228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In songs, the expression is in an inverse ratio to the interest of the 

 words. Good poetry is hardly susceptible of any but an uncolored 

 music, just enough to sustain the voice ; the thought, in effect, crowds 

 out the feeling, and, a choice being forced upon the attention, too 

 much musical accent would weaken the thought. For a full musical 

 interpretation of the feeling, a third-rate poetry, only indicating the 

 subject, is best, for it permits the concentration of all the attention 

 upon the emotional expression. This is, ordinarily, the character of 

 the librettos of operas, in which everything is subordinated to the 

 music ; but the song, the interest of which lies in the conception, is 

 accommodated with a colorless melody. 



By considering music as the language of the feelings, we are 

 enabled to account for the power it has over masses composed of the 

 most incongruous elements. An address can not affect alike persons 

 of different degrees of intellectual development, and must fall without 

 making any impression on a part of the audience. There is less dif- 

 ference in the capacity for feeling, and all are more or less subject to 

 the same transports of emotion. The masses feel more than they think. 



It is interesting to remark the generally simple and touching ex- 

 pression of popular songs. The feeling is brought out in its purity 

 without science or preparation, and the result is a music full of artless 

 charms, the inexhaustible source to which composers, knowing that 

 they can not find better ones, go for the themes of their works. These 

 popular songs are generally of a sad character, and tell of vague 

 aspirations and indefinite desires. Thus have originated those dreamy 

 melodies with which working-people love to lull their melancholy, 

 and which are frequently the only source to which we can go for the 

 history of those who have lived and suffered in obscurity. 



As different human races have their several languages, so each one 

 has its own musical system ; and these various systems, the existence 

 of which is explainable by the action of the same causes that have 

 made different words to designate the same things, prove that the 

 origin of the two languages is common, and that the one is the spon- 

 taneous expression of feelings, as the other is of thoughts. Like 

 alphabets, gamuts also may differ within certain limits. They are 

 also not fixed, and undergo the evolution common to all languages. 

 Most uncivilized peoples are unacquainted with semitones, and use 

 scales with full intervals. This is easily accounted for if we suppose 

 that these intervals are the ones which represent the elementary 

 intonations, and that they constitute a music near its origin. The 

 need of representing shades of feeling brings about a ]3rogressive fill- 

 ing up of the intervals. The ancient Celts excluded semitones, while 

 the music of the Greeks found refined expression in quarter-tones. 

 Our musicians are also sometimes tempted to reduce our minimum 

 interval of a semitone, and some performers abuse this process to an 

 extravagant degree. 



