Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/586

 C. STUMPF, MUSIKPSYCHOLOQIE IN ENGLAND. 585 seems not improbable that vague reminiscences of such more marked vocal expression enter into the effect of music on the modern mind. The fact that the later music has in its elaborate structure wandered far from its primitive pattern is no serious objection to this view; for, as Prof. Stumpf points out, our music distinctly preserves elements, such as rising and falling of pitch, crescendo and diminuendo, which have a clear analogy to the movements of emotional speech. It strikes one further that Prof. Stumpf disposes too lightly of the supposition that music gradually disengaged itself from speech by a process of selecting and fixing the intervals which dimly dis- closed themselves in primitive emotional utterance. One may safely say that much more definite knowledge of the manner in which primitive man spontaneously employed and inflected his voice is needed before one can confidently pronounce a negative here. And in this connexion I may call attention to a point which our author seems to have overlooked, viz., the well-marked musical character of the first baby-vocalisation. The la-la-ing of the infant suggests that uncivilised man may have begun with a. rude kind of song before he found his way to our more monoton- ous style of articulation. This essay makes one impatient to know how Prof. Stumpf will deal with the subject of musical emotion when he proceeds to take it up in his systematic exposition of musical psychology. For after all the brochure is in the main a criticism, and the author's own views are only vaguely indicated. As a piece of painstaking inquiry into current theories it deserves the highest praise. Prof. Stumpf has mastered the views he examines, and no one can charge him with serious misrepresentation. And his criticism, while incisive and unsparing, is tempered with a true courtesy. JAMES SULLY. 39