Music
So far as I can see, this is the least stable of the arts. From the
earliest records we learn that there were musicians, and people seem
to have been just as fond of music as we are ourselves, but, whereas
we find the old sculpture, painting (what there is of it) and
literature to have been in all essentials like our own, and not only
this but whereas we find them essentially the same in existing
nations in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, this is not so as
regards music either looking to antiquity or to the various existing
nations. I believe we should find old Greek and Roman music as
hideous as we do Persian and Japanese, or as Persians and Japanese
find our own.
I believe therefore that the charm of music rests on a more
unreasoning basis, and is more dependent on what we are accustomed
to, than the pleasure given by the other arts. We now find all the
ecclesiastical modes, except the Ionian and the AEolian,
unsatisfactory, indeed almost intolerable, but I question whether, if
we were as much in the habit of using the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian
and Mixo-Lydian modes as we are of using the later AEolian mode (the
minor scale), we should not find these just as satisfactory. Is it
not possible that our indisputable preference for the Ionian mode
(the major scale) is simply the result of its being the one to which
we are most accustomed? If another mode were to become habitual,
might not this scale or mode become first a kind of supplementary
moon-like mode (as the AEolian now is) and finally might it not
become intolerable to us? Happily it will last my time as it is.
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