The Music of Hindostan c11.119

c11.119

The question as to what foreigners are to make of this music is still more difficult. To add harmony to it is to kill it; and yet it is impossible for Europe to understand melody except in terms of harmony. Harmony has been successfully added to songs whose musical thought is nearer our own in Stanford's *Irish Songs* or Bourgault Ducoudray's *Chansons de la Basse Bretagne*. But are the *Chansons de la Grèce et de l'Orient* a complete success? And is the problem quite so simple as Herr Polak¹ supposes; though he exhibits the curiosities of Indian music, does he convey the art? It is quite possible to select, as Lady Wilson² and others have done, those songs which have definite cadences—and there are a few—or even to invent cadences for those which have none, to give them a frankly European dress, and to suggest the kind of mood in which a foreigner listens to Indian music. That is a definite thing well worth doing; but it does not bring one any nearer to an understanding of the indigenous art. The best authorities on Bengālī say that it is untranslatable, and one has heard the same of Sanskrit; and there seems to be no way of understanding the music except to set to work and learn its language.