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

presence or absence of objective accentuation. If such accents be

present in the series, the position of the limits is still a function

of the intensive preponderance of the accented over the unaccented

elements of the group. Further, it is related to the active or passive

attitude of the æsthetic subject on whom the rhythmical impression is

made, and there appear also important individual variations in the

values of the limits.

When the succession falls below a certain rate no impression of rhythm

arises. The successive elements appear isolated; each is apprehended

as a single impression, and the perception of intensive and temporal

relations is gotten by the ordinary process of discrimination involved

when any past experience is compared with a present one. In the

apprehension of rhythm the case is altogether different. There is no

such comparison of a present with a past experience; the whole group

of elements constituting the rhythmic unit is present to consciousness

as a single experience; the first of its elements has never fallen out

of consciousness before the final member appears, and the awareness of

intensive differences and temporal segregation is as immediate a fact

of sensory apprehension as is the perception of the musical qualities

of the sounds themselves.

The absolute value of this lower limit varies from individual to

individual. In the experience of some persons the successive members

of the series may be separated by intervals as great as one and one

half (possibly two) seconds, while yet the impression is distinctly

one of rhythm; in that of others the rhythm dies out before half of

that interval has been reached. With these subjects the apprehension

at this stage is a secondary one, the elements of the successive

groups being held together by means of some conventional symbolism, as

the imagery of beating bells or swinging pendulums. A certain

voluminousness is indispensable to the support of such slow measures.

The limit is reached sooner when the series of sounds is given by the

fall of hammers on their anvils than when a resonant body like a bell

is struck, or a continuous sound is produced upon a pipe or a reed.

In these cases, also, the limit is not sharply defined. The rhythmical

impression gradually dies out, and the point at which it disappears

may be shifted up or down the line, according as the æsthetic subject

is more or less attentive, more or less in the mood to enjoy or create

rhythm, more passive or more active in his attitude toward the series

of stimulations which supports the rhythmical impression. The

attention of the subject counts for much, and this distinction—of

involuntary from voluntary rhythmization—which has been made chiefly

in connection with the phenomenon of subjective rhythm, runs also

through all appreciation of rhythms which depend on actual objective

factors. A series of sounds given with such slowness that at one time,

when passively heard, it fails to produce any impression of rhythm,

may very well support the experience on another occasion, if the

subject try to hold a specific rhythm form in mind and to find it in

the series of sounds. In such cases attention creates the rhythm which

without it would fail to appear. But we must not confuse the nature of

this fact and imagine that the perception that the relations of a

certain succession fulfil the the form of a rhythmical sequence has

created the rhythmical impression for the apperceiving mind. It has

done nothing of the kind. In the case referred to the rhythm appears

because the rhythmical impression is produced, not because the fact of

rhythmical form in the succession is perceived. The capacity of the

will is strictly limited in this regard and the observer is as really

subject to time conditions in his effortful construction as in his

effortless apprehension. The rhythmically constructive attitude does

not destroy the existence of limits to the rate at which the series

must take place, but only displaces their positions.

A similar displacement occurs if the periodic accentuations within the

series be increased or decreased in intensity. The impression of

rhythm from a strongly accented series persists longer, as retardation

of its rate proceeds, than does that of a weakly accented series; the

rhythm of a weakly accented series, longer than that of a uniform

succession. The sensation, in the case of a greater intensive accent,

is not only stronger but also more persistent than in that of a

weaker, so that the members of a series of loud sounds succeeding one

another at any given rate appear to follow in more rapid succession

than when the sounds are faint. But the threshold at which the

intervals between successive sounds become too great to arouse any

impression of rhythm does not depend solely on the absolute loudness

of the sounds involved; it is a function also of the degree of

accentuation which the successive measures possess. The greater the

accentuation the more extended is the temporal series which will hold

together as a single rhythmic group.

This relation appears also in the changes presented in beaten rhythms,

the unit-groups of which undergo a progressive increase in the number

of their components. The temporal values of these groups do not remain

constant, but manifest a slight increase in total duration as the

number of component beats is increased, though this increase is but a

fraction of the proportional time-value of the added beats. Parallel

with this increase in the time-value of the unit-group goes an

increase in the preponderance of the accented element over the

intensity of the other members of the group. Just as, therefore, in

rhythms that are heard, the greatest temporal values of the simple

group are mediated by accents of the highest intensity, so in

expressed rhythms those groups having the greatest time-values are

marked by the strongest accentuation.

Above the superior limit a rhythm impression may persist, but neither

by an increase in the number of elements which the unit group

contains, nor by an increase in the rate at which these units follow

one another in consciousness. The nature of the unit itself is

transformed, and a totally new adjustment is made to the material of

apprehension. When the number of impressions exceeds eight or ten a

second—subject to individual variations—the rhythmical consciousness

is unable longer to follow the individual beats, a period of confusion

ensues, until, as the rate continues to increase, the situation is

suddenly clarified by the appearance of a new rhythm superimposed on

the old, having as its elements the structural units of the preceding

rhythm. The rate at which the elements of this new rhythm succeed one

another, instead of being more rapid than the old, has become

relatively slow, and simple groups replace the previous large and

complex ones. Thus, at twelve beats per second the rhythms heard by

the subjects in these experiments were of either two, three or four

beats, the elements entering into each of these constituent beats

being severally three and four in number, as follows:

TABLE I.

> >

Simple Trochaic, four beats per second: 1 2 3, 4 5 6; 7 8 9,10 11 12.

___/ ___/ ___/ ______/

>

________ ___________

Dipodic Trochaic, ” ” ” ” 1 2 3, 4 5 6; 7 8 9,10 11 12.

__/ __/ ___/ ________/

>>>

Simple Dactylic, three ” ” ” 1 2 3 4, 5 6 7 8, 9 10 11 12.

____/ ____/ _______/

The only impression of rhythm here received was of a trochaic or

dactylic measure, depending upon an accent which characterized a group

and not a single beat, and which recurred only twice or thrice a

second. Sometimes the subjects were wholly unaware that the elements

of the rhythm were not simple, a most significant fact, and frequently

the number reported present was one half of the actual number given.

During the continuance of such a series the rhythm form changes

frequently in the apprehension of the individual subject from one to

another of the types described above.

It cannot be too strongly insisted on that the perception of rhythm is

an impression, an immediate affection of consciousness depending on

a particular kind of sensory experience; it is never a construction, a

reflective perception that certain relations of intensity, duration,

or what not, do obtain. If the perception of rhythm in a series of

impressions were dependent on intellectual analysis and

discrimination, the existence of such temporal limits as are actually

found would be inconceivable and absurd. So long as the perception of

the uniformity or proportion of time-relations were possible, together

with the discrimination of the regular recurrence in the series of

points of accentuation, the perception of rhythm should persist,

however great or small might be the absolute intervals which separated

the successive members of the series. If it were the conception of a

certain form of relation, instead of the reception of a particular

impression, which was involved, we should realize a rhythm which

extended over hours or days, or which was comprehended in the fraction

of a second, as readily as those which actually affect us.

The rate at which the elements of a series succeed one another affects

the constitution of the unit groups of which the rhythmical sequence

is composed. The faster the rate, the larger is the number of

impressions which enter into each group. The first to appear in

subjective rhythm, as the rate is increased from a speed too slow for

any impression of rhythm to arise, are invariably groups of two beats;

then come three-beat groups, or a synthesis of the two-beat groups

into four, with major and minor accents; and finally six-and

eight-beat groups appear. When objective accentuation is present a

similar series of changes is manifested, the process here depending on

a composition of the unit-groups into higher orders, and not involving

the serial addition of new elements to the group.

The time relations of such smaller and larger units are dependent on

the relative inertia of the mechanism involved. A definite subjective

rhythm period undoubtedly appears; but its constancy is not maintained

absolutely, either in the process of subjective rhythmization or in

the reproduction of ideal forms. Its manifestation is subject to the

special conditions imposed on it by such apprehension or expression.

The failure to make this distinction is certain to confuse one’s

conception of the temporal rhythmic unit and its period. The

variations of this period present different curves in the two cases of

subjective rhythmization and motor expression of definite rhythm

forms. In the former the absolute duration of the unit-group suffers

progressive decrease as the rate of succession among the stimuli is

accelerated; in the latter a series of extensions of its total

duration takes place as the number of elements composing the unit is

increased. The series of relative values for units of from two to

eight constituents which the finger reactions presented in this

investigation is given in the following table:

TABLE II.

No. of Elements. Proportional Duration.

Two, 1.000

Three, 1.109

Four, 1.817

Five, 1.761

Six, 2.196

Seven, 2.583

Eight, 2.590

This progressive extension of the rhythm period is to be explained by

the mechanical conditions imposed on the expression of rhythm by

processes of muscular contraction and release. Were it possible freely

to increase the rate of such successive innervations, we should expect

to find a much greater constancy in the whole period occupied by the

series of reactions which composes the unit. The comparatively

unsatisfactory quality of these larger series, and the resolution of

them into subgroups described elsewhere in this paper, are due to this

inability to accommodate the series of motor reactions to the

subjective rhythm period.

On the other hand, the temporal value of the unit which