FEBRUARY 9, 1912] 
music develops this attitude. The musi- 
cian proceeds with a remarkable uncon- 
sciousness of the elements involved both in 
the appreciating and performing of music. 
Any musician who is invited into the psy- 
chological laboratory where experiments 
in the psychology of music are performed, 
will demonstrate this, which is an entirely 
natural fact and casts no reflection upon 
him. The psychology of music for musi- 
cians has not yet come into existence. Its 
coming depends upon the recognition psy- 
chologists will give to the possibility of 
psychological measurements in music. 
The musician waits for the psychologist to 
blaze the trail. He is a most docile in- 
quirer when opportunity is given. The 
perspective of music, and the perspective 
of the musician, which is gained by the ob- 
jectifying of factors involved, will be pro- 
jected into our common account of music, 
and this will vitalize musical ideas and fur- 
nish the singer a more general insight into 
his capacities and possibilities. 
Such features of the psychology of 
music will form a foundation for musical 
pedagogy. last year the director of a 
great symphony orchestra brought his in- 
strumental and vocal soloists into the psy- 
chological laboratory and there performed 
a large number of experiments on them. 
Everything proved practically new to these 
musicians and yet they did not tire in point- 
ing out what a great help each and every 
measurement would be in their training 
if they were available. Take one example 
—the measurement of the pitch of an in- 
strumental or vocal tone as seen in direct 
reading on an instrument in the labora- 
tory. Orchestra leaders and soloists con- 
tinually differ in regard to the pitch sung 
or played under given circumstances. The 
director called up the players of the oboe, 
the French horn and the first violin, in 
turn, and the instant each played, the re- 
SCIENCE 
211 
cording instrument showed, to a small 
fraction of a vibration, how much the tone 
played varied from the true tone, and dis- 
putes of long standing were settled in a 
moment. The conductor then proceeded 
in the same way with his vocal soloists. 
They all saw their faults and fortes pictured 
quantitatively on the instrument, and left 
the laboratory unanimous in the verdict 
that the introduction of such psychological 
measurements into the conservatory would 
be a great step in the advancement of 
musical instruction. 
It is the business of the psychological 
laboratory to develop measuring instru- 
ments and methods, and to standardize 
them because, when the musician employs 
any of these measurements, he is employ- 
ing psychological, and not musical, tech- 
nique. 
Measurements of this sort may be divided 
into four groups according as they repre- 
sent essentially natural capacity, plasticity 
(that is, capacity for learning), acquired 
skill, and knowledge; and, in each and all 
of these phases, the art of music would 
profit by such facts. 
After all, pure psychology will be the 
chief gainer. One can not observe under 
controlled conditions in a field so rich and 
unworked without gathering new facts, cor- 
recting errors, broadening views and deep- 
ening insight into the nature of the mental 
processes involved in music. Applied 
psychology of music is to pure psychology 
of music as engineering is to physics; they 
must go hand in hand. Neither stands 
higher nor lower than the other in the rank 
of merit as a pursuit. And especially at 
the beginning of such an applied science 
as psychology, too high a value can not be 
placed upon the matter of laying solid 
theoretical foundations before we begin to 
work for practical results. 
In conelusion, then, what is the lesson of 
