BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
| No. IV. | JULY 1817. | Vol. I. |
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.
CURSORY REMARKS ON MUSIC, ESPECIALLY ON THE SOURCES OF THE PLEASURE WHICH IT COMMUNICATES.[1]
The pleasures which are interwoven with the constitution of our nature, and which, under proper regulation, become important sources of our happiness, may be divided into three classes:—1stly, Those which arise from the gratification of the bodily senses; 2dly, Those of which the exercise of the imagination is the chief, if not the only quality;—and lastly, Those of a mixed nature, in which the intellectual faculties are excited into agreeable action by impressions made on the animal senses. The first class cannot require, and indeed do not admit of, illustration. All that can be affirmed respecting them is, that certain objects in the surrounding world are adapted to excite pleasurable sensations with sufficient universality to entitle them to be called naturally agreeable. We are gratified by certain tastes and smells, and can give no explanation of the cause of our enjoyment. It is of a kind which lasts no longer than the impression itself, and terminates with the removal of its object. But the higher classes of our pleasures, being renewable by voluntary efforts of the mind, and depending on the exercise of its various faculties (of perception, of association, of judgment, of imagination), become fit objects of that branch of science, the dignity and importance of which are commensurate with those of our intellectual and moral powers and habits.
The inquiry, respecting which I have no higher purpose than that of offering a few hints to serve as the basis of an evening's conversation, regards a class of pleasures, which all civilized nations, in all ages, have thought worthy of cultivation. In those records of remotest history, the sacred writings, we find repeated mention of the cornet, the trumpet, the psalter, the cymbal, and the harp, and always in connexion with their power of exciting pleasant trains of feeling, or of contributing to some moral effect. Among the Greeks, music was practised by those who had attained the highest distinction as warriors or philosophers, and was thought not unworthy the countenance and encouragement of one of the wisest and least voluptuous of ancient legislators.[2] The Hindus, also, the high antiquity of whose records appears to be established by sufficient evidence, have possessed, from the earliest period to which their history extends, a music, confined indeed to thirty-six melodies. In modern times, none, I believe, but absolutely barbarous nations, are entirely destitute of music. Among the North American Indians, we are informed by Mr Weld, that nothing resembling poetry or music is to be found; but among the more gentle and civilized inhabitants of some of the Society islands, a sort of music (rude, it must be confessed, and little calculated to please an European ear) was
