As to the feeling of end or æsthetic completeness the results are
similar and yet independent. In a few cases the answer was "doubtful,"
but in the overwhelming majority a definite reply was given; and
while the judgment of completeness was by far more frequent in the
pleasant combinations than in the unpleasant ones, yet often the
unpleasant processions appeared as complete and the pleasant ones
as incomplete. Here again the feeling of completeness grows with
the interval, being smallest for the figures with distances of four
vibrations. But most characteristic seems the fact that the feeling
of end is in no way as in music dependent upon the return to the
starting-point. The combinations which involved such return to the
"tonica" show in no way a preponderance of judgments of completeness.
If we order the results according to the number of this æsthetic factor
the figures _acba_, _cbac_, and _cabc_ stand very low, giving in the
majority of cases the suggestion of not-completeness in spite of their
return to the beginning, while the figures of the type _abcb_, _cbab_,
or _cba_, or even the complex _babcba_, suggest in a majority of
judgments the feeling of an end. The feeling of an end comes, according
to the subjective reports of the observers, with an "internal unity of
meaning" of the phrase given. This unity of meaning is here evidently
quite independent from any simple mathematical relation.
The music-like quality of the figures was emphasized frequently in
the subjective records. "I just enjoyed the progressions as music."
"The elements are the same as in music." A melody of 384, 392, 400
was called a "very mournful strain"; 444, 452, 460 "Wagnerian motive;
Tristan and Isolde"; and the same tones in another order "Very
pleasant; expressed a pathetic resignation," or "Sounds like a little
piece of music"; and so in most varied forms.
The basis of these experiments is of course by far too slender to
build on them a theory, yet our results suggest at least a greater
interest in the æsthetics of those tone-combinations which are
excluded from our regular music. This interest is reënforced by the
self-observations of all participants. They felt strongly that after
all our musical pleasure in melody does not belong intrinsically to
the tone-perception, but is learned and acquired like the grammar of
our mother tongue. Such grammar too controls completely our internal
demands for expression, and yet the learning of a different language
can bring a new adjustment and a new set of psychophysical dispositions
for linguistic demands. That whole apparently natural demand for the
tone-combinations which give fusion and consonance can be inhibited
during the listening to amusical combinations as soon as a short
training in miniature intervals changes the acoustical perspective.
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