IV. AN ESSAY 



ON MUSIC. 



From the Britisli Magazine for October 1800. 



1. OF MUSIC IN GENERAL. 



.1 HE agreeable effect of melodious sounds, 

 not only on the human ear, but on the feel- 

 ings and on the passions, is so universal and 

 so powerful, as deservedly to excite the at- 

 tention of the psychological philosopher. For 

 what ultimate end a susceptibility for this 

 peculiar pleasure has been implanted by na- 

 ture in the mind, is not easy to be ascer- 

 tained ; but setting aside the well known 

 pleasing sensation of a delicate titillation, 

 wherever the nerves are possessed of great 

 sensibilitj', and the associations of an in- 

 teresting voice, giving expression to poeti- 

 cal and impassioned diction, it is probable 

 that the taste for all complicated and scienti- 

 fic music is wholly acquired. 



Music may be considered as consisting of 

 three component parts, rhythm, melody, and 

 harmony. Rhythm is an agreeable succes- 

 sion of sounds considered with respect to the 

 time of their whole duration. Melody is an 

 agreeable succession in respect to the pitch, 

 V or the frequency of vibrations of each sound. 

 Harmony is an agreeable combination of se- 

 veral sounds at the same time. It is evident 

 that rhythm and melody are almost insepa- 

 rable ; but that harmony is by no means ne- 

 cessary to the existence of music. In the 

 first place, it is easy to conceive that a love 



of rhythm, or of the periodical recurrence of 

 the same or similar sensations at equal inter- 

 vals of time, may be derived from thehabit of a 

 certain equality and recurrence in the motions 

 of the body, such as walking, or in children 

 who cannot yet walk, from the passive mo- 

 tion of gestation ; this predilection for the re- 

 turn of customary sensations appears to be 

 an innate and fundamental tendency of the 

 human system, to which physiologists and 

 metaphysicians have been obliged ultimately 

 to refer many properties, both of body and 

 mind. But be this as it may, the love of 

 rhythm, which is, perhaps, the lowest ingre- 

 dient in musical taste, is, if possible, still 

 more universal than the love of harmony and 

 melody. Poetry, or rather metrical compo- 

 sition, is distinguished from prose only by 

 the regularity of its rhythm; and the know- 

 ledge of metre and prosody, however high it 

 may rank in the critic's estimation, is a sub- 

 ordinate and comparatively insignificant 

 branch of musical science. The natural 

 fondness for rhythm is the principal founda- 

 tion of the pleasure of dancing, an amuse- 

 ment intimately connected with music, and 

 no less popular. The rhythm of a musical 

 composition is almost always nt least two- 

 fold, often three or fourfold, consisting of 

 subordinate divisions or bars, and jjcrio'dical 

 returns of larger' members, cither phrases or 



