MUSIC A MYSTERIOUS ART.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 97, 22 October 1908, Page 3

MUSIC A MYSTERIOUS ART.

(By Professor Ernest Grosse.) .Music stands in nature and influence unique among the arts .as -an. art of its. .own sort. . . All the other arts "have to .serve the purpose of life. Music serves essentially the objects of art alone' In this sense musio may 1)0 called the purest ■• art. -Especially between music rand poetry, notwithstanding their close outward connection, there exists- a deep inner contrast. . Poetry is master of the whole world of phenomena. Music can say of itself: "My kingdom is riot of this .World." • ' ; "Any person," - says Feechner, "tliough he. may possess little general culture, may receive a higher and stronger direct musical ■ impression, ■niay be able to understand music in its own ''-"sense better and receive more enjoyment from it than the cultivated man, if he is more versed in the apprehension and following' of musical relations and has a larger native musical talent, notwithstanding he oan associate little of consequence with it, and the other much; but the 'by-product of the music will be of : iriore significance to the other, 'j Musical talent seems in fact to-be consistent with 'every- kind of " mental endowmenfr«-v It -is not jJAiely. foim^--developed to ar higher degree in men who stand below the average in other respects; While it is sometimes wholly, wanting in persons of high intellectual and even artistic cajiacity. The musical endowaaent 'of 'different people, too, ' appears just as capricious and independent in its iridivid\ial manifestations.- !; \ The bushmen rise high above the other huhting peoples in their musk cal capacity, and yet their civilisation'in pother respects is quite as ■ Tilde and meagre as iflmt of any other. Even when, we turn" toward the higher" stages of development the relation between civilisation andniusic is'hO clearer. Why are the German people felessed with so "wondrous abundance of the highest .musical talent, while the nearly related English have not been able . to produce a single great master ? " Because the Germans are better - endowed' musically than the English, is the reply. But the question is precisely : ' AVhence is that superiority derived? We shall not deny that a normal relation . may exist between the musical gifts and the civilisation of a people or an age, but we have, to confess that we do not know what it is. .-•;.■" Plato's assertion that music is a means of ix>pular education has' be^n repeated in our time. But umsie can substantially only educate trv.j music. Whoever askj ai'ything eby from it only gives evidence that he is hot able to appreciate what it offers him. . - • v '.i. r.'" ■ : Music is tan-art wholly of its own kind- which! 'Gari ; ; be compared, as to mea'ris and i effects", with no other art. Nobody >has> insisted -more energetically on this distinct' position^ of piusic than^Schopenhauer. "Music is : quite independent of -the visiblo is absolutely ignorant of it, • and' could exisfih a certain if Itliere ■ were ; no' worM, -which caiiriot :be said of the otlier arts." All the .other arts take their models from .the jvisible worldj from nature; they are v imitative, representative arts ; but music, in its pure worki at least, copies no natural phenomena of' a,riy sort whatever.' : ! It .creates, as Gur;ney says, audible forms, successions, and combinations of tones wnicja Mve no prototype' in~ Nature' arid do not exist oittside "_of music. . ; /