CHAPTER I.
Music as a Human Need.
Our thesis contemplates a new phase in psychological and sociological study, one wherein we must endeavor to estimate the part played in mental and environmental development, by vibration as the acting force.
In whatever direction we turn, Music is met with in one form or another. The undoubted fact that Music is not confined to the human species, but is a part of bird and other animal life, is strongly indicative that there is something more in Music, than its apparent pleasurable quality, and that beneath its array of superficial forms, there must lie some great fundamental necessity for its existence and functioning. Upon it may depend the preservation of the life of certain complex living organisms.
Darwin’s theory as expressed in “The Descent of Man”[7] seems to us not to touch the real source of the phenomenon, and in Spencer’s “Illustrations of Universal Progress,” the latter’s theory of the Origin and Function of Music[8] seems to us to omit the greatest factor in Music. Spencer’s idea is that all Music is an idealization of the natural language of passion, but the nature of passion does not in reality lend itself to Music, because passion’s spontaneity of action forever forbids the exercise of that control which is needed in the performance of Music. Wallaschek, in “Primitive Music,”[9] claims that Music is the result of the original rhythmical impulse in man. This last mentioned theory approaches more nearly the theory advanced by us in the present work, namely, that Music originates in man’s need of rhythmical sound-vibrations, for the re-establishment of rhythmical motion in his own nervous system, disturbed by the evolutionary increase of mental action not rhythmically employed.[10] In order to view the subject fully, and in all its implications, we must retrace the path of evolution to that point, where the living thing which later developed into the man of today, first found itself in possession of locomotion agencies and prehensile appendages, and first began to move about in search of energy materials, with which to satisfy an inward need of integration. The first thing that moved began to dissipate its motion, and to “need” corresponding integration. Rhythm marked this primitive inward action, undisturbed by ideas; rhythm also governed the external stimulus. This prehistoric atavus ate when hungry, or when he could get food, his need being rhythmical, at the time when fruit and nuts offered easy satisfaction of a rhythmic hunger; he awoke at daybreak, and slept with the sun; rhythmic at all times.
Now, therefore, this early man’s circulation and pulse must have been relatively rhythmic, yet there is no record of Music as an invention, until a new factor arose in his environment.[11] The needs of life began to suggest partnerships, children cemented parenthood groups, family groups met and associated with other family groups, still others were added and the Tribe was formed. Much of the Tribal life of prehistoric times is a matter of conjecture, but enough can be learned from the mores of later tribes, to suggest with reasonable probability some of the earliest tribal customs. Music is a late invention, but the elements out of which Music is fashioned—rhythm, motion and sound—constitute the first impulses, the first responses to stimuli in themselves rhythmic; and the oldest peoples exhibit traces of the love of sound in rhythmic action. The probability is that association, with man as with birds, developed a need of communication; from this need originated the acoustic formation of speech, and speech in turn brought the first conscious interchange of ideas. Intense mental action causes disturbed physical rhythm. Physical functions are not yet adapted to the physical disturbance caused by such mental action. The organs for the assimilation of the terrific stimuli of modern life, are still imperfectly developed, as is illustrated by the inability of the body to cope with increasing intellectuality, and the consequent alleged increase of insanity in modern times. As the eye has evolved from the sense of touch to its present power, and may progress to a capacity for still clearer vision, so has the nervous system evolved from its single cell, to its present cell multiplicity, and may develop new cell formations, with which to support changing degrees of added stimuli.
A departure from established belief will be noted at this point. Ideas were wonderful and powerful stimuli to the primitive mind. That extreme tension which causes modern minds to become unbalanced, is not proportionately more intense, than must have been the reaction of the primitive mind, to the very first question and answer of primitive speech. A new stimulus acting upon a new organ produced a new disturbance—a disturbance of a life heretofore purely rhythmic; and a part of the internal organic family became separated for independent motion, became differentiated with a rhythm of its own, differing as a matter of course, from that old established rhythm of the most ancient physical life. Right at this point of development, the need of more or less conscious readjustment was instinctively felt. Internal rhythm had been disturbed, and man immediately invented an artificial producer of rhythmic vibration: i. e.—percussion. This sent into his nervous system uncounted thousands of rhythmic impulses, which tended to reestablish his disturbed rhythmic motion. To hold that the first rhythmic inventions are to be looked for in war songs, in religious rites, or in festal diversions, seems to us to ignore, not only all of the immensely important prior steps by which such comparative complexity has been attained, but also to leave the phenomenon of rhythm-craving, before the invention of the most primitive instrument, entirely unaccounted for. When the war element enters into tribal life, there has already been some growth of institutionalization. Home life, marriage, inheritance, government—these we find already in a certain stage of development, in the very earliest tribes of which we have any positive knowledge. The life of these tribes, so similar in all parts of the world, produced certain disturbances within the original rhythmic bodily motion. The reaction to such disturbance was exactly expressed, in the rhythm producers instinctively devised at each stage. War was the only great disturber of habitual rhythm for ages, and consequently Music of a character to meet the need of this element was early invented.
For domestic rhythm-disturbing crises, Music—sound—was often employed by the tribes. The ancient Chinese[12] used to “sound” the house of a newly wedded couple, under the impression that in this way the bride and groom would enter a home “cleared of evil demons”. Here we have a sub-conscious recognition of the actual driving force of rhythmic vibration. So, in ancient Japan, war songs were the old expressions of national agitation. These, accompanied as they invariably were, by high sentiments of loyalty and patriotism, steadied the rage of war-fever to a good fighting point, and prevented impulsive, or too reckless charging.
The Hindus[13] believe their musical scale is an inspiration from Heaven. Their Music is an expression of religious rather than military agitation.
When we think of how primitive man at first must have wondered at all the unknown forces about him, is it not possible to believe that religious, rather than warlike emotion, was the first to intensely agitate all early tribes?