The Music of Hindostan c11.223

c11.223

note of the scale may be any or all of these according to the ‘mood’ in which it occurs. Its character depends not on its pitch relation to a tonic only, though it does so depend partly, and on its relation to the tessitura of the song, which we also feel to be part of its essence (though the, to us, more important distinctions of harmony largely cut across this), but also on the extent to which it is *ex officio* a substantive or a passing note. The whole scale is made up of a hierarchy of notes; so that the passage from G to A♭, let us say, is not merely an exaltation of pitch, nor merely an exchange of the perfect consonance C–G for the imperfect C–A♭, but a passage from a stable to an unstable note of the scale (for A♭ may under certain circumstances become A♮) and from a permanent to a temporary (for the A♭ may be altogether omitted, or omitted in certain conditions), or from a note of universal application to one which requires special treatment (for the A♭ may be used in descent, but not in ascent).