Athenæus, in his frequent allusions to music, attributes to it many intellectual and emotional properties (e.g., Book XIV, Chapter XXV) and in one place refers to "melodies inciting to lawless indulgence" (Book XIII, Chapter LXXV).
We may gather from the Priapeia (XXVI) that cymbals and castanets were the special accompaniment in antiquity of wanton songs and dances: "cymbala, cum crotalis, pruriginis arma."
The ancient belief in the moralizing influence of music has survived into modern times mainly in a somewhat more scientific form as a belief in its therapeutic effects in disordered nervous and mental conditions. (This also is an ancient belief as witnessed by the well-known example of David playing to Saul to dispel his melancholia.) In 1729 an apothecary of Oakham, Richard Broune, published a work entitled Medicina Musica, in which he argued that music was beneficial in many maladies. In more recent days there have been various experiments and cases brought forward showing its efficacy in special conditions.
An American physician (W. F. Hutchinson) has shown that anæsthesia may be produced with accurately made tuning forks at certain rates of vibration (summarized in the British Medical Journal, June 4, 1898). Ferrand in a paper read before the Paris Academy of Medicine in September, 1895, gives reasons for classing some kinds of music as powerful antispasmodics with beneficial therapeutic action. The case was subsequently reported of a child in whom night-terrors were eased by calming music in a minor key. The value of music in lunatic asylums is well recognized; see e.g., Näcke, Revue de Psychiatrie, October, 1897. Vaschide and Vurpas (Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie, December 13, 1902) have recorded the case of a girl of 20, suffering from mental confusion with excitation and central motor disequilibrium, whose muscular equilibrium was restored and movements rendered more co-ordinated and adaptive under the influence of music.
While there has been much extravagance in the ancient doctrine concerning the effects of music, the real effects are still considerable. Not only is this demonstrated by the experiments already referred to (p. 118), indicating the efficacy of musical sounds as physiological stimulants, but also by anatomical considerations. The roots of the auditory nerves, McKendrick has pointed out, are probably more widely distributed and have more extensive connections than those of any other nerve. The intricate connections of these nerves are still only being unraveled. This points to an explanation of how music penetrates to the very roots of our being, influencing by associational paths reflex mechanisms both cerebral and somatic, so that there is scarcely a function of the body that may not be affected by the rhythmical pulsations, melodic progressions, and harmonic combinations of musical tones. (Nature, June 15, 1899, p. 164.)
Just as we are not entitled from the ancient belief in the influence of music on morals or the modern beliefs in its therapeutic influence—even though this has sometimes gone to the length of advocating its use in impotence[[118]]—to argue that music has a marked influence in exciting the specifically sexual instincts, neither are we entitled to find any similar argument in the fact that music is frequently associated with the love-feelings of youth. Men are often able to associate many of their earliest ideas of love in boyhood with women singing or playing; but in these cases it will always be found that the fascination was romantic and sentimental, and not specifically erotic.[[119]] In adult life the music which often seems to us to be most definitely sexual in its appeal (such as much of Wagner's Tristan) really produces this effect in part from the association with the story, and in part from the intellectual realization of the composer's effort to translate passion into æsthetic terms; the actual effect of the music is not sexual, and it can well be believed that the results of experiments as regards the sexual influence of the Tristan music on men under the influence of hypnotism have been, as reported, negative. Helmholtz goes so far as to state that the expression of sexual longing in music is identical with that of religious longing. It is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to every normal man as to Lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the attraction of a beautiful face. But the voice is not usually in itself an adequate or powerful method of evoking sexual emotion in a man. Even in its supreme vocal manifestations the sexual fascination exerted by a great singer, though certainly considerable, cannot be compared with that commonly exerted by the actress. Cases have, indeed, been recorded—chiefly occurring, it is probable, in men of somewhat morbid nervous disposition—in which sexual attraction was exerted chiefly through the ear, or in which there was a special sexual sensibility to particular inflections or accents.[[120]] Féré mentions the case of a young man in hospital with acute arthritis who complained of painful erections whenever he heard through the door the very agreeable voice of the young woman (invisible to him) who superintended the linen.[[121]] But these phenomena do not appear to be common, or, at all events, very pronounced. So far as my own inquiries go, only a small proportion of men would appear to experience definite sexual feelings on listening to music. And the fact that in woman the voice is so slightly differentiated from that of the child, as well as the very significant fact that among man's immediate or even remote ancestors the female's voice can seldom have served to attract the male, sufficiently account for the small part played by the voice and by music as a sexual allurement working on men.[[122]]
It is otherwise with women. It may, indeed, be said at the outset that the reasons which make it antecedently improbable that men should be sexually attracted through hearing render it probable that women should be so attracted. The change in the voice at puberty makes the deeper masculine voice a characteristic secondary sexual attribute of man, while the fact that among mammals generally it is the male that is most vocal—and that chiefly, or even sometimes exclusively, at the rutting season—renders it antecedently likely that among mammals generally, including the human species, there is in the female an actual or latent susceptibility to the sexual significance of the male voice,[[123]] a susceptibility which, under the conditions of human civilization, may be transferred to music generally. It is noteworthy that in novels written by women there is a very frequent attentiveness to the qualities of the hero's voice and to its emotional effects on the heroine.[[124]] We may also note the special and peculiar personal enthusiasm aroused in women by popular musicians, a more pronounced enthusiasm than is evoked in them by popular actors.
As an interesting example of the importance attached by women novelists to the effects of the male voice I may refer to George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, probably the most intimate and personal of George Eliot's works. In Book VI of this novel the influence of Stephen Guest (a somewhat commonplace young man) over Maggie Tulliver is ascribed almost exclusively to the effect of his base voice in singing. We are definitely told of Maggie Tulliver's "sensibility to the supreme excitement of music." Thus, on one occasion, "all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet—emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak: strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. Poor Maggie! She looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the slightest perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while her eyes dilated and brightened into that wideopen, childish expression of wondering delight, which always came back in her happiest moments." George Eliot's novels contain many allusions to the powerful emotional effects of music.
It is unnecessary to refer to Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, in which music is regarded as the Galeotto to bring lovers together—"the connecting bond of music, the most refined lust of the senses."
In primitive human courtship music very frequently plays a considerable part, though not usually the sole part, being generally found as the accompaniment of the song and the dance at erotic festivals.[[125]] The Gilas, of New Mexico, among whom courtship consists in a prolonged serenade day after day with the flute, furnish a somewhat exceptional case. Savage women are evidently very attentive to music; Backhouse (as quoted, by Ling Roth[[126]]) mentions how a woman belonging to the very primitive and now extinct Tasmanian race, when shown a musical box, listened "with intensity; her ears moved like those of a dog or horse, to catch the sound."