The Music of Hindostan c5.39

c5.39

Not all Indian music is at this level; and one who determines to hear the real thing must be content to pass hours of boredom and traverse tracts of philistinism, ignorance, and want of skill before he has his reward—as, indeed, may be the case nearer home. But when it comes there is no mistaking it. No doubt there is often that added charm which we get, for instance, in reading poetry in a foreign language, in which the unfamiliar words contain a poetry of their own apart from the poetic use of them; the very naïveté of the melody and the old-worldliness and other-worldliness of the setting in which it is heard often compel our feeling for beauty even in very humble specimens of the art. We lose, perhaps, by not understanding the words, but less than we might expect. All their burden is the simplest desires and the simplest fears—the unwearied iteration of *Miserere Domine*, and the unwearying tale of human love.