The Music of Hindostan c18: Appendix I

The Music of Hindostan c18

Language: English

Appendix I

c18.1

The scale of twelve notes, as given on p. 86 of the *Introduction to the Study of Indian Music*, is here written out, distinguishing the notes derived from quintal harmony by capital letters and those from tertian harmony by small letters, and placing above them the available common chords:

c18.2

G ab | C db D eb | } Major. e F | a Bb b C |

c18.3

G | b C | e | } Minor. eb | G ab | C |

c18.4

C db D eb e F g G ab a Bb b C

c18.5

This scale is the plagal form of the *Sa-grāma* beginning on *F*; hence the notes are *g♭*, *a*, and *B♭*, instead of (as from *C*) *f♯*, *A*, and *b♭*. *F* was chosen as a more convenient starting point than *C* because then all the ‘black’ notes can be called flat, instead of one of them being an *f♯*. Taking the scale as it appears above, it will be observed that no chord but a first or second inversion can stand on *D*, *e♭*, *B♭*, or *b*; so that none of these notes could, if harmonized, be used in a prominent or a final sense. The writer suggests, however, that these ‘natural’ harmonies would be sufficient for the harmonization of Indian melodies.

c18.6

With regard to this suggestion, attractive as it sounds, there are several difficulties.

c18.7

In the first place, there is no such thing as natural harmony. Nature ‘gives’ a note, with its Fifth a good deal fainter, and its Third much fainter still. We make the three notes of equal loudness, and call them a chord. But Guido d’Arezzo did not get so far as that. Adam de la Hale did not hear the Third as a satisfactory note. Josquin des Prés could not endure the minor chord as final. Palestrina inserted the minor chord at that place, but surreptitiously altered it to major. Bach, in the first part of the forty-eight Fugues, prefers on the whole the *Tierce de Picardie*. Beethoven’s favourite ending is in the unison—like Guido’s—which, indeed, is all that can truly be called ‘natural’; and that is not a ‘chord’. Without wishing to press the word ‘natural’ too far, the argument goes to show that the employment of the very first chord is the knell of modal melody.

c18.8

Secondly, the modes (*Rāgs*) all have an *aṃśa*, and this *aṃśa* is seldom the drone note. In the many *Rāgs* in which the *aṃśa* is at *e*, or *a*, the melody would have to close on a minor chord; when it is at *e♭* the final note, which the *aṃśa* as a rule is, could only bear a second inversion; when at *b* (as in Behāg) it could have no chord at all. It would not be possible to end the melody (in this last case) on *b* with an *e* minor chord below it, for that would make the *e* really final instead of the *b*, and so falsify the *Rāg*.

c18.9

Again, is there not at the bottom of this suggestion a misunderstanding of the nature of harmony? That was not a fortuitous thing, but directly necessitated by what went before it. There had been melody, with some notes salient and others in abeyance, upon a drone (explicit or implicit). To support the salient notes better the drone took other positions, and so, breaking up, became an independent part, long before any ‘chord’ was invented. To these two parts another drone was added, to form what was called the Triplum, which similarly broke up; and another, to form the Quadruplum. There is no thought of chords in all this; only of concurrent melodies, of whose successive moments chords were later generalizations. A chord cannot be used in music for its own sake, any more than can a word in language; it has a before and after, and that is its only reason for existing.

c18.10

It would be a rash thing to say that the European method of harmony is the only possible one. All that can be said is that it is perfectly logical. This breaking up of the drone is, at bottom, the moment when the desire arises to contrast not one note with another, but one whole passage of the song with another passage, and that is the way in which music has always advanced. We saw something that looked very like this in Exs. 93 and 99. All that really happens in the second of these examples is that the mother and son sing the same tune at different pitches. But it reminds us of a stage in our own art when, as in the times before Tye and Tallis, in whose music there are still traces of it, the soprano and tenor parts had a flat less in the signature than the other two parts.

c18.11

And, lastly, would not this suggestion defeat its own end—the preservation of just tuning—and lead after all straight to the accursed thing, Equal Temperament? For as soon as harmony came to be valued for its own sake it would be impossible not to feel an enormous difference between, say, a major and a minor chord. If then, closing on a (in Imankaliān), the composer had nothing but an a minor triad and a second inversion at his disposal, could he resist the forbidden a db e, which is so near and yet so far? And if the db would not do, would it be long before he altered it—and then chaos?

c18.12

Still, it is conceivable that a step in the argument could be jumped, and that a nation should go straight to harmony without first having felt the impulse which led to it, just as it is possible that Esperanto will become a living language although it is based on a different motive from that of all other languages on earth. The possibility depends on the actual achievements of composers in one case and of authors in the other, and it is vain to attempt to prophesy.

c18.13

But this question of harmony is only a side issue in a book whose main purpose is to establish the true principles of Indian intonation—a purpose which it excellently fulfils. And every one who is interested in the music of India will look forward eagerly to another by the same hand, which is perhaps hinted at on p. 4, containing a ‘census of Indian Rāgas’ grouped ‘according to the principles of correct intonation’. If such a book appeared, written with authority, it would supersede all the books on the subject.