There are two marvellous things in music; timbre and rhythm.
By rhythm is understood the number of a group of corresponding vibrations recurring in a second. Rhythm may be defined as a recurring movement, composed of unequal parts; the beat of a pulse, in which each pulsation can be separately distinguished, will serve as an example.
Rhythm may be found everywhere, in poetry equally with music; and it is this which imparts its chief charm. The beauty of the rhythmic prose of the Hebrew Nābhī naturally attracted the multitude independently of the subject matter of their words; and the rhythmic language of Renan’s translation of the book of Job enables us perfectly to grasp and appreciate the special charm incidental to rhythm.
Music is provocative of nervous effects, at times of great intensity; beneficent to the greater number of persons, but to others quite the reverse; in his infancy Mozart almost fainted on hearing the sound of the trumpet.
Professor Wundt—who in his works deals with the human soul and that of beasts—founded at Leipzig, in 1879, a laboratory with this inscription over the entrance, “Institute for Experimental Psychology.” Wundt said: “The result of my researches does not accord with the dualism of Plato and Descartes; from experimental psychology the animism of Aristotle (who connects psychology and biology) alone is evolved, as the plausible metaphysical conclusion.”
A wonderful man this Aristotle! Whether we wish to analyse those sensations which stir every fibre of our moral being, or to trace the etymology of a word, or study the most modern of all our sciences, the first to present himself to our mental vision is the sage of Stageira.
The first notes of an air by Mozart or of a sonata of Beethoven could never have been produced by them by chance, they were willed by a power which their composers considered outside themselves.
Inspiration—revelation—the same thing with all, in all time, and in every place, they differ but in degree. It is possible that a musical physician such as Helmholtz, added to a psychological physiologist as Wundt was, and the two grafted on to a philosopher such as Aristotle, might have been able to define, in a measure, the meaning of the words Inspiration and Revelation.
It is with a knowledge of causes that we are able to say: “The universal phenomenon of vibration is a fight for life, a fight between being and not being.”