Spirit and Music

Spirit and Music, by H. Ernest
Hunt

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Title: Spirit and Music
Author: H. Ernest Hunt
Release Date: May 20, 2007 [EBook #21542]
Language: English
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SPIRIT AND MUSIC
By the same Author

NERVE CONTROL SELF TRAINING A BOOK OF
AUTO-SUGGESTIONS THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT A
MANUAL OF HYPNOTISM THE HIDDEN SELF POINTS ON
PRACTISING

Spirit and Music
BY
H. ERNEST HUNT
Author of Nerve Control, Self Training, &c, &c.; Lecturer in
Psychology at the Training School for Music Teachers, The
Metropolitan Academy of Music, The Kensington School of Music,
&c., London
LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. J.
CURWEN & SONS, LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1922
Printed in Great Britain by St. Stephen's Printing Works, Bristol.

CONTENTS
CHAP.
I THE SPIRIT OF MUSIC
II THE PLACE OF MUSIC IN LIFE
III THE EXPRESSION OF LIFE
IV SPIRIT A LIVING FACT
V THE CONDITIONS OF INSPIRATION
VI THE INTERPRETER

VII THE TEACHER
VIII THE SOUL OF SONG
IX MUSIC AND EDUCATION
X THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT
XI "PURE MUSIC"
XII THE PURPOSE OF ART

SPIRIT AND MUSIC
CHAPTER I
THE SPIRIT OF MUSIC
"Art is the Manifestation of the Spiritual by means of the Material"
Newlandsmith
Music is a part of life. It is not merely an accomplishment or a hobby,
nor yet a means of relaxation from the strenuous business of earning a
living. It is not an addendum or an excrescence: it is an actual part of
the fabric of life itself. The object of these pages will be to show how
closely Music, and indeed Art in general, has woven itself into the
pattern of our lives, and how intimately it may influence and fashion
the design.
The structural basis of Music is vibration. Sound comes to us in the
guise of air-waves, which impinge upon the drum of the ear. The
nerve-impulse thus aroused is conveyed to the brain, and there
translated into sound. Strictly speaking there is thus no sound until the
brain translates the message, while if the machinery of the ear be too
dull to answer to the vibration the sound simply does not exist for us.
Beyond doubt the world is full of sounds that we cannot hear and of

sights that we never see, for of the whole range of vibration our senses
permit us to garner but the veriest fragment--a few notes here of sound,
and a brief range there of sight, out of the whole vast scale of vibrant
Nature.
There are sounds which are musical, and others that are raucous and
mere noise. The difference lies in the fact that harsh sounds are
compounded of irregular vibrations, while the essence of Music is that
its waves are rhythmic and follow each other in ordered swing. Rhythm
is thus the primary manifestation of Music: but equally so it is the basic
characteristic of everything in life. We learn that in Nature there is
nothing still and inert, but that everything is in incessant motion. There
is no such thing as solid matter. The man of Science resolved matter
into atoms, and now these atoms themselves are found to be as
miniature universes. Round a central sun, termed a Proton, whirl a
number of electrons in rhythmic motion and incessant swing. And these
electrons and protons--what are they? Something in the nature of
charges of electricity, positive and negative. So where is now our
seeming-solid matter?
When this knowledge informs our outlook we see that all that lives,
moves: and even that which never seems to move, lives also in
continual rhythm and response. The eternal hills are vibrant to the eye
of science, and the very stones are pulsing with the joy of life. The
countryside sings, and there is the beat of rhythm not merely in our
hearts but in every particle of our body. Stillness is a delusion, and
immobility a fiction of the senses. Life is movement and activity, and
rigidity and stiffness come more near to what we understand as death.
Yet even in death there is no stillness, there is but a change in the form
of activity. The body is no longer alive as an organised community, but
in its individual cells: the activity is the liveliness of decomposition.
Thus