160 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

OTTO RUDOLPH ORTMANN,

MUSIC PHILOSOPHY, AND
MUSIC EDUCATION
DAVID J. GONZOL
Idaho State University

What is music? What should we teach when we teach music? How should we? In
the early twentieth century, these most foundational questions relating to music
education were addressed by the highly regarded, though less well known, educa-
tor and researcher, Otto Rudolph Ortmann. In 1922, he published an article in
which he outlined a theory of musical experience, developing aspects of the phys-
ics of sound, qualitative theory, and Gestalt psychology, prefiguring important
ideas in music philosophy. Ortmann highly valued his theory, utilized it in other
research throughout his career, and influenced others such as Carl Seashore.
Few, however, seem to be aware of his work or its implications for music educa-
tion.1
The seminal 1922 article, “The Sensorial Basis of Music Appreciation,” was
written while Ortmann was teaching at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.2 While this article has received
little attention, much of his other research has been widely and well received.3
“Papa Ortmann,” well beloved of family and students, had a career Gerig charac-
terized as “a wedding between Materia Medica and Frau Musica.”4 A prolific

© Philosophy of Music Education Review, 12, no. 2 (Fall 2004)

 DAVID J. GONZOL 161

researcher, superb musician, and excellent teacher, he published articles on mu-

sic theory (one of which was reprinted and extended in 1983), musicology, music
reading, ear training, synesthesia, and jazz.5 His research on piano performance,
particularly his two books,6 is regarded as definitive; it has been discussed in a
thesis and four dissertations; some of it has been replicated. In Famous Pianists
and Their Technique, Gerig devoted a chapter to Ortmann.7 Ortmann’s theory of
listening types, in effect a theory of music cognition,8 was accepted by Robert
Neidlinger, Doreen Rao, and Bennett Reimer.9 In the 1992 Handbook of Research
on Music Teaching and Learning, F. R. Wilson and F. L. Roehmann praised the
significance of Ortmann’s body of research as undiminished in importance in
music education.10
It may be that Ortmann’s “Sensorial Basis” theory received little attention at
the time because too few were interested in such theories or in the synthesizing of
science and psychology or the touching on philosophy that he employed. Although
he influenced Seashore, the philosophical issues he began to explore would be
developed more strongly only decades later, by philosophers such as Monroe
Beardsley, Peter Kivy, and Jerrold Levinson. It seems that Ortmann’s theory not
only prefigures some ideas in recent music philosophy, but supports them as well.
If it does, then our increased understanding of music can provide a firmer basis
for developing better music education–one of Ortmann’s aims. In this article I
will describe his theory, sketch how it aligns with subsequent research, and con-
sider its value today. Ortmann attempted a comprehensive explanation of music’s
nature; as far as his explanation is accurate, that far it can help us understand
music and in turn music education.

THREE “ATTRIBUTES”
At the turn of the 1900s, it was popular to refer to “attributes” of sound. Ortmann
posited that all sensation, including sound, has three types of attributes. The pri-
mary attribute he termed extensity, by which he meant the breadth of the sensa-
tion that is perceived. Extensity has three forms, transtensity (frequency), intensity
(strength), and protensity (duration). These can be perceived individually but also
as sound’s secondary attributes, chief of which is quality. Tertiary attributes of
sound are made through association, either by (a) contiguity, linking a sound’s
quality with things experienced near in time to the sound, or by (b) similarity,
associating the quality with sensations of like extensity (for example, the expres-
sive brightness of a sound and a light). Ortmann believed that tertiary attributes
form “the threshold of musical imagination, and imagination in turn, of musical
enjoyment.”11 Accordingly, he concluded that music could express many things,
and that this is dependent on listeners, their individual histories, and their entire
field of sensations.
162 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

THE PRIMARY ATTRIBUTE OF EXTENSITY

In the Renaissance, Benedetti and Galileo found that pitch was related to
frequency, and in 1702, Sauveur was the first to state that overtones affect timbre.
In 1863, Helmholtz claimed that pitch is due to frequency, loudness to intensity,
and quality to the relative strength of overtones, a view widely accepted until the
turn of the century when others began positing more complex but more accurate
explanations.12 Ortmann drew on this history. As already noted, he wrote that the
only primary attribute, extensity, is comprised of three quantitatively measurable
characteristics: transtensity, intensity, and protensity. He cited precedents: Carl
Stumpf, in 1890, suggested that timbre was comprised of extension or volume,
pitch, and intensity;13 in 1905, Knight Dunlap had written of various attributes:

Psychologists in general agree that ‘sensation’ has the four characters of qual-
ity, intensity, duration (or protensity), and feeling-tone. To these some would
add volume (or extensity), and others would add vividness. There seems to be
no reason why the list should not be somewhat further extended by adding
local significance . . . and meaning. . . .14

In 1912, Dunlap added that by extensity he meant the “inchoate bigness” of

sensation, and that it was connected to pitch.15 In the same year, William
McDougall wrote that all sensations had intensity and duration, but only some
had extensity, as the occupation of space.16 In 1910, Edward Titchener had pos-
ited that pitch and size made up quality, but quality and intensity constitute tone
color.17
How many attributes and what they were seemed any researcher’s guess.
Ortmann sifted and reorganized them. Influenced by Gestalt psychology, he re-
ferred to Wolfgang Köhler’s view that sound has brightness, volume, vocality, and
pitch.18 Yet it is the accounts of Gestaltist James Ward (though Ortmann did not
refer specifically to him) and Seashore that most closely prefigure his theory.
Ward wrote that each single sensation has its own certain quality and that this
quality is determined by three quantitatively measurable attributes: intensity,
protensity (duration), and extensity (“massiveness or voluminousness”), arguing
that extensity is a valid attribute of all sensations, almost exactly prefiguring
Ortmann’s view.19 Ward further argued that variations in either intensity, protensity,
or extensity affect the overall quality of a sensation, a point Ortmann adopted.
By 1919, Seashore listed pitch, intensity, duration, and extensity as four indi-
vidual attributes.20 In 1922, Ortmann’s reorganization of these attributes crystal-
lized the modern foundation of the physics of sound. He argued that extensity is
comprised of the other three, that it is the entire breadth of a sound’s, or any
sensation’s, basic characteristics—and he broke new linguistic ground:
 DAVID J. GONZOL 163

Extensity has three forms: transtensity (trans = across) or the projection in

consciousness of the spatial dimension parallel to the recipient organism; in-
tensity (in = toward), or the projection in consciousness of the spatial dimen-
sion at right angles to the recipient organism and protensity (pro = with), or
the projection in consciousness of the uni-dimension of time.21

In a monograph on synesthesia, Ortmann rephrased this:

By sensation-form . . . I mean the impression upon consciousness of the si-
multaneous effect of transtensity, intensity and protensity; transtensity being
the number, area or distribution of end-organs affected, intensity the degree
to which they are affected, and protensity the length of time they are affected.22

By now, defining intensity this way had become traditional, and Ortmann’s
use of protensity followed Dunlap and Ward. In coining transtensity as the charac-
ter of being extended across something, Ortmann was original. He was also rea-
sonable, for he wrote that each vibration (the width of which is measurable across
space) of sound travels across to us; each also travels across the body of the sound-
producing object, and across the length of the ear’s cochlea–shorter lengths of it
for higher frequencies, longer for lower.
Ortmann argued that his theory had the advantage of using terms for sound
qualities that could also be used for all other sensations as Ward had done. Ortmann
also reasoned that transtensity, intensity, and protensity are primary since, if any
one is eliminated, the entire sensation is eliminated. In 1919, Seashore seemed to
have an inkling of this primacy for in his “Talent Charts,” subjects’ senses of pitch,
intensity, and time are measured, but not extensity, which he claimed was sensed
as volume and best measured as a sense of intensity. By the 1930s, Seashore had
modified his views further to be essentially the same as Ortmann’s.23 Seashore
now agreed that of tone’s physical characteristics, the three most basic, frequency,
amplitude, and duration, result in sonance–simply what Ortmann termed exten-
sity. A fourth characteristic Seashore identified is the form of the sound wave,
which we will see corresponds precisely to what Ortmann claimed were second-
ary attributes.24
Ortmann did miss two considerations. Since the 1870s, researchers had be-
gun to suggest that measurable frequency, intensity, and duration were not iso-
morphic, respectively, with pitch, loudness, and perceived duration. Loudness,
for example, is not due solely to intensity; in small part it is related to frequency.25
By Ortmann’s time this was confirmed. Curiously, he never acknowledged this,
and the reason is unclear. It may be for the same reason that Seashore, at times,
wrote as if there were such isomorphism. Seashore recognized that there was not,
but sometimes used such terms as frequency and pitch interchangeably, for he
saw that often the differences are negligible.26 Still, with his usual carefulness, one
would think that Ortmann would have wanted to make this clear.
164 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

Ortmann’s second error concerns measurable qualities and sensibility. The

problem is ancient. As proposed by Democritus in the 4th century B.C.E., and
later by Galileo and then Robert Boyle, quantitatively measurable qualities are
insensible as such and are distinguished from their sensible counterparts; Boyle
termed the former primary qualities, the latter secondary qualities. Frequencies,
intensities, and durations are measurable by tools but are inaudible; pitches,
loudnesses, and perceived durations are audible but not strictly or precisely re-
lated to their measured quantities.
Ortmann, then, inaccurately considered frequency and pitch as interchange-
able; likewise intensity and loudness, and measured duration and perceived dura-
tion. If he had realized his error, he might not have listed all of them under the
primary attribute of extensity. To his credit, as secondary attributes, he categorized
what extensities sound like–chiefly quality. To that degree his theory aligns with
the now accepted distinction between primary and secondary qualities.
Yet erring on these two relatively minor issues does not diminish his other,
frankly historical, claims. He is the first to identify frequency, intensity, and dura-
tion as the three essential and basic characteristics of sound and music, the view
held today.27 He was visionary in jettisoning other proposed attributes, and built
his theory logically and systematically. This much of his achievement is worth
acknowledging in the history of the physics of sound.

SECONDARY ATTRIBUTES AND QUALITY

In the generation before Ortmann, Helmholtz’s view predominated that the
perceived quality of sound is determined by the wave form, due to the relative
intensity of fundamental and overtone frequencies, with no consideration for
duration. Ortmann disagreed, writing that such a view was of “the physicist.”28
Ortmann proposed that transtensity, intensity, and protensity coexist in all sensa-
tion, producing secondary attributes, chief of which is quality.
Quality is the sensorial complex resulting from the simultaneous presence in
consciousness of the three primary attributes. It depends for its particular char-
acter [italics added] upon the relationships of quantity existing among the
three intensities. . . . [Q]uality is the psychological reaction to sensation-form.29

Quality is not a synthesis, he reasoned, since one can synthesize only that
which occurs separately. Each sound, each sensation, is a unique complex, per-
ceived by us as “flatness, shallowness, roundness, bluntness, sharpness, pointed-
ness, breadth, depth, volume, mass, shape, abruptness, smoothness, vagueness,
clearness, and others.”30 Moreover, any change in any degree changes the sensa-
tion and changes the quality. “No two tones of different pitch, intensity, or dura-
tion can have the same quality. Not even simple tones, such as those of the tuning
 DAVID J. GONZOL 165

fork.”31 Nor can opposing changes in a tone’s basic attributes somehow cancel out
each other. Ortmann noted that the structure of the ear’s cochlea makes impos-
sible a constant ratio between pitch and loudness. This makes high tones more
sharp and piercing, low tones more flat and broad, middle tones round. It is not
physically possible, say, to increase the loudness of a low tone until it becomes
piercing.
In opposition to Helmholtz’s widely accepted view, Ortmann claimed that the
onset, sustenance, and ending of a sound–now referred to as the envelope–help
determine quality as well. He was one of the first to remove attacks and decays
from recorded piano tones, finding that subjects had difficulty recognizing them
as piano tones. He changed playback speeds of vocal tones, and the altered vi-
brato confused subjects.32 He concluded that duration is integral to quality.
Further, he noticed similarity in sensation forms for different sensations. Maxi-
mum transtensity (a low pitch, or a wide visual or tactile area) with uniform inten-
sity yields a flat sound, or a flat area in sight or touch. To him, this similarity
explained synesthesia in a subject he observed for ten years and, more significantly,
suggested why we use words primarily describing qualities in one sense to de-
scribe qualities in other senses (for example, flatness and brightness for sounds or
sights).33
Ortmann posited that the feeling of sensation is determined by (a) the abso-
lute values of and ratios between the sensation’s characteristics and (b) the degree
of complexity of the sensation’s form. All moderate values tend toward pleasant-
ness, extreme ones toward unpleasantness–as a sound extremely high, loud, or
long. Sounds too complex through opposite extremes in values–as a high, but
short sound–can be unpleasant as well. However, he considered why the simple
sound of a tuning fork seems less pleasant than the more complex tone of a violin.
He reasoned that some complexity holds our attention better, “not because it is in
itself physiologically more pleasant.”34 Preference of complexity is an acquired
taste. All else being equal, simplicity in sensation–smooth tones, smooth sights,
smooth touches–is more pleasant.
To summarize thus far: for Ortmann, the primary, insensible attribute of ex-
tensity (consisting of frequency, intensity, and duration) is sensed as a multitude
of secondary attributes–the chief being quality–a virtually limitless variety of sen-
sations in a virtually limitless variety of pleasantness or unpleasantness (prefer-
ence being a different issue). But the objectivity or subjectivity of these qualities
was an unsettled issue. Likely he thought primary attributes objective, as Galileo
did; at least, he never questioned this. But he had difficulty deciding on secondary
qualities. In 1922, he equivocated: “For the primary and most of the secondary
attributes are in a way, common to all persons, accompanied, at the most, by
variations in degree.”35 In 1935, he was more sure: “Tone-quality, then, is a sub-
166 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

jective reaction.”36 Yet by 1939, he was omitting “subjective.”37 This seems to reflect
twentieth-century doubts about the objectivity of sensation, a notion that would
affect music teaching, as we will see below. What he did determine was that some
sensations are impossible: “A loud-surfacy tone, a weak-brilliant tone, a thin-full
tone are physical and psychological impossibilities; just as impossible as a square
circle, a tenor with an inferiority complex.”38 He had no doubt that we can accu-
rately hear and describe tonal qualities, though he remained unsure about the
objectivity of this. In his planned but unfortunately never written third volume on
the psychology of piano playing he likely would have explained his position more
fully.
Support for Ortmann’s ideas is now widespread. Science has long accept-
ed the distinction, very much in line with his explanation, between primary and
secondary qualities. More recent support comes from Gestalt psychologists. In
1915, Köhler urged calling perceived figures and forms “qualities.”39 In 1922,
Max Wertheimer wrote that perceptive stimulus groups are gestalts, not because
physiology is denied, but because of physiology.40
Later, Beardsley argued that perceptual aspects are indeed sensed from physi-
cal ones: a smooth chair, a vivid painting.41 And recently, Stephen Handel posited
a system strikingly like Ortmann’s in that at one level we hear raw physical fea-
tures: intensities, durations, pitches. At a second level we hear features not physi-
cally measurable: “warmth, roughness, hollowness, brightness, and so on . . . ab-
stractions, reflections, and translations of the actual physical energies.”42 Recently,
others have argued for the non-measurable objectivity of secondary qualities.43
That the physical basis of sound and music is tri-partite, as Ortmann proposed,
is now universally accepted. That these three physical bases have audible coun-
terparts as a second class, and that all three determine quality are by now accepted
as well. There is no direct evidence that Ortmann consciously attempted to align
his theory with traditional qualitative theory, although it does so, save that mea-
sured frequency, intensity, and duration are inaudible as such. He is the first to
define quality in the sense accepted now, against Helmholtz’s definition, and as
an influence on Seashore–perhaps the author through whom his ideas received
their widest currency. Likewise visionary are his ideas that commonalties between
sound and other senses have a physical basis; how that may explain commonali-
ties in our descriptions of sounds and other sensations; and why raw sounds, and
thus music, tend toward pleasantness or unpleasantness. While the most progress
in research regarding the objectivity of the perceived qualities of sound and music
has been very recent, his theory provides a strong basis for such research, as well as
for what he proposed as a third class of attributes, which begins to deal more
directly with the meaning of music as an issue in the philosophy of music.
 DAVID J. GONZOL 167

TERTIARY ATTRIBUTES
Remarkably, there seems to be no precedent for Ortmann’s idea that tertiary
attributes are some type of humanly meaningful qualities “read into tonal sensa-
tions”—into secondary attributes. Ortmann’s tri-level theory of the musical expe-
rience resembles strongly the qualitative theory of primary, secondary, and ter-
tiary qualities. Yet it was only after his 1922 article that Gestalt researchers and
others began to develop the notion of tertiary qualities. This aspect of his theory
may be the most ground-breaking.
Ortmann wrote, “Tertiary attributes are attributes read into tonal sensation
through the action of sensation, present or past, of other sensory fields.”44 Tones
are “brittle” or “feathery” though not per se; yet we speak of them that way be-
cause they somehow resemble actual brittleness and featheriness. As evidenced
in the title of his article, “The Sensorial Basis of Music Appreciation,” he thought
these tertiary attributes give rise to the meaning of music, “because this class of
attributes forms the threshold of musical imagination, and imagination, in turn,
of musical enjoyment.”45
For Ortmann, tertiary attributes rise through sensorial association. He made
four points about this. First, associations are made consciously. His teaching of
children led him to believe that with the very young it might be possible to trace
such conscious associations. Second associations made later “are often extremely
complex and in their normal operation for the adult usually defy analysis.”46 We
may think our association of a certain tone with brittleness is instinctive, but
Ortmann believed associations are formed through long chains of steps, steps
no longer necessary (or possible) for adults to retrace consciously. Third, associa-
tions are made between different tones and also between tones and other types of
sensations when there are similarities between transtensities, intensities, or pro-
tensities of tones and sensations. Musical tones are “noisy,” he argued, because
their physical characteristics are quite complex. Piano tones are “bell-like” be-
cause they physically resemble the sound of real bells.47
Important to Ortmann was that the resemblance of sounds to sights, touches,
or tastes gives rise to descriptors common to more than one sense. He gave “bright-
ness” as an example because so many researchers had identified it as a fundamen-
tal attribute of sound. He reasoned that, as a secondary attribute, we call a vision
“bright” when it is of great intensity compared to its transtensity; that is, a strong
radiance in a relatively smaller area. As a tertiary attribute, high tones are bright
because in sound there is “an increasing ratio of intensity to transtensity as we
ascend.”48 “Sharpness” is sensed when there is great intensity and little transtensity:
a needle or a high staccato pitch. An unyielding tactile area and a strong sound
168 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

we call “hard” because they both have much intensity. Sparkling sights or sounds
have minimal protensities and minimal transtensities. He even developed a table
of the primary attributes and the senses usually associated with them for sixteen
tertiary attribute descriptors including rich, dull, colorful, clear, pinched, and sour.49
He further pointed to our associations of nearness with strong sounds, farness
with weak sounds, calling them “hazy, veiled, mysterious, intimate.”50 He explained
that we associate nearness with high sounds and farness with low sounds, because
distance damps higher partials: nearby thunder crashes; in the distance it rumbles.
Even high and low tones become the tertiary attributes of “height” or “depth,” or
even “ethereality, heavenliness, profundity, gravity” through “a complex chain of
visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic association.”51
Ortmann’s fourth and final point is that physical sensation plus association
colored to some degree by our own “emotional complexes” results in “feeling-
tone.”52 Moderate sensations tend toward pleasantness; extreme sensations toward
unpleasantness. Yet the number and complexity of associations learned can result
in experience of vast variety.

As a result of the influence of these complexes, a single tone, even, may ex-
press longing, remorse, and what not. Nay, even more. Since such attributes
are tertiary, that is, essentially dependent upon association with other sense
departments, the same tone may express beauty to one, ugliness to another,
and neither beauty nor ugliness to a third.53

He proposed that this explains the great diversity of reactions he witnessed at a

performance of Le Sacre du printemps, during which no two people, he believed,
had had the exact same experience.54 His notion could explain the most opposite
reactions: “After a wonderful novelty, one musician exclaims: ‘Wonderful!’ and
another equally talented musician: ‘Rotten!’”55

A performance of Tristan is a world of poetry to the adolescent girl; it is “worse

than a pig-kill” to a scientist of my acquaintance; it is a fitting environment
for her new evening gown to Mrs. Smith; a study in altered chords to the
harmony student; a reaction experiment to the psychologist.56

He believed his theory “materially simplifies the problems of the complex reac-
tions to music.”57 It is certainly an improvement, as he remarked, over the discrep-
ancies in the many previous studies of tonal attributes. It is more systematically
logical and more factual. It is by no means all complete or even correct, but
certainly has something of value to offer physics, psychology, philosophy, and
music education. He is the first to attempt a tripartite, hierarchical structure of
attributes–or, ostensibly, qualities–and without apparent reference to traditional
qualitative theory.58
 DAVID J. GONZOL 169

In 1690, John Locke had posited tertiary qualities as “bare powers,” like a
flame has power to melt wax. In 1890, Christian von Ehrenfels piqued interest in
Gestalt qualities, qualities other than primary ones.59 Only after Ortmann’s theory
did other researchers develop the notion of tertiary qualities as artistic or aesthetic
qualities. In 1925, Wertheimer complained that “only we Europeans, at a late
stage of culture, have hit upon the idea of separating the physical and psychic of
many physical processes. . . .” He invited readers to “think of someone dancing. In
his dance there is joy and grace. How is that?”60 In 1937, Köhler took the position
that tertiary qualities are objective. Though perhaps indefinable, he thought
it obvious there is “the Mozart-character of some music and the Brahms-quality
of another.”61 And, strikingly like Ortmann, Handel advanced the notion that we
hear at to a third level by taking qualities from the second level and hearing them
as objects (“violinness,” “President Carterness,” “airplaneness”); he likened them
to James Gibson’s “affordances.”62 Further, in recent years, significant arguments
have been advanced for the objectivity of tertiary qualities.63 Ortmann was not
convinced about that objectivity, but clearly he considered secondary attributes
as what we physically sense–what we now call secondary qualities–and tertiary
attributes as interpretive, cultural, often expressive qualities–that is, tertiary
qualities.
Ortmann’s physics of sound, more strongly factual than any previous, gave
him a strong basis for positing that we recognize similarities among sensations.
Others wrote of sensations having extensities, protensities, and so on, but he was
original in suggesting that we take resemblances between senses as various quali-
ties–roundness, brightness, sourness. To suggest we “read into” those qualities
tertiary attributes is even more original.
Significantly, he avoided a precise definition of tertiary attributes, instead de-
picting them by examples and explaining how they arise; and sometimes his ex-
amples of secondary and tertiary attributes seem similar. Perhaps this issue is tied
to his ambivalence about their subjectivity or objectivity. He was certain that there
should be varied reactions to Le Sacre, but equally certain that all would appre-
hend the sparkling in Moszkowski’s Étincelles.64 And if we could, as he suggested,
trace associative chains to their objective beginnings, at what point might such
chains become less objective? At least, he did not believe that musical meanings
arise completely out of our imaginations, with no firm ties to physical sensation.
Still, he gave a plausible beginning explanation as to why we use the same
descriptors across different senses. Further, Ortmann gives the sense that tertiary
attributes are the ones we value the most–positively or negatively (“Wonderful!”
“Rotten!”). Unfortunately, he was not careful to distinguish music from mere sound,
nor more physical tertiary attributes from more humanly emotional ones. Most
unfortunately, he did little to explain philosophically tertiary attributes, that is, to
170 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

explore reasons why we would apprehend physical sensation A as gloomy and

sensation B as feathery.
But he did begin to explain the opportunity to do so; his title (“A Sensorial
Basis”) reflects his awareness of this emphasis. And there seems little against the
likelihood that, at least in part, tertiary attributes (qualities) are formed through
long chains of conscious associations, more or less pleasant or unpleasant accord-
ing to their extremity or complexity, which come to seem automatic. Perhaps the
only absolutely certain, but of course impossible, test for this notion would be to
observe subjects’ every conscious and unconscious experience with music from
their very beginnings.
If his theory is valid at least that far, what fuller, more successful philosophical
explanations of music can his theory support? Not all, certainly. For example, it
cannot support formalist theory. If somehow the subject of music is moving forms
of tones (per Hanslick et al.), it is hard to see why Ortmann’s idea of association is
needed. Nor can it help creation theory or music explained by it (for example,
change ringing or the music of John Cage), as the focus there is the process, not
the product. Since one is so often never sure of what musical sounds will result, it
is hard to form reliable associations, meaningful over time.
Certainly Ortmann was thinking of an explanation of music as expressive. His
ideas have nothing to contribute to arousal theory; he made it clear that we con-
sciously associate music with tertiary attributes–not that music controls us more
or less directly. Yet his work does provide support for representation and semiotic
theories; more often than many at that time he pointed out how music can re-
semble, and how (perhaps sometimes as a sign) it can be associated with other
sounds and sensations.
Yet Ortmann’s theory has even more compatibility with the recent appear-
ance of expression theory. Kivy argued that music can resemble human gestures
and speech, and have cultural associations (as trumpets with royalty), arguing,
very like Ortmann: “To confine the resemblance possibilities of music to the ‘sounds
like’ phenomenon alone would be to fly in the face of the human propensity to
blur the distinctions between the senses and their ‘proper’ objects.”65
Ortmann’s explanation also accords with all but the last two points of Jerrold
Levinson’s development of this theory that music is expressive of emotion or other
psychic conditions if, in appropriate context, appropriately backgrounded listen-
ers readily and aptly hear the music as expressive, in a sui generis or musical man-
ner, as by an indefinite persona.66 In his separate theory of music cognition,
Ortmann held firmly that every musical sound depended on context–no note or
chord or repetition could ever sound the same way twice.67 And as he certainly
implies, it is through constructing chains of association that we acquire appro-
priate backgrounds for experiencing music. He further asserted that associations
 DAVID J. GONZOL 171

eventually function automatically–that is, readily–and need function aptly; to

him it was essential to apprehend sparkling in Étincelles and not, say, velvetiness
or despair. He admitted that listeners unsure of what to do with Le Sacre–or sure
of the inappropriate thing–were too unfamiliar with the piece, or its style, to have
more apt ways of taking it.
He did not make provision, as Levinson did, for the idea that expressive music
is experienced as produced sui generis by a persona, which may have given Ortmann
some means to distinguish music from mere sound. Yet it is of course too much to
expect him to have fashioned a perfectly valid philosophy of music; he was con-
centrating on a sensorial basis. But that his ideas accord so well with current ideas
in science, psychology, and philosophy demonstrates their power. It also suggests
that some important implications for music education might arise from his theory.

TEACHING MUSIC’S PRIMARY QUALITIES

Allowing for corrective updates to Ortmann’s terminology and theory–substi-
tuting “qualities” for “attributes,” and the notion that measurable qualities are
insensible–students can be taught that the only dimensions of sound are primary
qualities, and these are frequency, intensity, and duration. Ortmann made little of
the fact that these are measurable, and that is a good cue: we are on the right track
in thinking that the most measuring that students need to deal with in music is
when they are using a metronome, tuning fork, electronic tuner, or stopwatch.
Many generations have learned music excellently without measurement or mea-
suring tools, ignorant of these inaudible dimensions. They belong, strictly speak-
ing, to science. Learning them can be supportive of music education, and is to be
recommended, but it is not strictly necessary in learning music. Primary qualities
are best used when measuring technical features of music is valuable.

TEACHING MUSIC’S SECONDARY QUALITIES

The three dimensions of sound are heard as secondary qualities, such as pitch,
loudness, perceived duration, and their mixture, quality (which is timbre in a
rather more inclusive sense). It is essential to deal with them since they are the
stuff of which music is made. Students must learn high and low, loud and soft,
long and short, and the raw feel of musical sounds, along with their finer grada-
tions, endlessly varied but sure in every culture: major scales or slendro scales, the
power of the tuba or the quietness of the koto, the free rhythm of recitativo secco or
the syncopation of jazz, a country twang or a French oboe sound. In addition,
combining pitches gives harmonies; combining pitches and rhythms produces
melodies; combining melodies can result in counterpoint. Considering dynam-
ics, articulations, textures, forms, genres, ensembles, every style has its own em-
172 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

phases, and some degree of mastery of these–from a young child singing well the
jump rope game, Kuma San, to a violist playing flawlessly in Bach’s St. Matthew
Passion, to someone being aware of Tony Bennett altering phrases–is a necessary
part of music learning. This may be called teaching technique in music education.
In relation to science, we could teach that the three dimensions of sound
operate in various combinations we hear as pitch, loudness, perceived duration,
and especially quality. Though Ortmann did not coin envelope for sound, he is
the first to explain accurately the concept. And, from his explanation, we speak
legitimately of qualities in descriptive terms: low, round, clear, smooth. This is
not to claim that any term should be (or could be) perfectly precise. As long as it
is significantly precise for the occasion, a term such as “lower,” “rounder,” “clearer,”
and “smoother” may be most appropriate, as Ortmann strongly urged in piano
pedagogy.

TEACHING MUSIC’S TERTIARY QUALITIES

If teaching music’s primary qualities is, in the main, teaching science, and
teaching its secondary qualities is teaching technique, then teaching music’s ter-
tiary qualities is teaching culture and value–what we might call teaching style in
music education.68 Much, if not most, music has tertiary qualities. Much of that,
if not most, has expression. Yet at times it is difficult to determine if it has either
and, if it does, what sorts of qualities or expressions it has. Does Cage’s Imaginary
Landscapes for Twelve Radios have any tertiary qualities? Do peals of Kent Treble
Bob Majors express anything? I myself am unsure, because I have not studied
them sufficiently. It is hard to say “yes” to either, but I believe Landscapes is,
simply, something to do (we know that many would be hard pressed to defend it
as being music), and the change ringing has the tertiary quality of fascination in
its dazzling permutations but is not claimed to express anything–at least, no hu-
man states, traits, or emotions. It might be mistaken for cheerfulness, but after
the first hour, it become apparent that what seemed to be an expression of emo-
tion is in fact not that, for it does not have the emotional placing of human cheer.
Now, it can be difficult pinning down the expression in a passage of Brahms,
or just what a certain Beatles refrain is “about” musically, but often it is relatively
easy. While Ortmann remained skeptical about the objectivity of tertiary qualities
(and there is not room to settle that point here), we can admit that (a) some music
appears to have no tertiary qualities (and we may find it difficult to understand
how it is music); (b) some music appears to have tertiary qualities, but not expres-
sion; (c) some music seems expressive though it is difficult to understand it; and
(d) some music seems to have easily recognized expressiveness as, for example,
the mournfulness of the music as well as the lyrics of “Who Killed Cock Robin?”
 DAVID J. GONZOL 173

As Fred Roger observed, the upshot here is that often “it’s all right to won-
der.”69 Music teachers are indeed trying to eradicate ignorance, but sometimes we
simply do not know. Acknowledging that can be educative too. Yet when we do
know, or even know in part, or even strongly suspect, we can teach that. Ortmann
was sure that somehow some music has “sourness” or “profundity” and very many
would agree. At least, he advanced by one step an argument for expression as
objective by positing a physical basis for it. That of course does not settle all the
concomitant philosophical issues, but we cannot wait for that to be resolved be-
fore we teach expressive music as expressive music. In Ortmann’s view, we must
teach that way.
In the meantime, Ortmann’s concept of tertiary qualities proves most useful
in music education. Primarily, it urges that tertiary qualities are the most impor-
tant thing about music (though it does not prove that). Constance Gee warned
against advocating music education for non-musical reasons (for example, to sup-
port mathematics education) and even against teaching music and its most pre-
cious qualities as if they were not precious, delicate, nor hard to teach–as if teach-
ing “a quality of life” is like selling vacuum cleaners.

Music educators teach because they love it and they want others to love it.
They teach because making music alone and with others is an immensely
satisfying experience; and they believe that knowing about musical forms and
traditions imbues the making and the listening with intellectual and emo-
tional grist.70

When music is taught as a technical skill only, music-making and listening be-
come mechanical, merely analytical, a note-spinning without style–even unmusi-
cal. Ortmann’s theory advances us beyond wishful thinking about technique and
style by laying a logical foundation for both of them.
However, what about teaching music which seems to be literally unexpressive,
or even music which is unstylish, having apparently no tertiary qualities? It is hard
to see how Ortmann’s theory could help us teach such music; it does not seem to
help with Imaginary Landscapes, for instance. Yet I suggest applying his explana-
tion in teaching Kent Treble Bob Majors by teaching students to revel in its per-
mutations and their dazzle.
From all this we can learn two things. First, if I do not understand something
of a certain music’s tertiary qualities, I can teach that music only mechanically, or
about qualities which may or may not be apt or correct. Second, I must study well
that music and its status regarding tertiary qualities. This can be difficult with
unfamiliar styles and pieces, but music educators need to understand well both
the technique and style of music they teach. However, most music is expressive
174 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

(occasionally even representational), and what most of us have studied most closely.
Such expression or representation must be taught faithfully. One must teach “Who
Killed Cock Robin?” with the apt mournfulness and Mussorgsky’s “The Great
Gate of Kiev” with its particular power and grandeur, and each within its appro-
priate and respective ranges of expression.
Ortmann pointed out that secondary qualities are the basis for tertiary quali-
ties. Learning technique is the foundation for learning style. It follows that teach-
ers can point to the minor scale and falling phrases in “Cock Robin,” and to
Mussorgsky’s very Russian emphasis of the major scale’s minor triads (for example,
the submediant) as features for the expressions, respectively, of grief and gran-
deur. Even non-musical information can help. Jimi Hendrix lived in a revelrous,
albeit tense, time; one can look to find if he lived that way and if his music is
tensely revelrous. Sometimes students notice the style and expression first and
can then learn the concomitant technique; in that case the process is reversed. Yet
knowing both technique and expressive style, as Ortmann suggests, constitutes a
fuller understanding of the music.
According to Ortmann’s idea that associations are built and built individually
(though in communities), it follows that different musical styles have different
values in expression for a particular technique. For example, a Renaissance tritone
and a Bebop tritone are very different. In the Renaissance, tritones were used with
caution and care; they were considered very tense. Beboppers use them more
freely, even carelessly, often in fun, not thinking of them as being tense as Renais-
sance people did. Given the particular value of a specific technique’s attendant
expression, then, we teach much by association, not only through how we con-
sider it and perform it, but also through relating how people of that music consid-
ered it. This is one reason why making or listening to music with those who well
understand it is so important. We take cues from their behavior to learn what is
valued, how it is valued, and to what extent.
This includes, as Ortmann argued, expressive speech about music. Charles
Leonard and Robert House were convinced that expressive speech led away from
music’s meaning; for example, if students concentrated on how some music “goes
like an elephant,” they would learn nothing about its true expression.71 Simple
speech might not adequately tell of many musical expressions, but words such as
mournfulness, grandeur, hope, or joy are not simple. They are quite complex, able
to communicate a wide range of various shades of meaning while clustering around
a central concept. The point is to use such words well. Then language can de-
scribe expressive music appropriately and adequately. Perfect authentic cadences
in recitative express finality. Sometimes they are rather ordinary, sometimes pi-
quant, and sometimes terrifying. Using those very terms can help students learn
to hear and perform those qualities intelligently and, later, independently.
Recitative absolutely depends on that intelligence.
 DAVID J. GONZOL 175

If teaching music means teaching technique and style, are some approaches
better than others? Which methods does Ortmann’s theory support? Tellingly,
Ortmann’s theory gives no grounds to favor performing over listening or vice versa.
However, the term ‘Music Appreciation,’ which for us conjures listening lessons,
is in his title, although his discussions of learning most frequently involve his
piano students. Here is another cue, supporting what David Elliott argued: “Mu-
sic-making and music-listening are two sides of the same coin.”72 Ortmann once
told of some varied, mostly inappropriate, reactions at a concert. He thought the
solution is, first, that squirmy children “should be at home, playing folk-tunes.”73
Then, he suggested, study should bear the burden:

But improvement will come when, through adequate training in music, there
is first-hand acquaintance with the literature, non-professional practice of some
instrument and of ensemble playing in any form; not the non-discriminative
passive attitude of the radio fan, nor the effusive emotionalism of the club-
read listener, but intelligent active participation, preferably under the guid-
ance of competent teachers, at levels of advancement adapted to the capabili-
ties of the individual.74

Ortmann’s theory does not necessitate a particular balance, and by and large can-
not be used to find a final resolution to this question. However, he did leave the
way open for and elsewhere recommended that teaching technique can be suc-
cessful through a combination of both performance and listening approaches.
This is something to keep in mind as we debate our personal position.

CONCLUSION
Gee claimed music “immensely satisfying”; Anthony Storr wrote that “great
music facilitates a new organization of our inner experience,” for it has “such an
unrivalled power to exalt, console, and to make sense of the disorder of our day-to-
day existence.”75 These sentiments may be what Alfred North Whitehead meant
when he wrote of the need for vivid values; that science alone cannot give a com-
plete view of the world (not that anyone ever showed it could).76 Applying
Ortmann’s theory, we may know of a chord’s measured intensity in watts per square
meter, but that alone is no substitute for knowing its power though experiencing
it. Further, we need to know why that power is precious to us, to know its value.
Music educators can teach for these things. According to Ortmann, they must
teach for them, often by modeling their valuation of music, and also by explaining
that valuation. Teaching music requires teaching technique and style. “The fer-
tilization of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art,” wrote Whitehead.77
Surely Ortmann would have agreed. Art and music are to help us live and can be
of immense help, but learning them must include studying both technique and
style, both mechanical and cultural qualities.
176 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

In the final sentence of his article, Ortmann summarized his position: “The
attributes of the separate tone form the real basis of auditory reaction, and through
this, of musical experience in all its complexity.”78 He believed his theory was an
accurate sensorial basis for what we do with music, a valid explanation of how we
listen and hear musical sounds in certain ways and not others, and that the asso-
ciations we make with those sounds are an essential part of musical experiences.
These notions are in large measure valid and carry sound implications for music
education.
His tripartite theory of attributes startlingly resembles modern qualitative theory
with its primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities. He was a pioneer in the modern
science of the physics of sound, and was singularly original and insightful about
music’s sounds and meaning. As a precursor to recent philosophical research, he
provided a plausible explanation of music’s physics and how we hear music. From
his theory, we find strong support for the ideas that music has technique and style,
and that music educators must teach both well. Teaching both, we teach music in
its fullness and richness, “in all its complexity.”

NOTES
1
David J. Gonzol, “Otto Rudolph Ortmann’s Theories of Musical Experience and Their
Implications for Music Education” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland at College Park,
1995). In this dissertation, I more fully explicate and evaluate Ortmann’s theory of at-
tributes as well as his theory of listening types, according to past but especially recent re-
search. The latter theory is not dealt with in the present article.
2
Otto Rudolph Ortmann, “The Sensorial Basis of Music Appreciation,” Journal of Com-
parative Psychology 2 (1922): 227–256.
3
Reginald Gerig, “The Great Otto Ortmann,” The Piano Quarterly 112 (Winter, 1980–
81): 22–29; Dorothea Ortmann-Seletzky, “Otto Ortmann–A Biography,” in The Music of
Otto Ortmann: A Compilation, ed. Dorothea Ortmann-Seletzky and Earl J. Geyer (Balti-
more: Park Lane Press, 1984), 3–4; W. McClellan, “Ortmann, Otto Rudolph,” in The New
Grove Dictionary of American music, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie (London:
Macmillan, 1986), 3:453. Ortmann was born in Baltimore in 1889 to parents who were
musicians (his mother was offered a contract at the Metropolitan Opera). He studied at
Baltimore City College, Johns Hopkins University, and Peabody Conservatory. Under his
Directorship at Peabody from 1928 to 1941, the Conservatory’s standards were raised con-
siderably. From 1942 he taught at Goucher College, where he was Chair of the Depart-
ment of Music from 1948 to 1957. Afterward, he taught privately, and died in 1979 at age
90. He translated the second volume of Unterweisung im Tonsatz at Hindemith’s request
and was a founder of The American Musicological Society. On May 31, 1964, he received
the Peabody Conservatory Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Service.
4
Gerig, “The Great Otto Ortmann,” 22.
5
For a list of Ortmann’s publications, see Gonzol, Ortmann’s Theories.
 DAVID J. GONZOL 177

6
Ortmann, The Physical Basis of Piano Touch and Tone: An Experimental Investigation
of the Effect of the Player’s Touch Upon the Tone of the Piano (New York: E. P. Dutton,
1925); The Physiological Mechanics of Piano Technique: An Experimental Study of the
Nature of Muscular Action as Used in Piano Playing, and of the Effects Thereof Upon the
Piano Key and the Piano Tone (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1929).
7
Gerig, Famous Pianists and Their Technique (Washington, DC: Robert B. Luce, 1974).
8
Ortmann, “Types of Listeners: Genetic Considerations,” in The Effects of Music, ed.
Max Schoen (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1927), 38–76.
9
Robert J. Neidlinger, “Bring Learning Theory to the Listening Lesson: Psychological
Guidelines for Developing Perceptive Consumers of Music,” Music Educators Journal 58
(March, 1972): 52–53, 97–100, 103, 105; Doreen Rao, “Craft, Singing Craft and Musical
Experience: A Philosophical Study With Implications for Vocal Music Education as Aes-
thetic Education” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1988); Bennett Reimer, A Phi-
losophy of Music Education, 1st ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), chap. 7;
Reimer, A Philosophy of Music Education, 2nd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NY: 1989), chap. 7.
10
F. R. Wilson and F. L. Roehmann, “The Study of Biomechanical and Physiological
Processes in Relation to Musical Performance,” in Handbook of Research on Music Teach-
ing and Learning: A Project of the Music Educators National Conference, ed. Richard Colwell
(New York: Schirmer, 1992), 510.
11
Ortmann, “Sensorial Basis,” 245.
12
Hermann von Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische
Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik [A Theory on the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological
Basis for the Theory of Music] (Braunschweig: F. Vieweg und Sohn, 1863).
13
Carl Stumpf, Tonpsychologie (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1890).
14
Knight Dunlap, “Extensity and Pitch,” Psychological Review 12 (1905): 287.
15
Dunlap, A System of Psychology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 34.
16
William McDougall, Physiological Psychology (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1905).
17
Edward Bradford Titchener, A Text-Book of Psychology (New York: Macmillan, 1910).
18
Wolfgang Köhler, “Akustiche Untersuchungen. III” [“Acoustic Investigations. III”],
Zeitschrift für Psychologie 72 (1915): 1–192.
19
James Ward, Psychological Principles (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press, 1918),116ff. As the validity of extensity had been in some doubt, especially for taste
and smell, Ward argued for its validity by giving the example of a drop of sugar water on the
tongue, which spreads, increasing that sensation’s extensity. As for the sense of smell, Ward
admitted that humans can hardly control the extent of the surfaces of their olfactory organ,
though he believed dogs could!
20
Carl Seashore, The Psychology of Musical Talent (Boston: Silver Burdett, 1919).
21
Ortmann, “Sensorial Basis,” 228.
22
Ortmann, “Theories of Synesthesia in the Light of a Case of Color-Hearing,” Human
Biology 2 (1933): 168.
23
While it is not known for certain if Seashore knew Ortmann’s “Sensorial Basis,” he
highly praised Ortmann’s two books on the piano, in which Ortmann referred to his theory.
178 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

See Seashore, “The Psychology of Music: III. The Quality of Tone: (1) Timbre” Music
Educators Journal 23 (September, 1936): 24–26; “The Psychology of Music: IV. The Qual-
ity of Tone: (2) Sonance” Music Educators Journal 23 (October, 1936): 20–22; Psychology
of Music (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938); In Search of Beauty in Music: A Scientific Ap-
proach to Musical Aesthetics (New York: The Ronald Press, 1947).
24
Seashore also listed extensity, but in the earlier sense, as the “size” of a sound al-
though he did not consider it a basic characteristic.
25
E.g. Pietro Blaserna, The Theory of Sound in Its Relation to Music (New York: D.
Appleton and Co., 1876); Edmund Catchpool, A Text-Book of Sound (London: W. B. Clive,
1894).
26
Seashore, Psychology of Music; In Search of Beauty.
27
Stephen Handel, Listening: An Introduction to the Perception of Auditory Events (Cam-
bridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989).
28
Ortmann, “What is Tone-Quality?” The Musical Quarterly 21 (1935): 442.
29
Ortmann, “Sensorial Basis,” 233–234.
30
Ibid., 236.
31
Ortmann, “What is Tone-Quality?” 443.
32
Ibid.
33
Ortmann, “Theories of Synesthesia.”
34
Ortmann, “Sensorial Basis,” 245.
35
Ibid., 254
36
Ortmann, “What is Tone-Quality?” 448.
37
Ortmann, “The Psychology of Tone-Quality,” in Papers Read at the International
Congress of Musicology: Held at New York: September 11th to 16th, 1939, ed. Arthur Mendel,
Gustav Reese, and Gilbert Chase (New York: Music Educators’ National Conference for
the American Musicological Society, 1944), 227–232.
38
Ortmann, “Piano Technique in the Light of Experiment,” The American Mercury 4
(December, 1927): 445.
39
Köhler, “Akustiche Untersuchungen. III.”
40
Max Wertheimer, “Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt. I” [“Investigations on
Gestalt Theory. I”], Psychologie Forschung 4 (1922): 47–58.
41
Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1958).
42
Handel, Listening, 181.
43
A. D. Smith, “Of Primary and Secondary Qualities,” The Philosophical Review 99
(1990): 221–254; Clive Stroud-Drinkwater, “The Naïve Theory of Color,” Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 54 (1994): 345–354.
44
Ortmann, “Sensorial Basis,” 245.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid., 246.
47
Ortmann, Physiological Mechanics.
 DAVID J. GONZOL 179

48
Ortmann, “Sensorial Basis,” 248.
49
Ibid., 250.
50
Ibid., 252.
51
Ibid.
52
Ibid., 253.
53
Ibid., 254.
54
Ortmann, “On Listening to Music,” The American Mercury 8 (May, 1931): 116–119.
55
Ortmann, “Types of Listeners,” 67.
56
Ortmann, Physical Basis, vii.
57
Ortmann, “Sensorial Basis,” 255.
58
However, it seems very likely that Ortmann read Ward’s Psychological Principles, in
which Ward approved of Locke’s position.
59
Christian von Ehrenfels, “Ueber ‘Gestaltqualitäten’” [“On ‘Gestalt Qualities’”],
Vierteljahrsschrift der wissenschaftliche Philosophie 14 (1890): 249–292.
60
Wertheimer, “Gestalt Theory,” trans. N. Nairn-Allison, Social Research 11 (1944):
96. First published in Symposion: Philosophische Zeitschrift für Forschung und Aussprache
1 (1925): 39–60.
61
Köhler, “Psychological Remarks on Some Questions of Anthropology,” The Ameri-
can Journal of Psychology 50 (1937): 286.
62
Handel, Listening, 181; James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Percep-
tion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979).
63
For reviews of related literature, see Gonzol, Ortmann’s Theories, 110–138; Göran
Hermerén, “Qualities, Aesthetic,” in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. Michael Kelly (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 4:97–99. See Roger Scruton’s support of primary,
secondary, and tertiary qualities in his The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1997), especially chap. 6.
64
Ortmann, Physiological Mechanics; “What is Tone-Quality?”
65
Peter Kivy, Sound Sentiment: An Essay on the Musical Emotions, Including the Com-
plete Text of The Corded Shell (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 54–55.
66
Jerrold Levinson, “Musical Expressiveness,” in The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical
Essays (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996).
67
Ortmann, “Notes on the Nature of Harmony,” The Musical Quarterly 7 (1921): 366–
375; “Types of Listeners.”
68
Although ‘style’ often includes musical technique, I am using it here only in the sense
of what is missing if one plays all the correct notes (technique) without any expression or
whatever else there must be to make it a (at least partially) musical performance—i.e.,
tertiary qualities.
69
Fred M. Rogers, “Did You Know?” (1979), in Family Communications: Mister Rogers’
Neighborhood, http://www.misterrogers.org/mister_rogers_neighborhood/did_you_know.asp
(accessed August 10, 2003).
70
Constance Bumgarner Gee, “The ‘Use and Abuse’ of Arts Advocacy and Its Conse-
180 PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC EDUCATION REVIEW

quences for Music Education,” in The New Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and
Learning, ed. Richard Colwell and Carol Richardson (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002), 957.
71
Charles Leonard and Robert W. House, Foundations and Principles of Music Educa-
tion (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), 109.
72
David Elliott, “Music, Education, and Schooling,” in Winds of Change: A Collo-
quium in Music Education with Charles Fowler and David J. Elliott, University of Mary-
land at College Park, April 3, 1993 (New York: ACA Books), 39.
73
Ortmann, “On Listening to Music,” 117.
74
Ibid., 119.
75
Anthony Storr, “The Meaning of Music,” The Times Literary Supplement (November
20, 1970): 1364.
76
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925).
77
Ibid., 180.
78
Ortmann, “Sensorial Basis,” 255.