The Music of Hindostan c14.3

c14.3

THE drum is used not, as with us, to assert the accent at special moments, or to reinforce a crisis, but to articulate the metre of the singer’s melody, or to add variety to it by means of a cross-metre. There are four main elements in drumming: the quality, the intensity, the pitch of the sounds, and the time-intervals between them. We do not, on the whole, use percussion much. When we do, we value it, perhaps, chiefly for the graduated intensity with which it points the rhythm. We look a little askance at varieties of quality; we recognize the drums (*grosse caisse* or *tympani*), the cymbals, and the triangle; but we are not quite sure how far the tambourine, castanets, and Berlioz’s flannel-headed drumsticks are legitimate music. Of the pitch we only demand that it should not clash with the pitch of other sounds, it is in no way a vital constituent of the harmony, which is almost invariably complete without it. The time-intervals of the drum-notes reinforce as a whole those of the other instruments; they seldom cross them, and only produce a certain amount of confusion when they do, which, however, may be a useful resource upon occasion.