The Music of Hindostan c18.9

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.