The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1895-02-23

Some rather striking questions are
asked and answered by the Philadel-
phia Record. After noting that music
as science has long batiied the critics
1t remarks: "They have reduced it to
an art of tonality and harmonics; but
why certain 'clang tints' or sound col
ors should portray certain states of
feeling, or why certain theme develop
ments should suit certain sentiments,
remains an impenetrable mystery.
Wagner attempted to give personality
to certain musical phrases, or leading
motives; and despite the cry of the
advocates of pure harmoncs the great
est maestros have INDUCED in onoma-
topoetic defects. Scarlatti wrote a cat
fugue; Mendelssohn initiated dom
keys bray: Beethoven, the god of
music composed battle symphony;
and even Wagner echoed the birds.
What would music become if for a mo-
ment one should overthrow its conven-
tional associations? The laws of har-
mony do not teach us, for instance.
that the minor key should be interpret
ed invariably as the voice of sorrow,
nor that the villains voice should be
bass or the oboe signify a pastoral
episode. Suppose genius should arise
who should write a lyrical drama on
entirely reverse lines. in which the vii
lain should be a tenor and the lover a
basso profundo, and in which all the
sad passages should be sung in the
major key and all the merry arias in
the minor: would not the sensation
eclipse the famous Meyerbeer opera
joke? And yet, why, if there be a
fundamental scientific basis for music,
should the discord of yesterday become
the chord of today. the heretical cad
ence of today become the orthodox cad
ence of tomorrow? Why should Cho-
pin have offended? Wherefore the war
between Handel and Bach? Why the
modern Wagnerite ana the anti-Wag-
nerite-say, Saint-Saens and Massenet?
Is I'll Trovatore' or Don Giovanni any
less immortal than 'Falstaff' or the
Niebelung Trilogy?"
To these interrogations the Record
makes reply by quoting the eXtraor-
binary deductions of Professor Alfred
S. Warthin, of the University of Mich
igan, who declares that while he was
attending q series of performances of
Wagner's operas he discovered that
certain people in the audience We're in
a state of self-induced hypnosis. Fur
ther study of this condition enabled
him to determine that these music
lovers We're for the time being so COM
pletely absorbed by sounds that all eX-
ternal relations were removed from
them; that they We're in state wherein
nothing but music existed, or, in other
words, that they We're completely un-
der the hypnotic influence of the music
drama. Following up his discovery,
Professor Warthin tried the hypnotic
experiment upon a brother physician
with the ensuing remarkable results:
This gentleman was placed in a hyp-
motto state, and Wagner's Ride of the
Walkure' was played at him on a
piano. Immediately the subjects face
showed great mental excitement, his
body twitched with violent emotion, his
legs were drawn up in seeming agony,
his arms tossed wildly in the air, and
he broke out in profuse perspiration.
On being awakened from his trance
the patient declared that he had not
perceived the music as sound, but as
feeling, and that feeling was the sensa-
ton of excitement, as if he were riding