The Foundations of Music
by Henry J. Watt
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In my previous volume The Psychology of Sound I made a minutely critical analysis of the elementary phenomena of sound and their simpler complexities, and I developed what seemed to me to be the only systematically true and promising theory of these phenomena. The work was necessarily addressed to those who are primarily interested in such a study, i.e. to psychologists and to physiologists. But I endeavoured to make the material as interesting to the theoretical musician as was possible under the circumstances. Not that the latter has little interest in such fundamental analysis. On the contrary he is profoundly concerned to know how his art springs from its roots in mere sound and to see that the foundations ascribed to it are such as will evidently suffice to bear the whole superstructure of music. But the purely psychological or phenomenal point of view could not but be new and strange to his mind, requiring some time to come into growth and fruition there. Once the essential nature of the position has been grasped, its spontaneous development is certain. There is no inherent difficulty in ascribing volume and order to sounds or to tones. The difficulty springs merely from the unfamiliarity of the object in such connexions. At the present day conviction is much more easily secured for descriptions and theories of material objects even although many of their students may never have come into contact with them at all than it is for descriptions and theories of psychical objects, although their students are almost of necessity constantly face to face with them at any desired moment. Every one who takes any interest in music has had unlimited opportunities of turning his observations upon tones and their sequences and combinations. But in the great majority of cases he has seldom, if ever, looked studiously at pictures or models of the sensory organ of hearing and in all probability knows nothing of that organ by direct observation of it. But he will nevertheless drink in a description and theory of the material organ with avidity, while he will turn a bored and sceptical ear to a direct analysis and theory of tones, although for both purposes similar methods and explanations may have been used. The mere postulation of a material thing as the bearer of volumes and orders and their coincidences and overlappings seems to bring a special comfort to the mind.
APA: Phil, Henry Jackson Watt D. (2013). The Foundations of Music. London: Forgotten Books. (Original work published 1919)
MLA: Phil, Henry Jackson Watt D. The Foundations of Music. 1919. Reprint. London: Forgotten Books, 2013. Print.