272 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



introspective vein, when translated by Schumann 

 into the music of love, resulted in the creation of 

 the most poetic, most intimate appeals of quivering 

 consciousness for reciprocity in an attachment of 

 the most ethereal and delicate quality of which a 

 sexually founded passion is capable. A very similar 

 type of poetic achievement in music is to be found in 

 the love songs of Johannes Brahms and of Richard 

 Strauss. In neither of these composers is there to be 

 seen the same degree of spontaneity of utterance as 

 in Schumann, while in both there is a highly indi- 

 vidual attribute of modernity which arises from a 

 refined but sometimes somber self-scrutiny in respect 

 to emotional experiences. But it is significant of the 

 marvelously subtle and varied possibilities of erotic 

 feeling that these newest exponents of a fundamental 

 human passion should be able to stir emotional 

 depths hitherto unsounded and sometimes terrible 

 in their beauty pain. And any mention of modern 

 tendencies in the music of love would be glaringly 

 incomplete without a reference to the very different 

 emotional response that may be counted on from 

 the ingratiatingly sensuous, semisensual music of 

 Wagner, as one may hear it, for example, in Tristan 

 and Isolde. The wonderfully continued summa- 

 tions of stimuli ending in climaxes of great emotional 

 intensity and exquisite beauty derive their signi- 

 ficance from the universality of their appeal, from 

 the fact that they elicit a keenly pleasurable sensa- 

 tion from so many different nervous systems, at 



