MUSIC AND SCIENCE.

BY

CHARLES KASSON WEAD.

(Address of the retiring President, delivered before the Society, Saturday evening, January 15, 1910.)

We meet tonight under unusual conditions. About a year ago the Society elected as President its most distinguished member, Simon Newcomb; after a long and painful illness he died July 11. In December, on the day fixed in the bylaws for the annual address of the President, we listened to tributes of esteem and to able addresses commemorating his life and services. To attempt to add anything tonight to what has been so appreciatively said by men who knew him and his work so well would be superfluous and inappropriate.

To the office left vacant I was elected for the remainder of the year; and members of the Society, jealous of its traditions, insisted that one who had held the honor, if only for a short time, should fulfill, at the earliest practicable date, the duty of presenting a Presidential address.

The subject I have chosen belongs in part to one branch of Physics: while this branch receives the smallest number of pages in a text-book, has the fewest votaries, and lies at one side of the modern current of spectacular or industrial research, there is, on the other hand, no branch of physical science which deals with subject-matter lying so close to the heart of humanity as Acoustics. In studying electricity or thermodynamics, who ever thinks of man's desires and actions as part of the material to be investigated? But Acoustics belongs to the humanities as well as to mathematics

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and physics; and men's actions, likes and dislikes, as expressed in music, furnish a large part of its most interesting subject-matter. Unfortunately the musicians, ethnologists and physicists sometimes appear to be more ready to dispute than to coöperate in studying the subject. So the most desirable thing at present is that all who are interested in the matter shall cease to say-You ought or ought not to do so and so,and shall seek first to learn all the actual facts relating to the past and present of music, and then to consider their significance. Before long the histories and philosophies of music must be rewritten because of the many facts not at the command of older writers. Let us this evening try to get a bird'seye view of the subject in some of its broad aspects.

To this end, suppose that a superhuman being from Mars should cease digging new canals for a time and should visit our earth, alert, intent on seeing every form of human activity and learning the chief conclusions of human inquiry and research, unprejudiced, and able to consider men's actions, thoughts and feelings as objectively as he would rocks and animals; and suppose that we may accompany him as he hastens over the world.

Our visitant would soon learn that music is one of the great human activities; he learns that in our country the census classes 100,000 persons as "Musicians," and puts the annual production of instruments at $100,000,000; he sees our children spend many hours a week in the study of music; often he sees thousands attending a concert or opera where a hundred persons are busy making sounds; he finds the tumult of sound is all "a mighty maze, but not without a plan."

To learn something of this plan he examines instruments like those in the fine collections at the National Museum, or the New York Metropolitan Museum, consults histories and theoretical books, and asks how music has developed, what its physical, physiological and psychological foundations are, and what music means to those who compose, perform, and listen to it. Unfortunately human students of these things cannot yet answer the questions fully and satisfactorily; but some results already gained deserve attention.

One recognizes early that while musical activity is found. among almost all peoples, throughout all history, the specific form in which it finds expression has been and is very varied, and what gives satisfaction to one people is often unpleasant to another; yet one finds uncritical men assembling in magazine articles comments "on music" from writers in the most diverse conditions; although, perhaps, no two writers had the same concrete idea back of the word. For in reality the idea of music is not only as generic and indefinite as that of tree or animal, but it is constantly being extended to cover new forms. A good modern definition is that of the Oxford Dictionary:

"Music. That one of the fine arts which is concerned with the combination of sounds with a view to beauty of form and the expression of emotion; also the science of the laws or principles (of melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) by which the art is regulated. It has two branches, the art of the composer and that of the executant."

Following the order of ideas in this definition, one notes, first, that the "fine arts" are primarily to be enjoyed; their educational relations should be held secondary. It ought to be obvious that a strange thing cannot be understood or enjoyed at once; familiarity with it or with closely allied things is indispensable; but the contemptuous remarks of travelers about Arab, Hindu or Indian music are far more easily found than the appreciations of those who have learned to enjoy it. Besides the pleasure that comes from suitable bodily activity and coöperation with others, as in choral singing, the elements of musical enjoyment are partly material, sensuous; and partly psychical, mental. To the first belong the beauty of tone, as in the voice; the contrasts in timbre or quality of orchestral instruments; the variations in pitch and loudness of the notes of a melody; and most important of all, rhythm in its infinite variety; primitive and Oriental rhythms are far more complex than those of European musicians.

The principal mental elements of musical enjoyment depend on memory, and may be included under the compre