MUSIC, PSYCHOLOGY of The psychology of music deals with the mental processes whieh fur nish both the motives for its production and the ground of its appreciation. it has an individual and a social .1.1)(44: for music as an art involves not only the individual eonseiousness, as such hut also, since it is a means of expression and Communication. the modification of one mind by another.
The mental elements primarily involved in musie are sensations of tone. Of the Inmon or 11.000 tones which may be distinguished in eon sciousness, music uses a comparatively small number. Our own elaborate musical system in cludes only 85 or 90, ranging from about 40 to 4000 vibrations per second; something less than seven octaves. The simple tonal sensation is produced by an uncompounded pendular vibra tion of the air. The note or simple clang is com posed of a number of simple sensations, called partials o• partial tones, one of which (the lowest) is the fundamental ; the others are called overtones. The character ('timbre,' clang-tint,' 'quality') of the note is determined by the num ber and intensity of the various partials. (See ('LANG-TINT, EXPLANATION OF.) Every simple tune has three aspects or attributes: quality, intensity, and duration (qq.v.). Quality is pitch (high or low) ; intensity is degree (a tone is 'loud' o• 'soft,' strong o• weak) ; duration is temporal length ( long or short). To these seine psychologists add a fourth attribute, extension or voluminousness; a tone is said to be 'big' or `thin,' broad' or 'pointed.' It is a question whether the spatial attribute is not reducible to simple qualitative differences plus associations from vision and pressure. By the combination and variation of the first three attributes, all classes and forms of music are produced. There is. first of all, the combination of qualities and intensities in the note, which is the practical basis of music. Above this stand the alterna tions of intensities which produce rhythm, the successive rise and fall of pitch forming the essence of melody, and the synchronous combi nations of pitches (see FUSION) known as har mony. :Music began, doubtless, with the simplest of these combinations. We find in primitive
music a small number of qualities used over and over, without the finer shadings of intensive dif ferences, with little or no appreciation of har mony, but often with a strongly marked rhythm, accentuated by various bodily movements. (See Aim PRIMITIVE.) I hit the growth of music has been marked not so much by complica tions in quality, intensity, and duration—great as these have been—as by another factor in de velopment which has proceeded part passu with the mental evolution of the race. This factor is the capacity to group and unify series of units, the capacity to form perceptions and associations isolated tones. A perception (q.v.) is always something more than the summation of a series of sensational elements. It is the reading of meaning, of significance into the series taken as a group or whole. Musical perception has de veloped in precisely the same manner as have other forms of perception, by the widening and deepening of meaning. Compare, e.g. a savage's perception of a protruding stratum of rock with a geologist's. One is poor. vnohle, shallow—as bare as the rock itself; the other is rich. com plex, deep—as complicated as the conditions un der which the rock was formed: it contains group after group, and leads to complex trains of asso ciations. The case is similar with music. Primi tive man used a simple musical alphabet and spelled out simple, childish phrases. Take as an instance the following example whieh the abo rigines of Australia were accustomed to reiterate over and over for hours: Put this beside Wagner's "Ring of the Nibc lungs," The two may be said to represent almost the extremes of musical culture. the capacity to combine tonal elements into significant unitary wholes. The monotonous chant of the Australian, no less than the creations of Wagner and Bee thoven, contains a design, an organization, a put ting into definite form of a number of detached elements. It is this which distinguishes music from a haphazard arrangement of tones or the isolated calls and cries of animals, however im portant these may have been in the genesis of music.