Dwight’s Journal of Music: A Paper of Art and Literature. Whole No. 172. Boston, Saturday, July 21, 1855. Vol. VII. No. 16.

Music the Exponent of Emotion.

“Every one, as a child, has experienced a plea-
sure in studying the changeable forms of the Kalei-
doscope. Such a Kaleidoscope is Music, although of
an incommensurably higher grade. It brings before
us, in a constant series of new developments, beauti-
ful forms and colors, now softly blending and now
harshly contrasting, yet always full and symmetrical.
The difference between the two consists in this, that
whereas the tone-kaleidoscope is the immediate ema-
nation of an Art-working mind, the other visible
one is but an ingenious mechanical toy. Would we
elevate the operation of colors to a level with Music,
and try to illustrate that operation by begging of the
latter art, we should necessarily fall upon the device
of the color-piano or the eye-organ, the invention
of which evinces that, as far as relates to form, the
two phenomena rest upon a common basis.

“It is an extremely difficult task to describe this
independent beauty, or that which is specifically
musical in the Art of Tone. Since music is the
representative of nothing pre-existing in Nature,
and has no tangible contents, any description of it
must consist either in dry, technical terms, or poeti-
cal imaginings. Her province, in fact, ‘is not of
this world.’ All the fantastic descriptions, charac-
teristics and outward views of a Tone-work are figu-
rative or erroneous. Where another art admits of
description, it is here only metaphor. It is time that
Music should be imbibed, as Music, since its proper
comprehension, as well as its true enjoyment, must
proceed from itself.” — Dr. E. Hanslick, Vom Musik-
alisch Schönen.

The author from whom we extract the above
remarks, in a treatise on the “Musically Beauti-
ful,” comes forward into the arena of musical
aesthetics with the assumption that music, although
it be the exponent of feeling, cannot justly lay
claim to all that has been attributed to it in that
department. We think that, in coming into con-
flict with those old and established claims, he has
advanced some new ideas, and that he will find a
school of thought ready to give him a hearing,
and follow in his footsteps. The necessity we
always feel of connecting thoughts of an orches-
tral nature with outward forms, leads to the con-
stant alliance between musical imagery and some
counterpart sought for in nature.

We profess to describe feeling by the thousand
combinations of tones, that constitute the works
of musical invention, but we have never, as yet,
produced tangible names for these tone-emotions.
If we adopt the analogy of colors, we can make
some nearer approach to a representation or de-
tail of feeling; yet, even with this aid, we can
fall upon no effective language.

If each distinct musical idea, as we are wont to
term it, were a language, it should be adapted to
but one set of emotions, and should belong to
them alone. It would not dare to depart over
into any other province of emotion, but would
represent a word-language in a musical sense, by
remaining the exponent of emotion in one sphere
only, and extending to no other. Such are the
usages of written language, every grade of thought
having its distinctive phraseology and forms of
expression, so that no intellectual idea can spring
up, without having its special representation in

written speech. The pretensions of Music, on
this score, are vague, doubtful and assuming.

Where the same forms of melody are adapted
to similar or congenial emotions, we have no
reason to doubt the claims of the Tone-Art;
but where we find the same forms of composi-
tion, or what is usually termed musical ideas,
used to express opposite subjects or contrast-
ing feelings, we may reasonably conclude that
Music appears before us with entirely false pre-
tensions. The poet is able, through his ornamen-
tal structure of word-forms, to give us a subjective
picture of Niagara Falls; but when OLE BULL 
attempted the same thing before a credulous ama-
teur audience, he could do no more than work
their imaginations up into a false belief of what
they could not actually realize. His gentle chro-
matic rising and falling of stringed sounds, ex-
pressive of a rising and descent of emotion, the
sudden burst of bass notes and chords, intimating,
perhaps, an entrance into the sublime, may do,
no doubt, for the occasion represented; yet the
identical combinations of tone, grouped in almost
the same position, have been used to describe
scenes at total variance with Niagara Falls, and
acting with opposite influences to those of this
great natural wonder. The noted “Crambam-
buli,” the drinking-song and jovial accompani-
ment of the German students’ carousals, is adapted
to sacred melody by our American psalmodists,
a circumstance that would tend to show, if music
were a language in the common acceptation, that
there is but a shade of difference between the
incitements of piety and those of the bacchanalian
bowl.

This we may say in regard to the identity of
tone-language to express opposite emotions; but
the more difficult problem is involved in the
question of the manner in which an outward
scene can become the subject of a tone-composi-
tion. We are willing to admit that an outward
action of Nature can give rise to a successful imi-
tation of sounds, and thus produce an entertaining
piece, the harmonious combination of the master
improving upon the monotonous operations of
external nature; but when instrumental music
attempts to exhibit the subjective workings of the
same scene, it departs, invariably, into the pro-
vince of vague theory.

Before Music can become a language of emo-
tion, in a strictly analogous sense, she must, neces-
sarily, adapt all her tone-structures to specific
purposes, allowing no one to act in the place of
the other, but each to preserve its appropriate
and definite class of emotional thoughts. What
the exact state of the soul may be, while dwelling
with mysterious and delighted gaze upon some
great natural wonder, neither poet nor tone-
painter has ever succeeded in revealing, let his
work have been ever so loftily conceived, or his
combinations ever so grandly brought together.
Yet the right to that bold task can more justly be
claimed by the musical composer than by any
other, since the most highly wrought species of
mental inspiration proceeds from the influence of
modulated sounds, and the state into which they
elevate the imagination is, necessarily, akin to
that produced by Nature’s expressive silence.

We can, however, give another construction to
the term language, which would not altogether
exclude it from the domain of Music, and that is
when it addresses the mind by association.

When the Ranz des Vaches is heard in distant 3

lands by the Swiss mountainer, it recalls the
memories of the past. It does ineffably more
than this, by raising up before the mind’s eye the
whole picture of native scenery, outwardly grand
and beautiful, renewing the forgotten tales of
life, and recounting long-buried emotions. In
effecting all this, Music is a language, addressing
not only the sense, by the pictures of tangible
Nature, but appealing to the soul by a power of
tone-thought which nothing else could supply.
In so far it is language, but becomes so only by
association.

To describe a scene never beheld by the audi-
tor of the piece, through intricate tone-combina-
tions, is one of those erroneous assumptions alluded
to by the philosophical writer, from whom we
have made the foregoing extracts. Music can
describe only that which the hearer has seen, and
in doing this, association furnishes the key to the
comprehension of the object of description. But
even here it is indispensable that the hearer
should have wandered amid the scenes and local-
ities described by the tone-master, and enjoyed
there with him each specific feeling. He must
needs have seen the outward object as he felt the
inward movement, which was intended to be fitted
to that peculiar situation. This is all that de-
scriptive music, subjectively designed, is able to
perform. To attempt local description, there-
fore, except by the powers of association, to lead
the imagination into an evening study, a woody
shade, a twilight musing, is a fiction, and should
be expelled from the theory of musical invention
and romance. If we view it in the degree or in-
tensity of feeling it shows forth, the analogy to
language becomes more striking. Here, although,
the precise situation of the soul is not exhibited,
yet the degree of its elevation is so nearly reached,
as to become description, in a musical sense, and
for which we have no expressions in a written
terminology. To display this elevation, as well
as a corresponding depression, is the aim and
destiny of the Tone-Art. These antipodes of
human emotion have no adequate psychometer in
any form of practical word-language, and it has
never belonged to the attributes of Music to re-
cord the intensity of feeling by the instrumentality
of a harmonious mechanism; the interpreter, if
not the language, of the soul’s experience.

If we inquire into the reason why the musical
composer selects a visible picture in order to give
a name to his composition, we can find no other
explanation than in the fact that the soul’s per-
ceptions have no nomenclature. By referring
the imagination of the hearer to a visible scene, a
common emotion is at once called into activity;
hence musings by twilight are, in some measure,
identical; and if a certain theme becomes asso-
ciated with this occasion, it exercises the part of
language. All word description must, necessa-
rily, be confined within the limits of sense, ex-
pressing that which is tangible and felt, only in
as far as it is seen.

Upon this ground also we find the mere popu-
larity of music to rest, in the same manner that a
popular literature proceeds from the actual events
of life, the descriptions of noted scenes and genre
details.

The pictorial art places before us all the
outward scenes of life and nature, but how deeply
the soul felt in the study of those scenes it has
never yet revealed. This attribute belongs to the
Art of Tone, and in denying its claims to do all

it pretends to, we refer more to the phraseology
of description than the intensity of effect which
lies in music.

What it describes it does musically, and its na-
ture can be comprehended only musically, and by
those initiated into the whole sphere of musical
thought, as we are obliged to term it. When the
pictorial art resigns this species of internal de-
scription to the Tone Art, the latter may be said
to begin where the former leaves off, but that
both can move within the same sphere, is im-
possible.

To the painter emotion is a sustenance which
is visible in the emanations of his pencil and
breathes throughout his works. Yet the emo-
tions conceived by him and giving character to
his finest touches of lines and colors, lights and
shades and proportions are described in the lan-
guage of the pictorial art, which approaches the
nearer to a language the more visible it becomes.
The tone artist, treading upon ground which the
painter cannot reach, or where he forbears to
step, we think is somewhat justified in laying
claims to a higher destiny than the other arts are
admitted to. In the history of emotion itself we
might find a clue to enable us to decide upon this
disputed problem. Every one’s own experience
tells him the relative degrees of emotion proceed-
ing from the study of the fraternal arts, and this
degree of emotion is the true criterion by which
to weigh the real worth and moral influence of
Art. In judging of his own favorite branch of
art each one decides according to the intensity of
his feelings in its pursuit, and hence we should
judge its whole value depended upon the susten-
ance derived from emotional influences.

It is a remarkable truth that the world of sense
often leads us into the world of Tone. The most
romantic localities are full of musical inspiration,
and where the soul cannot discharge itself by the
language of the pencil it resorts to music to ex-
press its joy. This fact has doubtless given rise
to many pleasant fictions in the shape of outward
scenes claimed to be represented by musical com-
positions. The music might have been written at
the place attempted to be described, but it could
not have been written of it. It exemplifies,
however, very forcibly the necessity of the culti-
vation of the Euterpean art, leading us a step
higher than the platform of Nature into the ethe-
rial region which we term harmony of tone.

If, as we have already assumed, the composer
begins where the artist ceases, if the limits of
imitative art form the starting point of musical
feeling, we can perceive the wide range left for
its enjoyment. This lies extended over the whole
world of abstraction, and the inventions of a mu-
sical fancy having no counterpart in Nature, no
reality of substance to copy, but proceeding from
the combinations of pure thought itself, always
destroying its own harmonies in order to be able
to reproduce them, and soaring far beyond the
world of sense, its illimitable nature can, in some
measure, be appreciated.

As this branch of human development extends
we shall always be adding to our fund of musical
thought, for which we have as yet but feeble ex-
pressions, and these derived from the analo-
gies of a language which are but an indifferent
substitute for that which we really need. Our
nomenclature of musical thought must become
more exclusively musical, before it can lay open
its real meaning and designs to the mind and ima-

gination. Every combination of tones, every
group of symphonious representations, all the
swells and cadences of rhythmical compositions,
all those dashes of discord, which in BEETHOVEN,
precede the beautiful ascents into harmony, and
to which we could give no better name than the
Beethovenism of tone-thought; all these and a
thousand other forms should have a ready vocabu-
lary, to render the science we are but entering
upon, complete and open to the understandings
of all.
J. H.