ed--viz., the
experience of feeling in connection with the music. We are still very
far from understanding the relation between music and feeling. The
most that is known about it as yet is that to a listener of even a very
slight amount of experience the minor chord suggests unhappiness, while
the major chord sounds brighter and more agreeable; a pleasant rhythm,
somewhat lively, betokens cheerfulness; a slow and heavy rhythm
betokens seriousness, perhaps sadness; but beyond this elementary
beginning of musical feeling, which is common to the most
insignificantly endowed individuality, there is a vast world of finer
sensibilities connected with music. A certain chord, or succession of
chords, or especially a certain melo-harmonic phrase, touches the
sensitive ear with a peculiar thrill, and this happens over and over
again, and continually in the more fortunate works of all the great
masters, when followed by sympathetic hearers. The point in this
connection which we have to notice is that the capacity of feeling to
be touched and awakened by tonal incitations is practically universal
as regards civilized man. The extent of the influence which music will
exert varies enormously in individual cases, but from the fact that
every normal hearer will be touched more and more by music with a
little practice in hearing it; that the number of those who are
extremely sensitive to this form of spiritual suggestion is much larger
than is ordinarily supposed; and from the fact of this capacity in the
average individual, and the universality of the admiration awakened by
the works of the great geniuses in music, it is a fair conclusion that
the future is destined to throw more light upon this obscure part of
the psycho-musical capacity of mankind; and it is obvious, as said
before, that the great geniuses whose works are demonstrated to contain
this power to touch hearers had this endowment in an extraordinary
degree, but not to such a degree as need place any bar upon the popular
appreciation of their music, if a comparatively small amount of
education has been given in hearing.

To sum up, then, the results arrived at in this discussion. The
programs and discussions now about to be undertaken have been arranged
for the purpose of assisting the listener to a recognition of the
peculiarities and individual charms of the works of the masters
represented, and also, incidentally, to afford the listener a certain
education in the