Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Music of Hindostan c12: Chapter VII. Grace

The Music of Hindostan c12

Language
English

Chapter VII. Grace

c12.2

*Bot.* That will ask some tears in the true performing
of it : if I do it let the audience look to their eyes.
*Midsummer Night's Dream.*

c12.3

MUSIC has been called a universal language, and no doubt, in the deepest sense, it is. But just as no one language can really be common to all peoples because it will be pronounced differently in different mouths, so the very same notes will be sung by different throats in such a way as to be unrecognizable to us. This is conspicuously the case with Indian singing, in which all the distinctions of colour which we should get from notes in simultaneity has to be extracted from notes in succession. A note, G, has for us hundreds of different colours according to its harmony, such as, for instance:

c12.4

Ex. 291.

c12.5

not to mention the cases where E♭ is not the bass, or G not the treble, or the parts are more or less than four; while the passage from G to F admits of only a few variations,

c12.6

Ex. 292.

c12.7

and the like, singly or in combination. In Hindu, and probably in all purely melodic music, the single note as such is itself and nothing else, while the passage from one note to the next has a number of possibilities by way of grace-note.

c12.8

We think of grace-notes as something which may but need not be added to the note, not as something actually inherent in it. If cultivated for their own sake or used at all in excess they are regarded by us as meretricious. We remember with a smile Mendelssohn's trombone-player who announced the theme of the *Lobgesang* Overture as or we laugh with Spohr at his Italian horn-players who supplied obvious omissions in his score by their *contrappunto alla mente*, or on our own account at an occasional festival singer who ornaments penultimate notes into consecutive Fifths with the bass. The trills of the voice leave us cold, the ‘turn’ in ‘Rienzi’s prayer’ spoils a rather dignified tune, and the family of double appoggiaturas in harpsichord music enjoys at best a sort of *succès d’estime*.

c12.9

Ex. 293.

c12.10

Indian ‘grace’ is different in kind. There is never the least suggestion of anything having been ‘added’ to the note which is graced. The note with its grace makes one utterance. The object of grace is, of course, to add importance to the particular note; but there are such varying degrees in which this may be done that the whole system of *gamak*,¹ the general term for the thing, becomes an elaborate vehicle of light and shade. It brings the notes of a melody, as surely as the various light and shade of a picture brings the contours of the face, from the flat into the round; which again is precisely what harmony does for them, by assigning to the successive notes varying degrees of consonance.

c12.11

¹ Pronounce ‘gummuck’.

c12.12

There are nineteen ² forms of *gamak*, or, omitting minor distinctions, a dozen. For practical purposes these may be referred to two main types, on stringed instruments.

c12.13

² See the Ragavibodha in R. Simon’s *Notationes des Somanātha*, Munich, 1903.

c12.14

The first sort is formed by sliding (*gharsana*, ‘rubbing’) the finger along the string, in either or perhaps in both directions. It differs from what we are accustomed to on the violin only in being more frequent and more spontaneous. The other sort is unknown to us and is not possible nowadays on our instruments.³ We set store by a rich, full-bodied tone; and for that and other reasons we prefer a comparatively thick string at a high tension to produce a note which in India is produced on a thin (and longer) string at a low tension.⁴ A lateral deflexion of any appreciable extent would set one of our strings out of tune by forcing the tuning peg from its position; indeed, we often see a violinist taking advantage of this fact when tuning his instrument. But an Indian string can be deflected a good deal without disturbing the peg. The stopping finger of the left hand ‘makes’ the note, which the right hand then plucks; and while it is still vibrating the left hand deflects it and, of course, sharpens the note. If the note is stopped near the nut, only a slight sharpening, a semitone or two, is possible; but if it is stopped in the middle of the string, a sharpening of as much as four or five or even seven semitones may be got. A good vīṇā-player prefers to get his notes in this way, much as a violinist would rather play in the third position than in the first. To get an E, for instance, he will ‘stop’ at the B or the C or the C♯ fret and instantly deflect the string, so quickly, in fact, as almost to deceive both the eye and the ear of the listener. The ‘deflect’ as we may christen it (the Sanskrit word is dolana, ‘swinging’) imparts a wonderful flexibility to the execution, and demands, of course, an accurate ear for its successful performance. The ‘slide’ and the ‘deflect’ are known in Hindostan as Ghasīṭ and Mīṇḍ, in Bengal as Āsh and Mirh, in the Carnatic as Dhara and Varek, and by other local names.

c12.15

³ Except on a small scale on the practically obsolete clavichord.

c12.16

⁴ A long thin string is divisible into a large number of nodes, and the corresponding upper partials give, incidentally, to a note which is somewhat deficient in body a peculiar glitter and brilliancy.

c12.17

But the vīṇā, with its congeners the satār and surbahār, is only a younger brother of the ‘vīṇā of the body’, the voice. It cannot rival the voice in one notable respect, the passage at will from loud to soft or from soft to loud. It is true that Indian singers do not make so much use of this advantage as they might, or rather they do it in a different way from what we might have expected. Crescendos are but seldom spread over several bars so as to lead to a climax; they are used rather to assist the grace-notes in their work of rounding the edges of the notes of the melody. In this, as in other ways not confined to music, Indian art aims rather at elaborating detail than at corroborating the lines of structure.

c12.18

It is in the grace-note that the unusual intonations, which were once no doubt commoner in the Rāgs than they now are, still survive. A grace seldom consists of the diatonic notes of the Rāg, as is obvious from the description just given. Consequently it is impossible without a very elaborate notation to give a true picture of it. There is the less need to do so since, even if it were faithfully presented, it would be impossible for European throats or fingers to perform it. Still an attempt has been made to hint at it. In the following example the crotchet heads representing the grace are attached to the substantive note by a slur. They are, indeed, placed upon a definite space or line, but must be taken only to suggest the place where the auxiliary notes begin and the sort of course they take. The heads without the tails of the notes are given because the time is variable and entirely at the will of the singer, which is influenced by the context in which they occur; but also in order to remind the reader that they are subordinate in a special sense to the substantive note. They occur after the note as well as before it:

c12.19

Rāg. Bhairaū. Tal. Tevra. (Seven crotchets, 3 + 2 + 2.)

c12.20

RABINDRANATH TAGORE. (Hymn.)

c12.21

Lento. = 70. Ex. 294.

c12.22

The music of the Scotch bagpipe, the general effect of which is not at all unlike Indian pipe tunes, is, however, graced on a radically different principle from that of Indian gamak. The scale of the bagpipe has preserved an unusual intonation, similar to, but not the same as, the Indian. This scale is described in Grove's Dictionary as:

c12.23

Scotch Bagpipe scale. Ex. 295.

c12.24

i.e. as, practically, a three-quarter tone scale (which is decidedly rare in India, and as Ellis¹ points out is very nearly the same as, and is probably intended for, the Arabian Zalzal's scale, *Meshaqah*). But its grace-notes are entirely diatonic; and, what is more significant, they are used not to soften the transition from note to note of the melody, but, principally, to intensify them by a rudimentary harmony. This may be seen in the ‘Cock o' the North’, taken from McKinnon's *Collection of Pipe-music*:

c12.25

¹ 'Musical scales of various nations,' Journal of the Society of Arts, March 27, 1885.

c12.26

*The Cock o' the North.*

c12.27

Ex. 296.

c12.28

More accurately, for those who are interested in such matters, the bagpipe scale may be given in cents (i.e. 1/100ths of a semitone).

c12.29

| | | | | | C | C# | | F | F# | |
| From G { | Just scale | 0 | 204 | 386 | 498, | 590 | 702 | 884 | 996, | 1088 | 1200 |
| | Bagp. scale | 0 | 191 | 388 | 532 | 686 | 894 | 1044 | 1200 | | |
| | | G | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | A | |
| From A { | Bagp. scale | 0 | 197 | 341 | 495 | 703 | 853 | 1009 | 1200 | | |
| | Just scale | 0 | 204 | 316, | 386 | 498 | 702 | 814, | 884 | 996 | 1200 |
| | | | | | C | C# | | F | F# | |

c12.31

The true representative of the Indian instinct is found, in Europe, amongst the Magyars, as we should expect, of course, from the close connexion between the Romany and Hindostani languages. And if the Magyar grace-notes have, in their native purity, the microtonic intonation, some of their figures

c12.32

Ex. 297.

c12.33

might, with a little less insistence on the rhythm, pass for Indian; and their favourite metre, [Figure: ], is quite in the Indian style, and an example of it is to be seen in the song ‘Akla chalo’ on p. 93, Ex. 177.

c12.34

At the end of the *Ragavibodha* are given fifty examples of the use of *gamak* in fifty separate *Rāgs*, and with the help of Herr Simon’s book (p. 182, note) and a knowledge of the Hindostani *Rāgs* it is possible to decipher these. The time, however, presents difficulty. The indication, and the only indication, for all the examples is the word *dinmātrā*, which means ‘general time’, and refers, no doubt, to the *Alāpa* or ‘preluding in the *Rāg*’. But timeless music is unappetizing and difficult to read; so bars have here been added, and the crotchets and quavers arranged on the assumption that a graced note is longer than one ungraced. It must be clearly understood, however, that these time-values have no warrant in the original. The example chosen is in the *Rāg Vasanta* (=spring). This *Rāg* is endeared by its associations, which, whether they arise from it or not, are those of its name. It has also a strongly marked character. It is the F-f scale with the G flattened: the C is lightly touched, and the salient notes are A and E, which it will be noticed alone bear the trill; the D of this *Rāg* is generally held to be natural, but is sometimes given as flat (see the list of *Rāgs* on p. 151, though it differs in some particular from each of the versions there given). Perhaps it may be possible to realize some of its strange beauty by playing over the notes without the graces three or four times till they are familiar, and then singing or whistling it with the graces; but until it is heard in its native land the strangeness will probably remain more credible than the beauty:

c12.35

Vasanta. (i.) Tonic F.

c12.36

Ex. 298.

c12.37

The example of Vasanta was selected mainly because this particular one was curiously misinterpreted in Sir William Jones’s article in *Asiatic Researches*, and has been so reprinted by others. It was written out in an ordinary major key (A major); no hint was given of a *gamak* from beginning to end; and on the strength of its rhythm (as *not* given in a book of 1609) it was suggested as the melody of three of the songs in the *Gīta Govinda* of the eleventh century (whose musical rhythm was *not* established by the poetic metre). Thus:

c12.38

(Pseudo-) Vasanta (ii).

c12.39

Ex. 299.

c12.40

vi - ha - ra - ti he - ri - rī ha sa - ra - sa va - san - te nṛt - ya - ti yu - va - ti ja - ne - na sa - man sa - ci vi - ra - hi ja - na - sya du - ra - nte.

c12.41

The typical form of composition which exhibits ‘grace’ in all its glory is the Mohammedan *Tappa*, in which melodic flow and rhythmical structure are so veiled that it has seemed worth while to give them in a simpler statement in the stave below:

c12.42

*Tappa*. Rāg Khamāj. Tāl Tintāl. *Andante con moto*. ♩ = 70.

c12.43

Ex. 800.

c12.44

(Musical notation)

c12.45

(Musical notation)

c12.46

(Musical notation)

c12.47

(Musical notation)

c12.48

(Musical notation)

c12.53

*Tappa*. *Rāg Kāfī*. *Tintāl*.

c12.58

The numbers over the bars of the skeleton tune represent the beats (see *Tāl*). The graces are here written out in full, because abbreviations would have been confusing, and on the diatonic notes so as the better to be taken in at a glance. But if the grace of bar 3, for instance, were put, as it were, under an aural microscope the real sounds would appear something like this:

c12.59

Ex. 302.

c12.60

with other passage notes in between which can be mentally supplied.

c12.61

Grace is so natural an accompaniment of any non-harmonic music that it may seem idle to search for a reason for it. Yet in the music of India it is so elaborate and so integral a part of song that it is tempting to try to account for it in some way. It seems as if the language may have been at least a contributory cause. When two vowels meet in Sanskrit, except in a few special cases they coalesce; and the compound thus formed was marked in the *Rigveda* with the circumflex accent called *Svarita* (‘sounded’), which had half a dozen or more names according to the particular vowels which were in question. When the *Rigveda* accents (there were two others) were employed in the *Sāmaveda*, that is, in the chants to which the *Rigveda* was sung, they took the form of musical notes; and the *Svarita* in particular was a high note with ‘grace’ attached to it. It is natural to conclude, therefore, that the ‘deflect’, as we have called it when it appears in instrumental music, represents that ‘grace’ and is traceable to this peculiar treatment of the vowels.

c12.62

When two consonants meet one is assimilated to the other so as to slide into it almost imperceptibly. Accommodations such as those in *orthodok-sy* and *dog-ma*, *younk-ster* and *blag-guard*, *Sut-ton* and *Sud-bury*, *eks-tra* and *egz-ample*, and the like, have their counterparts in Sanskrit, not only in the interior of one word, but quite as commonly between the end of one and the beginning of the next. It is the tendency to weld words together in these and other ways that gives perhaps its importance, as between notes, to that other class of grace, the ‘slide’.

Linked texts (4)