The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c3: Introduction
The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c3
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- English
Introduction
c3.1
WHETHER music as an attribute of man is as old as speech or not, we cannot say; for present consideration it is sufficient that both can be intensified into poetic expression with a common power in affecting the emotions, notwithstanding that there is a vast and unbridgable distance between the precision of articulate language and the vague suggestion and glamour of musical sound. There is a quality in recited poetry not inaptly described as musical, since it has a special charm due to the choice and rhythm of words, assisted by the personal note of the reciter. But this rhythmic euphony is only allied to the musician's art, it cannot correctly be said to be comprehended in it, owing to the absence of defined musical intervals. From whatever point of view we overlook the human race, its history and development, we can nearly always trace music as having some connection, however slender, with the particular form of culture, or it may even be the absence of culture, under notice. Let us for the moment turn aside from the modern European musician's standpoint, as for him Harmony, although of comparatively recent origin, is indispensable, and we shall find melody in the succession of notes and their rhythmic movement possessing a beauty and exerting a charm which have endured for ages and comprehend the whole art of Music in the older civilisations. In Egypt; in Babylonia, Persia, and Arabia; in Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome—and in India, modern as well as ancient, for here simple melody still reigns supreme. With the exception of the Drone, apparently of Indian origin, which is literally preserved in the Bagpipe and Hurdy Gurdy, and is a characteristic feature in our modern harmonic music—conspicuous as the Pedal point—the traces of any combination of musical intervals, out of Europe, are unimportant and need not be considered in a comparison of our Western music, with its elaborate system of harmony, and that of the rest of the world, whether ancient or modern, where harmony has no place.
c3.2
Among the heterogeneous populations of India much material may be found that bears upon the history of melody. There is an Aryan strain probably as old as the Vedic Sanskrit, and a Persian which has in these latter days, and especially in Northern India, considerably modified the true Hindu. There are also echoes of an indigenous music which prevails among the hill tribes, remaining in the Indian music of to-day; but yet not so clearly heard that we can say we identify here or there a refrain of an original or pre-historic music, although we may unconsciously be very near it. In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to affirm that a pentatonic, or system of five notes in the octave, is of greater antiquity than a heptatonic or seven-note system; or that a chromatic or half-tone scale preceded an enharmonic composed of quarter-tones. All these varieties occur in our historic records, and if we argue from the analogies of speech, or consider the measurement of vibrating strings, it is no less plausible to decide for primitive narrow intervals than for primitive wide ones. In every province, go where we will, may be found some melodic or rhythmic habit or turn which it is possible to reckon as proper to it, having its peculiar scales or modes, its figures, rhythms, graces to mark its authenticity, but we may yet be far away from its origin, even as to locality. In the native music of Africa, so far as is known, there is much that may be traced to Asiatic sources.
c3.3
The oldest civilisation that offers us any substantial information is Egypt. It begins in the earliest historic monuments with a graphic sign representing a fingerboard instrument of the tamboura or guitar kind, which already marks a summit level in instrumental construction and musical conception. We are not likely to learn from civilisations which may have preceded Egypt, as from the non-existence of any form of graphic art they cannot now divulge their secrets.
c3.4
Another question that has arisen is that of the priority of instrumental or vocal music. There are many difficulties attending a vocal origin of what we understand in varied pitch and recurring rhythm by melody. The poets' music already touched upon, depending upon very small vocal inflections, can no more be measured and retained than the notes of many song birds which yet give us infinite pleasure. Very small musical intervals in traditional use which delight Indian and other Eastern people are clearly of instrumental origin, and to be attributed generally to facilities afforded by strings. This tradition may be of very great antiquity, and such old forms of music that occur to us, it may be Vedic chants or Hebrew psalms, are, in comparison, conceivably modern. A striking instance of a purely instrumental small interval is that of the Hindu musical unit, the s'ruti. The consideration of the value of this interval and of a combination of s'rutis to form an octave scale will be found in Captain Day's lucid exposition, and is as interesting as it is important. There can be no doubt about the origin of the s'ruti in the measurement of a stretched string.
c3.5
The object of this introduction will be gained if we, for a little while, allow ourselves to forget the glory and splendour of our modern harmony, in favour of those melodic systems which once satisfied the great nations of classical antiquity, and still content those hoary civilisations of the East which preserve so much that is really ancient in their present daily life. Captain Day shows us interesting resemblances between the leading modes of old Greece and Asia Minor and certain favourite modes of the Hindus. There is no sure evidence of an intimate musical connection between those countries and India, a few scattered references in classical writers excepted; but the relationship of sister Aryan languages may have been paralleled by a relationship of musical types sufficient to justify a theory of descent instead of one of imitation.
c3.6
The greater freedom in musical intervals melodic systems allow must be reckoned as compensating in some measure for the want of those harmonic combinations of which our European music has such inexhaustible wealth. What we lose in the possession of this rich estate is that we are effectually barred from the use and enjoyment of a more pliant melody, free from the fetters imposed by consonant chords, a melody which has a great privilege in easily touching the emotions. Recent scale theories, claiming to have their foundation in natural laws, are insufficient to account for the material which allows the pliability of Eastern melody. But they are insufficient even to account for our common diatonic scale, the structure of which rests upon three harmonic triads, and with chromatic and enharmonic systems are utterly irreconcilable. Under Captain Day’s guidance we find that in India an ancient quarter-tone system has become in modern times a half-tone one—substantially our equal temperament, but permitting an expressive or ornamental use of smaller intervals than the half-tone, according to the player’s feeling or fancy. Whether this ideally half-tone system is due to a natural transformation tending to simplicity—as we find the rich Sanskrit reduced in modern vernacular dialects—or to an adaptation more suitable for practical use than a fine-spun theory of ancient music teachers, must, like nearly all the questions that have here been propounded, remain open or be regarded as beyond the possibility of answer.
c3.7
It must not be overlooked that the Persian and Arab musicians have also their enharmonic systems, and if these may be referred back to an older Babylonian, the delight felt in such melodic freedom may have been widespread in a remote antiquity. We would not, however, resign our harmony for this freedom, although we admit its great power to incite a poetic impression when we are in certain moods. What Indian music offers to mood will be found in Captain Day’s pages, and, studied from this point of view, the information he offers cannot but be of the highest value. He shows us the existence of a really intimate expressive melodic music, capable of the greatest refinement of treatment, and altogether outside the experience of the Western musician. What we learn from such inquiries is that the debated opinions of musical theorists, the cherished beliefs of those who devote themselves to the practice of the art, the deductions we evolve from historic studies—all have to be submitted to larger conceptions, based upon a recognition of humanity as evolved from the teachings of ethnology. We must forget what is merely European, national, or conventional, and submit the whole of the phenomena to a philosophical as well as a sympathetic consideration, such as, in this century, is conceded to language, but has not yet found its way to music.
c3.8
A. J. HIPKINS.