MORAL MUSIC.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5343, 6 October 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

MORAL MUSIC.

[BY AN' EXPEBIMENTER.]

Inmin a bumble sphere of life—a hairdresser's assistant, in fact; but I have a thirst for improving , my mind, nnd regularly attended tlio evening classes at our institute. It wan then? I road in a magazine about morals mid music. The writer discussed the question wliother music by itself, unpolluted I)} , words, had any ' mental sijjnificnuco or moral power. , I left ofF reading rather puzzled, but I am of a practical turn of mind. I joined our bricklaying , class at the institute last term, and although I nip my fingers a good deal still, it has rnado me inclined to put all new truths to the test of experiment. So I determined to experiment on myself, and see what mental significance and moral power music possessed, if liny. I regulated my life very carefully during the trial, so that no outfide influence should spoil the result. I weighed, anil measured out my food nnd drink, abstained from pickles and sensation literature, denied myself the exciting pleasure of Jemima's company on Thursday and Sunday, and, to counterbalance the language of some of our ruder customers, and to give morals an oven chance, T slept with a tract under my pillow. I started with a quite unprejudiced mind, for the attention T had paid to music before was mo.stly measured by the loudness of it. I took a seat nt St. James's Ifiill in good time, arid opened ray mind and morals for impressions. First of all a man came on the platform and began, as far as I could fee, to tune the piano. I thought he ought to have done this before the advertised time of opening, but when ho got off the stool the people all began to applaud him, and on enquiring I found that, the man I had taken for a tuner was really the giver of the concert, and that ho had been playing one of his own compositions. So I lost this experiment altogether. However, soon after the player returned with a violinist, and they started a duet. I set my tooth. If there was any significance or moral in a violin and piano mixed, I determined to liavo it. I had first fleeting visions before my mind of all the creatures 1 hnd ever seen in pain. There was the squeak of a rat caught in a tr»p ; thero was the .same sort of shriek Jemima gave when I took her to have a tooth out; and there was the loud wail which accompanies the conversion of pig into pirk. But this was only the. first chapter. The players stopped, md began again ; and the next chapter p'.sntred me among the industrial arts. Und< • the influence of the magic instruments I uv the foundation of England's greatness. There was an athletic carpenter induM. ?nusly pawing wood. There was a grindstone putting an edge on an axe. There were a number of whirrs, which brought back vividly a loom I had seen at work at an exhibition, and thero wns a rather asthmatic smith striking his anvil and coughing between even , blow. But. this was not all. They began a third cliaptcr. and I was immediately among lollypops. All the nice.-it things! had ever tasted stood before me in a row. There was a pot full of npricot jam : theic was some roast beef gravy, than which, taken on the knife, T know nothing more toothsome; there was a sixpenny strawberry ice, and a nice cut of lamb nnd mint bhuw to finish up with. I wns sorry when they left off, but glad to tind I Xiih YtitS'VwTw evidently a musical embodiment of a clean shave ; the first part was the misery of laying your head back and having your nose tweaked ; tho second was the being scraped ; and the last was tho happy moment when you stretch your limbs, pass your satisfied hand over your smooth chin, and nod to yourself complacently in the glass. The moral was obvious ; that it is a duty to got shaved, and not to shave yourself, but to go to tho professional man. l>l y next experiment was to hear a young lady sinjif. She came on the platform, looking lovely, and slip had on n sash and a dressimprover that I never saw equalled fur ele--I,'anee. My hopes rose at the eight of her. I felt sure that so much beauty could not be otherwise than moral. ' Oh, do be moral! do bo moral !' I kept saying to myself, as the accompanist opened fire on her song. A dreadful thought then arose ; tho words of her song would taint tho experiment, which was to be on music alone. But to my delight, I could not catch a word of what she sang. It was all pure musk;. Her sweet Kong suggested to mo as follows : I first, (taw her running up stairs and down again as fast as ever she could, and then she sat down on the mat to rest, ivhilo the piano panted. Then sho drew out from sonic* wbete'one long, straight note, thick in the middle and tapering off at each end, so seductive that I fancied myself a storm-tossed mariner listening to n. mermaid. I could almost feel tho waves of the Margate boat irurgle around me. Then she draw a jusr of hot water out of tho boMer—fit least, that was its intellectual significance to me, bocause the note went steadily rising upwards, with little splashes in between, just like the sound of the water when I draw a jug to nhavo a customer. Then she ran upstairs again like lightning, and disappenred through tho tiles, while tho pianist banged the front door to. T am sure there was a splendid moral to all this, for who looked so beautiful and smiled m sweetly ; but I am undecided whether the moral was that I was to sign tho pledge, or that I was not. to go to concerts without Jemima as a safe-guard

I next gave myself up bodily to what they called a 'concerto.' When I saw scvoi'ftl gentlemen come on the platform with a variety of instrument.", I thought it would t>e a inoi'o serious experiment th'iii tlie othern, and so it proved. I kept my eyes on thciij when they first liejran, but they looked ho comical- one with his (iheokn blown out, (mother with hi« hair iih if it had just bei'ii machined, another trying to jn.i! liis nrni round his fiddle"* waist, tiud another jerking his eyes out of hin head—that I felt it was not givintr thumiinic a fair chance, ho I slmt tuy own eyes tight. Ah kooii as I had (Trine so there was no end of intellectual nitfiiitieiuuM". I was in a pleasure van junt Htnrtinsj for Hampton Court, with Jemiinii. Tlicro was the jogtrot of the horsen, and every now and then the skid put on ; there w»s lauyhter and the puffing of pipes, and oouiisionnlly a loud roar, iia we emssed a big thoroughfare. "Wo Noon jjot into the country and liefird tliu birds chirping, and tlioro was n. mveet purgliujr sound, wliich intimated to 7ite that the men on tlie box hftd broached tho foiir-trullon ejipk. I was just getting rwidy for a glaeo, u-lion nil at once the whole scene vanlsJied. Tho music had Htoppeil, and wlien it began ngnin things were muclx nlteied for tlio worse. With tlie first note 1 folt a nhnddm , jr<> down mv vitiih. Soino

thing was coming, T did not know what. I felt jusfc like being woke up in bed by a strange noise, mid no matches handy, and my razors open to everybody on the table. Then I heard the bans fiddle my distinctly, ' Prepare to meet your doom, , Jccveral times over, while the violins tried to mieer at me,

nnd the piano rattled chains in tlio corner

Thin was very trying, but worse was to fyl

TJtotv were faint cries and nobs from

the next room, as though murder wna going

on ; tliero wero long silences' which wero

woi'.-o to bear than any sound ; then tsuiuoone bogran to work softly at the door with a centre-bit, and theio "were rumblings as

though someone else was letting himself down the chimney. I fancied I could almost see his leg. Then there was another hush, and, thank heaven, I could tell by the handclapping that that pm-t was over. It was about time, for the mental significance had got quite overpowering. Thero was then a total change. The music took me back in a second to the last ball I had been to-tho eighteenpenny one, refreshments extra. I was dancing all the dances at once, and all the girls were making up to me, and it only made Jemima smile. That was a really delightful mental significance, and I could havo done with more of it. But I doubt whether the concerto on tho whole was moral. lam sure that ice down the back cannot be good for anyone, nor can 1 see, in cool moments, that raising the animal spirits so many degrees above proof is proper. I have not yet concluded my experiments. I havo still to try the effects of a cornet solo ; and the flute, as well as the concertina, tho bones, and the banjo. But 1 havo no doubt that if more people would try my plan, nnd honeetly state tho results, we should in time get at tho truth of this moral music—London paper.