CHAPTER XXTheImpasseof Musical TheoryWill twenty chapters render plainThose lonely lights that still remainJust breaking over land and main?Forfairly obvious reasons the psychology of Music is often regarded as more backward than that of the other arts, and theimpassewhich has here been reached more baffling and more exasperating. But such advance as has been possible in the theory of the other arts has been mainly concerned with them as representational or as serviceable. For poetry, for painting, for architecture there still remain problems as perplexing as any which can be raised about music. For example, what is the difference between good and bad blank verse in its formal aspect, between delightful and distressing alliteration, between euphony and cacophony, between metrical triumph and metrical failure? Or in the case of Painting, why do certain forms excite such marked responses of emotion and attitude and others, so very like them geometrically, excite none or produce merely confusion? Why have colours their specific responses and how is it that their combinations have such subtle and yet definite effects? Or what is the reason that spaces and volumes in Architecture affect us as they do? These questions are at present as much without answers as any that we can raise about Music; but the fact that in these arts other questions arise which can in part be answered, whereas in Music questions about the effects of form overwhelmingly preponderate, has in part obscured the situation.Other effects are of course also involved; in programme music something analogous to representation in painting; in opera and much other music, dramatic action; and so forth. But these effects, although often contributing to the total value, are plainly subordinate in music to its more direct influence as sound alone. The difficulties which they raise have such close analogies in painting and poetry that a separate discussion may be omitted. The problem of ‘pure form’ arises, however, with peculiar insistence in music.More than forty years ago Gurney summed up the state of musical theory as follows: “When we come to actual forms, and to the startling differences of merit which the very simplest known to us present, the musical faculty defies all explanation of its action and its judgements. The only conceivable explanation indeed would be an analogy, and we know not where to look for it†”. And the work done since has added remarkably little. As he so admirably insisted, even though we confine ourselves to the responses of one individual, all general explanations of the musical effect apply equally to the ineffective, to the distressing and the delightful, to the admirable and the atrocious alike. But the same is true of all attempts to explain the effects upon us of any forms which neither represent something nor are in obvious ways serviceable. Whether they are forms seen or heard, whether they are made up of notes or of movements, of intervals of time or of images of speech, the same is true of them all.Whatever effects cannot be traced to some practical use we might make of them (as we use a plate to eat from or a house to live in), or to some interference with or threat against the ways in which we might act, or to some object practically interesting to us, which they represent—all such effects are necessarily very difficult to explain.There is nothing in the least mysterious, however, about the difficulty of explaining them. The facts required happen to be beyond our present powers of observation. They belong to a branch of psychology for which we have as yet no methods of investigation. It seems likely that we shall have to wait a long while, and that very great advances must first be made in neurology before these problems can profitably be attacked. But however regrettable this may be, there is no justification whatever for the invention of unique faculties and ultimate, analysable, indefinable entities. To say that a thing is unanalysable may be to assert either that it is simple or that we do not know yet how to analyse it. Musical effects, like the effects of forms in general, are inexplicable in the second sense only. To pretend that they are inexplicable in the first sense is mere mystery-mongering. To take two parallel cases, trade booms and fine weather were until recently inexplicable, and are doubtless still in many respects difficult to account for. But no one would pretend that these blessings require us to assume uniquesui generistendencies in economic or meteorological affairs.But the practice of describing the ‘musical faculty’ and the formal effects of the arts in general assui generishas another cause in addition to intellectual bewilderment. Many people think that to say that a mental activity is unique, orsui generis, in some way gives it a more exalted standing than if it were recognised as merely too complicated or too inaccessible to experiment to be at present explained. In part this is a relic of the old opinion that explanation is itself derogatory, an opinion which only those who are, in this respect, uneducated, still entertain. Partly also this preference for ‘unique’ things is due to confusion with the sense in which St Paul’s may be said to be unique. But the experience of ‘seeing stars’ after a bang on the nose is just as ‘unique’ as any act of musical appreciation and shares any exalted quality which such uniqueness may be supposed to confer.Every element in a form, whether it be a musical form or any other, is capable of exciting a very intricate and widespread response. Usually the response is of a minimal order and escapes introspection. Thus a single note or a uniform colour has for most people hardly any observable effect beyond its sensory characteristics. When it occurs along with other elements the form which they together make up may have striking consequences in emotion and attitude. If we regard this as an affair of mere summation of effects it may seem impossible that the effect of the form can be the result of the effects of the elements, and thus it is natural and easy to invent ultimate properties of ‘forms’ by way of pseudo-explanation. But a little more psychological insight makes these inventions appear quite unnecessary. The effects of happenings in the mind rarely add themselves up. Our more intense experiences are not built up of less intense experiences as a wall is built up of bricks. The metaphor of addition is utterly misleading. That of the resolution of forces would be better, but even this does not adequately represent the behaviour of the mind. The separate responses which each element in isolation would tend to excite are so connected with one another that their combination is, for our present knowledge, incalculable in its effects. Two stimuli which, when separated by one interval of time or space, would merely cancel one another, with another interval produce an effect which is far beyond anything which either alone could produce. And the combined response when they are suitably arranged may be of quite another kind than that of either. We may, if we like, think of the effects of impulses at various intervals of time upon a pendulum, but this metaphor is, as we have suggested, insufficient. It is over simple. The intricacies of chemical reactions come nearer to being what we need. The great quantities of latent energy which may be released by quite slight changes in conditions suggest better what happens when stimuli are combined. But even this metaphor incompletely represents the complexity of the interactions in the nervous system. It is only by conjecture that its working can as yet be divined. What is certain is chat it is the most complex and the most sensitive thing of which we know.The unpredicable and miraculous differences, then, in the total responses which slight changes in the arrangement of stimuli produce, can be fully accounted for in terms of the sensitiveness of the nervous system; and the mysteries of ‘forms’ are merely a consequence of our present ignorance of the detail of its action. We have spoken above of the ‘elements’ of a form, but in fact we do not yet know which these are. Any musical sound, for example, is plainly complex, though how complex it is from the point of view of its musical effects is still very uncertain. It has pitch, it hastimbre, the characters which change as it is played upon one kind of instrument or another, the characters which are sometimes called its colour. Its effects also vary with its loudness and with its volume. It may be far more complex still. Its relations again to other musical sounds may be of at least three kinds: pitch relations, harmonic relations and temporal relations, complicated, all of them, in the utmost degree by Rhythm. Possibly other relations still are involved. There would be no advantage here in entering into the detail of the analysis of these qualities and relations. The one point of importance for our present purpose is the immense scope for the resolution, interinanimation, conflict and equilibrium of impulses opened up by this extraordinary complexity of musical sounds and of their possible arrangement. It is not in the least surprising that so few invariable correspondences between stimuli and total responses have as yet been discovered.The same state of affairs recurs wherever forms by themselves, dissociated from all practical uses and from all representation produce immediate effects upon the mind. In painting, in sculpture, in architecture and in poetry, we need equally to be on our guard against those who would attribute peculiar, unique and mystic virtues to forms in themselves. In every case their effect is due to the interplay (not the addition) of the effects which their elements excite. Especially we do well to beware of empty speculations upon ‘necessary and inevitable relations’ as the source of the effect. Of course in a given case a certain relation, a certain arrangement, may be necessary, in the sense that the elements if differently disposed would have a quite different combined effect. But this is not the sense in which necessity is usually claimed. It is necessity, in the metaphysical sense, some here utterly obscure kind of ‘logical necessity’ which is the favourite toy of a number of art critics. To those who have some familiarity both with Logic and with Psychology the regular appearance of the term ‘logical’ in describing these relations is the clearest indication that nothing definite or adequately considered is being said. The fact that, given certain elements arranged in a certain way, a certain further element can usually be introduced in one way and one way onlyif a certain total effect is to be produced, does, it is true, give a certain ‘inevitability’ to the artist’s work. But what the effect is and whether the effect is worth while have still to be considered, and this inevitability has nothing to do witha priorirightness and is a matter simply of cause and effect. The salt required to make a soup palatable is ‘logically necessitated’ in this sense as much as any relation in a picture. The value lies not in the apprehension, conscious or subconscious, of the rightness of the relations, but in the total mental effect which, since they are right (i.e. since they work), they produce.
CHAPTER XXTheImpasseof Musical TheoryWill twenty chapters render plainThose lonely lights that still remainJust breaking over land and main?Forfairly obvious reasons the psychology of Music is often regarded as more backward than that of the other arts, and theimpassewhich has here been reached more baffling and more exasperating. But such advance as has been possible in the theory of the other arts has been mainly concerned with them as representational or as serviceable. For poetry, for painting, for architecture there still remain problems as perplexing as any which can be raised about music. For example, what is the difference between good and bad blank verse in its formal aspect, between delightful and distressing alliteration, between euphony and cacophony, between metrical triumph and metrical failure? Or in the case of Painting, why do certain forms excite such marked responses of emotion and attitude and others, so very like them geometrically, excite none or produce merely confusion? Why have colours their specific responses and how is it that their combinations have such subtle and yet definite effects? Or what is the reason that spaces and volumes in Architecture affect us as they do? These questions are at present as much without answers as any that we can raise about Music; but the fact that in these arts other questions arise which can in part be answered, whereas in Music questions about the effects of form overwhelmingly preponderate, has in part obscured the situation.Other effects are of course also involved; in programme music something analogous to representation in painting; in opera and much other music, dramatic action; and so forth. But these effects, although often contributing to the total value, are plainly subordinate in music to its more direct influence as sound alone. The difficulties which they raise have such close analogies in painting and poetry that a separate discussion may be omitted. The problem of ‘pure form’ arises, however, with peculiar insistence in music.More than forty years ago Gurney summed up the state of musical theory as follows: “When we come to actual forms, and to the startling differences of merit which the very simplest known to us present, the musical faculty defies all explanation of its action and its judgements. The only conceivable explanation indeed would be an analogy, and we know not where to look for it†”. And the work done since has added remarkably little. As he so admirably insisted, even though we confine ourselves to the responses of one individual, all general explanations of the musical effect apply equally to the ineffective, to the distressing and the delightful, to the admirable and the atrocious alike. But the same is true of all attempts to explain the effects upon us of any forms which neither represent something nor are in obvious ways serviceable. Whether they are forms seen or heard, whether they are made up of notes or of movements, of intervals of time or of images of speech, the same is true of them all.Whatever effects cannot be traced to some practical use we might make of them (as we use a plate to eat from or a house to live in), or to some interference with or threat against the ways in which we might act, or to some object practically interesting to us, which they represent—all such effects are necessarily very difficult to explain.There is nothing in the least mysterious, however, about the difficulty of explaining them. The facts required happen to be beyond our present powers of observation. They belong to a branch of psychology for which we have as yet no methods of investigation. It seems likely that we shall have to wait a long while, and that very great advances must first be made in neurology before these problems can profitably be attacked. But however regrettable this may be, there is no justification whatever for the invention of unique faculties and ultimate, analysable, indefinable entities. To say that a thing is unanalysable may be to assert either that it is simple or that we do not know yet how to analyse it. Musical effects, like the effects of forms in general, are inexplicable in the second sense only. To pretend that they are inexplicable in the first sense is mere mystery-mongering. To take two parallel cases, trade booms and fine weather were until recently inexplicable, and are doubtless still in many respects difficult to account for. But no one would pretend that these blessings require us to assume uniquesui generistendencies in economic or meteorological affairs.But the practice of describing the ‘musical faculty’ and the formal effects of the arts in general assui generishas another cause in addition to intellectual bewilderment. Many people think that to say that a mental activity is unique, orsui generis, in some way gives it a more exalted standing than if it were recognised as merely too complicated or too inaccessible to experiment to be at present explained. In part this is a relic of the old opinion that explanation is itself derogatory, an opinion which only those who are, in this respect, uneducated, still entertain. Partly also this preference for ‘unique’ things is due to confusion with the sense in which St Paul’s may be said to be unique. But the experience of ‘seeing stars’ after a bang on the nose is just as ‘unique’ as any act of musical appreciation and shares any exalted quality which such uniqueness may be supposed to confer.Every element in a form, whether it be a musical form or any other, is capable of exciting a very intricate and widespread response. Usually the response is of a minimal order and escapes introspection. Thus a single note or a uniform colour has for most people hardly any observable effect beyond its sensory characteristics. When it occurs along with other elements the form which they together make up may have striking consequences in emotion and attitude. If we regard this as an affair of mere summation of effects it may seem impossible that the effect of the form can be the result of the effects of the elements, and thus it is natural and easy to invent ultimate properties of ‘forms’ by way of pseudo-explanation. But a little more psychological insight makes these inventions appear quite unnecessary. The effects of happenings in the mind rarely add themselves up. Our more intense experiences are not built up of less intense experiences as a wall is built up of bricks. The metaphor of addition is utterly misleading. That of the resolution of forces would be better, but even this does not adequately represent the behaviour of the mind. The separate responses which each element in isolation would tend to excite are so connected with one another that their combination is, for our present knowledge, incalculable in its effects. Two stimuli which, when separated by one interval of time or space, would merely cancel one another, with another interval produce an effect which is far beyond anything which either alone could produce. And the combined response when they are suitably arranged may be of quite another kind than that of either. We may, if we like, think of the effects of impulses at various intervals of time upon a pendulum, but this metaphor is, as we have suggested, insufficient. It is over simple. The intricacies of chemical reactions come nearer to being what we need. The great quantities of latent energy which may be released by quite slight changes in conditions suggest better what happens when stimuli are combined. But even this metaphor incompletely represents the complexity of the interactions in the nervous system. It is only by conjecture that its working can as yet be divined. What is certain is chat it is the most complex and the most sensitive thing of which we know.The unpredicable and miraculous differences, then, in the total responses which slight changes in the arrangement of stimuli produce, can be fully accounted for in terms of the sensitiveness of the nervous system; and the mysteries of ‘forms’ are merely a consequence of our present ignorance of the detail of its action. We have spoken above of the ‘elements’ of a form, but in fact we do not yet know which these are. Any musical sound, for example, is plainly complex, though how complex it is from the point of view of its musical effects is still very uncertain. It has pitch, it hastimbre, the characters which change as it is played upon one kind of instrument or another, the characters which are sometimes called its colour. Its effects also vary with its loudness and with its volume. It may be far more complex still. Its relations again to other musical sounds may be of at least three kinds: pitch relations, harmonic relations and temporal relations, complicated, all of them, in the utmost degree by Rhythm. Possibly other relations still are involved. There would be no advantage here in entering into the detail of the analysis of these qualities and relations. The one point of importance for our present purpose is the immense scope for the resolution, interinanimation, conflict and equilibrium of impulses opened up by this extraordinary complexity of musical sounds and of their possible arrangement. It is not in the least surprising that so few invariable correspondences between stimuli and total responses have as yet been discovered.The same state of affairs recurs wherever forms by themselves, dissociated from all practical uses and from all representation produce immediate effects upon the mind. In painting, in sculpture, in architecture and in poetry, we need equally to be on our guard against those who would attribute peculiar, unique and mystic virtues to forms in themselves. In every case their effect is due to the interplay (not the addition) of the effects which their elements excite. Especially we do well to beware of empty speculations upon ‘necessary and inevitable relations’ as the source of the effect. Of course in a given case a certain relation, a certain arrangement, may be necessary, in the sense that the elements if differently disposed would have a quite different combined effect. But this is not the sense in which necessity is usually claimed. It is necessity, in the metaphysical sense, some here utterly obscure kind of ‘logical necessity’ which is the favourite toy of a number of art critics. To those who have some familiarity both with Logic and with Psychology the regular appearance of the term ‘logical’ in describing these relations is the clearest indication that nothing definite or adequately considered is being said. The fact that, given certain elements arranged in a certain way, a certain further element can usually be introduced in one way and one way onlyif a certain total effect is to be produced, does, it is true, give a certain ‘inevitability’ to the artist’s work. But what the effect is and whether the effect is worth while have still to be considered, and this inevitability has nothing to do witha priorirightness and is a matter simply of cause and effect. The salt required to make a soup palatable is ‘logically necessitated’ in this sense as much as any relation in a picture. The value lies not in the apprehension, conscious or subconscious, of the rightness of the relations, but in the total mental effect which, since they are right (i.e. since they work), they produce.
Will twenty chapters render plainThose lonely lights that still remainJust breaking over land and main?
Will twenty chapters render plainThose lonely lights that still remainJust breaking over land and main?
Will twenty chapters render plainThose lonely lights that still remainJust breaking over land and main?
Forfairly obvious reasons the psychology of Music is often regarded as more backward than that of the other arts, and theimpassewhich has here been reached more baffling and more exasperating. But such advance as has been possible in the theory of the other arts has been mainly concerned with them as representational or as serviceable. For poetry, for painting, for architecture there still remain problems as perplexing as any which can be raised about music. For example, what is the difference between good and bad blank verse in its formal aspect, between delightful and distressing alliteration, between euphony and cacophony, between metrical triumph and metrical failure? Or in the case of Painting, why do certain forms excite such marked responses of emotion and attitude and others, so very like them geometrically, excite none or produce merely confusion? Why have colours their specific responses and how is it that their combinations have such subtle and yet definite effects? Or what is the reason that spaces and volumes in Architecture affect us as they do? These questions are at present as much without answers as any that we can raise about Music; but the fact that in these arts other questions arise which can in part be answered, whereas in Music questions about the effects of form overwhelmingly preponderate, has in part obscured the situation.
Other effects are of course also involved; in programme music something analogous to representation in painting; in opera and much other music, dramatic action; and so forth. But these effects, although often contributing to the total value, are plainly subordinate in music to its more direct influence as sound alone. The difficulties which they raise have such close analogies in painting and poetry that a separate discussion may be omitted. The problem of ‘pure form’ arises, however, with peculiar insistence in music.
More than forty years ago Gurney summed up the state of musical theory as follows: “When we come to actual forms, and to the startling differences of merit which the very simplest known to us present, the musical faculty defies all explanation of its action and its judgements. The only conceivable explanation indeed would be an analogy, and we know not where to look for it†”. And the work done since has added remarkably little. As he so admirably insisted, even though we confine ourselves to the responses of one individual, all general explanations of the musical effect apply equally to the ineffective, to the distressing and the delightful, to the admirable and the atrocious alike. But the same is true of all attempts to explain the effects upon us of any forms which neither represent something nor are in obvious ways serviceable. Whether they are forms seen or heard, whether they are made up of notes or of movements, of intervals of time or of images of speech, the same is true of them all.
Whatever effects cannot be traced to some practical use we might make of them (as we use a plate to eat from or a house to live in), or to some interference with or threat against the ways in which we might act, or to some object practically interesting to us, which they represent—all such effects are necessarily very difficult to explain.
There is nothing in the least mysterious, however, about the difficulty of explaining them. The facts required happen to be beyond our present powers of observation. They belong to a branch of psychology for which we have as yet no methods of investigation. It seems likely that we shall have to wait a long while, and that very great advances must first be made in neurology before these problems can profitably be attacked. But however regrettable this may be, there is no justification whatever for the invention of unique faculties and ultimate, analysable, indefinable entities. To say that a thing is unanalysable may be to assert either that it is simple or that we do not know yet how to analyse it. Musical effects, like the effects of forms in general, are inexplicable in the second sense only. To pretend that they are inexplicable in the first sense is mere mystery-mongering. To take two parallel cases, trade booms and fine weather were until recently inexplicable, and are doubtless still in many respects difficult to account for. But no one would pretend that these blessings require us to assume uniquesui generistendencies in economic or meteorological affairs.
But the practice of describing the ‘musical faculty’ and the formal effects of the arts in general assui generishas another cause in addition to intellectual bewilderment. Many people think that to say that a mental activity is unique, orsui generis, in some way gives it a more exalted standing than if it were recognised as merely too complicated or too inaccessible to experiment to be at present explained. In part this is a relic of the old opinion that explanation is itself derogatory, an opinion which only those who are, in this respect, uneducated, still entertain. Partly also this preference for ‘unique’ things is due to confusion with the sense in which St Paul’s may be said to be unique. But the experience of ‘seeing stars’ after a bang on the nose is just as ‘unique’ as any act of musical appreciation and shares any exalted quality which such uniqueness may be supposed to confer.
Every element in a form, whether it be a musical form or any other, is capable of exciting a very intricate and widespread response. Usually the response is of a minimal order and escapes introspection. Thus a single note or a uniform colour has for most people hardly any observable effect beyond its sensory characteristics. When it occurs along with other elements the form which they together make up may have striking consequences in emotion and attitude. If we regard this as an affair of mere summation of effects it may seem impossible that the effect of the form can be the result of the effects of the elements, and thus it is natural and easy to invent ultimate properties of ‘forms’ by way of pseudo-explanation. But a little more psychological insight makes these inventions appear quite unnecessary. The effects of happenings in the mind rarely add themselves up. Our more intense experiences are not built up of less intense experiences as a wall is built up of bricks. The metaphor of addition is utterly misleading. That of the resolution of forces would be better, but even this does not adequately represent the behaviour of the mind. The separate responses which each element in isolation would tend to excite are so connected with one another that their combination is, for our present knowledge, incalculable in its effects. Two stimuli which, when separated by one interval of time or space, would merely cancel one another, with another interval produce an effect which is far beyond anything which either alone could produce. And the combined response when they are suitably arranged may be of quite another kind than that of either. We may, if we like, think of the effects of impulses at various intervals of time upon a pendulum, but this metaphor is, as we have suggested, insufficient. It is over simple. The intricacies of chemical reactions come nearer to being what we need. The great quantities of latent energy which may be released by quite slight changes in conditions suggest better what happens when stimuli are combined. But even this metaphor incompletely represents the complexity of the interactions in the nervous system. It is only by conjecture that its working can as yet be divined. What is certain is chat it is the most complex and the most sensitive thing of which we know.
The unpredicable and miraculous differences, then, in the total responses which slight changes in the arrangement of stimuli produce, can be fully accounted for in terms of the sensitiveness of the nervous system; and the mysteries of ‘forms’ are merely a consequence of our present ignorance of the detail of its action. We have spoken above of the ‘elements’ of a form, but in fact we do not yet know which these are. Any musical sound, for example, is plainly complex, though how complex it is from the point of view of its musical effects is still very uncertain. It has pitch, it hastimbre, the characters which change as it is played upon one kind of instrument or another, the characters which are sometimes called its colour. Its effects also vary with its loudness and with its volume. It may be far more complex still. Its relations again to other musical sounds may be of at least three kinds: pitch relations, harmonic relations and temporal relations, complicated, all of them, in the utmost degree by Rhythm. Possibly other relations still are involved. There would be no advantage here in entering into the detail of the analysis of these qualities and relations. The one point of importance for our present purpose is the immense scope for the resolution, interinanimation, conflict and equilibrium of impulses opened up by this extraordinary complexity of musical sounds and of their possible arrangement. It is not in the least surprising that so few invariable correspondences between stimuli and total responses have as yet been discovered.
The same state of affairs recurs wherever forms by themselves, dissociated from all practical uses and from all representation produce immediate effects upon the mind. In painting, in sculpture, in architecture and in poetry, we need equally to be on our guard against those who would attribute peculiar, unique and mystic virtues to forms in themselves. In every case their effect is due to the interplay (not the addition) of the effects which their elements excite. Especially we do well to beware of empty speculations upon ‘necessary and inevitable relations’ as the source of the effect. Of course in a given case a certain relation, a certain arrangement, may be necessary, in the sense that the elements if differently disposed would have a quite different combined effect. But this is not the sense in which necessity is usually claimed. It is necessity, in the metaphysical sense, some here utterly obscure kind of ‘logical necessity’ which is the favourite toy of a number of art critics. To those who have some familiarity both with Logic and with Psychology the regular appearance of the term ‘logical’ in describing these relations is the clearest indication that nothing definite or adequately considered is being said. The fact that, given certain elements arranged in a certain way, a certain further element can usually be introduced in one way and one way onlyif a certain total effect is to be produced, does, it is true, give a certain ‘inevitability’ to the artist’s work. But what the effect is and whether the effect is worth while have still to be considered, and this inevitability has nothing to do witha priorirightness and is a matter simply of cause and effect. The salt required to make a soup palatable is ‘logically necessitated’ in this sense as much as any relation in a picture. The value lies not in the apprehension, conscious or subconscious, of the rightness of the relations, but in the total mental effect which, since they are right (i.e. since they work), they produce.