, accompany the physical process of hearing.
[Sidenote: _Tones and musical material._]
Without discrimination it is impossible to recognize even the crude
materials of music, for the first step is already a co-ordination of
those materials. A tone becomes musical material only by association
with another tone. We might hear it alone, study its quality, and
determine its degree of acuteness or gravity (its pitch, as musicians
say), but it can never become music so long as it remains isolated.
When we recognize that it bears certain relationships with other tones
in respect of time or tune (to use simple terms), it has become for us
musical material. We do not need to philosophize about the nature of
those relationships, but we must recognize their existence.
[Sidenote: _The beginnings of Form._]
Thus much we might hear if we were to let music go through our heads
like water through a sieve. Yet the step from that degree of
discrimination to a rudimentary analysis of Form is exceedingly short,
and requires little more than a willingness to concentrate the
attention and exercise the memory. Everyone is willing to do that much
while looking at a picture. Who would look at a painting and rest
satisfied with the impression made upon the sense of sight by the
colors merely? No one, surely. Yet so soon as we look, so as to
discriminate between the outlines, to observe the relationship of
figure to figure, we are indulging in intellectual exercise. If this
be a condition precedent to the enjoyment of a picture (and it plainly
is), how much more so is it in the case of music, which is intangible
and evanescent, which cannot pause a moment for our contemplation
without ceasing to be?
[Sidenote: _Comparison with a model not possible._]
There is another reason why we must exercise intelligence in
listening, to which I have already alluded in the first chapter. Our
appreciation of beauty in the plastic arts is helped by the
circumstance that the critical activity is largely a matter of
comparison. Is the picture or the statue a good copy of the object
sought to be represented? Such comparison fails us utterly in music,
which copies nothing that is tangibly present in the external world.
[Sidenote: _What degree of knowledge is necessary?_]
[Sidenote: _The Elements._]
[Sidenote: _Value of memory._]
It is then necessary to associate the intellect with sense perception
in listening to music. How far is it essential
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