Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/583

 -582 CRITICAL NOTICES : tions. And it is impossible to explain historically the development of modern musical intervals out of these slight movements of tone in speech. The hypothesis of a ffi-fitim quid between singing and speaking, such as has been attributed to the Greeks and other early peoples, seems therefore to our author to be an absurdity. While, however, denying that music is an outgrowth from lan- guage, Prof. Stumpf allows more weight than Mr. Gurney to the effect of analogies between the two when they are both in ex- istence. In vocal and even in instrumental music he recognises the transference of feelings from the region of emotional language. And his fuller technical knowledge enables him to add that the rules of musical execution, especially in the case of the violin, were developed under the influence of the perception of these analogies. At the same time these links of association between speech and music cannot be said to explain the whole or even the main charm of music. This has a purely musical origin, viz., the combination of intervals in certain agreeable forms. Prof. Stumpf next examines my own contributions to the psychology of music. The attempt to combine Mr. Spencer's theory of musical expression with Helmholtz's doctrine of musical sensation seems to our author a singularly unhappy one. The recognition of intrinsically beautiful aspects of musical combina- tions makes it unnecessary, he thinks, to call in the aid of associations with speech, which moreover ought, ex lnjp>th>'*i, to lose more and more of their effect as the art of music develops. The writer directs his criticism more especially against my account of the effect of musical harmony. He insists on the necessity of distinguishing between the sensation and the feeling of harmony, the former of which is always the same for a given interval, whereas the second varies considerably according to the special connexion in which this combination appears. Having disposed of the speech-theory Prof. Stumpf turns to the doctrine of Mr. Darwin, according to which music owes its effect to the fact of its being an outgrowth from the vocal accompani- ments of the wooings of our semi-human ancestors. It foil* from this, says pur critic, that the emotional power of music must be continually declining. He then proceeds to examine the theory. He objects in the first place that the basis of fact is wholly inadequate. Animal sounds serve other purposes than that of alluring the female, <.v/., warning. And if we seek to derive musical effect from animal experience, why should we not take into account these other functions, more particularly the part played by sound as the expression of mere delight ? Moreover the instances of wooing sound relied on by Darwin are not drawn from animals in the same line of development as man, whose immediate predecessors, indeed, appear to be singularly back- ward in the production of musical sounds. Again, says Prof. Stumpf, Mr. Darwin is compelled to postulate that certain sequences of tone are originally agreeable while others are