More Physiological Explanations.

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it is a general law that, alike in men and animals, there is a direct connection between feeling and motion; the last growing more vehement as the first grows more intense. Mental excitement of all kinds ends in excitement of the muscles; and the two preserve a more or less constant ratio to each other.

As regards the connection of these physiological facts with the origin and function of music, Mr. Spencer points out that all music is originally vocal, that all vocal sounds are produced by the agency of certain muscles, that these muscles, in common with those of the body at large, are excited to contraction by pleasurable and painful feelings, and that, therefore, feelings demonstrate themselves in sounds as well as in movements. A dog barks as well as leaps when he is let out; a cat purrs as well as erects her tail; and a canary chirps as well as flutters, when pleased; an angry lion roars while he lashes his sides, and a dog growls while he retracts his lip. A maimed animal not only struggles, but howls; and in human beings, bodily suffering expresses itself not only in contortions, but in shrieks and groans. In anger, fear, and grief, the gesticulations are accompanied by shouts and screams; delightful sensations are followed by exclamations; and we hear screams of joy and shouts of exultation.

In these facts it is clear, as Mr. Spencer says, that we have "a principle underlying all vocal phenomena, including those of vocal music, and by consequence those of music in general. The muscles that move the chest, larynx, and vocal chords, contracting like other muscles in proportion to the intensity of the feelings, every different contraction of these muscles involving, as it does, a different adjustment of the vocal organs, every different adjustment of the vocal organs causing a change in the sound emitted, it follows that variations of voice are the physiological results of variations of feeling; it follows that each inflection or modulation is the natural outcome of some passing emotion or sensation; and it follows that the explanation of all kinds of vocal expression, must be sought in this general relation between mental and muscular excitements."

The natural sequel to these considerations is an examination of the chief peculiarities in the utterance of the feelings,-grouping these peculiarities under the heads of loudness, quality or timbre, pitch, intervals, and rate of

variation.

In regard to loudness, it is hardly necessary to say that loud vocal sounds are commonly the result of strong feelings,

inasmuch as the loudness of a vocal sound increases with the strength of the blast from the lungs, which blast is effected by some of the muscles of the chest and abdomen, while the force of the muscular contraction is in proportion to the intensity of feeling. Moderate pain is borne silently, extreme pain causes an outcry. Slight vexation makes a child fret and fume; a grave vexation, inducing passion, makes the same child cry loudly and sharply. Loud applause means high approval; uproarious merriment, high enjoyment; and anger, surprise, or joy, give rise to increased loudness of the voice. From the silence of apathy to the shriek of agony or shout of joy, the utterances grow louder with the increasing strength of the emotions or sensations.

In the matter of quality or timbre, it will be found that the quality of voice varies with the mental state: the tones are more sonorous than usual under excitement: the sounds of strong feeling have much more resonance than those of mere conversation: the voice has a metallic ring under the influence of rising ill-temper, and the habitual speech of a scold gets from habit a piercing quality quite opposite to the softness that indicates placidity. A ringing laugh shows a joyous temperament: the tones of grief approach in timbre to those of chanting; and the voice of an eloquent speaker becomes more than usually vibratory in pathetic passages. Now this resonance of vocal sounds is produced by a muscular effort beyond that needed for quiet conversation. To cease speaking and sing a single word, the vocal organs must be readjusted by muscular action; and we have here another set of instances of the connection between mental and muscular excitement.

The phenomena of pitch give the same result. The pitch of the voice varies with the action of the vocal muscles, and that action varies with the mental state. The middle notes of ordinary conversation are produced without much effort while very high or low notes require a good deal of effort; and while the middle tones are used in states of calmness or indifference, high or low ones are used under excitement,higher and higher, or lower and lower, as the excitement increases. The habitual sufferer complains in tones far above the natural key; and agony gives rise to shrieks (very high notes), or groans (very low notes). Anger is expressed in high wrathful tones, or, perhaps, low muttered imprecations. There are groans of horror, remorse, and disapproval, and shrill cries of extreme joy and fear.

Vocal Sounds the Result of Muscular Stimuli.

21

Again, as regards intervals, the monotony of common speech contrasts with the wide intervals, such as fifths, octaves, &c., that distinguish emotion. Two friends meeting daily utter their greetings in notes that have only moderate intervals; but two friends meeting suddenly after long separation greet each other in tones of much stronger contrast; and a person calling to another who does not answer as expected, uses (unless very patient) tones that get more and more widely contrasted with each call, as patience decreases. And here, again, we have muscular action in proportion to emotion; for to speak in large intervals requires more muscular action than to speak in small ones. Moreover, the direction as well as the extent of vocal intervals derives from the relation between nervous and muscular excitement; and a departure from the middle notes in either direction shows increasing emotion, while a return towards the middle notes shows decreasing emotion.

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Lastly, variability of pitch gives a similar result, as may be seen from the following instances:-When an eagerlyexpected visitor arrives among his friends, all the voices undergo changes of pitch both greater and more numerous than usual. If a speaker at a public meeting is interrupted by some squabble among those he is addressing, his comparatively level tones will be in marked contrast with the rapidly changing ones of the disputants. . . . During a scene of complaint and recrimination between two excitable little girls, the voices may be heard to run up and down the gamut several times in each sentence." In such cases as these, muscular excitement is shown "not only in strength of contraction, but also in the rapidity with which different mus. cular adjustments succeed each other."

It seems, then, that the chief phenomena of vocal sounds are manifestations of the general law that feeling is a stimulus to muscular action,-a law that lies deep in the nature of animal organisation, inasmuch as it holds good with all sensitive creatures, and is not confined in its operation to man. The expressiveness of these various modifications of voice is, as the scientific investigator tells us, innate. "Each of us, from babyhood upwards, has been spontaneously making them, when under the various sensations and emotions by which they are produced. Having been conscious of each feeling at the same time that we heard ourselves make the consequent sound, we have acquired an established association of ideas between such sound and the feeling which caused it. When the like sound is made by

another, we ascribe the like feeling to him; and by a further consequence we not only ascribe to him that feeling, but have a certain degree of it aroused in ourselves; for to become conscious of the feeling which another is experiencing, is to have that feeling awakened in our own consciousness, which is the same thing as experiencing the feeling. Thus these various modifications of voice become not only a language through which we understand the emotions of others, but also the means of exciting our sympathy with such emotions."

When we pass from the phenomena of speech to those of song, we find that the peculiarities which indicate excited feeling are precisely those that distinguish song from ordinary speech. Of the changes of voice that correspond with passionate, vivacious, deprecatory, or exalted utterance, whether we consider loudness, timbre, pitch, intervals, or rate of variation, we find that each one is carried to an extreme in vocal music, far higher than it reaches as the ordinary physiological result of pleasure or pain. So that song "employs and exaggerates," in a systematic combination, the "natural language of the emotions," just as poetry employs and exaggerates the natural language, not only of ideas, but also of such emotions and passions as are not too vague to pass into speech.

The same absolute correspondence with physiological phenomena exists in many of the minor peculiarities of song. The trembling of anger, fear, hope, joy, the effect of the relaxation of muscles resulting from an extremity of emotion,-a trembling that works upon the voice through the vocal muscles, is idealised in that tremulousness frequently employed by singers in pathetic passages. The action of the vocal muscles which gives us staccato passages, expressing exhilaration, confidence, resolution, corresponds with the musculations productive of sharp, decisive, energetic movements of the frame, indicative of those states of mind. "Conversely, slurred intervals are expressive of gentler and less active feelings, and are so, because they imply the smaller muscular vivacity due to a lower mental energy." There are numerous other analogies that will be obvious without specification; and even the rhythm that distinguishes song from speech, and also distinguishes poetry from ordinary speech, seems to correspond with dancing and the various rhythmic motions of the body in pain, grief, or agitation. The more facts examined in this connection, the more clear it becomes that vocal music (upon which all

Recitative Midway between Speech and Song.

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music is founded) is "an idealisation of the natural language of passion."

We have already noticed the gradual manner in which music doubtless diverged from speech, as indicated in the dance-chants of savages and other analogous phenomena, such as the recitative of the early Greeks. It is now needful to remark how, in all those qualities discussed in connection with emotional and musical utterance, musical recitative stands midway between speech and song. "Its average effects are not so loud as those of song. Its tones are less sonorous in timbre than those of song. Commonly it uses notes neither so high nor so low in pitch. The intervals habitual to it are neither so wide nor so varied. Its rate of variation is not so rapid. . . . . Its primary rhythm is less decided," and it has none of that "secondary rhythm produced by recurrence of the same or parallel musical phrases, which is one of the marked characteristics of song."

...

And if recitative arose from emotional speech, as it doubtless did, there is no more doubt that song arose out of recitative. Of this transition there is evidence in the leading gradations of an opera; for "between the comparatively level recitative of ordinary dialogue, the more varied recitative with wider intervals and higher tones used in exciting scenes, the still more musical recitative which preludes an air, and the air itself, the successive steps are but small."

To the influences which induced this development, an index must be sought in the dispositions of those individuals who were personally instrumental in the development, as distinguished from the radically modified society, already described at some length, wherein the development has taken place; and we have abundant evidences that among the members of that society, whose average sensitiveness and susceptibility have been so developed by social and political movements, musical composers have, as a rule, been pre-eminently susceptible, sensitive, of active affections. Intenser feeling producing intenser manifestations in these natures, will "generate just those exaggerations which we have found to distinguish the lower vocal music from emotional speech, and the higher vocal music from the lower; and thus we may under

* See page 3.

† Grétry's principle that song is derived from speech through the intermediate stage of declamation, harmonises with this view, inasmuch as declamation is only a simpler, less exalted recitative, or, if one prefers to express it otherwise, recitative is but an idealised declamation.