The rhythm of life

Front matter

THE RHYTHM lOF

I BY -

f CHARLES , BRODIE 13 PATTERSON lk&.H^ lifliiliii

Foreword

Dear Dr. Charles Brodie Patterson

This is a work for which I have long waited. I find here a fundamental examination of spiritual and physical laws relating to the rhythmic and vibratory forces that rule in the human sphere of thought and feeling.

At a time when so much work is done, having mere impressionism as a basis, it is a source of joy to know that you have put into this book the product of years of patient observation and searching analysis, and I feel certain that it will stand the test of time.

In Chapter III, under the title "Energy-Motion- Vibration," you go to the foundation of the subject of vibration, and in "Music and Colour Tones" you show their relation, and write with absorbing interest.

My first experience with the therapeutical power of music was in Paris at a time when the subject was not even discussed; but not until I went to live in London did I put the subject to a practical test. A friend of mine, the late Miss Clara Barton, who was for a long time President of the Red Cross Association of America, being dangerously ill, I was strongly impressed to try what musical improvisation would do in her case; a piano was moved into her apartment, and there every day I improvised for about one hour. The experiment proved successful, and in a comparatively short time Miss Barton was able to leave her bed. The cure proved permanent. I could relate many instances of a similar nature among my friends in Florence, Berlin, and other cities.

iv FOREWORD

For years I meditated the writing of such a book as you have now brought out, and I can say without any reserve that you have expressed my views and judgments all along the different lines of thought herein set forth. I shall now refer my friends to this work, for I do not think in our time a better can be written by anyone here or abroad.

There are chapters such as "Colour Tonics," "Cosmic Consciousness," and ^'Musical Therapeutics," that go to the fundamental basis of the subject, and you have put into concise terms what many would only render more recondite and mysterious. The laws you enunciate are as old as time, but the large vision presented to the mind of the reader, the harmonious arrangement and the lucid definitions make the work authoritative and original. Every chapter deals with some phase of life-rhythm, some aspect of sound waves, some manifestation of colour-tone to which every human being is more or less intimately related.

The book is a key to the rhythm of life. Students of the new therapeutics, artists, musicians, singers and public speakers will study it as a text book.

Very sincerely yours,

FRANCIS GRIERSON.

New York, March 15, 1915.

Preface

For many years I have been haunted by an idea that would not remain at rest in my mind, but kept ever and ever recurring; therefore, I have sought in this book to voice the thoughts which have so long been my companions, giving expression to them, as best I can, through the written word.

It is more than a quarter of a century ago that I began to dream dreams of music and colour that should prove a universal panacea for anxious and fearful minds, for sick and diseased bodies; a panacea that should dispel sorrow and doubt, that should bring rest and peace to mind, and health and strength to body. I felt then, as I feel now, that a new spring-time should corhe to the world when a greater love of music and colour should enter into the life of man. So the text of this book is to bring light out of darkness, to bring health out of disease, and to bring joy out of pain; to proclaim, as it were, a new gospel of health, happiness, and beauty, to help to bring into our lives the new song of life that will surely come when we have prepared the way for its coming.

There is a necessary preparation before one may receive this new gospel. One must first be willing to lay aside biased and prejudiced thought, and earnestly desire truth solely for its own sake. Lord Bacon said, "No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth." In the study of truth we often have to lay aside preconceived thoughts and ideas in order to make the mind receptive to a new or a still greater truth. Many times have I wished that someone would write a book on music and colour for

VI

PREFACE the healing and beautifying of mind and body, but as yet no one has seen fit to do so. Therefore I can refrain no longer, and simply have to obey the behest of something in my own consciousness that will not let me rest until I begin and finish this book.

I know that I am only a pioneer, or perhaps the voice of one crying in the wilderness; nevertheless, I am absolutely certain that a day will come in the far or near future, I know not which, when music and colour will exert a thousandfold more influence upon human life than they do at present. And if I can have some little part in bringing into the world a recognition of other values in music and colour than those we have heretofore known, I am satisfied.

This book is not intended to show the definite way that one should take, but rather to suggest the possibilities that will reward the earnest seeker who devotes time and thought to carrying on a still more thorough investigation of the subject.

I know that in any new departure one must run the gauntlet of true, as well as superficial criticism, but I am in no way deterred by this, knowing that whatever may be true in the book will survive false criticism, and whatever there may be of dross will sooner or later perish. Thought lives in the mind in order to be expressed, to take form as the written or the spoken, word. I leave my written word to the critic and lay reader alike, as an expression of my own thought and feeling, hoping that it will bring some spiritual, mental, or physical uplift that will prove to be for the highest good of all. And if I call out a deeper emotion or a higher aspiration that will make for a greater love of music and colour and their fuller expression in life, I shall rest thoroughly content, feeling that this book will have proved of some benefit to my fellow-men, and so have fulfilled the dearest wish of the author.

Colour Tonics ....

X. Keynote to Health — Harmony

XL

XIL

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVL

Music and Character . . . .

viil

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE

XVII.

Music and Education .

. 237

XVIII.

A Refining Influence .

. 249

XIX.

Musical Therapeutics .

. 262

XX.

. 275

XXI.

. 291

Introduction

The present time is one of transition. The dogmatism that has pervaded all schools of thought, whether religious or philosophical, scientific or artistic, is passing away before the coming of a new order, a new order that is an expanding as well as a modifying factor, a new order that has come to fulfil, but not to destroy anything that is in any way vital to life. On the surface it may appear that this new order is highly destructive. It is destructive in that everything that is found to be useless, and everything that has clouded or obscured man's mental vision is gradually being relegated to the past.

The nineteenth century was an era of dense materialism. It was, strictly speaking, a utilitarian age, an age in which man's physical organism played a much greater part than his soul. Materialistic thought entered into everything. Religion, literature, and art were all made the exponents of man's sense, or physical nature. The crudest kind of literalism entered into everything. Countries like England, which for many centuries had given expression to much that was beautiful and artistic, seemed, long before the Victorian age, to lose, in a marked way, a true sense of art and beauty. It is only necessary to look at the architecture, the statuary, and most of the paintings of that particular period, to perceive how little of the artistic and beautiful was to be found there. Only a few master minds, poets, and painters, held aloft the banner of idealism and beauty. Rank materialism ruled on every side. Materialism, scepticism and doubt have ever been and ever will be destructive of all true art.

The last twenty-five years of the nineteenth century mark the beginning of a change, not only in Europe, but in America as well. Since then, this change has been gradually going on, affecting almost everything in life; but while the old is rapidly passing, it is, as yet, only the spring-time of the new, when ideals have not yet taken definite form, so that the whole world to-day may be said to be filled with unrest and expectation. Great composers and poets, who are the true interpreters of human life, have been among the first to herald the new order. But the sphere of music and poetry is just as much filled with unrest and transition as is any other condition of the world's life. In the music of to-day there is the search after something that has not yet been attained, which is evidenced by the increased use of chromatics, changes of modulation, and hitherto unheard of departures in time and rhythm.

Quite a number of modern composers have introduced chromatics into their music in what would seem to be an excessive way. But it is very doubtful whether they have added anything of real beauty or charm to it by so doing. It seems to me rather to point to a desire for something that has not been fully expressed in music, a something that will be expressed in a better way, possibly, without the undue use of

INTRODUCTION 3

chromatics. Certainly there is very Httle of the higher and sweeter thought of Hfe expressed through their use. More frequently chromatics are used to express sorrow or anger, or, I might say, the stress of man's superficial nature. Too often the effect is to take from, rather than add to, the beauty or the strength of music. There is in its use too much of what I might call unreal sentiment, and more or less of gloomy foreboding, and the mysterious elements of life. Its present use may be indicative of the unrest and warfare that prevails throughout the civilised world. To me it would seem as though the composer were striving after effects through the excessive use of chromatics in his music just as much as many people in other departments of life are striving after effects that have little value or true relation to real expression. Within the last few years many Russian composers have come to the fore, and they have put into their music the unrest of the great Russian nation, the pathos of the slavery of its people, and something of a desire, too, for greater freedom. Much of their music is written in the minor keys. It lacks that triumphant sound that comes to the composers who write for a free and enlightened people. The music is wonderful as an expression of human feeling, but in its undertone you find the sadness and the struggle of life. Even when there is an effort made to produce music of a bright or an inspiring nature, you are sure to find some strain that is tinged with the sadness or the unrest of a great nation in bondage.

At present, in France, there has come into vogue what, by many, is considered a new school of music, of which Debussy may be said to be the founder, or chief representative. Whether this is to become the foundation of something new in music that will become permanent, it is yet too early to say. It may be that it will act on music in the way that the impressionists* painting has acted — to change, to enlarge, or to beautify the old art. While one may get from it a certain kind of intellectual and psychic stimulus, still it does not seem to be, as yet, of a full, soul-satisfying nature. I might add that the effect of Debussy's music on myself is not altogether satisfactory. I seem to be carried up into the clouds, and left suspended between heaven and earth, yet my head never emerges into the open blue. However, it is only through innovations in every department of life that the best of everything is at last fully realised.

Within recent years considerable discussion has arisen as to whether music may, or may not, prove beneficial in the healing of the sick. It is useless for any one to deny the fact that music exerts a decided influence upon one's mind and feelings, and there can no longer be any question that both thought and feeling produce a marked action upon man's physical body. Among many people there exists a decided difference of opinion as regards the value of music. The music lover, while not associating it with the renewing of the strength of his body, nevertheless feels it essential to his mental and spiritual welfare. Many others who might consider themselves of a more practical turn of mind look upon music solely as a luxury, and regard the people engaged in its production, i.e., composers, singers, and instrumental musicians, as mere dilettanti, men and women who are engaged, at best, in a work that never makes for any practical or real good in life. There are some people in the world who seemingly lack the faculty of ever getting beyond

INTRODUCTION 5

concrete expression. What they call common sense seems to shut out all idealistic vision. They are held in bondage to the earth and the things of the earth by their sense nature. They are the people who let well enough alone, and who never make progress save in material accumulations. What they possess, what they eat, and what they drink, form their chief pleasures in life. But if the music lover is right in believing that his soul and mind are both uplifted and benefited by listening to music, he must take one step farther and see the practical value that accrues also to the physical organism. When he is able to do this, music will no longer need its defenders, because, if music can be made of value in the healing of the sick, and the overcoming of mental and physical pain, then the most so-called practical man will seek its aid as ardently as the lover of music.

Chapter II Husic Of Other Clihes

"Nine sisters, beautiful in form and face, Came from their convent on the shining heights Of Pierus, the mountain of delights, To dwell among the people at its base. Then seemed the world to change. All time and space, Splendor of cloudless days and starry nights. And men and manners, and all sounds and sights, Had a new meaning, a diviner grace. Proud were these sisters, but were not too proud To teach in schools of little country towns Science and song, and all the arts that please; So that while housewives span, and farmers ploughed. Their comely daughters, clad in homespun gowns, Learned the sweet songs of the Pierides."

—Longfellow.

"Therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; Since naught so stalkish, hard, and full of rage. But music for the time doth change his nature."

— Shakespeare.

Every country has its own music which has ever kept pace with its greatest human development. I might put that in a stronger way by saying that the music sets the pace, that it was, and is, the real leader of civilisation, and that the growth of a nation can best be determined by its music. While the music of the present time seems to be very largely the product of the last few hundred years, without question its real beginning had its root in a remote past, for music is the very oldest of all the arts. It may be said of music that it is the very foundation on which all the other arts are builded. We might go still farther and say that music is the soul of all art ; that music, in its highest and best sense, comes closer to the divine in man than does anything else in life ; that in its last analysis, it is a revelation of God to man. Music is, as it were, the link between divinity and humanity. The truly great composer is the most divinely inspired of all the world's prophets, and through his music he reaches far greater audiences and preaches far more wonderful sermons than the most eloquent preachers on earth have ever done.

Recent discoveries made in Egypt go to show that the ancient Egyptians possessed a wonderful knowledge of music. It is believed that they had more kinds of musical instruments in their orchestras than we possess at the present time; and it is said also that they had instruments to give a full and complete expression to the sounds of nature; such as the warring of the elements, the flowing of the brooks, the soughing of the wind, and various other nature sounds; while in our orchestras we have instruments which can, to a degree, be made to produce such effects, yet they were not expressly designed for that purpose, as many of the instruments of Egypt apparently were. There are^ some writers who go back to the legendary continent of Atlantis, and write of the music that antedated even that of Egypt; but such writing, at best, is only speculative, since there is no authentic evidence concerning it. But of the music of the ancient civilisation of Egypt there is an ever-unfolding evidence showing the wonderful progress that music had made in that country practically before the dawn of the greater part of the world's civilisation. Maspero and other great Egyptologists have shown beyond all question that in an ancient past, a civilisation existed in Egypt that was one of the most wonderful the world has ever known. And largely through Egyptian influence there followed another great civilisation, greater than any tha* has appeared on the face of the earth since that time, namely, the civilisation of ancient Greece. Greece, in her use of music, followed along lines similar to those of Egypt. Many of her musical instruments were like those of Egypt, and historically there can be very little question that the Grecians drew much of their fundamental musical knowledge from Egypt.

The ancient Greeks were without doubt one of the most highly developed and civilised nations that have ever inhabited the earth. They were great in every department of human endeavour. Great in literature and art, great in commerce and war, great in everything that pertained to mental or physical development. Practically all the civilised nations of the earth since their time have been influenced in a marked way by ancient Greek thought and art. Many things that have come to us in the present as new, research would show to be only a revival of the Greek thought of by-gone ages ; for ancient Greece has furnished the intellectual, ethical, and artistic fundamental basis of all that is best in the civilised thought of the present. Just as, in another way, the Jewish civilisation has transmitted to us its religious thought and feeling. Undoubtedly Greece influenced the other nations in a musical way, although we have no written music of that early time. Still, all through Greek literature, we find not only reference to the purposes for which music was used, but also a full knowledge of the wonderful power that could be exercised through its use. Greek tradition makes Orpheus their greatest representative of both vocal and instrumental music. We are told that this almost god possessed the power to draw the rocks and trees from their places, and even to arrest the rivers in their courses by the influence of his wonderful voice and lyre. The Greeks looked upon him as one of the greatest pioneers of civilisation. Pindar writes of him as the "Father of Song." We are told, too, that Orpheus was closely associated with the mystical, ceremonial side of religion. He was said also to have taught mankind the use of medicine ; and when we read of the many cures effected by the Greeks through the use of music, we may well understand that he gave to music a prominent part in the healing of the sick. One of the legends told is that Orpheus and Amphion drew the wild beasts after them, made the trees and stones dance to the time of their harps, and brought them together in such a manner as to form a regular wall and enclose a great city. An English writer who lived somewhat over a hundred years ago wrote: "Stripped of the fable, this story, according to general interpretation, signifies that they subdued the savage disposition of a barbarous people who lived in caves, woods, and deserts, and by representing to them in their songs, the advantages of society, persuaded them to build cities and form a community." If this be true, we see the foundation of a real community of interests is to be established through the use of music.

Aristoxenus, an early Greek critic of prosody, distinguished the elements out of which rhythm is composed as: the spoken word, the time of music in song, and the bodily motion. And he defined rhythm so produced as an arrangement of the time periods. The art of the early Greek poets was devoted to a harmonious combination of language, instrument, and lo THE RHYTHM OF LIFE

gesture, the whole three uniting to form perfect rhythm. Ages ago it was known that rhythm could be put into everything we do with the greatest advantage, so that no matter what work one may be engaged in, the rhythmic way of doing it is the easiest as well as the most graceful.

Pythagoras, who lived some six hundred and fifty years before Christ, and is considered one of the greatest of early mathematicians, believed that the universe was created by music. It is said he taught that not the ear, but mathematics, should be the guide in music. He was apparently one of the first Greeks to teach the music of the spheres, and had a scale in which the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn corresponded to the notes E, F, G, A, B, C, and D, of which the Sun formed the middle or the controlling note; thus we can see that the music of 2500 years ago was, in one sense, derived from the heavens, and that heavenly bodies wxre used as symbols of musical sounds. Unquestionably Greece laid the foundation of her civilisation in music, and the other Muses constituted different degrees of the one great fundamental note that ruled through all from first to last.

It is music that comes through man's ear in sound, and it is music that comes through man's eye in colour. Musical sound vibration and musical colour vibration underlie all nature, and give beauty to all life. Take music and colour out of the world and we have a dead world, a world without a soul. The nation that is devoid of the musical sense, so that it neither creates nor loves music, has lost its soul. And the individual who has not awakened to a love of music and colour has not yet found his soul. We feel

MUSIC OF OTHER CLIMES ii

music and colour far more than we see or hear them. The greatest beauty of sound or colour is a revelation to the soul of man rather than something derived through his sense nature. Greece was a great nation so long as she continued to use the divine principles of rhythm, melody, and harmony in everything she felt, thought, and did. From the time she began to lose these principles, there came a decline. But the spirit which once animated the Greek people did not die; it lives on, and will continue to live on until there shall come a civilisation even greater than that of the Greeks. As Jesus was a prophecy of what man must become, so Greece was a prophecy of what the whole world shall yet become.

When we write of the music of the past, let us remember that music is without beginning or ending, that it lives in the heart of the Infinite, that the demand can never exceed the supply. Moreover, the world can have the music it desires if it is willing to seek it. But the things that heart and mind desire are not brought tnto being without an effort on the part of those desiring them. We must bring of what we have to bear on that which we desire to have; for everything we receive, there must be something in the nature of an equivalent given. We can have what heart and mind desire, when we use heart and mind and bodily effort to get it. It was Plato who said: "The soul which has seen the most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or musician, or lover." It is through seeing the most of truth and expressing all that we are able to see that there comes the new birth, the new zeal, the new knowledge. Love music for the love of music; love beauty for the love of beauty, and music and beauty will become redoubled, as it were, in your life. If we are going to secure from life all that is highest and best, then we must bring to life all that is highest and best. We cannot barter the unlovely for the lovely, or the unwholesome for that which is wholesome, the discordant for the harmonious. No, it is like that attracts like. Give all the melody that is in your life to the world, and a still greater melody will flow back into it. Give to the world the best, and give only the best, then shall you receive the best.

With the decline of music in Greece, there was a long period when the progress of music seemed to have come to an end. The world came under the thraldom of the Roman Empire, and the Muses, save in the most external way, failed to prove of interest to the people. With the coming of materialism into any country, the death-knell of beauty is sounded. The Roman Empire was noted for its building of wonderful roads, and the carrying on of great wars; but it paid little attention to all that goes to make life truly great or beautiful. True it is that, under some of the emperors of Rome, art flourished more than it did under others. With the advent of Christianity as the national religion of the Roman Empire, it might be thought that the Christian Gospel of peace and good-will would have brought with it something of the true music of life; but there is little evidence that the change from Roman barbarism to Christian civilisation wrought any marked change in the art of the day. Undoubtedly all the persecutions and the curtailments of the religious rights of the early Christians had much to do with keeping them from expressing themselves through music. There were doubtless many other reasons besides this. The majority of them were made up of the poorer classes and it is doubtful whether, even under ordinary circumstances, they would have been able to have expressed themselves through music. It was during the fourth century A.D. that Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, made the first real effort to produce Church music, and he seems to have met with considerable success ; later, Pope Gregory the Great carried on still further the work begun by Ambrose. But comparatively little of what might be called good music was produced until the middle or end of the fourteenth century. From that time on the growth of music is a continuous one, and Italy takes a very prominent part; not only did she lay a new foundation of musical art, but she has continued on through the centuries without any break in her career, so that I think it may truthfully be said that the knowledge and love of music possessed by the Italians has not been exceeded by the people of any other nation in modern times.

Palestrina, born 1528, may be said to be the first great master of Italian music. Certainly he was the greatest master of the pure old choral style. He accomplished far more during his life than any other previous com.poser had done, for he wrote many masses, hymns, madrigals, and a large variety of other works. Palestrina represents, in his music, the perfection, the flower, and the fruit of all that had gone before his time. We might say that not only does he sum up all that was highest and best that was before his time, but that he opened the way for, and gave a new impetus to, music. He resembles the painter, Fra Angelico, in the reverence, the love, and the devotion that he put into his religious music. After Palestrina comes Henry Purcell, of England, who probably influenced England more, in a musical way, than any one single English composer has ever done. In his music he had the faculty of exciting practically any kind of emotion through what might be called his magical modes of expression. So that he stands with the great minds of England, and it is doubtful if any of the songs of the present will appeal to the English ear or sympathies to the same degree as do the delightful, as well as beautiful, old songs of Purcell. After Purcell follows Johann Sebastian Bach, a very giant among composers. From his time forward Germany takes rank with Italy as one of the two greatest music-producing countries of the world. Bach may be called the real father of German music, not that the Germans had not produced beautiful music before his time, but he laid music on an enduring foundation, and he, more than any one else, embodies what a musical writer calls the whole essence of the German nature. He was not only a composer of the highest order, but was a great organist as well. He wrote for the instrumental musician, unlike Handel, who was born near the same time and who wrote chiefly for the voice. Bach stands supreme as the most intellectual composer of all modern times. He carries perfection and variety of form to such a degree, that it is questionable whether all the great composers who came after him did not profit more through the study of his music than from that of any other composer. Some day the world at large will probably realise how much it is indebted to Bach for laying the art foundations of modern music and making it possible for those who followed him to profit by what he had accomplished.