A Comparative Study of Some of the Leading Music Systems of the 15th, 16th, 17th & 18th Centuries c15.23.4

c15.23.4

If research is able to determine the meaning of the pictorial descriptions of the ragas, (and I must mention that there are to be found works on the chromatics of sound, such as Field on the Chromatics of Sound), then these pictorial representations can be incorporated in our text-books to be, as expounding the aesthetic and psychic possibilities of the raga. The ancient works do not throw any light on the principles of the compositions of tunes or songs, so that every one has to fall back on a limited stock of "ustadi" songs, the correctness of which no one can be sure of as they have never been noted and have only been handed down from generation to generation. If these principles are determined, and standardised, incorrect versions of "ustadi" compositions can be corrected, and also new compositions made. By a study of the works relating to the southern system, we can compose songs for the northern musicians in the ragas which are sure there but have not found a place in the northern system, and thus induce, at some date, how distant soever, a fusion of the two sister systems of music.