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The whole point is that he did work "from" it, and not "toward" it. To receive an inspiration or stimulus from a picture is one thing, but to try to reproduce through music exactly that picture in the minds of other persons is quite another thing. Every artist must get his experience from life, and a big part of life is visual, but no matter what the source of his feeling the final aim of the musician is musical beauty, not rivalry with the art of painting.

Character and Ornament. We often feel that there is a sort of opposition between that quality in a piece of music which we call its individual character, and that quality by which it conforms to certain conventional standards of musical beauty. Folk-music and the music of the greatest masters will usually stand out as individual, that is, the melodic ideas will strike us as unique and as having some meaning and some backbone, so that we should recognize and remember them. Music, on the other hand, which is too urbane to show individuality, depends upon trills, runs, turns, gracenotes, etc., for its beauty. These ornaments are in the nature of standard "properties" which are attractive in themselves, and which may be added in the desired quantity to any tune. The very fact that they are

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CHARACTER AND ORNAMENT

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common property tends to make these embellishments blot out the individuality of any tune they are applied to. An example of the unfortunate use of embellishment is found in the English form of "Robin Adair." It introduces an ornamental change into the Irish tune "Aileen Aroon," but in so doing it merely obscures the outline of an air which is more characteristic and beautiful without the change.

There is, however, a legitimate place for the introduction of ornament, and where it does not obscure the character of the music it is, of course, an added beauty. There are cases, indeed, in which character and ornament coincide. A very charming example is found in Arne's "The Lass with the Delicate Air." The effect of this music is undoubtedly ornate, and yet there are no superfluous notes; if we try to leave out any, we spoil the real spirit of this polite ditty. We may even say that pure ornament is also expressive. The player or singer who can be lavish of ornament shows thereby a certain facility and ease, and gives the agreeable impression of having "surplus energy."

READING REFERENCES.

HELMHOLTZ: "Sensations of Tone."
SEDLEY-TAYLOR: "The Science of Music."

POLE: "The Philosophy of Music."

GURNEY: "The Power of Sound."

PARRY: "The Evolution of the Art of Music."

WALLESCHEK: "Primitive Music."

GROSSE: "The Beginnings of Art."

Chap. x.

FILLMORE: "The Harmonic Structure of Indian Music." Am.

Anthropologist, vol. i.

MEYER: "Elements of a Psychological Theory of Music," Psy. Rev. vii.

"The Psychology of Music," Am. Jour., vol. xiv.

HADOW: "Studies in Modern Music."

PUFFER: "The Psychology of Beauty." Chap. v.

EMERSON: "The Feeling-Value of Unmusical Tone Intervals," Harvard Psy. Studies, vol. ii.

"A Grammar of Plainsong" by the Benedictines of Stanbrook. "The Oxford Hist. of Music."

HANSLICK: "Vom Musikalisch-Schönen."

CHAPTER VIII

COLOR

Physical and Physiological Basis of Color.

When a pencil of white light is directed through a prism it is spread out into a series of colors called the spectrum, always in the following order: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. The colors are produced by the vibration of¡ waves of ether, ranging from 440,000 million per second for red, to 790,000 million per second for violet. Pure color is the result of simple vibration-rates; white light. is the result of the combination of certain vibration-rates. The color purple does not appear in the spectrum, but is made by a mixture of the two end colors. When a ray of red light passes through the optical mechanism and strikes the retina, it stimulates the endings of nerves which carry the impression to the brain and so give rise to the sensation red; a ray of yellow light causes a sensation of yellow to be stimulated, etc. If the red and yellow rays are mixed they will cause a sensation of orange to be stimulated, or, even if the rays are not mixed, but should both strike the same point on the retina, either at the same time or in quick succession, they would also cause orange to be seen. This is to say that color mixture may take place on the retina itself, the rays traveling separately until they reach that point.

Colors may vary in three ways, aside fom their duration and spatial extent, namely, in brightness, in saturation

and in hue. The brightness of a color is determined by the amount of white light with which it is mixed. To mix a color with white or with black is to increase or to decrease, respectively, its brightness. The saturation of a color may be called its fullness or intensity of tone; hence perfectly homogeneous light would be completely saturated, and any mixture would decrease the saturation. Saturation may be varied, without changing the brightness or the hue of a color, by mixing with the color a gray which exactly equals it in brightness. The hue of a color is varied by mixing with it the colors on either side of it in the spectrum; thus yellow may be varied in two ways

toward green or toward red. Physically it is right to speak of black as the absence of light, and of white and

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gray as colorless light. But, psychologically, black and white and all the intermediate grays have individuality and positive character, and they are properly called colors.

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