Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/415

. Some homosexual hearers of Tschaikowsky's last (and most elegiac) symphony, known as the "Pathetic" claim to find in it such revelations of a sentimental-sexual kind that they have nicknamed the work the "Pathic" Symphony. Brahms and the colossal Bruckner have been characterized as "the ultimate voices in a homosexual message by symphonic music"; even if one sub-consciously uttered.

Gustav Naumann lately has Written a brochure on the. theory that art is living, interesting and alluring solely because of its sexual power and sexual quality; solely because of direct working on the sexual instincts of men and women. This influence may exist, even when they are not aware of it, by inseparably sensuo-sexual aspects of the artistic product or performance which they admire. Naumann lays stress on modern dramatic music (especially Wagner's) as "disturbing." our natural sexual harmony and wholesome repose of being; as acting on it unfavourably and excitingly. He claims that chaster and more classic forms of music have a tranquilizing operation; are in better sexual accord with the healthful man. The argument is interesting certainly. Most, if not all all, music seems indissolubly connected with the nervous-generative systems, in men and beasts. If some finer, forms, styles and schools of it do not seem at all sexuo-nervously irritant they are those that are palely elementary, or to which humanity is now accustomed—much as it grows wonted to dubious airs, evil waters or harmful chemical beverages. Unless in simple, familiar ambients, our contemporary human race does not receive music in sexual calm. A pastoral melody on a flute, a ballad on a mandoline may soothe us, as we think; so minute is the unwholesome effect on us. As music's dramatic force and complexity thicken, we ourselves are much as beasts whose nerves quiver when a pianoforte is played, or when a sonorous is march sounded on a military band.