d
inflection with a non-pessimistic trend of thought. Under stress
of emotion we emphasize words strongly, and with this emphasis
we almost invariably raise the voice a fifth or depress it a
fifth; with yet stronger emotion the interval of change will
be an octave. We raise the voice almost to a scream or drop it
to a whisper. Strangely enough these primitive notes of music
correspond to the first two of those harmonics which are part
and parcel of every musical sound. Generally speaking, we may
say that the ascending inflection carries something of joy
or hope with it, while the downward inflection has something
of the sinister and fearful. To be sure, we raise our voices
in anger and in pain, but even then the inflection is almost
always downward; in other words, we pitch our voices higher and
let them fall slightly. For instance, if we heard a person cry
"Ah/" we might doubt its being a cry of pain, but if it were
"Ah\" we should at once know that it was caused by pain,
either mental or physical.

The declamation at the end of Schubert's "Erlking" would have
been absolutely false if the penultimate note had ascended to
the tonic instead of descending a fifth. "The child lay dead."

How fatally hopeless would be the opening measures of "Tristan
and Isolde" without that upward inflection which comes like a
sunbeam through a rift in the cloud; with a downward inflection
the effect would be that of unrelieved gloom. In the Prelude to
"Lohengrin," Wagner pictures his angels in dazzling white. He
uses the highest vibrating sounds at his command. But for
the dwarfs who live in the gloom of Niebelheim he chooses
deep shades of red, the lowest vibrating colour of the solar
spectrum. For it is in the nature of the spiritual part
of mankind to shrink from the earth, to aspire to something
higher; a bird soaring in the blue above us has something of
the ethereal; we give wings to our angels. On the other hand,
a serpent impresses us as something sinister. Trees, with
their strange fight against all the laws of gravity, striving
upward unceasingly, bring us something of hope and faith; the
sight of them cheers us. A land without trees is depressing and
gloomy. As Ruskin says, "The sea wave, with all its beneficence,
is yet devouring and terrible; but the silent wave of the blue
mountain is lifted towards Heaven in a stillness of perpetual
mercy; and while the one surges unfathomable in its darkness,
the other is unshaken in