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cheers us because we are accustomed to hear it in connection with
laughing and quips and cranks; military music inspirits us because we
are accustomed to hear it in connection with martial movements and
martial sights; sacred music depresses us because we are accustomed to
hear it at moments when we are contemplating our weakness and mortality;
'tis a mere matter of association. To this easy-going way of disposing
of the problem there was an evident and irrefutable objection: but why
should we be accustomed to hear a given sort of music in connection with
these various conditions of mind? Why should dance music, and martial
music, and sacred music all have a perfectly distinct character, which
forbade, from the very first, their being exchangeable? If it is a
matter of association of ideas, tell us why such characters could have
been kept distinct before the association of ideas could have begun to
exist? To this objection there was no reply; the explanation of musical
expression by means of association of ideas seemed utterly hollow; yet
the confused idea of such an association persisted. For it was, after
all, the true explanation. If we ask modern psychology the reason of the
specific characters of the various sorts of music, we shall again be
answered: it is owing to the association of ideas. But the two answers,
though apparently identical, are in fact radically different. The habit
of association existed, according to the old theory, between various
mental conditions and various sorts of music, because the two were
usually found in connection; hence no explanation why, before habit had
created the association, there should have been any connection, and,
there being no connection, no explanation why the habit and consequently
the mental association should ever have been formed. According to the
modern theory, on the contrary, the habit of association is not between
the various mental conditions and the various styles of music; but
between specific mental conditions and specific sounds and movements,
which sounds and movements, being employed as the constituent elements
of music, give to the musical forms into which they have been
artistically arranged that inevitable suggestion of a given mental
condition which is due to memory, and become, by repetition during
thousands of years, an instinct ingrained in the race and inborn in the
individual, a recognition rapid and unconscious, that certain audible
movements a