The soul is distracted from the meaning of a song when it is sung merely to arouse pleasure. But when one sings out of devotion, he pays more attention to the content and the meaning, both because he lingers more on the words, and because, as Augustine says, each affection of our spirit, according to its variety, has its own appropriate measure in the voice and singing, by some hidden correspondence wherewith it is stirred. The same is true of the hearers, for even if they do not understand what is sung, they understand why it is sung, namely for God's honor, and this is enough to arouse their devotion (S. T., II-II, 91, 2 ad 3).

They [compositions which express spiritual experiences] stir elements in us; they reverberate thought in a larger part of our being. Certain emotions and expectations are aroused besides those that accompany our reactions to pure music. [22]

Finally, we grasp the true secret of beauty only by a comparison of the work with the ideal which has inspired it, and since this is largely a personal matter which each one interprets for himself, it follows that appreciation will vary according as one approaches or falls short of the ideal behind the work. The adage "de gustibus non est disputandum" is valid in the sense that countless factors such as character, temperament, education, age and sex enter into the form and mold our taste; but it is not absolute, for since all men are influenced in some ways by what is beautiful, there must be some universally accepted appreciation of beauty.

Thus morality, thought and art all converge upon the same terminal goal which must thus be the good, the true and the beautiful at once. Virtue, it (traditional Thomism) held, makes contemplation possible and vice makes it impossible in the full sense. Moreover, both virtue and contemplation are furthered and fostered by properly understood aesthetic activity.

What contemplation on the way to self-possession shares of its quality is insight but that insight contains the knowledge that the distance yet to be covered is infinite. This leaves it restless. Morality is similarly restless since it is not brought to rest in the possession of the ultimate good. Aesthetic experience alone has the sense of rest of that possession, the sense of satisfaction and being at an end (A Classical Philosophy of Art: The Nature of Art in the Light of Classical Principles, University Press of America, Washington D.C. 1982, pp. 4-5).

Art teaches men the pleasures of the spirit, and because it is itself sensitive and adapted to their nature, it is the better able to lead them to what is nobler than itself. So in natural life it plays the same part, so to speak, as the "sensible graces" in the spiritual life: and from afar off, without thinking, it prepares the human race for contemplation (the contemplation of the saints) the spiritual joy of which surpasses every other joy (S.T., I-II, 147, 3, 4) and seems to be the end of all human activities. For what useful purpose do servile work and trade serve, except to provide the body with the necessaries of life so that it may be in a state fit for contemplation? What is the use of the moral virtues and prudence if not to procure that tranquility of the passions and interior peace which contemplation needs? (Art and Scholasticism, p. 62-63).

To each musical experience is brought the sum of an individual's attitudes, beliefs, prejudices, conditionings in terms of time and place in which he has lived. To each musical response, also, he brings his own physiological needs, unique neurological and endocrinological systems with their distinctive attributes. He brings, in all of this, his total entity as a unique individual . . . (Music Therapy, ed. by E. T. Gaston, The Allen Press, Kansas 1958 p. 25).

emotional expression, aesthetic enjoyment, entertainment, communication, symbolic representation, physical response, enforcing conformity to social norms, validation of social institutions and religious rituals, contribution to the continuity and stability of culture and contribution to the integration of society . . . (The Anthropology of Music, Northwestern University Press, Illinois 1964, p. 156).

It is in the resemblances which exist between the mind and beauty that we find the true cause of feeling of beauty; the apprehension of the beauties of nature and of artistic works brings with it a keen delight, because in their perfections the mind discovers an image of its own perfection, and the complement of its aspirations. There is in the human mind an innate and unquenchable desire for knowledge, of effecting through an ideal assimilation the union of other beings with ourselves. This tendency is naturally directed with greater force towards those objects which are most easily known, in which the object of the intellect stands out in greatest prominence. Precisely such is the case with works of beauty: their form, that essential, constitutive element which makes them what they are, shines forth with a peculiar brilliancy, manifesting the perfection, order and unity which are closely analogous to our own, in that it possesses in fact or in symbol, a soul dominating and bursting through matter . . .(ibid., p. 53).