The Music of Hindostan c5.40

c5.40

Causes have been here assigned for this music being what it is; and it would seem that the music will not change until the causes change. Of these the language and the climate are two constant factors. It is shown in Chapter VIII that language, especially verse, has had a determining effect upon the rhythm of the music; and the climate, besides affecting the question of instruments, diminishes the enterprise which is necessary for concerted music. So far, then, it may be predicted that the music will remain metrical rather than rhythmical, vocal rather than instrumental, and individual rather than concerted. The other two factors were the conservatism and the large area of the country. This large area has already been somewhat contracted, and is likely to be still more contracted in the future, by easier and cheaper means of communication; the effect of this, musically, should be to reduce the variety of *Rāg* and *Tāl*, and to make the ‘dialects’ conform to some common standard. The conservatism will, no doubt, die hard. It seems to many as if all hope for music lay in recovering the traditions and the knowledge which made it so fine in the past. They believe that art can only prosper under munificent patronage, and that when that is removed art must die. In that they may be right; but when they go on to say, or to imply, that the *materia technica* of the art, its precise formularies as they existed in those days, must be sought out and quickened into life, as the only means of awakening an interest which has fallen asleep, they are on more debatable ground. Music cannot stand still. Its whole essence consists in finding short cuts to old routes. In the process it does many things that are afterwards seen to be regrettable; they die off, that is all, and the art lives on. The whole of our musical history is full of instances of this. We can appreciate the pope's prohibition of the sharp leading note or Mendelssohn's annoyance at the methods of Berlioz by considering the sort of reception we gave to Wagner's 'substantive' sevenths and chromatic harmony, now become commonplaces, and are giving to French whole-tones and to German pure dissonance. Life is too short to spend wholly in living in the past, and human needs are too imperative to be satisfied by proxy. It is inevitable that the multiple means of expression which Indian music has at its command will be reduced in number, that the fine edges of them will be worn down, and that the real needs will be expressed more simply. For, after all, a man sings because it is a splendid thing to do, and because he cannot help it; and when that is really the case he is not going to be fettered by obsolescent rules.