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I have found little evidence to show that music, except in occasional
cases, exerts even the slightest specifically sexual effect on men,
whether musical or unmusical. But I have ample evidence that it very
frequently exerts to a slight but definite extent such an influence on
women, even when quite normal. Judging from my own inquiries it would,
indeed, seem likely that the majority of normal educated women are liable
to experience some degree of definite sexual excitement from music; one
states that orchestral music generally tends to produce this effect;
another finds it chiefly from Wagner's music; another from military music,
etc. Others simply state--what, indeed, probably expresses the experience
of most persons of either sex--that it heightens one's mood. One lady
mentions that some of her friends, whose erotic feelings are aroused by
music, are especially affected in this way by the choral singing in Roman
Catholic churches.[127]
In the typical cases just mentioned, all fairly normal and healthy women,
the sexual effects of music though definite were usually quite slight. In
neuropathic subjects they may occasionally be more pronounced. Thus, a
medical correspondent has communicated to me the case of a married lady
with one child, a refined, very beautiful, but highly neurotic, woman,
married to a man with whom she has nothing in common.
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