a great power over dispositions and manners, to smooth and make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered passions. The like also would not be unexpedient after meat, to assist and cherish nature in her first concoction, and send their minds back to study in good tune and satisfaction.1 For us the interest of this passage lies in its ascription to the musical art of both a practical and an aesthetic value. Harmony is characterized as divine, but to beautiful music in its service to humanity (as is suggested in Milton's concluding sentence) are assigned some prosaic tasks. Yet the tractate may give a misleading prominence to the homely and less dramatic use of music in human culture. If so, the emphasis must be corrected, and the suggestions of the tractate supplemented by those made in other places; for, while demanding that music should both profit and delight, Milton, even when writing without hyperboles, recognized a rich diversity in its effects, and admitted among them many so transporting that he might have cried with Dryden: What passion cannot music raise and quell?? Thus, when 'the Powers militant that stood for Heaven' are ordered to move forward against the enemy angels, they go in silent legions, their ears attentive to the sound Of instrumental harmony that breathed Heroic ardor to adventurous deeds.3 Or when Satan has first gently raised the fainted courage of his hosts by high (and hollow) words, and then incited them 1Education, Works 4.391. And see John Aubrey, Collections for the Life of Milton, in Of Education [etc.], ed. by Lockwood, p. xli: 'He made his nephews songsters and sing from the time they were with him.' 2 Song for St. Cecilia's Day 24. 'P. L. 6. 64-66. to frenzy through the martial sounds of clarion and trumpet, he steadies, orders, and inspires them with music of another sort: Anon they move In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood1 Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil.2 'Dr. Spaeth, in dealing with the Hellenic elements in Milton's theory of music, comments on his interest in 'the ancient "modes" or keys of the diatonic scale,' of which the most important were the Dorian, the Phrygian, and the Lydian. To each of these Plato ascribes an ethos or particular emotional value. It is this ethos of the Greek modes, 'their effect upon man, their power to induce joy or sadness, heroic valor or effeminate languor,' which appeared particularly to interest Milton. See Spaeth, pp. 67-68. Earlier in his book Dr. Spaeth points out how finely and consistently Milton discriminates between the effects of various instruments as dependent upon the quality of their sound. Every tone 'has for him [Milton] a fixed and definite function.... Certain instruments fit certain situations, produce certain effects. They cannot be indiscriminately changed about. . . . To him no variation in function was possible without an accompanying variation of quality. If an instrument can produce different qualities of tone, as is the case with the pipe family, then it can likewise exercise different functions. If its quality and effect are constant then its function must also be constant.' See Spaeth, pp. 38-39. And, for a similar point of view in regard to the effects of various types of music and of various kinds of instruments, compare Dryden, Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music, and A Song for St. Cecilia's Day, especially stanzas 4-8. 'P. L. 1.549-562. The attitude reflected in these passages is confident and liberal. Milton looks upon music as a great moving and determining force in life. Its immediate appeal is sensuous, but its ultimate touch, on the one hand calming, reassuring, healing, on the other rousing, stimulating, emboldening, is upon the vital interests of man's spirit. This interpretation is prevailingly Greek; in Plato and Aristotle lies its confirmation. Milton adopted their general concept of the function of music, and into his specific notion of its humanizing power and service introduced nothing discordant. He believed that music had a purgative virtue, calmed perplexity, banished anguish, doubt, fear, sorrow, and pain, charmed its devotees, shut them away from‘eating cares,' dispelled their weariness, kindled fire in the heart of warriors, and incited them to heroic deeds; that it was as much the gift of 'hearteasing mirth' as of 'divinest melancholy'; that it lifted men to Heaven, and brought Heaven down to men. Because of all these things, it appeared to him no less imperative than to Plato that men 'practise music,' and recognize in its strains the echoes of the universal harmony. If such was Milton's idea of music, every word that he said of it has significance for this essay. A poet who cared less for the art might speak less precisely-might, for example, in an instance like the following, be content to satisfy his metre either with 'artful' or with 'artless.' Not so Milton. When he writes, To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice the import relates the words to the 'wanton heed' and 'giddy cunning' of the 'melting voice' in L'Allegro, to the 1 Sonnet 17.11-12. artful strains of the shepherd in Comus, and to the ‘artful and unimaginable touches' mentioned in the tractate Of Education. Such phrases are explicit proof of Milton's notion that music required more of a proficient than that he be genially receptive toward his endowment; they show that, in his eyes, poet and musician, and indeed all artists, alike win their way through laborious effort, to a ready and graceful manipulation of their media. As might be expected, the terminology of this cherished art came freely into Milton's diction. Words that to-day have lost musical significance retained for him either full musical value or strong musical suggestion. If his mental associations with terms like' jar," jangle," noise,' and' chime,' are taken into account, certain passages surprise us with a richer meaning. A few illustrations will suffice. The gates of Heaven emit harmony as they move, but ‘the infernal doors' of Hell fly open 3 With impetuous recoil and jarring sound.' In the ode On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, the thrilling sound that holds Heaven and Earth in happy union is spoken of as composed in part of a divinely-warbled voice, in part of a stringed 'noise' that accompanied it. To Milton's 1 See above, p. 41. See Milton's Knowledge of Music, by William Henry Hadow, in Milton Memorial Lectures, ed. by Percy W. Ames 1908, p. 19: 'It will be observed that one of Milton's favorite epithets for music is "artful"kunstmässig. He is no believer in the supersition, not wholly dead even at the present day, that music is a matter of some remote and unaccountable inspiration which needs no intellectual gift and no training in craftsmanship. On this point he well knew what he was saying.' P. L. 7.206. P. L. 2. 880. Compare the 'jarring atoms,' in the first stanza of Dryden's Song for St. Cecilia's Day, under which Nature lay until 'the tuneful voice' was heard that called forth universal harmony. imagination the‘jangling noise of words' that arose from the builders of the Tower of Babel was more than loud and rasping. It smote the ear, but distressed it, too, with a discordant resonance, comparable to that described in the lines, Arms on armor clashing brayed Horrible discord, and the madding wheels Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise of conflict.' The sense that Milton attaches to 'chime,' though not uncommon in poetry, is rare outside the poets. We seldom think of any object asʻchiming' except bells. But Milton has 'chiming strings" and the 'melodious chime ... of harp and organ," as Cowper has 'the chimes of tinkling rills,' and Wordsworth 'the chiming hounds' or 'the chiming Tweed.' For the incidental though always correct usage of more precise terms like diapason, descant, number, proportion, close, concent, symphony, and harmony, the reader is referred to Dr. Spaeth's Glossary and Index. In passages where sound is not involved, Milton's free introduction of musical terms is again likely to hinder our understanding of his thought. Samson, lamenting his folly cries: Tell me, friends, Am I not sung and proverbed for a fool 1 P. L. 6.209-211. P. R. 2.363. 'P. L. 11.558-559. 'S. A. 202-209. |