It is strong in
mankind and becomes peculiarly intense in the type known as artistic.
The fulness of his own emotions compels the musician to utterance. To
strike a sympathetic chord in other sensitive breasts it becomes
necessary to devise forms of expression that may be unmistakably
intelligible.
Out of such elements the tone-language has grown, precisely as the
word-language grew out of men's early attempts to communicate facts to
one another. Its story records a slow, painstaking building up of
principles to control its raw materials; for music, as we understand it,
cannot exist without some kind of design. Vague sounds produce vague,
fleeting impressions. Definiteness in tonal relations and rhythmic plan
is requisite to produce a defined, enduring impression. In primitive
states of music rhythmic sounds were heard, defined by the pulses but
with little or no change of pitch, and sounds varying in pitch without
regularity of impulse. A high degree of intellectuality was reached
before our modern scales were evolved from long-continued attempts at
making well-balanced successions of sounds.
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