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James Sully, Sensation and Intuition: Studies in Psychology and Aesthetics, 2nd edn
(London: Kegan Paul, 1880)
‘On the Nature and Limits of Musical Expression’, pp. 220-46
[228] The links of association now considered appear to invest music with three kinds
of representative character. First of all, by the simplest process of association, musical
tones seem to typify vocal action itself, viewed as a conscious play of muscular
energy. Secondly, by a further process, they revive and render more or less distinctly
recognizable to consciousness, varieties of emotional agitation, such as usually vent
themselves in like vocal sounds. Finally, by a still longer operation of thought, these
re-awakened feelings [229] are projected in fancy behind the musical tones, so that
these seem to be the utterances of another soul stirred to emotional movement. Each
of these orders of character deserves special description and illustration.
The first class of expressive characters may be called the Dynamic attributes of
music. This term is sometimes applied to accent, or the emphatic strength of tones,
but it seems better fitted to denote all suggestions of force or energy. As Mr. Spencer
has shown, the equivalents of vocal energy in music are emphasis, rapidity, distance
of pitch from a certain average level, and width of interval. Strong tones, and rapid
sequences of tones clearly imply, by suggestion, large amounts of vocal energy. With
respect to pitch, it seems probable not only that very high and very deep notes, as
remote from the plane of easiest vocal execution, represent large amounts of force,
but that height has an additional dynamic value. It is observable that rising intervals in
melody usually increase in emphasis, while falling intervals decrease. A descent to
the key-note is more restful than an ascent to the same note, and accordingly, the
former is commonly written diminuendo while the latter is written crescendo. It seems
possible that as the human voice produces its loudest and most distinct sounds at a
high pitch, whereas its very low notes are comparatively feeble and unpenetrating as
well as indistinct in pitch, the habit of throwing all loud cries, intended for a distant
hearer, into a high pitch, may have given rise to special associations between height
and intensity of tone. By means, then, of these links of resemblance, music calls up
nascent feelings of muscular energy, and so assumes a dynamic aspect. The composer
may skilfully combine these musical symbols of vocal energy so as to give to a
particular composition a special dynamic character. […]
[…] [231] In more complex musical structures the suggestions of conscious energy
and of grateful movement, fail, in a yet higher degree, to attain the rank of distinct
feelings. Yet even here one may observe their subtle influence on our musical
perceptions and judgments. For what is the well-known interpretation of music as the
play of Nature's forces but the projection of ideas of vocal and other conscious actions
behind the tones, which are thus transformed into displays of an objective might?
Musical tones are able, no doubt, in dim outline to imitate some few of nature's
sounds, such as the voices of wind and water, crash and roar, and other aspects of
volume or quantity in sound. Far more powerfully, however, they awaken memories
of our own conscious energies. Hence a grand orchestral volume of tone, by stirring
myriads of such vague feelings, and at the same time supplying dim ideal shapes for
these impulses, readily seems transmuted into the splendid simultaneous rush of
nature's energies, whether in chaotic separation or in harmonious order. And thus it
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becomes possible at times to speak imaginatively of a more definite dynamic
character in a piece of music. […]
Yet music, while transmitting to the hearer's mind these vague ideas of motor energy,
conveys still more copiously ideal shadows of the emotional life which is more or less
associated with all muscular activities, when not voluntarily put forth, and which
holds such an intimate relation to vocal action as the great instrument of expression.
How finely music expounds the emotional experiences of life, appears to be a familiar
truth. Yet it is not quite so easy to perceive what are the precise shades of feeling it
expresses; and, as we have seen, there is still much discussion as to [232] the limits of
this expression. A more adequate understanding of this point may, perhaps, be
reached by carefully examining the mental process by means of which music is able
to awaken faint pulsations of a past emotion.
When a plaintive melody, as, for example, that of Mendelssohn's Suleika in E Minor,
or of Schumann's Ich grolle nicht, moves the listener's mind to an exquisite sadness, it
effects this, according to the theory of vocal association, by its numerous
resemblances — in softness and slowness of tone, in gradual transition, and in
strange, half-painful intervals of melody — to those vocal sounds into which a feeling
of pensive sadness has, through long experiences, spontaneously uttered itself. Hence,
the emotional forms which the several styles of music are fitted to awaken must be
those which have a distinctive and characteristic expression. […]
[235] It is said that music represents not only feelings but Ideas. No doubt the
transition in vocal sound from pure emotional expression to articulate declaration is a
very gradual one, and in our ordinary life-intercourse feeling vents itself by affecting
intelligible speech. Hence it seems natural that musical composition, built up as it is
out of large numbers of distinct tones, rapidly succeeding one another and
accompanying one another in simultaneous combinations, should, in vaguely
depicting emotion, seem also to describe the many trains of image and thought which
accompany, sustain, and determine our emotional states. It is obvious that there is
nothing in musical elements beyond the mere aspects of number and rapidity which
directly imitates thought. Further, even the thread of resemblance which binds
together musical tones and articulate speech is a very slender one; for the
distinguishing properties of articulate sounds are strongly opposed to the musical
qualities of tone. Yet though in itself feeble, this link of analogy, when united to the
powerful influences of emotional suggestion, may be sufficient to generate distinct
ideas of language in the hearer's mind. That is to say, a series of tones becomes
transformed by the reacting influence of the feeling which it awakens, into a clear,
articulate language, which seeks to define, to explain, and to justify the emotion. […]
Once more, music seems to take from our inner subjective life, and to body forth in
outer symbols, not only feelings and ideas, but also impulses of Will. Whereas the art
is primarily lyric, uttering a pure, unconstrained impulse of feeling, it becomes later
on dramatic, or rhetorical, declaring earnest resolution, firm purpose, eager
questioning, and so on. […]
It remains to be seen how these subjective effects of music become transformed by
intellectual processes into apparently objective realities. […]
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[237] Co-ordinations of different rhythmic movements, again, become interpreted
either as distinct processes of thought and feeling in one and the same mind, or as
passages from the inner lives of different minds. How analogous is the play of two
currents of thought and sentiment in one mind to the interchanges of thought between
two minds, may be seen in Mr. Tennyson's subtle poem, The Two Voices. Yet it may
perhaps be said that when one series of tones is rendered very prominent as the
dominant melody, while the others are of the nature of harmonic accompaniments, the
hearer is apt to interpret the composition as the outflow of a single emotional nature.
Vocal solos, and the simpler melodic passages of instrumental music appear to have
this significance, since the slight and subordinate accompaniment naturally suggests
the side currents of a dominant feeling. On the other hand, if two or more parts are
equally prominent, and the whole movement is more strictly polyphonic in character,
the common interpretation is that of different natures in emotional intercourse. Thus,
for example, in listening to Mendelssohn's duetto, in the Lieder ohne Worte, one is
inclined to think of the two shades of sentiment depicted — half dissonant, but finally
blending in perfect unison, and passing into the most delicious repose — as the
reciprocal appeal and response of two distinct personalities converging towards
complete sympathy. At the same time, this distinction is not a very rigid one, since
even a polyphonic [238] plexus of tones, such as one finds in the music of Bach, for
example, may be conceived as simultaneous revelations of one emotional mind, while
the harmonic surroundings of a dominant melodic movement shape themselves as the
responsive and sympathetic voices of a group of minds, acting as a Greek chorus to
the dominant mind.
[…]
[238] As a final stage of this mental disposition to refer musical tones to an objective
source, I may allude to the recognized habit of regarding music as the audible form of
visible movement, and as the ear's symbols for reading the great processes of Material
Nature. Musical tones, as we have seen, distantly imitate nature's sounds. Moreover,
through the suggestions of our own active energies and their resulting movements,
and the well-established parallelism between rhythmic sound and rhythmic motion,
sequences of tone may indirectly call up faint images of nature's visible activities, as
the [239] blithe flow of brook or the angry rush of cataract. But this is not the whole
of the process. Music exerts its deepest and most enduring influence on the emotional
regions of our nature, stirring vague impulses of oft-experienced sorrow and joy,
terror and relief. And under the sway of these emotional states, ideas tend to
transform themselves into appropriate images. Now the most constant intellectual
accompaniment of a deep emotion is the thought of its exciting cause, or objective
source. Hence, under the influence of an impressive piece of music, the mind is
strongly predisposed to look for recognizable causes of its strange agitations; and by
this means suggestions of external events, which otherwise would scarcely rise into
consciousness as distinct ideas, become intense and luminous images. And thus a
composer may to some extent conjoin with the easier task of stirring a certain variety
of emotional mood the more difficult task of bodying forth to the consciousness of the
listener those great and impressive events of nature — dire storm and hurricane,
smiling calm, attack from furious beast or human foe, or deliverance from peril —
which through long ages have been the causes of some of the deepest emotional
experiences of human nature. And it is this truth which justifies what is good in such
attempts as that of Beethoven in his grand, deeply-moving Sinfonie Pstorale to sweep
out in vague tonic outline imposing phases of nature.
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Our examination of the sources of musical expression seems to bring us to the
conclusion, that though there are vast numbers of analogies entwining about music
and human life and nature, and binding them in mental union, no one order of these is
of sufficient distinctness and strength to render music clearly imitative. The emotional
suggestions of music, dependent on links of vocal association, are by far the most
conspicuous, and yet these, as we have seen, are never sharply defined.
[…]
[240] Yet this very limitation of musical expression, when looked at from another
side, may be seen to have been an addition to its power. What is lost in definite
transmission of individual emotion is more than made up in vague transmission of
vast groups and strata of feeling. A delicate and subtle melody taken from some
musical classic does not, it is true, profess to be a very exact paraphrase of one
distinct flow of feeling; yet, by its numerous half-hidden affinities with vast series of
vocal expressions, it is able to stir deep and complex fountains of emotion, slowly
distilled out of wide tracts of experience. […] And if we add to this the plausible
hypothesis, that mingling with this residuum of individual experience are countless
currents of emotion transmitted by long series of ancestors, the explanation of the
effect appears to be complete. Music, it is obvious, though owing much of its power
to emotional suggestion, has not been influenced by the needs of expression alone.
Like all other arts, it owes its development in a large measure to a desire for pure
sensuous pleasure, as well as for the more intellectual delight which is supplied by
beauty of form. The attainment of a deep and true expression of human passion has
always been a farther aim of music; and the actual progress of the art is the resultant
of these different forces.
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