The Psychology of Beauty Part 9

VI

It is strange that those who would accept the general facts of musical logic as outlined above do not perceive that they have thereby cut away the ground from under the feet of the "natural language" argument. If the principle of choice in the progress of a melody is tone-relations.h.i.+p, the principle of choice cannot also be the cadences of the speaking voice. That musical intervals often RECALL the speaking voice is another matter, as we have said, and to this it may be added that they much more often do not. The question here is only of the primacy of the principle. Thus it would seem that the facts of musical structure const.i.tute in themselves a refutation of the view we have disputed.

To say that music arose in "heightened speech" is irrelevant; for the occasion of an aesthetic phenomenon is never its cause. It might as well be said that music arose in economic conditions,-- as indeed Grosse, in his "Anfange der Kunst," conclusively shows, without attempting to make this social occasion intrude into the nature of the phenomenon. Primitive decorative art arose in the imitation of the totemic or clan symbols, mostly animal forms; but we have seen that the aesthetic quality of the decoration is due to the demands of the eye, and appears fully only in the comparative degradation of the representative form. In exactly the same way might we consider the "degradation" of speech cadences into real music,--supposing this were really the origin of music. As a matter of fact, however, the best authorities seem to be agreed that the primitive "dance-song" was rather a monotonous, meaningless chant, and that the original pitch- elements were mechanically supplied by the first musical instruments; these being at first merely for noise, and becoming truly vibrating, sonorous bodies because they were more easily struck if they were hard or taut. The musical tones which these hard vibrating bodies gave out were the first determinations of pitch, and of the elements of the scale, which correspond to the natural partial vibrations of such bodies. "The human voice,"

Wallaschek<1> tells us, "equally admits of any pentatonic or heptatonic intervals, and very likely we should never have got regular scales if we had depended upon the ear and voice only.

The first unique cause to settle the type of a regular scale is the instrument." To this material we have to apply only that "natural persuasion of the ear" which we have already explained, to account for the full development of music.

<1> _Primitive Music_, 1893, p. 156.

The beauty of music, in so far as beauty is identical with pleasantness, consists in its satisfaction of the demands of the ear, and of the whole psychophysical organism as connected with the ear. It is now time to return to a thread dropped at the beginning. It was said that a common way of settling the musical experience was to make musical beauty the object of perception, and musical expression the object, or source, of emotion. This view seems to attach itself to all shades of theory. Hanslick always contrasts intellectual activity as attaching to the form, and emotion as attaching to the sensuous material (that is, the physical effects of motion, loud or soft sound, tempo, etc.). He speaks of the aesthetic criterion of INTELLIGENT gratification. "The truly musical listener" has "his attention absorbed by the particular form and character of the composition," "the unique position which the INTELLECTUAL ELEMENT in music occupies in relation to FORMS and SUBSTANCE (subject)." M. Dauriac in the same way separates the emotion of music<1> as a product of nervous excitations, from the appreciation of it as beautiful. "It is probably that the pleasure caused by rhythm and color prevails with a pretty large number, with the greatest number, over the pleasure in the musical form, pleasure too exclusively PSYCHOLOGICAL for one to be content with it alone....The musical sense implies the intelligence....The theory...applies to a great number of sonorous sensations, and not at all to any musical perceptions."

Mr. W.H. Hadow<2> tells us that it is the duty of the musician not to flatter the sense with an empty compliment of sound, but to reach through sensation to the mental faculties within.

And again we read "the art of the composer is in a sense the discovery and exposition of the INTELLIGIBLE relations in the multifarious material at his command."<3>

<1> "Le Plaisir et l'Emotion Musicale," _Rev. Philos._, Tome 42, No. 7.

<2> Op. cit., p. 47.

<3> Grove's _Dict._ Art. "Relations.h.i.+p."

Now it is not hard to see how this ant.i.thesis has come about.

But that the work of a master is always capable of logical a.n.a.lysis does not prove that our apprehension of it is a logical act. And the preceding discussion has wholly failed to make its point, if it is not now clear that the musical experience is an impression and not a judgment; that the feeling of tonality is not a judgment of tonality, and that though the aesthetic enjoyment of music extends only to those limits within which the feeling of tonality is active, that feeling is more likely than not to be quite unintelligible to the listener.

Indeed, if it were not so, we should have to restrict, by hypothesis, the enjoyment of music to those able to give a technical report of what they hear,--which is notoriously at odds with the facts. That psychologist is quite right who holds<1> that psychology, in laying down a principle explaining the actual effect of a musical piece, is not justified in confining itself to skilled musicians and taking no notice of more than nine tenths of those who listen to the piece. But on the understanding that the tonality-feeling acts subconsciously, that our satisfaction with the progression of notes is unexplained by the laws of acoustics and a.s.sociation, we are enabled to bring within the circle of those who have the musical experience even those nine tenths whose intellects are not actively partic.i.p.ant.

<1> Lazarus, _Das Leben der Seele_, ii, p. 323.

The fact is that musical form, in the sense of structure, balance, symmetry, and proportion in the arrangement of phrases, and in the contrasting of harmonies and keys, is different from the musical form which is felt intimately, intrinsically, as the desired, the demanded progress from one note to another. Structure is indeed perceived, understood, enjoyed as an orderly unified arrangement. Form is felt as an immediate joy. Structure it is which many critics have in mind when they speak of form, and it is the confusion between the two which makes such an ant.i.thesis of musical beauty and sensuous material possible. The real musical beauty, it is clear, is in the melodic idea; in the sequence of tones which are indissolubly one, which are felt together, one of which cannot exist without the other. Musical beauty is in the intrinsic musical form. And yet here, too, we must admit, that, in the last a.n.a.lysis, structure and form need not be different. The perfect structure will be such a unity that it, too, will be FELT as one--not only "the orderly distribution of harmonies and keys in such a manner that the mind can realize the concatenation as a complete and distinct work of art." The ideal musical consciousness would have an ideally great range; it would not only realize the concatenation, but it would take it in as one takes in a single phrase, a simple tune, retaining it from first not to last. The ordinary musical consciousness has merely a much shorter breath. It can "feel"

an air, a movement; it cannot "feel" a symphony, it can only perceive the relation of keys and harmonies therein. With repeated hearing, study, experience, this span of beauty may be indefinitely extended--in the individual, as in the race. But no one will deny that the direct experience of beauty, the single aesthetic thrill, is measured exactly by the length of this span. It is only genius--hearer or composer--who can operate "a longue haleine."

So it is that we must understand the development in musical form from the cut and dried sonata form to the wayward yet infinitely greater beauty of Beethoven; and thence to the "free forms" of modern music. "Infinite melody" is a contradiction in terms, because when the first term cannot be present in consciousness with the last there is nothing to control and direct the progression; and our musical memory is limited. Yet we can conceive, theoretically, the possibility of an indefinite widening of the memory.

It was on some such grounds as these that Poe laid down his famous "Poetic Principle,"--that a long poem does not exist; that "a long poem" is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

He says, indeed, that because "elevating excitement," the end of a poem, is "through a psychical necessity" transient, therefore no poem should be longer than the natural term of such excitement. It is clearly possible to subst.i.tute for "elevating excitement," immediate musical feeling of the individual. What is the meaning of "feeling," "impression,"

here? It is the power of entering into a Gestaltsqualitat-- a motor group, a scheme in which every element is the mechanical cue to the following. Beauty ceases for the hearer where this carrying power, the "funded capital" of tone- linkings ceases. In just the same way, if rhythm were a perception rather than an impression, we ought to be able to apprehend a rhythm of which the unit periods were hours. Yet we may so bridge over the moments of beauty in experience that we are enabled, without stretching to a breaking-point, to speak of a symphony or an opera as a single beautiful work of art.

VII

But what of the difficulties which such a theory must meet?

The most obvious one is the short life of musical works. If musical beauty is founded in natural laws, why does music so quickly grow old? The answer is that music is a phenomenon of expectation as founded on these natural laws. It is the tendency of one note to progress to another which is the basis of the vividness of our experience. We expect, indeed, what belongs objectively to the development of a melody, but only that particular variety of progression to which we have become accustomed. So it is that music which presents only the old, simple progressions gives the greatest sense of ease, but the least sense of effort--the ideal motion not being hindered on its way. Intensity, vividness, would be felt where the progression is less obvious, but felt as "fitting in" when it is once made; and where it is not obvious at all--where the link is not felt, a sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness arises. So it is with music which we know by heart. It is not that we know each note, and so expect it, but that it is felt as necessarily issuing out of the preceding. A piece of poor music, really heterogeneous and unconnected, might be thoroughly familiar, and yet never, in this sense, felt as SATISFYING expectation. In the same way, music in which the progressions were germane to the existing tonality-feeling, while still not absolutely obvious, would not be less quickening to the musical sense, even if learned by heart. It is clear that there is an external and an internal expectation--one, imposed by memory, for the particular piece; the other const.i.tuted partly by intrinsic internal relations, partly by the degree to which these internal relations have been exploited. That is, the possibility of musical expectation, and pleasure in its satisfaction, is conditioned by the possession of a tonality- feeling which covers the const.i.tuents of the piece of music, but which has not become absolutely mechanical in its action. Just as rhythm needs an obstacle to make the structure felt, so melody needs some variation from the obvious set of relations already won and possessed. If that possession is too complete, the melody becomes as stale and uninteresting as would a 3-4 rhythm without a change or a break.

The test of genius in music, of the width and depth of mastery, is to be able to become familiar without ceasing to be strange.

On the other hand, if in music to be great is always to be misunderstood, it is no less true, here as elsewhere, that to be misunderstood is not always to be great. And music may be merely strange, and pa.s.s into oblivion, without ever having pa.s.sed that stage of surprised and delighted acceptance which is the test of its truth to fundamental laws.

But how shall music advance? How shall it set out to win new relations? It is at least conceivable that it takes the method of another art which we have just studied. To get new beauties, it does not say,--Go to, I will add to the beauties I already have! It makes new occasions, and by way of these finds the impulse it seeks. Renoir paints the baigneuse of Montmartre, and finds "the odd, beautiful huddle of lines" in so doing; Rodin portrays ever new subtleties of situation and mood, and by way of these comes most naturally to "the unedited poses."

So a musician, we may imagine, comes to new and strange utterances by way of a new and strange motion or cry that he imitates. Out of the various bents and impulses that these give him he chooses the ones that chance to be beautiful. And in time these new beauties have become worn away like the trite metaphors that are now no longer metaphors, but part of the "funded capital." That was a ridiculous device of Schumann's, who found a motif for one of his loveliest things by using the letters of his temporary fair one's name--A B E G G; but it may not be so utterly unlike the procedure by which music grows.

VIII

But what provision must be made for the emotions of music? It cannot be that the majority of musicians, who are strangely enough the very ones to insist that music is merely the language of emotion, are utterly and essentially wrong. Nor has it been attempted to prove them so. The beauty of music, we have sought to show, grows and flowers out of tone-relations alone, consists in tone-sequences alone. But it has not been said that music did not arouse emotion, nor that it might not on occasion even express it.

It is in fact now rather a commonplace in musical theory, to show the emotional means which music has at its command; and I shall therefore be very brief in my reference to them. They may be shortly cla.s.sed as expressive by a.s.sociation and by direct induction. Expressive by a.s.sociation are pa.s.sages of direct imitation: the tolling of bells, the clash of arms, the roar of wind, the hum of spinning wheels, even to the bleating of sheep and the whirr of windmills; the cadence of the voice in pleading, laughter, love; from such imitations we are REMINDED of a fact or an emotion. More intimate is the expression by induction; emotion is aroused by activities which themselves form part of the emotions in question. Thus the differences in tempo, reproduced in nervous response, call up the gayety, sadness, hesitation, firmness, haste, growing excitement, etc., of which whole experiences these movement types form a part.

These emotions, as has often been shown, are absolutely general and indefinite in their character, and are, on the whole, even in their intensity, no measure of the beauty of the music which arouses them. Indeed, we can get intense emotion from sound which is entirely unmusical. So, too, loudness, softness, crescendo, diminuendo, volume, piercingness, have their emotional accompaniments. It is to Hanslick that we owe the general summing up of these possibilities of expression as "the dynamic figures of occurrences." How this dynamic skeleton is filled out through a.s.sociation, or that special form of a.s.sociation which we know as direct induction, is not hard to understand on psychological grounds.

It is not necessary to repeat here the reasons for the literally "moving" appeal of sound-stimulations, which have been already detailed under the subject of rhythm.

Yet there still remains a residue of emotion not entirely accounted for. It has been said that these, the emotions expressed, or aroused, are more or less independent of the intrinsic musical beauty. But it cannot be denied that there is an intense emotion which grows with the measure of the beauty of a piece of music, and which music lovers are yet loth to identify with the so-called general aesthetic emotion, or with the "satisfaction of expectation," different varieties of which, in fusion, we have tried to show as the basis of the musical experience. The aesthetic emotion from a picture is not like this, they say, and a mere satisfaction of expectation is unutterably tame. This is unique, aesthetic, individual!

I believe that the clue to this objection in the natural impulse of mankind to confuse the intensity of an experience with a difference in kind. But first of all, there must be added to our list of definite emotions from music, those which attach themselves to the internal relations of the notes. Gurney has said that when we feel ourselves yearning for the next unutterable, we are really yearning for the next note. That is the secret! Each one of those tendencies, demands, leanings, strivings, returns, as between tone and tone in a melody, is necessarily accompanied by the feeling-tone which belongs to such an att.i.tude. And it is to be noted that all the more poignant emotions we get from music are always stated in terms of urgency, of strain, of effort. That is because these emotions, and these alone, are inescapable in music since they are founded on the intrinsic relations of the notes themselves.

It is just for this reason, too, that music, just in proportion to its beauty, is felt, as some one says, like vinegar on a wound, by those in grief or anxiety.

"I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes."

It is the yearning that is felt most strongly, the more vividly are the real musical relations of the notes brought out.

Music expresses and causes tension, strain, yearning, through its inner, its "absolute" nature. But it does more; it satisfies these yearnings. It not only creates an expectation to satisfy it, but the expectation itself is of a poignant, emotional, personal character. What is the emotion that is aroused by such a satisfaction?

The answer to this question takes us back again to that old picturesque theory of Schopenhauer--that music is the objectification of the will. Schopenhauer meant this in a metaphysical, and to us an inadmissible sense; but I believe that the psychological a.n.a.lysis of the musical experience which we have just completed shows that there is another sense in which it is absolutely true.

The best psychological theory of the experience of volition makes it the imaging of a movement or action, followed by feelings of strain, and then of the movement carried out.

The antic.i.p.ation is the essential. Without antic.i.p.ation, as in the reflex, winking, the action appears involuntary.

Without the feeling of effort or strain, as in simply raising the empty hand, the self-feeling is weaker. When all these three elements, IMAGE, EFFORT, SUCCESS, are present most vividly, the feeling is of triumphant volition. Now my thesis is--the thesis toward which every though of the preceding has pointed--that the fundamental facts of the musical experience are supremely fitted to bring about the illusion and the exaltation of the triumphant will.

The image, dimly foreshadowed, is given in the half-consciousness of each note as it appears, and in that sense of coming integration already recognized. The proof is the shock and disappointment when the wrong note is sounded; if we had not some antic.i.p.ation of the right, the wrong one would not shock.

The strain we have in the effort of the organism to reach the note, the tendency to which is implicit in the preceding. The success is given in the coming of the note itself.

All this is no less true of rhythm--but there the expectation is more mechanical, less conscious, as has been fully shown.

The more beautiful, that is, the more inevitably, irresistibly right the music, the more powerful the influence to this illusion of the triumphant will. The exaltation of musical emotion is thus the direct measure of the perfection of the relations--the beauty of the music. This, then, is the only intimate, immediate, intrinsic emotion of music--the illusion of the triumphant will!

One word more on the interpretation of music in general aesthetic terms. All that has been said goes to show that music possesses to the very highest degree the power of stimulation. Can we attribute to it repose in any other sense than that of satisfying a desire that it arouses? We can do so in pointing out that music ever returns upon itself--that its motion is cyclic. Music is the art of auditory implications; but more than this, its last note returns to its first. It is as truly a unity as if it were static. We may say that the beauty of a picture is only entered into when the eye has roved over the whole canvas, and holds all the elements indirectly while it is fixated upon one point. In exactly the same way music is not beauty unless it is ALL there; at every point a fusion of the heard tone with the once heard tones in the order of their hearing. The melody, as a set of implications, is as ESSENTIALLY timeless as the picture. By melody too, then, is given the perfect moment, the moment of unity and completeness, of stimulation and repose.

The aesthetic emotion for music is then the favorable stimulation of the sense of hearing and those other senses that are bound up with it, together with the repose of perfect unity. It has a richer color, a more intense exaltation in the illusion of the triumphant will, which is indeed the peculiar moment for the self in action.

VI THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE

VI THE BEAUTY OF LITERATURE

I

THAT in the practice and pleasure of art for art's sake there lurks an unworthy element, is a superst.i.tion that recurs in every generation of critics. A most accomplished and modern disciple of the gay science but yesterday made it a reproach to the greatest living English novelist, that he, too, was all for beauty, all for art, and had no great informing purpose. "Art for art's sake" is clearly, to this critic's mind, compatible with the lack of something all desirable for novels. Yet if there is indeed a characteristic excellence of the novel, if there is something the lack of which in a novel is rightly deplored, then the real art for art's sake is bound to include this characteristic excellence. If an informing purpose is needed, no true artist can dispense with it. Otherwise art for art's sake is a contradiction in terms.

The critic I have quoted merely voices the lingering Puritan distrust of beauty as an end in itself, and so repudiates the conception of beauty as containing all the excellences of a work of art. He thinks of beauty as cut up into small snips and shreds of momentary sensations; as the sweet sound of melodious words and cadences; or as something abstract, pattern-like, imposed from without,--a Procrustes-bed of symmetry and proportion; or as a view of life Circe-like, insidious, a golden languor, made of "the selfish serenities of wild-wood and dream-palace." All these, apart or together, are thought of as the "beauty," at which the artist "for art's sake" aims, and to that is opposed the n.o.bler informing purpose. But the truer view of beauty makes it simply the epitome of all which a work of art ought to be, and thus the only end and aim of every work of art.

The beauty of literature receives into itself all the precepts of literature: there is no "ought" beyond it.

And art for art's sake is but art conscious of its aim, the production of that all-embracing beauty.

What, then, is the beauty of literature? How may we know its characteristic excellences? It is strange how, in all serious discussion, to the confounding of some current ideas of criticism, we are thrown back, inevitably, on this concept of excellence! The most ardent of impressionists wakes up sooner or later to the idea that he has been talking values all his life. The excellences of literature! They must lie within the general formula for beauty, yet they must be conditioned by the possibilities of the special medium of literature. The general formula, abstract and metaphysical as it must be, may not be applied directly; for abstract thought will fit only that art which can convey it; hence the struggle of theorists with painting, music, and architecture, and the failure of Hegel, for instance, to show how beauty as "the expression of the Idea" resides in these arts. But if the general formula is always translated relatively to the sense-medium through which beauty must reach the human being, it may be preserved, while yet affirming all the special demands of the particular art.

Beauty is a constant function of the varying medium. The end of Beauty is always the same, the perfect moment of unity and self-completeness, of repose in excitement. But this end is attained by different means furnished by different media: through vision and its accompanying activities; through hearing and its accompanying activities; and for literature, through hearing in the special sense of communication by word. It is the nature of this medium that we must further discover.