The enduring moral law: How music orders the soul and mirrors society's fate

“ Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gayety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just, and beautiful. ”

“ There is as much music in the world as virtue. In a world of peace and love music would be the universal language, and men greet each other in the fields in such accents as a Beethoven now utters at rare intervals from a distance. All things obey music as they obey virtue. It is the herald of virtue. It is God’s voice. In it are the centripetal and centrifugal forces. The universe needed only to hear a divine melody, that every star might fall into its proper place, and assume its true sphericity. ”

“ He loves God, whom he cannot name, whom he worships in no church built with hands, with an equal rapture. Virtue appears to him with the same loveliness as beauty.... There are times when he despairs for himself, never for the world. Law, order, a faultless celestial music, alone exist for him; and these he believed to have been settled before time was, in the heavens. Thus his music was neither revolt nor melancholy,’ and it is this, the noblest expression of a strange and otherwise inarticulate soul, which lives for the eternal glory of the art of music. ”

“ «Music pours on mortals
Its beautiful disdain.»
Disdainful it is, truly, because it reminds us of the discord and the rhythmless onmarch of our days. It voices the passions that have torn and mutilated and stung and blinded us; we meditate the foolishness, the fatality, of our chaotic lives. But beautiful it is also; and it has been wisely said that beauty offers us «a pledge of the possible conformity of the soul with nature.» Music, at once disdainful and beautiful, shows us our deepest feelings, so wayward and tragic in experience, merged into ineffable perfection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Classic beauty was indeed there, but with the expression of inadequacy to its internal consciousness, oppressed with the grief of its fallen existence, and with the sadness of an infinite longing on its ethereal countenance.
'Soul.' Music, addressing itself through the ear to the emotions, is the art of the longing, divining, loving soul. It never excites abstract or antagonistic thought; it unites humanity in concrete feeling. ”

“ If ideas, feelings, imaginations, are intellectual, then is music; if that which can excite, combine, modify, elevate—memories, feelings, imagination—is intellectual, then music is intellectual.
An art which, like music, is the offspring of passion and emotion, could not but take a dramatic form. The lyrical drama, secular and sacred, civilized humanity could not but produce. Nothing is more natural than that the gayety and grief of the heart should seek the intense and emphatic expression which music can afford. ”

“ But unite them, see them pass into the mouths and hearts of convulsed multitudes, observe men, under the delirium of their influence, march up to the cannon’s mouth and plunge themselves headlong into eternity, and we have an instance of what is meant by saying that music, united to intelligence, is an agent of nearly unlimited power for good or evil in human society. ”

“ It is a pity that music, which may be so serviceable to the good temper of the mind, should ever be abused by any to the support of vanity and luxury, and made an occasion of drawing the heart away from God and serious things: if this be to any the effect of it, it drives away the good Spirit, not the evil spirit. ”

“ Of the truth of their proposition in the abstract, there can be little doubt; it is in the rigid application and extreme extension of it the fault lies. Music has certainly a powerful influence on the passions, and produces happy effects upon the human heart and mind when cultivated moderately: but when it becomes the general prevailing passion of a nation, or, as it were, gets dominion over them, it unquestionably produces not effeminacy merely, but a hateful depravity of manners. ”

“ Seldom indeed do men reflect on the connexion between the chords of music and the social affections. Morality is to immorality, what harmony is to discord. Society detests vice, and the ear is offended with discordant sounds. Society is pleased and happified with virtue, and the ear is delighted with harmony. ”

“ He who violates it cannot be allowed to work in our city, and to corrupt the taste of our citizens. For our guardians must grow up, not amid images of xliv deformity which will gradually poison and corrupt their souls, but in a land of health and beauty where they will drink in from every object sweet and harmonious influences. And of all these influences the greatest is the education given by music, which finds a way into the innermost soul and 402imparts to it the sense of beauty and of deformity. ”

“ Much that is evil in life, much that offends against the moral law, must be regarded as beautiful in so far as it plays its necessary part in the universal whole. Clearing away these misconceptions, then, an approximate definition would be that the essence of beauty is harmony. So soon as a detail is shown in its relation to a whole, then it becomes beautiful because it is expressive of the supreme unity. A discord in music is felt to be a discord only as it is isolated; when it takes its fitting and inevitable place in the large unity of the symphony, it becomes full of meaning. ”

“ But moral worth at bottom consists in finding pleasure in what is noble, and pain in what is ignoble, that is, in a correct distribution of affection. But in good music the strains that give pleasure are attached to the ideas that are noble, and the strains that give pain to the ideas that are ignoble; hence, by a natural association, the pleasures and pains which we find in the music attach themselves to the ideas which it accompanies. ”

“ Moreover, as music is one of those things which are pleasant, and as virtue itself consists in rightly enjoying, loving, and hating, it is evident that we ought not to learn or accustom ourselves to anything so much as to judge right and rejoice in honourable manners and noble actions. But anger and mildness, courage and modesty, and their contraries, as well as all other dispositions of the mind, are most naturally imitated by music and poetry; which is plain by experience, for when we hear these our very soul is altered ”

“ That she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human conduct, renders, after a certain number of generations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little a one; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure render, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men are deceived by the long-suffering of the laws of nature ”

“ It is something ideal and unrealizable; it has nothing in common with this life, but is only a momentary aspiration of humanity towards the holiness which exists only in the world of art and beauty; afterwards, this vale of earth, with its endless sorrow, its agony of doubt and unsatisfied hopes, seems still more gloomy and without issue. In the Ninth Symphony we hear the despairing cry of a great genius who, having irrevocably lost faith in happiness, escapes for a time into the world of unrealizable hopes, into the realm of broken-winged ideals. ”

“ And today humanity responds more universally, perhaps, to the appeal of “the good old hymns” than to any other one type of music.
No one will seriously deny that music is a necessary element in our lives when it can produce in the same listener the highest spiritual exaltation as well as the most frivolous gaiety. The inspiration to strive for an ideal—the will to be better than we really are—these things come to us most readily through music and afford an adequate refuge from the world, the flesh and the devil—the triad which gives battle in every heart. ”

“ Yes, in the representative arts emotion is merely adjective; in music alone is it substantive. We see in a portrait a lovely woman; we behold in marble a noble youth; we read in poetry a desperate story; in music, on the contrary, we hear love, nobility, despair. And since this emotional life is the deepest reality we know, since our intuitions constitute in fact the very essence of that world-spirit which is but projected and symbolized in sky, sun, ocean, stars, and earth, music cannot but be a richer record of our ultimate life than those arts which deal with objects and symbols alone. ”

“ The identity between the line of melody and the lining form, between the harmony and the character-relations of this form, is true in a sense antithetical to what one would suppose on the contemplation of musical tragedy. We may agitate and enliven the form in the most conspicuous manner, and enlighten it from within, but it still continues merely phenomenon, from which there is no bridge to lead us into the true reality, into the heart of the world. Music, however, speaks out of this heart ”

“ 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. ”

“ Another moral effect of music is that it produces katharsis or ‘purification’; that is, by arousing in us pity and fear for humanity at large, it lifts us out of ourselves and affords a safe vent for our emotions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Poetry may be forgiven for hiding sorrow in bliss, but it is only music that hides bliss with sorrow. And see, Carlomein (for we are in a tale of dreams just now, and both alone) , there have been martyrs for all faiths,—for love, for poetry, for patriotism, for religion. Oh! for what cause, where passion strikes and stirs, have there not been martyrs? But I think music has not many, and those were discrowned of that glory by the other crown of Fame. Shall I die young, and not be believed to have died for music? For that end must the music be rapt and purified,—stolen from itself ”

“ Through music, which in acknowledging the error, in laying bare the fatal discord, at the same time symbolizes its resolution. Through music, in whose vocabulary sin and suffering and punishment are never final; in whose vivid coloring the great doom itself is but a vista into endless depths of harmony and peace and unexclusive bliss beyond.
The splendid sinner’s end is rather melodramatic in the opera; and yet there is a poetic and a moral truth in it; and the spectre of the Commendatore is a creation fully up to Shakspeare. No man ever literally came to that; but many have come to dread it. ”

“ The soul’s last consolation is to be found in music; of this I am certain. If there is any one thing that can make restitution for the lost illusions of religious faith, provide us with wings, transform us, and save us from the abyss to which we are rushing with savage senses, it is music. Where are you, O redeemer? You are wandering about over the earth, the poorest, the most abandoned, the guiltiest of men. When are you going to pay your debts, Daniel Nothafft? ”

“ But all this can only happen to the non-musical soul when the harmony to which it listens is really harmonious, and when it comes at an appropriate time, when the surrounding conditions permit and incline the man to surrender himself to its influences; in a word, when there is nothing else demanding his attention. The most barbarous of the practices of royalty and civic magnificence is that of employing music as an accompaniment to feasts. ”

“ In order to do justice to this essay a man ought to suffer from the fate of music as from an open wound.—From what do I suffer when I suffer from the fate of music? From the fact that music has lost its world-transfiguring, yea-saying character—that it is decadent music and no longer the flute of Dionysus. Supposing, however, that the fate of music be as dear to man as his own life, because joy and suffering are alike bound up with it ”

“ One of the destructive faults justly charged against modern art, and notably of music, is its misapplication. A want of harmony in the relation of an art to the nature and object of the thing to be expressed or illustrated by it, is the signal for its own enervation and the corruption of what it should purify and strengthen; which is the teaching alike of philosophy and experience. ”

“ Emasculated music! Such music as tyranny over mind and spirit calls for, to lull its unmanned subjects into sensual calm. Such as an Italian priesthood has encouraged, to make its people forget that they were men, and remember that they were and would ever be slaves. Music that no tyrant need ever dread, lest it should nerve the arm of a tyrannicide. Music that would never ring to any song of freedom, or chime with any lay of tender and ennobling love. ”

“ The essential spirit of discord seems let loose on our modern music, tainted, as it were, with the moral infection that has seized the [Pg 710] land; it is music for a democracy, not the stately, solemn measure of imperial majesty. ”

“ The idea that music should exercise a world redeeming power, and promote all social advancement, must appear strange, when first mentioned to those who are familiar only with fashionable operatic performances and the heartless style of vocal and instrumental music in vogue at the centres of musical education, which is robbed as thoroughly as possible of all ethical life, all soul inspiring power. ”

“ We only affected to love music. It was intellectual, spiritual, in all respects creditable to our moral nature, to be able to appreciate Mozart and Beethoven, and so we set up for connoisseurs, and martyrised ourselves that Europe might think us musical. Is there more truth in this theory than the other? Hypocrisy is not generally so lasting as the musical fervour has proved itself to be. A fashion is the affair of a season ”

“ Musical appreciation is thus subject to the same variations which make the ordinary experiences of men so diverse. The prophet on fire with righteous indignation and the common scold undergo in anger the same suffusion of blood, the same boiling up of the organs; yet how different in dignity and value are their sentiments! And music, by setting up a certain sympathetic turmoil in the organs, will plunge one man into a selfish opium-dream and will fill another with the rarest, most magnanimous aspirations. ”

“ If music could in itself give expression to ethical ideas, it would also be proper to say that this score is Parisian in its immorality. Coupled with its story, which glorifies the licentiousness of Paris and makes mock of virtue, the sanctity of the family tie, and the institutions upon which social stability and human welfare have ever rested and must forever rest, the music may also be set down as immoral. Certain it is that there is nothing in it that is spiritually uplifting, and as little that makes for gentleness and refinement of artistic taste. ”

“ Careless of the excitements and mutations of the times; unambitious of place or power; indifferent to the struggles and heart-burnings of party politicians, from the utter uncongeniality of the feelings and emotions they engender, with their own, they live secluded, shut up within their own hearts, and seldom appear to the world in their true colors, from the utter impossibility of making it comprehend or sympathise with their refined and mysterious feelings. The world has no conception of the exquisite delight that music confers upon musicians. ”

“ Would he not find in music a realm where he would breathe a purer air and be happier because he would leave behind him all those unanswerable questions which forever cry a halt to his intelligence? Moral idealism is not enough for the spirit of men and women, for, humanity being what it is, morality is bound to crystallize into dogma. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In society, where education requires a submission to rule, singing belongs to the domain of art; but in a primitive state all nations have their songs. Musical rhythm drives away weariness, lessens fatigue, detaches the mind from the painful realities of life, and braces up the courage to meet danger. ”

“ And in all public acknowledgments of our collective dependence as one race upon the one God, music alone is considered sufficiently symbolic and tender to express the universal sense of helplessness, of generic trust in His marvellous mercy. ”

“ The old man made other men, and women too, work for him, the new man is making the hitherto uncontrolled forces his servants, locking them up in such small compass that a twist of the wrist will start the crash of worlds.
The notes of the great god Pan, so "piercingly sweet by the river"—a far cry and a weary way from Pan to Handel and Beethoven; yet during all that time music has been the joy and the consolation of peoples,—all except the Quakers.
If Poetry is the prophet of the future, music expresses all emotions,—love, joy, fear, above all, aspiration. ”

“ As the ethical instructors of mankind have always disavowed the pursuit of pleasure as such, and allowed it only as subsidiary to morality and social duty, the question with legislators has been what form of music is best calculated to educe the moral virtues and the nobler characteristics of the mind. It was this view that entered into the speculative social constructions of Plato and Aristotle. Now, undoubtedly the various modes of music operate very differently on the mind: every one knows the extremes of martial and ecclesiastical music ”

“ Music is the nearest at hand, the most orderly, the most delicate, and the most perfect, of all bodily pleasures; it is also the only one which is equally helpful to all the ages of man,—helpful from the nurse's song to her infant, to the music, unheard of others, which so often haunts the deathbed of pure and innocent spirits. And the action of the deceiving or devilish power is in nothing shown quite so distinctly among us at this day,—not even in our commercial dishonesties, nor in our social cruelties,—as in its having been able to take away music, as an instrument of education, altogether ”

“ I know there are many educated and intelligent people who, absorbed in commerce, politics, and other pursuits, think that music is a mere family pastime—an ear-gratifying enjoyment. Great popularity has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, and there is no doubt that the widespread, instantaneous appreciation and popularity of melody has detracted somewhat from the proper recognition of the higher and graver attributes of music. But that music is a power and has influenced humanity with dynamic force in politics, religion, peace, and war, no one can gainsay. ”

“ Slowly we see the idea die out that only the nobles and the wealthy had the right to life, liberty and happiness, and we see the ideas of freedom and equality taking the place of serfdom and slavish obedience to over-lords. All this may seem strange to appear in a book on music but art always mirrors the life and feelings of the people of its time. ”

“ Record companies began only to record safe music, musicians began to water down their music.
The C.I.A. and F.B.I. had files on the music they knew who was going along with the program, those who bought cars and played electric music and those whose politics were considered a threat to the existing inertia. The neglect of the poor, the neglect of the arts is no accident, this country is sustained by killing off all that is beautiful, that deals with reality. They will go to any lengths to hold back the truth, to prevent the individual from hearing and seeing his or her own vision of life. ”

“ Without the growth of the individual, music cannot grow; without freedom of thought, neither the language of tones nor that of words can gain full, free utterance. Freedom is essential to the life of the indwelling spirit. Wherever the flow of thought and fancy is impeded, or the energies of the individual held in check, there music is cramped. ”

“ Every genuine strain of music is a serene prayer, or bold, inspired demand, to be united with all, at the Heart of all things. Her appeal to the world is more loving than the world can yet appreciate. Kings and statesmen, and men of affairs, and men of theories, would stand aside from their own over-rated occupations to listen to her voice, if they knew how nearly it concerned them, how much more it goes to the bottom of the matter, and how clearly she forefeels humanity's great destiny. The soul that is truly receptive of music learns angelic wisdom, and grows more childlike with experience. ”