With a great literature in the form of special studies, we
must yet, on the whole, admit that we possess no general
formula in the philosophy or psychology of music which covers
the whole ground. Schopenhauer has said that music is the
objectification of the will--not a copy or a picture of it,
but the will itself; a doctrine which however illuminating
when it is modified in various ways is obviously no explanation
of our experience. Hanslick has but shown what music is not;
Edmund Gurney's eloquent book, "The Power of Sound," is
completely agnostic in its conclusion that music is a unique,
indefinable, indescribable phenomenon, which possesses, indeed,
certain analogues with other physical and psychical facts, but
is coextensive with none. Spencer's theory of music as
glorified speech is not only in a yet unexplained conflict
with many facts, but has never been formulated so that it could
apply to concrete cases. The same is true of Wagner's "music
as the utterance of feeling."

But there is a body of scientific facts respecting the elements
of music, in which we may well seek for clues. As facts alone
they are of no value. They must be explained as completely as
possible; and it is probable that if we are able to reach the
ultimate nature and origin of these elements of music they
will prove significant, and a way will be opened to a theory
of the whole musical experience. The need of such intensive
understanding must excuse the more or less technical discussions
in the following pages, without which no firm foundation for a
theory of music could be attained.