THE EXPRESSION OF LIFE

"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life"
Beethoven

If Music be a means of expression, we must needs ask ourselves what it expresses. It is entirely insufficient to accept music as sequence or a combination of tones that "sound nice." It would be just as reasonable to regard a meal as something that tastes nice, whereas of course the meal has a meaning and a use beyond mere taste: its purpose is to sustain life, and the question of taste is merely incidental to the larger issue. Music therefore may sound nice, but we desire to arrive at some explanation far transcending this.

All phases of life express something, and we shall not be very far from the truth if we regard that something as spirit. The grass, we say, is alive: but its life consists in its ability to express that essential something which we here term spirit. When it is no longer able to accomplish this, the grass is still there, but we call it dead. We might draw an apt parallel from the electric light bulb: this is nothing but a possible source of light, until it is connected with the main supply from the generating station. The seeming independence of the bulb is a fiction, it has no true existence as a lamp until it expresses itself by giving light. Yet the light is not its own light, and when the filament breaks and the current can no longer circulate through the bulb it ceases to be a lamp. It is, like the grass, dead: and for exactly the same reason, that it can no longer express life or spirit.

Furthermore, the amount of resistance that a lamp interposes to the free circulation of the current through it has its effect upon the light it gives. One lamp may yield a fine light, and another on the same circuit may afford but poor illumination: the one expresses well, and the other ill. So, too, with the grass, one patch may be free-growing and another may be but poor stuff: one expresses well, and the other feebly. In the same way with ourselves, if our bodies have the life force circulating freely they express robust health: and if the force find but a constricted channel, then our bodies express health in scanty measure and approximate more to disease than to the normal well-being. Our bodies are no more independent organisms than is the lamp bulb: they express the spirit which is the essence of the self, and when that self withdraws the body is as dead as the grass or the worn-out bulb. Yet the failure of the bulb casts no reflection upon the generating station, for the current is still there. We do not need to assume that the current has failed, for in that case it would fail alike for every bulb upon the circuit. If every form and phase of life were to expire and cease at a given moment, we might then, and then only, be justified in assuming that spirit had ceased to be: but in that case there would be but little need for us to worry about the point.

We may imagine spirit as the driving force behind everything, as the urge towards evolution, as the pent-up intelligence which ever seeks one variation and then another. Then, when one variation appears, more appropriate to its surroundings than others, this, because of its fitness, survives. As human beings we are individualised fragments of the great universal spirit. There is only the one life and the one spirit, but there are diversities of gifts to enable that spirit to be expressed. The grass expresses it in its luxuriance, its colour, and its growth: the birds in their song: and the whole of what we are pleased to term the lower creation bespeaks this spirit in the daily activity. When this expression ceases, the thing that was once alive is dead.

There is no special merit that all the works of the Lord should thus praise the Lord in their expression, because below the stage of a human being there is no option. The lower forms of life are like lamps on a circuit which light up by reason of the current over which they exercised no control. But a human being is like a lamp that is connected with the main circuit and yet has its own switch. This ability to switch on or off constitutes our measure of freewill, our power of saying yes or no. It is a necessary accompaniment of our knowledge of good and evil for "no choice, no progress." It betokens our progress from the merely animal stage of consciousness to that of self-consciousness—the phase of existence where we not only know, but we know that we know. This ability to express well, badly, or not at all, just as we may please, is our special prerogative: it gives man the privilege, which is denied to all life below him, of deliberately choosing the worse and of making a fool of himself. The animals know what is good for them because they follow their unreasoning instincts and blindly repeat the racial course of action implanted within them, and the mere survival of the species proves that this particular response to the particular circumstance has been "tried out" by ages of experience. But a man blinds and smothers his instincts (and these at the best, it may be observed, are distinctly mixed) or perhaps indulges them in defiance of his better judgment, and thus his expression of his own divinity is often sadly marred.[5]

A man may even deny the very existence of spirit, and thus by a subtle but efficacious species of self-suggestion prevent its manifestation in himself. But whether he expresses this spirit well or ill, a man does in fact join with all creation below him in manifesting this innate spirituality without which there can be no life.

Thus everything stands for something else that is deeper, there is an outer form and an inner soul or spirit. Spenser thus expresses it:—

It is only when we grasp this elementary truth that life becomes in the least plain and intelligible, and the result of grasping it is that we cease to be deceived by the apparent values of things, and are able to appraise them more at their true and spiritual worth. We are then enabled to pass from circumstances (which are results) to the realm of causes: the balance is transferred from the seen to the unseen, and the point of view approximates more to the eternal than the transient. A greater poise and certainty follow as a matter of course, since the mental outlook is centred in the true rather than the seeming.

All life then is the expression of spirit, and our varied activities are but the modes of this expression. To this, Music is no exception. Very naturally also, the better the machinery or the technique of expression, the more of the spirit can get through. We can play more sympathetically, more fluently, and with finer effect on a beautiful "grand" than on a jangly upright instrument: the one is a better vehicle of expression than the other. So also we can secure more fluent expression with a fountain pen than with one that continually interrupts the free flow of ideas by demanding to be dipped in the inkpot. We have two typewriters of the same manufacture, but one is an early model and the other a modern machine: there is a vast difference in the ease of expressing thought, in the favour of the later instrument with all its special conveniences. In general terms the object of all improvement of technical means is the better expression of the spirit. Musically, to practise scales and exercises with the object of getting one's fingers loose is like eating for the sake of developing a fluent jaw action—the vision of the end has been lost in the means. We must ever keep in view the fact that life itself, and especially Art and Music, can only fulfil a proper purpose when resulting in the ever-increasing and better expression of the underlying spirit, or as Elgar puts it—"more of Truth."

The law of spirit is Love. The drive of spirit is ever upward towards progress, aspiration, and unity. If we take a drop of quicksilver and separate it into smaller particles, as soon as ever the conditions allow, these smaller globules will amalgamate themselves with the larger body from which they have been temporarily divorced. We can almost imagine we hear them utter a fervent "thank goodness" as they reach that home of heart's desire. So are we, too, as separated and individualised sparks of the divine fire, burning till at length we reach our freedom and can merge ourselves in that Sun of spirit whence, "trailing clouds of glory," we have come.

Man, we say, is a gregarious animal, and it is certainly only the man of warped mind who seeks to cut himself off from his fellows: we are all of us spirits, and spirit seeks unity and approach. Love is the one uniting and binding force in the universe, just as its opposite—hatred—is the disintegrating element. Love operates in attraction, as we see it in motherhood, childhood, and the love of man and maid. But it also works on the grand scale in the guise of the law of Gravity which attracts and binds universes together, and regulates and controls the swing of inconceivable immensities. Look again and we may see love working as chemical affinity to attract molecule to molecule, or as cohesion to keep the very particles knit together in kinship.

It is this spirit of love that unites the myriad cells of our own body into the little commonwealth of self: when this life-force withdraws, the love ceases to bind, and immediately the "dead" body becomes infinitely alive, but the unity is at an end and decomposition has set in. So love is the fulfilling of the law: not merely "a" law, but the very fundamental law on which our continued existence hangs. Eliminate gravity, and the universe as we know it must come to an end in a catastrophe which it is beyond the power of our imagination to conceive. If cohesion ceased to be, then everything would fall to powder and would disintegrate. Destroy all love between man and man, and civilisation itself would fall to pieces. This is no question of dogma, gospel, or man-made law, it is simply a plain statement of the fundamental condition of our very existence. The importance of love is paramount, and if we are wise we shall seek to discover these overriding laws of our being, and adjust our lives in conformity with their requirements.

Spirit is love, and love manifests itself in service: the love that seeks its own ends, or strives to get instead of to serve, is no love at all. Therefore if Music is to express this spirit it must do so by contributing its meed of assistance to make this workaday world more bright by gladdening the heart of man. Quite obviously much of the music that is written has been composed with no such intent, therefore and to that extent it stultifies itself. It must be classed as the "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal" of the prophet. St. Paul's analysis of the reason of the ineffectiveness of such, too, is searchingly accurate: that, lacking charity, it signified nothing. Charity is only another synonym for that love which is the manifestation of spirit. The true musician has this spirit of love within him and it demands expression, and so we find Mozart exclaiming "I write because I cannot help it." So Granville Bantock, too—"The impulse to create Music is on me, and I write to gratify my impulse. When I have written the work I have done with it. What I do desire is to begin to enjoy myself by writing something else."[6] The musician sings because he must: he writes so that the spirit may find its outlet in that direction: or he plays, when only through his fingers and the instrument can he find that expression which his soul demands.

When Music is thus outpoured it speaks of spirit, and adds to the spiritual store of the world. It reinforces the unseen hosts that fight for spirit in the age-long struggle with the powers of materialism and darkness. No breath of spirit is ever lost, and nothing devoid of it is ever permanent, either in music or in anything else. Sounds without sense or meaning are futile, notes without a heartfelt message are "returned empty" as they were sent forth, and practice without purpose other than mere self-gratification, agility, or display, is a magnificent and glorious waste of time. But Music, when its true underlying purport is discovered, is at once an inspiration and a most real means of achieving that fundamental object, for which our very existence here at this present moment is devised, namely spiritual growth and development.