Produced by David Newman, Sigal Alon, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net 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.