The development of the auditory functions points to the same
close connection of sound and movement. Sounds affect us as
tone, and as impulse. The primitive sensation was one of
impulse alone, mediated by the "shake-organs." These shake-
organs at first only gave information about the attitude and
movements of the body, and were connected with motor centres
so as to be able to reestablish equilibrium by means of
reflexes. The original "shake-organ" developed into the
organs of hearing and of equilibrium (that is, the cochlea
and the semicircular canals respectively), but these were
still side by side in the inner ear, and the close connection
with the motor centres was not lost. Anatomically, the
auditory nerve not only goes to those parts of the brain
whence the motor innervation emanates, and to the reflex
centres in the cerebellum, but passes close by the vagus or
pneumogastric nerve, which rules the heart and the vasomotor
functions. We have then multiplied reasons for the singular
effect of sound on motor reactions, and on the other organic
functions which have so much to do with feeling and emotion.
Every sound-stimulus is then much more than sound-sensation.
It causes reflex contractions in the whole muscular system;
it sets up some sort of cardiac and vascular excitation.
This reaction is in general in the direction of increased
amplitude of respiration, but diminution of the pulse,
depending on a peripheral vaso-constriction. Moreover, this
vasomotor reaction is given in a melody or piece of music,
not by its continuity, but for every one of the variations
of rhythm, key, or intensity,--which is of interest in the
light of what has been said of the latent motor image. The
obstacle in syncopated rhythm is physiologically translated
as vaso-constriction. In general, music induces cardiac
acceleration.
All this is of value in showing how completely the attention-
motor theory of rhythm applies to the rhythm of sounds. Since
sound is much more than sound, but sound-sensation, movement,
and visceral change together, we can see that the rhythmical
experience of music is, even more literally and completely
than at first appeared, an EMBODIED expectation. No sensorial
rhythm could be so completely induced in the psychological
organism as the sound-rhythm. In listening to music, we see
how it is that we ourselves, body and soul, seem to be IN the
rhythm. We make it, and we wait to make it. The satisfaction
of our expectation is like the satisfaction of a bodily desire
or need; no, not like it, it IS that. The conditions and
causes of rhythm and our pleasure in it are more deeply seated
than language, custom, even instinct; they are in the most
fundamental functions of life. This element of music, at least,
seems not to have arisen as a "natural language."
IV
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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