Music and Some Highly Musical People
Book Excerpt
Afterwards, the human ear, penetrated by sounds of melody issuing from wind, wave, or bird, the rapt mind in strange and pleasing wonder contemplating the new and charming harmonies,--then it was that man received his first impressions, and took his first lessons in delightful symphony.
Take from man all creative and performing power in music, leaving him only the ear to catch and the mind to comprehend the sounds, and there would still be left to him God's own music,--the music of Nature, which, springing as it did from eternity, shall last throughout eternity.
Passing what must appear to human comprehension as vague (an attempt at the contemplation of which would be without profit in this connection), and what has been called the "music of the spheres,"[3] we may pr