The Music of Hindostan c5.24

c5.24

Lastly there is the climate, the effect of which is twofold. Since life is lived under the simplest conditions and much in the open air, day being turned into night and night into day, all times of the twenty-four hours are available, to somebody, for making music. And the character of the music is felt, far more than in Europe where the conditions are more formal, to depend closely upon the hour and season of its performance. It is difficult to gauge the strength of this feeling, since those who believe that the beauty of the music depends on its being heard at the appropriate time are about equal in number to those who do not. The belief is strongest where the music is purest, where it is performed for its own sake rather than for display, and, like every other musical belief, is very old. Another result of the climatic conditions is seen in the simplicity of the instruments. The *Vina*, the most elaborate and the oldest, has not a tithe of the complication of the piano; for the tension of the strings being low, the framework can be simple, and the fingers being on the string, all mechanism is dispensed with. Nor are the gradations between the best and the worst specimens so subtle as in the violin; for the tone is not exposed so much to criticism on plucked as on bowed strings. Neither, of course, is there any comparison in the cost; ten pounds will buy a good instrument for the player's purpose, and the many tens more that may be spent on it are lavished, though not wasted, upon its ornamentation. Meanwhile, for simpler requirements, nature provides the bamboo, out of which an hour's work will fashion a serviceable flute, and man provides the water-pot (*chatti*) over which a skin may be stretched to furnish a quite sufficient drum.¹ It is not the great heat that matters—the difference between midsummer and midwinter is no greater than in Europe—but the all-pervading damp of the rains after the searching heat of June. This swells the wood and softens the glue and so breaks down the tone of elaborately constructed instruments such as we employ.