MUSIC IN ITS RELATION TO THE INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS---book review

MUSIC IN ITS RELATION TO THE INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS
John Stainer
Mus. Doc., M.A., Prof. Mus., Oxon.
London New York
Novello, Ewer And Co.
Copyright, 1892, by Novello, Ewer and Co.

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The cause of the sound works its way to us in absolute silence; sound, in fact, does not exist in itself but only in us, it is purely subjective. It does not exist externally to us, is not objective, is not an entity. Some one may exclaim, this cold scientific explanation of sound deprives music of all its romantic charms! Nothing of the short!

When a symphony or accompanies chorus is being performed, the various instruments or voices, according to their quality of tone and pitch, are sending fourth waves of various shapes and outlines, which as they join each other on their outward course, become merged and superposed into waves of a single form; each of which, of course, contains in itself the sum of the waves which constituted it. When a thread of this complicated wave enters the human ear., it beats against the tympanum of the ear as before, and again the fibres of Corti's organ are ready to tell the brain what has reached them.
This organ of Corti is the most marvellous musical instrument kanown to us, it consists of many thousands of fibres or rods which are fixed at one end, while the other end lies in minute sacs of nerve tissue; so delicate and clever is this instrument that it analyses the contents of the complicated sound-wave, takes it to pieces, passes on to the intellect the fact that such and such instruments are being played, or, such and such voices used; it first analyses and then allows the intellect to reconstruct and know the many and several external causes of the one complicated wave. Could anything be more romantic or poetical than this! It is more than a romance, it is a miracle! So you see how important it is that we should never forget that when we are listening to music each hearer has sound only in his own head; there is no noise or sound whatever existing in the space between the hearer's heads; no noise or sound whatever between each single head of the hearers and the instruments or organs of voice causing vibrations, and no noise or sound whatever in the instruments themselves or the organs of voice themselves.
All sound therefore is purely subjective; there is no such thing as sound in itself.

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-----Your interpretation---
If there is no one to hear there is dead silence in a room/globe/universe.
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Sound is an effect on us, not a cause which effects us.

Not only do we habitually speak of effects as being causes, but we are constantly depicting imaginary realities and entities which are merely creations of our forms of thought.

With the adjustment of a scale simultaneously, perhaps intuitively, arose the recognition of the fact that a succession of sounds can embody Rhythm just as mush as a succession of mere noises.

It is clear that for Analysis of music, what is required of the listener is primarily the power of receiving the physical sensations of sound, then of rapidly exercising his intellect upon these sensations by coordinating and arranging them, and passing a mental judgment on what the composition is; lastly, he can (still by his intellect) pass a verdict on its correctness or incorrectness, that is to say, how far it is or is not in accordance with those accepted rules and regulations which we call the grammar of music in its widest sense; this grammar being, as we have said, nothing more than a series of quotations drawn from the works of the masters, analysed and arranged. A grammar of a language is exactly the same kind; and like it, our grammar of music has its acidence, its syntax, and its prosody.

The only fact which raises Music, Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture to a higher grade than the processes of Touch, Taste, Smell, is that the former, n their own various spheres, make a demand upon the intellect, and by means of the intellect upon the emotions, which the latter do not. The only thing which prevents us from composing a symphony in Touch, by a succession and combination of various materials to be touched; and similarly symphony in tastes or smells, is that separate sensations of Touch, Taste, or Smell do not present themselves to the intellect as capable of being coordinated and systmatized, and therefore do not effect the emotions. It is evident then that Art can not be said to exist unless there is an appeal to the emotions by means of the Intellect. If the thing created appeals only to the Intellect, it is not a work of art. It is for this reason that our multiplication table, or a complicated geometrical figure, wonderful as they would seem to a rude savage, never can be considered a "works of art."

The task of a composer is synthetical-he puts together the material of his art according to some aim; on the other hand, the task of the hearer is analytical, he resolves the whole into its component parts before he can finally pass a judgment on it. But no aiming at good art by the creator, no critism of music by its hearer, no separation of good and bad can take place, untill creator and hearer have on some common ground passed judgment on certain questions which are not within the scope of mere intellect, but are within the realm of taste. The judge in this Court of taste is our sentiment of the Beautiful. Whence comes this sentiment of the Beauiful?

If an attempt were made to catalogue the duties of this sentiment we might, perhaps, say that it should be able to appreciate the beauty of-uniformity-which does not sink into dulness; variety-which does not produce a sense of confusion; relation of component parts-which gives an idea of unity; contrast without opposition between the contrasting elements, and over and above all this, the artistic aim of the composer-that is, the thought undelying his mode of expression; and lastly, it must be able to grasp and sympathize with that emotional frame of mind of the composer which compelled him to exert his creative gift.

There is something besides a Thought underlying a work of musical art; there is the emotional condition of its creator. Veron says:"The valus of a work of art rests entirely on the degree of energy with which it exhibits the intellectual character and emotional condition of its author. The only rule imposed on it is the necessity for a certain comformity with the mode of thinking and feeling of the public to which it appeals."

Feeling and knowledge are, finally, only two sides of the original fundemental fact, conciousness, which is a dynamic creative thing in relation to its own content. It begins by creating blindly, impulsively, under the lead of cerebral processes; this is feeling. It ends by creating prevision, selection, thought; this is knowledge. An interpretation of Sensations is requisite to the production of all emotions, the more difficult the interpretation the higher and more rare will be the emotion. Emotion, therefore, presupposes Intellect and elevated emotions and elevated Intellect. (by Holmes-Forbes)

A perception of form; whether it be in melodic succession of sounds or in organised combinations of sounds, lies at the root of our appreciation of the Beautifull in Music, and therefore no emotion consequent upon the appriceation of the Beautiful can exist until the Intellect has apprehended the form, and therefore, n legitimate emotions can precede the intellectual precess."

In the hearer the sensations of sound are apprehended, analysed, grouped, and formulated by the Intellect; next, that the Intellect is occupied in passing judgment on the conformity of the work to the recognised regulations of the art; next that this intellectual operation calls into activity our sentiment of the beautiful, with which a certain amount of emotion is always inseparably allied. In short, the action of hearing music requires 1) Sensation, 2) Intellect, 3)Sentiment of the Beautiful, 4)Emotion; or, to satet it in another way, "there can be no emotion where there is no sentiment of the Beautiful; no sentiment of the Beautiful without an operation of the Intellect; no operation of the Intellect without Sensations of the Sound."

There is no such thing as Sound in itself, it is merely the name of a sensation. It follows that Music, being made out of Sounds as its only materila, must also be purely subjective. This is obvious. The fact that musicans have made into a system, have codified and analysed the commonest "expressions" or "sayings" of music, until we have a well-marked series of grammatical treatises, in no wise shakes tha fect that the Art exists only in our brains, and is not an external entity.

Feelings are the proximate cause of the laws of counterpoint.

Music is the most subjective of all arts. (Hegel) Hegel simply means that in some arts the external cause is more permanent than in others; for example, no one can deny that in Sculpture the external cause of our sensations is in a way more permanent than in Painting. From one point of view Music can hardly be said to have any permanent external cause at all: a full score of a symphony, opera, or oratorio, is nothing more than a description of the manner in which the causes of sounds are to be made use of at every performance of a great work of musical art the tone-picture has to be re-painted according to these directions or descriptions; and as we all know by experience the attempts to reproduce these tone-pictures vary in every possible degree, from very good to very bad.

"Music is the most subjective of all arts- it is, in fact, purely subjective; so please beware of the use of such expressions as "art in itself", "music in itself", "objective art." And never speak of beauty as "existing in the medium of an art!" Never try to perform the impossible intellectual feat of realising that music is a "self-subsistent form of the beautiful!"

The beauty of music, which exists, and onlt can exist, inside the preceiving subject, exists also outside perceiving subject: and it is beautiful in itself although it has no objective reality or separate existence. Sentiment of beauty cannot exist without an operation of the Intellect.

Every device of change in melody and harmony, in tone-colour, and time, may be freely resorted to, while at the same time all ends of pleasing symmetry and proportion of parts are fully satisfied.

Music has strong power as an abstract expression.

How far and within what limits can a composer/genius express emotion in his composition, and how far and within what limits can the hearer feel emotion.

There is a general concurrence that the more emotional the mood of a composer, the more emotional will be his musical production, assuming that he has the technical skill and training to express hsi thoughts. It must also beyond dispute that a composer must be of a highly imaginative, as well as sensitive temperament, otherwise invention would be impossible, and art would find itself walking round and round in a circle incapable of expansion. But the most widely divergent opinions exist as to the limitation of this power of a composer of causing emotion, and hearer of feeling it.

Are there definite emotions to which we can give such names as sarrow, joy, hope, fear, love?

Such feelings are very distinct, and it is the unquestionable province of music to produce them.

But when one is held under the spell of an emotional mood, such as any one of those just named, the memory often places before us, very vividly , scenes and memories which have long past by, and it invests them with new meaning and new force.

These mental results are entirely limited to each person individually, to write down these efects of memory, and renewed reflections on past events, and ascribe them either to the composer's hearth or head, to the composition itself, is most foolish and most unprofitable. Yet this is a common and not unpopular path of current literature; let us, in the truest interests of our art, discourage it in every way.

The operations of the intellect and the emotions have to be carefully and delicately balanced against each other, bith in the composer and hearer.

The beauty of pure music is grasped and felt by an intellect musically trained, emotions and deep emotions will undoubtedly be stirred up. In the case of an untrained listener, words added to music, and especially words, scenery, acting, and music combined, may greatly intensify his emotional condition; but he must not therefore as people usually do, attribute all the emotion to the effect of the music, and jump to the conclusion that no training is necessary for its due appreciation. More music becomes a language the more necessary is it that its grammar should be studied by all who pretend to enjoy its beauty and meaning, and certainly by those who venture to critise it.