The imitative powers of Dancing are much superior to those of instrumental Music, and are at 1
least equal, perhaps superior, to those of any other art. Like instrumental Music, however, it is not necessarily or essentially imitative, and it can produce very agreeable effects, without imitating any thing. In the greater part of our common dances there is little or no imitation, and they consist almost entirely of a succession of such steps, gestures, and motions, regulated by the time and measure of Music, as either display extraordinary grace or require extraordinary agility. Even some of our dances, which are said to have been originally imitative, have, in the way in which we practise them, almost ceased to be so. The minuet, in which the woman, after passing and repassing the man several times, first gives him up one hand, then the other, and then both hands, is said to have been originally a Moorish dance, which emblematically represented the passion of love. Many of my readers may have frequently danced this dance, and, in the opinion of all who saw them, with great grace and propriety, though neither they nor their spectators once thought of the allegorical meaning which it originally intended to express.
A certain measured, cadenced step, commonly called a dancing step, which keeps time with, and 2
as it were beats the measure of, the Music which accompanies and directs it, is the essential characteristic which distinguishes a dance from every other sort of motion. When the dancer, moving with a step of this kind, and observing this time and measure, imitates either the ordinary or the more important actions of human life, he shapes and fashions, as it were, a thing of one kind, into the resemblance of another thing of a very different kind: his art conquers the disparity which Nature has placed between the imitating and the imitated object, and has upon that account some degree of that sort of merit which belongs to all the imitative arts. This disparity, indeed, is not so great as in some other of those arts, nor consequently the merit of the imitation which conquers it. Nobody would compare the merit of a good imitative dancer to that of a good painter or statuary. The dancer, however, may have a very considerable degree of merit, and his http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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imitation perhaps may sometimes be capable of giving us as much pleasure as that of either of the other two artists. All the subjects, either of Statuary or of History Painting, are within the compass of his imitative powers; and in representing them, his art has even some advantage 1
over both the other two. Statuary and History Painting can represent but a single instant of the action which they mean to imitate: the causes which prepared, the consequences which followed, the situation of that single instant are altogether beyond the compass of their imitation. A pantomime dance can represent distinctly those causes and consequences; it is not confined to the situation of a single instant; but, like Epic Poetry, it can represent all the events of a long story, and exhibit a long train and succession of connected and interesting situations. It is capable therefore of affecting us much more than either Statuary or Painting. The ancient Romans used to shed tears at the representations of their pantomimes, as we do at that of the most interesting tragedies; an effect which is altogether beyond the powers of Statuary or Painting.
The ancient Greeks appear to have been a nation of dancers, and both their common and their 3
stage dances seem to have been all imitative. The stage dances of the ancient Romans appear to have been equally so. Among that grave people it was reckoned indecent to dance in private societies; and they could therefore have no common dances. Among both nations imitation seems to have been considered as essential to dancing.
It is quite otherwise in modern times: though we have pantomime dances upon the stage, yet the 4
greater part even of our stage dances are not pantomime, and cannot well be said to imitate any thing. The greater part of our common dances either never were pantomime, or, with a very few exceptions, have almost all ceased to be so.
This remarkable difference of character between the ancient and the modern dances seems to be 5
the natural effect of a correspondent difference in that of the Music, which has accompanied and directed both the one and the other.
In modern times we almost always dance to instrumental Music, which being itself not imitative, 6
the greater part of the dances which it directs, and as it were inspires, have ceased to be so. In ancient times, on the contrary, they seem to have danced almost always to vocal Music; which being necessary and essentially imitative, their dances became so too. The ancients seem to have had little or nothing of what is properly called instrumental Music, or of Music composed not to be sung by the voice, but to be played upon instruments, and both their wind and their stringed instruments seem to have served only as an accompaniment and direction to the voice.
In the country it frequently happens that a company of young people take a fancy to dance, 7
though they have neither fiddler nor piper to dance to. A lady undertakes to sing while the rest of the company dance: in most cases she sings the notes only, without the words, and then the voice being little more than a musical instrument, the dance is performed in the usual way, without any imitation. But if she sings the words, and if in those words there happens to be somewhat more than ordinary spirit and humour, immediately all the company, especially all the best dancers, and all those who dance most at their ease, become more or less pantomimes, and by their gestures and motions express, as well as they can, the meaning and story of the song.
This would be still more the case, if the same person both danced and sung; a practice very common among the ancients: it requires good lungs and a vigorous constitution; but with these advantages and long practice, the very highest dances may be performed in this manner. I have http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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seen a Negro dance to his own song, the war–dance of his own country, with such vehemence of action and expression, that the whole company, gentlemen as well as ladies, got up upon the chairs and tables, to be as much as possible out of the way of his fury. In the Greek language 2
there are two verbs which both signify to dance; each of which has its proper derivatives, signifying a dance and a dancer. In the greater part of Greek authors, these two sets of words, like all others which are nearly synonimous, are frequently confounded, and used promiscuously.
According to the best critics, however, in strict propriety, one of these verbs signifies to dance and sing at the same time, or to dance to one’s own music. The other to dance without singing, or to dance to the music of other people. There is said too to be a correspondent difference in the signification of their respective derivatives. In the choruses of the ancient Greek tragedies, consisting sometimes of more than fifty persons, some piped and some sung, but all danced, and danced to their own music.
[The following Observations were found among Mr. SMITH’S Manuscripts, without any intimation whether they were intended as part of this, or of a different Essay. As they appeared too valuable to be suppressed, the Editors have availed themselves of their connection with the passage referred to in <II.2> and have annexed them to this Essay.]
OF THE AFFINITY BETWEEN MUSIC, DANCING, AND POETRY
In the second part of this Essay I have mentioned the connection between the two arts of Music 1
and Dancing formed by the Rythmus, as the ancients termed it, or, as we call it, the tune or measure that equally regulates both.
It is not, however, every sort of step, gesture, or motion, of which the correspondence with the 2
tune or measure of Music will constitute a Dance. It must be a step, gesture, or motion of a particular sort. In a good opera–actor, not only the modulations and pauses of his voice, but every motion and gesture, every variation, either in the air of his head or in the attitude of his body, correspond to the time and measure of Music. The best opera–actor, however, is not, according to the language of any country in Europe, understood to dance, yet in the performance of his part he generally makes use of what is called the stage step; but even this step is not understood to be a dancing step.
Though the eye of the most ordinary spectator readily distinguishes between what is called a 3
dancing step and any other step, gesture, or motion, yet it may not perhaps be very easy to express what it is which constitutes this distinction. To ascertain exactly the precise limits at which the one species begins, and the other ends, or to give an accurate definition of this very frivolous matter, might perhaps require more thought and attention, than the very small importance of the subject may seem to deserve. Were I, however, to attempt to do this, I should observe, that though in performing any ordinary action—in walking, for example—from the one end of the room to the other, a person may show both grace and agility, yet if he betrays the least intention of showing either, he is sure of offending more or less, and we never fail to accuse him of some degree of vanity and affectation. In the performance of any such ordinary action, every person wishes to appear to be solely occupied about the proper purpose of the action: if he means to show either grace or agility, he is careful to conceal that meaning, and he is very seldom successful in doing so: he offends, however, just in proportion as he betrays it, and he http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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almost always betrays it. In Dancing, on the contrary, every person professes, and avows, as it were, the intention of displaying some degree either of grace, or of agility, or of both. The display of one, or other, or both of these qualities, is in reality the proper purpose of the action; and there can never be any disagreeable vanity or affectation in following out the proper purpose of any action. When we say of any particular person, that he gives himself many affected airs and graces in Dancing, we mean either that he gives himself airs and graces which are unsuitable to the nature of the Dance, or that he executes aukwardly, perhaps exaggerates too much, (the most common fault in Dancing,) the airs and graces which are suitable to it. Every Dance is in reality a succession of airs and graces of some kind or other, and of airs and graces which, if I may say so, profess themselves to be such. The steps, gestures, and motions which, as it were, avow the intention of exhibiting a succession of such airs and graces, are the steps, gestures, and motions which are peculiar to Dancing, and when these are performed to the time and measure of Music, they constitute what is properly called a Dance.
But though every sort of step, gesture, or motion, even though performed to the time and 4
measure of Music, will not alone make a Dance, yet almost any sort of sound, provided it is repeated with a distinct rythmus, or according to a distinct time and measure, though without any variation as to gravity or acuteness, will make a sort of Music, no doubt indeed, an imperfect one.
Drums, cymbals, and, so far as I have observed, all other instruments of percussion, have only one note; this note, however, when repeated with a certain rythmus, or according to a certain time and measure, and sometimes, in order to mark more distinctly that time and measure, with some little variation as to loudness and lowness, though without any as to acuteness and gravity, does certainly make a sort of Music, which is frequently far from being disagreeable, and which even sometimes produces considerable effects. The simple note of such instruments, it is true, is generally a very clear, or what is called a melodious, sound. It does not however seem indispensably necessary that it should be so. The sound of the muffled drum, when it beats the dead march, is far from being either clear or melodious, and yet it certainly produces a species of Music, which is sometimes affecting. Even in the performance of the most humble of all artists, of the man who drums upon the table with his fingers, we may sometimes distinguish the measure, and perhaps a little of the humour, of some favourite song; and we must allow that even he makes some sort of Music. Without a proper step and motion, the observation of tune alone will not make a Dance; time alone, without tune, will make some sort of Music.
That exact observation of tune, or of the proper intervals of gravity and acuteness, which 5
constitutes the great beauty of all perfect Music, constitutes likewise its great difficulty. The time or measure of a song are simple matters, which even a coarse and unpractised ear is capable of distinguishing and comprehending: but to distinguish and comprehend all the variations of the tune, and to conceive with precision, the exact proportion of every note, is what the finest and most cultivated ear is frequently no more than capable of performing. In the singing of the common people we may generally remark a distinct enough observation of time, but a very imperfect one of tune. To discover and to distinguish with precision the proper intervals of tune, must have been a work of long experience and much observation. In the theoretical treatises upon Music, what the authors have to say upon time is commonly discussed in a single chapter of no great length or difficulty. The theory of tune fills commonly all the rest of the volume, and has long ago become both an extensive and an abstruse science, which is often but imperfectly comprehended, even by intelligent artists. In the first rude efforts of uncivilized nations towards singing, the niceties of tune could be but little attended to: I have, upon this account, been http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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frequently disposed to doubt of the great antiquity of those national songs, which it is pretended have been delivered down from age to age by a sort of oral tradition, without having been ever noted, or distinctly recorded for many successive generations. The measure, the humour of the song, might perhaps have been delivered down in this manner, but it seems scarcely possible that the precise notes of the tune should have been so preserved. The method of singing some of what we reckon our old Scotch songs, has undergone great alterations within the compass of my memory, and it may have undergone still greater before.
The distinction between the sounds or tones of singing and those of speaking seems to be of the 6
same kind with that between the steps, gestures, and motions of Dancing, and those of any other ordinary action; though in speaking a person may show a very agreeable tone of voice, yet if he seems to intend to show it, if he appears to listen to the sound of his own voice, and as it were to tune it into a pleasing modulation, he never fails to offend, as guilty of a most disagreeable affectation. In speaking, as in every other ordinary action, we expect and require that the speaker should attend only to the proper purpose of the action, the clear and distinct expression of what he has to say. In singing, on the contrary, every person professes the intention to please by the tone and cadence of his voice; and he not only appears to be guilty of no disagreeable affectation in doing so, but we expect and require that he should do so. To please by the choice and arrangement of agreeable sounds is the proper purpose of all Music, vocal as well as instrumental; and we always expect and require, that every person should attend to the proper purpose of whatever action he is performing. A person may appear to sing, as well as to dance, affectedly; he may endeavour to please by sounds and tones which are unsuitable to the nature of the song, or he may dwell too much on those which are suitable to it, or in some other way he may show an overweening conceit of his own abilities, beyond what seems to be warranted by his performance. The disagreeable affectation appears to consist always, not in attempting to please by a proper, but by some improper modulation of the voice. It was early discovered that the vibrations of chords or strings, which either in their lengths, or in their densities, or in their degrees of tension, bear a certain proportion to one another, produce sounds which correspond exactly, or, as the musicians say, are the unisons of those sounds or tones of the human voice which the ear approves of in singing. This discovery has enabled musicians to speak with distinctness and precision concerning the musical sounds or tones of the human voice; they can always precisely ascertain what are the particular sounds or tones which they mean, by ascertaining what are the proportions of the strings of which the vibrations produce the unisons of those sounds or tones. What are called the intervals; that is, the differences, in point of gravity and acuteness, between the sounds or tones of a singing voice, are much greater and more distinct than those of the speaking voice. Though the former, therefore, can be measured and appreciated by the proportions of chords or strings, the latter cannot. The nicest instruments 1
cannot express the extreme minuteness of these intervals. The heptamerede of Mr. Sauveur could express an interval so small as the seventh part of what is called a comma, the smallest interval that is admitted in modern Music. Yet even this instrument, we are informed by Mr.
2
Duclos, could not express the minuteness of the intervals in the pronunciation of the Chinese language; of all the languages in the world, that of which the pronunciation is said to approach the nearest to singing, or in which the intervals are said to be the greatest.
As the sounds or tones of the singing voice, therefore, can be ascertained or appropriated, while 7
those of the speaking voice cannot; the former are capable of being noted or recorded, while the latter are not.
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ENDNOTES
[1 ] In the same letter Millar wrote: ‘Of all his writing I have most curiosity about the metaphysical work you mention. I should like to see his powers of illustration employed upon the true old Humean philosophy.’ On this Scott comments, ‘There is no trace of this MS.’ ( ASSP, 313 n. ). But I agree with Professor Raphael (who kindly drew my attention to this letter) that in view of the word ‘illustration’ (cf. the titles of the three ‘historical’ essays) the ‘metaphysical’ MS.
could have been no other than that of these essays. Professor Raphael sees in Millar’s comment some confirmation of his own view that Smith was greatly influenced by Hume’s new attitude to the ‘faculty’ of imagination. I have dealt with this more fully in my essay, ‘Adam Smith and the History of Ideas’; see also D. D. Raphael’s ‘Impartial Spectator’, both in Essays on Adam Smith.
See further 16–21, above.
[1 ] Mrs. Patience Wright, born in New Jersey in 1725, moved to London in 1772 and remained there until her death in 1786. Her wax models, many life–sized, had a great vogue ( DNB). [The London Magazine for 1775 (555) printed a notice of her work.]
[2 ] [Cf. WN I.xi.c.31 (‘Of the Produce of Land which sometimes does, and sometimes does not, afford Rent’), where this point is elaborated. Smith remarks of the rich: ‘In their eyes the merit of an object which is in any degree either useful or beautiful, is greatly enhanced by its scarcity, or by the great labour which it requires to collect any considerable quantity of it, a labour which nobody can afford to pay but themselves. Such objects they are willing to purchase at a higher price than things much more beautiful and useful, but more common.’]
[3 ] Il Penseroso, 49–50.
[4 ] [Cf. WN I.xi.c.31: ‘With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so compleat as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.’]
[5 ] [Cf. WN I.ix.9: ‘The wages of labour are lower in France than in England. When you go from Scotland to England, the difference which you may remark between the dress and countenance of the common people in the one country and in the other, sufficiently indicates the difference in their condition. The contrast is still greater when you return from France.’]
[6 ] [Cf. Astronomy, II.11.]
[1 ] [Smith made much of this point in discussing the consequences of social stratification and of the division of labour. See WN V.i.f.52–3 and generally this section: ‘Of the Expence of the Institutions for the Education of Youth’. See also V.i.g.15, where Smith defends the encouragement of those who, ‘without scandal or indecency’, might amuse the people ‘by painting, poetry, musick, dancing; [and] by all sorts of dramatic representations’.]
[2 ] [Smith’s use of the word ‘system’ for a rhythmical series is clarified in II.29, below.]
[* ] The Author’s Observations on the Affinity between Music, Dancing, and Poetry, are annexed to the end of Part III of this Essay.
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[3 ] [Thomas Tyrwhitt’s edition of The Canterbury Tales (1775–8), by printing final –e, –es, etc., where these are metrically required, refuted the common earlier notion that Chaucer’s verse was quite irregular. See Dryden, Preface to the Fables (1700). The mistaken assumption, voiced here, that inclusion or omission of these ‘unmeaning’ syllables was an arbitrary metrical expedient, is still prevalent.]
[4 ] [Eighteenth–century critics, who were fond of this expression, included painting rather than dancing in the three. They ascribed the metaphor to Cicero’s remark on the kinship of the humane arts, Pro Archia Poeta, I.2; but obviously the Muses are the basis. The changing relations of music, dance, and poetry in different societies, savage and civilized, are treated at length by John Brown in A Dissertation on the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions, of Poetry and Music (1763), III ff. See also Cartaud de la Villate, Essais historiques et philosophiques sur le goût (1734).]
[5 ] [ L’Allegro, 137.]
[6 ] [Cf. TMS I.i.4.7–10, where Smith emphasizes the contrary moderating effects of emotion on going into the company of others.]
[7 ] [TMS I.i.5 distinguishes the ‘amiable’ virtues from the ‘awful and respectable’.]
[8 ] [Smith probably has in mind the myth of Plato’s Phaedrus, 250 A–D, where Plato compares the invisible loveliness of the different virtues with the brightness of beauty, and says that if wisdom were visible to the eye it would be even more captivating than beauty. There is an allusion to the passage in Cicero, De Finibus (II.16.51–2), a work with which Smith was especially familiar.]
[9 ] The eighth concerto grosso contained in Corelli’s Opus 6 is explicitly designated ‘composed for the night of the nativity’. It was a concerto di chiesa and is known as the ‘Christmas concerto’.
[10 ] Milton’s two poems, together with one by Charles Jennens, were set to music by Handel under the title L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. The work, first performed on 27 February 1740, was several times revived.
[11 ] J.–J. Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (1768), s.v. ‘Imitation’; reprinted under ‘Imitation’
in the Encyclopédie, supp. vol. iii (1777) [and in Rousseau’s Essai sur l’origine des langues (1781), chap. 16].
[12 ] [The threefold division (diastaltic, systaltic, hesychastic) by Aristides Quintilianus is described in Charles Burney’s ‘Dissertation on the Music of the Ancients’ (§5), prefixed to vol. i (1776) of his General History of Music. Smith possessed a copy of Burney’s work (J. Bonar, Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith, ed. 2, 39) and may well be drawing on it here. If so, the passage provides confirmatory evidence of the late composition, or at least revision, of this essay on the Imitative Arts (see the editor’s Introduction, 171–2).]
[13 ] Smith’s emphasis on ‘disposing the mind’ provides a much more convincing account than Rousseau’s.
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[14 ] Alcione by Marin Marais (1656–1728), words by Houdar de La Motte, first produced at Paris in 1706, revived many times, and later much altered. Its tempeste symphonique, Act IV, sc.iv, has been described as ‘one of the first essays in operatic realism’ (A. Loewenberg, Annals of Opera 1579–1940, 2nd ed. revised (1955)).
[15 ] Issé by André (Cardinal) Destouches (1672–1749: not to be confused with the librettist Philippe Destouches–Néricault), words by Houdar de La Motte, first produced at Fontainebleau in 1697 and many times revived. [The scene referred to is Act II, sc.v.—or Act III, sc.v, in the five–
act version of 1708.]
[16 ] Amadis (later Amadis de Gaule) by Jean–Baptiste Lully (1632–87), words by Philippe Quinault, first produced at Paris in 1684, several times revived, and finally rescored by J. C. Bach.
[The scene referred to is Act III, sc.ii. The passages in the three operas to which Smith refers are in Recueil général des opéra representez par l’Académie royale de musique: vol. ix (1710), 103; vol. vi (1703), 211 (1708 version in vol. ix, 370); vol. ii (1703), 465.]
[17 ] [ Carmen Alexandri Pope In S. Caeciliam Latine redditum by Christopher Smart (1743; reprinted 1746).]
[18 ] [ Dunciad, ii.226, 262.]
[19 ] The original edition has ‘Apostolo, Zeno,’ but the redundant commas are probably an error of the printer (or conceivably of the copyist). Apostolo Zeno (1668–1750) was one librettist, not two. Metastasio (Pietro Trapassi, 1698–1782) succeeded him as imperial court poet in Vienna and was of course far more influential.
[20 ] The Spectator, i (1711), 5, 18, 29, 31. Though Addison was no musician, his articles inspired Johann Mattheson to translate and imitate them and to found the periodical Critica Musica in 1722. (See Grove’s Dictionary of Music, article on ‘Criticism’.)
[21 ] It is possible that the ‘approval’ of Vivaldi’s lovely Four Seasons (1728) had declined by the time Smith was writing.
[22 ] The term ‘concerto’ is used here in its ‘correct’ form of a group or ‘concert’ of instruments.
Its virtual restriction to solo (or rarely double or triple) virtuoso works dates from the time of Haydn and Mozart.
[23 ] [Cf.II.2, above, where Smith writes of a rhythmic succession in music or dance as ‘a sort of whole or system’. Systems in science are discussed in Astronomy, IV.19.]
[24 ] Charles Avison (1709–70), composer and for much of his life organist in Newcastle–upon–
Tyne. His original writings may be regarded as the beginning of English musical criticism. [The reference is to An Essay on Musical Expression (1752), 25 and passim. ]
[25 ] [Roger de Piles (1635–1709)—usually called ‘Du Piles’ by English writers—analyses Titian’s strengths and limitations in several of his works of art criticism. Smith here echoes a remark in Abrégé de la vie des peintres (1699), 265, which suggests that Titian was more concerned with http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/PhilosophicalSubjects...
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