196 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



changing the duration of the notes that compose it, and you render it 

 obscure and unrecognizable, because you have destroyed its sym- 

 metry. But why, then, do not several hammers striking in cadence 

 produce music ? They certainly comply with 'the three conditions of 

 air, vibration, and rhythm. Why is the accord of a third so pleasing to 

 the ear? Why is the minor mode so suggestive of sadness ? There is 

 the mystery, there is the unexplained phenomenon. 



"We restrict ourselves to saying that music, which, like, speech, is 

 perceived through the medium of the ear, does not, like speech, call 

 upon the brain for an explanation of the sensation produced by the 

 vibration on the nerves ; it addresses itself to a mysterious agent 

 within us, which is superior to intelligence, since it is independent of 

 it, and makes us feel that which we can neither conceive nor explain. 



"Let us examine the various attributes of the musical phenomenon. 



"1. Music as a Physical Agent. It communicates to the body shocks 

 which agitate the members to their base. In churches, the llame of 

 the candle oscillates to the quake of the organ. A powerful orchestra 

 near a sheet of water ruffles its surface. A learned traveler speaks 

 of an iron ring which swings to and fro to the sound of the Tivoli 

 Falls. In Switzerland I excited, at will, in a poor child afflicted with 

 a frightful nervous malady, hysterical and cataleptic crises, by playing 

 on the minor key of E flat. The celebrated Dr. Bertier asserts that 

 the sound of a drum gives him the colic. Certain medical men state 

 that the sound of the trumpet quickens the pulse and induces slight 

 perspiration. The sound of the bassoon is cold ; the notes of the 

 French horn at a distance, and of the harp, are voluptuous. The flute 

 played softly in the middle register calms the nerves. The low notes 

 of the piano frighten children. I once had a dog who would gener- 

 ally sleep on hearing music, but the moment I played in the minor 

 key he would bark piteously. The dog of a celebrated singer whom 

 I knew would moan bitterly, and give signs of violent suffering, the 

 instant his mistress chanted a chromatic gamut. A certain chord 

 produces on my own sense of hearing the same effect as the heliotrope 

 on my sense of smell and the pineapple on my sense of taste. Ra- 

 chel's voice delighted the ear by its ring" before one had time to seize 

 what was said, or appreciate the purity of her diction. 



"We may aflirm, then, that musical sound, rhythmical or not, agitates 

 the whole physical economy, quickens the pulse, incites perspiration, 

 and produces a pleasant momentary irritation of the nervous system. 



" 2. Music is a Mural Agent. Through the medium of the nervous 

 system, the direct interpreter of emotion, it calls into play the higher 

 faculties ; its language is that of sentiment. Furthermore, the mo- 

 tives which have presided over particular musical combinations estab- 

 lish links between the composer and the listener. We sigh with Bellini 

 in the finale of La Somnambula; we shudder with Weber in the su- 

 blime phantasmagoria of Der Freischutz ; the mystic inspirations of 

 Palestrina, the masses of Mozart, transport us to the celestial regions, 

 toward which they rise like a melodious incense. Music awakens in 

 us reminiscences, souvenirs, associations. When we have wept over 

 a song, it ever after seems to us bathed in tears. The old man, 

 chilled by years, may be insensible to the pathetic accents of Rossini, 

 of Mozart ; but repeat to him the simple songs of his youth, the pres- 



