Books: The Psychology of Beauty
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Ethel D. Puffer >> The Psychology of Beauty
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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-relationship, 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
constitute 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. "Relationship."
Now it is not hard to see how this antithesis has come about.
But that the work of a master is always capable of logical
analysis 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 association, we are enabled to bring
within the circle of those who have the musical experience even
those nine tenths whose intellects are not actively participant.
<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 antithesis
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 analysis, 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 substitute 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 constituted
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 constituents 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 pass into oblivion, without ever having
passed 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 classed as expressive by association and by
direct induction. Expressive by association are passages 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 association, or
that special form of association 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 attitude. 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 analysis 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 anticipation is the essential. Without anticipation, 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 anticipation 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 superstition 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
nobler 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.
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