Even when we do not
visibly move in unison with the rhythm--as we usually do not--we tend
to do so, which proves that in any case the motor mechanism of the
body is stimulated and brought into play by the sounds. There is a
direct psychophysical connection between the hearing of rhythmic sounds
and the tendency to execute certain movements. But there is an equally
direct relation between emotions and tendencies to movements, through
which the former find expression and are given effect in the outer
world. To every kind of emotion--love and hate and fear and sorrow and
joy--there corresponds a specific mode of motor manifestation. The
connection between rhythmic sound and emotion is therefore plain; the
link is a common motor scheme. Rhythms arouse into direct and immediate
activity the motor "sets" that are the physical basis of the emotions,
and hence arouse the corresponding emotions themselves, without any
ground for them outside of the organism. And these emotions, since
they are aroused by the sounds and not by any object to which they
might be directed and upon which they might work themselves off in a
meaningful reaction, are interwoven into the sounds,--they and the
sounds come to us as a single indissoluble whole of experience. The
emotions become the content of the sounds. And hence the strangeness
of the musical experience--the fact that we feel so deeply over nothing.
The second cause for the concreteness of the musical experience I take
to be certain emotions and feelings which are aroused by association,
not with the rhythmic elements of music alone, but with the tone-color,
intensity, and melody also.
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