The Music of Hindostan c5.30

c5.30

“They have brought large instruments with brass strings; giant mandolins and overgrown guitars with the scroll of the finger-board ending in the head of some monster. These guitars differ considerably from one another and are intended to produce very different effects; but they have all of them large sound-boards, and occasionally, at the ends of the finger-board, hollow globes looking like fruit on a branch. They are painted, gilded, inlaid with ivory; they are old, well seasoned, and valuable. The mere sight of these queer shapes awakes in me a feeling of mystery—the mystery of India. The musicians smile as they show me them. This one is to be caressed by the finger, that to be stroked by the bow, a third to be plucked with a mother of pearl plectrum, and there is one which is to be played actually by rolling along the strings a little oval piece of ebony. Refinements, these, such as our Western musicians have never known. Then there are drums tuned to different notes and child singers sumptuously dressed. A programme specially printed for me is put into my hand containing the melodious polysyllables of the performers’ names.