The Music of Hindostan c16.s1.205

c16.s1.205

In this kinematograph of the modes they are seen to be each an isolated moment in the whole musical experience; or, to reverse the picture and the metaphor, the modes make a kind of stellar photograph of our harmony. The notes that give us difficulty are the F♯ and the D♭; the former yields freely, the latter persists surprisingly. In our scales we know two leading notes, upward to the tonic (B♮) and downward to the dominant (A♭). These modes show the other two, downward to the tonic (D♭) and upward to the dominant (F♯). But the whole of our harmony is based, of course, on the fact, which the ear, however, only gradually endorses, that any note may be treated as a leading note in either direction. It is in the same way that the ear endorses these extreme modes; to plunge suddenly into one of them is to be completely baffled. We have to take them as the native ear does, as extensions of some other more familiar mode, as accentuations of its poignancy, or as heightenings of its exhilaration.