Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/211

* MTJSIC. 175 MUSIC. Put this beside Wagner's "Ring of the Nibe- lungs." The two may Ije said to represent almost the extremes of musical culture, the capacity to combine tonal elements into signilicant unitary •wholes. The monotonous chant of the Australian, no less than the creations of Warner and Jiee- thoven. contains a design, an organization, a put- ting into definite form of a number of detached elements. It is this which distinguishes nuisic from a haphazard arrangement of tones or the isolated calls and cries of animals, however im- portant these may have been in the genesis of music. But if music implies form, it also implies con- tent. It is a vehicle of expression no less than a way of arranging and organizing tones. When now we come to inquire into the processes which lie behind musical production, we find that they are various and highly complex. We shall, how- ever, get an insight into their nature if we look upon music both as a means of conscious expression and as a medium of communication. Regarded in this light, music takes its place be- side gesture speech and writing. It differs from speech, however, in that it gives voice to feelings and emotions instead of to ideas. Speech is pri- marily a medium for the conununication of 'thought,' and when it attempts to express emo- tion and sentiment borrows straightway from nuisic — either rhythm (in taking poetic form) or melody (in constructing recitative or song) — or it may go back to the conunon root of speech and music, and enrich itself from the language of gesture and mimetic movement. But wliile music's ultimate appeal is to the sensibilities, it cannot be said to exist apart from the intellect or the will. Such absolute disjunction could only rest on the fallacy that intellect, feeling, and volition are separable faculties of the mind. (See Faculty.) Music arouses not only feeling, but also thought and action. The complex nature of the 'musical consciousness' is indicated by the fact that it is now called a feeling, now an emo- tion, now a perception, and now a sentiment. ( See these words.) It is, indeed, all of these. The pleasurable feeling which music induces is unde- niable: it arouses an emotion in the sense that it ]>resents 'situations' which call forth organic sensations squarely faced by the attention; it includes the organization of auditory sensations into unitary perceptual wholes; and, finally, it involves sentiment by taking the form of the ipsthctic judgment, e.g. 'these elements combined in this way are beautiful.' Xor does this ex- haust the contents of nuisical expression. There may be. both in the motive of the artist and in the consciousness aroused in the hearer, imagina- tions, retrospections, moods, desires, associations, resolves, and volitions. Thus far does the 'mu- sical consciousness' range. The key to its com- plexity is furnished by a review of the large number of modes through which music appeals to consciousness. In the first place, simple tones have an affective value, which is different at different parts of the scale. Secondly, the siinple clang or note varies not only, as we have seen, in sensational elements, but also in pleasantness and unpleasantness, as its clang-tint changes. Tliirdly. the same element of fusion which amalgamates the partials iji the note is also present in the chord. Fourthly, the chord is also niore or less pleasant, inore or less conso- nant or dissonant. Other elementary factors are the indefinite number of possible accentuations, of pitch sequences, repetitions, and alternations, of similarities and contrasts. Add to these the possibilities of modulation from key to key, the host of figures in each of which there is the charm of the like and the diverse, of symmetry and of complexity, and of unity nniintaining it- self in variety; add the employment of various instruments, including the human voice, and cen- turies of experience lending their wealth of asso- ciations, and the intricacies of nuisical composi- tion and appreciation receive at least a partial explanation. The explanation cannot be com- pleted except by a comprehensive account of the genesis and development of nuisic. ( See .Esthet- ics; Music.) There are two or three stages in the evolution of music which deserve mention here on account of their psychological impor- tance. The first is the production of the scale. It is very difficult for us to conceive what music would be without a definitely formulated scale. We have so constantly in mind the scale which has formed the basis of Western music for cen- turies that it is almost impossible to appreciate the mental processes of people who have had music without a definite scale, or even of those whose scheme of intervals differs from ours. And yet, it is certain that a formulated scale fol- lows upon musical practice. The scale came from melodic utterances as rhythm came from the regular movements of the dance. We find in the music of savages informal and unsystematic vocal expressions of feeling which are sometimes no more tlian intoned Avails or howls, sometimes haphazard collections of simple figures repeated with little order or unity. When these become definite enough to be remembered and to be re- peated from time to time, material for the for- mation of scales begins to collect; but the scale as an abstract arrangement of musical intervals appears only at a comparatively late stage of intellectual progress. The nucleus of the scale was probably at first a single interval — an in- terval which was agreeable and expressive. A comparison of various scales. Eastern and West- ern, ancient and modern, points to the fifth and the fourth as the first intervals to be selected. Gradually other notes were added and two gen- eral types of scales were formed; the pentatonic (scales based on five notes), in use in China, Japan, Java, and the Pacific Islands, and the heptatonic (based on seven notes), the scales of India. Persia, Arabia, ancient Greece, and modern Europe. In all countries the octave seems to have been more or less explicitly recognized. The fact that most Caucasian races have produced seven-note systems, and the peoples of Eastern Asia five-note systems, indicates that the general structure of the scale depends ultimately upon artistic impulses which are common to a given type of mind. The attempt to derive the hepta- tonic scale from an earlier, more primitive pen- tatonic. seems to have failed. The two types ap- pear to be equally primitive. Instruments giving a diatonic scale date as far back as the Stone Age. Doubtless, the choice of the interval of the semitone depends largely on the fact that the semitone is the smallest interval that the hu- man voice can produce with ease and accuracy. Wallaschek, however, is of the opinion that the voice even with the aid of the ear would never have produced regular scales without help from musical instruments. Simplicity in construe-