Virginia Woolf, Street Music (1905)

‘Street musicians are counted a nuisance’ by the candid dwellers in most London squares, and they have taken the trouble to emblazon this terse bit of musical criticism upon a board which bears other regulations for the peace and propriety of the square. No artist, however, pays the least attention to criticism, and the artist of the streets is properly scornful of the judgment of the British public. It is remarkable that in spite of such discouragement as I have noted – enforced on occasion by a British policeman – the vagrant musician is if anything on the increase. The German band gives a weekly concert as regularly as the Queen's Hall orchestra; the Italian organ grinders are as faithful to their audience and reappear punctually on the same platform, and in addition to these recognised masters every street has an occasional visit from some wandering star. The stout Teuton and the swarthy Italian certainly live on something more substantial than the artistic satisfaction of their own souls; and it is therefore probable that the coins, which it is beneath the dignity of the true lover of music to throw from the drawing-room window, are tended at the area steps. There is an audience, in short, who is willing to pay even for such crude melody as this.

Music, to be successful in a street, must be loud before it is beautiful, and for this reason brass is the favourite instrument, and one may conclude that the street musician who uses his own voice or a violin has a genuine reason for his choice. I have seen violinists who were obviously using their instrument to express something in their own hearts as they swayed by the curb in Fleet Street; and the copper, though rags make it acceptable, was, as it is to all who love their work, a perfectly incongruous payment. Indeed, I once followed a disreputable old man who, with eyes shut so that he might better perceive the melodies of his soul, literally played himself from Kensington to Knightsbridge in a trance of musical ecstasy, from which a coin would have been a disagreeable awakening. It is, indeed, impossible not to respect any one who has a god like this within them; for music that takes possession of the soul so that nakedness and hunger are forgotten must be divine in its nature. It is true that the melodies that issued from his labouring violin were in themselves laughable, but he, certainly, was not. Whatever the accomplishment, we must always treat with tenderness the efforts of those who strive honestly to express the music that is in them; for the gift of conception is certainly superior to the gift of expression, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that the men and women who scrape for the harmonies that never come well the traffic goes thundering by have as great a position, though fated never to impart it, as the masters whose facile eloquence enchants thousands to listen.

there is more than one reason perhaps why the dwellers in squares look up on the street musician as a nuisance; his music disturbs the householder at his legitimate employment, and the vagrant and unorthodox nature or such a trade irritates a well-ordered mind. Artists of all kinds have invariably been looked on with disfavour, especially by English people, not solely because of the eccentricities of the artistic temperament, but because we have trained ourselves to such perfection of civilisation that expression of any kind has something almost indecent – certainly irreticent – about it. Few parents, we observe, are willing that their sons should become painters or poets or musicians, not only for worldly reasons, but because in their own hearts they consider that it is unmanly to give expression to the thoughts and emotions which the arts express and which it should be the endeavour of the good citizen to repress. Art in this way is certainly not encouraged; and it is probably easier for an artist than for a member of any other profession to descend to the pavement. The artist is not only looked upon with contempt but with a suspicion that has not a little of fear in it. He is possessed by a spirit which the ordinary person cannot understand, but which is clearly very potent, that exercises so great a sway over him that when he hears its voice he must always rise and follow.

Nowadays we are not credulous, and though we are not comfortable in the presence of artists we do our best to domesticate them. Never was such respect paid to the successful artist as there is to-day; and perhaps we may see in this a side of what many people have foretold, and that the gods who went into exile when the first Christian altars rose will come back to enjoy their own again. Many writers have tried to trace these old pagans, and have professed to find them in the disguise of animals and in the shelter of far-away woods and mountains; but it is not fantastic to suppose that while everyone is searching for them they are working their charms in the midst of us, and that those strange heathens who do the bidding of no man and are inspired by a voice that is other than human in their ears are not really as other people, but are either the very gods themselves or their priests and prophets upon earth. Certainly I should be inclined to ascribe some such divine origin to musicians at any rate, and it is probably some suspicion of this kind that drives us to persecute them as we do. For if the stringing together of words which nevertheless may convey some useful information to the mind, or the laying on of colours which may represent some tangible object, are employments which can be but tolerated at best, how are we to regard the man who spends his time making tunes? Is not his occupation the least respectable – the least useful and necessary – of the three? It is certain that you can carry away nothing that can be of service to you in your day’s work from listening to music; but a musician is not merely a useful creature, to many, I believe, he is the most dangerous of the whole tribe of artists. He is the minister of the wildest of all the gods, who has not yet learned to speak with human voice, or to convey to the mind the likeness of human things. It is because music incites within us something that is wild and inhuman like itself – a spirit that we would willingly stamp out and forget – that we are distrustful of musicians and loath to put ourselves under their power.

To be civilised is to have taken the measure of our own capabilities and to hold them in a perfect state of discipline; but one of our gifts has, as we conceive, so slight a power of beneficence, so unmeasured a power of harm, that far from cultivating it we have done our best to cripple and stifle it. We look upon those who have given up their lives to the service of this god as Christians regard the fanatic worshippers of some eastern idol. This arises perhaps from an uneasy foreknowledge that when the pagan gods come back the god we have never worshipped will have his revenge upon us. It will be the god of music who will breathe madness into our brains, crack the walls of our temples, and drive us in loathing of our rhythmless lives to dance and circle forever in obedience to his voice.

The number of those that declare, as though confessing their immunity from some common weakness, that they have no ear for music is increasing, though such a confession ought to be as serious as the confession that one is colour blind. The way in which music is taught and presented by its ministers must to some extent be held answerable for this. Music is dangerous as we know, and those that teach it have not the courage to impart it in its strength, from fear of what would happen to the child who should drink so intoxicating a draught. The whole of rhythm and harmony have been pressed, like dried flowers, into the neatly divided scales, tones and semi tones of the pianoforte. The safest and easiest attribute of music – its tune – is taught, but rhythm, which is its soul, is allowed to escape like the winged creature it is. Thus educated people who have been taught what it is safe for them to know of music are those who oftenest boast of their want of ear, and the uneducated, who sense of rhythm has never been divorced or made subsidiary to their sense of tune, are those who cherish the greatest love of music and are oftenest heard producing it.

it may be indeed that the sense of rhythm is stronger in people these mines are not elaborately trained to other pursuits, as it is true that savages who have none of the arts of civilization are very sensitive to rhythm before they are awake to music proper. the beat of rhythm in the mind is akin to the beat of the pulse in the body; and thus though many tune hardly anyone is so coarsely organised as not to hear the rhythm of its own heart in words and music and movement. It is because it is thus inborn in us that we can never silence music, any more than we can stop our heart from beating; and it is for this reason too that music is so universal and has the strange and illimitable power of a natural force.

In spite of all that we have done to repress music it has a power over us still whenever we give ourselves up to sway that no picture, however fair, or words however stately, can approach. The strange sight of a room full of civilised people moving in rhythmic motion at the command of a band of musicians is one to which we have grown accustomed, but it may be that some day it will suggest the vast possibilities that lie within the power of rhythm, and the whole of our life will be revolutionised as it was when man first realised the power of steam. The barrel organ for instance, by reason of its crude and emphatic rhythm, sets all the legs of the passers by walking in time; a band in the centre of the wild discord with cabs and carriages would be more effectual than any policeman; not only cabman but horse would find himself constrained to keep time in the dance, and to follow whatever measure of trot or canter the trumpets dictated. This principle has been in some degree recognised in the army, my troops are inspired to March into battle to the rhythm of music. And when the sense of rhythm was thoroughly alive in every mind we should if I mistake not, notice a great improvement not only in the ordering of all the affairs of daily life, but also in the art of writing, which is nearly allied to the art of music, and is chiefly degenerate because it has forgotten its allegiance. We should invent – or rather remember – the innumerable metres which we have so long outraged, and which would restore both prose and poetry to the harmonies that the ancients heard and observed.

Rhythm alone might easily lead to excesses; but when the ear possessed its secret, tune and harmony would be united with it, and those actions which by means of rhythm were performed punctually and in time, would now be done with whatever of melody is natural to each. Conversation, for instance, would not only obey its proper laws of metre as dictated by o our sense of rhythm, but would be inspired by charity, love and wisdom, and ill-temper or sarcasm which sound to the bodily ear as terrible discords and false notes. We all know that the voices of friends are discordant after listening to beautiful music because they disturb the echo of rhythmic harmony, which for a moment makes of life a united and musical whole; and it seems probable considering this that there is a music in the air for which we are always straining out years and which is only partially made audible to us on the transcripts which the great musicians are able to preserve. In forests and solitary places an attentive ear can detect something very like a vast pulsation, and if our ears were educated we might hear the music also which accompanies this. Though this is not a human voice it is yet a voice which some part of us can, if we let it, understand, and music perhaps because it is not human is the only thing made by men that can never be mean or ugly. 

If, therefore, instead of libraries, philanthropists would bestow free music upon the poor, so that at each street corner the melodies of Beethoven and Brahms and Mozart could be heard, it is probable that all crime and quarrelling would soon be unknown, and the work of the hand and the thoughts of the mind would flow melodiously in obedience to the laws of music. It would then be a crime to account street musicians or any one who interprets the voice of the god as other than a holy man, and our lives would pass from dawn to sunset to the sound of music.

First published in the National Review, 265 (March 1905). Republished in Woolf’s Collected Essays, vol. 1.

We study Freedom of Thought in Woolf’s Essays in our current Virginia Woolf Season, Saturday 6 April 2024, with Beth Rigel Daugherty.