Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1903-11-03
MUSIC AND MORALS.
The Effect Of Harmonious Sounds
Upon the Character.


Various persons have said a good
deal lately about the 'moralizing' eff
feet of music and the consequent need
of having it taught, and taught well,
in all public schools, says the Chi
cago Tribune. Certainly this was the
view of The pedagogical value of mu-
sic which was current among the
Greeks. Sweet and harmonious
sounds were supposed by the Greek
philosophers to bring sweetness and
harmony into ones character. In
modern times this. view has received
many shocks. Music has got away
from it's close association with math-
ematics as a form of intellectual dis
cipline. The medieval "quadriyium"
or course of scientific studies, in
Guided arithmetic, geometry, music
and mathematics. What school in
sists on a similar collocation today?
To the average person music Is
matter of emotion 1t might almost
be put down as an emotional stimulus.
Hence it is that we have Tolstoi in
the "Kreuzer Sonata denouncing mu-
sic not as a "moralizing" but as
"demoralizing" agency. and undoubt-
eddy, to many persons who acquaint-
ance with the mechanics of music is
slight. the thing is great magic
of subtle, airy, intoxicating power.
Falstaff's description Of the effects OF
sherrie-sack might we'll pass for a de-
'scription of the effect of which many
people experience from Tschalkow-
sky symphony at ascends me into
the brain, dries me there all the fool
ish, and dull End crudy vapors winch
environ it; makes it apprehensive,
quick, forgetive, full of fiery, nimble
and delectable shapes; which, deliver
ed over to the voice, the tongue,
which is the birth, becomes excellent
wit" To a person who does not I'M
derstand the structure of music the
wonder of it is much like the wonder
of ineligible scratches on a piece Oh
wood to a savage who does not I'M
derstand the art of writing. When
music is not Intellectually apprehen1-
ed its effect upon the emotions is in
tensified by its mysteriousness. The
rabbit, full of emotion. but not of in
telligence, which stands rigid with
terror looking down the mouth OF the
hypnotic cobra, is not more helpless
than the person of acute sensibilities,
but of complete musical ignorance,
who sits in ecstacy under the spell OF
the swaying bows of the Thomas or
chestra.
This is the reason why in "The Mill
after that famous evening of music
Maggie Tulliver was left strong to
do but weak to resist" The effect OF
music upon her had been simply to
intensity She was stimulated. Her
powers of doing were quickened. But
her powers of resisting, that is, OF
reasoning, of judgment, and of choos-
ing right from wrong, had been swept
out of her soul.
What is the remedy? The remedy
is in just the kind of thing which
is being done now in the public
schools. People who have really
learned how poetry is made, escape
from a subsection to art into a mas
terry over it. They know how the
great magic" is accomplished, and
their enjoyment of it becomes ration
al instead of animal Tolstoi's and
George Eliot's heroes and heroines
would have been differently influenced
by music if they had gone through the
kind of discipline in it which Plato
commands in his republic.