Part 7 (1/2)

<1> _The Boundaries of Music and Poetry_

To this, after all, Hanslick hiht subscribe Other writers seek to balance for on ”the dual nature ofultimately on the enizing the interdependence of the two elehest type of pure music, music in which beauty is based upon expression, and expression transfigured by beauty”<1>

<1> DG Mason, _Fro to Brahms_, 1902, p 30

This usual type of reconciliation, however, is a perfectlyaesthetic demands The question is of the essential nature of music, not whether music may be, but whether it must be, expressive; not whether is has expressive power, but whether it is, in its essence, expression,--a question which is only obscured by insisting on the interdependence of the two elements If music has its essential source in the cadences of speech, then it ly

Herbert Spencer is perfectly logical in saying ”It may be shown that e of eood or bad according as it confore”<1> But what, then, ofto Ambros, is justified by its formal relations?

Is ood because it is very expressive, and bad because it is too little expressive? or is its goodness and badness independent of its expressiveness? Such a question is not to be answered by recognizing two kinds of goodness Only by an attempt to decide the fundamental nature of the musical experience, and an adjustment of the other factors in strict subordination to it, can the general principle be settled

<1> _On Educaiton_, p 41

The excuse for this artificial yoking together of two opposing principles is apparent when it is seen that for themselves to two different mental faculties It seems to be the view of most musical theorists that the experience of musical form is a perception, while the experience of estion of facts and ideas, is an emotion Thus Mr

Mason: ”In e of the principles of musical effect can help us to learn, that the balance and proportion and synancy, however great, in the parts

He best appreciates musicwho understands it intellectually as well as feels it eain, ”We feel in the music of Haydn its lack of emotional depth, and its lack of intellectual subtlety”

<1> Op Cit, p 6

It is just this contrast and parallelism of structure as balance, proportion, symmetry, addressed to the mind, with expression as emotional content, that a true view of the aesthetic experience would lead us to challenge If there is one thing that our study of the general nature of aesthetic experience has shown, it is that aesthetic erasp of relations, nor an emotion within the accepted rubric--joy, desire, triumph, etc Whether or not music is an exception to this principle, remains to be seen; but the presumption is at least in favor of a direct, immediate, unique emotion aroused by the true beauty of reat literature in the form of special studies, we eneral fory of round Schopenhauer has said that music is the objectification of the will--not a copy or a picture of it, but the will itself; a doctrine which however illu when it is modified in various ways is obviously no explanation of our experience Hanslick has but shohat music is not; Edmund Gurney's eloquent book, ”The Power of Sound,” is conostic in its conclusion that music is a unique, indefinable, indescribable phenoues with other physical and psychical facts, but is coextensive with none Spencer's theory of lorified speech is not only in a yet unexplained conflict with many facts, but has never been formulated so that it could apply to concrete cases The sa”

But there is a body of scientific facts respecting the elements of music, in which we may well seek for clues As facts alone they are of no value They must be explained as completely as possible; and it is probable that if we are able to reach the ultiin of these elenificant, and a ill be opened to a theory of the wholemust excuse the es, without which no firm foundation for a theory of reat factors of music are rhythm and tone-sensation, of which rhythm appears to be the eneral as a repeating series of time intervals Events which occur in such a series are said to have rhythm In aesthetics, it is the periodic recurrence of stress, e, the sounds of e of poetry Subjectively it is the quality of stimulation due to a succession of impressions (tactual and auditory are ularly in objective intensity We desire to understand the nature, and the source of the pleasing quality, of this phenoical description, however, even a physiological explanation, that we can hope to fathonificance of rhythm in music and poetry

Those treat really beg the question; they assuround, namely, the natural impulse to rhythm Even those theories which explain it as a helpful social pheno work, etc, fail to account for its peculiar psychological character--that co” of which Nietszche speaks, which we all feel, and whichquality of rhythical influences, for the explanation in some fundaanism For this reason we must find superficial the viehich connect rhythesture necessary; or more particularly with the conditions of work, which, if it is skilled and well carried out, proceeds in equal recurring periods, like the swinging of a hammer or an axe But it appears that primitive effort is not carried on in this way, and proceeds, not froh, by ain, it is said that work can be well carried out by a large number of people, only in unison, only by simultaneous action, and that rhythm is a condition of this

The work in the cotton fields, the work of sailors, etc

requires so action Rhythainst this it ht assist coular intervals, while periodicity is the fundamental quality of rhythm Thus this theory would explain a natural tendency by its effect

Looking then, in accordance with the principle stated above, for deeper conditions, we find rhythm explained in connection with such rhythmical events as the heart beat and pulse, the double rhythm of the breath; but these are, for the most part, unfelt; and moreover, they would hardly explain the predoical ones Another theory, closely allied, connects rhytheneral, but attaches itself rather to the effect of rhythhtened sense of expansion, or life, connected with the augmentation of muscular es following rhythmic stimulation”<1> But why should it be just rhythmic stimulation that produces this effect? We are finally thrown back on physiology for the answer that in rhythmical stians refreshed by iain, however, we must ask, why on this hypothesis the periods thereatest variety obtains

One le note ht; within the periods, that is, the minor moments of activity and repose are quite unequal

<1> HR Marshall, _Pain, Pleasure, and Aesthetics_

Last of all, we must note the view of rhythm as a phenomenon of expectation (Wundt) But while we can undoubtedly describe rhythm in terms of expectation and its satisfaction, rhythh its difference from other kinds of expectation

All these explanations seem either merely to describe the facts we seek to explain, or to fail to notice the peculiar intimate nature of the rhythmical experience But if it could be shown not only that in all stimulation there must be involved an alternation of activity and repose, but also that an equality of such periods was highly favorable to the organisical theory of rhythical facts of so-called subjective rhyth seem to supply just this need

It has been shown<1> that we can neither receive objectively equal sense-sti into these a rhythmical ele of a clock, for instance--is heard in groups, within each of which one elereater intensity A series of rouped in the same way Now this subjective rhytheneral physiological basis of attention

<1> TL Bolton, _Amer Jour Of Psychol_, vol vi The classical historical study of theories of rhythm remains that of Meumann, _Phil Studien_, vol x

Attention itself is ultimately a motor phenomenon Thus: the sensory aspect of attention is vividness, and vividness is explained physiologically as a brain-state of readiness for e;<1> in the case of a visual stimulus, for instance, a state of readiness to carry out movements of adjustment to the object; in short, the motor path is open Now attention, or vividness, is found to fluctuate periodically, so that in a series of objectively equal sti, would be more vividly sensed This is exemplified in the well-known facts of the fluctuation of the threshold of sensation, of the so-called retinal rivalry, and of the subjective rhyth of auditory stimuli, already mentioned There is a natural rhythm of vividness Here, therefore, in the very conditions of consciousness itself, we have the conditions of rhythm too The case of subjective motor rhythm would be still clearer, since vividness is only the psychical side of readiness for e; in other words, increased readiness forie_, 1902, P 525