---

Out of so distant a past as this comes this famous illustration of the influence of music. The power with which music is credited to "soothe the savage breast" will only be disputed by those who maintain that the noises that soothe the savage breast do not deserve the name of music at all. But to this it is sufficient answer that for elementary life elementary forms of music are appropriate. Nay, we might descend lower still, and illustrate our subject by examples of the influence of music over the lower forms of animal life. Even a very dull and unmusical ear can detect the difference between the low, dulcet strain that soothes the spirit and assuages its tumult, and the sharp, ringing, martial air that sets the heart heating and the feet starring. When it was said of John Knox that his voice stirred Scotland like the sound of a trumpet everyone realised the appropriateness of the simile. In the crises of great struggles men have been "played up" almost impossible ascents, when neither the ardour of the fight nor the chance of defeat would have stirred them sufficiently. The little child's sleep waits on the croon over its cradle; and the strong man's death in battle is made easy by the shrill call of the bugle or the pipes to blood and brain. Music can strike a chill to the heart with the wail of a dirge, or it can set the pulses dancing to the thrill of the march, or lift the soul irresistibly heavenward on swelling billows of chorus or magnificat. The passage that I have taken as a text has been expounded by Robert Browning in one of the greatest poems of the nineteenth century. It is in itself a moving incident, the great first king, drear and stark in his tent, and the bright, blithe young harpist seeking by music to win his soul back from the inferno of despair, where it was overwhelmed. But how? By what fashion of music can this miracle be accomplished? What craft can avail to bring back the dead to life? First, says Browning, he plays the tune of the sheepfold, the musical call to which they flock across the hills in the evening when the stars are coming out. Then he played strains which the creatures loved, the quails and the crickets, and the jerboa. And then the reaper's song of rejoicing, and then:

The last song,

When the dead man is praised on his journey.

And then he breaks into the glad marriage chant, and follows this with a battle march, and then again with:

The chorus intoned,

As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned.

This last effort, according to Browning, wrung a deep groan from the lips of the afflicted and desolate Saul. There was power in the music to break the chain of Saul's captivity. But now, in my judgment, Browning is absolutely right in representing that for the higher and deeper influence music alone, mere instrumental music, will not suffice. David realises this; he begins to sing to his harp; he makes the music the vehicle of great and inspiring thought; and he sings these uplifting and invigorating beliefs and hopes into the sorrow-stricken soul before him. The question now comes to be: how much of this result was the influence of music, and how much the influence of ideas? I would say, rather, there is a previous question. Would the bare ideas alone have had this wizard power over the soul apart from the music? The language of music is broadly understood by all peoples. The music of Beethoven is far more universally appreciated than the poetry of Milton, because of the disabilities inflicted on mankind by the tower of Babel. A Greek or an Italian cannot understand a line of Shakespeare, but Wagner's dramatic speech they comprehend. And, indeed, it may require a sensitive and discerning mind to appreciate Michael Angelo's expression in stone or on canvas of the woes of Italy, but it hardly needs education to realise how the tragedies of Poland fail through the music of Chopin.

I. THE DANGER OF SELF-INDULGENCE. An absorbing enjoyment of music and devotion to music is one of the commonest forms of selfishness. This power of music to take a masterful grip of the senses is so remarkable that it very commonly means the exclusion of all other objects and interests whatsoever. Even as the Pied Piper in Browning's legend played the children to their doom, and they followed him laughing and dancing, and careless of everything but, the pleasure of the hour, so, as it seems to me, the influence of music may be full of a fatal fascination, in the presence of which all life's prosaic and commonplace duties go to the wall. There are tens of thousands of musical people, keenly sensitive to its almost incomparable joys, who ask only to be lapped

in soft Lydian airs

Married to immortal verse.

They seek life itself

In notes, with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out.

And the temptation of the Lotos eaters is their temptation, and the music of the Sirens draws them to their fate. It is in that nobler Orpheus song, of which it is recorded:

Nor sang he only of unfading bowers

Where men a tearless, painless age fulfil

In fields Elysian spending blissful hours

Remote from every ill

But of pure gladness found in temperance high,

In duty owned, and reverenced with awe:

Of man's true freedom, which may only lie

In servitude to law

And how 'twas given through virtue to aspire

To golden seats in ever calm abodes;

Of mortal men admitted to the quire

Of the immortal gods.

Even the Siren sisters, so the legend ran, ceased their music and listened wistfully to so high and noble and deathless a strain as this.

II. THE MUSICAL TEMPERAMENT. There is another peril, due less perhaps to the music itself than to the musical temperament. Life cannot be all music. Nothing that you and I can ever do can entirely rule the discords out of it. And when the hour of music is over the reaction is apt to be extreme. The musical temperament is for this very reason subject more than most to nervous irritabilities. It is subject to wide extremes of sensation and emotion. One hour it, is strung up to the keenest sensitiveness; but unstrung it is dull and flat beyond the common. And like all nervously fashioned temperaments this tendency to sudden and violent reactions brings special moral perils in its train. The lives of great musicians are almost without exception melancholy reading. As the Scotch would say, they were "gey ill to live wi'." You have to be very charitable to their genius if they are to retain your respect.

III. HARMONY IN CHURCH CHOIRS. And here you know, as one who has known so little of what many ministers have known so much, I might say a word on the thorny subject of church choirs. John Wesley, who never worshipped at Kensington Chapel, held strong opinions on this subject. But, honestly, I cannot say that I have come across what is ignorantly assumed to be the regulation trouble in churches, that these contribute least harmony who are humorously said to lead the harmony of the church. But, if it were so I should not be surprised. Let those be censorious who know least about the constitution of the musical temperament. I want to say, as I close, that, the truth of truths in regard to this subject is that the influence of music is a good servant but a bad master; that you need a higher master-influence over your lives than the influence of music. The famous lines of Milton ere no exaggeration:

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing

Such notes as, warbled to the string,

Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,

And made Hell grant what Love did seek.

Iron tears down Pluto's cheek! There is power in music to soften the hardened spirit till it weep iron tears, till those who are familiar with evil catch a glimpse of love and innocence such as breaks down their self-complacency and stoicism. "And made Hell grant what love did seek." Yea, it was the music of the life of Jesus — love seeking a lost world from the grip of hell, that conquered the powers of evil, and delivered humanity from its dark captivity. It was this Divine Orpheus who sang such piercing and penetrating strains that the captives of Hell were enamoured once again of the life of faith and virtue. He made Hell grant what Love did seek. Think of that, if you will, as illustration of the influence of the higher melodies.

(C. Silvester Horne, M. A.)

---

---

KJV: And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

WEB: It happened, when the [evil] spirit from God was on Saul, that David took the harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.