SPIRITIST MUSIC.

Recently, at the headquarters of the Spiritist Society of Paris, the president did me the honor of asking my opinion on the present state of music and on the modifications that might come to it through the influence of Spiritist beliefs. If I did not at once yield to that kindly and sympathetic appeal, it was, believe it, gentlemen, for a cause of a higher order.

Musicians are men like the others, more men, perhaps, and, under those conditions, fallible and prone to sin. I was never free of weaknesses, and, if God made my life long so that I might have time to repent, the intoxication of success, the indulgence of friends, and the flatteries of courtiers often deprived me of the means to carry out that repentance. A maestro is a power in this world, where pleasure plays so important a role. Many snares are set before the steps of one whose art consists in delighting the ears and softening the hearts, snares into which the unhappy man falls. He becomes drunk on the drunkenness of others; the applause stops up his ears, and behold, he walks straight toward the abyss, without seeking a point of support to resist the pull. Nevertheless, in spite of my errors, I placed my faith in God; I believed in the soul that vibrated within me and, freeing itself from the resonant cage, it soon recognized itself amid the harmonies of creation and merged its prayer with those that rise from nature to the infinite, from creation to the uncreated Being!…

I am happy at the sentiment that my coming into the midst of the Spiritists provoked, because it was sympathy that determined it, and, if at first only curiosity drew me, it is to my gratitude that you will owe the exposition of the theme that was proposed to me.

There I was, ready to speak, supposing I knew everything, when, my pride brought low, my ignorance was made plain to me. I fell silent and listened. I returned, instructed myself, and, when to the words of truth, spoken by your mentors, were joined reflection and meditation, I said within myself:

The great maestro Rossini, the creator of so many masterpieces according to men, did nothing more, ah! than shell out a few of the less perfect pearls from the musical casket created by the Master of masters. Rossini gathered notes, composed melodies, drank from the cup that contains all harmonies, stole a few sparks from the sacred fire; but that sacred fire neither he nor others created! — We invent nothing: we copy from the great book of Nature, and the multitude applauds, when we do not present the score too distorted.

A dissertation on celestial music! Who could undertake such a thing? What superhuman Spirit could make matter vibrate in unison with that enchanting art? What human brain, what incarnate Spirit could capture its infinitely varied shades? Who possesses to that degree the sentiment of harmony?… No, man is not made under such conditions!… Later!… much later!…

For now, I will come, perhaps before long, to satisfy your desire and give you my appraisal of the present state of music and to tell you of the transformations, of the progress that Spiritism may cause it to undergo. — Today, it is still far too early. The subject is vast; I have already studied it, but it still exceeds me. When I have mastered it, if that be possible, or, rather, when I have glimpsed of it as much as the state of my Spirit permits me, I will satisfy you. A little more time. If only a musician can speak of the music of the future, he must do so as a master, and Rossini does not wish to speak of it as a schoolboy. Rossini.

(Medium: Desliens.)

[SECOND COMMUNICATION.]

The silence I kept on the question that the Master of the Spiritist Doctrine proposed to me has been explained. It was fitting that, before entering upon so difficult a subject, I should concentrate, gather my recollections, and condense the elements within my reach. It was not for me to study music; I had only to classify the arguments methodically, in order to present a summary capable of giving an idea of my conception of harmony. That work, which I did not do without difficulty, is now finished, and I am ready to submit it to the appraisal of the Spiritists.

Harmony is difficult to define; it is often confused with music, with sounds, as resulting from an arrangement of notes and from the vibrations of the instruments that reproduce that arrangement. But that is not harmony, just as the flame is not the light. The flame results from the combination of two gases: it is tangible; the light it projects is an effect of that combination and not the flame itself: it is not tangible. Here, the effect is superior to the cause. The same occurs with harmony; it results from a musical arrangement, it is an effect likewise superior to the cause. The latter is brutal and tangible; the effect is subtle and intangible. One can conceive of light without flame and understand harmony without music. The soul is apt to perceive harmony, excluding all concurrence of instrumentation, just as it is apt to see light without the concurrence of material combinations. Light is an intimate sense that the soul possesses: the more developed it is, the better the soul perceives light. Harmony is likewise an intimate sense of the soul, which perceives it in relation to the development of that sense. Outside the material world, that is, outside tangible causes, light and harmony are of divine essence. The possession of one and the other is in proportion to the efforts employed to acquire them. If I compare light and harmony, it is to make myself better understood and also because these two sublime delights of the soul are children of God and, therefore, brothers. The harmony of Space is so complex, it has so many degrees that I know and many others still that remain hidden from me in the infinite ether, that one placed at a certain height of perceptions is as if seized with astonishment upon contemplating those diverse harmonies, which would constitute, if united, the most unbearable cacophony; whereas, on the contrary, perceived separately, they constitute the harmony particular to each degree. In the lower degrees, these harmonies are elementary and coarse; they lead to ecstasy in the higher degrees. A harmony that shocks a Spirit of subtle perceptions enchants another of coarse perceptions, and, when it is given to the inferior Spirit to delight in the charms of the higher harmonies, ecstasy carries it away and prayer penetrates its innermost being. The enchantment transports it to the elevated spheres of the moral world; it begins to live a life superior to its own and would thus wish to go on living forever. But, as soon as harmony ceases to penetrate it, it awakens, or, if you prefer, falls asleep. In any case, it returns to the reality of its situation, and, from the laments that escape it for having descended, there exhales a prayer to the Eternal, asking Him for strength to rise again. Therein it has a great motive for emulation. I will not attempt to explain the musical effects that the Spirit produces by acting upon the ether; what is certain is that the Spirit produces the sounds it wishes and that it cannot wish for what it does not know. Thus, then, one who understands much, who has harmony within itself, who is saturated with it, who enjoys its intimate sense, that impalpable nothing, that abstraction which is the conception of harmony, acts when it wishes upon the universal fluid which, a faithful instrument, reproduces what it conceives and desires. The ether vibrates under the action of the Spirit's will; the harmony that the latter carries within itself becomes concrete, so to speak; it wafts forth, sweet and soft, like the perfume of the violet, or roars like the tempest, or cracks like the thunderbolt, or releases plaints like the breeze. It is swift as lightning, or slow as the mist; it has the rendings of a sob, or is continuous like the grass; it is precipitate as a cataract, or calm as a lake; it murmurs like a brook, or growls like a torrent. Now it presents the rugged harshness of the mountains, now the freshness of an oasis; it is alternately sad and melancholy like the night, glad and jovial like the day; capricious like the child, consoling like a mother, and protective like a father; disordered like passion, limpid like love, and grandiose like Nature. When it reaches this last terrain, it merges with prayer, glorifies God, and carries to rapture even the one who produces it, or conceives it. Oh! comparison! comparison! Why must we be obliged to make use of you! Why must we bend to the degrading necessity of seeking, of borrowing from tangible nature coarse images, in order to make comprehensible the sublime harmony in which the Spirit delights! And, despite the comparisons, one does not succeed in giving an idea of that abstraction, a sentiment when a cause, a sensation when it becomes an effect.

The Spirit that has the sentiment of harmony is like the Spirit that has intellectual riches: the one and the other constantly enjoy the inalienable property they have gained. The intelligent Spirit, that teaches its science to those who are ignorant, experiences the happiness of teaching, because it knows that it makes happy those whom it instructs; the Spirit that makes the chords of the harmony it carries within itself resound in the ether experiences the happiness of seeing satisfied those who listen to it.

Harmony, science, and virtue are the three great conceptions of the Spirit: the first ravishes it, the second enlightens it, the third elevates it. Possessed in all their fullness, they merge and constitute purity. Oh! pure Spirits who possess them! descend into our darkness and illuminate our path. Show us the road you have taken, so that we may follow in your footsteps!

When I think that these Spirits, whose existence I can scarcely understand, are finite beings, atoms, in the face of the eternal Lord of the Universe, my reason is confounded in pondering the greatness of God and the infinite beatitude that He enjoys within Himself, by the sole fact that His purity is infinite, since all that the creature acquires is no more than a parcel of what emanates from the Creator. Now, if the parcel comes to fascinate by will, to captivate and dazzle by sweetness, to shine forth by virtue, what shall the eternal and infinite source whence the creature comes not produce? If the Spirit, a created being, comes to draw from its purity so much happiness, what idea is one to have of that which the Creator draws from His absolute purity? Eternal problem! The composer who conceives harmony translates it into the coarse language called music; he makes his idea concrete and writes it down. The artist learns the form and chooses the instrument that allows him to express the idea. Set in motion by the instrument, the air carries it to the ear of the listener, and the ear transmits it to the soul. But the composer was powerless to express entirely the harmony he had conceived, for lack of an appropriate language. The performer, in his turn, did not understand the whole written idea, and the unruly instrument he uses does not permit him to translate all that he may have understood. The ear is affected by the coarse air that surrounds it, and the soul, finally, receives, through a rebellious organ, the horrible translation of the idea that blossomed in the soul of the maestro. That idea was his intimate sentiment. Although distorted by the agents of instrumentation and perception, it always causes sensations in those who hear it translated; those sensations are harmony. Music produced them; they are an effect of music. Music is placed at the service of sentiment to occasion sensation. Sentiment, in the composition, is harmony; sensation, in the listener, is also harmony, with the difference that it is conceived by the one and received by the other. Music is the medium of harmony; it receives it and gives it, as the reflector is the medium of light, as you are the medium of the Spirits. It transmits it more or less deformed, according as it is well or ill executed, just as the reflector sends back the light more or less well according as it is more or less brilliant and polished, just as the medium expresses the thoughts of the Spirits more or less well according as he is more or less malleable. Now that harmony is well understood in its meaning, that it is known to be conceived by the soul and transmitted to the soul, one will understand the difference that exists between the harmony of the Earth and that of Space.

On Earth, everything is coarse: the instrument of translation and the instrument of perception. Among us, everything is subtle: you have the air, we have the ether; you have an organ that obstructs and veils; we have direct perception. Among you, the author is translated; among us, he operates without an intermediary and in a language that expresses all conceptions. Nevertheless, these harmonies have the same source of origin, as the light of the Moon has the same source of origin as that of the sun; the harmony of the Earth is no more than a reflection of the harmony of Space.

Harmony is as indefinable as happiness, fear, anger. It is a sentiment. Only one who possesses it can understand it, and only one who has acquired it possesses it. The jovial man cannot explain his joviality; the timorous one cannot explain his timidity; they can set forth the facts that these sentiments provoke, define them, describe them; but the sentiments, these remain unexplained. The fact that causes joy in one will produce nothing in another; the object that occasions fear in one will determine courage in another. The same causes generate contrary effects; in physics this does not exist, in metaphysics it does. It exists, because sentiment is a property of the soul, and souls differ from one another in sensibility, in impressionability, in freedom. Music, which is the secondary cause of the harmony perceived, penetrates and transports one, while leaving another cold and indifferent. This is because the first is in a state to receive the impression that harmony produces, whereas the second is in the opposite state; he hears the air that vibrates, but does not understand the idea it brings him. The latter comes to grow bored and to fall asleep, while that other grows enthusiastic and weeps. Evidently, the man who enjoys the delights of harmony is much more elevated, more refined, than the one whom it does not succeed in penetrating; his soul, more apt to feel, frees itself more easily, and harmony aids it in this disengagement; it transports the soul and permits it to see the moral world better. From this it must be concluded that music is essentially moralizing, since it brings harmony to souls and harmony elevates and ennobles them. Everyone recognizes the influence of music upon the soul and upon its progress. But the reason for this influence is generally unknown. Its explanation lies entirely in this fact: that harmony places the soul under the power of a sentiment that dematerializes it. This sentiment exists in a certain degree, but develops under the action of a similar, higher sentiment. One who is devoid of such a sentiment is led gradually to acquire it: he ends by letting himself be penetrated by it and drawn to the ideal world, where he forgets, for moments, the inferior pleasures that he prefers to the divine harmony. Now, if we consider that harmony issues from the concert of the Spirit, we shall deduce that music exercises a salutary influence upon the soul and that the soul which conceives it also exercises an influence upon music. The virtuous soul, which nourishes the passion for the good, the beautiful, the grandiose, and which has acquired harmony, will produce masterpieces capable of penetrating the most hardened souls and of moving them. If the composer is earthbound, how shall he be able to express the virtue he disdains, the beauty he is ignorant of, and the grandiose he does not understand? His compositions will reflect his sensual tastes, his frivolity, his negligence. They will be now licentious, now obscene, now comic, now burlesque; they will communicate to the listeners the sentiments they express and will pervert them, instead of improving them. Spiritism, by moralizing men, will therefore exercise a great influence upon music. It will produce more virtuous composers, who will transfuse their virtues by causing their compositions to be heard.

There will be less laughter; there will be more weeping; hilarity will give way to emotion, ugliness to beauty, and the comic to the grandiose.

On the other hand, the listeners whom Spiritism disposes to receive harmony easily will enjoy, in hearing serious music, a true enchantment; they will scorn the frivolous and licentious music that seduces the masses. When the grotesque and the obscene are swept away by the beautiful and the good, the composers of that order will disappear, for, without listeners, they will gain nothing, and it is to gain that they befoul themselves.

Oh! yes, Spiritism will have an influence upon music! How could it be otherwise? Its advent will transform the art, refining it. Its origin is divine, its force will carry it everywhere there are men to love, to elevate themselves, and to understand. It will become the ideal and the objective of artists. Painters, sculptors, composers, poets will seek their inspirations in it, and it will furnish them, because it is rich, it is inexhaustible.

The Spirit of the maestro Rossini will return, in a new existence, to continue the art that he considers the foremost of all. Spiritism will be its symbol and the inspirer of its compositions.

Rossini.

(Medium: Nivart.)