Home The Nature and Objective of Aesthetics Art and the Artist The Art Work The Art Work in the Making The Creative Mind Art and the Artist Art and the Layman The Experience of Beauty Beauty in Music The Varieties of Musical Experience Principles of Evaluation The Beautiful in Music Music As the Measure of the Arts Painting Poetry	THE VARIETIES OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE An excellent, concrete summary of the range of these individual differences in the musical response is offered by the results of a study made by Vernon Lee on Varieties of Musical Experience. This investigator asked a number of persons to answer the following question: "When music interests you, has it got for you a meaning which seems beyond itself, or does it remain just music?" She reports that: about half of the subjects interrogated did precisely answer that undoubtedly music had a meaning beyond itself, many adding that, if it had not, it would constitute only sensual enjoyment and be unworthy of their consideration, some of them moreover indignantly taking in this sense my words about music remaining just music. That for these persons music did not remain just music, but became the bearer of messages, was further made certain by pages and pages, often of unexpectedly explicit or eloquent writing admitted to describe the nature of that message, to describe the things it dealt with and the more or less transcendental spheres whence that message of music seemed to come. So far for one-half of the answers. The others either explicitly denied or disregarded the existence of such a message; insisted that music had not necessarily any meaning beyond itself, and far from taking the words "remains just music" as derogatory to the art or to themselves, they answered either in the selfsame words or by some paraphrase that when they cared for music it remained just music. And in the same way that the believers in meaning as message often gave details about the contents of that message, so, on the other hand, the subjects denying the existence of a message made it frequently quite clear that for them the meaning of music was in the music itself, adding that when really interested in music they could think of nothing but the music. Matisse Concerning the nature of the message or the meaning found in music by the first group of listeners, Vernon Lee comments as follows: The affirmative answers, often covering many pages, showed that according to individual the message was principally of one of these kinds: visual or emotional, abstract or personal, but with many alterations and overlappings. But fragmentary, fluctuating and elusive as it was often described as being, and only in rare cases defining itself as a coherent series of pictures, a dramatic sequence or intelligent story, the message was nevertheless always a message, inasmuch as it appeared to be an addition made to the hearers' previous thoughts by the hearing of that music, and an addition due to that music and ceasing with its cessation. The other half of the listeners did not deny the existence of a meaning or a message in music, but nevertheless claimed that: whenever they found music completely satisfying, any other meaning, anything like visual images or emotional suggestions, was excluded or reduced to utter unimportance. Indeed this class answered by a great majority that, so far as emotion was concerned, music awakened in them an emotion sui generis, occasionally shot with human joy or sadness, or on the whole analogous to the exaltation and tenderness and sense of sublimity awakened by the beautiful in other arts or in nature, but not to be compared with the feeling resulting from the vicissitudes of real life. It was nearly always persons answering in this sense who explicitly acquiesced in the fact that music could remain, in no derogatory sense, but quite the reverse, just music. In his great work, The Power of Sound, 1 Gurney also recognizes two types of listeners, which, "though they shade into one another, and may each of them in various degrees be realised by a single individual in listening to a single composition, are for all that in their typical state radically different." The two types of listeners are the definite and the indefinite, the difference between the two lying in what it is they hear, and the kind of pleasure they experience. In definite hearing there is a perception of form, namely, melodic and harmonic sequences and combinations, while indefinite hearing involves "merely the perception of successions of agreeably-toned and harmonious sound." This distinction is basic, since for Gurney the outstanding feature of a melody is an "ideal motion," a melody consisting of units of motion, in which each tone "yearns" to move to another tone and each unit of motion or phrase to another unit, both movements tending towards a definite position. These motions, one vertical as pitch, and the other horizontal as rhythm, give each melody a unity of form and a definiteness which constitute its unique individuality. The indefinite listener, therefore, who does not grasp the form, does not hear music at all, but only discreet pleasant sounds. It is the response to the "ideal motion" which is to Gurney the one essential source of the pleasurable experience of music, and which constitutes the aesthetic element of the art of tone. Consequently there are various reasons why the pleasure arising from any series or combination of sounds which conveys no distinct musical meaning should be lower and less than that attainable through more definite apprehension . . . First, there is the evidence of the majority of those who at all enjoy listening to Music, and who have experienced at different times both sorts of pleasure. Next, we have the right to identify the higher pleasure with the more specialized, that which is appreciated by the more developed and differentiated sense; and which of course belongs to the distinct exercise of the musical faculty, as opposed to the nearly universal nervous susceptibility to the effect of rich and powerful sound. Next, while the impression of mere beauty of sound-color is exceptionally sensuous and passive, not admitting of any of the indirect aesthetic effects given (as we have seen) by the material of architecture, nor of the associations of space and freedom which a painter's most formless hues may gain from the blue sky and the other colored spaces of nature, the apprehension of musical motives, on the other hand, constitutes a specially active kind of self-realization. And lastly, there is the point already sufficiently insisted on, the power of, in some measure at least, permanently possessing forms which have once become familiar, in contrast to the utter transience of all formless sound-effects. A classification similar to that of Gurney is made by Ortmann, who labels Gurney's indefinite hearer as the sensorial type and the definite listener as the perceptual type. The sensorial Ortmann calls the most rudimentary form of response, which has for its basis the raw sensory material of music. Responses of the sensorial type are limited entirely to what is given in the auditory stimulus itself; and this stimulus is restricted here to a single tone, or an unanalyzed chord. The characteristics of such a stimulus are, in audition: pitch, intensity, duration, quality, and whatever sensorial factor we find must be explained as the result of the effects of these characteristics. The perceptual Ortmann describes as the interpretation of the sensorial reaction: The perceptual response . . . is concerned with auditory things: progression, sequence, motive, phrase, form, outline, contrast, ascent, descent, movement, and many others. . . . The basic difference between the perceptual and sensorial responses is the presence in the former, and the absence in the latter, of relationships. The sensorial response represents a single impression upon consciousness. In the perceptual response, the effect of each separate stimulus is determined by its environment. What has preceded the present stimulus leaves its influence upon it. A tone now becomes a part of a melody, a chord becomes a put of a tonality, and a phrase becomes part of a form. On the mental side, the perceptual response involves active or voluntary attention. Since perception is a conscious process demanding for its proper operation both analysis and synthesis, it is accompanied by active or voluntary attention. It means a response to the stimulus different from the nature of the stimulus itself. This added increment is the result of sustained concentration or mental work. Ortmann recognizes a third type, an imaginal, which, however, fits perfectly with Gurney's definite response, since its basis is the "ideal motion," namely, a feeling for tonality, anticipated chordal resolutions, responses to a melody in harmony, and the like. A somewhat different grouping is made by Hanslick, whose essay is devoted to combating the popular notion that the aim and object of music is the expression of emotion. By inference from his argument Hanslick would recognize two types of listeners, the impure or the extrinsic, and the pure or the intrinsic. To the extrinsic listener, "sound and its ingenious combination are but the material and the medium or expression, by which the composer represents love, courage, pity, and delight. The innumerable varieties of emotion constitute the idea which, on being translated into sound, assumes the form of a musical composition." To such listeners the substance of music is in what it implies: "the whispering of love, or the clamor of ardent combatants." For the intrinsic hearer, on the other hand, the essence of music is sound and motion, and it expresses nothing but musical ideas--that is, music consists wholly of sounds artistically combined. "The ingenious co-ordination of intrinsically pleasing sounds, their consonance and contrast, their flight and reapproach, their increasing and diminishing strength--this it is, which in free and unimpeded forms presents itself to our mental vision." Of experimental studies on types of listeners that of Myers is probably the most exhaustive and inclusive that has as yet appeared. His classification is based upon introspective reports of fifteen persons of various degrees of musicalness who reported their reactions to six musical compositions played on the phonograph, namely: Beethoven Overture to "Egmont" (Op. 84), Tschaikowsky "Valse des Fleurs" from the "Casse-Noisette" Suite (Op. 71a), and his "Italian Capriccio" (Op. 45), Mendelssohn Hebrides Overture ( "Fingal's Cave," Op. 26), the first of Grieg Symphonic Dances (Op. 64), and Kreisler setting and rendition of Couperin "Aubade Provençale." From his data Myers deduces the following four types of listeners: 1. The intra-subjective type. To this type of listener music appeals for the sensory, emotional, or conative experiences it arouses. That is, the attention of the hearer is held by the sensory effects, or the flow of feeling, or the experience of self-activity induced by the music. 2. The associative type. In this response the main appeal of the music lies in the extra-musical ideas and associations it suggests. For instance: "I was in the Queen's Hall, a fair girl in a pink dress was playing and another girl was accompanying her. The violinist had a sad look about her. I felt she had a sorrow in her life." 3. The objective type. This listener assumes a critical attitude toward the music, it is analyzed and evaluated as an aesthetic structure. "I noticed by what simple means in these modern days he gets his effects. . . . I noticed also . . . how he gathered up his climax by syncopation." 4. The character type. Here the music is personified as a subject, given character traits such as morbid, joyful, dainty, mystic, reckless, playful, etc.