Literature Quotes (Psychology of Music)

Psychology of Music by Carl E. Seashore.

Rhythm

1. "There are two fundamental factors in the perception of rhythm: an instinctive tendency to group impressions in hearing and a capacity for doing this with precision in time and stress". 
2. " The development of this ability results in power to handle vast numbers of sounds with ease, and this success is a source  of pleasure. And that is true, not only in poetry and in music, but in our natural hearing, even under primitive conditions. thus, Rhythm has become a biological principle of efficiency, a condition for advance and achievement and a perceptual source of satisfaction"
3. "Rhythm favours perception by grouping".
4. "Rhythm adjusts the strain of attention".
5. "Rhythm gives us a feeling of balance". 
6. "The sense of Rhythm gives us a feeling of freedom, luxury, and expanse. It gives us a feeling of achieving in moulding or creating".
7. "Rhythm gives us a feeling of power, it carries"
8. "It stimulates and lulls, contradictory as this may seem. Pronounced Rhythm brings on results in a mild form of ecstasy or absent mindedness, a loss of conciousness of the environment".
9. "Rhythmic Periodicity is instinctive". 
10. "Rhythm finds resonance in the whole organism. It is not a matter of the ear or the finger only; it is a matter of the two fundamental powers of life, namely, knowing and acting". 
11. "Rhythm arouses sustained and enriching associations".
12.  "Rhythm reaches out in extraordinary detail and complexity with progressive mastery".
13. "The instinctive craving for the experience of rhythm results in play, which is the free self-expression for the pleasure of expression". 

Loudness

1. "Volume as a musical characteristic of tone is a complex experience resting upon the frequency, the intensity , the duration, and the harmonic constitution of the physical stimulus, and largely influenced by associational affective, and motor factors in perception".

Pitch

1. "Pitch is the qualitative attribute of auditory sensation which denotes highness and lowness in the musical scale and is conditioned primarily on the frequency of sound waves".