MUSIC.

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BY HENRY GILES.

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The mere capacity in man of perceiving sound, renders the musical element a necessity in nature and in life. Discord, as a permanent state, is as inconceivable as a permanent state of chaos. The combinations of sounds, therefore, in the audible creation, if not all in detail musical, are pervaded by the musical element: No ear is insensible to the music of the air in the branches of a tree; to the groaning of it in the hollow cave—to its whistle in the grass, or to its spirit-voices in a stormy night around the dwelling. No ear is insensible to the trickling melody of the stream, to the deep song of the river—to the solemn anthem of the torrent, to the eternal harmonies of the ocean. Birds are peculiarly the musicians of the animal world. But how skillful and how rich their music is, we must learn, not from the printed page, but in the sunny grove. Though other creatures have not, as birds, the gift of song, yet are they not unmusical, and have their parts in the mighty orchestra of living nature. Musical sounds are grateful to the sense—and all beings that hear listen to them, enjoy them, and need them. In music man has a common medium of sympathy with his fellow animals. The charger prances to the sounds that swell the heart of his master—for he, too, has a heart which they can enter and dilate. A melody can soothe the lion’s rage. The elephant treads delighted to the measure of the band. The dog bays gladness to the shepherd’s flute. The cow stands in placid rapture while the milk-maid sings. Man is scarcely ever so rude as to be beyond the reach of music. It was a myth, containing as much truth as beauty, that feigned Apollo with his lyre as the early tamer of wild men. If music is the first influence which the race feels, it is also the first which the individual feels. The infant opens its intelligence and love to the mother’s song as much as to the mother’s face. The voice, even more than the look, is the primitive awakener of the intellect and heart. Every mother ought to sing. A song will outlive all sermons in the memory. Let memories that begin life have songs that last for life.

As a mere sensation, music has power. A little maid I have known, who would sit on her cricket by her father’s knee until he had read the whole of Christobel—of which she did not know the meaning of a line. It was melodious to her ear, and merely in its music there was fascination to her infant spirit. The songs which primitive people sing—in which they have their best social interchange, are frequently poor in diction and bald in sentiment. It is the music that gives the words a life; and this life can transfuse energetic inspiration into the meanest words. Early melodies are, of necessity, most simple. They are the instincts seeking to put themselves into measured sound—yet with little to fill the ear, and less to reach the mind. Nevertheless, they are good for the mind and pleasant to the ear. A rude musical sensation is of value; of how much more value is a refined musical sensation. But a musical sensation is of its very nature a refined one. It is among the purest of sensations. It may, indeed, be associated with coarse and base emotions. This, however, is not in itself. It is in the imagination or the word-music simply, as music presents nothing to the sense that is either coarse or base. The conception is from the mind to music, not from music to the mind. Speaking of music as a sensation, I speak relatively—for to man there is no music without soul. In music soul and sense both mingle—and become one in its inspired sound.

Yet the least part of music is the mere sensation. It is not on the ear but on the heart that its finest spirit dwells. There are the living chords which it puts in motion, and in whose vibration it has the echoes of its tones. The heart, after all, is the instrument with which the true musician has to deal. He must understand that from its lowest note to the top of its compass. The true test of music is the amount of feeling it contains. The true criterion of a love for music is the capacity to appreciate feeling in music. Music properly is the language of emotion. It is the language of the heart. Its grammar, its rhetoric, its eloquence, its oratory, is of the heart. The evidence of its power is in the calm or the quivering pulsation. Feeling in music is a memory, a sympathy, or an impulse. Nothing can recall with such vividness as music can a past emotion—a departed state of mind. Words are but the history of a by-gone thought—music is its presence. All our profoundest feelings are in their nature lyrical. Whatever most deeply affects us, we do, in some way, link to tune, or they are by tune awakened. The feelings sing of themselves, and make an orchestra of the brain. Persons utterly incapable of putting the simplest combination of sounds musically together, will make melody in their hearts of the reminiscences that strongly move them. And these will commonly be sad, as all is that is connected with the Past—sad, however, with various degrees of intensity—some, but calm regrets—others, dirges and requiems. Therefore it is that the most affecting melodies belong to the Past—to the past in the life of a man—to the past in the life of a nation. Such melodies come not from prosperity or power. They come from those who have missed a history, or whose history is over. Such melodies are voices of sadness—the yearnings over what might have been but was not—the regret for what has been but will never be again. And thus, too, it is with the most affecting eloquence. That which agitates the breast with force resistless is the word which is fraught with the passions of its sorrow. Life in power is Action—Life in memory is elegy or eloquence. A nation, like a man, dreams its life again—and until life is gone or changed it soliloquizes or sings its dreams. The music of memory lives in every man’s experience; and the excellence of it is, that it binds itself only to our better feelings. It is the excellence of our nature, also, that only such feelings have spontaneous memories. The worst man does not willingly recall his bad feelings: and if he did, he could not wed them to a melody. Hatred, malice—vengeance, envy, have, to be sure, their proper expressions in the lyric drama, but of themselves they are not musical, and by themselves they could not be endured. It is not so with the kind emotions. They are in themselves a music—and memory delights in the sweetness of their intonations. Love, affection, friendship, patriotism, pity, grief, courage—whatever generously swells the heart or tenderly subdues it—or purely elevates it—are, of themselves, of their own attuning and accordant graciousness, of a musical inspiration. With what enchantment will a simple strain pierce the silence of the breast, and in every note break the slumber of a thousand thoughts. It is a positive enchantment. Faces long in the clay bloom as they did in youth. An inward ear is opened through the outward—and voices of other times are speaking—and words which you had heard before come to your soul, and they are pleasant in this illusive echo. Your spirit is lost in the flight of days, and insensible to the interval of distance; it is back in other hours, and dwells in other scenes. Such are the mysterious linkings by which music interlaces itself with our feelings—and so becomes an inseparable portion of our sympathy. But sympathy exists only when music answers to the spirit. Give not a merry carol to a heavy heart; although you may give a grave strain to a light one. Music, as rightly used, is, as some one calls it, “the medicine of an afflicted mind.” Joy is heightened by exultant strains, but grief is eased only by low ones. “A sweet, sad measure” is the balm of a wounded spirit. Music lightens toil. The sailor pulls more cheerily for his song: and even the slave feels in singing that he is a man. But, in other forms of labor, we miss in our country the lyric feeling. Most of our work is done in silence. We hear none of those songs at the milking hour, which renders that hour in Europe so rich in pastoral and poetical associations. We hear no ploughman’s whistle ringing over the field with a buoyant hilarity. We have no chorusses of reapers, and no merry harvest-feasts. But if such things can not be naturally, it is vain to wish for them—and it may be even useless to mention them. Better things, perhaps, are in their place—grave meditation and manly thought—and I merely allude to them as elements that accord pleasingly with certain modes of life in countries to whose habits and history they are native. Music in social intercourse is a fine awakener of sympathies, and a fine uniter of them. A violin or a piano is often not less needed to soothe the ruffled spirit of a company, than the harp of David was to calm down the fiend in the turbulent breast of Saul. Music, as we see in the customs of all nations, is used as an antidote to the sense of danger, as well as a stimulus to the passion of combat. And as embattled hosts move with measured tramp to the field of death, music is the magic that is trusted to charm away fear or to call up courage.