Joseph Goddard (1833 1910) was a philosopher and historian of the music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this collection of essays, first published in 1862, he argues that 'music is the most original and perfect offspring of the human mind'. He first demonstrates this by comparing music with the other fine arts in their expression of emotion, and shows music to have its roots in language, as both depend on principles of rhythm, tone and phrase. He then illustrates how these elements can express the full spectrum of human thought and morality, including truth, faith,...

Joseph Goddard (1833 1910) was a philosopher, theorist and historian of the music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who developed some highly influential ideas about the relationship between music and human evolution. First published in 1868, this study presents Goddard's theory on the connection between music and the human spirit, in which he argues that two major counterparts of emotion instinctive and abstract correlate directly with two key elements of music: melody and harmony. He demonstrates this through a fascinating and thorough comparative analysis of the works...