theory of music. That musical tones present the closest analogies to the human voice as affected by emotion and serving as its expression, and that in this manner the art is able to stir so many recognisable shades of emotion in the listener's mind, has been recognized more or less clearly by the majority of writers on the subject, whether speculative or critical. Indeed, the common modes of describing the effects of music, employing as they do analogies drawn from the outpouring of joy and grief in vocal sounds, appear to point very distinctly to this interpretation of musical symbols.

The conclusion to which a subjective analysis of musical effect appears to lead us is confirmed, moreover, by the history of the genesis and development of music. Its earliest forms seem to have been simply slight intensifications of that natural cadence and rhythm which a flow of emotion impresses on vocal utterance. Not even discrete tones of uniform pitch were at first employed, the melodies of this primitive song sliding continuously through all gradations of pitch, just as one finds occurring to-day in Oriental music, and in many of the popular airs of Southern Europe as sung by the native peasants. This naïve form of art, moreover, was uniformly accompanied by dance or rhythmic movements, the whole play of voice and moving limb serving to express the varying phases of some internal sentiment. The long processes by which the art has grown from this rough shape into the elaborate forms familiar to ourselves, in which range of pitch, time, melody, harmony, and co-ordination of simultaneous movements have been carried to so great a complexity, at the same time outgrowing the capacities of the human voice, may be regarded as a slow tentative progress towards the realization of the fullest and most varied beauty of tonic form. But has this progress involved a pari passu decline in expressive power? As the germ of musical art has become gradually loosened and separated from its natural stem, has it lost the most essential characters of its parentage? And, if not, by what means has the representative function been preserved, and, it may be, enlarged?

Recalling what has been said respecting the wide stimulative effects of musical sensation, one may readily see that even if modern music is in external form far removed from pre-artistic and spontaneous vocal utterance, yet if it presents beneath its characteristic differences multitudinons faint analogies to this natural utterance, it may still be capable of reviving vast regions of emotional consciousness. Even if less definitely like vocal expression, and

more subordinated to laws of form and beauty, it may still be fitted to produce deep and wide effects on the human mind as an indirect exponent of its feelings and thoughts.

Now a careful consideration of the structure of music, as we now know it, can hardly fail to convince us that underneath so much that is purely artificial, or rather artistic, there lie deeper traits which still link the art with the simple instinctive activities of the human voice. A brief account of these, then, will constitute our next step towards a comprehension of the highest significance of complex modern music.

The analogies between music and natural vocal sounds may be found both in the elements of the art and in its combinations or arrangements. The former, again, may be subdivided into direct and indirect resemblances. Among the points of direct resemblance I should reckon pitch of tone, intensity or emphasis, timbre, change of pitch or interval, as great or small, and duration and rapidity of tone. All these properties present themselves, with tolerable distinctness, in natural vocalization, where they indicate, in their ever varying degrees, the multitudinous subtle changes of our inner emotional life. Thus they serve to bridge over, so to speak, the chasm which seems at first sight to divide the regions of natural expression and tonic art. With respect to pitch, it has been remarked that spontaneous emotional utterance commonly produces a gradual sliding of continuous tone rather than a series of tones of distinct pitch. Yet, as Mr. Spencer has shown, even in every-day vocal expression, especially of the more excited and energetic kind, one may notice leaps of the voice through wide intervals. Further, with attention, we can easily detect in voices familiar to us some characteristic prevailing height of tone, deviations from which, whether above or below, indicate transitions of mind from a calm, even condition to one of agitation. The variations of timbre in the human voice accompanying changes in the prompting feeling are very curious. Indeed it seems as though peculiarities of vocal timbre, as for example, in the whining cry of pain, and the cooing sound of tenderness, serve, quite as much as changes of pitch and force, to indicate the qualitative peculiarities of our feelings. Finally, changes of emphasis and of rapidity in vocal sounds obviously correspond to changes in the intensity of the emotion expressed. Thus, a large number of well-marked musical properties have their prototypes in aspects of natural vocal sound, and to this fact is due a considerable part of the emotional influence of music.

Q

Movements which are rapid and emphatic, and which extend through a wide range of pitch, become slightly representative of excited emotional expression, whereas slow, quiet, and gently gliding movements appear to typify the calmer utterances of an equable mind. Sometimes this imitation grows more distinct, and the melodic passage becomes an echo of some definite phase of vocal expression. Thus, for example, in sliding cadences, as of the violin, in marked changes of instrumental colouring, and in chromatic as distinguished from melodious movements, musical composition occasionally approximates to distinct expression. Yet such effects are only transient, and if too frequent, are incompatible with proper musical form.

In the elements of music having indirect affinity with vocal sounds something is due to analogies, not between different impressions of sound, but between these sensations and other orders of feeling. Thus, for example, melodious sequence owes a considerable part of its expressive character to its peculiar pleasurable effect on the mind. It may, no doubt, be true that even this distinctive property of music was first suggested by natural vocalization. For example, many spontaneous forms of expression appear to employ the interval of the fifth (C-G). It is presumable, indeed, that apart from the possible action of natural and sexual selection, peaceful emotional expression would, through a semi-conscious control of the will, tend to fall into forms most grateful to the ear, so that the most melodious intervals would become the most natural, that is, the easiest for vocal execution. At the same time, the emotional effect of artistic melody involves a link of indirect analogy. When an interval is sweet and natural, or strange and harsh, the slight amount of direct resemblance between it and vocal sounds, to which I have just referred, leads the listener to interpret the whole of its pleasurable or painful character as vocal and expressive. That is to say, a strictly tonic effect in melodic interval becomes translated into the expression of a happy or of a sorrowful shade of feeling, even though in natural emotional utterance this particular sequence rarely if ever occurs. Similarly with the harmony and discord of simultaneous tones. The co-ordination of two or more tones of different pitch, intensity, etc., was probably first suggested by the common phenomenon of sympathetic vocal expression by different persons. And similarities and contrasts in the pitch, intensity, direction of interval, and rapidity of two or more series of tones, clearly have their direct analogies in varying relations among

the simultaneous utterances of several voices. Thus, the convergence of two series from a wide interval to perfect unison, or from greatly unequal to equal intensities or rapidities, directly resembles the familiar vocal accompaniment of those interchanges of emotion which make up a considerable part of simple social life. And so it happens that the new and artistic ingredient of harmony, with its painful correlate, comes, in the same manner as the element of melody, to simulate an analogy with vocal expression. A pleasing harmony seems to be the equivalent for happy emotional agreement of two voices, while a disagreeable discord appears to pourtray their painful emotional disagreement. A third musical quality which becomes in a similar manner transformed into a seemingly vocal one, is tonality, or the ruling of a fundamental key-note. This element, too, may have been first suggested by the medium pitch which the spontaneous voice customarily adopts. As a point of quiet repose after wide elevations and depressions, this habitual level of voice seems to furnish the prototype of the restful satisfactory key-note. And if this is so, we may readily understand how it happens that we attribute a vocal significance to the elaborate relations of key, regarding each note of the scale as the equivalent of a certain vocal transition from the medium and normal pitch of quiet customary expression.

It need hardly be said that the complete simulation of these attributes of the natural voice by the artistic inventions of melody, harmony, and key, has been rendered possible by the long predominance of song, as the earliest and most popular variety of music. Such artistic experiences add new affinities and associations to those of pre-artistic and natural experiences, confirming the tendency of the listener to interpret every aspect of musical tone, by whatever instrument produced, as the rough symbol of a vocal utterance.

Passing now from the elements employed by music to the combination and co-ordination of these in artistic composition, one may find still further points of affinity with instinctive vocal action. Although a finished song, say one of Schubert or of Mendelssohn, not to speak of complex instrumental compositions, may at first seem to be very unlike a chain of vocal utterances prompted by changing feeling, there are, nevertheless, in the ordering of musical parts, distinct analogies to the sequences of sound produced. by the natural voice. Thus, for example, one may find both in natural vocal sounds and in musical sequences, not only great variations in the force, pitch, and rapidity of the sounds making up the

series, but also a certain duration of the whole, a prevailing force or intensity and rapidity of sound, a large regulating movement of rise and cadence, and finally, a general tendency to revert to a point of rest, which is supplied in music by the key-note. Although no simply spontaneous vocal utterance falls into the regular order prescribed by the laws of musical time, yet faint adumbrations of equal rhythm are certainly furnished by vocal expression. It is obvious that every distinct vocal embodiment of emotion is marked by a roughly assignable length, and by a certain degree of rapidity, complexity of change, and so on. For example, the vocal utterances of certain shades of feelings are comparatively even and monotonous, and quickly subside, while those of other and more involved passions are characterized by great and rapid changes of pitch, emphasis, and rapidity, and by the length of their evolution and transformation. Hence one naturally comes to read in all forms of musical structure a translation-elaborated and idealized, it is true, -of that play of vocal activity, with the alternating impulses of daily life, which long preceded all art, and still presents itself as one of our most familiar experiences.

Now, however vague some of these resemblances between musical form and spontaneous vocal expression may be, the whole sum of such affinities is quite sufficient to produce a very marked mental effect. Since, as I have observed, there is little or nothing in the impressions of music to call forth the mental energies to objective realities beyond; since, too, as we have seen, sensations of tone contain powerful elements of mental excitement, we may reasonably expect that the stream of emotional influence will rush into any vaguely marked channels which the suggestions of tone present at the moment. And what one might thus infer à priori, one may observe in actual fact. The well-recognized effects of music on wide regions of consciousness may be seen to illustrate this deeplying relation between the art of tone and the natural undirected actions of the inarticulate voice.

The links of association now considered appear to invest music with three kinds of representative character. First of all, by the simplest process of association, musical tones seem to typify vocal action itself, viewed as a conscious play of muscular energy. Secondly, by a further process, they revive and render more or less distinctly recognizable to consciousness, varieties of emotional agitation, such as usually vent themselves in like vocal sounds. Finally, by a still longer operation of thought, these re-awakened feelings