Читать книгу The Play of Man - Karl Groos - Страница 14

Pleasure in listening to tones and noises shows itself remarkably early, although, as is well known, the child is born deaf. Infants but two or three days old will stop crying in response to a loud whistle, and Perez has noted signs of enjoyment of vocal and instrumental music during the first month. Preyer reports of the seventh and eighth weeks: “There seems to be a marked sensitiveness to tone, and perhaps to melody as well, for an expression of the most lively satisfaction is discernible on the child’s face when its mother soothes it with lullabys softly sung. Even when it is crying from hunger a gentle sing-song will cause a cessation such as spoken words can not effect. In the eighth week the baby heard music for the first time—that is, piano playing. Unusual intentness of expression appeared in his eyes, while vigorous movements of his arms and legs and laughter at every loud note testified to his satisfaction in this new sensation. The higher and softer notes, however, made no such impression.”40 The little boy in Sully’s Extracts from a Father’s Diary manifested displeasure at first on hearing piano playing, but soon became reconciled to it, and his mother noticed that while his father was playing the child became heavier in her lap, “as if all his muscles were relaxed in a delicious self-abandonment.”41 Perez relates of a child six months old, on a visit to two aunts: “As the first of the young women began to sing he listened with evident delight, and when the other one joined in with a rich and melodious voice the child turned toward her, his face expressing the utmost pleasure, mingled with wonder and astonishment.”42 This seems to indicate that agreeable tones and variety of movement are at first more appreciated than is the actual beauty of the melody. According to Gurney, appreciation of melody as such first appears in the fourth or fifth year.43 It is otherwise with rhythm. Just as ethnology shows us that from the first inception of music rhythm was more prominent than melody, so it seems that the child too, as a rule, is sensitive to rhythmical cadence even when the beauty of melody is lost upon him. The regular ticking of a watch excites lively interest in the merest infant. Sigismund says: “I have often seen three- and four-year-old children skip about when they heard enlivening band music, as if they wished to catch the time of the rhythmic movement, an impulse which indeed affects adults as well,44 as all well know.” Here we have inner imitation, the central fact of æsthetic enjoyment, displayed by the veriest babes. Children show their enjoyment of rhythm, too, in their preference for strongly accented poetry.45 Even half-grown boys and girls take but little note of sense, compared with the interest which they bestow on rhythm and rhyme. That a normally endowed girl could interpret the words of a poem, Singing on its Way to the Sea, as Singing on its Waiter, etc., without having her curiosity aroused, can only be explained by this fact.46 Is it not a frequent experience of full-grown men to be suddenly struck with the profound truth hidden in some epigrammatic form of expression whose euphony has a hundred times delighted them? They have actually failed up to that time to grasp the clear, logical meaning of the verse or passage. Indifference to the words of their songs is most marked among primitive peoples, while with children an instinctive demand for some employment of their organs of hearing has much to do with their pleasure in harmony and rhythm. The following facts justify this statement: The disposition toward acoustic expression is particularly susceptible to satisfaction from sensuously agreeable stimuli, such as are responsive to harmony, melody and rhythm, partly on known and partly on unknown grounds. Here Fechner’s principle of co-operation is applicable—namely, that two pleasure-exciting causes working together produce a result which is greater than their sum—and is so strong, in fact, as to extend the sphere of sound-play far beyond that of the sensuously agreeable. Absolute silence makes us uncomfortable, and, when it is lasting, conveys to the mind a special quality of emotion, as in optics there is a positive feeling of blackness. So it happens that we take pleasure in noise as such even when it is not agreeable. This applies especially to children. “Les bruits choquants, aigus, glappissants, grondant,” says Perez, “ne leur sont pas désagréable de la même manière qu-aux grandes personnes.” Marie G—— manifested in her third year the liveliest joy in the grinding and squeaking of an iron ring in her swing. To small boys it is a treat to hear a teamster crack his whip. My brother-in-law when a boy cherished for years the ambition to make all the electric clocks in our house chime in concert with a great musical clock. A sense of discomfort is produced sooner, however, by a variety of discordant sounds to which we are passively listening, than when the din is self-produced—a distinction which extends into the domain of art, as testifies many a piano virtuoso.

Among adults it is probably true that sound-play is either entirely or in part connected with the pleasure we derive from ringing and resonance, subject to much the same limitations as we have applied to children. Underlying it all we find, though it is not always easily recognisable, enjoyment of the stimulus as such. I would instance the cheery crackling of flames in a fireplace, the frou-frou of silken garments, the singing of caged birds, the sound of wind, howling of storms, rolling of thunder, rustling of leaves, splashing of brooks, seething of waves, etc. Most of these, it is true, contain elements of intellectual pleasure as well, and so through association link themselves to genuine æsthetic enjoyments. Yet the satisfaction in mere sound as such is also unmistakably present, being most evident perhaps where strong stimuli are involved, since these have a directly exciting effect, while weaker ones, on the contrary, are soothing. Edler’s romance, Die neue Herrin, gives a good instance of this emotional sensibility abnormally exaggerated. “Thomasine was exactly like a child in her dread of silence, and spared no effort to enjoy pleasant sounds, whether produced by herself or from other sources. … When her birds were silent she resorted to the music room, with its musical box and two grand pianos.” This seems to confirm the idea that mere desire for sound as such is an important element in the attention given to music. The art of primitive races illustrates this as well as our own marches, dances, etc. Gurney distinguishes two methods of listening to music: the one accompanied by intelligent appreciation, the other “the indefinite way of hearing music,” which is only cognizant of the agreeable jingle or harmony. I think there is a form of the satisfaction still more crude; when we note the indifference of many habitual concert-goers to fine chamber music we must infer that the power of stimulus is the principal source of their apparently absorbed enjoyment. Gurney, too, seems to recognise this elementary factor when he says: “While it is natural to consider as unmusical those persons in whom a musical ear is lacking or is only imperfectly developed, and who therefore can not at all reproduce or perhaps recognise melodies, such persons often derive extreme pleasure of a vague kind from fine sound, more especially when it rushes through the ear in large masses.”47

Not to penetrate too far into the realm of æsthetics, we will attempt to answer but two of its more obvious questions, which, however, are by no means simple ones. Whence is derived the strong emotional effect (1) of rhythm and (2) of melody? (Some thoughts on the acoustic effects of poetry will be presented in the next section.) Rhythm may be regarded as the most salient quality of music, and seems to have antedated melody considerably among primitive peoples. While nothing is easier than to recognise the pleasure it affords, the derivation of its exciting effect on the emotions is most difficult to trace. Widely diverse theories have been advanced in the various attempts to solve this riddle. Rhythm is a conspicuous instance of the unity in variety which characterizes beauty. It satisfies this intellect, and is calculated to rivet the attention by exciting expectation. It answers to our own organization; the step, the heart-beat, breathing, the natural physical processes, are all rhythmic, as well as the alternation of waste and repair in the nervous system. But while these facts undoubtedly contribute to our enjoyment of rhythm, they can hardly account adequately for its intense emotional effects.

At this point the Darwinist comes to the rescue, and says that its employment in courtship sufficiently explains these effects, taking into account their hereditary association. He dwells on the sexual excitation which quivers in the purest enjoyment of music, and is “likely to excite in us in a vague and indefinite manner the strong emotions of a long-past age.”48 Far be it from me to discard this hypothesis hastily, particularly as I have no better one to offer, but since it appears to afford but a meagre chance of solving the problem, we may venture to seek enlightenment in another supposition. It is to be found in Souriau’s system of æsthetics, which in my opinion is not yet fully appreciated. As Nietzsche has said, “As in art, so with any æsthetic fact or appearance, a physiological condition of transport is essential,”49 so, too, Souriau insists that art employs every possible means to induce in us a semi-trance or hypnotic state, and through it renders us approachable to a degree which would be impossible when we are normally alert.50

Now, rhythm is to the last degree such a transporting agency, owing to its strong hold on the attention. Weinhold and Heidenhain have induced hypnosis by means of the ticking of a watch, and in so doing have only employed an agency which has similar uses the world over. Just as most of the inhabitants of the earth have learned the use of narcotics, so too are they eager to adapt such an intoxicant as rhythm proves to be.51

We may read numberless statements of hypnotic conditions being turned to account for religious and magical ends. Next to measured movements of one’s own body, we find that listening to rhythmic sounds and the monotonous repetition of incantations is the surest key to this state of dreamy consciousness.52 In Salvation Army methods the catchy, swinging songs are an indispensable means of eliciting the ecstatic condition, though, through the power of auto-suggestion, the expectation of the state is also strongly influential. It is the singing, however, as Souriau says, which throws the hearer into a state of mild hypnosis and renders him accessible to any suggestion.53 When the end in view is a religious one, the ecstatic subject sees all sorts of visions, and can swear to the appearance of saints or gods. When the measure is martial in its suggestions, the subject becomes belligerent; when it excites sexual feeling, he responds in that direction; in short, his soul, being entirely under the influence of the hypnotist, will reflect, and involuntarily respond to, every suggestion. We see, then, that these intense emotional effects are only in part attributable to sound as such; rhythm is not entirely responsible for them, but figures rather as a contingent cause through which suitable suggestions act as the immediate cause of emotional disturbances. “Hypnotism,” says Souriau, “is but a means, never an end. Art employs this means the better to control our minds and keep our imagination in the limits prescribed by her suggestions. What we owe to her is not sleep, but the dream.”54

This view seems to correspond with the facts. When we drum a familiar air with the fingers the regular time-beat is not at all stirring, indeed it is sometimes quite the contrary. When, however, agreeable or interesting associations are connected with it the rhythm at once induces in us a condition of the utmost susceptibility to suggestion. Any change in intensity or time then calls forth our capacity for “embodiment” (Einfühlung) or inner imitation in such force and completeness as would be altogether unattainable without this deep-seated propensity of ours for measured rhythm. In many cities it is customary, when fire breaks out, to ring a church bell in quicker time than its usual stroke, and by reason of the indirect factor—namely, their significance as a warning—the uniform sounds produce the most profound effect on æsthetically sensitive persons. Even those who would be unaffected by the announcement that another part of the city was in flames are deeply moved on hearing the tolling bell. The harmless tones become appalling. They seem to proclaim the destruction of the world, and the imagination dwells on the idea that nothing will be left in existence but these terrific, all-pervading waves of sound. The intense feeling aroused by drum-beats is similar to this. Since every loud sound is calculated to arouse our involuntary attention, a rhythmical succession of loud sounds irresistibly holds our consciousness, and, in the case of martial or festive music, association aids in casting the spell and, with the acoustic pulsations, forms a strong combination to which for the moment our whole being is subjected.

It is, however, when rhythm develops into melody that we experience the utmost force of its suggestive power.55 It is interesting to see how well Hanslick describes this preliminary condition of musical enjoyment—this trance-like state—only to censure it. “The elements of music, sound, and movement hold many emotional music lovers willing captives. It is surprising how large the number is of those who hear, or rather feel, music in this way. Since they are susceptible only to what is elementary, they attain but a vague supersensuous and yet sensuous excitement, answering to the commonplace character of the music which appeals to them. Lounging half asleep in the boxes, they yield themselves to the swing of the melody without taking note of the exalted passages which may swell, yearn, jubilate, and throb with increasing appeal. These people, sitting in a state of undefined ecstasy, form the body of ‘the appreciative public,’ and do more than any other class to discredit what is best in music. Science can now supply these hearers who are void of spirituality and seek only the effects of rhythm in music with what they need, by means of an agency which far surpasses art in this effect—namely, chloroform. It will plunge the whole organism into a lethargy pervaded by lovely dreams, and, without the vulgarity of drinking, will produce an intoxication which is not unlike its effect.”56 Hanslick is quite right in one respect: the trance condition as such is not confined to musical enjoyment; but he overlooks what Nietzsche makes so clear, that it is an indispensable physiological condition of the most intense form of æsthetic pleasure. His position is more that of the critic than that of the pleasure seeker. His saying that “the laity ‘feel’ music most and the cultivated artist least” shows this. First and foremost to him is his “intellectual satisfaction in following and anticipating the motive of the composition, in being confirmed in his judgment here or agreeably disappointed there.”57 The element of æsthetic enjoyment in this I have characterized, in my Einleitung in die Aesthetik (p. 187), as internal imitative creation. But the purest, highest, and most spontaneous pleasure is that in which we have no thought for the artist, but yield ourselves whole-heartedly to the beautiful object. Here is the essence of the problem, and here the condition of transport becomes most prominent, though it is never entirely wanting, even in the outer circles of æsthetics, where it becomes comparatively unimportant, as, for instance, in the satisfaction afforded us by the happy arrangement of the heads of a discourse.

In trying to find out just what it is that rhythm suggests to us in simple tones that succeed one another at agreeable intervals we may advance the hypothesis—to use a somewhat strained expression—namely, that it makes the impression of a dancing voice. By this I mean that in the enjoyment of melody there is a mental fusion of two kinds of association, one the analogue of pleasing movement in space, and the other the analogue of vocal expression of mental and emotional processes. The two are so incorporated as to produce a new entity which, as a whole, is unlike any other. The fact that we represent tone-beats by up-and-down motion in space has never been satisfactorily explained, although the greatest variety of reasons has been advanced.58 Yet it is unquestionable that we do, and that the act is one of our most cherished mental recreations; to use Schopenhauer’s expression, nothing else produces the “idea of movement” in such purity and freedom as do tone-beats. A series of tones more or less rapid, says Siebeck, can adequately reproduce the rhythm of movement “without a visible physical basis, which, by reason of its relation to other associated images, would tend to destroy the impression of movement considered purely as such.”59 On this, too, depends the extraordinary facility of tone movement, of which Köstlin says that it “glides, turns, twists, hops, leaps, jumps up and down, dances, bows, sways, climbs, quivers, blusters, and storms, all with equal ease, while in order to reproduce it in the physical world a man would have to dash himself to pieces or in some way become imponderable.”60 All this goes to prove that our pleasure in the realization of movement is never more perfectly ministered to than in music. Spellbound by the magic of rhythm, our consciousness repeats, voluntarily and persistently, the varying dance of tones, and, freed from all incumbrances, floats blissfully in boundless space, like Musa in Keller’s dance legend.

But melody is more than a mere alternation of tone. It is also a kind of language, by means of which the soul’s deepest emotions seek expression. While it does suggest up-and-down motion in space, at the same time it stands for the audible expression of our mental life. It would be misleading to attempt to explain this illusion from simple analogies between speech and music, since it is itself primarily a mode of expression, and we involuntarily make known our feelings and desires by means of it; by such association of tone with voice the former comes to point for us to life and its manifestations. There are, however, many points of resemblance between melody and the verbal expression of feeling. Dubos has devoted some attention to this relation, and, among contemporary writers, Spencer has most clearly set forth the analogy. But he makes the mistake of applying it to the origin of music, rather than as an explanation of our enjoyment of it, and is decidedly at fault in the statement that music originated in passionate and excited speech.61 It can attain reflection only by means of the changing time and stress of melodic and rhythmic movement, as well as the appropriation of the numerous sounds and intervals which are hidden in feeling speech, and which take effect on the listener. Yet even this statement must not be interpreted too literally. Just as scenery often owes its impressiveness to vague suggestions of human interest, just as thunder sounds like an angry voice without being an exact copy of it, so the analogy between music and speech may be very real without their becoming identical at any point. The song of birds will perhaps best illustrate my meaning. Why does the nightingale’s note seem plaintive and that of other birds cheerful or bold? Certainly not because we know the bird’s feelings, but because there is an indefinable likeness between our own vocal expression of emotion and the bird’s song, which, in spite of its vagueness, calls forth in us the most direct response. And it is exactly so in the other case. We can not expect to change an emotional declamation into the same kind of melody simply by fixing the pitch and regulating the intervals, for melody has its own laws, to which speech is not amenable. We see, then, that though the analogy is a real one and a constant, it must not be carried too far. How far variation of stress is concerned with emotional expression is interestingly shown in Wundt’s attempt to classify temperament on this basis:

	Strong.	Weak.
Fast	Choleric.	Sanguine.
Slow	Melancholic.	Phlegmatic.

With regard to intervals, let any one attempt a mournful “O dear!” and a jubilant “All right!” in the major and minor thirds, and he will not remain in doubt for a moment as to which is the suitable one for each occasion. Gurney’s experiments with children resulted in the same emotional effects when the piano was very much out of tune as when it was correct,62 and the attempt of Helmholtz to find a physical explanation signally failed. All these facts point to the independence of the musical interval.

In concluding, I repeat that these two analogies are capable of fusion, as my figure of “dancing voice” implies.63 If we try, for instance, to determine what constitutes the masculine, almost harsh, quality of Bach’s melodies, we will find on inspection that his best arias have a variety of formal qualities of which it is difficult to say whether they pertain more to movement in space or to voice expression. There is pre-eminently a fulness of accent which imparts even to the weaker notes a certain impetus (Béreíté dích Zîón). Moreover, his propensity to begin with two strong accents directly contiguous (Méin gläúbiges Heize, In Déine Hände), which impart to the whole a massive character from the very first, as well as the many repetitions abruptly introduced in a different pitch, and the strongly accented final syllables where again two frequently come together; all these are characteristics which tell in two directions. Here is melody governed by the laws of harmony in its forceful, clear, and irresistibly progressive movement, as well as in the expression which it gives to a purely masculine personality, full of earnest purpose and sure of himself and his aims. Only by the fusion of these two lines of association do we get at the full significance of the piece.