108/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
One should not try, in that sense, to understand music. The profoundest harmonies cannot be translated into definite forms of thought or natural images. One need only surrender to it, become passive, and let it speak as Nature speaks. People do not shun Nature under the pretext that her language is too complex and abstruse. Even uncultured people receive inspiration from the beautiful and sublime.
The phrases “popular music” and “music for the masses” are frequently used to distinguish music which satisfies an inferior order of taste from that which appeals to the more refined taste. But such a method of discriminating is artificial. It is considered expedient to elevate public taste in other art matters by exhibiting to the general public, works of the highest grade.
No one advocates filling museums and galleries with inferior productions on the ground that the current standard of popular taste will not enable the masses to appreciate works of greater intrinsic merit. In discussing music of genuine worth, one is first impressed with the prevailing fondness for melody (tunes, airs).
This form reveals life in its linear aspect, as a series of consecutively related experiences. But, in its higher phases, life includes far more than that; it possesses breadth and depth, as well as length. The profoundest harmonies afford a comprehensive view of its fulness and richness.
They reveal it as many, yet one; as a struggle of contending forces, yet governed by an all-inclusive purpose; as often discordant and imperfect when viewed in detail, but harmonious and satisfactory as a whole.
The ecstasy of the higher vision transfigures the tones, so that we obtain through them an insight into life, which enables us to appreciate its external and internal relations, its variety and unity, its individuality and universality, its finitude and infinity. One who hears with the physical ear recognizes nothing but sounds; but one who hears with the spiritual ear appreciates ideas.