Kant defines the Beautiful as that which "through the harmony of its form with the fac ulty of human knowledge awakens a disinterested, universal. and necessary satisfaction." We are now another remove from the utilitarian; for in a certain sense all art is useless, inasmuch as it bestows no material benefits. Its beauty is its excuse for being, and music being the least representative of the arts, copying no material forms, is therefore easily the most ideal of all the arts and the most inutile. Apprehended in time and not in space, it addresses itself to the imagination. And here we are confronted by the crux of llansliek and other :estheticians of the formal. "Definite feelings and emotions are unsnseeptible of being embodied in music," he de clares. Music does not express emotion, it ex• presses. itself. It is sound-play; it consists of exquisite arabesques; it is a formal pattern of tone, and all the wonderful things attributed to it exist only in the overheated imagination of its hearers. Precisely so, and it is this almost mi raculous subjeetivizing process that proves the weakness of Ilansliek's thesis. No other art at tacks so powerfully the emotions. "Music acts like a burn, like cold. heat, or a caressing con tact. Music nets on the muscular system, on the circulation, the respiration . . . and is the most dependent on physiological conditions. The primary effect is a physical one." Beauquier says:. "Musical vibration is only one particular mode of perceiving the universal vibration.
. . . Musical art is the art of sensibility par exeellence, since it regulates the great phenomena of vibration into which all external perceptions resolve themselves, and transfers it from the region of the unconscious, in which it was hidden, to that of consciousness." Again Itibot: "While certain arts at once awaken ideas which give a determination to the feelings, music acts inverse ly. It creates disposition-3 depending on the organic state and on nervous activity. which we translate by the vague terms—joy, tenderness, serenity. tranquillity. uneasiness. Out this canvas the intellect embroiders its designs at pleasure, varying according to individual peculiarities." Let its admit, then, with liansliek and the for malists that music does not express emotion; yet this does not preclude the idea of an emotional content in the listener. who projects his per sonality into the forms. In music the forms and the subject are identical; we cannot dissociate the pattern of the love theme in Tristan mid !sold(' from its emotional effect. The sound once set. in nail' we are at liberty to dream, to thrill, to weep, to sigh with all the moods super induced by a master. And this playing upon our nerves, our imagination, is intentional. in mod ern times music has become an instrument of overpowering 'mot halal signifieanee. Eighteenth century music with its gay scheme of decoration, its pretty reeurring patterns. its play of forms, and its freedom from the overwrought, the in tense, can well he utilizfsl by Ilansliek as an ex ample of music for music's sake. It expressed little in the latter-day eonnotation of the word; so to modern music, especially Beethoven, we might truthfully give the title of classic, ns it foffills many of the requisites of antique art; its 111'211 v, symmetry, grandeur. and profound
emotional quality. The position of the formalist school is based on a half truth. A study of the nature of einnt ions would have cleared the ground long ago of ineumbering verbalising. Ribot de- I fines the technique of an emotion thus: "First an intellectual state, then organic and motor dis turbances, and then the consciousness of these disturbances, which is the psychic state we call emotion." This clear definition of a very compli cated process may be applied to the effects of music upon a sympathetic listener—naturally sympathy must he granted, else all music ad dresses itself to the deaf. A vast mirror of sub jectivity. music appeals to each of us according to our temperaments. It paints upon the hack gromid of our consciousness enlarged meanings of ourselves. Composed of alternate sound and silence, it reaches our very soul with its rhythmic pulsings and sensuous qualities. It is at once the most impersonal and most personal of all the arts. It traverses the keyboard of our desires and arouses noble ambitions or sensual crises as well. It is an unmoral art; it can be impressed with equal facility in the service of church or tavern. Its very plasticity makes it an agent for evil and nevertheless a powerful aid to worship. It is because of this easily molded nature that music has served in every camp. has gone to the wars, has sounded the psalms of peace, has been the bone of contention between warring schools and factions. has led the bride to the altar, and intoned the grief for the dead one. Music, in sonic form or other, has always ac companied man on his march through the ages, tracing in spiritual mimicry his evanescent emo tional gestures. Captive to his baser senses, a column of smoke by day, this agile protean art has played the pillar of flame, a burning eloquent sign in the darkened skies of revolt, superstition, and misery. A potent symbol. 'a mighty fortress' during the _Middle Ages, music served the Church faithfully, and when enfranchised it has as faith fully recorded the great emotions of secular souls. Ariel and Caliban—to what purposes has this versatile art not been put ? At first man played upon a reed to his mate; then he grew in love with his time for its own sake. To-day, after putting the art through all its probable paces, it has been harnessed to the Drama, and, from being the exponent of pure. formal beauty, it is pressed into the service of the Characteristic. The Chi nese, thousands of years ago, discovered the charm of ugliness, and it would seem that mod ern music is striving for that goal. Rosenkranz has written a volume on .Esthetics of the Ugly. and in the general hurly-burly, topsy-turveying of the arts, it would not he improbable if music played the part of devil's advocate in the new wsthetic dispensation. The line of demarcation between the beautiful and the ugly is slight, for beauty is a relative quality, and ugliness often proves its capital foil. To show how shifting has been the standard of musical beauty one has only to consult history or personal memories. A decade may transform the musical map, depos ing reigning monarchs and elevating to the pur ple the veriest newcomer. Music is a fickle god dess.