Parallel Paths: A Study in Biology, Ethics, and ArtRolleston, T. W. (Thomas William)
Philosophy
Parallel Paths: A Study in Biology, Ethics, and Art
Rolleston, T. W. (Thomas William)
Art; Ethics; Science -- Philosophy
Now Music has a control unrivalled among the arts over this element of
rhythm. Other arts can suggest rhythm, Music actually _is_ rhythm—it
is the very pulse of life. It can produce rhythm, moreover, in a
great variety of ways. The mere succession of sounds is rhythm, but
music also has at command the varying stresses or accents of notes,
alternations in volume of sound, alternations in pitch and quality of
sound. And since a sequence of notes will cling to the memory, Music
can put into rhythmical relations, not only single notes, but groups of
notes, _i.e._ musical phrases, and chords, which are musical phrases
played all at once. Music can therefore not only thunder upon the brain
with mighty shocks of sound, but can enchant it with the most delicate
complexities. The range of its power over rhythm is incomparably
greater and subtler than that of the only two other arts in which
rhythm works directly on the senses—dancing and metrical verse.
The element of beauty in a rhythmical phrase seems to depend mainly
on the kind of mood it awakens. There are moods of meditation,
moods of tenderness, moods of ardour, moods of yearning, moods of
gaiety—all these and many more are under the control of rhythmic
phrases. And there are common-place, self-assertive, bouncing rhythms
which produce corresponding moods, and which may therefore be called
ugly. The precise connexion of certain phrases with certain moods
depending, as it does, on a world of dim associations stretching
far beyond our personal, conscious life, is probably incapable of
scientific statement. In the last result I think we should find
that the characters of different rhythms are associated with bodily
movements, attitudes, gestures, in short with dancing; but a host of
other associations, branching out from this in many directions, have
introduced a complexity of meaning which defies analysis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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