The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c3.4

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.