Note 98 — Chapter II

For the sake of brevity and clearness I do not give here the observations and evidence. They will be found at the end of this work, as Appendix D.

Under the title "An experimental test of musical expressiveness," Gilman, in American Journal of Psychology, vol. IV, No. 4, and vol. V, No. 1 (1892-3), has studied from another point of view the effect of music on various listeners. Eleven selections were given; I note that three or four at the most excited visual images—ten (perhaps eleven), emotional states. More recently, the Psychological Review (September, 1898, pp. 463 ff.) has published a personal observation of Macdougal in which sight-images accompany the hearing of music only exceptionally and under special conditions. The author characterizes himself as a "poor visualizer;" he declares that music arouses in him only very rarely visual representations; "even then they are fragmentary, consisting of simple forms without bond between them, appearing on a dark background, remaining visible for a moment or two, and soon disappearing." But, having gone to the concert fatigued and jaded, he sees nothing during the first number: the visions begin during the andante of the second, and accompany "in profusion" the rendering of the third. (See Appendix D.) May we not assume that the state of fatigue, by lowering the vital tone, which is the basis of the emotional life, likewise diminishes the tendency of affective dispositions to arise again under the form of memory? On the other hand, sensory images remain without opposition and come to the front; at least, unless they are reënforced by a state of semi-morbid excitation.