man
voice. [64] At first the suggestion seems plausible; but on analogous
grounds we might set the piano above the orchestra, because the piano
gives us pure harmony and counterpoint, without the adventitious aid of
variety in timbre. And it is indeed true that, for some such reason as
this, musicians delight in piano-sonatas, which are above all things
tedious and unintelligible to the mind untrained in music. Nevertheless,
in spite of its great and peculiar prerogatives, it would be absurd
to prefer the piano to the orchestra; and there is a kindred absurdity
involved in setting the orchestra above that mighty union of orchestra,
organ, and voices which we get in the oratorio. When the reason alleged
for ranking the symphony above the oratorio leads us likewise to rank
the sonata above the symphony, we seem to have reached a reductio ad
absurdum.

[63] Now within two years, Mr. Paine's C-minor symphony has
followed the completion of his oratorio.

[64] These peculiar associations are no doubt what is chiefly
enjoyed in music, antecedent to a properly musical culture. Persons of
slight acquaintance with music invariably prefer the voice to the piano.

Rightly considered, the question between vocal and instrumental music
amounts to this, What does music express? This is a great psychological
question, and we have not now the space or the leisure requisite for
discussing it, even in the most summary way. We will say, however, that
we do not see how music can in any way express ideas, or anything but
moods or emotional states to which the ideas given in language may add
determination and precision. The pure symphony gives utterance to moods,
and will be a satisfactory work of art or not, according as the composer
has been actuated by a legitimate sequence of emotional states, like
Beethoven, or by a desire to produce novel and startling effects, like
Liszt. But the danger in purely instrumental music is that it may run
riot in the extravagant utterance of emotional states which are not
properly concatenated by any normal sequence of ideas associated with
them. This is sometimes exemplified in the most modern instrumental
music.

Now, as in real life our sequent clusters of emotional states are in
general determined by their association with our sequent groups of
intellectual ideas, it would seem that music, regarded as an exponent of
psychical life, reaches its fullest expressiveness when the sequence of
the mood