The Music of Hindostan c12.10

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.