_Recognition of Musical Elements_


[Sidenote: _The nature of music._]

Music is dual in its nature; it is material as well as spiritual. Its
material side we apprehend through the sense of hearing, and
comprehend through the intellect; its spiritual side reaches us
through the fancy (or imagination, so it be music of the highest
class), and the emotional part of us. If the scope and capacity of the
art, and the evolutionary processes which its history discloses (a
record of which is preserved in its nomenclature), are to be
understood, it is essential that this duality be kept in view. There
is something so potent and elemental in the appeal which music makes
that it is possible to derive pleasure from even an unwilling hearing
or a hearing unaccompanied by effort at analysis; but real
appreciation of its beauty, which means recognition of the qualities
which put it in the realm of art, is conditioned upon intelligent
hearing. The higher the intelligence, the keener will be the
enjoyment, if the former be directed to the spiritual side as well as
the material.

[Sidenote: _Necessity of intelligent hearing._]

So far as music is merely agreeably co-ordinated sounds, it may be
reduced to mathematics and its practice to handicraft. But recognition
of design is a condition precedent to the awakening of the fancy or
the imagination, and to achieve such recognition there must be
intelligent hearing in the first instance. For the purposes of this