Note 47 — Chapter VI · THE SUBJECTS AND METHOD OF EDUCATION—DRAWING AND MUSIC.

It is not difficult for a man who has devoted sufficient time to music, and has known many musical people, to find some analogy to Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian modes, as moral agents, in our modern music. For surely the real meaning, the real depth, in the art is this: that it represents, and by representing stimulates within us, various emotions. Like all the other faculties of man, the emotions are a great class of mental phenomena improved and strengthened by a certain quantity of stimulus, but exaggerated and injured by being overstrained, or too perpetually exercised. And it is the peculiar province of music to awaken emotions too subtle and various for the coarser utterance of words, and therefore to fill the mind with feelings delightful, indeed, and deep, but from their very nature unutterable in words and inexplicable except by sympathy. You cannot convey to an unmusical man what is called the expression of an air—that is to say, the emotion it has caused within you. Let us add that if you could explain it, it would not have the distinctive value which it really possesses. It is this very feature in the question which has caused the moral effects of music to be wholly overlooked in a cold and logical age, when many men are not affected by it, and in which everything inexplicable by direct statement is likely to be considered unreal.

The emotions, then, which it is the proper object of music to stimulate, are of that subtle character that they cannot be defined. Different composers will, no doubt, excite a different complexion of feeling in the mind. The works of Handel and J. S. Bach produce a thoroughly satisfied and cheerful temper, even when they treat sad subjects; whereas Beethoven has almost always about him that profound melancholy which is to a mind in distress more sustaining in its sympathy than all the comfort of consolation. But this only describes the general character of the emotions produced, and not the emotions themselves. For these are often not consciously before us at all, but influence us, like our prejudices, from a hidden vantage-ground within the soul.

But, alas! the history of this delicious stimulant is like that of all the rest. Men begin to crave for it, and then constantly pursue it; they will not be satisfied without stronger doses, and, presently, even these cease to have their effect except by intoxication. In such case, the stimulant is no longer applied to exciting an emotion, but to satisfying a passion. And this latter differs from the former in being more violent (being, perhaps, compounded of several emotions), and in containing some coarser bodily element, either consciously or unconsciously.

It may be illustrated from what are called sentimental songs. If we compare the old chaste love-songs that are found among the national melodies of England, and still better of Ireland, with the love-songs in one of the greatest of modern operas, Gounod’s “Faust,” the distinction will be easily apprehended. When an Irish girl puts sweet wild music to the words of her song, and is then better satisfied with it than if she merely spoke it, the reason is this, that there are in her love a number of tender emotions, far too subtle to be uttered in the words, but which are conveyed in the expression of the melody. The very same may be said of the solemn, almost religious love-songs of the old Italian composers, in which knightly reverence for the gentler sex is so apparent. Let the soberest critic compare this music with the splendid duet in the garden scene of Gounod’s “Faust,” and more especially with the concluding song of the act (that in six flats). Expressive this music is beyond description, and expressive of love; but how different!