The Music of Hindostan c17.14

c17.14

These principles, which we recognize as the foundations of our melody, we find more naïvely formulated in the systems of *Rāg* and *Tāl*, much as we read in Plato simple statements of the eternal problems of ethics and politics. These systems lay it down that chromatic alterations can only take place on the weak (*alpa*) notes of the scale, that is, in unessential places; and that, though any amount of cross-rhythm is permissible, it must justify itself by resolution at a particular point (the *sam*).