236 Prof. TJiompson on Physical Foundation of Music. [June 13/90. 



the massive triumphal march, or the wailing miserere. The horn 

 of Siegfried summons us to Briinhilde's rock, quite irrespective 

 of the upper partial tones which accompany its fundamental tone. 

 We may try to analyse our sensations with endless metaphysical re- 

 finements : we may investigate their physical causes by the most careful 

 dissection of the waves and wavelets with which the musician's hand 

 and instrument flood our listening ears — and we are not a whit nearer 

 either to composing music ourselves or to comprehending its intrinsic 

 beauty and power. We might as well suppose that we could become 

 painters by going through a course of chemical analysis of the paints 

 employed by a Watts or a Herkomer. True, a knowledge of the 

 chemistry of pigments will assist the artist by sparing him blunders 

 and giving him something more than empirical rules to guide him in 

 the mixing of his paints. So likewise, a knowledge of the physical 

 basis of music may help the musician by lifting him above merely 

 empirical rules, which, like that forbidding consecutive fifths, are 

 founded on no rational basis, being deliberately violated by the 

 builder of every organ, and set aside by every great composer. But, 

 make him a musician, never. Analysis, though it is an instinctive 

 faculty of the mind, is not art. Of some arts indeed, it may be said 

 that analysis is death ; but only of those which have been based on 

 falsehood or superstition. Art that is true fears nothing from 

 analysis; it is beyond and above its reach. And music, the most 

 refined, the most subtle, the most spiritual of the arts, defies analysis 

 more efiectually than any. Our enquiry leaves its emotional and 

 spiritual power untouched, unchanged. 



Some things there are which lose their charm when touched by 

 the finger of enquiry : their spell is snapt ; their magic vanishes 

 into thin air. Not so is it with music : — 



" For music, which is as a voice, 

 A low voice calling fancy, as a friend, 

 To the green woods in the gay summer-time, 

 Seeing we know emotions strange by it 

 Not else to be revealed . . . • 

 ... is earnest of a Heaven." 



[S. P. T.] 



