Achmet-Marie de Servin d'Héricourt

“ Among primitive peoples of few ideas, whose feelings show few variations of shade in expression, music is almost wholly confined to a few modulations expressive of the principal divisions of feeling—love, joy, sorrow, and warlike ardor. Civilization, with its refinements, has produced a music that has grown constantly richer in shades and means of expression, to the point which has been reached by the great masters of our age. ”

“ It is impossible to treat of music without speaking of rhythm, which, without being an essential part of it, enframes it, sustains it, and gives precision to its otherwise vague expression. The origin of rhythm need be sought no further off than in the movements and paces of men. ”

“ Having thus found the origin of music in the imitation of these instinctive modulations of speech, it should be easy to draw from this an exact idea of its nature; for, without doubt, to read verse well, to declaim with warmth and conviction, is only to perform in advance the work of the musician. We have now a whole class of musical phrases which are only exaggerations of spoken intonations; they are our recitatives. The music of uncultivated peoples is mostly recitative; so also was a large part of the music of the middle ages. ”

“ By considering music as the language of the feelings, we are enabled to account for the power it has over masses composed of the most incongruous elements. An address can not affect alike persons of different degrees of intellectual development, and must fall without making any impression on a part of the audience. There is less difference in the capacity for feeling, and all are more or less subject to the same transports of emotion. The masses feel more than they think. ”

“ The application of such a word as comprehend, or understand, to music, is a source of numerous misconceptions; music does not understand, it feels. It addresses itself only to that part of us which is susceptible of emotion ”

“ We might expect the same kind of a failure if we should try to find sources of emotion in the working out of an equation.
It is true that persons exist who have no sense for music, and to whom its language is a blank; but they are rarely found, and prove nothing. Opposed to them are much more frequent instances of excessively sensitive natures, on whom even simple single musical intervals produce wonderful effects. Who has not made music without suspecting it? ”

“ Thus have originated those dreamy melodies with which working-people love to lull their melancholy, and which are frequently the only source to which we can go for the history of those who have lived and suffered in obscurity. ”

“ To this enjoyment, which exists parallel with the succession of sounds, should be added the pleasure of the hearer's adapting his personal feelings of the moment to the general sense of the performed music: a theme marked with melancholy will move a whole audience of thousands to sadness, each person of whom will associate his feeling with some particular object. This impersonality of the musical phrase and its adaptability to individual feelings explain the taste of the masses for music, and its power over them. ”

“ Different rhythms reflect the different paces of the walker or the rider plainly enough to justify us in attributing their origin to them. The same cause that makes one pace his room with gaits varying according to the impressions of the moment, in the reverie of solitude or in conversation, also determines the rhythm in music. ”

“ Good poetry is hardly susceptible of any but an uncolored music, just enough to sustain the voice; the thought, in effect, crowds out the feeling, and, a choice being forced upon the attention, too much musical accent would weaken the thought. For a full musical interpretation of the feeling, a third-rate poetry, only indicating the subject, is best, for it permits the concentration of all the attention upon the emotional expression. This is, ordinarily, the character of the librettos of operas, in which everything is subordinated to the music ”

“ This language of feeling is really more within their reach than speech; and we may generally remark that when we address ourselves to our domestic animals it is by the intonation alone, of greater or less force, that we make them understand—that is, feel. ”

“ The minor and major fifths express the feelings from prayer to violent desire and menace. The sixth is the interval of passion; it is the symbol of a very accentuated emotion, and is inevitably met where love is declared. A semitone higher conveys the idea of something painful, which is resolved into a real expression of grief in the cry of the seventh, the symbol of an excess of suffering. There are, in effect, no two ways of saying the same thing in music, and it is only in the way the phrase is introduced and sustained by the harmony that authors vary. ”

“ As different human races have their several languages, so each one has its own musical system; and these various systems, the existence of which is explainable by the action of the same causes that have made different words to designate the same things, prove that the origin of the two languages is common, and that the one is the spontaneous expression of feelings, as the other is of thoughts. ”

“ IT is common, in defining music, to compare it with some other art, painting, for instance, and say it is to the ear what that is to the eye; that it is the representation of the ideal by a means especially adapted to the organ to which it is addressed, or by the combination of sounds. ”

“ Nothing, in fact, is more incompatible with pleasure than monotony, even in agreeable things. The feelings do not escape this general law; and the cause of musical enjoyment must be sought in the infinite variety of conditions of feeling through which the rapid succession of musical intervals makes us pass. ”

“ In the theory of Helmholtz, music expresses the different dispositions of the soul by imitating the characteristic particularities of movement in space, and by thus translating the forces and impulses that produce the movement. ”

“ As we must have the power of comprehending abstract ideas in order to understand philosophers, so we must be more or less accustomed to musical sensations to appreciate the great musicians; and it is interesting to observe how we learn by study to enjoy works which at first fall cold upon us. ”

“ He contradicted this, and defined music as the double result of the conformation of the organs and the disposition of the soul, as the art of awakening emotion by means of the combination of sounds. It is, in fact, generally agreed that music addresses itself more directly to our feelings and passions, and is correctly said that it speaks to them in a special language. ”

“ In certain states of feeling we are sometimes surprised to find ourselves composing simple melodies that are never finished, and are major or minor according as we are gay or sad, while we may be totally ignorant of the existence of those modes. ”

“ Most uncivilized peoples are unacquainted with semitones, and use scales with full intervals. This is easily accounted for if we suppose that these intervals are the ones which represent the elementary intonations, and that they constitute a music near its origin. The need of representing shades of feeling brings about a progressive filling up of the intervals. ”

“ Melancholy sentiments involving diminished vitality, we might naturally conceive them to be expressed musically by diminished intervals, the compass of which requires little effort; while earnest desires, strong passions, and pleasant and happy feelings, being accompaniments of a more active vitality, provoke more vigorous expressions; and these expressions, by giving an outlet to the excess of vitality, furnish one of the best means for calming violent passions. ”

“ The elements it represents can not be conceived as isolated from each other, any more than we can conceive a human organization a pure intelligence. We all know the important part intonation plays in conversation, and how by it the general sense, the whole expression of the spoken words, may be varied indefinitely. ”

“ The smaller intervals are congenial with indifference, monotony, doubt, melancholy, and sadness; the group of moderate intervals affirms occupation, pleasure, and desire, which grow more ardent as we approach the extreme intervals ”

“ Just as our emotional being loves to be amused by rhythms suggesting natural outer movements, so certain cadenced sounds casually heard, such as that of a passing train, the trotting of a horse, or the beating of oars, induce states of sensibility, under the influence of which we surprise ourselves by humming old airs, or by improvising melodies that naturally adapt themselves to the fortuitous movement. ”

“ While he admits that it may have been at first only an imitation of the instinctive modulations of the voice corresponding with the different states of the mind, he does not consider this fact contradictory to his definition, for the natural processes of vocal expression are capable of being traced back to the same elements. "Rhythm and accentuation express directly the rapidity and vivacity of corresponding psychical movements; a vehement effort causes the voice to rise; the desire to produce an agreeable impression on another person prompts us to select a pleasant tone ”