THE SPIRIT OF MUSIC

"Art is the Manifestation of the Spiritual by means of the Material"
Newlandsmith

Music is a part of life. It is not merely an accomplishment or a hobby, nor yet a means of relaxation from the strenuous business of earning a living. It is not an addendum or an excrescence: it is an actual part of the fabric of life itself. The object of these pages will be to show how closely Music, and indeed Art in general, has woven itself into the pattern of our lives, and how intimately it may influence and fashion the design.

The structural basis of Music is vibration. Sound comes to us in the guise of air-waves, which impinge upon the drum of the ear. The nerve-impulse thus aroused is conveyed to the brain, and there translated into sound. Strictly speaking there is thus no sound until the brain translates the message, while if the machinery of the ear be too dull to answer to the vibration the sound simply does not exist for us. Beyond doubt the world is full of sounds that we cannot hear and of sights that we never see, for of the whole range of vibration our senses permit us to garner but the veriest fragment—a few notes here of sound, and a brief range there of sight, out of the whole vast scale of vibrant Nature.

There are sounds which are musical, and others that are raucous and mere noise. The difference lies in the fact that harsh sounds are compounded of irregular vibrations, while the essence of Music is that its waves are rhythmic and follow each other in ordered swing. Rhythm is thus the primary manifestation of Music: but equally so it is the basic characteristic of everything in life. We learn that in Nature there is nothing still and inert, but that everything is in incessant motion. There is no such thing as solid matter. The man of Science resolved matter into atoms, and now these atoms themselves are found to be as miniature universes. Round a central sun, termed a Proton, whirl a number of electrons in rhythmic motion and incessant swing. And these electrons and protons—what are they? Something in the nature of charges of electricity, positive and negative. So where is now our seeming-solid matter?

When this knowledge informs our outlook we see that all that lives, moves: and even that which never seems to move, lives also in continual rhythm and response. The eternal hills are vibrant to the eye of science, and the very stones are pulsing with the joy of life. The countryside sings, and there is the beat of rhythm not merely in our hearts but in every particle of our body. Stillness is a delusion, and immobility a fiction of the senses. Life is movement and activity, and rigidity and stiffness come more near to what we understand as death. Yet even in death there is no stillness, there is but a change in the form of activity. The body is no longer alive as an organised community, but in its individual cells: the activity is the liveliness of decomposition. Thus all the world expresses life, and expresses it in a rhythm in which law and order reign supreme, and in which a sweet and sane regularity is the ordinance.

Regular rhythm involves accent. Whether or no there be any such emphasis as a thing in itself, the listening ear supplies it to meet a need. When we attend to a clock ticking, the tick-tock, tick-tock, however even it may sound at first, soon resolves itself into a rhythm with the accent on either the tick or the tock. So does the beat of an engine, or the hum of a railway train, merge itself into some definite sound picture, with the accent for relief that the ear demands. Thus out of rhythm grows very naturally an accentuation which gives balance, structure, and form. We start with the little units—the ticks and the tocks—and we build something bigger by grouping these together. This is a principle which we may see running through the activities of life in a thousand forms.

Bricks are made to pattern and thus possess a rhythm of their own, but when they are laid in courses they merge their individual rhythm into the ordered lines of the courses. These again may be comprehended in larger units of arches, buttresses, and stories: and all these again will be grouped and contained in this or that style of architecture. So, too, Music may begin with notes and tones, but accent quickly groups these into larger units to satisfy the senses in their demand for balance and proportion. Thus by increasing the size of our unit we build the rhythm of form and lay the foundation for the further development of the Art.

Since Nature is regular, from the beating of our own hearts to the swing of universes in the heavens, therefore engrained in our very selves is this claim for ordered progression, balance, and sustained sequence. When we attain this, whether in Music or otherwise, we derive a measure of restfulness and satisfaction and we gain a sense of completeness. Any work of Art should leave us with this conviction, that nothing could be added or left out without marring the perfect proportion of the whole. "Jazz," whether in Music or in any other direction, gives just the very opposite effect, marring the sense of proportion and distorting the feeling of satisfaction. It exists as a testimony to a morbid dissatisfaction with life, it gives emphasis to the unbalanced and neurotic. The true beauty of Art—as of Music—consists on the contrary of this larger rhythm which makes for wholesomeness and proportion, which achieves at once the rest and the satisfaction that the soul craves. Its wholesomeness is health, which again is ease. Its reverse is disease: and when Music becomes mere noise and discord it is the same as when beauty becomes ugliness and health vanishes in sickness.

The second element of Music is melody, and this corresponds to the outline in Nature. Things have their shapes and their forms, even as our very lives consist of ups and downs, varied with occasional runs along the level. The country has its outlines, its hills that rise and climb, its valleys that fall and fade. There is the even line of the horizon, topped by the swelling clouds: there are curves and sweeps in the swaying of trees and grasses, in the flight of birds, and in the grace of the human form. It is significant that Nature's handiwork so abounds in curves, whilst that of man is fashioned so much upon straight lines with consequent sharp points and angles. Is it not obvious that Art has had but scanty share in designing our towns and manufactories? Right angles, no doubt, stand for utility in a commercial age, but Nature with her longer purview has little use for them and prefers a more rounded way of progress. Nature inspires, but not in square-cut periods. It is a safe plan to turn to Nature, as to the diagram of God, if we find ourselves in any doubt as to the way.

"Let your air be good, and your composition will be so likewise, and will assuredly delight," says tuneful Father Haydn, and Music's outline in melody limns, as does that of Nature, the beauty of her design. It speaks of wood or stream, of billowed sky, and now of sombre shadow. It ripples in dainty dance, or tumbles down in cascades of joy. Music's melody vies with the drive and bluster of the wind, sobbing and sighing, whistling round corners and playing pranks. Then, maybe, it sinks to silence, and the white mist creeps up: and now there is no melody, no outline, but just the one still sameness over all.

We live in a three dimensional world, and in its length, breadth, and solidity do we disport ourselves. Music also has its three-fold manner of expression, its rhythm, its melody, and now its harmony. The rhythm is for balance, the melody for the outline, while the harmony constitutes the texture. Here again in other directions we may trace the same essentials: there is a texture of colouring, a style in Literature, and an appropriate technique for harmony in every branch of Art, just as there is an harmonic scheme in Music. This may be airy, light, and gossamer, or turgid and obscure: it may be commonplace or ponderous. Like Nature, it may have a thousand or a myriad shades to mirror as many moods and tenses. It may have the misty filminess of steam, the limpid deeps of water, or the cold weight and icy dullness of pompous ignorance.

See how Nature harmoniously groups her colour scheme, with a master hand ensuring that nothing shall clash or be inappropriate. Into this scheme she introduces the song of birds and the sighing of the breeze, with perhaps in the dull distance the roar of the sea growling away and refusing to be driven from its obstinate pedal bass. Into our life she brings affection rose-colour, and for openness and truth the blue of the sky. She paints hatred dark, and passion fiery. Energy she portrays as red, and purity white. Could we but see ourselves in this colour-scheme we should realise that, like God's fresh air, all should be clear and bright, but we ourselves pollute the design with the smoke of our own desires.

So the musician to-day takes the theme that has been given to him by the high gods, for "the idea in embryo comes from a Higher Power"[1] and paints in and accompanies it with such harmonies as his soul may sound and his technique record. He has Nature for pattern, and he may do what he will so long as, Nature-like, there is life expressing itself. Everything in the world stands for something, as even the hills stand for pulsing life. As within, so without: the outer semblance is never the real thing, but ever stands as a mirror to the inner. The bird sings, but he is ever expressing his soul in song: it is only the human singer who can utter sounds without significance. Music is never mere notes, never sound alone, but always the outer form as the expression and unfoldment of something deeper. Rhythm, melody, and harmony are simply the three-fold means of expression, both of the musician and of Mother Nature. Of the two, Nature makes the better Music, being closer to the heart of God.