Music lover

“ It is therefore evident that any attempt to account for a specific affection, such as the love of music, must be fractionated, placing responsibility in turn upon the scientist, the artist, and the self-revelation of the inspired music lover at each culture level. It has become the recognized function of the psychology of music to integrate the contributions from all scientific sources, such as anatomy, physiology, anthropology, acoustics, mental hygiene, and logic, in their bearings upon the hearing of music, the appreciation of music, musical skills, theories, and influences. ”

“ This taught me that music of every kind has its lover, and that with a little pains and a little patience the love for music belongs to all alike, and may be increased if other things do not push it aside. ”

“ Many are content to listen to music for the mere sensuous impression it creates as it wraps itself about the inner being, lulling a perturbed spirit to rest, or awakening longing and aspiration, joy and sadness, according to the nature of the music and the hearer's mood. ”

“ This ear for music, again, is something quite different from scientific knowledge of music or from the emotional sensitiveness which makes the music-lover. It is a purely physical endowment, and may—in fact, usually does—exist without a corresponding degree of real feeling for music. It is, of course, a highly valuable adjunct to a genuine musical genius like a Mozart or a Schubert and to a genuine virtuoso. ”

“ II Blunders in Music Study
Like a voice from the Unseen, the Eternal, music speaks to the soul of man. Its informing word being delivered in the language of the emotional nature finds some response to its appeal in every normal human breast. ”

“ Similar remarks might be quoted by the score from the letters of composers and other great men devoted to music, showing that music is valued like a personal friend who is always ready to sympathize with our joys and sorrows. And when a real music-lover comes across a beautiful new piece, how he bubbles over with enthusiasm to play or sing it to his friends, and let them share the pleasure ”

“ Truly indeed has it been said that its universality gives music its high worth. Mirroring [Pg 39] neither your inner life alone nor mine, but the world's essence, the transfiguration of what seems real, the divine Ideal, some spark of which glows in every bosom, each individual may feel in it whatever he is capable of feeling. The soul's language, it takes up the thread dropped by words and gives utterance to those refined sentiments and holy aspirations words are inadequate to awaken or express. ”

“ Only by taking it into our hearts and homes, by admitting it to our intimate companionship, can we approach a knowledge of the art that has enriched so many lives, even though it has never yet completely fulfilled its function. At the same time, every music lover is helped to new ideas, inspired to fresh efforts, by suggestions and statements from those who have themselves had deep experiences in their search for the inner sanctuary of the Temple of Art. ”

“ In fact, the aim has been to equip the lover of music—that is, of good music of all kinds—with the knowledge which will enable him to enjoy far more than before either an orchestral concert, a piano or song recital, an opera or a music-drama—anything, 26 in fact, in music from Bach to Richard Strauss ”

“ There{151} have been others who used the acted drama and the lyric, like Shakespeare; or words and music—”
“Let us see how your thesis works out with music,” says Mrs. Ogi.
Up to the end of the eighteenth century music has been either an adjunct of religious propaganda, or else a leisure-class plaything and decoration. The musicians are commanded to come and entertain their lords and masters, while the latter feast and dance and gossip. The musician as an artist, a lover of beauty for its own sake, exists at his own peril. ”

“ Viewing certain current tendencies the cultured musician is often moved to wonder where the soul of music has fled. The critical faculty is keenly alive to-day, but musical criticism, shorn of its better part, musical appreciation, can never lead to the insight requisite for true musical interpretation. Observation and perception, intellectual discernment and spiritual penetration are essential to gain insight into a great musical composition until its musical ideas, the very grade and texture of its style, are absolutely appropriated. ”

“ In an aristocratic family there are four children, all manifestly lacking in musical talent, but intelligent and co-operative in education. They are all given excellent advantages of musical education and environment and pursue them as a matter of course. Are they likely to come into a warm love of music? (4) It has been observed that when one listens to very beautiful music he tends to swallow saliva by gulps, as the young lover does in a state of infatuation; and that when he hears vile music, there is a tendency to want to spit. ”

“ One who can play or sing without notes is as free as [Pg 87] a bird to soar aloft in the blue ether of musical imagination.
FRANZ LISZT
Every interpreter of music longs for appreciative listeners, and young musicians, in especial, often lament the lack of these. It is well to remember that the genuine musical artist is able to create an atmosphere whose influences may compel an average audience to sympathetic listening. A good plan for the artist is to be surrounded in fancy with an audience having sensitively attuned ears, intellectual minds, and warm, throbbing hearts. ”

“ Of the music of primeval man we can form an estimate from the music of still existing uncivilized races. As the vocabulary of their speech is limited, so the notes of their music are few, but expressive gestures and modulations of the voice supplement both. With advancing civilization the emotions of which the [Pg 31] human heart are capable become more complex and demand larger means of expression. Some belief in the healing, helpful, uplifting power of music has always prevailed. ”

“ We have learned in part the lesson of morality, but we have yet to learn the lesson of beauty." This must be learned through the culture of the æsthetic taste, a matter of slow growth, which should begin with the rudiments, and is best fostered in an atmosphere saturated with good music.
Too much stress cannot be laid on the importance of hearing good music. When it falls on listening ears it removes all desire for [Pg 66] anything coarse or unrefined. Constant companionship with it prepares the ear to hear, the inner being to receive, and cannot fail to bring forth fruit. ”

“ MOZART
The inevitable dualism which Emerson found bisecting all nature appears also in music, which is both spiritual and material. The spiritual part of music appeals to the spiritual part of man, addressing each heart according to the cravings and capacities of each. The material part of music may be compared to the body in which man's spirit is housed. ”

“ Take music. The person who knows what he likes takes his pleasure in the tune, but gets little or nothing from the tune’s development; hence his favorite music is music which is all tune.
We recall a naïve query by the publisher of a magazine, at a musicale in Gotham. Our hostess, an accomplished pianist, had played a Chopin Fantasia, and the magazine man was expressing his qualified enjoyment. “What I can’t understand,” said he, “is why the tune quits just when it’s running along nicely.” This phenomenon, no doubt, has mystified thousands of other “music lovers.” ”

“ Yet the company of music lovers is great. Music is the most universal avocation. This has been true of all races throughout all times and at all culture levels. Only a fraction of one per cent of persons who hear music or practice it do so vocationally. We, the people, preserve it primarily as an avocation, an activity purely for pleasure and cultural enrichment. The love of music abounds at our time and in our country ”

“ Tho' the flowers have sunk in death;
So, when pleasure's dream is gone,
Its memory lives in Music's breath.
Music, oh how faint, how weak,
Language fades before thy spell!
Why should Feeling ever speak,
When thou canst breathe her soul so well?
Friendship's balmy words may feign,
Love's are even more false than they;
Oh! 'tis only music's strain
Can sweetly soothe, and not betray. ”

“ Father, how can you advance such an argument? Music's votaries offer no apologies for their art. The husbandman places the grain within the breast of Mother Earth for man's material welfare; God places music in the heart of man for his spiritual development. In man's spring time, his bridal day, music means joy. ”

“ Over the Rainbow, the expression of our freedom and self-realization in the spirit of adventure, lies within the power of music.
Who loves music? The love of music is not universal. Deep, warm, and poised devotion to music is comparatively rare. Much of music is plain work, sheer drudgery. Much is climbing toward a goal never to be attained. Many who ply the art of music can hardly be said to love it in the long run. ”

“ On the one side we have the claim that music is the all-sufficient law unto itself; that its appeal to sympathy is through the intrinsic sweetness of harmony and tune, and the intellect must be satisfied with what it may accidentally glean in this harvest-field; that, in the rapture experienced in the sensuous apperception of its beauty, lies the highest phase of art-sensibility. ”

“ The musician looks quite away from the incidents of ordinary life, entirely upheaves its details and its accidents, and sublimates whatever lies within it to its quintessence of emotional content—to which alone can music give a voice, and music only. ”

“ Its tones of melody and harmony require only to be heard in order to awaken in the breast emotions the most delightful. And yet who can speak at all of an agency so charming in other than words of warmest praise? Again: if music be a thing of such consummate beauty, what else can be done but to tender an offering of praise, and even of gratitude, to those, who, by the invention of most pleasing combinations of tones, melodies, and harmonies, or by great skill in vocal or instrumental performance, so signally help us to the fullest understanding and enjoyment of it? ”

“ When one hears it, he can revel in the full luxury of music ; and to thus enjoy song, one can have no hired minstrel, no crowded benches, no glare of lamps, no bustle. He must have a still, calm eye, in some quiet bower, away from the hum of cities ; with one who needs not ask or be told what string to strike - one who will cling to the merit, not the less precious that we seldom hear it, the pathetic simplicity which nature prompts - whose heart is in the strain breathed forth - carolling in its own created atmosphere of harmony. ”

“ Do you love music? Of course, I mean real music, not jazz. The mutual love of music unites people.
Do you like art in any form? Mutually artistic tastes unite. The artistic soul cannot be very happy with one who lacks in this respect. ”

“ The road branches here; one leads the way we know too well, the other leads to a real love of fine music, to a real happiness in it, and to a real respect for it. Let me say, also, that children love good songs, and that, as a part of their natural or normal endowment, they possess in this respect, and to a remarkable degree, that quality which we ignobly call “taste.” ”

“ Beloved brethren, have no discord over music. Hold in yourselves the true sense of harmony, and this sense will harmonize, unify, and unself you. Once I was passionately fond of material music, but jarring elements among musicians weaned me from this love and wedded me to spiritual music, the music of Soul. ”

“ This is true on a smaller scale in all musical leadership, composition, performance of the virtuoso, musical criticism and passionate listening.
Symbolism. The main function of the great musician is to make his music symbolic. He must take the listener out of the humdrum attitudes of life through the avenue of musical feeling into a state of abandon, which, in its extreme form, approaches ecstasy and obliviousness to material surroundings and facts. Even the devices of program music give but remote and stilted aid. ”

“ Squire Egan was as good as his word. He picked out the most suitable horsewhip for chastising the fancied impertinence of Murtough Murphy; and as he switched it up and down with a powerful arm, to try its weight and pliancy, the whistling of the instrument through the air was music to his ears, and whispered of promised joy in the flagellation of the jocular attorney.
"We'll see who can make the sorest blister," said the squire.
"I'll back whalebone against Spanish flies any day. Will you bet, Dick?" ”

“ So capable of love and its expression is music, indeed, that you almost wonder if any but musicians have ever truly loved, or loving have expressed. And yet—! Round every corner there lurks an "and yet." And if you only continue your march, or your reading, you always reach that corner. ”

“ As we appreciate it to-day, music lends itself readily to our definition of art. It is a personal expression—who, when listening to music which he enjoys, does not feel himself poured forth in the tones? It is social and public—what brings us together under the sway of a common emotion more effectively than concert or opera? ”

“ It must be shaped, and strung, and kept carefully in tune; no easy matter in surroundings little suited to delicate instruments and delicate music. Possessing it, we possess, in the only true sense of possession, the whole world. For going along our way, whether rough or even, there are formed within us, singing the beauty and wonder of what is or what should be, mysterious sequences and harmonies of notes, new every time, answering to the primæval everlasting affinities between ourselves and all things; our souls becoming musical under the touch of the universe. ”