270 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



ing profound emotion may have contributed in some 

 degree to the thinness of their music, but this poverty 

 is to be considered as a result of the prevailing defi- 

 ciency in musical ideas rather than its cause. 



Just as painting found its great chance in the illus- 

 tration of Christian tradition, so did music perceive 

 its opportunity in ministering to the devotional spirit 

 that tenanted the Gothic churches of Christendom. 

 The music of Palestrina and of Buxtehude, though 

 unimpassioned and failing to reflect modern intro- 

 spective tendencies, was admirable in form and served 

 well to introduce the deeper feeling embodied in the 

 classic contrapuntal composition of Bach. The 

 great emotional restraint and noble devotional char- 

 acter of Bach's music give it a stately grandeur 

 which compensates in a degree its lack of freedom in 

 form and variety in emotional qualities at least 

 as compared with the work of later masters. The 

 music of Bach leans to the intellectual rather than 

 to the emotional side, but just as it is too refined 

 and lofty to reflect any crude aspects of the instinct 

 of self-preservation, so it is too calm in its feeling to 

 arouse, in an active way, the passion of love based 

 in a direct way on sexual attraction. It deals rather 

 with the impersonal and abstract aspirations of 

 man, with broad philosophical or devotional men- 

 tal states, than with more elementary and per- 

 sonal moods. The music of Beethoven reflects the 

 qualities of a passionate being, less restrained by the 

 forms of art, more desirous of making an appeal, 



