Soundness

“ Power of Sound over the Mind.—The power of sound to affect the mind, and especially the feelings, is too well known to require specific statement. The note of an instrument, the tone of a human voice, the wild warbling of a bird, the tinkling of a bell, the variations of speech and of song, from the high and shrill to the low and heavy intonation, from the quick and impetuous to the slow and plaintive movement, these simple varieties of tone affect powerfully the heart, and find their way at once and irresistibly to the feelings. ”

“ Meanwhile the poet’s rich, resonant voice filled the studio with an agreeable and rambling monotone:
“Verse is a vehicle for expression; expression is a vehicle for verse; sound, in itself, is so subtly saturated with meaning that it requires nothing of added logic for its vindication. Sound, therefore, is sense, modified by the mysterious portent of tone. Thank you for understanding, thank you for a thought—very, very precious, a thought beautiful.” ”

“ Sound was the first instinctive language, one for man and winds and waters; and music, which is the development of this primeval converse, leaving to grammars the expression of cold and abstract thought, has gathered about her in her mountain caverns the echoes of all sighs sad or passionate, of all inarticulate cries born of aspiration or desire, and there blended them into eternal harmonies which at her word flow forth and join the hearts of men. ”

“ But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings
To a magic of numbers flying before your thought
Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder?
Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses
Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound?
I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches
The waves of mingled music and light from afar,
The antennæ of Thought that listens through utmost space.
Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof
Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over
And use me again if I am worthy to use. ”

“ So we see that all the sounds we hear, - the warning noises which keep us from harm, the beautiful musical notes with all the tunes and harmonies that delight us, even the power of hearing the voices of those we love, and learning from one another that which each can tell, - all these depend upon the invisible waves of air, even as the pleasures of light depend on the waves of ether. It is by these sound-waves that nature speaks to us, and in all her movements there is a reason why her boice is sharp or tender, loud or gentle, awful or loving. ”

“ The puzzling question of ‘what am I?’ still persists, and I am farther away from the right answer than ever. Would a sound be a sound if there were no one to hear it? If the waves of vibration struck no human ear, would the sound be in existence at all? ”

“ A sound in a low key, brings down the mind. Such a sound in a full tone, hath a certain solemnity, which it communicates to the emotion produced by it. A sound in a high key, chears the mind by raising it. ”

“ My darling Flora’s Margaret.
{78}
THE RICH, SWEET SOUND OF THE HUMAN VOICE.
Many sounds are heard by the human ear,
Sounds that are delicate, or loud and clear,
The rustling of leaves by the gentle breeze,
Or the hurricane crashing thru the trees;
Sounds in the mountains and sounds on the sea
And sounds wherever man happens to be;
But of all known sounds the sound of man’s choice
Is the rich, sweet sound of the human voice. ”

“ Thus any continu'd sound, as the music of binds, or a fall of waters, awakens every moment the mind of the beholder, and makes him more attentive to the several beauties of the place, that lie before him. ”

“ He who would hear the voice of Nada, 'the Soundless Sound,' and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dhâranâ. ... When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams; when be has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE—the inner sound which kills the outer. ”

“ We are bound to hear because we have ears; and of all the voices that are candidates for our attention, and of all the music that sounds through the universe, no voice is so sweet and weighty, no words so fundamental and all-powerful, no music so melodious, so deep and thunderous, so thrilling and gracious, as are the words of that Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us. ”

“ Sound is to a poem what colour is to a picture. Get away from the printed word, the mere symbol; it means something for the head, it is true, but nothing for the heart until it is translated into sound. ”

“ The power of words fitly set has made itself known, and a word has come to be judged like a note in music—as a potential element of harmony—a sound that in its own place may mean any emotion of joy or sorrow, hate or love. ”

“ All sounds, all colours, all forms, either because of their pre-ordained energies or because of long association, evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions, or, as I prefer to think, call down among us certain disembodied powers, whose footsteps over our hearts we call emotions; and when sound, and colour, and form are in a musical relation, a beautiful relation to one another, they become as it were one sound, one colour, one form, and evoke an emotion that is made out of their distinct evocations and yet is one emotion. ”

“ The soft, starlit voice might touch an over-eager soul with calm; to the soul distressed, the strong voice would come like a great noon-tide wind, impelling it towards the height where the sun dwelt, and all the fountains of the day. ”

“ We have assigned the first division of natural beauty to sound, which we distinguish from diction in that propriety and force of meaning are looked to in this; in sound it is the pleasantness or harshness that is regarded, flattering or offending the ear, or it is a kind of imitation of the subject-matter—sad things recited tearfully, excited rapidly, or harsh harshly. ”

“ A tone is something to hear, and hearing is mental. An old French anatomist once said: “The eye sees what it is looking for, and it is looking only for what it has in mind.” The same is true of the ear. We hear the tone mentally before we sing it, and we should hear it as distinctly as if it were sung by another. ”

“ Manifold sweet sounds--all blended into one happy harmony, softened by distance, rendered more melodious to the heart by associations felt but not defined, and made more touching by the soft evening hour--filled the whole air, and spread a calm, bright, contemplative charm over the listening senses. ”

“ Where shall we find the unearthly, heart-thrilling voice, which the fancy imputes to these supernatural beings,-the aerial, tremulous, half-formed syllables, melting into the winds, and passing over the ear as if they were breathed, not spoken? ”

“ At first, the voices enter in full but peculiar harmony, softly swelling in emphasis on each word, till the middle of the verse, when a gradual separation of each part takes place, preparing for the first close; you hear them, as though weaving among themselves a rich texture of harmonious combination; one seems struggling against the general resolve, and refusing more than a momentary contact with one another, but edging off upon delicious dissonances, till the whole, with a waving successive modulation, meet in full harmony upon a suspended cadence. ”

“ The rhythm, rhyme, melody, harmony are all an embodiment in sound, as distinguished from word, of what can be so embodied—the feeling of the poem, which goes before, and prepares the way for the following thought—tunes the heart into a receptive harmony. ”

“ Nothing but feeling and sentiment could produce them. It was soul breathed forth in sound. I was always alive to the influence of music; indeed, I was susceptible of voluptuous influences of every kind—sounds, colors, shapes, and fragrant odors. ”

“ An opposite conclusion would be at war with our convictions of the wisdom and benevolence of the Deity, who made the hearing ear and formed the melodious voice, and strung the soul of man with chords ever responsive to the influence of sweet sounds. Music is as truly the voice of nature as speech ; that is, it is as natural for man to convey and to receive the movements of sentiment by the influence of sweet sounds as by the use of words. ”

“ The mind's ear conceives the beauty of those seen but "unheard melodies" which are "the sweetest." The look of certain words conveys certain ideas to the mind; they seem as entities to display the absolute color, form, expression, associated with their meanings, just as their seen rhythm and melody sound themselves Constructive effects.to the ear. The eye, moreover, finds the architecture of verse effective, realizing a monumental, inscriptionary beauty in stanzaic and ode forms. Shape, arrangement, proportion compose the synthetic beauty of Construction. ”

“ This writer endeavors to establish his views on this subject, by observing, that “grandeur or sublimity of sound, can no otherwise arise from its loudness, than as that loudness excites an idea of power in the sonorous object, or in some other associated with it in the mind: for a child’s drum, close to the ear, fills it with more real noise, than the discharge of a cannon a mile off ”

“ In what part of creation is it that the heart of man may not find music, if he will? Sweet sounds may, indeed, by the ear produce the impression most distinctly; but sights presented to the eye will raise exactly the same sensations in the spirit ”

“ Yet, as I have tried to show, when meaning is made central, sound may fit it closely, and when the meaning is emotional, the music of sound may echo its cry, and the image, instead of rebelling, may serve. Emotional thought is the essence of poetry and the link between its music and its pictures. ”

“ The dulness of the poet's ear shows itself in the defective melody of his verse; for both metre and rhythm have a physiological basis; they represent and express the harmony which is in the body when the body is finely attuned to the spirit. ”

“ Beyond doubt the world is full of sounds that we cannot hear and of sights that we never see, for of the whole range of vibration our senses permit us to garner but the veriest fragment—a few notes here of sound, and a brief range there of sight, out of the whole vast scale of vibrant Nature. ”

“ That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? ”

“ The mood of the moment, the especial weight of a turn of thought, the desire of the speaker to share his exact soul-concept with you,—these seek far more subtle means than the mere rendering of certain vocal signs; they demand such variations and delicate adjustments of sound as will inevitably affect the listening mind with the response desired. ”

“ Whatever makes a noise, from the deafening roar of sea, cataract, and whirlwind’s mighty crash, through all forms of animal life, to the sweet and gentle voice of woman, makes a sound which agrees perfectly with its character. ”

“ For then the voice conserves its own formation, Conserves its shape. But if the space between Be longer than is fit, the words must be Through the much air confounded, and the voice Disordered in its flight across the winds— And so it haps, that thou canst sound perceive, Yet not determine what the words may mean ”

“ It is interesting, in a word, only when nothing else is equally so, carrying the vessel of the interest with least of a stumble or a sacrifice; but it is of the essence that the sounds so set in motion (it being as sound above all that they undertake to convey sense,) should have something to proceed from, in their course, to address themselves to and be affected by, with all the sensibility of sounds. ”

“ The objects of both sight and hearing—the sound which strikes the ear and the appearance which meets the eye, the articulations of the voice and the outlines of the members, every audible and visible motion—are both alike produced from matter contiguous to us ”

“ These crude gestures and cries by which primeval man expressed his feelings, though they were the germs out of which music grew, were as yet no more music, which is not only expressive sound, but formed, articulate sound, than an infant's cooings are speech. ”

“ The articulate character of sounds is for us one of the most important arrangements which exist in [100] the world; for it is by this that they become the interpreters of thought, will and feeling, the means by which a person can convey his wants, his instructions, his promises, his kindness, to others; by which one man can regulate the actions and influence the convictions and judgments of another. ”

“ What has been said about sound applies of course equally to light. The general principle is that the appearances, in different perspectives, which are to be grouped together as constituting what a certain thing is at a certain moment, are not to be all regarded as being at that moment. ”

“ Even in silent reading, poetry is a voice which we delight to hear. [Footnote: And for many this "inner speech" consists quite as much of articulation as of sound. The "sound" of a word is really a complex of actual sounds plus associated articulation impulses. Throughout the remainder of this chapter, when I refer to the sound of words, I shall have in mind this entire complex. We may therefore say that in silent reading poetry is a voice which we delight both to hear and to use.] ”

“ Like the harmony of sounds in musical composition, it produces an effect of which we are unable to give an account; but which we feel to be instantly destroyed by the jarring sound of a different note, or the discordant effect of a foreign expression. ”

“ The vibrations of the voice, as you see now while I am speaking, cause that little flame on the needle to flicker, diminishing with the lowered degrees of a single tone and rising with its upward trend. ”