The simplest manifestations of the purely sensuous effect of sound are to be found in the savage’s delight in noise.  In the more civilized state, this becomes the sensation of mere pleasure in hearing pleasing sounds.  It enters into folk song in the form of the “Scotch snap,” which is first cousin to the Swiss jodel, and is undoubtedly the origin of the skips of the augmented and (to a lesser degree) diminished intervals to be found in the music of many nations.  It consists of the trick of alternating chest tones with falsetto.  It is a kind of quirk in the voice which pleases children and primitive folk alike, a simple thing which has puzzled folklorists the world over.

The other sensuous influence of sound is one of the most powerful elements of music, and all musical utterance is involved with and inseparable from it.  It consists of repetition, recurrence, periodicity.

Now this repetition may be one of rhythm, tone tint, texture, or colour, a repetition of figure or of pitch.  We know that savages, in their incantation ceremonies, keep up a continuous drum beating or chant which, gradually increasing in violence, drives the hearers into such a state of frenzy that physical pain seems no longer to exist for them.

The value of the recurring rhythms and phrases of the march is well recognized in the army.  A body of men will instinctively move in cadence with such music.  The ever recurring lilt of a waltz rhythm will set the feet moving unconsciously, and as the energy of the repetition increases and decreases, so will the involuntary accompanying physical sympathy increase or decrease.

Berlioz jokingly tells a story of a ballet dancer who objected to the high pitch in which the orchestra played, and insisted that the music be transposed to a lower key.  Cradle songs are fashioned on the same principle.

This sensuous sympathy with recurring sounds, rhythm, and pitch has something in common with hypnotism, and leads up to what I have called suggestion in music.

This same element in a modified form is made use of in poetry, for instance, in Poe’s “Raven,”

    Quoth the raven, nevermore,

and the repetition of colour in the same author’s “Scarlet Death.”  It is the mainspring (I will not call it the vital spark) of many so-called popular songs, the recipe for which is exceedingly simple.  A strongly marked rhythmic figure is selected, and incessantly repeated until the hearer’s body beats time to it.  The well-known tunes “There’ll Be a Hot Time,” etc., and “Ta-ra-ra, Boom-de-ay” are good examples of this kind of music.

There are two kinds of suggestion in music:  one has been called tone-painting, the other almost evades analysis.

The term tone-painting is somewhat unsatisfactory, and reminds one of the French critic who spoke of a poem as “beautiful painted music.”  I believe that music can suggest forcibly certain things and ideas as well as vague emotions encased in the so-called “form” and “science” of music.