Spirit rapping

“ The measure of the music gives time to concentrate the thought contained into its most powerful form. The rhythm and vibration which accompany music and singing, enhance the power of thought. Whenever we sing in the true spirit of the sentiment uttered we send out shafts, so to speak, of pure thought. Not one of those is lost. It lodges somewhere, and as all good can never do harm, our good thought, sent in song, must do good to those who come within our influence to receive our good shafts. A singer who uses music for vain display loses the opportunity for good. ”

“ Furness. Do these raps always have that vibratory sound—tr-rut—tr-rut—tr-rut?
“The ‘Medium.’ Sometimes they vary.
“Mr. Furness. As a general rule I have heard them sound so.
“The ‘Medium.’ Every rap has a different sound. For instance, when the ‘spirit’ of Mr. Seybert rapped, if the sound was a good one, you would have noticed that his rap was different from that of another. Every one is entirely different from another.
“Mr. Furness. Do you suppose that the present conditions are such that you can throw the raps to a part of the room other than that in which you are? ”

“ Spirits were ordered to rap on the walls, and inside the piano, which they entirely failed to do, rapping all the time unmistakeably under the table, with slight variations of sound. And every time that one of these raps was produced, it was impossible for the younger medium to repress a slight, almost imperceptible, movement of the body, showing plainly that they were caused by her: even if this could for a moment be doubted, after a second request from us that she would leave the table, and suffer us to hear so much as a single rap when she was not there, which she again refused to do. ”

“ When men can produce such music, we may naturally ask if the spirits of the departed are near, quickening the soul of the unconscious musician with a spark of the music-spirit of a higher world? This may be considered by many as wild talk; but there are still some human [Pg 9] beings who, at least once in their lives, have felt a strain of melody fall with entrancing power upon their hearts, inspiring diviner thoughts than they had ever known before, and so subliming the feelings, that for a time they felt a consciousness of their heavenly origin. ”

“ Its task is to awake in the soul a thousand dormant ideas; it flies up and sweeps through space, scattering seeds in the air to be taken in by our ears and blossom in our heart. Believe me, in painting his Saint-Cecilia, Raphael gave the preference to music over poetry. And he was right; music appeals to the heart, whereas writing is addressed to the intellect; it communicates ideas directly, like a perfume. The singer’s voice impinges not on the mind, not on the memory of happiness, but on the first principle of thought; it stirs the elements of sensation. ”

“ Any one who has sat at an ordinary dark séance will recollect the number of false starts the table makes, the exclamations, "Was that a rap?" when the wood simply cracks, or, "Did you feel a cold air?" when somebody breathes a little more heavily than usual. I have myself made the experiment, though not without adding an open confession im [304] mediately afterwards. I have blown on the fingers of the sitters, and made them feel sure it was a "spirit aura," have done the neatest of raps with my index-finger when my little finger has been securely hooked in that of my next neighbour. ”

“ This second and higher "soul" significance shows itself in the emotional appeal of the music, in the feelings it provokes and the mood it engenders. Here sound speaks in parables with an outer story and an inner meaning. The non-musical person hears sounds, but the musical mind hears sense. Whether the tidings be of sweetness, affection, or delight, of strength, vigour, or energy, of sorrow or regret, there is all the difference in the world between the outward comprehension and the inner interpretation. The formal part of the music is the frame, but the emotion supplies the picture within. ”

“ I started, as she thus echoed my own thoughts.
“It is not so much the case in vocal music; the voice and passion of the singer give individuality, and limit it at once to the finite, and within that limit we can be entirely satisfied. But the absolute concord of perfectly wrought instruments, and the perfect beauty of the compositions they utter, rouse in us a burning sense of the infinite which cannot be assuaged.”
“I agree with you,” I said.
I thought she sighed. We were silent. The ghost of the evening in the Rue du Puits rose between us. ”

“ What expression is right and what is not is largely a matter of opinion. Instrumental music has been to some a rock of offense, exciting the spirit, through the sense of hearing, to wrong thoughts—through "the lascivious pleasing of a lute." Others think dancing wicked, while a few allow square dances, but condemn the waltz. ”

“ Is it not more reasonable to believe that music first came into the world when the savage took delight in any tones—those of the human voice, of a reed, or of a drum—purely as tone, and began to take a further simple delight in the relations between tones? Need we concern ourselves at all with speech, excited or torpid? Can we not begin with mere feeling venting itself in mere sound—as we know it must have done at first—and draw a line from this straight through all the music of all the world? ”

“ People say we have got beyond the rapping. The truth is, a large portion of the world have not yet got to the raps. They are not yet able to appreciate the raps. We must make considerable progress before we can get the philosophy of the raps. We have much to learn yet before we can get the full benefit of a simple sound, even though it be not accompanied by much intelligence. The first lesson I shall attempt to teach—pardon me for assuming to be a teacher, I will be a pupil at any time—is how to study and know yourselves; how to ascertain the laws of your being, action, and manifestation ”

“ Their individual characteristics afforded him continually new suggestions in regard to tone-coloring, and he rose often to audacity, for his time, in his harmonic devices. Grace and spirit, originality of invention, joyous abandon, a fancy controlled by a studious mind, a profusion of quaint humor and a proper division of light and shade, combine to give the dominant note to his music. ”

“ His passion is so keen and vital, his melody so winning, his love of beauty so single-hearted, that to demand the sterner qualities is almost an act of ingratitude. He knows the full secret of that mysterious power—so easy to feel, so impossible to define—through which music fulfils its function of suggesting and typifying emotion. He can appeal to our sensuous nature with a mastery which is almost irresistible, and he never degrades the appeal into vulgarity or sensationalism. ”

“ Perhaps we find ourselves tapping the rhythm with our feet or our fingers, or it may be that we find the very expression on our own face is altering to match that upon the countenance of the dancer. The skilful speaker also can arouse almost any emotion he pleases in the minds of his audience. He may one moment have them laughing, and then the next, as if by magic touch, he may bring them to sober mood or even to sorrow. Music no less surely does the same through the agency of rhythm, melody, and harmonic texture. ”

“ In fact, it was proved that their power as singers held sway wherever they sang; wherever was found a soul in unison with melodious sound, a heart capable of human emotion. It was not so much the words of their songs—these, it is true, were not without merit in a religious sense—as the strangely pathetic and delightful melody of their music, and the freshness and heartiness of the rendering, that gave them their greatest charm. ”

“ If, indeed, music were just a means for the arousal of feelings, it would not be a fine art, but an orgy. For, in order to be aesthetic, feelings must be not merely stimulated by, but objectified in, the sense medium, where they can be mastered and known. But the intimacy of music is not in contradiction with the freedom and objectivity characteristic of all art. For musical feelings, although they are experienced as our own, are nevertheless also experienced as the sounds; in music we live, not as we live ordinarily, within our bodies, but out there, in a rarer and unpractical medium—tone. ”

“ She was created for a musician—there she is borne away by the magic of the art in which she excels, and the natural enthusiasm of her impassioned character: she can sigh, she can weep, she can smile over her harp. The sensibility of her soul trembles in her song, and the expression of her rapt countenance harmonizes with her voice. But at her drawing-desk, her features lose their animated character—the smile of rapture ceases to play, and the glance of inspiration to beam. ”

“ The music, once admitted to the soul, becomes also a sort of spirit, and never dies. ”

“ Here is seen, it must be admitted, what appears very much like genius in the melody-making power. Something it is, undoubtedly, that shows an innate comprehension, power in expression, and love of harmony, in a degree that is simply intense. The history of the colored race in this country establishes the fact, too, that no system of cruelty, however great or long inflicted, can destroy that sympathy with musical sounds that is born with the soul. ”

“ There is a near connection between music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. As often as articulation passes naturally into intonation, there poetry begins. Where one idea gives a tone and colour to others, where one feeling melts others into it, there can be no reason why the same principle should not be extended to the sounds by which the voice utters these emotions of the soul, and blends syllables and lines into each other. ”

“ For, itself offering no images of things and events to which we may attach the feelings which it arouses, we supply our own. We fill in the impersonal form of musical feeling with the concrete emotions of our own lives; it is our strivings, our hopes and fears, which music expresses. By denying us access to the world about us, music compels us to turn in upon ourselves; it is we who live there in the sounds. For, as we have seen, the rhythmic tones seize hold not only of our attention, but of our bodies also—hand and foot and head and heart, resounding throughout the whole organism. ”

“ Gradually, two essentials of good singing—tone-quality and truth of intonation—began to be neglected. But why should either of these two factors be less essential to a singer than to an instrumentalist?
Of late it has been tacitly assumed, if not boldly claimed, that sentiment, passion, temperament, atoned for—even if they did not entirely replace—voice and lack of skill in the artist. But what constitutes an artist? Art has been defined by an English lexicographer as “Doing something, the power for which is acquired by experience, study or observation;” ”

“ Some of us must wait for the best human gifts until we come to heavenly places. Our natural desire for musical utterance is perhaps a prophecy that in a perfect world we shall all know how to sing. But it is something to feel music, if we cannot make it. That, in itself, is a kind of unconscious singing.
As I think back to my childhood, it seems to me as if the air was full of hymns, as it was of the fragrance of clover-blossoms, and the songs of bluebirds and robins, and the deep undertone of the sea. ”

“ We find that thought and will control all physical action in singing. If the thought is right, the action will be right; if wrong, the action will surely be wrong. When right thought and action have developed absolute freedom, then the emotional energy, the singer's sensation, the true power of the voice, should dominate everything. The mind or will controls the body through thought, but the thought must be aroused through feeling or emotion; and the feeling or emotion is inspired by the sentiment to be expressed. ”

“ Joseph S. Cotter, Jr.
“Sweet music in the soul”—that is heaven’s kind gift to this people, music of sorrow and of faith; music, low and plaintive, of hope almost failing; music, clear and strong, born of vision triumphant; music, alas, sometimes marred by the strident notes of hatred and revenge. Verily, poets learn in suffering what they teach in song. ”

“ The fact that on many occasions so-called rappings, table liftings, writings, and other supposed spirit manifestations have been shown to be the result of mere human trickery does not necessarily prove that such demonstrations may not be the efforts of an immortal soul to make its presence known. ”

“ He was remarkably susceptible to music. It was like strong drink, firing him to audacities of feeling,--a drug that laid hold of his imagination and went cloud-soaring through the sky. It banished sordid fact, flooded his mind with beauty, loosed romance and to its heels added wings. ”

“ No art, I believe, affords such strong evidence of the spiritual in man as music, and there is no art that requires so exclusively means that are--purely intellectual and ætherial. The intuition of what is Highest and Holiest--of the Intelligent Power which enkindles the spark of life in all Nature--is audibly expressed in musical sound; hence music and song are the utterance of the fullest perfection of existence--praise of the Creator! ”

“ Unless you have some pointed remark to make about the rendition of the music, it is far better to give merely the place of beginning without making any remarks at all. Securing quiet by a prolonged rapping with the baton is a sign of weak discipline. Do not rap at all until the music is distributed, the accompanist in his place and ready to begin, your score open, and until you know exactly what you are going to do first. Then let just a slight tap or two suffice to notify everyone that the rehearsal is to begin at once. ”