Critical Historical Essays | Page 7

the sacerdotal
character of this species of instrument very plainly indicated.
Now let us turn back to the Pan's pipes and its direct descendants, the
flute, the clarinet, and the oboe. We shall find that they had no
connection whatever with religious observances. Even in the nineteenth
century novel we are familiar with the kind of hero who played the
flute--a very sentimental gentleman always in love. If he had played the
clarinet he would have been very sorrowful and discouraged; and if it
had been the oboe (which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been
attempted in fiction) he would have needed to be a very ill man indeed.
Now we never hear of these latter kinds of pipes being considered fit
for anything but the dance, love songs, or love charms. In the beginning

of the seventeenth century Garcilaso de la Vega, the historian of Peru,
tells of the astonishing power of a love song played on a flute. We find
so-called "courting" flutes in Formosa and Peru, and Catlin tells of the
Winnebago courting flute. The same instrument was known in Java, as
the old Dutch settlers have told us. But we never hear of it as creating
awe, or as being thought a fit instrument to use with the drum or
trumpet in connection with religious rites. Leonardo da Vinci had a
flute player make music while he painted his picture of Mona Lisa,
thinking that it gave her the expression he wished to catch--that strange
smile reproduced in the Louvre painting. The flute member of the pipe
species, therefore, was more or less an emblem of eroticism, and, as I
have already said, has never been even remotely identified with
religious mysticism, with perhaps the one exception of Indra's flute,
which, however, never seems to have been able to retain a place among
religious symbols. The trumpet, on the other hand, has retained
something of a mystical character even to our day. The most powerful
illustration of this known to me is in the "Requiem" by Berlioz. The
effect of those tremendous trumpet calls from the four corners of the
orchestra is an overwhelming one, of crushing power and majesty,
much of which is due to the rhythm.
To sum up. We may regard rhythm as the intellectual side of music,
melody as its sensuous side. The pipe is the one instrument that seems
to affect animals--hooded cobras, lizards, fish, etc. Animals' natures are
purely sensuous, therefore the pipe, or to put it more broadly, melody,
affects them. To rhythm, on the other hand, they are indifferent; it
appeals to the intellect, and therefore only to man.
This theory would certainly account for much of the potency of what
we moderns call music. All that aims to be dramatic, tragic,
supernatural in our modern music, derives its impressiveness directly
from rhythm.[01] What would that shudder of horror in Weber's
"Freischütz" be without that throb of the basses? Merely a diminished
chord of the seventh. Add the pizzicato in the basses and the chord
sinks into something fearsome; one has a sudden choking sensation, as
if one were listening in fear, or as if the heart had almost stopped
beating. All through Wagner's music dramas this powerful effect is

employed, from "The Flying Dutchman" to "Parsifal." Every composer
from Beethoven to Nicodé has used the same means to express the
same emotions; it is the medium that pre-historic man first knew; it
produced the same sensation of fear in him that it does in us at the
present day.
Rhythm denotes a thought; it is the expression of a purpose. There is
will behind it; its vital part is intention, power; it is an act. Melody, on
the other hand, is an almost unconscious expression of the senses; it
translates feeling into sound. It is the natural outlet for sensation. In
anger we raise the voice; in sadness we lower it. In talking we give
expression to the emotions in sound. In a sentence in which fury
alternates with sorrow, we have the limits of the melody of speech. Add
to this rhythm, and the very height of expression is reached; for by it
the intellect will dominate the sensuous.
[01] The strength of the "Fate" motive in Beethoven's fifth symphony
undoubtedly lies in the succession of the four notes at equal intervals of
time. Beethoven himself marked it So pocht das Schicksal an die
Pforte.

II
ORIGIN OF SONG vs. ORIGIN OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC
Emerson characterized language as "fossil poetry," but "fossil music"
would have described it even better; for as Darwin says, man sang
before he became human.
Gerber, in his "Sprache als Kunst," describing the degeneration of
sound symbols, says "the saving point of language is that the original
material meanings of