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 the influence of Spiritist beliefs might bring to it. If I did not respond immediately to that benevolent and sympathetic appeal, believe, gentlemen, that only a greater cause motivated my abstention.

Musicians, alas! are men like the others, perhaps more men, that is to say, in that condition, fallible and sinful. I was not exempt from weaknesses, and if God granted me a long life in order to give me time to repent, the intoxication of success, the indulgence of friends, the flattery of courtiers often deprived me of the means. A conductor is a power in this world where pleasure plays so great a part. He whose art consists in seducing the ear, in moving the heart, sees many snares laid beneath his steps, and into them the unfortunate man falls! He becomes drunk with the intoxication of others; the applause stops up his ears and he goes straight to the abyss, without seeking a point of support to resist the dragging. Nevertheless, in spite of my errors, I had faith in God; I believed in the soul that vibrated within me and which, freed from its sonorous prison, soon recognized itself amid the harmonies of creation and mingled its prayer with those that rise from Nature to the infinite, from the creature to the uncreated being!…

I am happy about the sentiment that brought about my coming among the Spiritists, because it was sympathy that dictated it and, if at first curiosity drew me, it is to my gratitude that you owe my appreciation of the question that was asked. I was there, about to speak, believing I knew everything, when my pride, falling, revealed my ignorance. I fell silent and listened. I returned, instructed myself and, when to the words of truth uttered by your instructors were joined reflection and meditation, I said to myself: The great conductor Rossini, the creator of so many masterpieces, according to men, did nothing, unfortunately, but shell out a few of the less perfect pearls from the musical casket created by the master of conductors. Rossini joined notes together, composed melodies, tasted the cup that contains all harmonies; he stole a few sparks from the sacred fire; but that sacred fire neither he nor the others created! – We invent nothing: we copy from the great book of Nature and the crowd applauds when we do not deform the score too much. A dissertation on celestial music!… Who could undertake it? What superhuman Spirit could make matter vibrate in unison with that enchanting art? What human brain, what incarnate Spirit could capture its shades, varied to infinity?… Who possesses to that degree the feeling of harmony?… No, man was not made for such conditions!… Later!… much later!…

Meanwhile, perhaps I shall soon come to satisfy your desire and give you my appreciation of the present state of music and tell you of the transformations, of the progress that Spiritism may introduce there. – Today it is still too soon. The subject is vast, I have already studied it, but it still takes hold of me; when I am master of it, if the thing is possible, or rather, when I have glimpsed it as far as the state of my spirit permits me, I will satisfy you. But, still a little time. If only a musician can speak well of the music of the future, he must do so as a master, and Rossini does not wish to speak as an apprentice. Rossini.

[Review of March.]

MUSIC AND THE CELESTIAL HARMONIES.

Continuation. – See the January number.

(Paris. – Desliens Group, January 5, 1869. – Medium: Mr. Desliens.)

Gentlemen, you are right to remind me of my promise, for time, which passes so swiftly in the world of space, has eternal minutes for him who suffers it under the grip of trial! A few days, a few weeks ago, I counted as you do; each day added a whole series of vicissitudes to those others already endured, and the cup was slowly filling.

Ah! you do not know how heavy a reputation as a great man is to bear! Do not desire glory; do not be known: be useful. Popularity has its thorns and, more than once, I saw myself wounded by the too brutal caresses of the crowd.

Today, the smoke of incense no longer intoxicates me. I soar above pettiness, and it is a horizon without limits that stretches before my insatiable curiosity. Therefore, the hours fall in gushes into the secular hourglass, and I seek always, always study without ever counting the time elapsed.

Yes, I promised you. But who can boast of fulfilling a promise, when the elements necessary to fulfill it belong to the future? The powerful man of the world, still under the breath of the flattery of courtiers, might have wished to confront the problem hand to hand; but it was no longer a fratricidal struggle that was at issue here; there were no longer applause, noisy acclamations to encourage me and to escape my weakness. It was, and still is, a superhuman labor into which I threw myself; it is against it that I struggle always and, if I hope to triumph, nevertheless I cannot conceal my exhaustion. I am defeated… in difficulty!… I rest before exploring anew; but, if today I cannot speak to you of what the future will be, perhaps I can appreciate the present: to be a critic, after having been criticized. You judge me and will not approve of me unless I am just, which I shall try to be, avoiding personalities. Why, then, so many musicians and so few artists? so many composers and so few musical truths? Alas! it is because there is not, as people think, an imagination that art can create; there is no other master and no other creator but truth. Without it there is nothing, or there is only an art of contraband, of tinsel, of counterfeit. The painter can give the illusion of showing white where he has put only a mixture of nameless colors; the oppositions of shades create an appearance and it was thus, for example, that Horace Vernet was able to make a magnificent bay horse appear of a brilliant white. But the note has only one sound. The chaining of sounds does not produce a harmony, a truth except when the sound waves make themselves the echo of another truth. To be a musician, it is no longer enough to align notes upon a staff, in such a way as to preserve the correctness of the musical relations; thus one only manages to produce agreeable noises; but it is feeling that is born beneath the pen of the true artist, it is feeling that sings, weeps, laughs… It whistles in the foliage with the tempestuous wind; it leaps with the foaming wave; it roars with the furious tiger!… But, to give a soul to music, to make it weep, laugh, howl, he himself must have experienced these different feelings, sorrows, joy, anger! Is it with a smile on the lips and incredulity in the heart that you personify a Christian martyr? Will it be a skeptic of love who will make a Romeo, a Juliet? Will it be a carefree madcap who would create the Marguerite of Faust? [Goethe's Faust - Google books.] No! Whole passion is needed for him who makes passion vibrate!… And this is why, when so many sheets are blackened, works are so rare and truths exceptional: it is because there is no belief, it is because the soul does not vibrate. The sound one hears is that of gold that jingles, of wine that crackles!… The inspiration is the woman who displays a false beauty; and, since one possesses only false defects and virtues, one produces only a varnish, a musical makeup. Scratch the surface and you will soon find the stone. Rossini.

(January 17, 1869. – Medium: Mr. Nivard.)

The silence I kept on the question that the master of the Spiritist Doctrine addressed to me has been explained. It was fitting, before approaching that difficult theme, to collect myself, to recall, and to condense the elements that were in my hand. I did not have to study music, I had only to classify the arguments with method, in order to present a summary capable of giving an idea of my conception of harmony. This work, which I did not accomplish without difficulty, is finished, and I am ready to submit it to the appreciation of the Spiritists.

Harmony is difficult to define. It is often confused with music, with the sounds resulting from an arrangement of notes, and from the vibrations of the instruments reproducing that arrangement. But harmony is not this, just as flame is not light. 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. So it is with harmony. It results from a musical arrangement, it is an effect equally superior to its cause: the cause is brutal and tangible; the effect is subtle and is not tangible. Light can be conceived without flame and harmony is understood without music. The soul is apt to perceive harmony outside of any concurrence of instrumentation, just as it is apt to see light outside of any concurrence of material combinations. Light is an intimate sense that the soul possesses; the more developed that sense, the better it perceives light. Harmony is likewise an intimate sense of the soul: it is perceived in proportion to the development of that sense. Outside the material world, that is, outside tangible causes, light and harmony are of divine essence; we possess them in proportion to the efforts made to acquire them. If I compare light and harmony, it is to make myself better understood and, also, because these two sublime satisfactions of the soul are daughters of God and, consequently, sisters. The harmony of space is so complex, has so many degrees that I know, and many more still that are hidden from me in the infinite ether, that he who is placed at a certain level of perceptions is, as it were, seized with admiration on contemplating these diverse harmonies, which, if they were united, would constitute the most insufferable cacophony; whereas, on the contrary, perceived separately, they constitute the harmony particular to each degree. These harmonies are elementary and coarse in the inferior degrees;

they lead to ecstasy in the superior degrees. A given harmony, which wounds a Spirit of subtle perceptions, dazzles a Spirit of coarse perceptions; and when it is given to the inferior Spirit to delight in the delights of the superior harmonies, it is seized by ecstasy and prayer penetrates it; the enchantment drags it to the elevated spheres of the moral world; it lives a life superior to its own and would wish to continue to live thus forever. But, when harmony ceases to penetrate it, it awakens, or, if one prefers, it falls asleep. In any case, it returns to the reality of its situation, and in the laments it lets escape for having descended, a prayer exhales to the Eternal, asking for strength to ascend. For it this is a great motive of emulation. I shall not attempt to give the explanation of the musical effects that the Spirit produces by acting upon the ether. What is certain is that the Spirit produces the sounds it wills, and cannot will what it does not know. Now, he who understands much, who has harmony within him, who is saturated with it, who himself enjoys his intimate sense, that impalpable nothing, that abstraction which is the conception of harmony, acts when he wills upon the universal fluid which, a faithful instrument, reproduces what the Spirit conceives and wills. The ether vibrates under the action of the Spirit's will; the harmony that the latter carries within itself so to speak becomes concrete; it exhales gentle and soft like the perfume of the violet, or roars like the tempest, or bursts like the thunderbolt, or laments like the breeze; it is swift as the lightning, or slow as the cloud; it is interrupted like the sob, or uniform like the grass; it is disordered like a cataract, or calm like a lake; it murmurs like a brook or thunders like a torrent. Now it has the rustic harshness of the mountains, now the freshness of an oasis; it is successively sad and melancholy like the night, jovial and gay like the day; it is capricious like the child, consoling like the mother and protective like the father; it is disordered like passion, limpid like love and grandiose like Nature. When it reaches this last term, it merges with prayer, glorifies God and leads to dazzlement even him who produces or conceives it. Oh! comparison! comparison! Why is one obliged to employ you? Why bend to your degrading necessities and take, from tangible nature, coarse images to make conceivable the sublime harmony in which the Spirit delights? And even so, despite the comparisons, can one make understood that abstraction, which is a feeling when it is cause, and a sensation when it becomes an effect?

The Spirit that has the feeling of harmony is like the Spirit that has acquitted itself intellectually; both constantly enjoy the inalienable property they have conquered. The intelligent Spirit, who teaches his science to those who are ignorant, experiences the happiness of teaching, because he knows that he makes happy those whom he instructs; the Spirit who makes the chords of the harmony that exists within him resound in the ether, experiences the happiness of seeing satisfied those who hear him.

Harmony, science and virtue are the three great conceptions of the Spirit; the first dazzles it, the second enlightens it, the third elevates it. Possessed in their plenitude, they merge and constitute purity. O pure Spirits who contain them! Descend into our darkness and light our march; show us the path you took, so that we may follow your footsteps!

And when I think that those Spirits, whose existence I can understand, are finite beings, atoms, in the face of the universal and eternal Lord, my reason is confounded, thinking of the greatness of God and of the infinite happiness that He enjoys in Himself, by the mere fact of His infinite purity, for all that the creature acquires is only a fragment that emanates from the Creator. Now, if the fragment comes to fascinate by the will, to captivate and to dazzle by gentleness, to shine forth by virtue, what then must the eternal and infinite source from which it was drawn produce? If the Spirit, a created being, comes to draw so much happiness from its purity, what idea must one form 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 Spirit learns the form and takes the instrument that must enable it to express the idea. The air set in motion by the instrument carries it to the ear, which transmits it to the soul of the listener. But the composer was powerless to express entirely the harmony he conceived, for want of a sufficient language; in turn the performer did not understand the whole of the written idea, and the unruly instrument he uses does not permit him to translate all that he understood. The ear is wounded by the coarse air that surrounds it, and the soul receives, at last, through a rebellious organ, the horrible translation of the idea born in the conductor's soul. The conductor's idea was his intimate feeling; although corrupted by the agents of instrumentation and of perception, it nevertheless produces sensations in those who hear its translation; these sensations are harmony. Music produced them: they are effects of the latter. Music is put at the service of feeling to produce sensation. In the composer feeling is harmony; in the listener sensation is also harmony, with the difference that it is conceived by 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 renders it more or less corrupted, according as it is more or less well executed, as the reflector sends better or worse light, according as it is more or less brilliant and polished, as the medium expresses more or less the thoughts of the Spirit, according as he is more or less flexible. And now that harmony is well understood in its meaning, that one knows it is 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.

Among you, 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 the organ that obstructs and veils; in us perception is direct and nothing veils it. Among you, the author is translated; among us, he speaks without intermediary and in the language that expresses all conceptions. And yet, these harmonies have the same source, as the light of the Moon has the same source as that of the Sun; just as the light of the Moon is the reflection of the light of the Sun, the harmony of the Earth is but the reflection of the harmony of space. Harmony is as indefinable as happiness, fear, anger: it is a feeling. One does not understand it except when one possesses it, and one does not possess it except when one has acquired it. The man who is jovial cannot explain his joy; he who is fearful cannot explain his fear. They can tell the facts that provoke these feelings, define them, describe them, but the feelings remain unexplained. The fact that causes joy in one will produce nothing upon another; the object that occasions fear will produce the courage of another. The same causes are followed by contrary effects; this does not happen in physics, but it happens in metaphysics. This occurs because feeling is a property of the soul, and souls differ among themselves in sensibility, in impressionability, in liberty. Music, which is the secondary cause of perceived harmony, penetrates and transports one and leaves the other cold and indifferent. It is that the first is in a condition to receive the impression produced by harmony and the second in a contrary state; he hears the air that vibrates, but does not understand the idea it brings him. The latter arrives at boredom and falls asleep, the former at enthusiasm and weeps. Evidently, the man who enjoys the delights of harmony is more elevated, more purified than the one whom it cannot penetrate; his soul is more apt to feel; it frees itself more easily and harmony helps it to free itself; it transports it and allows it to see better the moral world. From which it must be concluded that music is essentially moralizing, since it carries harmony to souls and harmony elevates them and enlarges them. The influence of music upon the soul, upon its moral progress, is recognized by everyone; but the reason for that influence is generally unknown. Its explanation lies entirely in this fact: harmony places the soul under the power of a feeling that dematerializes it. Such a feeling exists in a certain degree, but it develops under the action of a similar higher feeling. He who is deprived of that feeling is gradually brought to it; he too ends by letting himself be penetrated and dragged to the ideal world, where he forgets, for an instant, the coarse pleasures, which he prefers to divine harmony. And now, if it is considered that harmony issues from the concept of the Spirit, it will be deduced that, if music exerts a happy influence upon the soul, the soul, which conceives it, also exerts its influence upon music. The virtuous soul, which has the passion for the good, the beautiful, the great, and which has acquired harmony, will produce masterpieces capable of penetrating the most armored souls and of moving them. If the composer is down-to-earth, how will he express the virtue he disdains, the beautiful he ignores and the great he does not understand? His compositions will be the reflection of his sensual tastes, of his frivolity, of his indolence. They will be now licentious, now obscene, now comic and now burlesque; they will communicate to the listeners the feelings they express, and will pervert them, instead of bettering them. By moralizing men, Spiritism will thus exert a great influence upon music. It will produce more virtuous composers, who will communicate their virtues, by making their compositions heard.

They will laugh less, weep more; hilarity will give way to emotion, ugliness to beauty and the comic to grandeur.

On the other hand, the listeners whom Spiritism will have prepared to receive harmony easily, hearing serious music, will feel a true charm; they will disdain the frivolous and licentious music that seizes the masses. When the grotesque and the obscene are abandoned for the beautiful and the good, the composers of that order will disappear, because, without listeners, they will gain nothing, and it is to gain that they corrupt themselves.

Oh! yes, Spiritism will have an influence upon music! How could it be otherwise? Its advent will change art, by purifying it. Its source is divine, its force will lead it everywhere where there are men to love, to elevate themselves and to understand. It will become the ideal and the aim of artists. Painters, sculptors, composers, poets will ask it for their inspirations, and it will furnish them, because it is rich, because it is inexhaustible.

The Spirit of the conductor Rossini, in a new existence, will come to continue the art that he considers the first of all; Spiritism will be its symbol and the inspirer of his compositions.

Rossini.

[1]

ERRATUM. — March 1869 number, page 93, line 31, instead of: concert of the Spirit, read:

concept of the Spirit. (Translator's note: The correction was made in the proper place.)

[2]

[see Rossini.]