The Music of Hindostan c6.5

c6.5

The very simple melodies here recorded may seem to some too trivial to have been worth while. But if art is ‘doing common things in an uncommon way’, it seems clear that we must be familiar with the common things before we can appreciate the uncommon way of doing them. It is just for lack of this, of familiarity with such simple things as nursery rhymes and games, that we often fail to understand the poetry of a foreign country. It does not, however, occur to us that the same is true of music, because European music, which is all that most of us know, is cosmopolitan, and to understand a foreign composer it is seldom necessary to study the Folk-song of his country. He is using a familiar language, but doing unfamiliar things with it. But as soon as we leave Europe the language of music is not familiar to us, and our first object must be to learn it. We have to be humble, and begin with a ‘simple exercise’ book.