class="smcap">Addison.

Music is the sound of the circulation in nature's veins. It is the flux which melts nature. Men dance to it, glasses ring and vibrate, and the fields seem to undulate. The healthy ear always hears it, nearer or more remote.

—Thoreau.

—Browning.

All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments.

—Whitman.

Music: an Art and a Language

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

IN approaching the study of any subject we may fairly expect that this subject shall be defined, although some one has ironically remarked that every definition is a misfortune. Music-lovers, however, will rejoice that their favorite art is spared such a misfortune, for it can not be defined. We know the factors of which music is constituted, rhythm and sound; and we can trace the historic steps by which methods of presentation and of style have been so perfected that by means of this twofold material the emotions and aspirations of human beings may be expressed and permanently recorded. We realize, and with our inborn equipment can appreciate, the moving power of music; but to define, in the usual sense of the term definition, what music really is, will be forever impossible. The fact indeed that music—like love, electricity and other elemental forces—cannot be defined is its special glory. It is a peculiar, mysterious power;[1] quite in a class by itself, although with certain aspects which it shares with the other arts. The writings of all the great poets, such as Milton, Shakespeare, Browning and Whitman, abound in eloquent tributes to the power and influence of music, but it is noticeable that no one attempts to define it. The mystery of music must be approached with reverence and music must be loved for itself with perfect sincerity.

Some insight, however, may be gained into the nature of music by a clear recognition of what it is not, and by a comparison with the more definite and familiar arts. Music consists of the intangible and elusive factors of rhythm and sound; in this way differing fundamentally from the concrete static arts such as architecture, sculpture and painting. Furthermore, instrumental music, i.e., music freed from a dependence on words, is not an exact language like prose and poetry. It speaks to our feelings and imaginations, as it were by suggestion; reaching for this very reason depths of our being quite beyond the power of mere words. No one can define rhythm except by saying that rhythm, in the sense of motion, is the fundamental fact in the universe and in all life, both physical and human. Everything in the heavens above and in the earth beneath is in ceaseless motion and change; nothing remains the same for two consecutive seconds. Even the component parts of material—such as stone and wood, which we ordinarily speak of as concrete and stationary—are whirling about with ceaseless energy, and often in perfect rhythm. Thus we see how natural and vital is the art of music, for it is inseparably connected with life itself.

As for the other factor, sound is one of the most elemental and mysterious of all physical phenomena.[2] When the air is set in motion by the vibration of certain bodies of wood, metal and other material, we know that sound waves, striking upon the tympanum of the ear, penetrate to the brain and imagination. Sound is a reciprocal phenomenon; for, even if there were systematic activity of vibrating bodies, there could be no sound without some one to hear it.[3] Good musicians are known for their power of keen and discriminating hearing; and the ear,[4] as Saint-Saëns says, is the sole avenue of approach to the musical sense. The first ambition for one who would appreciate music should be to cultivate this power of hearing. It is quite possible to be stone-deaf outwardly and yet hear most beautiful sounds within the brain. This was approximately the case with Beethoven after his thirtieth year. On the other hand, many people have a perfect outward apparatus for hearing but nothing is registered within.

Combarieu, the French aesthetician, defines music as "the art of thinking in tones."[5] There is food for thought in this statement, but it seems to leave out one very important factor—namely, the emotional. Every great musical composition reveals a carefully planned and perfect balance between the emotional and intellectual elements. And yet the basic impulse for the creation of music is an emotional one; and, of all the arts, music makes the most direct appeal to the emotions and to those shadowy, but real portions of our being called the imagination and the soul. Emotion is as indispensable to music as love to religion. Just as there can be no really great art without passion, so we can not imagine music without all the emotions of mankind: their loves, joys, sorrows, hatreds, ideals and subtle fancies. Music, in fact, is a presentation of emotional experience, fashioned and controlled by an overruling intellectual power.

We can now foresee, though at first dimly, what is to be our line of approach to this mystery. One of the peculiar characteristics of music is that it is both the most natural and least artificial of the arts, and as well the most complicated and subtle. On the one hand it is the most natural and direct, because the materials of which it is constituted—that is, sound and rhythm—make an instinctive appeal to every normally equipped human being.[6] Every one likes to listen to beautiful sounds merely for their sensuous effect, just as everyone likes to look at the blue sky, the green grass and the changing hues of a sunset; so the rhythm of music, akin to the human heart-beat and to the ceaseless change and motion, which is the basic fact in all life, appeals at once to our own physical vitality. This fact may be observed at a symphony concert where so many people are wagging their heads, beating time with their hands or even tapping on the floor with their feet; a habit which shows a rudimentary love of music but which for obvious reasons is