is not favorable to singing.  I agree with the remarks of a correspondent, a musical amateur, who writes:  “Sexual excitement and good singing do not appear to be correlated.  A woman’s emotional capacity in singing or acting may be remotely associated with hysterical neuroses, but is better evinced for art purposes in the absence of disturbing sexual influences.  A woman may, indeed, fancy herself the heroine of a wanton romance and ‘let herself go’ a little in singing with improved results.  But a memory of sexual ardors will help no woman to make the best of her voice in training.  Some women can only sing their best when they think of the other women they are outsinging.  One girl ‘lets her soul go out into her voice’ thinking of jamroll, another thinking of her lover (when she has none), and most, no doubt, when they think of nothing.  But no woman is likely to ‘find herself’ in an artistic sense because she has lost herself in another sense—­not even if she has done so quite respectably.”

The reality of the association between the sexual impulse and music—­and, indeed, art generally—­is shown by the fact that the evolution of puberty tends to be accompanied by a very marked interest in musical and other kinds of art.  Lancaster, in a study of this question among a large number of young people (without reference to difference in sex, though they were largely female), found that from 50 to 75 per cent of young people feel an impulse to art about the period of puberty, lasting a few months, or at most a year or two.  It appears that 464 young people showed an increased and passionate love for music, against only 102 who experienced no change in this respect.  The curve culminates at the age of 15 and falls rapidly after 16.  Many of these cases were really quite unmusical.[128]

FOOTNOTES: 

[86] This view has been more especially developed by J.B.  Miner, Motor, Visual, and Applied Rhythms, Psychological Review Monograph Supplements, vol. v, No. 4, 1903.

[87] Sir S. Wilks, Medical Magazine, January, 1894; cf.  Clifford Allbutt, “Music, Rhythm, and Muscle,” Nature, February 8, 1894.

[88] Buecher, Arbeit und Rhythmus, third edition, 1902; Wundt, Voelkerpsychologie, 1900, Part I, p. 265.

[89] Fere deals fully with the question in his book, Travail et Plaisir, 1904, Chapter III, “Influence du Rhythme sur le Travail.”

[90] Fillmore, “Primitive Scales and Rhythms,” Proceedings of the International Congress of Anthropology, Chicago, 1893.

[91] “Love Songs among the Omaha Indians,” in Proceedings of same congress.

[92] Groos, Spiele der Menschen, p. 33.

[93] “Analysis of the Sexual Impulse,” Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vol. iii.

[94] Fere, Sensation et Mouvement, Chapter V; id., Travail et Plaisir, Chapter XII.