NA TURE 



91 



THURSDAY, MARCH 24, 1910. 



MUSIC. 

 Music: its Laws and Evolution. By Prof. Jules 

 Combarieu. International Scientific Series. Pp. 

 viii + 334. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner 

 and Co., Ltd., 1910.) Price 55. 



THIS important work could only have been written 

 by a musician who was acquainted with the 

 history of music, and also had a considerable know- 

 ledge of sciences connected with music, such as 

 mathematics, physics in relation to acoustics, 

 physiology, psychology, and aesthetics. Almost every 

 page shows the versatility of Prof. Combarieu in 

 dealing with the va.^us aspects of the subject, while 

 his power of lucid Ascription is conspicuous. There 

 is also the graceful beauty of stjie peculiar to 

 a Frenchman, and it has lost little or nothing 

 in translation. The fundamental thesis of the book 

 is that music is the art of thinking in sounds. Ac- 

 cording to the author, we can never hope to have an 

 adequate conception of music unless we realise that 

 it is a kind of intellectual activity associated with 

 emotional states, but without those concepts that are 

 the material of ordinary intellectual action. The 

 study of acoustics, the study of sensations of tone, 

 as was so fully carried out by Helmholtz in his first 

 work, "Tonempfindungen," the study even of scales 

 and major modes, are only to be regarded as con- 

 tributions to a fuller understanding of music, 

 although not a few writers, in dealing with these 

 aspects of the subject, have deluded themselves with 

 the notion that in so doing they were explaining the 

 true nature of music. All this may be readily 

 granted; but in justice to the physiologist and 

 psychologist, on whom Prof. Combarieu now and 

 then comes down heavily, almost with scorn ill-con- 

 cealed, it must be contended that the foundation of 

 music does consist of sensations, var}-ing in kind 

 and quality. The composer thinks in sounds which 

 are related to each other according to laws well 

 known to the composer, and which he often trans- 

 gresses, and the master musical mind has a kind of 

 instinct that perceives more deeply the hidden mean- 

 ings of the phenomena of the cosmos and the still 

 more ill-defined region of human thought and 

 feeling. 



Prof. Combarieu develops these ideas in a remark- 

 able order. Instead of beginning with what is com- 

 paratively simple, the nature of vibrations, the 

 mathematical basis of scales, &c., and the functions 

 of the ear and brain in relation to sensations of tone, 

 and then working onwards to the compositions of 

 such men as Bach, Handel, and Wagner, he proceeds 

 in the reverse order. First, he analyses a melody, 

 showing how much there is in it that cannot be ex- 

 pressed in words, such as sensations of mere pleasure, 

 the expression of emotional states, and the arousing 

 of sentiments, and even trains of thought and 

 of reminiscence, in the mind, and he arrives at the 

 NO. 2108, VOL. 83] 



conclusion that music is, as it were, the dynamics of 

 emotional life. He traces the evolution of music, the 

 simple melody, the canon originating in religious 

 feeling, the discovery of counterpoint, the use of 

 rhythm as connected with bodily muscular move- 

 ments, and the early relation of music to magic. 

 Next he examines the development of music as an 

 expression of the gradually increasing complexity of 

 social life, in this way accounting for the origin of 

 octaves, fifths, thirds, and other intervals, and the 

 development of the major and minor modes. Mus- 

 cular work requiring cooperation among many in- 

 dividuals taught men rhythm and musical time, and, 

 by slow degrees, the various modes of the Greeks, 

 Lydians, Phrygians, &c., reflected the social life and 

 habits of the Greeks. A confluence of these minor 

 modes has resulted in the minor mode of the present 

 day. In modern music there is a fresher and greater 

 use of the minor mode and of chromatic intervals, 

 and there is less satisfaction merely with conson- 

 ance, a development quite in keeping with the 

 anarchical state of thought and feeling characteristic 

 of the present day. The development of the orchestra 

 from primitive instruments is one of the most r** 

 markable phenomena in the evolution of music, knd. 

 modern composers now strive to write something 

 appropriate for each instrument. 



Prof. Combarieu makes some excellent observa- 

 tions on Darwin's well-known opinions on the sexual 

 relations of music. It is in most instances the lan- 

 guage of love, but a sexual theor\- will not account 

 for all music. The chapter on the physiology of 

 music is the least satisfactory- in this valuable book. 

 We do not think the author does justice to the 

 work of Helmholtz, probably because he fails to grasp 

 the theor\' of the cochlea and its difficulties. We 

 cannot follow him in his notion that, in some way 

 or other, the cochlea can, in a reflex way, adapt itself 

 to different combinations of tones. Here he merges 

 into metaphysical discussions that are beside the 

 question. The last chapter or section on music and 

 living beings is rather fanciful in describing 

 analogies between well-known physiological pheno- 

 mena and music. The illustrations he gives are 

 analogies and nothing more. 



Prof. Combarieu 's book is very suggestive. He 

 takes a noble view of music, an art which does not 

 seem even yet to have reached its climax. Great as 

 are the works of Bach, Handel, Verdi, and Wagner, 

 each reflecting in a subtle way their individual 

 genius, moulded by the circumstances in which they 

 lived and the influences that conspired to make them 

 great musicians, there may yet be in store for the 

 human race even greater works, which, in their turn, 

 will reflect the more complex conditions of civilisa- 

 tion, in even higher planes of non-conceptual 

 thought, and in deeper knowledge and feeling. One 

 mav also suppose that in this further evolution the 

 organs of music, the ear and the brain, will become 

 more complicated. The evolutionary process has not 



ended. 



John G. M'Kbxdrick. 



