Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory by Hugo Münsterberg (100 books to read .txt) 📕

position necessary, in the case of each higher member of the series of

distances, to make the stroke of the hammer on its anvil simultaneous

with that of the shortest fall. These fixed amounts were then added to

the indices of position of the several cams in each arrangement of

intervals employed in the experiments.

This apparatus answers a variety of needs in practical manipulation

very satisfactorily. Changes in adjustment are easily and quickly

made, in regard to intensity, interval and absolute rate. If desired,

the gradation of intensities here employed may be refined to the

threshold of perceptibility, or beyond it.

The possible variations of absolute rate and of relative intervals

within the series were vastly more numerous than the practical

conditions of experimentation called for. In two directions the

adaptability of the mechanism was found to be restricted. The

durations of the sounds could not be varied as were the intervals

between them, and all questions concerning the results of such

changes were therefore put aside; and, secondly, the hammers and

anvils, though fashioned from the same stuff and turned to identical

shapes and weights, could not be made to ring qualitatively alike; and

these differences, though slight, were sufficiently great to become

the basis of discrimination between successive sounds and of the

recognition upon their recurrence of particular hammer-strokes,

thereby constituting new points of unification for the series of

sounds. When the objective differences of intensity were marked, these

minor qualitative variations were unregarded; but when the stresses

introduced were weak, as in a series composed of 3/8-, 2/8-, 2/8-inch

hammer-falls, they became sufficiently great to confuse or transform

the apparent grouping of the rhythmical series; for a qualitative

difference between two sounds, though imperceptible when comparison is

made after a single occurrence of each, may readily become the

subconscious basis for a unification of the pair into a rhythmical

group when several repetitions of them take place.

In such an investigation as this the qualification of the

subject-observer should be an important consideration. The

susceptibility to pleasurable and painful affection by rhythmical and

arrhythmical relations among successive sensory stimuli varies within

wide limits from individual to individual. It is of equal importance

to know how far consonance exists between the experiences of a variety

of individuals. If the objective conditions of the rhythm experience

differ significantly from person to person it is useless to seek for

rhythm forms, or to speak of the laws of rhythmical sequence.

Consensus of opinion among a variety of participators is the only

foundation upon which one can base the determination of objective

forms of any practical value. It is as necessary to have many subjects

as to have good ones. In the investigation here reported on, work

extended over the two academic years of 1898-1900. Fourteen persons in

all took part, whose ages ranged from twenty-three to thirty-nine

years. Of these, five were musically trained, four of whom were also

possessed of good rhythmic perception; of the remaining nine, seven

were good or fair subjects, two rather poor. All of these had had

previous training in experimental science and nine were experienced

subjects in psychological work.

II. THE ELEMENTARY CONDITIONS OF THE APPEARANCE OF THE RHYTHM

IMPRESSION.

The objective conditions necessary to the arousal of an impression of

rhythm are three in number: (a) Recurrence; (b) Accentuation;

(c) Rate.

(a) Recurrence.—The element of repetition is essential; the

impression of rhythm never arises from the presentation of a single

rhythmical unit, however proportioned or perfect. It does appear

adequately and at once with the first recurrence of that unit. If the

rhythm be a complex one, involving the coördination of primary groups

in larger unities, the full apprehension of its form will, of course,

arise only when the largest synthetic group which it contains has been

completed; but an impression of rhythm, though not of the form finally

involved, will have appeared with the first repetition of the simplest

rhythmical unit which enters into the composition. It is conceivable

that the presentation of a single, unrepeated rhythmical unit,

especially if well-defined and familiar, should originate a rhythmical

impression; but in such a case the sensory material which supports the

impression of rhythm is not contained in the objective series but only

suggested by it. The familiar group of sounds initiates a rhythmic

process which depends for its existence on the continued repetition,

in the form of some subjective accentuation, of the unit originally

presented.

The rhythmical form, in all such cases, is adequately and perfectly

apprehended through a single expression of the sequence.[3] It lacks

nothing for its completion; repetition can add no more to it, and is,

indeed, in strict terms, inconceivable; for by its very recurrence it

is differentiated from the initial presentation, and combines

organically with the latter to produce a more highly synthetic form.

And however often this process be repeated, each repetition of the

original sequence will have become an element functionally unique and

locally unalterable in the last and highest synthesis which the whole

series presents.

[3] When the formal key-note is distinctly given, the

rhythmical movement arises at once; when it is obscure, the

emergence of the movement is gradual. This is a salient

difference, as Bolton, Ettlinger and others have pointed out,

between subjective rhythms and those objectively supported.

Rhythmical forms are not in themselves rhythms; they must initiate the

factor of movement in order that the impression of rhythm shall arise.

Rhythmical forms are constantly occurring in our perceptional

experience. Wherever a group of homogeneous elements, so related as to

exhibit intensive subordination, is presented under certain temporal

conditions, potential rhythm forms appear. It is a mere accident

whether they are or are not apprehended as actual rhythm forms. If the

sequence be repeated—though but once—during the continuance of a

single attention attitude, its rhythmical quality will ordinarily be

perceived, the rhythmic movement will be started. If the sequence be

not thus repeated, the presentation is unlikely to arouse the process

and initiate the experience of rhythm, but it is quite capable of so

doing. The form of the rhythm is thus wholly independent of the

movement, on which the actual impression of rhythm in every case

depends; and it may be presented apart from any experience of rhythm.

There is properly no repetition of identical sequences in rhythm.

Practically no rhythm to which the æsthetic subject gives expression,

or which he apprehends in a series of stimulations, is constituted of

the unvaried repetition of a single elementary form, the measures,

| >q. q |, or | >q. q q |, for example. Variation, subordination,

synthesis, are present in every rhythmical sequence. The regular

succession is interrupted by variant groups; points of initiation in

the form of redundant syllables, points of finality in the form of

syncopated measures, are introduced periodically, making the rhythm

form a complex one, the full set of relations involved being

represented only by the complete succession of elements contained

between any one such point of initiation and its return.

(b) Accentuation.—The second condition for the appearance of the

rhythm impression is the periodic accentuation of certain elements in

the series of sensory impressions or motor reactions of which that

rhythm is composed. The mechanism of such accentuation is indifferent;

any type of variation in the accented elements from the rest of the

series which induces the characteristic process of rhythmic

accentuation—by subjective emphasis, recurrent waves of attention, or

what not—suffices to produce an impression of rhythm. It is commonly

said that only intensive variations are necessary; but such types of

differentiation are not invariably depended on for the production of

the rhythmic impression. Indeed, though most frequently the basis of

such effects, for sufficient reasons, this type of variation is

neither more nor less constant and essential than other forms of

departure from the line of indifference, which forms are ordinarily

said to be variable and inessential. For the existence of rhythm

depends, not on any particular type of periodical variation in the

sensory series, but on the recurrent accentuation, under special

temporal conditions, of periodic elements within such a series; and

any recurrent change in quality—using this term to describe the total

group of attributes which constitutes the sensorial character of the

elements involved—which suffices to make the element in which it

occurs the recipient of such accentuation, will serve as a basis for

the production of a rhythmical impression. It is the fact of

periodical differentiation, not its particular direction, which is

important. Further, as we know, when such types of variation are

wholly absent from the series, certain elements may receive periodical

accentuation in dependence on phases of the attention process itself,

and a subjective but perfectly real and adequate rhythm arise.

In this sense those who interpret rhythm as fundamentally dependent on

the maintenance of certain temporal relations are correct. The

accentuation must be rhythmically renewed, but the sensory incentives

to such renewals are absolutely indifferent, and any given one of the

several varieties of change ordinarily incorporated into rhythm may be

absent from the series without affecting its perfection as a

rhythmical sequence. In piano playing the accentual points of a

passage may be given by notes struck in the bass register while

unaccented elements are supplied from the upper octaves; in orchestral

compositions a like opposition of heavy to light brasses, of cello to

violin, of cymbals to triangle, is employed to produce rhythmical

effects, the change being one in timbre, combined or uncombined

with pitch variations; and in all percussive instruments, such as the

drum and cymbals, the rhythmic impression depends solely on intensive

variations. The peculiar rhythmic function does not lie in these

elements, but in a process to which any one of them indifferently may

give rise. When that process is aroused, or that effect produced, the

rhythmic impression has been made, no matter what the mechanism may

have been.

The single objective condition, then, which is necessary to the

appearance of an impression of rhythm is the maintenance of specific

temporal relations among the elements of the series of sensations

which supports it. It is true that the subjective experience of rhythm

involves always two factors, periodicity and accentuation; the latter,

however, is very readily, and under certain conditions inevitably,

supplied by the apperceptive subject if the former be given, while if

the temporal conditions be not fulfilled (and the subject cannot

create them) no impression of rhythm is possible. The contributed

accent is always a temporally rhythmical one, and if the recurrence of

the elements of the objective series opposes the phases of subjective

accentuation the rhythm absolutely falls to the ground. Of the two

points of view, then, that is the more faithful to the facts which

asserts that rhythm is dependent upon the maintenance of fixed

temporal intervals. These two elements cannot be discriminated as

forming the objective and subjective conditions of rhythm

respectively. Both are involved in the subjective experience and both

find their realization in objective expressions, definable and

measurable.

(c) Rate.—The appearance of the impression of rhythm is

intimately dependent on special conditions of duration in the

intervals separating the successive elements of the series. There

appears in this connection a definite superior limit to the absolute

rate at which the elements may succeed one another, beyond which the

rapidity cannot be increased without either (a) destroying

altogether the perception of rhythm in the series or (b)

transforming the structure of the rhythmical sequence by the

substitution of composite groups for the single elements of the

original series as units of rhythmic construction; and a less clearly

marked inferior limit, below which the series of stimulations fails

wholly to arouse the impression of rhythm. But the limits imposed by

these conditions, again, are coördinated with certain other variables.

The values of the