Why We Love Music

by Carl E. Seashore

It gradually radiates from the lips through more general expressions of comfort in the face as a whole, and we have a clearly developed smile. Gradually it becomes associated with sounds—inceptive gurgling, simple droning, light chatter, and other inceptive forms of vocalization, always accompanied with a smile, which thus develops new meanings, and mother and child acquire mutual understandings, because from the first the mother tends to respond sympathetically in like language.

As this association grows it takes the form of audible laughter which, at a comparatively high stage of development, becomes a "ha-ha-ha" with musical inflections. This is a form of language, still not expressing specific ideas, but the general attitudes of well-being, comfort, satisfaction of young life as a whole. The mother knows it, loves it, and responds accordingly; and this mother's response draws from the infant a growing hierarchy of new types of responses, meaning the same thing.

Gradually these infantile sounds develop inflections and modulations in pitch, in loudness, in rhythm, and in tone quality. These inflections are the beginning of beauty in voice, and each new conquest gives a new form of satisfaction to the child and mother.

The mother may stimulate natural forms for expression of mutual feeling by her own musical laughter. Gradually the playing with these sounds becomes an object in itself, the making of a particular sound for mere pleasure. This is the beginning of singing and the appreciation of musical sounds.

We observe the child playing with modulations in pitch, in loudness, in duration, and in different kinds of tone quality. This is the beginning of musical experiment, of musical creation, and musical appreciation in the child. Blessed is the mother who can appreciate the music thus born. She then sees the significance of the rhythmic patty-cake as music which gives pleasure to mother and child alike. She then begins to understand that the jingling of a bell is sweet music to the child. She can see how the appreciation of rhythm is gradually revealed through the progressive development of means of making sounds and hearing varieties of sound. Perhaps unconsciously she sets patterns for a musical inflection which the child begins to imitate. To the child, noise is music, and the discovery of noises and the mastery of various noises play an immensely rich and important role, even in the highest forms of adult music.

Thus, the recognition and feeling of pleasure in sounds, and the power to make agreeable sounds, reveal to the child an unfolding musical world. His whole organism responds to it. This is an element of musical feeling.

Let me digress for a moment to say that the beginnings of mental life tend to develop from two fundamental needs: attraction and repulsion, likes and dislikes, approaching and getting away from—these being respectively the positive and the negative aspects of adjustment. The smile is the sign of the positive side. The companion piece of the smile as a taproot is the frown, which gradually develops through crying and is the reciprocal of laughter. The history of the frown and crying is quite parallel to the history of the smile and laughter in mental evolution and in the development of the individual.

Music in play. While it does serve a purpose as language in social adjustment, the musical activity of the young child is expression for the love of expression itself. This play aspect early differentiates itself from the use of sounds to convey meaning in language.

The child composes, rapidly revealing new melodic progressions, new rhythms, new kinds of sounds, and new patterns in the durations of sounds for his own delight in self-expression. Through them he wins manifestations of appreciation from those around him who constitute his audience. He repeats each new achievement as the momentary goal of play until new patterns progressively take their place. In these actions of musical composition, the same mental faculties that we see in the active adult composers are at work, but limited to the child's natural level of successful achievement.

He early reveals command of the four elements of all music, as such; namely, pitch, loudness, time, and kind of tone or tone quality; and we observe the unfolding of melody, dynamic expression, rhythm, and richness of tone. Through these he imitates the sounds of nature, speech, music, and noises at his level in the surroundings. In terms of these he develops memories, indulges in fantasy and creative imagination, and gradually begins to think about music. These are the avenues through which the child expresses his needs and urges vocally or instrumentally; but they are music in so far as they are indulged in for the pleasure of the hearing or the making of the sounds themselves.