The Power of SoundSmith, Elder, 1880 - 559 páginas |
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Términos y frases comunes
abstract accents actual æsthetic agreeable amount appreciation Architecture artistic association beautiful music beauty Beethoven chapter character characteristic chords colour complete connection contrast course definite degree delight distinct effect elements emotional enjoyment essential existence experience expression external fact faculty feeling give Grant Allen harmony hearing hexameters idea Ideal Motion imagine impressions independent individual instance instinct instruments intervals kind less lines Lohengrin means melodic form melodic motion melody ment metre Meyerbeer minor scale mode movement musical expression musical forms natural natural selection nervous notes noticed objects organic particular peculiar perceived perception perpetually phenomena phrase physical pitch pleasure Poetry polyphony present produced proportion racter realise recognised regards relation rhythm rhythmic seems semitone sensation sense simple single Song sort sound speech stimulation structure suggest syllables Tannhäuser things timbre tion tone tune unique unity variety voice whole words
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Página 117 - I conclude that musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex.
Página 441 - For if, as we have seen, there is an expenditure of mental energy in the mere act of listening to verbal articulations, or in that silent repetition of them which goes on in reading — if the perceptive faculties must be in active exercise to...
Página 119 - ... not appear improbable that the progenitors of man, either the males or females, or both sexes, before they had acquired the power of expressing their mutual love in articulate language, endeavoured to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm.
Página 191 - But for all this it is an essential condition that the whole extent of the regularity and design of a work of art should not be apprehended consciously. It is precisely from that part of its regular subjection to reason, which escapes our conscious apprehension, that a work of art exalts and delights us, and that the chief effects of the artistically beautiful proceed, not from the part which we are able fully to analyse.
Página 353 - After an instant of apprehension, we are startled by a threat of destruction to the very capability of rest, which in its turn subsides. From the terrible we pass to the joyful, and soon to playfulness and tenderness ; a placid character which is quickly reversed by a tone of anger, continued till it leads up to a repetition of all that has gone before. Then comes...
Página 357 - If you asked me what I thought on the occasion in question, I say, the song itself precisely as it stands.
Página 357 - Beethoven understood the danger he ran with his Pastoral Symphony. In the few words with which he headed it, " Rather expressive of the feeling than tone-painting," lies an entire aesthetic system for composers. But how absurd is it in painters to make portraits of him sitting beside a brook, his head in his hands, listening to the bubbling water ! With this symphony, I thought the aesthetic dangei would be still greater.
Página 357 - For critics always wish to know what the composer himself cannot tell them, and critics sometimes hardly understand the tenth part of what they talk about. Good heavens ! will the day ever come when people will cease to ask us what we mean by our divine compositions ? Pick out the fifths, but leave us in peace.
Página 441 - ... the least easily caught sounds. And as, if the concussions recur in a definite order, the body may husband its forces by adjusting the resistance needful for each concussion; so, if the syllables be rhythmically arranged, the mind may economize its energies by anticipating the attention required for each syllable.
Página 118 - As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed.