God and music

Front matter

By JOHN HARRINGTON EDWARDS

" God is its author, and not man ; he laid

The key-note of all harmonies ; he planned All perfect combinations, and he made Us so that we could hear and understand." / f r~

Preface

All men are vitally and equally concerned in the true answer to the inevitable question as to the Cause of causes. The human mind cannot rest in mere phenomena, or in secondary agencies. The heart of man refuses to satisfy its undying hunger for a personal God and for personal immortality with anything short of reality. If in any art, science, philosophy, or supposed revelation there is valid help to be had toward meeting the imperative demand of human nature for absolute truth and imperishable love, it will find ardent welcome from every sane and candid person who thinks below the surface of life.

The beautiful art and exact science of music promise such aid for the illumination and guidance heavenward of the soul of man, forever restless till it finds rest in God. This art has long claimed to be a fitting medium of communication between Deity and Humanity. Has modern science an-

8 PREFACE

nulled this claim ? Do the ascertained facts and laws of universal nature make it absurd ? It is hoped that the following pages will give reasonable proof that music, by its constitution, correlations, and effects, discloses a Supreme Being who is all that the mind and heart of man need and rightly crave.

The art of melodious and accordant sound does not bear solitary testimony to the verity of the great belief; it is one of many truthful witnesses to this surpassing fact. The other arts, all sciences, and the philosophic reason fairly interrogated, agree with it. The Christian Revelation, far from being outlawed in this day of searching light on all beliefs, receives fresh and ever stronger confirmation from every side, when research has been carried faithfully onward till it has attained probable certainty. But it is possible that some who have no ear for Moses and the Prophets, nor for Christian apologists, may yet listen to the message of music, as it tells in clear and winning tones of the God of melody and harmony, who loves beauty and goodness with impartial regard, and man most of all.

PREFACE 9

The argument here offered to the consideration of those who care for either the art or the faith so closely affiliated, is the fruit of many years of thought and reading ; yet no one knows so well as the writer how far short it comes of what is possible in the same line of inquiry. These chapters are but trial shafts sunk into a mine of rich truth, from which tempting specimens have been brought to the surface, in the hope of attracting other students to deeper research and a more extensive working of the boundless wealth of closely related artistic and theistic fact hid in the wonderful art of music. It is, indeed, remarkable that the theological value of the whole territory of aesthetics has been so little appreciated. If the present attempt made in one section of it shall lead some who are more adequately equipped for the task to undertake an exhaustive study of the subject, it will not have failed of accomplishing an end definitely sought.

To relieve the somewhat technical and dialectic character of portions of the book, quotation and illustration have been freely introduced. This has been allowed, also, to show that the view taken is not that of a mere advocate, much less of a theoio PREFACE

logical melomaniac. It will be seen that many of the wisest thinkers and greatest leaders of men, as well as those possessed of artistic genius, have been constrained to ascribe a similar evidential value to music. The number of such authorities might be indefinitely multiplied.

No special originality is claimed for the present work except, perhaps, in the marshalling of known facts, and the converging upon the main point of more or less familiar lines of argument in an unfamiliar but legitimate way. It is only just to say that what may to some seem commonplaces of musical science or of theological reasoning, are, nevertheless, quite apt to be entirely new to the majority of readers on either side, and are necessary to the general understanding of technical matters introduced.

The intention has been to make due acknowledgment of the more important references to, and quotations from, other writers. In the accumulated notes of years, the exact source of some facts, opinions, and valuable excerpts made use of has been lost. Credit is given in the Index to all, so far as known, to whom credit is specially owing.

PREFACE ii

Acknowledgment is gratefully made of suggestions as to particular chapters by M. Allen Starr, M. D., Ph. D., of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and by Mr. R. Huntington Woodman, Director of Music in Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn; also of useful hints and encouragement from the Rev. W. C. Stitt, D. D., who kindly read the entire manuscript. This recognition of indebtedness does not involve responsibility on the part of either of these friends for any views or statements contained in the book.

Brooklyn-New York.

-

Contents

I. The Theme 15

II. What is Music? 23

III. Music in Nature 43

Chapter I The Theme

A world thrilling in every atom with rhythmic vibrations ; a race of sentient and intelligent beings, so constituted as to perceive, combine, and enjoy an endless variety of musical sounds, and able to reproduce them by artistic methods in elaborate or simpler forms, which gratify and exalt their higher nature; these in a universe ruled by allembracing law that binds together its limitless realms in a unity demanding one sole cause equal, at least, to the production of its component elements and forces : — given these factors, what must we infer ? God.

The Deity thus declared is a perfect Being, whose nature is harmony, who is keenly alive to dissonance, physical or psychical, but who delights in every form of beauty. He has set the laws and forces of the universe in an exquisite order, such as will bless his creatures, by their own responsive cooperation, with innumerable melodic and harmonic sounds, that intimate the finer beauty of holiness, and may greatly aid in its attainment.

If there were no other proofs of the existence of a Creator, supposably infinite in wisdom, power, and goodness, and also of a spiritual constitution of the universe, we need be neither atheists nor agnostics. Music, with its implications and possibilities, would suffice to show to all minds capable of responding to its appeal, and of reasoning upon its causes and correlations, that there is a Supreme Power making for harmony, happiness, and spiritual perfecting.

The art and science of music by no means reveal all that God is. But the boundless realm of melodious and accordant sound does indicate a Creator, whose nature is full to ceaseless overflow of the love of audible beauty. The Being thus disclosed provides in the structure of the universe and of man for the making of melody and harmony in this and, probably, in all worlds. " Everything that the sun shines on, sings," and sings of the Great Musician. The Germans picture God as himself singing songs, and one of their ablest philosophers avers that without music life would be a grand mistake.

THE THEME 19

Everywhere, always, and among all his sentient creatures above the lowest stage of sentiency, the God of music uses this means to effect some of the highest possible ends.

Of far wider and more personal import is it to know what God is than merely to be assured that an all-controlling Power exists. It is of unspeakable interest to every human being to be certain that the Ruler of his life and destiny is of a nature kindred to his own, so that there can be intercourse and sympathy between invisible Deity and sensitive, aspiring, struggling humanity. Unlimited might, concerned only for the establishing of ethical right, could easily develop into an uncomfortable, loveless coexistence. " All law " is " all love " only if wielded by righteous love. On the other hand, a divine Autocrat is conceivable who, in superabundance of good-will toward his dependent creatures, would supply them with every means of gratifying their various faculties and cravings, artistic and otherwise, but with no imperative regard for the right. Such a monarch would be a ruler of evil omen to the universe. The calamitous results of his supremacy would be exceeded only by the woe zo GODANDMUSIC

which an omnipotent sovereign of infinite malice could cause. A god who fostered art solely for art's sake, regardless of moral conditions, would be an aesthetic Ahriman.

Music glorifies a regimen of exact law by the gracious dominance of an informing spirit that delights in the well-being and pure happiness of all who hear and feel. It is subject throughout to an intricate mathematical system, yet is the most altruistic of arts. Spiritual in essence, it utilizes the senses for the higher education of the soul. Born in the sphere of pure spirit, it touches the lower level of matter only to -pring upward, and, if true to its origin, to rise on the pulsating wings of the ether to loftier regions. The home of music is in the bosom of the Eternal. It is the only known language indigenous to heaven and heard in all inhabited worlds. Music is the lingua franca of the universe. Modern science goes far to confirm this idea of oldest philosophy.

The " passionate love of unity," which marks our time above others, finds in this late-born science fresh and eloquent attestation of the oneness of the Creator and the homogeneity of creation. Were

THE THEME 21

there gods many, or demiurgic sub-gods working at will in the universe, the music of the spheres would be palpable discord, prohibitory of science, and a torment to ear and soul. Pantheocracy would be pandemonium.

Visible and audible beauty are one in origin, in ultimate constitution, and in purpose. The aesthetic argument for the being of God has not been developed in any degree corresponding to that attained in other kinds of theistic proof, yet it is one of the strongest. Its contents, moreover, disclose a God of such attributes as to commend him to all who love beauty in any of its forms. A music-loving and a music-making Deity is close akin to the Heavenly Father of the Gospels. From the morning of creation he ordained song and gladness for the recreant but redeemed prodigals of earth on their return to the Father's heart and home.

It is not the purpose of this essay to demonstrate anew that God is ; but, postulating the common theistic belief as at least possibly true, to inquire if in the wonderful art of music there are any clear intimations of his being and nature. Should the argument attempted prove to some who may follow it a credible suggestion of rich depths and heights of half-discovered truth leading from audible nature up to God, it will be well worth the labor spent upon it.

To show that music, even as yet imperfectly mastered and understood, is an effluence and evidence of Deity, is a proposition that deserves serious study and sympathetic judgment. It may prove that much essential theology is latent in the art of harmonious sound. Possibly better than by metaphysics, and far more truly than by polemics, the direct knowledge that God is the Rewarder of all who aspire to know and be like him, may be taught by the tones and forms of pure music. Only it must be true music, worthy its divine Original, and not of sensuous type appealing to the senses alone or chiefly. Moreover, to know any kind of reality, especially the highest, man " must feel and act, as well as sense and think."

WHAT IS MUSIC?

«« Music is the manifestation of the inner essential nature of all that is."— Beethoven.

"The 'atheists of expression' cannot deny the unspeakable power of music to express joy and pain. The spirit of music is incapable of malice and mechancet'e"

" The same transformation through the awakened sense of the infinite is seen in the domain of art itself. As sculpture, with its exactness of line and severe proportions, is the representative art of the Greeks, so music which is, as it were, the attempt to express the unutterable in feeling an 1 aspiration, is the representative art of modern thought."— D. W. Forest.

Chapter II What Is Music?

The universe is rhythmical in every element and movement. Its history marches in ordered throb and step to some far-off, divine event, which will crown the long progression with perfect harmony. What men call music is a symbol foreshadowing the final consonance of all things, material and spiritual. It is a breaking into sound of the fundamental rhythm of universal being. The human art is but a trying of the strings, the often discordant attuning of this and that instrument, at best a first rehearsal on earth of the divine symphony of creation. But the motif is recognizable. The full, sublime harmony is coming. The law of spiritual rhythm will subdue all things to itself.

Music is not merely rhythmic sound; it is yet more the expression of spiritual experiences. In Spohr's words, it may be poetically described as " the consecration of sound." Schopenhauer more definitely says that it is " the quintessence of life and events, without likeness to any of them." Plato and Aristotle insisted that music is the most adequate imitation, meaning, doubtless, the truest expression, of life and character, or of moral temperament. This may have suggested Zola's epigram, " Art is nature seen through a temperament " • but, as music is an intimate part of nature, it cannot rightly be called imitation of nature. Hanslick affirms that " music embodies the general figures and dynamic element of occurrences, carrying our feelings with it."

These and similar denning statements are a varied phrasing of the truth that music goes deeper than sense, and springs out of the spiritual process in the universal life.

It is nothing less than cosmic, the very soul of motion, and immanent in all right feeling, thought, and action. Order, proportion, form, constitute the palpable ideality in every art ; but to say that " rhythm is the soul of music," is to put second first. Thought and feeling are before act. Power is the dynamic of motion. Efficient power is will at work. Thought is mental motivity, but what is thought depends upon antecedent tendency. There is Art before art. Potential music governs the actual.

Since modes of motion can produce only modes of motion, Lotze argues that music could not generate spiritual states if there were no spiritual force and substance to utter it to a spirit in man. This is the thought which the author of " Charles Auchester " more subtly expresses : " I felt that it is not in voice that the thing called music hides ; it is the uncreated intelligence of tone that genius breathes into the created elements of sound."

Schopenhauer is accurate as well as eloquent when he writes : " Of all the arts, music most universally and most many-sidedly portrays the very essence of the will, the very soul of passion, the very heart of this capricious, world-making, and incomprehensible inner nature of ours. Music shows us just what the will is, eternally moving, striving, charging, flying, struggling, wandering, returning to itself, and then beginning afresh with no deeper purpose than just life. It is great and strong, never by virtue of abstract ideas, but only by the might of the will that it embodies."

The will to create music operates through audible vibrations of certain velocities and ratios. Every atom and ion in the universe is a-tremble with rhythmic motion. Rhythm, Herbert Spencer says, is a fact of all motion and deducible from the persistence of force ; but this is only a condition, not a cause of ordered and beautiful existence. The whole creation is attuned to a foreordered harmony, which is the product of exact ratios of the universal vibration. It can even be affirmed that the universe is not only set to music, but is the product of music. Creation is simply vibratile force subject to intelligent will.

A recent theory to account for gravitation may possibly explain the physical origin of matter with all its form and relations. Bjerknes supposes that bodies of visible size vibrating at the same musical pitch may attract each other. If, among the many modes of atomic thrill, there is one general pulsation common to all atoms, the vibrating units may be drawn together by unisonous impulse acting as the square of the distance. The mutual attraction of atoms vibrating at the same or harmonious ratios may yet prove to be the final mechanical explanation of molecular structure, chemical affinity, crystallization, organic development, and stellar arrangement. Life in every form is rhythmic, though not necessarily due to atomic vibration. Will power first set the ether vibrating, and the divine will may conceivably use this means for propagating life.

Pythagoras had scientific ground for his basal principle that God organized all nature according to the laws of harmony. His axiom, " All is number and harmony," is verifiable by mathematical demonstration. Plato was a Pythagorean so far as to reiterate the dictum that the soul of the cosmos is musical harmony. Long before their day the Egyptian philosophers made music the symbol of the universe. They found it akin to astronomy, the divine, all-explaining science. The early Hindu belief traced this art to heaven as its birthplace. Its five modes, as practiced by the primitive Aryans in India, were held to have sprung from the five heads of Krishna. Hebrew Scripture does not commit itself to unscientific theories of the origin of music, but testifies to its early adoption as an expressional aid to worship. The brooding Spirit of the creation account in Genesis consists with the scientific theory of atomic, vibratile motion as the parent of all physical forces.

The more thoroughly music is studied in its rhythmical constitution and its correlations with other forms of spiritual and physical being, the more certainly it is seen to be cosmical in itself, and in its interrelations with the rest of the universe. The choral harmonies of the spheres are as possible to science as delightful to imagination. If faith were limited to the actually visible and audible, progress in science would be impossible, and its most valuable revelations would be in vain. Inventions in the field of acoustics, where the wonders of the telephone and phonograph have been found but yesterday, may some time enable men to hear planetary anthems and sidereal symphonies. Why not, when the cold calculations of mathematical astronomy have revealed planets before unseen ? Shall the grandest discoveries in our knowledge of the universe be always limited to the visual, while equal marvels doubtless await the ear ? Neptune, Uranus, and other worlds, known and unknown, may yet take their audible part in the celestial orchestra, when far-hearing devices shall enable us to perceive aerial vibrations of low velocities originating at great distances, as telescope and spectroscope now assist the eye to see rays of light otherwise invisible. With a sound-magnifying instrument, which would make the ear capable of perceiving vibrations in the ether coming at the rate of four hundred million millions per second, we could hear red. But all that would be necessary in order to perceive the few hundred vibrations in each second which produce most musical tones, would be some mechanical means of magnifying the tone waves so as to bring them within present hearing power. This, indeed, seems impossible, but so have antecedently seemed most of the great physical discoveries. Electricity, or some other force hitherto unknown, may yet lend us ears to hear the seemingly inaudible. Herzian waves, millions of miles in length and moving with almost the velocity of light, are now intercepted and their transoceanic message read by eye and ear alike. Science anticipates prophecy. Its coming triumphs who can predict ?

Whatever the future of science may have in store for the world in this respect, the mathematical argument holds good for the ancient supposition that the created universe not only originated in a Mind ruled and ruling by the laws of harmony, but also thrills in every atom and star with audible consonant vibrations —

" Ionian music measuring out

The steps of Time — the shocks of Chance — The blows of Death."

The art of music springs from a rhythmical origin. Every organ of the human body has its own fundamental rhythm. The pulse-beat is a representative example. The heart holds life's baton and leads the vital chorus. The muscular sense, physiologists teach, is the measure of time. The time-sense is due, according to this theory, to muscular contraction and relaxation. Dr. J. S. Wilks, in the Medical Magazine says that " there must be up-and-down movement in all muscular action, and in this, therefore, music appears to have had its origin." This suggestion is probably true as to the mechanical, sensuous element in the art, though this is not strictly music, but only the medium of its spiritual essence.

When regular and harmonious, the complex organic rhythm gives a sense of well-being, and often of positive pleasure. Its disturbance causes pain. The enjoyment of rhythmic motion was early found to be heightened by the regulated movements of dancing. Whether measured music began in the appeal to the ear and brain by the voice, or by rude instruments used to sustain the agreeable motion of the dance, or in some other way, it had independent birth in the pleasure which rhythmic sounds, in gratifying succession and combination, gave to the sense awakened by audible vibrations in the air. Discords, or musical sounds unfitting the environment, such as lively tunes at a funeral or dirges at a wedding, cause a feeling of uneasiness or actual t pain. The vital functions are stimulated by that which gives pleasure, abated by whatever is painful. Hence music must very early have taken a high place among the pleasurable activities of men.

Before human beings talked intelligibly, they probably sang imitatively. The first articulate signs by which mind communicated with mind were probably musical, echoes or imitations of melodious sounds in nature. Language and the art of music grew from the same common stem. Speech, however, was artificial, while music was natural. Rude yet sympathetic efforts at expression of feeling were the first forms of a wonderful and beautiful art. But it outgrew this elementary stage as soon as the human soul developed an intellectual apprehension of its own states, and learned other possibilities of expression given it by melodic sounds. As an art, music was born of the perhaps unconscious attempt to express what was strongly and pleasantly felt. The least material of arts, music expresses the spiritual in man more immediately than painting, sculpture, architecture, or even poetry. It voices his ideals and aspirations, his deepest feelings, and his unutterable longings.

For this capacity there is adequate reason in the constitution of mind and of things. Life is motion, a ceaseless ongoing. Feeling, the first effect of life, is, in psychical experience, emotion. Melody, by the definition of Helmholtz, is motion of pitch, capable of expressing emotion of all kinds. Representing pure movement, music, in Schelling's phrase, is above all others " the art which strips off the bodily." It is a clear product of the human mind in time, and so can embody in ethereal form the passing, changing spiritual states of the human soul. There is in it far more than melodious sound symmetrically ordered. The soul of music is a spiritual content of mind, with a meaning and force which cannot possibly be the product of mere vibrations in the atmosphere. Modes of motion may explain things physical, but can no more originate psychical events than a locomotive can construct a logarithm.

In the first place, music is essentially intellectual. " Seeing and hearing are in reality complicated acts of judgment." The mind sees, not the eye. The mind hears, not the tympanum or the fibres of Corti. What eye, ear, or brain receives is simply a motion in space. The soul dwelling within sends, and alone receives, the spiritual message of the tones which certain specific vibrations produce.

Music begins after the rhythmic motion takes place. The interval of time between the sensible impression and the mental state or action awakened by it is not beyond computation. Science is a new word of God which pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, that is, the faculty which perceives and judges by sense and the higher spiritual faculty. Psychometrical demonstration will perhaps be equal to the problem.

Think what music means to the human soul, and what it can do. It cannot be a soulless form of physical energy, nor a remarkable result of mechanical evolution, the sole function of which is to titillate the nerves. It is a vibrant door opening into the infinite. It is a Marconi system of communication between spiritual beings. God himself is immanent in it, modulates it by his law-ordered forces, speaks through it to his children.

Carlyle's rugged nature was sensitive as an yEolian harp to the significance and power of this inter-spiritual language. He says of it, " The meaning of music goes deep. A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech which leads us to the edge of the infinite and lets us for a moment gaze into that." Bacon touched the common understanding more nearly when, after saying that sound is " one of the subtilest pieces of nature," he wrote : " Tunes and airs have in themselves some affinity with the affections, as merry tunes, solemn tunes, tunes inclining men's minds to pity, warlike tunes ; so as it is no marvel if they alter the spirit, considering that tunes bear a predisposition to the motion of the spirit."

It is this capacity to express and reproduce the spiritual moods of men that gives music right to be called a fine art. One of the clearest seeing teachers of our time has stated its claim to this rank in these words : " We have not only a mortal body, with wants, in the supplying of which coarse and temporary contrivances, as arbitrary words, are well enough ; but we also have an enduring spirit with lasting emotions, and these emotions, which belong to the nature of spirit, have specific sounds which are their natural expression. And here arises music, the eldest if not the divinest of fine arts."

The body, even in its finest functions, is not the man. Nor is man all reason, nor life all drudgery. The lower animals never play. In human life the play instinct is the root of art. The overflowing joy of beauty is a divine benison. Music is a seeming reminiscence of heaven, sent to draw men thither again.

- It is the last appeal to man — Voice crying since the world began; The cry of the Ideal, cry To aspirations that would die : The last appeal, in it is heard The pathos of the final word."

The songs of a people keep alive their spiritual sensibility. They cheer, inspire, comfort, refine, elevate. They furnish atmosphere and wings by which mortals can, for a little, get almost free of matter, and rise into the region of pure beauty. By the aid of music they are thus lifted, if they will, nearer God ; or, alas, it may only raise them from earth just enough to have freedom and excitation for the evil that clings to the baser nature. Song, we may believe, was one of the pure joys of Eden, but the race of Cain, the Bible story runs, soon got hold of music in its mechanical form, for the earliest bit of recorded art-history is the item that Tubal Cain was father to those that handle the organ, or, more exactly, the Pan's pipe.

In simplest definition, music is rhythmical sound used as a means of expression. What it expresses is first in the soul from which it flows. It takes the

WHAT IS MUSIC?

color of the soul's atmosphere. As an art it is not found in nature, but belongs to the ear, the brain, and the spirit of man. Nature gives only sound of which to make music. It is, therefore, a human art for the expression of the spiritual in man. In its primitive form, as in drum worship and the early religious use of bells, music was really a naive attempt to interview the invisible spirits supposed to reside within them, which responded by rhythmical and more or less melodious sounds. The ascent from a crude, animistic essay at communion with the spiritual world to the Veni Spiritus, Bernard's celestial song, Bach's Passion Music, or the best hymns of Wesley and Faber in fitting musical expression, marks the course of man's religious growth. In sacred music he utters the highest that is in him, and aspires after that which is far higher.

The provision in nature for music is doubtless universal. The musical capacity of sentient beings is well-nigh the same, and increases the higher in the scale they are found. This fact indicates a Creator who possesses the love of music to a degree as yet but little recognized, and who reveals himself in both the actual and the potential music of the universe as a God of harmony. The visible heavens gave Napoleon his readiest argument with which to answer the atheistic queries of infidel comrades. Could we hear the music of the spheres in their rhythmic round, we should have potent proof not only of the Creator's existence but also of his characteristic qualities. Were our ears finely enough attuned to perceive the melodic sounds which continually fill the air about us, but fail to break through the barrier of our half-developed sense of hearing, we should have evidence of Deity in heaven and on earth as cogent as any the visible universe can furnish, and perhaps more appealing to the spiritual sensibility.