Note 134 — Chapter VII

The motor imagery suggested by music is in some persons profuse and apparently capricious, and may be regarded as an anomaly comparable to a synaesthesia. Heine was an example of this, and he has described in Florentine Nights the visions aroused by the playing of Paganini, and elsewhere the visions evoked in him by the music of Berlioz. Though I do not myself experience this phenomenon, I have found that there is sometimes a tendency for music to arouse ideas of motor imagery; thus some melodies of Handel suggest a giant painting frescoes on a vast wall space. The most elementary motor relationship of music is seen in the tendency of many people to sway portions of their body—to 'beat time'—in sympathy with the music. (This phenomenon has been experimentally studied by J. B. Miner, 'Motor, Visual, and Applied Rhythms,' Monograph Supplement to the Psychological Review, vol. v., No. 4, June 1903). Music is fundamentally an audible dance, and the most primitive music is dance music.