VIII. Pitch (ethos and pathos), Note Values, Dynamics, Changes of Tempo

If I may put it in this way, feeling can be coloured either more towards the head- or more towards the limb-organization. Should feeling tend in the direction of the head, it is expressed so to speak in the roundabout way of the intellect. Now I must beg you not to misunderstand this, and think that it is my intention to intellectualize the musical element. I have no such intention! It is a fact, however, that precisely in the element of pitch, something is manifest which causes feeling to tend in the direction of the intellect, only it does not reach the intellect, but remains in the realm of feeling. And so a musician need not in the least be interested when the intellectual physicist comes along and speaks of the frequency and the pattern of sound-waves. The musician can justifiably answer: ‘This may be all very well, and so on, but it has nothing to do with me. I am not interested in this.’ An intellectual conception of music leads away from the sphere of music. It may be left to the physicist. [51] That element of music which tends towards the intellect is also felt. Pitch, in all its differing manifestations, is an experience of feeling. And it is just because music inclines away from the intellect that the head has so little to do in tone eurythmy. Indeed in speech eurythmy, too, the head should play practically no part, though naturally it should humanly accompany the movements carried out by the speech eurythmist.