THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 15 



ing any beauty were it not for its remembered connections with, 

 passages in the immediate past and the immediate future. If, for 

 example, from the first movement of Beethoven's Funeral-March 

 sonata the first five notes are detached, they appear to be mean- 

 ingless ; but if, the movement being known, they are joined with 

 imaginations of the anticipated phrases, they immediately acquire 

 meaning and beauty. Indefinable as are the causes of this per- 

 ceptional pleasure in many cases, some causes of it are definable. 

 Symmetry is one. A chief element in melodic effect results from 

 repetitions of phrases which are either identical, or differ only in 

 pitch, or differ only in minor variations : there being in the first 

 case the pleasure derived from perception of complete likeness, 

 and in the other cases the greater pleasure derived from percep- 

 tion of likeness with difference a perception which is more in- 

 volved, and therefore exercises a greater number of nervous 

 agents. Next comes, as a source of gratification, the conscious- 

 ness of pronounced unlikeness or contrast ; such as that between 

 passages above the middle tones and passages below, or as that 

 between ascending phrases and descending phrases. And then 

 we rise to larger contrasts ; as when, the first theme in a mel- 

 ody having been elaborated, there is introduced another having a 

 certain kinship though in many respects different, after which 

 there is a return to the first theme : a structure which yields more 

 extensive and more complex perceptions of both differences and 

 likenesses. But while perceptional pleasures include much that 

 is of the highest, they also include much that is of the lowest. A 

 certain kind of interest, if not of beauty, is producible by the like- 

 nesses and contrasts of musical phrases which are intrinsically 

 meaningless or even ugly. A familiar experience exemplifies this. 

 If a piece of paper is folded and on one side of the crease there is 

 drawn an irregular line in ink, which, by closing the paper, is 

 blotted on the opposite side of the crease, there results a figure 

 which, in virtue of its symmetry, has some beauty ; no matter 

 how entirely without beauty the two lines themselves may be. 

 Similarly, some interest results from the parallelism of musical 

 phrases, notwithstanding utter lack of interest in the phrases 

 themselves. The kind of interest resulting from such parallel- 

 isms, and from many contrasts, irrespective of any intrinsic worth 

 in their components, is that which is most appreciated by the 

 musically-uncultured, and gives popularity to miserable drawing- 

 room ballads and vulgar music-hall songs. 



The remaining element of musical effect consists in the ideal- 

 ized rendering of emotion. This, as I have sought to show, is the 

 primitive element, and will ever continue to be the vital element ; 

 for if " melody is the soul of music," then expression is the soul of 

 melody the soul without which it is mechanical and meaningless, 



