The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1920-07-16
(in the Chicago Tribunel:


whose reactions to life are too ex-
traordinary to be fathomed Are we
TO regard as detectives or sensitiyes
these men of the rarest temperament,
quite immune to the seductions of
sound? But the recorded category OF
such mortals consists of great men.
poets, artists and intellectuals. Vic
tor Hugo, Gautier, Flaubert, Dumas,
Darwin, Carlyle, Burns and many
others have confessed their dislike for
music, so that the most ardent spon-
sor of the art can scarcely claim it
to be the adjunct of superior organ
ism.
Away! Away cries Jean Paul &c
music. Thou speakest of things which
Throughout my endless life l have
found not, and shall not find
John Stuart Mill, another example
of the musical defective, predicted that
the time would come when musical
creativeness would be extinguished IN
the human race. And Baudelaire, q
casuist of emotions, despised the COM
monness of the musical sense and
whimsically declared that the only
music congenial to him was that which
was made by his cat scratching at the
window pane. Among creatures of a
simpler order the only one that is
endowed with sympathy for man, the
dog, is distinguished for his dislike Of
music The dogs nerves react pain
| fully to music, so that he bowls his
protest or his sympathy-one knows
not which-at the pianist or the vocal
ist in their musical throes. 1t appears
to be sort of sixth sense, this subtle
aversion to the lures of rhythm, and
to possess is a symptom of some po-
tential kind of geniu, not yet evolved
in human kind, a genius for sympathy.
or doubt"
1t is not by chance that women fill
our concert halls and at the close OF
the concert by a popular virtuoso flock
down to the stage. There must be
some hidden power in music to appeal
so strongly to the feminine nature
Music's appeal to women has often
been dramatized, satirized and symbol
lied. Herman Bahr's THE Concert"
is notable instance, while the dramas
of Schnitzler illustrate the sexual sig
nifcance of music Arnold Benefits
Sacred and Profane Love" is re-
cent document Mrs. Cox writes sug-
gestively of this appeal:
Music is, biologically, function of
the male, in the game of sex, mans
most splendiferious gift to charm, sub
due and conquer an audience, a woman
or an enemy. The musicians tempera-
ment is martial or amorous, his gift
aggressive in its need of something
to affect and to act upon. Woman thus
becomes the natural object of music
and musicians, and her temperament
equips her to be the great music lover.
"a great musician is not necessar.
lily a great music lover a fact attested
by many great music makers of the
masculine gender-for instance, the
deaf Beethoven, who was surrounded
by silence like a world walking among
men. This master musician once de-
clared that before he lost his hearing
in his boyhood he had disliked music
so much that his father had to drive
him to the practice of the art. Even
Wagner hated a particular brand of
music described by him as the kind
that follows the rules and has no
other reason for existence as he hated
also that whole clinking, glistening
show, grand opera. Berlioz took
greater pride in the fact that his re-
QUEEN mass frightened one of the
listeners into a fit than in his master
piece, and Paganini often said that he
would rather be praised for the grace
of his bows to his audience than for
his musical performance
"In natures scheme of things it
seems to be woman's forte to act as
musics audience, the eternal listener,
appreciation and pupil of mans sono-
rites. For music the feminine nature
possesses a sublime incapacity and u
fatal receptivity, thus her epicurean-
ism which is solely that of the ear
Upon what else does the concert, the
church, the opera and the musical
rest their modern might?
"Woman's temperament is like n
sounding board, tense, vibrant, but
made of the stuff of dreams The
highest breeding has failed to make
the feminine being anything but an
addict to harmony, just justifying the
grabbed Tolstoi's statement that music
is woman's most refined lust of the
senses. Her immersion in tempera,
ment has qualified her for the musical
| life, while it has disqualified her in the
same degree for the truly spiritual
or intellectual life In the thrall of
music a woman loses herself in
l1apturous disintegration of all her arLi-
fetal selves and reverts to her plasmic
womanhood again, swooning with ex-
cess of life in the bosom Infinite. Thus