that they have distinct musical instinct, and 
 of peoples is sometimes very marked. Some are much addicted to chanting, as an accom- 
 races of savages are distinguished by parti- paniment to paddling and in extempore 
 cularly soft and musical languages, while verses and satires. The Fijians, with a re- 
 showing no superiority in musical develop- markably rich and euphonious language and 
 meut. The people of New Guinea are so many aesthetic tastes, are pre-eminent among 
 described ; the Samoans, with a pleasing the peoples of the South Seas for the rude- 
 language, have very rude percussive music, ness of their music. The Andamans, on the 
 with no variety beyond two or three notes : other hand, with a harsh and disagreeable 
 and the same applies to other Malayo-Poly- language, are described as having a marked 
 uesian races, in whom the absence of more taste for music, 
 varied musical cadences should, on Mr. 
 
494 
 
 THE SPEECH THEORY. 
 
 § 11. The 
 actual relations 
 between 
 Speech and 
 Music. 
 
 The general 
 impression of 
 music as 
 HtUeraace, 
 
 Many of the 
 features of 
 physical 
 motion which 
 Music may 
 suggest may 
 be exception- 
 ally well pre- 
 sented in 
 speech. 
 
 pressed to the furthest point, it is quite irrelevant to the actual structure 
 of tunes and to their supposed derivation from speech-cadences. There is, 
 as it happens, one noticeable peculiarity of many Scotch tunes, the avoidance 
 of the interval of a semitone ; but for analogies to this or any other definite 
 feature, the analogies which alone would be relevant to the theory we have 
 been reviewing, we of course look in vain in the shifting quicksands of 
 speech-utterances. Could any one, on the simple ground of being able to 
 detect the nationality of a Welshman and a Scotchman by their mode of 
 talking (to take Addison's own instance), detect which of two melodies — 
 say Ar hyd y nos and Annie Laurie — was the Welsh and which the Scotch 
 one ? 
 
 Having seen at such length what the relations between speech and Music 
 are not, we must now conclude by briefly enquiring what they are, over and 
 above those points of alliance which were sufiSciently discussed in connection 
 with the single branch of Song. I need not dwell again on the most general 
 fact of all, our impression of music, instrumental as well as vocal, as an 
 utterance of some true, however untranslatable, significance, and with some 
 personality (often, I think, our own), or it may be of several personalities, 
 projected behind it ; the sort of impression which I previously described 
 as frequently evoking what seems more like assent than mere admiration ; 
 an impulse to exclaim, at some melodic phrase, ' I should think so indeed ! ' 
 rather than ' How beautiful ! ' This character is clearly connected with 
 the perpetual experience of lines of sound, with varied ascents and 
 descents and varieties of pace and emphasis, as significant in speech ; 
 and is an instance of about as wide and pervading association as could 
 well be. But under this most general relation of all may be ranked a 
 number of other more special features ; which, however, are all entirely 
 general as compared with that supposed parallelism of actual ' cadences,' 
 of actual intervals and successions-in-pitch, which we have just been 
 reviewing. 
 
 Thus, all those features of physical motion mentioned in the fourteenth 
 chapter as having their counterparts in Music, which, we saw, is able to 
 suggest definite emotions so far as the physical motions are themselves 
 expressive of such emotions, may naturally be presented in speech. And 
 the connection of Music with the presentation of them in speech is of course 
 exceptionally close. For, first, in the use of language under emotion there 
 is not only the varied play of energy parallel to that which may be mani- 
 fested by muscular exercise of other sorts, but this varied play takes effect 
 in the actual material of Sound, and so obtains the widest and easiest 
 channel for associations with the art of sound. And, secondly, speech 
 stands apart from other physical modes of expression in having normally a 
 large amount of continuity : in the appreciation of feeling as conveyed by 
 speech, we are accustomed to long connected lines of impression, presenting 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 4gg 
 
 it may be many variations and contrasts of tone and character, or it may 
 be the mere quality of even persistence ; but in either case corresponding, 
 in their character as more or less sustained chains of utterances, to the 
 phenomena of Music, which in like manner may preserve a persistent 
 flow, or present within a short space a marked succession of variations and 
 contrasts. 
 
 I must repeat the previous warning, that it is not the presentation of 
 any definable features which is at the root of musical eifect : music may 
 be slow and quick and even and interrupted and emphatic and furious and 
 capricious and loud and soft and all the rest, and still be perfectly un^ 
 beautiful and unimpressive. But if it is musically impressive, particular 
 features of motion will give it particular expressive characters : and then 
 slowness becomes solemnity, and quickness becomes it may be' merriness 
 or it may be agitation, and fury becomes energy, and abruptness becomes 
 passion, and so on. And our present point is that these characters and 
 their intermixtures and transitions are probably more keenly felt through 
 the experiences of speech than through any other sorts of physical motion, 
 speech being the channel in which the varieties of psychical impulse most 
 constantly and prominently take effect. The criterion of this influence of 
 speech would be that, if a person of musical instinct could be imagined _to 
 live just as other men do, but to be miraculously deaf to the one pheno- 
 menon of speech, his sense of musical expression would be found decidedly 
 deficient. 
 
 Nor, when once the parallelism of actual intervals is given up, does it 
 seem impossible that association may extend to less obvious features, and 
 may exist between points in Music and speech which agree only indirectly^ 
 in the sort of relation they hold to other things in their own respective 
 lines ; for example, that a special strangeness given by some unexpected 
 chromatic turn may involve some faint hint of the less usual accents of 
 speech which would mark particular emotional occasions. A very frequent Eepdtition of 
 point, in which instinctive association with speech is undoubtedly present, ^ ^^^^ ' 
 is the repetition of a phrase, with or without a difference. The opening 
 couple of bars of two of Beethoven's best known sonatas supply an instance 
 of each kind — 
 
496 
 and — 
 
 THE SPEECH THEORY, 
 
 fe 
 
 m 
 
 5 
 
 gF^"^ 
 
 P 
 
 -g-- 
 
 ^ 
 
 — «■ — «^ — *r 
 -•- -•- -•- 
 
 
 F^iE 
 
 P-- 
 
 -«- -«- -•- -(SI- " 
 
 3: ^ :S-- ^^. 
 
 :|i 
 
 ^f^^^^^^^e^ 
 
 »/ 
 
 pr r 
 
 ^^fei=i^g| 
 
 Ei 
 
 '^=i 
 
 f=t=F 
 
 =3= 
 
 -=r 
 
 fthd employ- 
 mentof climax. 
 
 This feature of repetition cannot be connected with any single character of 
 expression, but often resembles the reiteration of speech in conveying to 
 the strain a special air of intensity, whether of some definable character — 
 solemnity, pleading, or whatever it may be — caused by other means, or of 
 the undefinable musical impression. In cases where this sense of intensity 
 or persistence is not noticeably conveyed, the general feeling of music as 
 a mode of utterance is still naturally helped by any such general points 
 of parallelism with speech. We may find in the second of the above 
 quotations another point of a similar kind ; namely, the rising to a 
 certain moment of climax and descent to the close, which is an extremely 
 common feature of sentences. On the other hand, there are passages 
 which seem to reach a climax and end on it, and which may be described 
 as having a certain air of rhetorical emphasis ; which again implies some 
 faint reference to the phenomena of speech. In these latter instances, 
 however, it is, I think, more doubtful how far our former criterion would 
 apply ; how far a person who had had no experience of speech, while able 
 to hear music, would fail to receive the full emotional effect from the 
 musical passages. There have been other applications of the idea of paral- 
 lelism to which this last remark applies still more certainly ; as that the 
 effects of harmony and polyphony have some reference to the simultaneous 
 concordant or diverging expressions of several different views by several 
 voices. The effect of several people talking at once is, to me at any rate, 
 so disagreeable, that I scarcely think any agreeable aesthetic effect could 
 owe anything to association with it. Some hint of varying strains of 
 feeling I think may be suggested by the motion of simultaneous musical 
 parts ; but it can hardly depend on even the faintest reference to their 
 simultaneous vocal expression. 
 
THE SPEECH THEORY. 497 
 
 The list of dim affinities between Music and speech could easily be Such affinities, 
 extended, but the cases I have given may serve as specimens. Far more jw ^^^^ 
 important than the features themselves is the point that they are quite "'^''ed, are no 
 
 '^ _ _ _ '^ J 1 guarantee of 
 
 undistinctive of what is musically essential ; that any one may find them pleasurable 
 as readily in music that he cares nothing for as in music that he loves ; music, 
 while none the less they contribute to give to music which is truly enjoyed 
 that peculiar character of utterance, as of a revelation of unimagined 
 things, received now, it may be, as a message from others, and now again 
 so possessing us that we seem to find its source in the deepest springs of 
 our own emotional nature. 
 
 K K 
 
498 
 
 5 1. Strat- 
 ture. The 
 impossibility 
 in Opera of 
 the larger aorl 
 of musical 
 organism ; 
 
 ^hicSl in ho 
 ■way aflfecta 
 the smaller 
 >an(l closer 
 organisms, of 
 -lengths Vary- 
 ing from a 
 short ' subject 
 to a long 
 paragraph. 
 
 CHAPTHE XXII, 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 Since it is vocal music which finds on the stage its most prominent arena, 
 the most fundamental points which concern Opera have already appeared 
 in their natural place in connection with Song. It will be necessary, 
 however, to consider the subject aoinewhat more in detail, and especially 
 in connection with recent theory and practice. 
 
 First as regards structure. It is clear how totally alien to the varied 
 succession of words, scenes, and events in a theatrical performance is the 
 organism of a large Symphonic movement. That sort of organism repre- 
 sents a growth which, having taken place from a purely musical centre 
 through the working of purely musical instincts, naturally also represents 
 the furthest departure of the art from alliaace with extraneous adjuncts ; 
 in other words, the furthest development of instrumental music. A similar 
 incompatibility with the continuity of theatrical scenes inust also preclude 
 any considerable use of many features not specially associated with 
 instrumental composition, such as fugue, ' imitation,' and the various devices 
 which have been employed to give unity to a single complete piece of 
 limited length. But the existence and development of these structural 
 complexities, as we have seen all through, has in no way annulled or 
 interfered with the instinctive and general demand of human ears for 
 impressive motives and melodies. These are the cardinal units of Music : 
 the effect on the musical sense of these closest and most vital organisms is 
 the central fact of the whole art. While the most complicated musical 
 fabric must be built clearly and intelligibly on such simpler and self- 
 (centred units of form, if it is to have any arresting and permanent power, 
 the simpler forms themselves^ from a ' subject' two bars long to a flowing 
 paragraph, retain a perfectly independent power, and make exactly the 
 same appeal as if there were no such thing as a fugue or a symphonic ' first 
 movement ' in the world. It is clearly of these straightforward pieces of 
 Ideal Motion that the progressive and accompanying music of theatrical 
 Scenes must in the main consist. The music of an Opera, regarded as a 
 whole, must be a stream of more or less definite sections, worked up within 
 certain limits, and embroidered with any amount of instrumental detail, 
 
OPERA. 499 
 
 but accompanying and adapting itself to the varied course of the extra- 
 musical elements. And while a prolonged stream of musically inde- 
 pendent paragraphs or lengths, whatever might be their individual charm, 
 would lack aim and coherence apart from some external unity, it may 
 receive in the unity of words and action a perfect justification. 
 
 But though Music does not impose on Song and Opera the reiterations Music cannot 
 and ' carryings out ' and elaborations of structure which occur elsewhere, mcS inUmate 
 that is, does not employ all its resources in one. of its branches, it is in tieTwhicT"''" 
 this sense, and in this sense only, that it can be said (as it often is said) to !°?H^ " '» •>« 
 
 , delightful from 
 
 make compromises. That it should abandon the essence of its nature, the moment to 
 essence which makes it delightful from moment to moment, from bar to 
 bar, the essence of vital melodic or harmonic motive,' is strictly impossible 
 without the loss of all its raison d'etre. That laxity, therefore, in the 
 coherence of sections, which is natural in a musical work whose unity is 
 provided for by other than musical means, no more opens the floodg'ates 
 to unmeasured declamation and recitative, whether accompanied by dry 
 chords or by tuneless passages of florid orchestration, than the want of 
 organic continuity in a collection of poems permits the majority of them 
 to be out of rhythm. Such compromises of the musical to the verbal 
 element as take effect in prolonged sections lacking the organic vitality 
 of distinct and agreeable motive, so far from giving greater play and scope 
 to the compound art, simply deprive the musical sounds of the power of 
 interesting human ears. While, therefore, the plot and scenes rule the 
 large scheme of the work, Music takes complete possession of the actual 
 sentences as they come, and in the construction of the actual motives and 
 sections relaxes her strict rights at most only here and there, to an extent 
 which vivifies the sense of their main predominance. 
 
 There is, however, one principle, predominant in all the larger sorts of § 2. The 
 musical organism, which is too deeply founded in the nature both of Music recurrence 
 and of the musical sense, to be dispensed with in any prolonged musical ^ectiveiy 
 presentation without the gravest loss ; the principle, namely, of recurreTice. ^^^^}^^^^ "" 
 Music passes before the ear without pause : it cannot stop to be looked at : 
 and the inevitable desire to hear impressive motives again is one which 
 the looser succession of an opera can satisfy as well as a single compact and 
 rounded movement. The principle, therefore, of the recurring 'subject' 
 is a most important one. It is exemplified in a simple way by the 
 frequent introduction into the overture of motives which are to follow 
 in the piece, and to which the sense of recognition ensures a double and 
 treble welcome. But a more recherche mode of employment (so long as it 
 is not carried to an extent which makes it seem mechanical, like the 
 
 ' It was sufficiently explained in the very much wider is the denotation of ' me- 
 tenth chapter, and must be specially borne Iodic motive ' from what is generally under- 
 in mind throughout the present one, how stood by an 'air ' or 'tune.' 
 
 K K 2 
 
BOO 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 5 3. Wag- 
 ner's confusion 
 on the subject 
 of organio 
 Btructure. 
 
 painting of a man's name on his back) is the assigning of particular 
 motives to particular personages or particular recurrent ideas in the piece, 
 The Leitmotiv. SO as to make the recurrence a distinctly dramatic effect ; a feature of 
 which Wagner was the first to perceive the great possibilities. The extra- 
 ordinary ease and rapidity with which any striking music becomes identi- 
 fied with that in association with which it is presented may give such 
 motives the power of seeming not so much to symbolise as actually to 
 express what is assigned to them ; but the primary source of their value is, 
 of course, the delight of the ear in hearing again and again what has once 
 struck it. 
 
 There should not be any difficulty in perceiving the complete compati- 
 bility of the two facts, (1) that the structural conditions of an opera, where 
 the stream of music is supported and justified by a progressive series of 
 scenes and words, are totally different from the structural conditions of a 
 large musical organism, such as a symphonic movement, which must be 
 rounded off into a self-complete unity by purely musical means : and (2) 
 that the musical series must not be a series of orderless sounds or frag- 
 ments of phrases, but must consist of sections ' or groups of bars linked 
 together by the firm bond of melodic coherence, seeing that Music would 
 cease to be Music if it resigned its intimate organic qualities. It would 
 be useless to insist further on these facts, after the detailed discussion of 
 musical form in the eighth and tenth chapters, were it not for the great 
 confusion in which Wagner has involved the really simple point. For he 
 talks of developing the ' symphonic form ' in union with the drama ; and 
 expressly anticipates from the mere evolution of a series of musical phrases 
 out of the successive sentences of a poem — the poem itself being necessarily 
 constructed without the slightest reference to the purely musical conditions 
 of large musical organism exemplified in the symphony — a richness of 
 'purely musical development which will infinitely exceed that hitherto 
 attained by the symphony ; as though richness of development could be a 
 possible result of perpetual differentiating, without any necessity of inte- 
 gration. Of course if Wagner or any one else succeeded in investing the 
 successive periods of a poem with a succession of musical sections all of 
 which were beautiful (and some of which, as in operatic concerted pieces, 
 might naturally attain within themselves to considerable complexity of 
 organism), that would be a most satisfactory result : but the invention of 
 any number of beautiful forms would have absolutely no relation to de- 
 velopm^ent oiform, in that wider general sense which implies the binding 
 together of a prolonged series of formed parts under aspects of structural 
 
 ' I must again warn readers who do not 
 recall the account of melodic organism in 
 the tenth chapter, against understanding by 
 this word musical lengths of a distinctly 
 
 detachable kind, that is, with the unmistake- 
 able beginning and end which we identify 
 with a single complete melodic form. 
 
OPERA. 501 
 
 uniiy. That development is best exemplified in our old comparison of the 
 large instrumental movement with its germ in the dance-tune : there we have 
 a true logical and historical development of form, resulting in a large and 
 complex series — in place of a small and simple series — of related clauses, 
 both the simple and the complex series being accepted by the musical in- 
 telligence as in a true sense a single and self-complete whole. Yet it is 
 actually a further advance in this direction, a truly musical development 
 of form to a point beyond that obtained in the symphony, that Wagner 
 asserts to be attainable through the medium of a verbal basis, with which 
 music is obliged to link itself sentence by sentence and paragraph by para- 
 graph, and which necessarily and confessedly takes no account whatever 
 of the laws and conditions of prolonged musical unity; as though by 
 arranging a number of animals (I fear that in view of modern recitative we 
 must make a good many of them invertebrates) tail to head, we should evolve 
 a single markedly superior vertebrate organism. 
 
 The fact is that the word /orm has been a complete stumbling-block to His failure to 
 this writer. He nowhere distinguishes its several senses, or the several various senses 
 grades of closeness of organic coherence which it includes : and the special f„^.J^°^^ 
 apphcation of it to the perceptions of the human senses, the notion of a 
 form as a set of impressions which the eye or ear, with their well-known 
 and limited range of action, can grasp and integrate, seems never to have 
 dawned on him in the course of his theorising. Thus while he seeks to 
 dignify the musical element of Opera by vague talk about ' infinite melody,' 
 the ' large melody which comprises the whole dramatic-musical piece,' and 
 while, as we saw, he actually gives the name of melody (and assigns there- 
 fore the character of form) to the undivided and multitudinous murmur 
 of a forest, he perpetually overlooks the humble fact that while melody 
 does not the least want to be infinite, it does very much want to have one 
 bar intelligibly and organically connected with the next, and even with 
 the next but one, and as a rule even the one beyond that ; and that the 
 ear's impression of what it is receiving from moment to moment is not the 
 least affected by the knowledge that these present strains belong to a 
 ' melody ' so large that it will be going on three hours hence. It may 
 sound attractive to make the poet remark to the musician, ' Throw your- 
 self fearlessly into the sea of music : spread your melody boldly, so that it andjhis notion 
 may flow through the whole work like an uninterrupted stream ; with it melody boidfy. 
 reveal all that I pass over in silence, because you alone can reveal it.' But 
 unfortunately notes, like syllables, when spread too boldly may result in 
 nonsense. And we have thoroughly seen what indispensable conditions 
 for musical coherence are (1) firmly measured rhythm ' and (2) a certain 
 ' It is difficult to avoid frequent repeti- which will be found at p. 155, note, pp. 261-2, 
 tion of this point, and impossible to add at and p. i61. I would specially refer to the 
 every repetition the slight amount of quali- , test of organic motive mentioned m the 
 fication that it demands ; the statement of latter place. 
 
502 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 definiteness and steadiness of key. Seeing how systematically these con- 
 ditions have been ignored (in spite of brilliant exceptions) in the recita- 
 tive-portions of Wagner's operas, it is surely odd to iind him complaining 
 in an injured tone of the view, ' instilled into people's minds,' that his 
 theory ' comprised just that element which had always seemed to them 
 eccentric and displeasing' in his compositions. Consider the following 
 specimens picked at random from the second act of Lohengrin : 
 
 mi 
 
 
 =p — tn» — 1« 
 
 S5^— 1= 
 
 Tag darf hier uns nicht mehr sehn. 
 
 pp 
 
 
 Ortrud. 
 
 1=^ 
 
 rz¥=z=|= 
 
 -!fs«S- 
 
 iop 
 
 
 1^. 
 
OPERA. 
 
 503 
 
 Jsc.. 
 
 ^0^^^^^. 
 
 farcht - bar t'dd - lich Gift, daa uns - re Schmach 
 
 und ih re 
 
 ^^^=^^E| 
 
 Telhamund.- 
 
 m 
 
 &" 
 
 i^^P ^g^^^ ^g^_ ^^^g^fe=g^S^E^^ 
 
 Weib 1 was bannt micli noch in dei -neNa-he? Wa- rum lass' ioh dich nicht al - 
 
 =1 q=ta= 
 
 :^Eqz£±J£ ^Ez^^^^^^ 
 
 hin,- 
 
 wo mein Ge - wis - sen Ku - he wie - der f^nd' I 
 
 Ped, 
 
OPERA 
 
 
 Ortrtjd. 
 
 > — K- 
 
 I^^S^^ili 
 
 ^ 
 
 'm 
 
 
 E^33 
 
 
 Willst du mir droh'n ? mir, ei-neni Wei be, droh'n ? O Fei - ger I 
 
 :3=P^= 
 
 ±t 
 
 tSm 
 
 
 «=i 
 
 ^==pi; 
 
 =^ 
 
 3i 
 
 ^is.--^-^- 
 
 ^ 
 
 Eg^^EEEiE 
 
 qs — t — >i=^: 
 
 
 ^_^ 
 
 =-i"= 
 
 liat - test du 80 grim - mig ihra ge-droht, der jetzt dicli in 
 
 /P 
 
 SR" 
 
 /r^ p ,iento. 
 
 ^^H^^^l^ 
 
 Fed. 
 
OPERA. 
 
 Tbleamund.,, 
 
 505 
 
 In these passages, which are fair specimens of their kind, there is 
 clearly no musical substance or vitality whatever. They wholly fail to Unmeiodic and 
 satisfy any condition which discriminates a really organic succession of iaoto ome* 
 notes from a mere set of orderless and arbitrary phrases, tacked on, frag- f^m ioAln"-'^* 
 ment after fragment, to the pronunciation of certain words ; whether it be S"'"- 
 our technical test, of collapse of form by change of time-relations, which " 
 will at once convict them of having no form to collapse ; or the more 
 popular criterion, that each note and bar, at any rate after several 
 hearings, shall be recognised and welcomed as right and unalterable 
 in its place. An ordinary amateur might hear strains of this sort in 
 
506 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 That so much 
 will pass 
 muster which 
 is totally 
 uninteresting 
 and unpleasing 
 is owing to the 
 chaotic state 
 of the public 
 mind in respect 
 of Opera. 
 
 connection with the same words and situations a dozen times, and 
 be none the wiser if the greater part of them had been altered on each 
 occasion ; and even an experienced musician, after careful attention, 
 might be sorry to have to bet on anything half a bar ahead. Chords 
 and orchestral passages may mechanically bind together such unrelated 
 note-fragments into a nerveless string, but never into the loosest 
 sort of organic xmion; and the stamp of their restless aimless impot- 
 ence is the fact that raore, than half their chord-support consists of 
 mere diminished sevenths, that keyless chord which is the eternal bane 
 of so-called ' dramatic ' music. As a contrast to the above I should be 
 glad to quote the section in the scene where Lohengrin first appears, 
 ending with ' Elsa, ich liebe dich,' where the vocal part, while still re- 
 taining quite the nature of free recitative as opposed to set aria, is sup- 
 ported by a truly fine rhythmic motive of quite sufficiently sustained 
 coherence. But, unfortunately, in the portion of the work delivered by 
 solo voices there are a dozen pages of the former sort for one of the 
 latter : elsewhere, as in Tristan, the proportion is even larger.' If 
 this is little recognised, it is because Wagner, with all his indisputable 
 superiority of musical genius, has really reaped to the full the benefit of 
 the chaotic state of the public mind on the subject of Opera. The great 
 majority of opera-goers go expecting to have a certain number of scenes 
 and situations set off by fine voices and brilliantly lighted spectacle, while 
 the whole is filled up with musical sound in the same sort of conventional 
 way that the back of the stage is filled up with scenery ; but without a 
 notion of having more than a fraction of the time occupied with vivid 
 enjoyment of the music, with definite melodic motive at which it wUl 
 repay them to prick up their ears. And this being their standard of the 
 evening's amusement, they are grateful for scenes and situations which at 
 any rate possess a certain romance, and for getting their accustomed quota 
 of musical enjoyment of a really superior quality ; and can hardly under- 
 stand the irritation felt by those who have a higher idea of operatic 
 possibilities, when a vein so splendid proves to be also so unabundant, and 
 when a man capable of writing the better parts of Lohengrin and Tann^ 
 hduser is found capable also of wearying and distressing hopeful and 
 attentive ears for whole quarters of an hour at a time. 
 
 Holding fast, then, to the principles of melodic motive set forth in 
 previous chapters, we cannot look for the development of form in general 
 
 ' Itis impossibleto help recalling Eousseau's 
 criticism of LuUi's recitatives : ' Comme la 
 mesure ne s'y fait sentir ni dans le chant, ni 
 dans ]£), basse, ni dans raocompagnement, rien 
 n'est si tralnant, si 14che, si languissant que 
 ces beaux monologues que tout le monde ad- 
 mire en baillant.' ' Sans les bras et le jeu de 
 I'actrioe je suis persuade que personne n'en 
 
 pourrait soufErir le r^oitatif , et qn'une pareille 
 musique a grand besoin du secours des yeux 
 pour 6tre support?,ble aux oreilles.' Unfortu- 
 nately Wagner's recitatives are often de- 
 livered by kings and heralds and people 
 whose bras and Jeu are not particularly in- 
 terestipg. 
 
OPERA. 507 
 
 from defiance of the primary conditions of form in particular. Nor is it 
 possible to allow, even to those special structural changes which Wagner § 4. Wag- 
 has really in great measure introduced, any such vital importance as is tioVof strongly 
 often attributed to them. They consist chiefly in dispensing with the 'Znl'^t thi'' 
 more obvious points of division which mark off a scene into definite musi- m^^icai seo- 
 
 . tions, though 
 
 cal pieces — solos, duets, trios, finales, and so on. This characteristic is it has proved 
 clearly not to be judged of in the abstract, but in reference to the particular drawbacks, is 
 works in which it is presented. So far as the avoidance of marked commeiTdaMe; 
 divisions may lead a writer into forgetting that the musician's business is, 
 quand TuSme, to produce satisfactory bits of music, whether they end with 
 the dominant and tonic chords or not, and into imagining that a para- 
 graph is relieved of the duty of containing pregnant and coherent sentences 
 by the substitution of commas for full stops and the avoidance of capital 
 letters, it has its dangers. We can hardly be properly grateful even for 
 getting rid of the padding of recitativo secco, as long as the substitute is 
 the sort of recitative of which I have just quoted examples. On the other 
 hand, so far as the continuity is a continuity of firm periods, each of 
 which, long or short, has true organic qualities, it will of course be delight- 
 ful, if only because it involves a large supply of the very thing we want. 
 So far as such music is given us, we certainly shall not hanker after 
 set morceaux ; and shall admit the flow of music through ' places, where 
 the voice-parts are not, as well as where they are, predominantly melodic, 
 to be both musically and dramatically beneficial. For the orchestra sup- 
 phes a means of retaining musical coherence without any interruption to 
 the dramatic flow of remarks : and vocal passages more or less sporadic in 
 themselves, and entirely removed from any conventional form of piece 
 where the dramatic character of the performers is liable to suffer, may be sus- 
 tained and united by clear and continuous orchestral motive with a specially 
 delightful effect, for which operatic scenes give unique opportunities. 
 
 Given, then, a sufficient amount of good organic music, of whatever 
 sort — and this, not the continuity or discontinuity of the sections, is 
 the vital and unchangeable point — we may admit the continuous mode of 
 structure to be an advantageous one, and shall not complain even if the 
 linking of sections involves a considerable interspersion of fragments and 
 passages of more transitional aim and character. Orchestral continuity 
 at any rate shuts off the chance of puerile and unmusical passages of 
 vocal display, and of interrupting applause. But we cannot allow much though the 
 reaUty to the prime reason usually assigned for the avoidance of set assigned'fo" ^ ' 
 pieces ; that it is unriatural to impose distinct musical divisions on the '^uehrT^ity. 
 normal flow of dramatic action, and that to do so is to demand of Poetry 
 unwarrantable concessions. An opera is not a drawing-room comedy; 
 it is a representation which has to be accepted entirely on its own 
 ideal level ; and to object on the ground of unnaturalness to the obser- 
 vance of natural musical conditions, which in no way interfere with 
 
508 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 The avoid- 
 ance of re- 
 petition of 
 ■words and 
 phrases is a 
 very unessen- 
 tial point. 
 
 § 5. Ex- 
 pression. All 
 those modes of 
 expressing 
 sentiments 
 which have 
 already been 
 discussed find 
 their largest 
 scope in 
 Opera. 
 
 our perception of the relations of the characters or the significance 
 of the scene, is like objecting to conversations in a tragedy for being 
 conducted in blank verse. With equal reason Eousseau complained of 
 vocal duets as unnatural, on the ground that two people do not talk at 
 once ; he therefore required that duets should be strictly dialogues, or that 
 if the parts were occasionally combined they should move in thirds and 
 sixths ! The appeal to Nature, which in Rousseau's day led to so many 
 odd conclusions, has of course only to be pressed to put an end to Opera 
 altogether. It is possible, no doubt, for set pieces to occur in places so 
 dramatically incongruous as to offend common sense. But the interest in 
 the progress of the drama will certainly not be damped by an occasional 
 full close and a frank admission to the ear that one musical paragraph is 
 over and another is going to begin ; and a scene where the words are at once 
 of such fiery interest, and so closely involved in rapid logical sequence as to 
 present no natural divisions, is not adapted for musical investiture at all. 
 
 Similar reasons preclude us from attaching any particular import- 
 ance to a point in the verbal structure, on which Wagner lays particular 
 stress in reference to the libretto of Tristan ; namely, the studied avoid- 
 ance of repetition of words or phrases. The conditions of musical structure 
 often make verbal recurrences a specially agreeable feature, as is proved 
 in vocal music of every class ; and the sentiments which are most naturally 
 associated with song lend themselves readily to such a mode of expression. 
 To make a virtue, then, of foregoing this feature, and of setting so many 
 thousand words, straight on end, to so many thousand notes, suggests 
 again an arbitrary and mechanical theory of amalgamation. Not that 
 there would be anything to object to in such a setting if it were beautiful 
 throughout ; but Music, in transfusing situations and sentiments with her 
 own emotional power, may certainly resent restrictions as to the mode in 
 which she is to debiter words and sentences, and may claim to bring 
 them, with full liberty, and on her own responsibility, into the mould of 
 her own forms. 
 
 So much for structure: next as regards expression. On this head 
 there is nothing to add in principle to what has been said in preceding 
 chapters. All that power of correspondence with definable moods and 
 sentiments which Music possesses is naturally called on to the utmost in 
 operatic composition. But the distinct scenes and personages of Opera 
 naturally add, by association, many apparent shades of expression to the 
 music, which can hardly be said to be objectively there, inasmuch as a 
 blind person ignorant of the language would hear and enjoy the music 
 without perceiving them, but which none the less become an in- 
 separable part of the effect. Thus Non piu andrai has obviously a gay, 
 gallant, military sort of movement ; but it has been also called mock-heroic ; 
 and well as the word applies, I hardly think that particular shade of 
 
OPERA. 509 
 
 expression would be perceived apart from the particular address of Figaro 
 to Cherubino. Whether or not this special instance commends itself, it is 
 clear, from the extreme breadth and generality of the extra-musical 
 emotions which Music can in itself suggest, that any dehcacy and dis- 
 tinctiveness of expression which seems to make particular pieces belong 
 to special characters and situations must be chiefly the result of association. 
 That whole large class of operatic heroines in whose personation prima 
 donnas are always said by the newspapers ' to realise the dreamy idealism 
 of the character,' and who are for the most part amiable young ladies 
 alternating between the joys and pangs of love, might sing each other's 
 melodies, sprightly, melancholy, or passionate, in the most impartial 
 manner. Zerlina certainly has a naiveU and charm of her own ; but I 
 doubt if it would have been perceived that she ought to have been a 
 rustic if she had happened to be a lady, difficult as it may be now to 
 imagine a change in her condition ; and the reason she is so distinct an 
 individual is really that she has tunes of such peculiarly good quality to sing, 
 not that either libretto or music mark her out in any way as a vivid human 
 character. And as regards more special points of expression, the passionate 
 vein of some agitated passage might often do duty equally for joy or anger; 
 tbe thrilling phrase with some wild and emphatic note might clinch the 
 idea of death either for self or for rival, of agonised renunciation or of wild 
 resolve. Such examples hardly need to be multiplied. 
 
 But besides the more simple and direct correspondence of the musical The corre- 
 with the external idea or character, there is another possible sort of corre- contrasts^and 
 spondence (the principle of which was noticed in Chap. XV. § 5), that, t™sitiona in 
 namely, of a relation between successive parts of the music to a relation analogous 
 between successive parts of the verbal or scenic presentation: and this, scene; 
 comprising as it does extensive possibilities in the way of parallel ebb and 
 flow, crisis and contrast, much increases the range of musical expressiveness. 
 It is naturally in Opera that such features are predominant. To take one 
 instance, in La ServaPadroTia the maid alternates lento and allegro passages, 
 in a song where she addresses pathetic remarks to her master and inter- 
 sperses sotto voce asides in comment on the effect. Often, as here, the tran- 
 sitions are such as might occur in independent instrumental music. Often, 
 however, the concomitants justify an amount of modification, interruption, 
 and comminution in the music which would otherwise be unnatural ; com- 
 promises, if we like to call them so, but not entailing any serious or 
 continuous sacrifice of coherent musical phrases; the actual points of 
 interruption being marked by their brevity and their exceptional character 
 as contrasted with the normal flow. In respect of these features, again, it 
 is to be noticed that the effect is really, for the most part, a general one, and 
 would equally well suit a considerable variety of incidents or of successions 
 of verbal sentiment, however much it becomes in each case identified with the 
 
610 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 the expression 
 here being 
 really of a 
 veiy general 
 kind, though 
 made to appear 
 precise \iy the 
 definiteness of 
 the action and 
 words. 
 
 The power of 
 association to 
 give rise to in- 
 describable 
 correspond- 
 ences. 
 
 Occaoianal ex- 
 pression by 
 marked me- 
 chanical fea- 
 tures. 
 
 special situation at which it occurs. When the heroine leaves off with a start 
 on a high note accompanied by a striking change of harmony, the plot is 
 obviously thickening, but the mere sounds do not reveal how. The sudden 
 interruption of some soft and tender passage with a crash, a change of 
 tempo, and some amount of orchestral tumtilt, would lend itself to a variety 
 of easily imagined surprises : or the supervention of a hush and a subdued 
 movement in simple colouring on an agitated and ornate duet or trio 
 represents in itself a deep but quite vague emotional change, which might 
 fitly embrace several different sorts of detail. And in every such case the 
 effect naturally seems accurately descriptive of what is on hand. 
 
 But association will do more even than this ; as we saw in the chapter 
 on Song, it will give rise to an exquisite and quite indescribable feeling of 
 affinity between a line of musical and a line of extra-musical impressions, 
 even in cases where the music, taken on its own ground, is not either 
 directly or indirectly suggestive of any definable emotions or circumstances. 
 Every reader will recall instances where he has known and loved such 
 music before connecting it with its words or anything else, and will re- 
 member how, when he has heard it in its place, the concomitants, though 
 in no way essential to begin with, have gradually become part and parcel 
 of the charm. This power of Music, provided it be in itself attractive, to 
 mingle its independent stream freely with all sorts of words and scenes, 
 and in many cases to make, so to speak, its own afSnities as it goes along, 
 is a fact of enormous importance to Opera ; the sphere of which would be 
 disastrously circumscribed if Music were confined to being always very 
 definably of this or that emotional character, and were debarred from all 
 alliances outside the range of true poetical inspiration. 
 
 We may rank under a separate head of expression, mentioned in the 
 chapter on Song but chiefly exemplified in Opera, cases where the feeling 
 of analogy with the accompanying verbal idea is created not by any emo- 
 tional colouring belonging to the series of notes as music, but by some 
 marked mechanical feature in them ; the occurrence of which may be said 
 to represent a true, though rare, exception to the law of formed and agree- 
 able musical phrases, since the intellectual sense of analogy may here have 
 gesthetic value in the absence of any true satisfaction to the purely musical 
 sense. The exception really proves the rule ; for it is just through the 
 rarity of such features that they can be effective. An instance may be 
 found in the expression of stern fixity given to the decree of the oracle of 
 Apollo, in Grluck's Alceste, by the iteration of a single note. This feature 
 is so simple and positive, and so strongly contrasted with what is usual in 
 music, that it makes its own point and justifies the brief absence of true 
 musical formation. 
 
 Another special sort of case, which may be conveniently though not very 
 logically included under the topic of expression, is where the charm of the 
 
OPERA. 511 
 
 union between music and other things results not so much froni its express- The combina- 
 ing as from its pointedly not expressing them. The combination of beauty tiSi absurdity, 
 with some measure of absurdity, a phenomenon quite unique in its sesthetic 
 effect, is also one to which Song, especially in theatrical performance, gives 
 extraordinary scope ; and the reason why good burlesque and good comic 
 opera are so rare lies in the absence of the delicate aptitude for a kind of 
 inward irony to which this twin result appeals. This serio-comic vein was 
 perhaps specially favoured by the robust naivete of an earlier stage of the 
 art, and fails somewhat in an age when the muse varies between knitting 
 her brows and splitting her sides, too intentionally serious to be touching, 
 or too intentionally comic to be amusing : but even in the modem deluge 
 of forced and of vulgar work, cases might be cited, coming under the rough 
 category of comic writing, where Music's readiness to lend a tender grace 
 to homely and even to whimsical things has been strikingly displayed, and 
 where the boundary line between jest and pathos, I might almost say be- 
 tween laughter and tears, seems to be of the most shadowy kind. Even 
 in pure mock-heroic the incongruity sometimes seems only to add a delicate 
 edge to the natural flavour of the music ; and no one surely would exchange 
 the half ecclesiastical aroma of the drunken porter's ' Deo Gratias ' in Le 
 Domino Noir, or the trio in Zerlina's chamber in Fra Diavolo, for any 
 amount of professedly bouffe writing. 
 
 Finally, we may rank under the head of expression those blendings of Dramatic effect 
 
 "" •' ,. ^, ,,... in concerted 
 
 song whose effect depends on somethmg more than plurality of voices^ piecesi 
 namely, on plurality of personalities. I do not mean by this, what is too 
 obvious to need enforcing, that the interaction of the dramatic personages 
 and the interplay of remarks afford the most favourable opportunity for all 
 the literally expressive and dramatic features that Music may present : ' but 
 rather that, even in the absence of such most distinctive characters, the 
 mere fact of being delivered by different people standing to each other in 
 certain dramatic relations, and the emphasis thus given to the sense of 
 individuality amid harmony, may immensely enhance the charm of operatic 
 concerted music and invest it with a peculiar romance or humour. The 
 individuality of the parts receives often additional prominence from the 
 mode of delivery, e.g. from each singer's marking his or her more emphatic 
 notes by making one step forward and spreading out his or her arms ; this 
 attitude of giving something to the audience, which would be absurd and 
 exaggerated in a concert-room, seeming appropriate enough in the costume 
 of the stage. Very slight dramatic incidents may contribute largely to 
 
 ' An excellent example (which I have by merely giving him semi-quavers against 
 
 encountered only as this chapter is going the crotchets of the others, and the hesi- 
 
 through the press) may be found in the fancy and agitation of Margherita are per- 
 
 garden-quartett of Mefistofele ; where the fectly expressed by the simple device of 
 
 mocking tone of the sham-lover is conveyed syncopaling her notes. 
 
512 OPERA. 
 
 the result. Thus in Rigoletto, the opera where sense and decency have 
 perhaps been most conspicuously outraged, and where the general dramatic 
 interest is of the lowest and most trifling kind, the celebrated quartett 
 owes much of its charm to the simple point that two of the singers are 
 not supposed to know that the others are near them, which gives piquancy 
 to the contrast in the strains they sing. An efifect resting on a similar 
 basis was a very pretty feature in a little piece of Mr. Sullivan's, called 
 The Zoo ; where an andante duet between two lovers was accompanied by 
 an allegro statement from the second lady of the number of buns and 
 lollipops she had been consuming. The special order of effect is quite as 
 well exemplified in such a case as this as in many much more ambitious 
 attempts ; and if it is not in any strict sense dramatic, it is at all events 
 intimately connected with the deKvery of music by dramatic personages 
 whose history and relations are to some extent present to the mind. 
 
 The combination of parts may also, of course, often give peculiar point 
 to some direct piece of dramatic intention, by the mere fact of enabling 
 several people to talk at once. Arne, in his Judgment of Paris, intro- 
 duced one of the first examples of such a concerted piece in a trio for three 
 soprano voices, where each reiterates the words ' Turn to me, for / am she.' 
 1 6. Necessity I have already incidentally adverted to the necessity of independent 
 
 of independent- . . . , „ ,. , n ^ i 
 
 ly agreeable impressiveness in the great bulk of the music oi an opera ; of such agree- 
 
 Sreat biX 0/ ableness of quality as would convey real pleasure, however far short of the 
 
 opera"^'" "^ *'' complete pleasure, to a person who did not catch the words or see the 
 
 scene. This topic needs the more careful consideration in that the view 
 
 itself is easily liable to misrepresentation, while the contradictions of it 
 
 may assume various very plausible forms. 
 
 False and It is easy, for instance, to stumble over the word independent, as 
 
 superfioia] ob- ii. niii «■! ii ••t-t 
 
 jections to this though it mvolved oblivion of the expression and dramatic smtability 
 Tt demands a which are naturally looked for in operatic music. Whether music which 
 dramatic°ex ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^® ^^'^ merits iwipressive can be ea;pressive at all, unless in a 
 pression ; perfectly barren sense, is a question which, though practically answered in 
 
 the fourteenth chapter, assumes primary importance in connection with 
 Opera, and must be further considered in a few moments. Meanwhile I 
 need hardly dwell on the normal compatibility of the impressive and ex- 
 pressive characters, having already occupied so much space with discussion 
 of the manner and degree in which Music may overlap the definable sphere 
 of ordinary human sentiments ; and having just explained that, so long 
 as no sacrifice is made of direct musical beauty, association is always ready 
 to extend the scope of this power by the gradual creation of genuinely- 
 felt though inexplicable analogies, 
 that it implies Again, the demand for inherent musical beauty is sometimes taken as 
 
 gains™othing implying that a good opera might be satisfactorily transferred to a concert- 
 presentation- ^oom : as though vindication of the qualities necessary to render effective 
 
OFERA. 513 
 
 a single element in a compound result were to assert that the single ele- 
 ment is worth as much as the whole result. I have, moreover, dwelt 
 especially on the facts (1) that the deUght bred from the union of the 
 distinct lines of impression is something quite beyond the mere sum of 
 the two, and (2) that the successive musical sections depend entirely on 
 the scene and action for explanation and justification of their succession. 
 
 It may sound plausible, again, to represent insistence on the rights of that it implies 
 Music as a vulgar preference for having one's ears tickled to the lofty have one's ears 
 dehght of witnessing ' dramatic interpretation : ' as though what is meant *"='^^'^ '< 
 by the rights of Music were ministration to the fame and fortune of soprano 
 acrobats. This fiction of a dilemma, in which the choice is between sur- 
 rendering the claims of one's ears for firm and coherent motive and be- 
 traying an itch for the tricks and roulades one most abhors, is less 
 excusable now than in Grluck's time. ' I wished,' Gluck said, ' to confine this last objec- 
 Music to its true province, that of strengthening Poetry by the expression defensible now 
 of the sentiments,' &c. ; and he compared the function of Music towards ^f Giu°k!'"'*^° 
 Poetry to the aid ' which liveliness of colouring and the happy combination 
 of hght and shade afford to a correct and well-designed picture.' ' I have 
 therefore carefully avoided interrupting a singer in the warmth of a dia- 
 logue in order to wait for a tedious ritornel, or stopping him in the middle 
 of a speech either for the purpose of displaying the flexibility of his voice 
 on some favourable vowel, or that the orchestra might give him time to 
 take breath before a long-sustained note.' Perfectly right, of course : 
 Gluck's practical reforms were altogether to be applauded. The only mis- 
 take is in not seeing that the points described are duties owed primarily to 
 the music, rather than by the music to the poetry. In being deUvered 
 from long passages of vocal gymnastics Music is being not ' confined ' but 
 set free, is not putting off her rights of beauty but shaking off the 
 triviaUties which more than anything else defraud her of those rights. Not 
 that Gluck was blind, even in theory, to the independent conditions of vital 
 musical organism ; as he showed by dwelling on the fatal effects which the 
 slightest alterations may produce. ' Make the least change,' he said, ' in 
 Che farb senza Eurydice, and it will become an air for a puppet-show.' 
 Quite so : that is the sort of melody which truly ' strengthens the expression 
 of sentiments ; ' and it may be hinted that if Gluck had written rather 
 more of such unchangeable music, and rather less of the- declamatory 
 recitative (good though much of it be of its kind) ' which everyone ad- 
 mires and yawns at ' and few indeed recall or live on, his operas would Music is strong 
 
 , ■' . .... to aid and 
 
 hardly have lost their vitality. What a satire, mdeed, are the surviving second Poet^^ 
 beauties of the OrpUe on the theory of humble musical subordination! -ng" "^ot '^'*"'" 
 Who would ever have read or heard of the libretto or its sentiments, but *;;[°^f^„i„g_ 
 for the ' seconding ' music ? How many of the thousands who have loved ^'™sth ™d' 
 Che faro have regarded the music as an adjunct to something more imports own; 
 
 L L 
 
514 OFERA. 
 
 ant than itself, or would have recalled a couple of lines of the words on 
 their own account ? It is not by adding ' liveliness of colouring ' or ' happy 
 combination of light and shade,' but by possessing perfectly beautiful and 
 definite melodic form, that such music acts as it does : it would be power- 
 less to second words and sentiments but for its own inherent strength. 
 Nor does such language imply either complaint of an inadequate libretto, 
 or oblivion that true operatic effect is entirely a joint one. The hbretto 
 is perfectly adequate — as even hbretti with less interesting scenes, with 
 balder words, and generally still more unfit for independence, may be 
 fairly adequate — just because the ' seconding ' power of Music will lift 
 them into her own region and make them one with herself, in an effect 
 which alone she would be powerless to attain. 
 § 7. The doc- This last point brings us face to face with the most comprehensive and 
 Music is to bow ad captandum form of the fallacy under the protection of which Music is 
 ete^aifights'^ ^° ^^ excused, when it likes, from gratifying the musical sense ; the doctrine 
 of Poetry. ^jj^t henceforth every composer with high aspirations is ' to consider it his 
 task to express a preconceived poetical idea by means of sound,' and is ' to 
 bow down before the eternal rights of Poetry.' Not of course that any one 
 will object to a composer's considering this his task, as long as he pro- 
 duces enjoyable music; and that enjoyable music can be produced by 
 persons who do consider this their task has been sufficiently proved ; only 
 they cannot be allowed to excuse themselves for producing uwenjoyable 
 music on the plea of bowing down before any eternal rights whatever. 
 The invocation The general use made of the name of Beethoven in connection with 
 Symphony. the above fallacy, has been already noticed : but the special instance most 
 insisted on has a special relation to our present topic, having been used to 
 show how Beethoven, tottering on the final Pisgah-peak of the Symphony, 
 pointed on to the Wagnerian Opera. It is a real curiosity in the way of 
 finding a text for a theory. Beethoven is represented as having felt ' the 
 demand of a previous poetic inspiration,' and being the spiritual father of 
 those who bow down, on the ground that in one movement of one symphony 
 (which by bad luck was the last he completed) he introduced a chorus, and 
 made them sing some stirring words to an utterly musical and rhythmic 
 tune of the most catching and popular character. In the same sense 
 Shakespeare proclaimed the insufficiency of men and women for dramatic 
 purposes by introducing beings of another order into the Tempest ; and in 
 the same sense Beethoven himself proved the inadequacy of his musical 
 resources and the necessity of henceforth bowing down before the eternal 
 rights of birds, by a well-known passage in the Pastoral symphony. 
 § 8. Thelimits But while we cannot allow Beethoven as the figure-head of a view which 
 it does notoon- he never once expressed and which his whole practice belies, the view may 
 cem differences ^^-^j claim to be examined on its own merits in connection with the field 
 
 in musical ap- 
 preciation, of art to which it has been specially applied. It is necessary first of all to 
 
OPERA. 515 
 
 make the limits of the disputed question perfectly clear. I am in no way 
 arguing with those who perceive musical beauty in some places where I do 
 not, or who perceive in other places a higher degree of it than I do. On 
 the contrary, I try elsewhere to show how baseless and unmeaning such 
 argument is apt to be ; and how so far as A receives any musical enjoyment 
 which is compatible ' with the complete enjoyment of all that B enjoys, B 
 is simply so much the worse off for being deaf to it. But the parts which 
 are able on their independent merits to attract and interest the ear are, of 
 course, not representative of a theory of complete dependence and sub- 
 ordination. In respect of them Wagner is simply a successful composer, 
 not a ' daring innovator.' They are fundamentally on the same line as all 
 other music that attracts and interests the ear ; and so far as such music 
 is given us, we wiU not quarrel with the giver as to whether the exquisite 
 harmony of two things can be held to imply the evolution of one out of 
 the other. The parts I am concerned with are successions of notes which 
 do not attract or interest the ear. The view of dependence which I dis- 
 pute is that Music acts on the drama not, or not only, by shedding the 
 light of its own beauty in broad masses and in vivid points ; but by 
 bringing out in close detail a ' melody contained in the poem ; ' which 
 ' melody ' may and often does take the shape of successions of notes that 
 convey no pleasure to the musical sense, but are none the less felt, in some 
 mysterious way, to ' express ' the words they go with. And my point is 
 that the alliance of these notes with words is not dramatic interpretation 
 or expression, but at best arbitrary symbolism and at worst mere mechanical 
 emphasis, which even as emphasis defeats its own object ; and that the 
 notes, having ex hypothesi no independent value, are simply an element 
 of weariness in a drama. 
 
 Here then is a plain issue. If, when I complain of a large number of 
 pages in Wagner's operas as unbeautiful, his adherents told me that they 
 found them the reverse, it might still, I think, be proved to them that 
 successions of notes which will not stick in the head, which might go 
 another way on another night without detection, which, in other words, are 
 
 ' This is a very necessary condition, and this, and the introduction to the third act of 
 applies to any sort of comparison of mnsioal the same opera, and other impressive and 
 tastes. There are many pieces of Wagner's characteristic passages, talked of as though 
 music which one hears quoted and played on they were on an unsurpassed level of excel- 
 pianos as special gems, and in which one lence, one may be pardoned for doubting 
 may perceive really remarkable excellence, whether those who so talk have really felt 
 while still receiving from them a certain im- gmte all there is to feel in certain very f ami- 
 prassion of cloyingness, mannerism, want of liar works, say the first movements of the 
 complete robustness, and occasionally vul- Pathet'ique and Pastoral sonatas. Will that 
 garity. The orchestral opening to the fourth introduction to the third act of Uhsngnn 
 scene of the second act of LoUngrin is so find itself guite comfortable among the mo- 
 beautiful as In some measure to atone for tives of the seventh symphony, m ears to 
 the dreary waste preceding it, which is which the motives of the seventh symphony 
 tolerably high praise ; but when one hears are supreme 1 If so, so much the better. 
 
 L L ^ 
 
516 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 The defence set 
 up for an im- 
 mense amoimt 
 of recent music 
 isnot that some 
 find it musi- 
 cally agreeable, 
 but that it is 
 dramatic. 
 
 § 9. The 
 absurdity of 
 saying that 
 successions of 
 notes are not 
 to be judged 
 with reference 
 to their effect 
 on the musical 
 sense. 
 
 § 10. Associ- 
 ation can only 
 set up magical 
 correspond- 
 ences between 
 music and 
 other things 
 on condition of 
 the music's 
 possessing 
 independent 
 charm. 
 
 wholly inorganic, must give a less sum of pleasure than successions of 
 notes which ivill stick in the head, which when they recur insist on being 
 welcomed, every note in its place, with joyful recognition, which, in other 
 words, are wholly organic. And it might further be proved that tremolando 
 passages of diminished sevenths are at any rate not original ; and that 
 firm rhythm and weli-defined tonality are such rooted and essential 
 elements of the great music which the whole musical world has admired 
 and continues to admire, that it is, to say the least, odd if they can be 
 discarded at a moment's notice. But at the same time if my friends con- 
 tinued to say they enjoyed these same pages, that would be a fact I could 
 never get behind. But what they do tell me is that the pages I object to 
 are dramatic ; that if I want beauty I must go elsewhere, or at least to 
 some other part of the same opera (where I gladly admit the possibility of 
 finding it), but that successions of musical sound can possess dramatic 
 value which have no locus standi as music ; in other words, that combina- 
 tions of notes can find some short cut to being effective and expressive with- 
 out parsing through the stage of interesting or satisfying the musical sense. 
 It should surely be obvious that since notes can get no musical quality 
 or coherence out of words, they can only add anything to the effect of 
 words by bringing a quality and coherence of their own, i.e. by giving the 
 distinctive impression of agreeable melodic and harmonic form. Consider 
 the converse case, and suppose the material, that is, the separate words, to 
 be taken out of a poem of Tennyson's, to be arranged in inconsecutive 
 fragments, and then set to music. Would it be thought a valid answer, to 
 a person who complained of their inanity, that it was unfair to judge of 
 their merits apart from the notes ? Yet what more sense is there in calling 
 formless and unrelated successions of musical sound music, and then saying, 
 as is perpetually said, that it is unfair to judge them as music, or to con- 
 sider them as entities at all apart from the words ? It need hardly be re- 
 peated that judging them as music does not mean obstinately treating 
 thena as if we were in a concert- room ; that the demands of the ear do not 
 shut out the sense of dramatic suitability, and the delight in the fusion of 
 the musical with the extra-musical elements. 
 
 We have seen how, in spite of the very broad and general nature of the 
 emotional conditions which Music will normally express, the mere adjunct 
 of definite words and scene will make the particular alliance with music 
 seem equally definite ; so that plaintive or passionate strains, which on 
 their own account could only be described by such general adjectives, will 
 truly wed themselves to a particular dramatic situation as though they 
 were the inevitable outcome of it. But to be soul-stirring, such association 
 demands independent coherence and vitality in the two things : it makes 
 concrete the connection between them only when they are alive and akin, to 
 begin with, by the abstract resemblance of each having something to tell, 
 
OPERA. 517 
 
 and it would do little to galvanise such ' dead formalism ' as Music has 
 recently been described to be when left to its own resources. No amount 
 of hearings of Tannhduser would make me feel this kind of association be- 
 tween the words and situation of the tournament of song and the music sung 
 by the competitors (with the exception of Tannhauser's own song), simply 
 because I see no independent beauty in the music. If I knew every bar by 
 heart, I should simply know, as a matter of fact, that each note comes 
 where it does with such and such a word, but the association being purely 
 mechanical would give me no additional pleasure. It will be remembered 
 that it is in the subtle and harmonious blending of things severally im- 
 pressive in their hvnd, that we found our general principle and condition 
 of magical correspondences in Art. The union of verbal phrases with 
 note-phrases which, to a person who did not catch the words and did not 
 look at the stage, would have no charm (and few will deny this to be 
 the case with such passages as I have quoted above), is not spiritual fusion 
 but mechanical welding ; however much the writer, who confessedly sits 
 down to evolve nmsic out of long strings of extra-musical conceptions, may 
 deceive himself as to the expressive power of his symbols. 
 
 People are somewhat apt to lose sight of this fact from thinking only 
 of short single fragments When a man shouts — 
 
 Or trud 
 
 accompanied by the inevitable harmony, a diminished seventh, it may 
 seem to ' express ' the fact that he has something disagreeable on his mind ; 
 what is lugubrious or violent has of course an exceptionally good chance of 
 being ' expressed ' by what is ugly, shiftless, or abrupt as music. In the same 
 way spasmodic orchestral scurryings are a favourite means of musically 
 ' pourtraying ' agitation and distress, and vague tremolando chords of 
 suggesting mystery. But any value which can be attached to such effects 
 depends on their rarity, as in the somewhat analogous case of metrical 
 irregularities in Poetry. When formless passage succeeds formless passage, 
 when the music is sustainedly incoherent, the symbols of the intended 
 qualities lose every vestige of interest. We see at once how mechanically set 
 and obvious the means for ' expression of sentiments ' in such circumstances 
 must be. The notes will go slow when the sentiment is grave, will quicken The mechani- 
 up when the sentiment is gay ; there will be some marked minor intervals of' express^ 
 when the sentiment is sad, and some chromatic ones when the sentiment ^-^'/^^^^f^j^^ 
 is agitated ; when there is a ' transition in the sentiment ' there will be fragments. 
 some modulating chords, helped out by some orchestral noise if the transi- 
 tion of sentiment means a little excitement ; the esthetic result being about 
 equivalent to what would be produced by printing words of joy red, words 
 
518 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 Inevitable ten- 
 dency in pro- 
 longed recita- 
 tive to lose in- 
 dividual move- 
 ment, and to 
 degenerate into 
 barren em- 
 phasis which 
 soon ceases 
 even to be felt 
 as emphatic. 
 
 FutUity of the 
 objection that 
 in other arts 
 imaginative 
 interest is not 
 confined to the 
 region of the 
 beautiful. 
 
 of grief black, words of jealousy green, words of thought brown, and so on. 
 "When there is no particular sentiment, as in the lengthy remarks of the 
 male personages, before the appearance of the hero, in the first act of 
 Lohengrin, there is no reason why the notes should do anything in 
 particular ; so it seems a pity that there, at any rate, they should not have 
 taken the opportunity of being agreeable. This of course is not a descrip- 
 tion of what recitative need be, but of what it perpetually is. There are 
 all degrees between coherence and absolute incoherence, between the most 
 beautiful melodic recitatives of Handel and Gluck and those quoted at 
 the beginning of this chapter. But a composer who has not grasped the 
 idea that there is no road to true musical expression save through the 
 exercise of true musical genius in the invention of true musical form, who 
 thinks that successions of notes can retain the character .of expressive 
 utterance while abandoning the conditions which give them a hold on the 
 ear, must of course be in special danger in any field where the conditions 
 may be io some extent relaxed. In prolonged recitative, even where 
 rhythm and key are not wholly flouted, there must always be a tendency 
 to lose clear, strong, and individual movement : where the object is just to 
 emphasise certain words, it must often be a matter of indifference whether 
 we have tweedledum or tweedledee, in the same sense that it is a matter of 
 indifference whether we have a word italicised or underlined. And it is to 
 the keeping of the ear on the stretch by a system of note-underlining, that 
 Music is reduced by the loss of its inherent rights and the abandonment of 
 organic periods. 
 
 I need hardly pause to answer the ordinary superficial objection that 
 the productions of the other arts may impress the imagination even in 
 the absence of the qualities included broadly under the term beauty. We 
 have seen ' how essentially Music lacks the conditions which apply, in 
 this respect, to the arts of representation^ — ^as, in Painting, the skill of 
 accurate delineation, and the distinct and far-reaching suggestions of 
 the subject-matter and treatment; and in Poetry, the sense of subtle re- 
 lations, and the infinitely delicate and complex associations of language ; 
 which admits of the rarest and most forcible use on almost any theme, 
 and within the briefest space. A passage of sound can suggest no delicacy 
 of detailed resemblance, can open up no distinct vistas of external or 
 speculative interest : the rare and forcible use of notes has no meaning 
 apart from satisfaction of the ear's claim for what is enjoyable, individual, 
 and rememberable : the sole employment offered to the mind under what 
 is musically ugly or unpleasing, as against the manifold activity evoked in 
 other cases, is the bald reflection that ' the situation demands ' what is 
 Ugly or unpleasing ; a refuge in which even the least exacting imagination 
 must surely soon find itself rather cramped. In tracing the causes of the 
 ' See especially the first part of chap. xvii. 
 
OPERA. 5] 9 
 
 unique dependence of Music on its own immediate resources, we have 
 seen how entirely the test-question must always be, " Is such and such 
 a sound-motion a source of assured delight to the sound-sense? Do 
 the melodic and harmonic combinations commend themselves to their 
 sole arbiter ? ' And this position is confirmed by our more recent observa- 
 tion of the utterly mechanical nature of any ' dramatic suitability ' which 
 tries to elude the test ; of the ease of imparting to inorganic successions 
 of notes external aspects of ' expression ; ' and pretending that characters 
 with which Music — so long as she is true to herself— can indeed invest 
 her very loveliest forms, wiU flourish equally in defiance of the ear's con- 
 ditions and in the absence of any forms to invest. 
 
 I have said that it is the frequent and continuous, not the brief and The brief and 
 occasional, abandonment of organic structure which is objectionable. More or abandonment 
 less fragmentary pieces, either of orchestral ' passage- writing,' or it may be of "''Kanic 
 of colour-effect from some solo-instrument such as a horn, or of unmetrical allowable and 
 declamation, may come in with propriety and effect, but only on condition 
 of their being sparingly and frankly used. But since the making of fragments 
 is cheap and easy, while fine melodic motive will not come even to genius 
 except in special moments and often as the result of long search, the 
 temptation is always to string fragments together, and impose on the 
 public the notion that the disconnected and spasmodic character of the 
 series is part of the ' dramatic ' business. Whenever a fine soprano voice 
 takes some unexpected notes in a high register, accompanied by some 
 marked bodily movement, one is sure to hear that word ' dramatic : ' many 
 indeed seem to appropriate it to the extreme or chromatic intervals which 
 have much the same relation to truly dramatic musical effects as the jerky 
 antics of a marionette to truly dramatic gesture. In a certain way the most 
 dramatic parts of a play, where the turns of events and remarks are apt to 
 be sudden and swift, and where set and sustained pieces of music are out of 
 place, expose the composer to particular difficulties ift the invention and but composers 
 concatenation of phrases; and with an idea that the inability to develop into whole long 
 long melodic motives excuses him from being melodic or supplying any ^^™g ,^y [^f ' 
 basis of rhythmic continuity, he is very apt to shut off music, and to turn J|.%^^| °^^^ 
 on noisy orchestral passages interspersed with short ' declamatory ' tags, together ; and 
 
 /-y -77 m n • especially at 
 
 A notable example of this may be found in Gmllaume 1 ell, an opera m important 
 the first half of which the composer has altogether surpassed himself, and 
 which goes literally to pieces in the apple-scene, at the very crisis of the 
 plot. 
 
 In face of a theory which specially insists on detailed illustration 
 of the verbal text, it is half amusing to note how completely those 
 particular musical points which crni truly go beyond the normal general 
 agreement, and can make a detail of the music seem one with a detail of 
 verbal expression, are precluded by Wagner's habit of ' throwing himself 
 
520 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 § 11. The 
 very points 
 where detailed 
 expression is 
 possible, es- 
 pecially by 
 striking har- 
 monic featnres, 
 depend entirely 
 on the true or- 
 ganic form 
 which Wag- 
 ner's recita- 
 tive discards. 
 
 § 12. The 
 perpetual ex- 
 pression-in- 
 detail which is 
 musically im- 
 possible is 
 dramatically 
 tuanecessar}'. 
 
 fearlessly into the sea of music' and despising the firm support of 
 measure and key. These detailed points are naturally for the most part 
 connected with harmony. We saw in the chapter on that subject how 
 individual and arresting the effect of a single chord might be ; and in 
 association with words and scenes, such features may become dramatic in 
 an extraordinary degree : as Wagner himself says, ' one single harmonic 
 turn is capable of the most touching changes of expression.' We saw the 
 effect of a single chord in a perfectly naive melody of Auber's, and in an 
 equally simple one of Schubert's ; we might add another harmonic feature 
 from the table-music towards the end of Don Giovanni, which, while 
 acting as the simple accompaniment of the simplest of melodies, seems to 
 suggest with superb irony the whole impending doom. But svich luck 
 comes only to one who deserves it ; we saw how harmony waits on melody, 
 and how thrilling harmonic points cannot be shed ad libitum, but 
 depend entirely on occupying a particular position in a particular organic 
 form. They can no more be got otherwise than a painter can get the 
 effect of his high lights in an orderless conglomeration of blotches and 
 streaks. No focussing of beauty or expression is possible at any point of 
 such series of patches as I quoted from Lohengrin. All that harmony 
 can do in cases like that is mechanically to support the patches and peg 
 them together; it can never vitalise them. Precisely similar remarks 
 apply to less concentrated musical features ; as, for instance, to the above- 
 mentioned use of syncopation in the garden-quartett of Mefistofele ; as 
 good an instance as could be wished of the dependence of thrilling dramatic 
 expression on independent and duly conditioned musical substance — on 
 definite beauties which genius brings forth, not by throwing itself vaguely 
 into the sea of music, but by hunting patiently for pearls. 
 
 It is clear that any musical features, whether of striking contrast, 
 or of special harmonic vividness, or of any other sort, which give the 
 chance for the most vivid sense of union with their dramatic concomitants, 
 must on musical grounds be occasional only : we cannot have marked 
 contrasts and vivid harmonic features every four or six bars. But on 
 verbal and dramatic grounds also this most detailed sort of expression is 
 only occasionally wanted. It is as absurd to suppose that there is a definite 
 dramatic turn of feeling or a ' motive of dramatic action ' to be musically 
 ' expressed ' every ten seconds, as to expect the heroine to be momentarily 
 alternating between smiles and scowls. And when this is recognised, and 
 the more general sort of correspondence between the musical and the 
 dramatic passages is realised as the normal condition of union, the 
 demand that the music, if continuous, shall be in itself agreeable, receives 
 additional force : on no other terms can words gain in anything except 
 tedium from a forced alliance with notes and intervals with which ttiey 
 have no more connection than with geometrical curves. 
 
OPERA. 521 
 
 At any rate those who are not wearied may be lauded for their § is. Some 
 patience, but hardly for their artistic perception. It may, no doubt, be ™-eu Incoherent 
 the case that some persons are so constituted as to prefer a long speech or ™ug^cJiphrase3 
 dialogue delivered in fragmentary phrases of musical sound, to the same *° common 
 words delivered in the speaking voice, or to silence. But inasmuch as a silence ; 
 million ways exist of being fragmentary and inorganic to one of being 
 the reverse, it is at any rate impossible to claim much merit for such 
 settings. Again, the background of fine and varied musical colour which and others may 
 a large orchestra, play what they will, can hardly help producing, may by the mere 
 have the same kind of general stimulating and supporting influence that ™ioui^of 
 it sometimes has on purely subjective trains of thought and emotion, ^""""^ ' 
 vaguely enhancing the pleasure of watching the dramatic situations, and 
 blending with the colour-effects (usually, it must be admitted, of a very 
 crude sort) presented to the eye. This indefinite effect was sufficiently 
 noticed in the chapters on Colour and on the two ways of hearing Music, nor 
 do I wish to undervalue it. But its value is comparatively small and but such 
 
 . , , , . pleasure must 
 
 short-lived, and, as we saw, is smallest in the case of those who seek tor be very short- 
 something more. The glory of sound-colour and mass is in seconding not "^ " 
 supplanting form : and when Music fails or ceases to convey individual 
 melodic and harmonic impressions, the finest voices and the most richly 
 coloured orchestral passages will not be able for many minutes to keep 
 up the fiction that the ear which is groping and leaking is really grasping 
 and assimilating. 
 
 Not of course, as I must once more repeat, that truly strong and § 14. Wag- 
 organic music is bound to reveal its qualities in a moment. At first much fesionof pre- 
 of a symphony of Beethoven or a fugal chorus of Bach may make on many ^™ ^"fo'ihe 
 as undefined an impression as that produced by the most nohow parts of 'naive lay- 
 operas : but the final verdict on all of these must rest not on any such result, 
 but on the conscious and definite perception of their beauties by those 
 who obtain more complete knowledge of them. Wagner, however, ex- 
 pressly presents his work ' not to the connoisseur but to the public,' and 
 conceives that the ' infinitely rich and ramified details of the large melody 
 which comprises the whole dramatic-musical piece ' are ' to reveal them- 
 selves to the most naive layman as soon as he may be sufficiently collected 
 to receive the impression.' And this in the same breath that he adduces 
 as a characteristic, and indeed a merit, of the great 'forest-melody' by 
 which he illustrates his ideal of operatic music, that the hearer cannot the 
 least possess or recall it, or obtain any notion or reminiscence of it in his 
 own home, but ' must return to the woods,' i.e. to his stall at the opera, 
 ' on a summer-night. Would it not be folly if he were to catch a sweet 
 wood-bird, so as to train it at home to whistle a fragment of that great 
 forest;-melody ? ' Whistling may not be the best medium ; but so far as 
 he possesses at home any means, whether in himself or in some domestic 
 
532 
 
 OPERA. 
 
 § 15. Unre, 
 ality in the 
 identification 
 of musician 
 and poet. 
 
 ' wood-bird,' of reproducing at will such beauties as voice or pianoforte can 
 reproduce, and thus facilitating and stamping his acquaintance with them, 
 he is not so much foolish as fortunate. The compliment paid here to the 
 naive layman is in fact about as left-handed as that paid to melody by 
 calling it infinite. What naive laymen are interested in, first and fore- 
 most, is not the maze but the clue ; not ' infinitely ramified details ' which 
 they cannot get hold of, but clear and continuous motive which they can. 
 Finally there is a strong unreality about Wagner's theory from a 
 practical point of view. If the words of a play which lasts for four hours 
 are to be ' expressed ' by notes, clause after clause, in the detailed way 
 which Wagner assumes possible, and more especially if the notes are not 
 to be bound to independent musical beauty, the words ought at any rate 
 to be most remarkably well worth expressing. What, then, is to happen 
 next ? Is not the rarity of the special poetic gift and function somewhat 
 ignored in the broad compliment to the abstraction. Poetry ? We have 
 only to look round to see that poets are not musicians, nor musicians 
 poets, even in the most indirect and potential sense ; the characteristics 
 which they necessarily possess in common may be reduced to a more or less 
 emotional temperament and a correct ear for time, both shared by them 
 with thousands of non-inventive persons. Yet we must admit, supposing 
 the close and special alliance of detail after detail in the two utterances 
 to be possible, that the poet who plans his poem so that it ' can penetrate 
 to the finest fibres of the musical tissue,' and who ' has perfectly mastered 
 the inexhaustible power of expression of the symphonic melody, so as to 
 be induced to meet its finest and most delicate nuances,' will have at any 
 rate a tolerable aptitude for Music ; and a cognate completeness and 
 delicacy of perception of the other art would be required from the 
 musician. Poet and musician seein really driven to be one: for the 
 picture of the musician humbly sitting, waiting to be fertilised, and then 
 inventing the music implicit in some one else's poem, is grotesque and 
 self-contradictory. But even Wagner would allow that, just as a total 
 absence of ear for tune would prevent the greatest of poets from appre- 
 ciating a melody, so some quite independent musical aptitude is necessary 
 to the ideal compound artist, to enable him to evolve and write down in 
 correct score the melody implicit in his poem. Now assuming that the 
 next hundred years, like the last, will produce a limited number of people 
 endowed with the necessary independent musical aptitudes, what ground 
 have we for expecting the possession by,any one of these of such dramatic 
 genius and such power of verbal expression as truly to entitle him to the 
 name of a poet ? The chances against the union of the two gifts are a 
 million to one. While Wagner cannot dispense in ' musicians of the future ' 
 with the special musical aptitudes possessed by those of the past, he in 
 fact demands in addition a totally new set of aptitudes. 
 
OPERA. 523 
 
 Such a change, it need hardly be said, is without any sort of precedent Fortunately, 
 or analogy. The argument on this more external ground entirely corre- ten(f'with*'°°' 
 sponds with our former objections. It is iust this attractive-sounding simple situa- 
 
 ■^ J J o tions and a 
 
 theory of amalgamatioQ of ' finest fibres ' and ' infinitely ramified details' kind of poetry 
 
 ,. 1. ~ p., which it cer- 
 
 which, we saw, cut at the root of musical coherence, and so of musical tainiy does not 
 
 beauty and effect. In such a theory a musician truly embraces a cloud, toprodiKie"'"^ 
 
 and his artistic offspring may too probably, like Ixion's brood, turn out a 
 
 double failure, neither music nor poetry. Meanwhile the particular 
 
 poetry before which the sister-art is to ' bow down ' does not seem likely 
 
 to attain extremely lofty flights. Fortunately there is no need that 
 
 it should: it is in fact only a simple and elementary sort of poetry 
 
 which is really suitable for musical setting, and the simplest draniatic 
 
 thread and most ordinary words will serve as a basis for a beautiful 
 
 opera. Only in face of the librettos at present existing in the lyorld 
 
 Music may perhaps fairly claim to stand upright a little longer. 
 
524 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 MUSICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 § 1. The In the Confessions of an Opium-Eater De Quincey has remarked with 
 ■which Music Surprise how few are the worthy and illuminating utterances which can be 
 ture." '" ^^^^^ adduced on the subject of Music, considering the conspicuous place the 
 art has held both in the ancient and in the modern world. His observa- 
 tion refers rather to general literature, but it is easy to extend its appli- 
 cation ; and to show moreover that so far as the preceding views and 
 arguments are just, the fact is far more true than surprising, and illustrates, 
 and is illustrated by, other experience. 
 The highest Criticism is a Word which covers a great deal of ground. It does duty 
 
 att-critic : equally for the most profound and illuminating instruction and for the 
 
 most transient record of hasty opinions. But in its highest aspect, at 
 any rate, the function of the art-critic is that of an interpreter. By his 
 greater sympathy with his subject, and knowledge of its special scope and 
 function in relation to the whole imaginative activity, he may really 
 fulfil the enviable part of making others see and appreciate marvels 
 otherwise quite beyond their ken; and it is hard to over-estimate the 
 influence of this kind which one man may have, where the subject is 
 adapted to such treatment. Those who depreciate the seeing with the 
 eyes of others, which is to many in the first instance the only means of 
 seeing worthily at all, simply ignore what to those who experience it is a 
 definite and indisputable possession ; and it is unfortunate that in subjects 
 where intuition seems predominant, as especially in Art, the very person 
 most fitted to act as a guide may be apt to distrust the value of guidance. 
 Having by nature the instinct and power of direct vision, and having all 
 his life found this element predominating in all his judgments, he can 
 with difficulty believe in sight at second hand, unless perchance he has 
 himself experienced a similar benefit in being told what to look at and 
 what to look for in some other region of Art where he is less of a master, 
 which has no In one of the arts, however, those who have so far agreed with me will 
 
 place m Music ^^^ ^^^^ criticism of the entirely enlightening kind never did and never 
 can exist. The true interpreter of Music must always be the performer, 
 not the critic ; and the latter^ from a feeling that he must explain some- 
 
MUSICAL CRITICISM. 525 
 
 thing, is in constant danger of mistaking his vocation. Many seem to find 
 
 this a difficult notion to catch. The soothing and stimulating effects of 
 
 Music, regarded merely as beautiful sound, are so marked and universal, 
 
 and pass often by such imperceptible degrees into the perception of 
 
 objective musical ideas, that persons of general culture, the limits of whose 
 
 musical instinct or proficiency chance to confine their experience rather to 
 
 the former end of the series, are apt to suppose that the keener and more 
 
 comprehending musical pleasure must be just a more intense and sustained 
 
 one of the same kind as their own, and that where they imagine occasional 
 
 streams and groves or catch intermittently the thread of musical assertion 
 
 and response, Beethoven would trace landscapes and watch dramas ; thus The common 
 
 mistaking secondary, momentary, and accidental suggestions of music for Music has aa 
 
 its true essence and the primary source of its creator's impulse. Moreover ^eming and 
 
 a cultivated person may be not unnaturally loth to admit the existence of '='™ be inter- 
 
 . . pieted by ex- 
 
 quite unknown regions ; and finding perhaps that, in the absence of any perts. 
 strong or subtle sense of form and colour, his general knowledge, intelli- 
 gence, and sympathy have carried him with admiring interest through 
 scores of picture-galleries, he may feel that it must be very much against 
 Music if here his general powers will not come in. The indefinite 
 emotional stirrings of beautiful sound are excellently described by De 
 Quincey ; but he makes the common mistake of intellectual writers in 
 taking these indefinite effects (whose power and value I have fully recog- 
 nised) for the substance of what is there ; in supposing that the inward 
 and indescribable character of musical impressions means that they are 
 ijecessarily vague and subjective. The greater indeed the hearer's power 
 of reflection and imagination, the more likely (in the absence of definite 
 musical instinct) that he will make music the background to his own 
 thoughts and aspirations, or take the critic's ideas on trust. Nevertheless 
 true art is objective ; and the definiteness in form which first-rate music 
 presents to the hearing ear is compatible with a sense of mystery and infinity 
 which no vagueness can emulate, and which will gain nothing from a score 
 of possible (and very often entirely different) subjective interpretations. 
 In a similar way many who derive a large amount of true perceptive 
 pleasure from some compositions and some parts of compositions, but find 
 others above their heads, suppose that a more gifted or more cultivated 
 faculty would reveal some symbolic purpose and meaning, that it would 
 show them different things, instead of the same things better and more 
 of them. Instead of sticking to the music and asking, « What does it say ? ' 
 to which a few more hearings might give them the answer, they look out- 
 side and ask, ' What does it mean ? ' ar.d feel sure the composer could have 
 told them. 
 
 We can easily see how the elimination of the interpreter's duties 
 narrows the musical critic's sphere. Poets, painters, and sculptors deal 
 
526 MUSICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 § 2. Limita- with a world of facts which are independently appreciable. The art of 
 musical critic's many 01 the greatest of them has been steeped m a particular vein oi ideas 
 ^P '"'^" and sentiments : and apart from this, their work is grounded everywhere 
 
 on truth and Nature and on a feeling for the connections of the visible and 
 spiritual world, and they themselves have the most definite relation to 
 their environment and their fellows. It is true that the greatest masters 
 have often worked with little self-consciousness or self-analysis, and no 
 sense of a special aim or mission, but have simply followed out an irresis- 
 tible inward impulse, not guessing to what an extent their natural vision 
 was revelation for the world. But a critic who enters into the ideas of the 
 men and of their time, and who knows what Nature is like, has at any rate 
 soM ground for explaining effectively their standpoint, and the kind 
 and measure of their success ; and we can many of us fully sympathise 
 With Dorothea's sudden awakening to the significance of saints with 
 architectural models in their hands and hatchets in their heads. In 
 visible art containing no religious or symbolical motive, the critic still 
 commands in the selection and treatment of the subject-matter topics on 
 which he will at any rate be intelligible to a large body of the public, and 
 which may afford him the very best text for interesting lessons on ancient 
 and modern life. All sUch topics disappear when We enter the world of 
 sound. We have seen how it is owing to her nature, and not through 
 having appeared on the earth in her full stature and beauty at a time 
 of teeming indastrial life and of conflicting and vanishing creeds, that 
 Music, while exercising a most powerful cosmopolitan influence, reigns 
 independently of any great phases or currents of human existence and 
 thought. No such book as Modern Painters could possibly be written in 
 connection with this art ; for all criticism which depends on a considera- 
 tion of external facts and relations is excluded in a region where there are 
 no such facts and relations to consider.' 
 
 ' Ctitics who> like C. H. Bittel-, perceive that ' Music covers the whole of life,' and 
 in the great B Minor Mass ' a musical com- that ' every moment of our lives,' and there- 
 mentary in Bach's own didactic argumenta- fore the dull ones, ' is a fit subject for music' 
 tive manner on the principal doctrines of I have been sometimes asked by pro- 
 Christianity,' have, no doubt, a limitless fessedly unmusical persons why there cannot 
 range for their interest; and it is a pity be some treatment of Music analogous to 
 this writer could not foresee how much, that criticism of Poetry which deals vrith the 
 e.g., the doctrine of the Procession of the form, the metrical and verbally musical 
 Holy Ghost would gain in intelligibility to dress of the thought. The answer of course 
 quite a number of London amateurs during is that the poetical criticism always includes 
 the spring of 1876, through the medium of reference to the subject-matter, and to the 
 Bach's learned and lucid exposition. The mode in which it is presented and trans- 
 soarcely less bold assertion by Mr. Haweis figured ; the very duality of subject-matter 
 of the principle that it is allowable for and form, the fact of definite investiture, 
 music to be dull, and to ' express uninterest- supplies the interesting topic: while in 
 ing successions of emotion,' is an instance of Music the subject-matter throughout is not 
 the straits to which an able writer is reduced invested in form, but i$ form, 
 by that disastrous and unmeaning premiss 
 
MUSICAL CRITICISM. 527 
 
 The same isolation which prevents an explanation, and so a criticism 
 (in the highest sense), of melodies or musical works as a whole, affects also 
 their details. A word or phrase in a poem, a figure or part of a figiire in 
 a picture, may be picked out and dwelt on in relation to the whole work, 
 and may be made a nucleus for aU manner of interesting considerations. 
 In Music, though the relation of a chord or phrase to its surroundings may 
 be technically criticised, no words can penetrate or enhance its effect. In 
 details, as in leading conceptions, force or appropriateness or namby- 
 pambiness, or whatever it may be, can be to a great extent proved in the 
 arts of representation, only felt in Music. 
 
 When once the uniqueness and isolation of musical experiences is Description 
 recognised, it becomes obvious moreover that description has not a much irider'fieid * 
 wider field than interpretation. Set attempts in that direction continually tation"'^"^^'^" 
 take the form of a mere piling up of big words. Whether a person 
 knows the special composition or is only about to make its acquaintance, 
 he can hardly gain much by being told, for instance, of Schumann's 
 quintett, that ' ecstatic inspiration, lofty expression, fine mastery of 
 passion, noble feeling, wealth of imagination, fresh and healthy images, 
 and a happy issue, are here united in a rare degree.' This specimen 
 fairly represents an enormously large number of the sentences written 
 about musical works. It is inevitable that vapouring phrases should 
 specially abound in respect of those unique and exciting utterances which 
 themselves admit of no confirmation or confutation by being confronted 
 with external reality : and multitudes who feel truly and acutely are un- 
 fortunately, in respect of verbal expression of their feelings, very much at 
 the mercy of the jargon they find in vogue around them. 
 
 There is doubtless a natural reason why those technically acquainted § S. Reason 
 with the art of Music should be popularly supposed to be in possession of of which musi- 
 secrets which are hidden from others, or rather why the nature of the thoughttobe'n 
 secrets should be misunderstood. There is a curious contrast between Pj^'^^j^^rstood. 
 the width of the instinctive appreciation of this art, and the esoteric and 
 apparently mysterious nature of its technicalities. An immense number of 
 persons who are habitually enjoying music have not the slightest idea 
 what a key or a modulation means ; while of those who have musical 
 knowledge in the sense that they can perform and read music with 
 facility, not one in fifty has any technical acquaintance with the simplest 
 elements of harmony and structure : and it is natural that such persons 
 should often vaguely imagine that only professed students can know 
 exactly what the creators are at, or be justified in speaking with decision 
 about their creations. It would be absurd to underrate the value of such 
 technical acquirements, even as regards appreciation: they often im- 
 mensely facilitate the process of making acquaintance with new works and 
 give certainty and tenacity to the memory ; to say nothing of the insight 
 
■528 MUSICAL. CRITICISM. 
 
 they give into the craft, the pleasure of perceiving wherein lie the 
 special points of skUful and original workmanship. But it is very import- 
 ant that those who lack them should realise that they make no vital reve- 
 lations ; that perception and enjoyment may be absolutely perfect without 
 them. That music which a person's natural capacity and experience in 
 the way of hearing and attending enable him to appreciate, he will 
 appreciate ; and though the power of technical analysis might give him 
 considerable extraneous interest, it would not alter the essence of the im- 
 pression, or make it at all more delightful to him.' The great advantages 
 which result from practical or theoretical study, in the way of rapid and 
 lasting acquaintance with musical works, should make those who possess 
 them anxious to recognise all that is implied in these facts ; the chief 
 point being that it is not so much milk instead of strong meat that the 
 untechnical lover of music requires, as judicious and condensed adminis- 
 tration of the stronger diet ; and especially, what has been already so much 
 insisted on, repetition of the same work till its motives are in a true sense 
 familiar. Berlioz complains that about Music people expatiate in perfect 
 ignorance who would never so commit themselves on other arts : I am 
 far more often annoyed by the remark from those who appreciate much, 
 and might easily appreciate more, in the truest way, that they ' understand 
 nothing about it ; ' which is like professing to ^ understand nothing about' 
 human beauty on the ground of not having minutelj' studied human 
 anatomy. 
 
 While on the subject of the relations of technical acquirements to 
 popular appreciation, it is just worth noting that there is music which 
 may be interesting to the performers without being so to the auditors : 
 
 ' Equally erroneous with the supposition harmonic forms are built. The actual 
 that technical acquaintance with the laws of definite effect on us of this or that musical 
 harmony will give the ear some new kind of motive as it is evolved before our ears — 
 appreciation of beauty, is the idea that dis- technically a series of time- and pitch-rela- 
 ooveries about the physical laws of sound tions, aesthetically a free form charged with 
 and the physiology of the ear have in some divine vitality — is no more explained by 
 way explained Music : whereas all they have physiological facts than the effect of a draw- 
 done is to explain the mattrial of Music, ing of Leonardo is explained by the natural 
 The theory of sound is an exceptionally actions of the eye in following straight lines 
 well-understood and self-complete branch of and curves. For realisation, however, of 
 physical science, just as Music is an excep- the general characteristics of musical im- 
 tionally popular and self-complete art : but pressions, some sort of conception of their 
 the two are absolutely distinct. Science relation to the organism and of the most 
 'explains the gradual adoption of a certain elementary facts of the nervous system does 
 system of notes, giving admirable scope for certainly seem requisite : not because such 
 the variety of proportional forms of which a conception at all explains the inner myste- 
 Music consists, and assigns reasons why ries, but because without it people are likely 
 some of these notes, sounded simultaneously, to blunder, or to accept blunders, on the very 
 are concordant and others discordant : but threshold of the subject. I need only refer 
 in this direction it does not get beyond the to the remarks about the 'tyranny of rhythm,' 
 bare and wholly unemotional elements, the quoted in the eighth chapter, 
 bricks and mortar out of which melodic and 
 
MUSICAL CRITICISM. 529 
 
 and though a large number of those who naturally lead public opinion on 
 the. subject are alternately the one and the other, and run the risk of 
 being bored as -well as boring, it may be not amiss that they should occa- 
 sionally brace and perhaps correct their taste and judgment by an 
 elimination (performed partly by self-analysis and partly by watching 
 other people's experience) of the element of merely technical interest. 
 
 I hope that in the course of this enquiry I have shown some reason to § 4. The 
 believe that, if the functions of musical criticism are limited, so also is its ksrthan'the 
 necessity, and that the grounds which preclude verbal interpretations and J)Jug*g™CTid- 
 set verbal descriptions lie at the root of the art's wide comprehensibility cism is limited 
 and diffusion. The very fact that not one in a hundred of those who 
 care for Music take the smallest interest in any external treatment of it is 
 as good an indication as could be had of its exceptionally swift and easy 
 channels to the comprehension and the heart. At the same time there is 
 plenty for words to do. The natural conditions of musical life render the 
 history of the art and its votaries rich in those chance incidents and 
 remarks which may often throw a light and reveal a truth better than 
 more deliberate criticism, and in which many a sedative might be found 
 for those who are perpetually haunted by the spectre of some inner 
 meaning : and the difference Music offers from the arts of the study and the 
 studio in enlisting for its presentation large bodies of artists, among whom 
 a special esprit de. corps and a peculiar life and language might be 
 expected to develop, is specially prolific in anecdotic interest. But work 
 of a more serious kind is not wanting. We have had in England excellent but criticism 
 recent examples of studies of particular composers, none the less interesting "^t ha"la 
 for the fact that the theme, when judiciously treated, is not an endless g^d?'™* 
 one ; and, more important still, we have accounts and general analyses of 
 particular works of a really educating sort. These accounts, to be useful, 
 are necessarily somewhat technical ; but the custom of giving quotations, 
 and guiding the listener's attention to the noticeable points, conveys the 
 elements of technical knowledge to all who can in some degree follow 
 music with their eye, an acquirement as common and easy among 
 amateurs as the actual realisation of it through the eye apart from 
 performance is rare even among connoisseurs. And with this backbone 
 of soKd stuff, a running commentary of verbal description is often vivid 
 and felicitous. 
 
 Criticism of the right sort, however, speaks for itself and is received ^^ §^5^^ln- 
 with avidity. More useful matter for my present purpose will present misleading 
 
 •' ■ . 1 ■ 1 J ■ criticism : 
 
 itself in connection with criticism which appears mistaken or misieamng, in respect of ^ 
 and which includes several varieties not as yet mentioned. In the first ;^,s„'jfg]^S' 
 place, then, newspaper-critics of so-called ' light music ' perpetually, as I wj-^hensio, 
 think, miss the important points in a way which makes their praise and capacity, 
 blame equally undiscriminating and worthless. This sometimes seems to 
 
 M M 
 
 insion 
 ^ar 
 
530 MUSICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 imply a failure to recognise the value of melodic pleasure, and perhaps a 
 certain individual lack of melodic instinct ; but it is chiefly to be regretted 
 in that it apparently assumes as an axiom the inability of the people to 
 appreciate good music. It would perhaps be useless for newspapers to be 
 always criticising the ordinary run of plays and entertainments by a 
 standard of very high aesthetic excellence, and here they may reasonably 
 consider it as much as can be fairly demanded if an audience gets a 
 tolerable amount of interest and amusement of a not unhealthy kind ; but 
 I hope I have not totally failed in showing that with Music it is otherwise, 
 and that good melody is a treasure of which the people have the key. 
 Why, then, should a critic say less than the plain truth ? The compositions 
 of Offenbach will afford an example. One knows the general tone in 
 which they are criticised, and all the stock phrases which as a rule reach 
 their utmost limit of severity in the expression 'pretty jingle.' This 
 may be damning with faint praise ; but why should music be praised at 
 all which fails to satisfy any conceivable canon of goodness ? According 
 to our pre^fious argument, the word had may be fairly used (absolutely or 
 relatively) of music — (1 ) which gives no pleasure, (2) which gives extremely 
 as exemplified slight and transitory pleasure, (3) which gives pleasure superior in these 
 Ottfenbaor-" respects, but shown by experience to be incompatible with more deep and 
 lasting pleasure given by other music. I am keeping strictly to experience 
 when I say that by far the greater part of Offenbach's music, like so much 
 of the ' popular ' music of the present day, comes under the second head. 
 He has written many works containing not one single melody which gets 
 hold of the popular ear, still less of the popular heart. That people go to 
 hear these works is owing to the great reputation which he has made by 
 other melodies which hxwe got hold of the popular ear, and to the fact that 
 the Tnise-en-scene and the miserable jokes and horse-play of the ordinary 
 opera-bouffe are in accordance with the popular taste : but any musician 
 may say with certainty of tunes of such very simple form that, if he 
 cannot recall them himself, and does not hear snatches of them either 
 among the audience issuing from the theatre or afterwards, they have 
 made no strong or permanent impression, and as mere rhythmical jingle 
 they do not deserve even so mild an adjective as pretty. With regard to 
 the less numerous class of Offenbach's melodies which have spread and 
 lived among the people, it must be experience again which settles whether 
 or not they belong to the third of the above classes. There are persons 
 who seem to have the power of getting pleasure from a very wide 
 range of melody ; and as far as I can judge, it would be in no way true to 
 say (as some will say) that the width is in the inverse ratio of the depth. 
 Moreover, there are degrees between strong love and indifference, and 
 acquaintance with a higher style of music may reduce without annulling 
 earlier partialities. From my own experience and such other as I have 
 
MUSICAL CRITICISM. 531 
 
 had access to, I should say that a small minority of Offenbach's melodies 
 possess an enduring charm of fine (occasionally even very fine) quality ; but 
 these, though among the number which the people find out, and the 
 critics might find out by watching the people, are usually swept along 
 with all the rest into the category of ' pretty jingle.' 
 
 A more important point is the influence of fashion on Music, as affecting and in respect of 
 the tone of musical criticism, and converting to an unworthy alliance what through^he'*' 
 should be a strong resisting force. It is specially common, in respect of paralysing in- 
 this inward and indescribable art, to find persons possessing a capacity for fashion, 
 valuable enjoyment, whose instincts are yet not sufficiently keen and cer- 
 tain, or whose self-distrust is too great, to allow them to preciser their 
 own requirements. Such persons are of course at the mercy of any 
 conventionalities around them ; and failing to interrogate their own im- 
 pressions directly, and to find out what is really enjoyable to themselves 
 from the only possible authority, go on living a barren existence, assist- 
 ing unquestioningly at what is in vogue, and getting from the sense 
 of a duty performed a satisfaction which partially compensates them 
 for a great deal of tedium. Griven, then, the peculiarities which mark 
 out Music as the special art of evening assemblies, and we get the exact 
 conditions for the deadening interaction of fashionable sheepishness and 
 blind and narrow criticism. It is naturally in large and wealthy centres 
 that misleading influences of this conventional kind find fullest scope : 
 iand in London they tend to stereotype a certain set of performances 
 which greatly conceal the true position of fhe art in the nation. Just 
 because the press has an air of representing the prevalent taste, it acts 
 mischievously when on extraneous grounds it assumes in the public an 
 interest which has little true vitality, or confuses what is vital with what 
 is conventional. London newspapers go everywhere : and the prominence 
 they give almost daily during the season to fashionable entertainments 
 would countenance the notion that Covent Garden is a real head-quarters 
 of English musical life— a title which might with far more justice be 
 claimed for many a provincial practice-room. 
 
 It needed no special insight of Wagner's to detect the general 
 weakness of modem Opera ; nor can he feel much flattered at the now 
 stereotyped laudations of his own works from critics who continue to 
 puff, as the most approved upper-class digestive, the strains he most 
 despises and the tours de force of high soprano voices. One par- 
 ticular point, the imposition of a single foreign language on all works 
 which enter the great English opera-houses, has been already noticed ; 
 but it would be lucky if the indictment could stop there. It is curious 
 how the whole level of things tends to alter as soon as one enters Covent 
 Garden. The enormous size of the theatre, to begin with, casts a blight 
 over everything that is not spectacle ; and the extraordinary dreariness of 
 
 M M 2 
 
832 MUSICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 seeing a few beings straying about in the distance on that Sahara of a 
 stage, or seated on an oasis of a sofa, and talking about the dullest 
 intrigues in redtativo secco, perhaps accounts for its appearing high 
 humour when Figaro hops on one leg, or makes a dab of soap over the face 
 of the man he is shaving. It is small wonder if artists fail in making 
 
 ■ emotional or amusing what is so essentially dull and puerile : the wonder 
 
 lies in an audience which can be satisfied by cake with so very few plums 
 in it, and which, so far from crying out (as Wagner says) for perpetual 
 
 Hoilowness of melody, will sit through a whole scene of this kind for the sake of a single 
 
 the interest in -ht t i i i • r 
 
 which news- one. No audience Untrammelled by fashion and precedent, m a pertorm- 
 
 fcldTthrcuimi- ^'^^^ of its own choosing, would stand even for five minutes being thus 
 
 English musi- ^°^®*i ^J ^^^^ appeals neither to their ears nor to their understanding ; 
 
 cal life. and as to my certain knowledge there are many whose occasional visits to 
 
 the Opera result in a feeling of bewilderment as to whether they or the 
 
 rest of the world are mad, I think it is important that the fact of there 
 
 being audiences who do stand it should not be misunderstood. The 
 
 misfortune is, not that people's ears should be wearied (as any one who 
 
 watches carefully may see that English ears are wearied) by nine-tenths 
 
 of such operas as Aida, ' o^l La Favorita, or Le Prophete, but that their 
 
 newspapers should make thfem believe what wearies them to be fine stuff, 
 
 worthy of its mise-en-scene'; so that either they persuade themselves they 
 
 are enjoying the music, whfen all that really impresses them is the voices 
 
 and the spectacle, or else,' still more disastrously, they get to dissociate 
 
 the idea at fine music from that of music to be loved. 
 
 The case of Opera presents peculiar facilities for bolstering up, for long 
 periods at a time, works wholly destitute of popular power. An opera is such 
 an expensive affair that the very fact of its being there imposes it to some 
 extent on the public, which has no chance of making a wide independent 
 choice ; and as the assistance of brilliant scenes, a fine band, and favourite 
 singers can be ensured, and appearances can thus be kept up, people are 
 very ready to eke out their own inadequate enjoyment with a belief in what 
 they consider skilled opinion. The brighter features of the case in some ways 
 make the drearier ones the more irritating. The repertory contains some 
 operas of dramatic interest, a few with a sustained flow and many more 
 with an intersprinkling of musical beauty, of various degrees of excellence. 
 Even where neither element is independently interesting, the combination 
 miay produce here and there exciting scenes, and afford occasional points to 
 gifted artists. Such instances are the text which critics should seize on, 
 in order to point out the contrast, and to urge that there is no inherent 
 necessity for three hours of tedium as the price of twenty minutes of 
 enjoyment. It is their business to separate the wheat from the chaff; 
 not to represent a sickly fashionable vogue, which makes no distinction 
 between the two, as healthy and genuine popularity. This language can 
 
MUSICAL CRITICISM. 533 
 
 hardly be accused of exaggeration. It is professedly in the singers, not 
 the music, that the staple attraction both of Italian operas and of guinea 
 concerts consists ; and different parts and songs are the permanent trapezes 
 on which they are to exhibit their skill. The consequence is that, if the 
 whole musical pleasure of the London Italian season could be summed up, 
 the average result per hour and per person would be a humiliating one 
 for the most elaborate and expensive entertainments of the largest city in 
 Emrope. However agreeable to dilettanti after dinner, the pleasure of 
 being tickled ceases absolutely with the tickling ; and even putting the 
 roulade business aside, when music depends for its whole effect on the 
 moment of performance and on being presented by most exceptional 
 instruments, simple addition shows how small is its total aesthetic value. 
 Luckily, though fine voices are rare and expensive andbelong to the 
 moneyed classes, fine tunes are common and cheap and belong, or may 
 belong, to the people. Many critics might get a condensed and much- 
 needed lesson in the physiognomy of genuine musical enjoyment by 
 sitting in the empty stalls and watching the pit and gallery at the next 
 performance of the Beggars' Opera ; a work, by the way, for preferring 
 which to the Italian fashions of its own day, the British public were 
 politely compared by an eminent contemporary critic to the cat that was 
 changed into a fine lady, but could never resist the temptation of pur^ 
 suing a mouse. 
 
 It is difficult to say exactly what amount of influence on the right side § 6- Danger 
 criticism might have in these matters, though easy to see how its sumptfonsT" 
 flattering and conventional tone acts like a dead weight on the wrong, throommtn'' 
 Just because of the enormous size of the present ' musical public ' and J^iik about 
 its consequent want of homogeneousness, just because ' musical taste ' has 'styles' and 
 come to have all sorts of different meanings, and is diffused in a frag- taste.' 
 mentary way, in all degrees of genuineness and sptp-iousness, through a 
 concert-room or a theatre, is it important to recognise the danger of 
 general assumptions, and of establishing on fortuitous and extraneous 
 grounds a prestige which is not checked off by the criterion of vital en- 
 joyment. Such assumptions take various forms. The commonest, perhaps, 
 is the ignoring of the entire individuality of all the most valuable musical 
 impressions, and the perpetual reference to ' styles ' and ' schools,' as if 
 the features implied in a special style or school were a guarantee of pleasure- 
 giving qualities. Music is valuable when this motive, and this, and this, 
 give to numbers of those who hear them that peculiar delight which is at 
 once perfectly distinct and perfectly indescribable ; not because it is 
 written in the ' flowing Italian style,' or belongs to the ' lively French 
 school.' The flowing Italian style comprises the sickliest sentimentalities 
 of Bellini and Donizetti, and the noblest scenes in Guillaume Tell ; the 
 Lively French school confounds the tinsel of Adam with the gold of Auber. 
 
SSi MUSICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 And it is hard to guess why the almost unbelievable inanities of the 
 Bohemian Girl are so frequently resuscitated, unless it be in order to assert 
 the existence of an ' English school.' Melody is far too much a hit-or-miss 
 affair with individuals for sweeping formulse to be anything but mis- 
 leading; and the very assumption that there is naturally a prevailing 
 ' taste,' which must be satisfied by certain external characteristics of the 
 music, tends to foster the external point of view, and a disposition which 
 is not taste but fashion. When we read that Pergolesi's Olimpiade and 
 Beethoven's Fidelio failed on their production from 'not hitting the 
 prevailing taste,' that even the entirely naive and popular music of the 
 Beggars' Opera did not prevent the success from being for some time 
 dubious at the first performance, and remember the unbounded popularity 
 which in the case of the two latter works followed in the briefest space 
 of time, we see that the unreal notion of something in a ' style,' apart from 
 the special content, may be as dangerous to good new as it is artificially 
 protective of bad old work. 
 § 7. The We have seen the danger which the musical critic runs in trvine: to 
 
 fruitlessness of »/ o 
 
 argument and describe and interpret : closely connected with this are the troubles which 
 rfproof in ^ beset him when he attempts to argue. Having in the first instance 
 '""aicalfeei'nff conimonly set up a subjective criterion of good and bad, he is apt to take 
 refuge, when pressed for reasons, in tautological expressions. He will say 
 that the good music {i.e. what pleases him) expresses great ideas, and the 
 bad uninteresting or trivial ones ; that the good is characterised by deep 
 thought and the bad by absence of thought, and so on ; but if the ideas 
 and thoughts are musical ones, this, though very likely true, is obviously 
 only a restatement of his opinion. Mr. Euskin finds no difiiculty in 
 showing the vulgarity and brutality of the introduction of rufiians stripping 
 to bathe in a picture of the Baptism of Christ ; any one who differed from 
 him would have to try to show by facts that such accessories are common 
 or appropriate on solemn occasions. But in Music, under the most 
 favourable conditions for a similar criticism, that is, where the alliance 
 with something external, such as words, seems to give a kind of fulcrum 
 for argument, no such demonstration can be given, simply because no 
 appeal from the individual consciousness to facts is possible. I may feel 
 with no less force the vulgarity of the Cujus Anvmam in Eossini's Stabat 
 Mater, but I can give no criticism of it worthy of the name. Again, I 
 miay be shocked by the musical irreverence of the way in which Meyerbeer 
 winds up the overture to the Huguenots with the theme of Luther's 
 glorious chorale, and here I may plausibly adduce a prima feme unfitness 
 in the conversion of a familiar psalm-tune into a jig ; but had Meyerbeer 
 made the tune himself and then treated it in the same way I should have 
 disliked his treatment equally, and have had nothing to appeal to. One 
 sometimes hears vague references to the ' consensus of the musical world ; ' 
 
MUSICAL CRITICISM. 535 
 
 but this will not afford much assistance, partly because in many cases all 
 that can fairly be meant is the musical world of a special country or period, 
 partly because this world is not coincident with the world of connoisseurs, 
 and partly because even among them the consensus is often imaginary. 
 
 Not that I would advocate, and least of all in conversation, a pedantic 
 reserve. The experience of one person may be of great service to another, 
 partly in showing points to notice, partly by sheer infection. We cannot 
 be always taking a census of the greatest happiness of the greatest 
 number, or keeping in mind an arrihre-pensee about such a criterion. 
 But arguments on art have special risks. It is hard indeed to make the 
 intuition of others an article of as vivid faith as our own ; and in Music 
 there is a special difficulty in realising that a keen pleasure is derived from 
 strains which one can perfectly follow, but only with the result of finding 
 them trivial or tiresome ; or that strains which powerfully move oneself 
 fall dead on another person's ears. Thus, though sympathy in perception 
 of beauty is one of the most exquisite of pleasures, which it is a pain to 
 miss, yet where agreement turns out to be hopeless, so impregnable seems 
 the standpoint of one's individual sensations that there may be a dismal 
 and cross-grained satisfaction in the mere attitude of resistance, of whiph I 
 perhaps tasted a grain in writing just now the sentence about the Gujus 
 Animaw,. And in more deliberate criticism, while any careful record of 
 experience is valuable, good sense and good temper may easily fail on 
 ground where the want of tangible relationship to other things prevents 
 the possibility of obtaining new points of view and new lights, and so new 
 means of estimation and comparison, and where consequently to explain 
 and convince is hopeless. On such ground it is little wonder if the odium, 
 musicum sometimes approximates in character to the odium theologicunn. 
 
 Differences of musical taste are as striking as they are ultimate. , § 8. The 
 
 " 1 1 • 1 I. ultimate and 
 
 There are some of an entirely generic sort, such as that which we have inexplicable 
 encountered more than once in this enquiry, of pedantic science versus differences; 
 popular instinct. This was curiously exemplified during the great days of 
 Italian music in the last century, by a very prevalent superstition that 
 the subordination of contrapuntal devices to melody marked a decline in 
 the art. Pergolesi was blamed by high authorities for not having written 
 his Stabat Mater in the style of the sixteenth century : and the celebrated 
 Mattel called the taste of the people ' frivolous and depraved,' because 
 they preferred the songs of the gondolieri to ' a learned and ingenious 
 kind of music, full of harmony and contrivance.' But musical pedants 
 still have the ears of men, and are rarely consistent. The very Jomelli 
 to whom Metastasio wrote, grieving that in the mazes of scientific elabora- 
 tion he had lost the power of touching the heart, pronounced the emphatic 
 ' This is invention ' of Piccini's La buona Figliuola, which had amazing 
 popularity among all classes. 
 
536 MUSICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 illustrated in As a Special and very interesting sample of complete difference of view 
 
 Schumiin^" about the same composition, we may select the following quotations from 
 flv!^^"/;""^ the writings of two most earnest devotees of Music, Mazzini says that 
 the Huguenots ' stands alone, a beacon to indicate to future composers the 
 course through which Music may be directed towards a high social aim.' 
 ' The sense of a guiding Providence pervades the whole work. The very 
 presence of Marcel on the stage arouses in the heart of the spectator the 
 sense of a providential influence at work to bring about the triumph of good,' 
 &c. ' Of German descent, though born in Italian Istria, one might almost 
 fancy this combination of the two elements in his own person significant, 
 symbolic, and prophetic. The figure of Griacomo Meyerbeer appears before 
 us as the first link between the two worlds, the complete union of which 
 will constitute the highest music of the future.' Compare with this 
 Schumann's criticism of the same composer and the same work ; which 
 made him ' weary and inattentive from anger,' and which he follows from 
 * the ridiculously trivial sanctity ' of the overture on through the whole 
 course of intrigue and carnage, indignant that one of the bloodiest of 
 religious dramas should be ' degraded to the level of an annual fair-farce, 
 in order to raise money and noise with it.' ' To startle or to tickle is 
 Meyerbeer's maxim, and he succeeds in it with the rabble. And as for 
 the introduced chorale, which sets Frenchmen beside themselves, I declare 
 that if a pupil brought such a lesson in counterpoint to me I should 
 certainly beg him to do better in future. How overladen yet empty, how 
 intentional yet superficial ! What blacksmith's work, that the mob may 
 not fail to observe it, is this eternal chanting of Marcel's A Firm Fortress I 
 Then a great deal is said about the dedication of the swords in the fourth 
 act. I acknowledge that it has much dramatic movement, some intelligent 
 striking turns, and that the chorus especially is of great outward effect ; 
 situation, scenery, instrumentation work together, and as the horrible is 
 Meyerbeer's element, he has written this with warmth. But if we look at 
 the melody from a musical point of view, what is it but a vamped-up 
 Marseillaise f Is there real art in producing effect with such means at 
 such a passage ? I do not blame the use of every means in the right 
 place ; but we must not exclaim " Grlorious ! " when a dozen of drums, 
 trumpets, and ophicleides are heard at a little distance in unison with a 
 hundred singing men. One Meyerbeerian refinement I must mention 
 here. He knows the public too well not to know that an excess of noise 
 stupefies at last. How cleverly he goes to work then ! After such ex- 
 plosions as that mentioned above, he gives us whole arias with the 
 accompaniment of a single instrument, as if he meant to say, " Behold 
 what I can do with but small means ! Look, Germans, look ! " ' 
 and in Maz- Mazzini's descriptions of German music have a still more remarkable 
 
 German music. Sound. ' German music consumes itself uselessly in mysticism.' The 
 
MUSICAL CRITICISM. 537 
 
 melody in Grerman music ' is short, timidly and slightly designed.' 
 ' German music is eminently elegiac ; it is the music of remembrance, of 
 desire, of melancholy hopes, of sorrows which no human lip can console — 
 a music as if angels lost to heaven were hovering around.' And this is 
 of what we are accustomed to consider by far the boldest and most ample 
 melodies, and by far the most robust and all-embracing music in the 
 world. "What is the good of arguing ? It had not spoken to Mazzini.' 
 His words are rather descriptive of what we have called the indefinite than 
 of the definite musical pleasure : music which merely ' embraces you with 
 a chain of gradations hnked by a master's hand, and surrounds you and 
 cradles you upon a wave of chords,' is not music which to you, then and 
 there, is presenting strong and individual melodic motive. Nor is the 
 converse fact wanting. Many tunes which are the daily bread of the 
 Italians, and wholesome where indigenous, are to many of us as disagree- 
 able and cloying as overripe pears : but so far as any one has received large 
 masses of delightful emotion from such tunes, that is a fact which it is 
 impossible to get behind or call in question. The most one can say, and 
 perhaps to sonie extent prove, is that larger masses of more delightful and 
 more varied emotion are produced by other music which, as a fact, and 
 not on any a priori grounds, will not, or will very rarely, go in the same 
 head with vivid delight in the modern Italian. 
 
 These remarks apply with especial force to conversation. Few subjects Special appU- 
 in the present day are more widely discussed than Music : no subject versation. 
 admits less of profitable discussion, as opposed to a mere airing of opinions. 
 The fact that a musical work cannot well be talked about during its 
 performance, and is not as a rule reproducible or quotable at pleasure, the 
 separation of the times when people talk and theorise from the times 
 when they actually realise music, makes an additional difficulty, over and 
 above the peculiar character of the impressions and the want of a generally 
 understood vocabulary. It follows that in general society musical talk 
 almost always sinks into that most barren and wearisome region, the 
 discussion of the merits or demerits of different executants and virtuosi. 
 But even where it is easy to recall the exact points on which stress is to 
 be laid, and where each person has command of the technical materials 
 necessary for discussion and is anxious to appreciate the other's ideas, it is 
 a common experience that differences of opinion on this subject are 
 mutually irritating rather than mutually instructive. It is curiously little 
 recognised that when it comes to a simple question of liking, disliking, 
 or regarding with indifference a succession of notes of which those who 
 
 ' I have heard from a friend intimately deavour, could not manage to perceive even 
 
 acquainted with Italy that he has found in choice specimens of Mozart any charnjing 
 
 Italians devoted to Verdi's melodies, who, or arresting quality. 
 without prejudice and after honest en- 
 
538 
 
 MUSICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 § 9. Such 
 lincertainty as 
 the test of 
 pleasure pie- 
 gents need 
 neither con- 
 fuse our views 
 nor paralyse 
 pur efforts. 
 
 differ would seem each to have an equally definite and complete knowledge, 
 discussion has no standpoint, and the simpler the strain, the stranger, the 
 less analysable, and the more irritating the difference. But if direct 
 justification of particular musical proclivities is in the main impossible, 
 some comfort may be found in the compatibility of wide differences in the 
 estimation of some compositions with a common admiration of a vast 
 number of others. 
 
 Many will be the readier to admit the expedience of toleration in 
 Music, from a recollection of the different ways in which they themselves 
 have been impressed by different compositions at different times. It is 
 not only that taste gradually develops, and so music once dear becomes 
 commonplace and music once uninteresting becomes dear : we have seen 
 that a trained faculty and taste are liable to similar phases in respect of 
 almost all compositions short of the strongest and purest. Moreover, 
 both the rapidity and the order of musical development differ greatly in 
 different cases, so that the power of appreciating the same composition 
 will form and culminate at very various times in different lives. But it 
 is, after all, on a clear perception of the grounds why differences are 
 beyond analysis and argument, that a plea for mutual tolerance can be 
 most successfully foiinded. 
 
 This impossibility of marking off good and had by objective tests 
 and rigid lines in this particular sphere of art is manifestly nothing more 
 than a corollary from the argument which was applied in the sixteenth. 
 Seventeenth, and eighteenth chapters. If pleasure is the criterion of 
 music's essential worth, we cannot refuse to consider both surface and 
 depth in our measurement : it seems as impossible to deny the epithet 
 good to the music which can give some degree of durable enjoyment to 
 large numbers of human beings, as to that which can give a greater degree 
 of more durable enjoyment to a smaller number.^ Bad music is bad in 
 the comparative sense that it can give, at best, a small sum of pleasure, 
 and either has not sufficient individual impressiveness for any one to feel 
 a longing for its exact recurrence, or is rapidly tired of when it recurs ; 
 
 ' It would be idle to attempt to compare 
 or equate surface and depth, even if all good 
 music got an equal chance of being known. 
 But it is worth while to point out, by an ex- 
 ample, one special way in which the supe- 
 riority of one piece of good music to another 
 is often satisfactorily indicated. Suppose it to 
 be true (which I am far indeed from assert- 
 ing) that the sum of pleasure derived in a year 
 from the strikingly beautiful and popular 
 overture to ToMnhduser is greater than that 
 derived from the first movement of the 
 Eroica Symphony. The broad ground to 
 
 take would, of course, be that in proportion 
 as musical experience spreads, will the su- 
 periority of the latter be more widely felt : 
 but my present point is that those who enjoy 
 the overture most are just those who enjoy 
 the symphony more. The perception of a 
 ' thin vein of genuine trash ' is no piore a 
 proof of inferior enjoymen in Music, than 
 the perception of a similai: characteristic in 
 Goethe's works renders the able critic who 
 has supplied me with the phrase a less ap- 
 preciE^tive admirer of their merits than other 
 people. 
 
MUSICAL CRITICISM.. 539 
 
 which means that it lacks any element of durability. The criterion is so 
 safely applied in an immense number of cases that we need hardly distress 
 ourselves at the existence of a debateable region where its application is 
 uncertain and difficult. The very difficulty of taking the census reveals 
 most satisfactorily the enormous width of the ground the census has to 
 cover. And certainly no doubts need paralyse our efforts to extend among 
 the people those opportunities of hearing and enjoying, every extension 
 of which will further prove the fundamental similarity of thousands and 
 thousands of human ears, and will more and more remove from our test 
 the charge, on the one hand, of admitting as good what connoisseurs 
 would condemn, and, on the other, of seeming to cor^fine the verdict to 
 connoisseurs. 
 
541 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 ON PLEAStJEl! AND PAIN IN RELATION TO THE EVOLUTIdN OP THE SENSESi 
 
 In the first chapter, I adverted to the idea that the development of pleasure aiid 
 pain admits of the same kind of explanation, on the theory of natural selection, as 
 do the numerous advantageous physical conditions to the survival of which that 
 theory supplies a clue. Suppose, for example (to take a perfectly crude and simple 
 instance), that lying in the sun tends to develop an eye in some creature ; the 
 idea would be that it would constitute an advantage to the creature to like lying 
 in the sun, since if he likes it he will do it agaiuj and in time will get the rudi- 
 ment of an eye^ which may l)e further developed by the same habit in his descend- 
 ants. But to begin with, no one accustomed to distinguish between physical and 
 psychical phenomena can fail to see that it is only to the former that natural 
 selection, which is a principle of physical life, can truly apply. Every stage of 
 the deductive zoology can be imagined without any supervention of psychical 
 phenomena at all. It is impossible to treat physical and psychical events as parts 
 of a single chain, and to credit a feeling, as such and irrespective of its physical 
 basis, with causal efficacy in a physical order ; and if a psychical phenomenon can- 
 not form a link in a physical nexus, so neither can its presence or absence be a 
 condition of advantage or disadvantage as regards physical existence. 
 
 We do, however, as a matter of fact, live in a world of psychical phenomena, 
 in a world of sentient creatures. And if we find that in them the physical im- 
 pulse or motion towards doing anything is connected with a certain psychical 
 phenomenon, known also as impulse, no confusion need result from speaking of 
 the impulse as a condition of the action, even if the word impulse be understood 
 in a psychical sense ; since, the connection being invariable, the appropriate phy- 
 sical changes will be necessarily involved^ But is the case the same with pleasure 1 
 If the connection between pleasure and psychical impulse were of an equally im- 
 variable sort, if pleasure and pain were essentially involved as objects in those 
 impulses of selection and rejection with which they are so commonly associatedj 
 it would doubtless be intelligible, though inaccurate, to substitute the object, 
 pleasure, as the necessary condition of the action. But this connection is so 
 little invariable that careful self-examination will fail to make it good even in 
 the most general and fundamental instances. Thus even in the case of hunger 
 which has not reached the stage of violence, we can often dissociate the object of 
 the impulse, eating, both from the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance. of 
 
542 ON PLEASURE AND PAIN 
 
 pain.' And this being so, we can cleaiiy dissociate the psychical life from pleasure 
 and pain, without landing ourselves in any theory of automatism ; for impulses 
 might remain, and take their place, when they occurred, among the other neutral 
 phenomena of feeling, of which a great part of all psychical life consists. 
 
 And it is possible to carry oiu" view of the externality of pleasure to the 
 conditions of advantage a step further, if, in addition to this position that impulse 
 can exist independently of pleasure, we may also hold that pleasure can exist 
 independently of impulse. This will perhaps be less readily granted : for pleasure 
 seems only definable as a mode of consciousness which we seek to retain or to re- 
 produce — a definition which clearly involves impulse. It appears to me, however, 
 that the essence of pleasure is Mwdefinable ; and that the above definition, though 
 applying very well to our own ordinary experience, overshoots that essence. Even 
 in our own experience, many pleasiu-es are so passive in character that the im- 
 pulse to retain them is of a wholly potential kind ; a baby may resist being taken 
 out of a warm bath, but can the essence of his pleasiwe in it from moment to 
 moment be really held to involve an impulse towards retention ? And as we 
 descend the scale of creation to simpler and simpler organisms, the necessity of the 
 ingredient of impulse seems to get more and more shadowy, and the essence of 
 pleasure seems more and more able to resolve itself into an experience without 
 any reference beyond the immediate instant. 
 
 We may readily grant, however, that in established cases of kinds of action 
 which have tended to preservation, and which have, in virtue of that fact, been 
 preserved and now exist, the union between pleasure (or avoidance of pain) and 
 psychical impulse is fairly close and constant ; that the impulse towards the 
 pleasure and the impulse towards the action are often felt as identical, and have a 
 similar appearance of directive force towards advantageous results. But when we 
 lare considering the efiects of natural selection, we must suppose new cases; for 
 natural selection supervenes on events which, so far as it is concerned, are strictly 
 accidental. Now the process by which the psychical order of phenomena rose into 
 distinctness was of course an infinitely gradual one ; we cannot conceive the more 
 fundamental impulses and pleasures as new things, turning up suddenly like 
 chance variations of structure. The physical connection between organisms and 
 their environment has grown in complication as the organisms have become more 
 and more diiFerentiated in structure, and the objective phenomena of selection and 
 rejection of certain objects and actions have, on the physical side, made up part of 
 this gradually complicated connection ; while in the concurrent and correlated 
 increase of general psychical vitality, ihe psychical impulses, the feeling of selection 
 and rejection have had their natural part ; as also have the phenomena of pleasur- 
 able sensation attaching to certain kinds of normal function. It is clearly, then, 
 outside such stereotyped aspects of life as this that we must look if we are to 
 establish any correct sort of essential connection between natural selection and 
 pleasure. But when we come to new cases, we find no essential bond between 
 our three factors of impulse, pleasure, and advantage implying opportunity for 
 development by natural selection ; and they may fall apart in various ways. Thus 
 natural selection may refuse its ratification to actions where impulse and pleasure 
 remain in accord ; a creature or a race might have deleterious impulses, and in 
 
 ' I am indebted for this view to my friend Mliics, contains a most forcible statement 
 Mr. Henry Sidgwiek, whose chapter on of it. 
 ' Pleasure and Desire,' in the Methods of 
 
IJSr RELATION TO TEE EVOLUTION OF THE SENSES. 543 
 
 that case its life might be a short, but there is no d priori reason why it should 
 not be a merry one. Again, though pleasure, and not pain, is the concomitant of 
 established impulses, till an impulse has been established through proving ad- 
 vantageous to existence, there is no evidence that it will be pleasurable in its 
 results rather than painful ; and though in the latter case further experience 
 might show that it was also disadvantageous, and that, either through its cessa- 
 tion in the individual or through the extinctive powers of natural selection, no 
 habit was established, yet the existence of the pain, prior to the weeding out of its 
 conditions, would remain an ultimate and irreversible fact. The case of pain 
 introduces special difficulties as to the historical relations of the phenomena into 
 which it enters to natural selection. For there is clearly a great difference be- 
 tween pleasure and pain, as regards their relation to advantage and so to natural 
 selection, in the following respect. Where advantage can be connected with 
 pleasure, it results from doing and repeating the pleasure-causing action; and the 
 preservation of the creature or its race, so far as it has been thus conduced to, 
 appears to constitute a stamp of approval both of the action and of the pleasure, it 
 not seeming necessary (except for purposes of strict accuracy already discussed) to 
 make a separation between the two : but where advantage can be connected with 
 pain, it results from not doing, from avoiding repetition of the pain-causing action ', 
 and the preservation of the creature, so far as it has been thus conduced to, 
 appears to constitute a stamp of approval for the sensibility to pain, but of dis- 
 approval for the action. We might, it is true, without absolute contradiction, 
 attribute to natural selection the double function of weeding out deleterious actions 
 by extinction of the creatures who continued to do them, and oi fostering pain 
 after trial of deleterious actions, through the survival of creatures to whom ad-^ 
 vantage accrued from early learning by pain to avoid such actions.' But then, 
 when once we begin to consider pain as an advantage which has been fostered, and 
 tiy to adjust the ratio of painfulness and advantageousness, we cannot altogether 
 ignore the ordinary common-sense view that insensibility to injuiy is, as a rule, 
 a proof of robustness ; or, more precisely, that insensibihty to pain from deleterious 
 events or courses is an indication of advantageous physical conditions. 
 
 It seems, then, that there is only one way in which pleasure and pain can be 
 truly ccmnected with natural selection ; namely, in respect of their present dis^ 
 tribution. If pleasure is a function of certain modes of physical change, it will 
 not naturally continue to co-exist with modes of physical change which tend to 
 destroy existence; that is to say, when we find pleasure now in connection with 
 impulses, it is naturally in connection with the only impulses which are there 
 now for it to be connected with, those, namely, which, by tending to preservation, 
 have themselves survived. Again, if pain is a function of certain modes of phy- 
 sical change which tend to destroy existence, whether by positive injury or by 
 prevention of the preservative conditions and actions, a contradiction would be 
 involved in its co-existence with conditions or actions which, by having persisted, 
 prove themselves to belong to the non-destructive class. 
 
 Perhaps the commonest form in which pleasure and pain are vaguely credited 
 with objective powers, is not so much in the connection of natural selection with 
 
 ' I have here adopted for convenience the certain nervous affections or processes fol- 
 
 inaccurate phraseology of ordinary usage: lowing on a physical impulse and tending 
 
 strictly, for learning hy poAn we should to prevent the repetition of that impulse, 
 substitute the physical correlative, viz. 
 
544 ON PLEASURE AND PAIN 
 
 particular pleasures and pains as in a more general sort of argument, of Ibis kind : 
 that as it may be assumed that creatures in whom the agi'eeable did not pre- 
 dominate over the disagreeable sensations would perish off the face of the earth 
 through a palpable want of the necessary adaptation to environment, therefore 
 pleasurable sensation in general must be an advantageous thing. But here of 
 course is involved the same fallacy as before : the psychical phenomenon of pleasure 
 is not regarded in its true relation to objective facts, as a sign of serviceable and 
 selected activities, but is treated as on the same plane with some kind of physical 
 adaptation. And we argue as before that agreeable sensation, being connected 
 with nervous processes, which in turn are connected with particular activities, 
 cannot of coui'se exist unless the activities are there; and the only activities which 
 can be there are necessarily just those which are in proper relation to the environ, 
 ment, so have survived, whether by natural selection or otherwise, and so have a 
 tendency to survival : but the essential physical processes are those which are re- 
 presented in feeling as the impulse, for example, to eat, not those which are repre- 
 sented in feeling as enjoyment of eating. 
 
 So far we have been entirely concerned with pleasures and pains in connection 
 with which an active impulse is found ; and in the gi'atification of the impulse, 
 provided it be of the advantageous kind, pleasure, though not an essential con- 
 stituent, has been a very constant concomitant, developing at the same time and 
 seeming to work altogether in the same direction as the impulse, and in fact so fused 
 with it in feeUng that the dual nature of the psychical phenomenon has to a great 
 extent passed unnoticed. It is clear that the only pleasures and pains with which 
 the deduct! ve zoology can have anything to do are those where such an impulse 
 exists, where a choice, a preference or rejection, is implied. For no advantage in the 
 struggle for existence could possibly accrue to any creature in connection with 
 sensibilities which did not take effect in some kind of action : natural selection 
 preserves existence, not enjoyment; activities, not passive sensibilities. The 
 choice may be either to do something immediately conducive to the existence of 
 the individual, as eating, or conducive to the propagation of the race ; or to do 
 something which modifies structure advantageously, as in our imaginary case of 
 the creature who got the rudiment of an eye by habitually lying in the sun. The 
 latter case, it will be at once noticed, differs from the ordinary actions which con- 
 duce to individual advantage, in the wide disconnection of the advantageous 
 result, the possession of a serviceable eye, from the pleasurable conditions of its 
 attainment : the creature's impulse, as represented in consciousness, is not towards 
 light nor towards getting an eye, but primarily towards warmth, or something 
 equally undifferentiated. When he begins to perceive the first glimmerings of 
 light, this is a sign that the advantage has begun ; for with the appreciation of 
 the difference between light and darkness, when, for example, some approaching 
 object temporarily obscures the light, the perception of objects has been started ; 
 and this advantage may appear in a rudimentary form at an early stage of de- 
 velopment : but it is quite discontinuous with the pleasure- tending impulse. If 
 now we proceed to consider the action of the higher senses after the formation of 
 their organs, we shall find this want of connection between what tends to pleasure 
 and what tends to advantage become so marked as to set these senses in a position 
 of real contrast with the lower. 
 
 To take vision first. Employment of its eyes by a creature which has got 
 
IN BELATION TO THE EVOLUTION OF THE SENSES. 545 
 
 them, and the results of that employment, seem indeed to present a certain analogy 
 to the processes and results in cases where, as in our crude instance of the 
 differentiation of an eye, structure has been advantageously modified by persistence 
 in some pleasurable action. Thus a creature who has impulses to move his eyes 
 will gain the unsought advantage of further development of their structure, leading 
 to increased scope, quickness, and precision. Here, then, the relation of impulse 
 and movement to subsequent advantage seems clear ; but what has become of 
 pleasure ? The enjoyment of mere light, when it is differentiated from warmth, 
 must be extremely slight ; in our own highly organised stage it can hardly be said 
 to exist, apart from enjoyment of definite objects and of colour ; and even if we 
 choose to consider that light, like warmth, may have been perceived with direct 
 satisfaction at an early stage of evolution (as when our old friend was lying in the 
 sun and getting the rudiment of an eye), we can hardly suppose enjoyment of it 
 to have formed an element in any creature's consciousness when using its sight in 
 the search for prey or the avoidance of enemies. And in any case it is the history 
 of our own pleasures which we are seeking to trace ; and for us it is undoubtedly 
 enjoyment of colour which constitutes the true pleasure of visual sense-impression. 
 And distinction of colour is wholly a matter of the elements of the retina ; it has 
 no connection with movements of the eye, such as would be specially advantageous 
 to a creature for purposes of getting sustenance or avoiding dangers. Colour is 
 marked and enjoyed rather in absence of movement, by steady passivity. There 
 results a difficulty in connecting this pleasure either with impulse or advantage ; 
 the impulse favourable to it would be a pure negation, the impulse to do nothing, 
 which certainly would never get stamped as favourable to existence ; and though 
 the power to discrim,inate colours, when got, is an advantage, it is just not the dis- 
 criminative act (tUl high mental elements, such as the sense of gradation and contrast, 
 have been developed), but the purely passive reception, to which pleasure attaches. 
 Or if it be said that the mere recognition of a colour would bp an advantage, as 
 aiding towards recognition of an object, still that fact 4oes not suggest to us any 
 active impulse by following which sensibility to particular colours might be attained. 
 A further difficulty in connecting enjoyment of cglour with advantageous im- 
 pulses will appear, if we consider what is the place of colour in the environment, 
 as compared, for instance, with that of food. The physical cause of colour is 
 ethereal waves of various lengths j and such waves are a perpetual daily element 
 of the terrestrial environment, the particular wave-length of this or that series of 
 waves, as it is reflected from any terrestrial object, depending entirely on certain 
 conditions in the object, and not in the slightest degree on the existence or the 
 whereabouts of eyes. The special consequences as regards living creattires are 
 evident. While the external conditions for satisfying hunger are small and 
 occasional fragments of the environment, which have to be distinctly searched 
 for and selected, the external conditions for perceiving colour are there, all 
 round, all day long, and not only do not need to be searched for and selected but 
 cannot, except by an impulse of avoidance resulting in positive movements, be 
 rejected. The irrelevance of enjoyment to the attainment of definite objects, 
 the absolute divorce between pleasure and selective and preservative action, 
 is here of the most marked description. In such a case advantage would 
 lie, not in particular impulses, but in variations of structure, either acci- 
 dental or developed by the exercise of function, and unconnected with impulse 
 towards pleasure or any other object ; and pleasure could only supervene as the, 
 
 N N 
 
546 ON PLEASURE AND PAIN. 
 
 unsouglit and inexplicable subjective counterpart of the nervous processes involved 
 in the gradual differentiation of the organ and its functions. 
 
 The case of the ear is very similar. The waves of aerial vibration which are 
 perceived as sound, travel, like the light-waves, in all directions, and during the 
 period of their occurrence pervade the whole environment. Their causes, like 
 those of colour, must have been quite independent and accidental as regards rudi- 
 mentary organisms : the physical conditions must have been practically all external, 
 since only the most infinitesimal fraction of the sounds which may have gradually 
 impressed primitive creatures could have been made by themselves. And it is 
 difficult to conceive how any impulse tending to pleasure could have led any 
 creature to put itself in the way of hearing sounds. Such an impulse is, indeed, 
 even harder to imagine in the case of sound than of colour. For in the first place 
 the physical conditions of sound are not, like those of light, continuously for 
 hours together all about in the environment ; sounds are for the most part occa- 
 sional and intermittent things, impossible for unintelligent creatures to put them- 
 selves specially in the' way of ; and in the second place, apart from imagination 
 and association, the louder sounds of nature difierfrom bright colours in not seem- 
 ing particularly pleasurable things ; and the more striking and impressive they 
 are the less agi'eeable do they appear, both as causing a physical shock or start 
 and in primitive life probably suggesting danger. Perception and discrimination 
 of sounds would doubtless be an advantage when attained ; but the attainment, as 
 in the case of the eye, would be com^e about through variations and differentiation 
 of structure entailing new and unsought sensibilities. 
 
 To sum up the case, then, as regards colour and sound. The relation of the 
 senses concerned to advantage in the struggle for existence difiers, first, from that 
 of the senses which pertain to eating and reproduction, in being entirely indirect : 
 the advantage of seeing and hearing things does not consist in seeing and hear- 
 ing, but in subsequent proceedings ; not in perceiving approaching prey, but in 
 catching it ; not in becoming aware of dangerous proximities, but in getting away 
 fi'om them. The case of the higher senses differs, secondly, from that of any more 
 general mode of affection (as of warmth) which may have been present during the 
 slow processes of differentiation of structure, inasmuch as the physical facts of 
 colour and sound seem to preclude the hypothesis of a habit gradually formed in 
 conformity to some constantly recurring embryonic impulse, and leading to per- 
 petual subjection of the organism to appropriate conditions. And as a result, the 
 primitive use and development of these particular senses seem to stand markedly 
 out of relation to pleasure. This may, perhaps, be best appreciated by noticing how 
 impossible it is to apply in their case phrases which, though inaccurate, are with 
 the necessary proviso intelligible, in application to the other senses ; as that it 
 would be an advantage to a creature to feel pleasure in a thing, inasmuch as 
 pleasure would lead to repetition. Eepetition of what? of some action : but (1) 
 no action will provide the sensorium of any creature with a colour or a sound, 
 unless the physical conditions are there ; (2) when the physical conditions are 
 there, the perception of the phenomena does not require any action ; (3) the 
 movements of seizing and avoiding and the like, in which the perception must re- 
 sult if it is to be even indirectly preservative, are exactly contrary to the condi- 
 tions of passivity favourable to the appreciation of the phenomena ; the enjoyment 
 of which would, therefore, seem to be not only something over and above percep- 
 tion and discrimination, but to a great extent incompatible with the only circumr 
 
ON RHYTHM. 547 
 
 stances where perception and discrimination would be serviceable. So that, on 
 the whole, the development of pleasurable capacity in connection with the de- 
 velopment of the sense seems in these cases entirely disparate from, and unre- 
 lated to, either impulse and action, or advantage in the struggle for existence. 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 ON EHYTHM IN EELATION TO THE NOTION OF SUCCESSION IN TIME. 
 
 The question as. to the formation of the notion of Time and the relation of suc^ 
 cession is too remote from our main subject to warrant any lengthy discussion 
 here. Thei-e is, however, one theory of great ingenuity which, as it connects this 
 formation directly with the sense of hearing and with rhythmic movements, seems 
 to come fairly within our scope ; and the more so since a notice of it may indirectly 
 serve to make the distinctive character of \hQ pitch-dimeTiaion of Chapters VII. and 
 VIII. more easily intelligible. The theory, as stated by Dr. Hughlings Jackson, 
 rests on the view that the two divisions of the auditory nerve are aiferent, the one 
 to centres in the medulla oblongata for movements of the heart, and the other to 
 centres for locomotion in the cerebellum. The nerve has therefore much mus-. 
 cularity in dependence on it, namely, the movements of the head and neck, and thus 
 indirectly locomotor movements, and the all-important movements of the heart-beat. 
 This association of movement with the auditory sense is supposed to account for our 
 sense of the time-relation of successive impressions, just as the movements of the 
 eye are beyond all doubt at the root of our notion of the extension, and the out-> 
 sideness to one another, of things in space. With regard to Space, Dr. Jackson 
 says with perfect truth, ' "We could have no notion of extension by mere impres- 
 sions on the retina; there must be movements of the eyeballs. To suppose that 
 we know the shape of an object by the merely sensory process of an object, as it 
 were, imprinting itself on the retina, is to suppose that the position of the several 
 retinal elements in relation to one another is known already. These can only be 
 learned by movements. Similarly,' he argues with equal trath, ' to say that, 
 since the ear receives sounds in succession, this kind of reception gives one an 
 idea of their time-relation, assumes that particular intervals,' i.e. time-intervals, 
 ' are already known : ' and these Dr. Jackson holds can also be learned by 
 movements, those namely of the heart. 
 
 Now, tempting as must appear any explanation of the notion of succession in 
 Time analogous to that of extension in Space, this view ' that our ideas of time 
 have final, although unconscious, reference to the rhythm of the heart,' seems open 
 to the gravest objections. There is doubtless a parallelism of a negative kind, a 
 parallelism of error in the assumptions, which Dr. Jackson confutes, that exten- 
 sion in the one case and succession in the other are ideas essentially present in the 
 simple sense-impressions with which we learn to connect those notions. But when 
 we attempt positive explanation, and compare the movements involved in the two 
 eases, the analogy breaks down. 
 
 Extension is connected wholly with things in space, that is, things outside one 
 another and with their several parts outside one another; this outsideness is 
 
 N M 2 
 
548 ON RHYTHM. 
 
 learnt by the special movements of the eye which bring the most sensitive part 
 of the retina to bear en each object or part of an object in turn, and the relative 
 positions of the points seen correspond to the various parts of the retina, with 
 each of which a special movement is associated. Movements associated with 
 sensations of touch might suffice in the same way to give some imperfect sense of 
 extension ; and locomotor movements have certainly played an important part in 
 the formation of our complete conception of Space, which seems to contain, beyond 
 extension, the notion of being able to move through it. But the multitude and 
 delicacy of the eye's experiences are such that, even quite unassisted, it would be 
 competent to the formation of a perfect notion of extension ; and we may say, 
 with small error, that that notion is only a generalised abstraction from ex- 
 periences of ocular movements. Now, the point to notice is this : that these 
 particular movements, and therefore the generalised conception of them, are 
 wholly devoted to cmd concerned with one class of impressions, those, namely, which 
 light brings to the retina : the impressions of light on the retina and these 
 special muscular movements of the eye are in our experience indissolubly 
 associated, and their range is absolutely coextensive and conterminous. That 
 relation between retinal impressions which we call extension is generalised from 
 a set of moTOments which unceasingly attend those retinal impressions, and have 
 no other object or function. 
 
 Now, what is the bearing of this on succession in Time ? The analogue in 
 Space of things in Time is a series of points in a line. For simplicity we may 
 take two points : we have seen, then, that constant experience of the movement of 
 the eye from one point to the other would suffice to give us the notion of the 
 outsideness of one to the other ; in fact, that the gradually generalised idea of such 
 experience is that notion. But then, as we have seen, it is the special movement 
 devoted to certain special sensory impressions, and to nothing else, which would 
 give the relation ; that particular movement and no other ; it is not merely 
 synchronous movement ; for instance, if we exercised some of our muscles while 
 our retina remained immovably fixed in the direction of the points, such move- 
 ments would of coui-se be wholly irrelevant to the space-relsi-tion pf the points. 
 Yet it is to this latter sort of movements, and not to the special ocular sort, that the 
 movements by which Dr. Jackson atteippts to explain the notion of succession are 
 analogous. If we take two sense-impressions perceived as successive, we look in 
 vain for any special movement associated with them, which can possibly put them 
 outside one another in a time-relation. We may receive two auditory impressions, 
 and a certain number of heart-beats may take place during the interval between 
 them : but there is absolutely nothing to refer the change of state, involved in 
 this movement of the heart, to the two auditoiy impressions, in the way that the 
 change gf state involved in the movement of the eye from one point to another 
 was necessarily referred to the two visual impressions. It is a synchronous, but 
 irrelevant, change of state. Assuming the relation of succession in the heart- 
 beats to be already known, we might conceivably use them as a measure : but 
 then we have to come down to the heart-beats themselves, and ask how the notion 
 of succession is to be got into them. We are talking about the formation of a 
 general idea : now, a general idea must be formed from particular elements 
 which reach consciousness ; and this is not ordinarily the case with the heart- 
 beats at any rate of those beings who are capable of forming general ideas. But 
 even supposing them to reach consciousness, as in certain bodily states they do, 
 
ON DISCORD. '549 
 
 they are felt merely as a set of precisely similar events. "We have no consciousness 
 of a change of physical state connecting one with another ; there is no movement 
 which, by its intimate association with a pair of such sense-impressions, while 
 still remaining — as movement — distinct from them, can set one outside the other 
 for us. 
 
 Nor is this all. Dr. Jackson seems to assume a special connection between 
 the ear and Time as a known fact, apart from theory. ' That the ear has to do 
 with Time as the eye has to do with Space is,' he says, ' a truism.' With all 
 deference to so distinguished an authority, I cannot admit that it is even true- 
 The sense of vision has almost a monopoly of the idea of extension : whereas in 
 the idea of succession it is hard to see that one sense can claim any special 
 superiority over another, or that sense-perceptions of any kind have more part 
 than the purely intellectual faculties. The notion of succession pervades the 
 whole of our experience through and through ; and the means by which it is 
 acquired are probably purely mental acts, attention to and comparison of impres- 
 sions or ideas in respect of such qualities as distinctness, greater or less isolation 
 from irrelevant or subordinate concomitants, and so on. The notion of Time is 
 thus much more ultimate and difficult to account for than that of Space ; and 
 it is everywhere assumed in our explanation of Space by movements. 
 
 If we want an analogy to visual extension in the region of sound, it is certainly 
 to Pitch and not to Time that we must go. The resemblance is very well put by 
 Helmholtz. ' It is- an essential character of Space that at every position within 
 it like bodies can be placed, and like motions can occur. Everything that is 
 possible to happen in one part of Space is equally possible in every other part of 
 Space, and is perceived by us in precisely the same way. This is the case also 
 with the musical scale. Every melodic phrase, every chord, which can be executed 
 at any pitch, can be also executed at any other pitch in such a way that we 
 immediately perceive the characteristic mark of their similarity. On the other 
 hand, also, different voices, executing the same or different melodic phrases, can 
 move at the same time within the compass of the scale, Uke two bodies in Space, 
 and, provided they are consonant in the accented parts of bars, without creating 
 any musical disturbances.' 
 
 APPENDIX G. 
 
 ON DISCORD. 
 
 Me. GbanT Allen, in his recent book on Physiological ^Esthetics, adopted the 
 words ' maximum of stimulation with minimum of fatigue ' as the general formula 
 for the conditions of peripheral stimulation most favourable to pleasure in the 
 case of the higher sense-organs. I wish to point out some considerations which 
 seem to detract from the value and generality of this formula. One obvious 
 objection may be seen at once to be the use of the subjective word ' fatigue 'for 
 the expression of objective phenomena in physiology : and it is ultimately owing, 
 as I helieve, to this dangerous and misleading use that the other weak points in 
 tho formula, if such indeed they prove to be, easily escape detection. 
 
550 ON DISCORD. 
 
 To illustrate my first objection, we may take a case or two where the sort of 
 ratio expressed in the formula seems familiar to us. We say, for instance, that a 
 skilful violinist extracts from his strings the maximum of transverse with the 
 minimum of longitudinal vibration ; or that mountain-air enables us to walk a 
 maximum number of miles with a minimum of fatigue. In either case the two 
 terms of the ratio are clearly distinct things, which may be conceived as increasing 
 together or decreasing together, or one of which may increase as the other decreases. 
 Now let us look at the word ' fatigue ' as used in the formula. It relates simply 
 to physiological facts, to the molecular disturbances of stimulated organs in which 
 wear is outrunning repair, and which are thus being brought further and further 
 from the state they were in to start with, without a chance of recurring to that 
 atate during the continuance of the stimulation ; ' a condition whose relation to 
 the condition of stimulation vnthout ' fatigue ' finds a rough parallel in the 
 difference of behaviour of two bodies respectively moved from a position of un- 
 stable and of stable equilibrium. But, holding fast to this objective view of the 
 terms employed, we see of course that the need of repair is simply dependent on 
 the amount of disturbance or wear ; that the unfatiguing and the fatiguing 
 stimulation are not two distinct things which can be separately appraised, but 
 are continuous, one being an excess of the other beyond the line where perpetual 
 repair is possible. So that our formula seems reduced to ' a maximum of getting 
 Tip to the line with a minimum of going over it.' 
 
 Cases where the formula is really applicable are those where several sets of 
 nerve-fibres are concerned. For instance, we can speak of a su^rface covered with 
 strips of the primary colours as inducing the maximum of stimulation with the 
 minimum of fatigue ; since here, while the eye ranges about, each colour affords a 
 rest to the nervous elements stimulated by the other two ; whereas the same 
 surface covered by one of the colours, and stimulating a single set of elements, 
 would cause a maximum of fatigue. Again, by improving the quality of a 
 musical note, that is, by calling into play more nervous elements in response to 
 the additional harmonic vibrations, we increase the general stimulation without 
 making it anywhere excessive. But the case of single and simple phenomena, or 
 single and simple parts of compound phenomena, is of course an entirely different 
 thing; and here the only way in which we can get any scientific conception 
 including the idea of ' maximum of stimulation ' seems to be by taking into 
 consideration a new term — the tirne, namely, during which the stimulation lasts, 
 and by substituting for ' minimum of fatigue ' the maximum of time during which 
 the sensation is pleasant. Take the case of a fine musical note ; if this be of only 
 moderate strength, it can be listened to for a good many seconds with satisfaction : 
 if, on the other hand, it be extremely loud, it may be pleasant for a moment, 
 pleasanter perhaps to many people and in some states of the organism than the 
 gentler note, but rapidly becomes almost unendurable. We may assume, then, 
 that for any given state of a particular organ a particular period of stimulation 
 has corresponding to it a maximum intensity of stimulation, which constitutes 
 the condition most favourable to pleasure for that period. But the two factors 
 obviously vary inversely ; ^ if we increase the loudness of the note we diminish 
 
 ' Stimulation is used throughout in a peripheral nervous elements to physical 
 physiological sense, to express the move- stimuli, 
 ments which constitute the response of the ^ They probably vary inversely in a very 
 
ON DISGORB. 551 
 
 the time during which it is agreeable : and on the subjective side we have very- 
 uncertain and limited power of comparing things so heterogeneous as greater 
 intensity and greater prolongation of pleasure ; so that, if we ourselves cannot 
 decide in what case pleasure is really most favoured, the physiological conditions 
 most favourable to it become a somewhat indefinite object of search. Our two 
 maxima, however, must clearly lie well within the points where, on the one hand, 
 the amount of stimulation would reduce the time of possible pleasurable endurance 
 of it to zero, and whore, on the other, the length of time during which it was 
 endurable would imply an almost inappreciable amount of it. 
 
 To return to our formula. The use of the word ' fatigue ' seemed to lead to 
 difficulties ; but if we relegate it to its rightful place on the subjective side, there 
 are doubtless feelings connected with the higher sense-organs to which it seems 
 quite fairly applicable ; and it is incontestable that the physiological counterpart 
 of these feelings is an exc&ss of stimulation in the organs concerned. But my main 
 objection is of a much more serious kind ; since, if substantiated, it connects the lax 
 use of the word, not with a weakness or want of clearness in definition, but with a 
 certain amount of failure in the apprehension ^nd discrimination of facts. These 
 facts are most prominent in the domain of Sound : and the special point to be here 
 discussed is as follows : — We find the word ' fatigue ' used to express the objective 
 counterpart not only of what is/elt as fatigue, e.g^ the too prolonged continuance 
 of a loud note, but of what is/elt as discord, an ultimate and wholly different sen- 
 sation. The two objective phenomena agree probably in the general character of 
 wear and tear as the two subjective sensations agree in the general character of un- 
 pleasantness : but, the natural supposition being that under this most general head 
 the two former diflfer from each other no less than the two latter, is it not rash to 
 identify them under a common name, when we should never dream of so confusing 
 their psychical counterparts ? Discord is not felt the least as fatigue : if, then, we 
 give the name ' fatigue ' to the physiological counterpart of discord, are we not likely 
 to overlook the extreme speciality which that particular form of wear and tear 
 (if so it be) must possess, and to rest conteiit with a most imperfect explanation 1 
 
 It is hardly necessary to remind my readers that the sensation of musical 
 tone is produced by continuous regular nervous stimulation, and that the sensa- 
 tion of discord is due to rapid ' beats,' that is, to a series of augmentations 
 and diminutions of stimulation interposed in the regular series, and caused 
 physically by the interferences of sound-waves of nearly equal lengths. The 
 separate beats are as little present to consciousness in the pure sensation of discord 
 as the separate vibrations in the pure sensation of tone : the sensation seems quite 
 unique and beyond analysis. The manner of connecting the unpleasantness of 
 the sensation with the theory of stimulation and fatigue is clearly shown in 
 Chapter VIII. of Helmholtz's Ton-Empfindvmgen, which forms a convenient text 
 for the objections I would venture to raise. He points out that a nerve is 
 
 complex way. Forthe subjective phenomena, of stimulation, the part of the time during 
 
 and doubtless therefore the objective, are which the sensation is most pleasant may 
 
 gradatedas the limiting instant is approached vary differently from the whole time during 
 
 when pleasantness vanishes : and the steps which its pleasantness remains above zero, 
 
 of gradation, and the proportion of the whole The matter lies quite beyond the reach of 
 
 time which elapses before the decline sets experiment, as the subjective facts can 
 
 in, probably differ according to the degree never be rendered sufficiently distinct and 
 
 of stimulation ; that is to say, with change isolated for accurate examination. 
 
652 ON DISCORD. 
 
 deadened by strong stimulation, and rendered less sensitive to fresh irritants : a 
 rest, however, enables it to recover its sensibility, and the time of rest necessary 
 in the case of the more delicate sensory organs is extremely short. Now the 
 intermittence which beats cause in the stimulation gives the nerves an opportunity 
 for recovery and repair during each minute period of interruption, and they thus 
 present themselves to each fresh attack of the stimulus in a state of renewed 
 nutrition and irritability. They are therefore subjected to a series of more violent 
 shocks than in cases of imintermittent stimulation, and this violence, as Helm- 
 holtz holds, sufficiently explains the unpleasant sensation. He illustrates this 
 position by the case of the eye, pointing out that by looking for even a moment 
 at the sun the sensibility of the retina is so blunted that we see a dark spot when 
 we turn our eyes to the sky ; that on coming out of darkness into full daylight 
 We first feel blinded, but the sensibility of our eyes is soon so far blunted that 
 this degree of brightness is found very pleasant ; and that so, ' by the continuous 
 imiform action of the irritation of light, this irritation itself blunts the sensibility 
 of the nerve, and thus effectually protects this organ against too long and too 
 violent excitement.' Intermittent flashes of light, on the other hand, permit 
 fresh renewals of irritability, and so act with more intensity, and ' everyone knows 
 how unpleasant and annoying is any flickering light, even if _it is relatively very 
 weak.' 
 
 With respect to stimulation so violent as that caused by looking at the sun, 
 the statement that the blunting of the nerve-sensibQity acts as a natural pre- 
 ventive of ' too violent excitement ' is surely too general. For, though the power 
 of producing the subjective impression of light is at once considerably blunted, it 
 would be rash to assume that the peripheral nerve-elements concerned in that 
 impression play no part in the sensation of increasing discomfort, which would 
 result if a person's eyes were forcibly kept open and exposed for some time to 
 the direct action of the sun. But anyhow here the stage of possible comfort is 
 instantly passed : that stage in the eye's power of adaptation lies within a certain 
 limit of stimulation. Thus, when the retina encounters ordinary daylight after 
 total darkness, nervous wear outruns repair (that is, on the subjective side, dis- 
 comfort is felt), until the stored-up sxiperfluity of irritability has run down, so to 
 speak, after which wear and repair go on equally. The stages of the shifting 
 ratio between wear and repair might be roughly illustrated by a steel sprmg, 
 which will yield and then remain steady under certain weights, but which, if the 
 pressure be excessive, will rapidly pass all the positions of steadiness and snap ; 
 the range of normal and reparable wear, the counterpart of agreeable sensation, 
 corresponding to the steady positions of the spring. Under direct exposure to 
 the sun, the snapping comes, that is, the molecular disturbance far outruns all 
 chance of recovery, in an almost inappreciable time. But this would happen 
 whether the sensibility of the retina had been previously blunted or not : let us, 
 then, neglect such violent cases, which tend to confuse the subject, and confine 
 ourselves to the limits within which regular stimulation is the counterpart of 
 endurable and agreeable sensation, as only here can the problem of intermittence 
 and its efiects be introduced. 
 
 Now, in trying to connect the unpleasant sensation corresponding to inter- 
 mittence with intensity of stimulation, understood in the ordinary and natural 
 sense, we at once come across a difficulty which is not removed by the undoubted 
 fact that the intermittence enables the nerves in some measure to renew their 
 
ON DISGO'RD. ^53 
 
 irritability, and which may be illustrated by the following case : — Silppos^ that 
 a person with good eyesight reads a book for half an hour by a strong and agree- 
 able light, or looks for the same time at a bright landscape, or merely sits talking 
 in a sunshiny room. The sensibility of his eyes is not to his knowledge affected 
 by the process ; for aught he is aware of, the page or the landscape or the room 
 looks as blight at the end of the time as at the beginning, and the blunting of 
 irritability must at any rate have been very small. Now suppdse him to read a 
 book or sit in a room illuminated by a much lower but still sufficient light, and 
 let the light flicker. The discomfort will be very decided : but it seems impossible 
 to make out that the normal kiad of stimulation of the end-organs connected 
 with sight is more intense here than in the former case. The stimulation has no 
 doubt been more intense than if the Hght, instead of flickering, had remained 
 steady at its highest strength : but the light in the first case we considered was 
 very much stronger than this ; and in order to make out the intensity of stimula- 
 tion or molecular disturbance in that first case td be leas than in the second, we 
 should have to suppose a self-protection amounting to a great and continuous 
 blunting of the power of response to stimulus ; and, as this would be represented 
 in consciousness by the reduction of the page or room to darkness long before the 
 expiration of the half-hour, the supposition is contradicted by facta. The sub- 
 jective feeling of brightness was far greater at every instant of time in the first 
 case than in the instants of greatest brightness, when the nerve-irritability was 
 most thoroughly renewed, in the second : and the subjective feeling of brightness 
 is the concomitant of a high amount of stimulation. It seems illogical, then, to 
 imagine greater violence of stimulation in the second case. The question as regards 
 the eye is complicated by the fact, to which Helmholtz does not call attention^ 
 that much of the discomfort caused by flickering is due to the perpetual muscular' 
 readjustments necessitated by the variations iu the strength of the lights But if 
 we agree to neglect this element, the proposed explanation could only pass mustei* 
 in a case where the light, supposing it to be steady, was as strong as the eye could 
 comfortably stand, in which case making it flicker and so permitting renewals ol 
 nervous irritability would send the sensation over the line of discomfort : if we 
 look at a less extreme case, we seem driven to connect the unpleasantness not 
 with excessive response of the nerves to stimulus, but with a special feature of 
 discorUinuous response, whether referable to perpetual stoppings or perpetual 
 startings or both. We need phrases like ' violence of stimulation ' or ' excessive 
 response ' (which are both better than ' fatigue ') to express the excessive molecular 
 disturbances which would be caused by iucreasing the steady light on the page or 
 in the room till it was disagreeably dazzling : we want another expression for the 
 exceptional order of disturbance introduced by the repeated intermittences. It is 
 not of course meant that the latter may not be in some way included under the 
 general rule of wear and repair : but it is in itself a quite different species of wear 
 from that involved in excess of the regular and normal stimulation. A man's 
 frame will need repair after rolling a truck along rails for three hours, and also 
 after setting it going, letting it stop and setting it going again, and continuing 
 this jerky labour for an equal time : but the movements in space and the work 
 done will be very different in the two cases. 
 
 When we pass to the ear the problem becomes much simpler and more distinct, 
 for several reasons. First, we get rid of the irrelevant element of muscular 
 fatigue, caused by adjustments of the pupil to varying degrees of light. Secondly. 
 
554 ON DISCORD. 
 
 the visual intermittences are felt as such, and the confused feeling of discomfort 
 may seem fairly describable by the word ' fatigue ' — especially under cover of the 
 associated muscular feelings, whereby the difference from the normal fatigue 
 caused by excess of light is necessarily much disguised ; whereas in discord the 
 intermittences are not perceived as such, but give rise to a new sensation to which 
 no one would dream of applying the name ' fatigue.' Again, confusion is avoided 
 in the case of the ear by the organ's very limited power of self-adaptation. For 
 the ear seems little liable to anything analogous to being first dazzled (like the 
 eye in emerging into daylight from the dark) and then getting its sensibility 
 blunted to the comfortable pitch which represents equilibrium between wear and 
 repair. Deafness of course ensues from prolonged exposure to excessive sound, 
 but this is owing to real structural injury : and in the case of musical tone,' at 
 any rate, I do not think it is ever the experience of a healthy ear to find a single 
 sound intolerably loud for a few seconds, and then to get reconciled to it ; when- 
 ever it is disagreeably loud to begin with, it gets worse. 
 
 Let us now take two means of stimulation for the ear analogous to our former 
 two cases of the strong steady light and the weaker flickering light : they will 
 evidently be a loud single tone or concord and a soft discord, say a very loud 
 octave and a very soft discord of a semitone, played on a finely-toned organ. 
 The former is of course felt as pleasant, the latter as unpleasant : and in con- 
 sistency it is sought to connect the former sensation with a lesser and moderate 
 amount, the latter with a greater and violent amount of stimulation. But the 
 actual physical stimulus is obviously very far greater in the case of the loud 
 concord than of the soft discord : the whole burden of the explanation must 
 therefore be thrown on the other factor of stimulation, namely, the degree of 
 irritabiUty or molecular instability in the organs concerned. First, then, with 
 respect to the loud concord, in order to make out the stimulation in the case of 
 thi=, the greater, stimulus to be less than that caused by the soft discord, we 
 should have to suppose the sensibility or power of response to be very greatly 
 and rapidly deadened : but we have sufficient proof that the nerve-elements are 
 performing their functions in a highly vivacious and persistent way, in the fact of 
 our continuing to hear and appreciate the sound for many seconds just as perfectly 
 as we did at first. Secondly, with respect to the discord, we can take this as soft 
 as we please ; so that the relation of the perpetually repaired organs to the 
 intermittent stimuli is not analogous to that of an eye brought from darkness into 
 daylight, but brought from darkness into obscure twUight ; and in such a case 
 ' intensity of stimulation ' ought not in reason to outrun the conditions of agree- 
 able sensation. For, looking at our two factors of stimulation, we see that it is 
 only the amount of stimulus which can be indefinitely varied, and there is an 
 obvious limit to the extent to which we can draw on the other factor, that of 
 irritability dependent on nutrition. The perfection of nutrition and repair cannot 
 be more than perfect ; it cannot be carried, cannot therefore carry irritability, 
 beyond a certain natural point ; so that, however unstable be the condition of 
 maximum irritability, we ought by diminishing the strength of the physical 
 stimulus to be able to avoid causing wear to outrun repair. WhUe granting, of 
 
 > "With respect to extremes of non-musical tion from it, hardly implies that the acoustic 
 
 soimd, opinions may vary. The getting ac- sensibility has been deadened. Here again 
 
 customed to such an extreme, in the sense of it is almost impossible to isolate the pheno- 
 
 gradually becoming able to distract atten- mena suiBciently for experiment. 
 
ON DISCORD. -655 
 
 course, that the greater the irritability the less the stimulus which will suffice to 
 cause the amount of stimulation correspondiag to unpleasantness, we still know 
 that the amount of stimulation which normally.corresponds to pleasantness is a 
 very considerable one : and we cannot postulate the perpetual renewal of such a 
 miraculous amount of irritability as would be required to bring stimulation up to 
 and far beyond this poiat even under the action of a very weak stimulus. The 
 intermittent stimulus produces, according to Helmholtz. ' a much more intense 
 and unpleasant excitement of the organs than would be occasioned by a continuous 
 uniform tone.' More unpleasant certainly : but the assumption is that it is more 
 unpleasant simply by dint of being more intense, however soft the sound, in face 
 of the fact that more intense excitement still, caused by a much greater stimulus 
 acting regularly on organs which are proved by the concomitant sensation to 
 remain perfectly responsive and undeadened, is felt as pleasant. And over and 
 above all this, if it were more intense in the manner imagined, it ought to be felt 
 as loudness : ' loudness,' as Mr. Grant Allen himself remarks in one place, ' is 
 the subjective concomitant of intensity in stimulation.' And the sensation of 
 loudness has absolutely no relation to that of discord, which retains its unique 
 character even when barely audible. 
 
 In this connection I may quote an illustration given by Helmholtz, which 
 seems to me delusive. He says, ' If a tuning-fork is struck and held at such a 
 distance from the ear that its sound cannot be heard, it becomes immediately 
 audible if the handle of the fork be revolved by the fingers. The revolution 
 brings it alternately into positions where it can and cannot transmit sound to the 
 ear, and this alternation of strength is immediately perceptible by the ear. . . . 
 Just as this alternation of strength will serve to strengthen the impression of the 
 very weakest musical tones upon the ear, we must conclude that it must also 
 serve to make the impression of sti-onger tones much more penetrating and violent 
 than they would be if their loudness were continuous.' No doubt a change or 
 movement serves often to direct attention to feeUngs which when uniform were 
 too slight to be noticed : a change even to a lessei' degree of stimulation might 
 have this effect, if the attention had got deadened by the monotony of a prolonged 
 impression. But the change here described by Helmholtz would be consciously 
 perceived as a cha/nge of loudness. In just the same way, with a very much 
 greater strength of tone, if the alternations were slow enough to be perceived as 
 separate, they would be recognised as alternations of loud and soft sound, the 
 loudness, im.less very extreme, being in no way unpleasant. Now by artificial 
 means we can introduce into a single continuous tone, that is, into a simple series 
 of regular stimulations, an intermittence similar to that produced by natural 
 interference in the compound series whose counterpart in consciousness is the 
 sensation of two discordant tones. Let us then, by way of getting a new point 
 of view, suppose the alternations to get faster and faster till they merge in con- 
 sciousness into one continuous sensation. "What quality or qualities should we 
 expect this sensation to have ? We know that there has been no change in the 
 nature and amount of the respective physical stimuli as they gradually got 
 crowded nearer together : d, priori therefore we find no reason to suspect much 
 change in the nature and amount of the physiological response to each of these 
 stimuli : and hence we should expect that the psychical representative of this 
 response would continue to be the sensation of loudness up to the end of the 
 process. And such we find by experiment to be the case : the quality of loudness 
 
«56 ON DISCORD. 
 
 remains when the sensation has become single and unintermittent. But ex- 
 periment reveals another quality which we could not have predicted : the sensation 
 is not one of loudness only, but is distinctly unpleasant and jarring. Again, if 
 we made the experiment with a soft sound, the rapid alternations of strength, 
 when merged in one sensation, could only bring its loudness up to the low level 
 of what were its louder parts when it was felt as intermittent ; but the same 
 jarring quality would be experienced as in the other case. And just so discords, 
 when soft, give a sensation which is not ' penetrating and violent,' but disagree- 
 able in a special and unique way. 
 
 The following consideration may set the difficulty in a still clearer light :— A 
 continuous low note, having, say, 120 vibrations to the second, is pleasant: a 
 higher note of equal apparent strength with several thousand vibrations to the 
 second, having its regular series of vibrations interrupted 120 times every second, 
 is unpleasant ; so is a discord of two high notes with the same number of beats 
 or interruptions. But here the periods given to the nerves for renewal of 
 irritability are equal in number in the two cases of the unpleasant and the 
 pleasant sensation. What right, then, have we to account for the contrast by 
 speaking of the stimuli as ' wastefuUy attacking the fibres and end-organs con- 
 cerned ' (to quote Mr. Grant Allen) in the one case, and as blunting and so protect- 
 ing them in the other ? 
 
 I will adduce only one more argument. If the same kind of stimulation, 
 when excessive, caused the unpleasant sensations both of over-loudness and of 
 discord, those who are able to experience one ought, under the appropriate con- 
 ditions, to agree in experiencing the other. But it is not uncommon to find that 
 of two persons who are equally susceptible of annoyance from over-loudness, one 
 is keenly sensitive to discord and the other totally unconscious of it. 
 
 To sum up. The disputed view, when clearly drawn out, implies variety in 
 degree, but not in hind, of the stimulation proper to the several end-organs. This 
 stimulation is felt as pleasant up to the point at which nervous wear begins 
 decidedly to outrun repair ; when it is felt as unpleasant this point has been 
 passed. The point itself is supposed to be the resultant of two factors : one is the 
 amount of the physical stimulus, which must be called excessive, in relation to a 
 particular state of the organs, whenever the action cannot last for an appreciable 
 time without seriously disturbing the balance between wear and repair : the other 
 i& the degree of nutrition and consequent molecular instability in the organs 
 concerned, which must be called excessive, in relation to a particular amount of 
 stimulus, if discomfort is experienced under the action of an amount of stimulus 
 which at other times may be found quite pleasant. We took cases where one 
 sensation was pleasant and another unpleasant, in spite of much greater violence 
 of stimulus in the former case : and to account for this according to the theory, 
 recourse was inevitably had to the second factor — the irritability of the nervfes, 
 supposed to be deadened in the former case, perpetually revivified in the latter. 
 We objected to each feature of the explanation ; to the deadening in the case of 
 the continuous tone or concord as being contradicted by the continued vitality of 
 the subjective feeling; to the revivification in the case of the discord (1) as needing 
 often to be miraculous in degree in order to account for the facts, (2) as bound, 
 so far as it did occur, to produce the normal concomitant of intensity of stimulation 
 — loudness, and not something quite difierent. Next, we found a case where a 
 pleasant and an unpleasant sensation were produced under conditions which, as 
 
ON DISCORD. 557 
 
 regards opportunity for renewal of irritability, were identical. Finally, we noticed 
 that, whereas two sensations depending on precisely the same physiological facts 
 ought to be equally awakenable under the appropriate stimuli, cases were common 
 where one was so awakenable and the other not. 
 
 We seem thus driven to assume the existence of some other kind of nervous 
 disturbance, connected specially with interruptions supervening on a mode of 
 motion which has been sufficiently established to become, so to speak, familiar. 
 We find an illustration, perhaps even a true analogy, in the effect of interruption 
 of any regular rhythm which is being watched by the eye or ear {e.g. in observ- 
 ing the pendulum or ticking of a clock), or produced by our own voluntary muscular 
 actions. In this comparison whole sense-organs, and actions slow enough to be 
 consciously and completely followed, take the place of the infinitely minute 
 nervous elements and infinitely rapid movements we have been considering. 
 And here we assuredly should never think of accounting for the unpleasant 
 sensation by ' intensity of stimulation,' the feeling of being baulked and dis- 
 appointed being totpJly different from that of over-strain or fatigue ; not more 
 different, however, than is the feeling of discord from the oppression of excessive 
 sound. If the new and special phenomenon, in either the illustrating or the 
 illustrated case, is to be brought on the objective side under the general rule of 
 wear and repair, it must probably be by supposing energy to be stored up ready 
 for discharge, which, when the regular and established stimulus does not come, is 
 discharged unnaturally, so to speak, and against resistance : as Mr. Grant Allen 
 well expresses it with regard to rhythm, ' if the opportunity for the discharge is 
 wanting, the gathered energy has to dissipate itself by other channels, which 
 involves a certain amoimt of conflict and waste.' If the suggested analogy be 
 applicable, we may imagine the new phenomenon of discord to appear in con- 
 sciousness as soon as the frequency of the baulkings, or whatever we are to call 
 them, has become sufficient to bring this sort of conflict up tp a certain pitch of 
 intensity. 
 
 I may just remark, in passing, that this case of discord serves well to illustrate 
 in how extremely small a degree considerations of peripheral nerve-stimulation 
 can really penetrate into the secrets of artistic- beauty. A discord is always a 
 discord wherever it occurs, and has the same wearing effect on the peripheral 
 organs : but the action of the higher co-ordinating centres so overrides the natural 
 character of the sensation as to convert it into an all-important feature of modern 
 music, the simplest bit of which is often crammed with discord. We may see here 
 the most extreme case of the difference, pointed out at the beginning of the first 
 chfl.pter, between a wearing affection of one of the differentiated sense-organs and 
 literal pain : for a sensation of the literally painful kind could never have its quaUty 
 reversed by a relation to another sensation which is to follow it. The very ex- 
 ceptional and distinct manner in which a particular sound-impression, unpleasant 
 in isolation, is made pleasant by a definite relation to another sound-impression, 
 may be taken, moreover, as illustrating the wider fact — the simple and direct 
 way in which, in this domaia of Sound, Form, i.e. the perception of relations ia the 
 elements of sensuous material, assumes pleasurable qualities. It helps us to 
 understand that this perception of relations, however mucl^ transcending mere 
 sensuous impression and in that way intellectual, is far too entirely and directly 
 <rrounded in very ijnique affections of sense to be connectible with any of the more 
 general sorts of iat^llectual activity : which, again, accounts for its exceptionally 
 
&58 ON DTSCOED. 
 
 early and distinct occurrence in the experience both of the individual and the- 
 race. 
 
 A few words may be added on the subject of colottr-discord. To put a simple 
 ease : why is immediate juxtaposition of orange and vermilion on one surface 
 disagreeable 1 Mr. Grant Allen tries to bring such facts under his general formula 
 on the ground that the same class of optic jElbres is stimulated by each of the two 
 colours, and that over-stimulation therefore ensues. But if the orange part were 
 vermilion, like the other, stimulation of the same class of optic fibres would be 
 carried still further and a still greater degree of over-stimulation would result, 
 whence we should logically expect an intensification of the same subjective feeling. 
 This objection is, in fact, the one which Mr. Sully made in his review of Mr. 
 Allen's book in Mind, and his reductio ad absurdum was perfectly sound, 
 that ' it would follow that the same colour spread over a large surface would 
 produce the pain of chromatic dissonance in its maximum degree.' To this Mr. 
 Allen replied that though all. dissonance is fatigue, all fatigue is not dissonance. 
 No : but even if we could conceive for the moment that the lesser stimulation, 
 being still excessive, was cognised as a special form of discomfort-!— cofowr-fecoj'c? 
 — while the more excessive stimulation was cognised as the normal discomfort 
 known as fatigue, what are we to say if we find a case where the feeling of the 
 lesser stimulation answers to the above description, but the feeling of the greater 
 is not fatigue but pleasure 1 If ' fatigue ' is one in kind (as the old formula and 
 the arguments in support of it throughout imply), how will Mr. Allen explain 
 the fact that we are annoyed by a mixed mass of pink and scarlet geraniums, but 
 are pleased by an equal mass of the flowers when they are all scarlet, seeing that 
 the conditions are more favourable to ' fatigue ' in the latter case ? He adds, 
 ' What would Mr. Sully say to a person who argued that on Helmholtz's principles 
 one and the same note continued for a long time would produce in the maximum 
 degree the pain of musical dissonance t ' But this remark, proposed as an absurdity, 
 really suggests the very difficulty which I have found in accepting Helmholtz's 
 principles of musical dissonance as complete : and indeed the remark has its exact 
 parallel and converse in the argument which forms the gist of this Appendix. 
 I have argued that, on the theory that stimulation is one in kind and only varied 
 in degree and is completely expressible in terms of intensity, it is impossible to 
 explain how it happens that its subjective concomitant in certain cases is an 
 impression not of loudness but of discord : conversely, had I taken discord as the 
 chief and central phenomenon, the fact with which I should have confronted the 
 theory would have been that the feeling of the stimulation due to a loud con- 
 tinuous note is unaccountably not discord but loudness. The above remark 
 proposed by Mr. Allen may in fact be used as a reductio ad absurdum of the view 
 he adopts on musical discord, exactly parallel to Mr. Sully's reductio ad absurdum 
 of his view on colour-discord. Mr. Sully, after his criticism on this point, adds, 
 ' We do not say that these disagreeable combinations may not be brought under 
 such a principle of painful stimulation as that laid down by Mr. Allen, but if so, 
 it must be effected in quite another way.' This appears to me to be a suggestion 
 parallel in kind to that advanced above as to the supervention, in cases of inter- 
 mittent nervous stimulation, of some special kind of dissipation and disturbance : 
 but if such facts really exist in the case of discordant colours, they are probably 
 of a much more obscure kind, since they can hardly depend on anything so simple 
 as interruptions of an established rhythm. 
 
ON DISCORD. 559 
 
 Two further points may be mentioned in opposition to the view that 
 ' fatigue ' or excess of normal stimulation is a sufficient explanation of colour- 
 discord. First, to return to our example of vermilion and orange, the special 
 unpleasantness ceases when the one is made to shade off into the other : and 
 yet here again the same optic fibres are used to a greater extent, as the eye 
 passes and repasses along the surface, than when it was mpre restrictedly occupied 
 with the dividing line where the two colouis lay side by side without gradation. 
 Secondly, the briefest time will suffice for the unpleasant sensation to be felt. 
 This is an objection which we are precluded from urging in the case of note- 
 discord, because there the ' fatigue ' was connected with intermittences of which 
 a large number occur in a second : but colours, however discordant, cause no such 
 intermittences, and the ' fatigue,' if such it be, ought in reason to grow by gradual 
 and sensible degrees, just as it would in the case of a single bright colour when 
 looked at continuously. 
 
 All things considered, one is led to guess that the extent to which explana- 
 tions resting on peripheral nervous conditions apply to sensations of colour-discord 
 and concoi'd must be very limited. They may cover, for instance, such broad effects 
 as the obviously resting action of complementary colours, which affect different 
 sets of fibres : but one seems more and more driven to refer the more delicate 
 shades of feeling to associational and intellectual elements. This would seem to 
 be the case even with single colours which are not blight, stimulating, or fatiguing, 
 and can be looked at for a long time without serious discomfort, but which are 
 simply ugly. Again, it is impossible to abstract the colour from the object ; and 
 even beautiful colours displease us in inappropriate and unusual positions. Such 
 associations, however, as we can consciously discover will often be found pro- 
 vokingly insufficient if pressed as explanations. For instance, the pleasantness of 
 the gradation from bright red to orange, as compared with their immediate 
 juxtaposition, might perhaps suggest a connection with the frequency of such 
 gradation in nature, as, for example, in sunsets. But then we also continually 
 find in nature a total absence of gradation in nearly related tints whose juxta- 
 position is nevertheless felt to be delightful ; as in looking at a light blue sky 
 through blue-green leaves. And indeed a glightness of divergence in colours often 
 seems the essential feature of their harmony ; whence a new difficulty in accepting 
 as final and complete the view that ' those combinations produce discord which 
 successively stimulate the same class of structures.' And these experiences of 
 colour-effects often occur in isolated acts of observation without any relation to 
 surrounding conditions ; so that they cannot possibly be explained on the same 
 grounds as the presence in music of sound-discords, which are enjoyed as parts of 
 a complex and organic whole. Such considerations are almost enough to make 
 one despair of anything like an exact and complete rationale of colour-discords 
 and affinities : it would at any r^te lie far beyond the scope of any conceivable 
 formula. 
 
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