mysterious agent
within us, which is superior to intelligence, since it is independent of
it, and makes us feel that which we can neither conceive nor explain.

Let us examine the various attributes of the musical phenomenon.

1. _Music is a physical agent._ It communicates to the body shocks which
agitate the members to their base. In churches the flame of the candles
oscillates to the quake of the organ. A powerful orchestra near a sheet
of water ruffles its surface. A learned traveller speaks of an iron ring
which swings to and fro to the murmur of the Tivoli Falls. In
Switzerland I excited at will, in a poor child afflicted with a
frightful nervous malady, hysterical and catalyptic crises, by playing
in the minor key of E flat. The celebrated Doctor Bertier asserts that
the sound of a drum gives him the colic. Certain medical men state that
the notes of the trumpet quicken the pulse and induce slight
perspiration. The sound of the bassoon is cold; the notes of the French
horn at a distance, and of the harp, are voluptuous. The flute played
softly in the middle register calms the nerves. The low notes of the
piano frighten children. I once had a dog who would generally sleep on
hearing music, but the moment I played in the minor key he would bark
piteously. The dog of a celebrated singer whom I knew would moan
bitterly, and give signs of violent suffering, the instant that his
mistress chanted a chromatic gamut. A certain chord produces on my sense
of hearing the same effect as the heliotrope on my sense of smell and
the pine-apple on my sense of taste. Rachel's voice delighted the ear by
its ring before one had time to seize the sense of what was said, or
appreciate the purity of her diction.

We may affirm, then, that musical sound, rhythmical or not, agitates the
whole physical economy,--quickens the pulse, incites perspiration, and
produces a pleasant momentary irritation of the nervous system.

2. _Music is a moral agent._ Through the medium of the nervous system,
the direct interpreter of emotion, it calls into play the higher
faculties; its language is that of sentiment Furthermore, the motives
which have presided over particular musical combinations establish links
between the composer and the listener. We sigh with Bellini in the
finale of La Somnambula; we shudder with Weber in the sublime
phantasmagoria of Der Freischutz; the mystic inspirations of Palestrina,
the masses of Mozart, transport us to the