The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan c3.7

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.