Herbert Spencer Writes to Alfred Tennyson

Abstract Chapter 1 introduces Herbert Spencer’s musical thinking through a letter that Spencer wrote to the poet laureate Alfred Tennyson. This letter sets the scene for a reading of Spencer’s theory of music psychology and his rise to fame within nineteenth-century mental science. Soon after, Spencer wrote to Charles Darwin and the two began a lifelong correspondence. This chapter recounts the non-Darwinian terrain of Victorian musical culture as a messy field of inquiry where Darwin’s music theory foundered and Spencer’s sailed more smoothly into the popular imagination. Reflections on the implications of historical music-evolution theories for current research mark the ends of each chapter in this book. This chapter concludes with a reflection on an underappreciated aspect of Spencer’s musical thinking: his philosophical reflections on the earworm (a mental tune that plays on repeat).