Even in the grand opera audiences of Germany, the public persists in manifesting a love for those musical ideas which awake emotions rather than cool critical judgment. The simple Kinder Lieder can be counted upon to bring the emotions to view, and unrequited love, the romantic woes of a god-like hero, or the dainty texts of sentimental ballads, are as effectual now as they ever were. Russian audiences are still more responsive to the emotional element in music, but their temperaments have a strong dash of the Ideo-motor in them.
All through Canada and the Western part of the United States, the Ideo-Emotional type of music awakens quickest response. Old ballads like “Coming Through the Rye,” “Home Sweet Home,” “Annie Laurie,” will bring applause during the preludes, and only in the most complicated environment is there a genuine response to the relatively complicated works of Wagner.
In a concert test upon the stone-working Italians at Wappingers Falls, N. Y., the home-sick Italians were so affected by “Santa Lucia” that they all closed their eyes and joined the singer, weeping as they sang. It was reported dangerous for a woman to go alone among these men, but they sang song after song for us, and escorted her five miles to the railroad station.[26]
Dogmatic-Emotional Types.
The Greek Church music and the music of the Catholic Church acts specially upon the Dogmatic-Emotional types. It is a curious sight to Americans to watch Russian peasants and officials praying in the railroad stations before rough altars and highly gilded images. The candles, always burning, suggest the strength of that command, authority, dogma, belief, which lies so heavily upon Russian minds. Under such a burden, the type of music must come within the restricted range of comprehension permitted to this type of mind. Yet this enforced religion does not act more sternly upon the choice of music in Russia, than does the free Dogmatic-Emotionalism seen in Ocean Grove, N. J. Here you find response to the same musical type that satisfied Russian audiences of a Dogmatic-Emotional character. Ocean Grove inhabitants do not pray in public stations, but no car runs on Sunday; no wagons deliver goods on the Sabbath, the rules which govern conduct and musical production in Russia, are not more strictly obeyed than are those which frown upon Sunday amusement in Ocean Grove, or dictate its musical supply. Strange to note, the Catholic element is more open in its “desecration” of the Sabbath, than is the Protestant element. This may be accounted for by the larger degree of Ideo-Motor activity among Catholic groups, notwithstanding the strength of the Church hold upon the fidelity of its members.
The Dogmatic-Emotional groups “need” a music to correspond to their type, and only such music is successful with them. Many years in church circles have proved to us the real desire or “need” of hymns and sacred songs, as a satisfaction of this type’s yearnings.
The Rationalistic Group.
Now we come to a class of comparatively few representatives. It presents a nearer approach to symmetry in its curve of mental and physical poise. It responds to stimuli appealing through knowledge to the higher intellectual processes. Ideals are stronger than their physical manifestations; the idea is more important than the model; the type is less affected by common stimuli; it secludes itself in contemplation, in more cool investigation of its own responses; it seeks food for mental labor, with time for detailed analysis of that work. All this means a more normal equilibrium between periods of high motion and rest; it means that a smaller chance of “disturbance” is encountered by this type, and consequently a smaller “need” of rhythmic music. The problem opera will satisfy it. In less need of marked rhythm, the analysis of new musical form will occupy these minds, regardless of the lack of either rhythmic or harmonious effects. The smallness of the Rationalistic group is indicated by the unpopularity of rationalistic composition. Opera managements produce the new “rationalistic” works, but they make up their financial losses by the Ideo-Emotional works like Faust, Carmen, Cavaleria Rusticana, Madam Butterfly and most of the beloved works of the popular operatic repertoire.
Thus we see that if music is a human need, it is a need greatest among the Ideo-motor and Ideo-Emotional types, or among the lower and middle classes chiefly. The Dogmatic-Emotional type needs a music of its own, and never fails to produce it. The Rationalistic type, also needs its music, because its rationalism has not yet extended to an absolute perfection of equilibrium between dissipation and integration of bodily forces, and wherever abnormality of pulse exists, there musical rhythm is “needed.” Even were this theory of musical need not admitted, the genuine love of music constitutes a need. So intense a yearning, unsatisfied, cannot be beneficial to the human system. Whether we admit music as a necessary part of human pleasure, or as a necessary stimulus to human rhythm of bodily motions, its “need” will scarcely be denied in the face of its constant demand and supply. Music reinforces human energy, aids in the control and order of the mind, elevates the conception of life, and furnishes repose for the overstimulated nerves of urban communities. Placing music then where you will, it belongs among those “better materials for storing, conveying and transforming energy”[27] and its wise application may lead to surprising results, in the conservation of faculties, now doomed to decay under the law of diminishing returns.
That some change in the bodily molecules takes place as a result of musical indulgence is believed by the author. The change in the pulse rate before and after a musical performance indicates an effect upon the circulation. The same time spent in listening to a lecture, shows less freedom from tension. This was shown in the 84 experiments with working girls. The 103 benefit tests upon revolutionary audiences showed marked effects in calming power: ten years’ experience in church choirs, showed the vast superiority of service with music, over service without music, in calming excitable congregations and in rousing phlegmatic ones; ninety-one consecutive experiments at Coney Island demonstrated that music can calm revolt, and change irritation to tranquillity; over three hundred concert studies in Russia and in the United States have shown marked increase in the normality of expression in audiences, after an evening of music, and twelve years of experience in teaching music, have shown so decided results in greater health and happiness in pupils, that music as a human “need” appears to us to be established beyond doubt.