Music in the History of the Western Church: With an Introduction on Religious Music Among Primitive and Ancient PeoplesDickinson, Edward
History
Music in the History of the Western Church: With an Introduction on Religious Music Among Primitive and Ancient Peoples
Dickinson, Edward
Church music
they think of it in its associations with poetry, religious and patriotic
observances, moral and legal precepts, historic relations, etc. Music, on
its vocal side, was mere emphasized speech inflection; it was a slave to
poetry; it had no rhythmical laws of its own. The melody did not convey
aesthetic charm in itself alone, but simply heightened the sensuous
effect of measured speech and vivified the thought. Mr. Spencer’s
well-known expression that “cadence is the comment of the emotion upon
the propositions of the intellect” would apply very accurately to the
musical theories of the ancients. Certain modes (that is, keys), on
account of convenience of pitch, were employed for certain kinds of
poetical expression; and as a poem was always chanted in the mode that
was first assigned to it, particular classes of ideas would come to be
identified with particular modes. Associations of race character would
lead to similar interpretation. The Dorian mode would seem to partake of
the sternness and vigor of the warlike Dorian Spartans; the Lydian mode
and its melodies would hint of Lydian effeminacy.[9] Instrumental music
also was equally restricted to definite meanings through association. It
was an accompaniment to poetry, bound up with the symbolic dance,
subordinated to formal social observances; it produced not the artistic
effect of melody, harmony, and form, but the nervous stimulation of crude
unorganized tone, acting upon recipients who had never learned to
consider music as anything but a direct emotional excitant or an
intensifier of previously conceived ideas.
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