The Psychology of Beauty

their shoulders, and opined the old man had not been quite himself when he wrote them. In the history of music it seems to be a rule almost without exceptions, that the works of genius are

e original object of wrath has passed into acceptance, nay, into dominance of the musical world. One may

hich accordingly demands freedom to follow all the varying nuances of feeling and emotion. Music has always been called the language of the emotions, but Wagner based his views not only on the popular notion, but on the metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer; in particular, on the view that music is the objectification of the will. Herbert Spencer followed with the thesis that music has its essential source in the cadences of emotional speech. In opposition primarily to Wagner, the so-called formalists were represented by Hanslick, who wrote his well-known "The Beautiful in Music" to show that though music ha a limited capacity of expression, its aim is formal or logical perfection alone. The expressionist school could not contradict the undoubted fact that chord

aries of Musi

usic," while resting ultimately on the emotional-speech theory. "The most universal composers, recognizing the interdependence of the two e

From Grieg to Br

as its essential source in the cadences of speech, then it must develop and must be judged accordingly. Herbert Spencer is perfectly logical in saying "It may be shown that music is but an idealization of the natural language of emotion, and that, consequently, music must be good or bad according as it conforms to the laws of this natural language."<1> But what, then, of music which, according to Ambros, is justified by its for

ducaiton

ion, while the experience of musical expression, disregarding for the moment the suggestion of facts and ideas, is an emotion. Thus Mr. Mason: "In music we are capable of learning, and knowledge of the principles of musical effect can help us to learn, that the balance and proportion and symmet

. Cit.

e thing that our study of the general nature of aesthetic experience has shown, it is that aesthetic emotion is unique- neither a perception nor an intellectual grasp of relations, nor an emotion within the accepted rubric-joy, desire,

ch however illuminating when it is modified in various ways is obviously no explanation of our experience. Hanslick has but shown what music is not; Edmund Gurney's eloquent book, "The Power of Sound," is completely agnostic in its conclusion that music is a unique, indefinable, indescribable phenomenon, which possesses, indeed,

and it is probable that if we are able to reach the ultimate nature and origin of these elements of music they will prove significant, and a way will be opened to a theory of the whole musical exp