Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c12: Criticism

Rāgas and Rāginīs: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c12

Language: English

c12.1 — 5 parts

Criticism

c12.1.1

The function that the Indian melodies, as rāgas, have been made to play, namely, of spelling out in the language of symphonic formulas definitive rasas, capable of evoking a variety of human emotions has yet to be investigated with reference to the nature of the psychology of musical expression. So much mystery has hovered round the phenomenon of musical expression itself, that until recently no clear conception of the nature of musical utterance has been possible. Great lovers of music have helped to intensify rather than elucidate the mystery. Definitions of music such as that of Cardinal Newman, as "the out-pouring of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound", or of Carlyle, who called "music a kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech leading us to the edge of the infinite", or that of Lafcadio Hearn—who characterized music as "a psychical storm, agitating to unimaginable depths the mystery of the past within us", can only be regarded as emotional effusions, rather than as scientific enunciations of the nature of musical expression. Even the attempts of expert musicians have not been helpful in unravelling the mystery of the riddle. The technical experts, long persisted in the psychological fallacy, that music had nothing to do with the ordinary emotions of life, but were concerned with emotions peculiar to music itself—i.e. purely musical emotions. According to this view, supported by psychologists like Dr. W. Brown¹ and M.

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Combarieu, music is a unique kind of thought and musical concept which connotes sensations unattainable in the other medium. Says M. Combarieu: "La musique est l'art de penser avec des sons sans concepts." ['Music is an art of thinking in terms of sound without concepts’]. The logical implication of this view is that music, unlike painting and sculpture and, like architecture, is incapable of rendering, or expressing a theme, a subject, or a topic. It is one thing to say that music is a language, having laws and logic of its own, and it is quite another, to suggest that music can only deal with matters peculiar to the Kingdom of Sound and is unable to utter, express, or deal with subjects of human emotion, or other thematic materials. According to this doctrine, music is a Non-representative Art,—an Art of production of certain dynamic shades, tempos, phrasings, tone colours—blended into a design of orchestration—having a significance other than that of intellectual, or emotional values. If it arouses any emotion,—the same is not akin to anything that can be imitated, or verbally described. To put it in the language of plastics, music is decorative rather than illustrative. Its patterns have dynamic rather than thematic motifs. There is a certain amount of truth in the doctrines indicated above.

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It insists, somewhat unduly, on the quality of music as “pure art values”—something akin to ‘abstract aesthetic qualities’ aimed by exponents of modern paintings in attempting to release the art of painting from the tyranny of subject-matter. The exponents of the modern movements in painting have demonstrated that it is possible—to produce ‘pictures’ of great aesthetic significance, without recourse to any subject, theme, or anecdote. A picture need not tell any story, or represent any imitation, or description of nature. ‘Absolute painting’ though they represent nothing,—evokes a disinterested aesthetic sensation,—due to a happy perception and contemplation of special relations, dimensions, proportions, accents, colour values and rhythm inherent in the quality of the design, claiming to attain the condition of music. But this demonstration of the quality of non-representative painting, does not invalidate the capacity of the painter’s craft to represent, delineate, or imitate nature, or to render themes of human or emotional significance. And if music possesses, as it indeed does, in a large measure, the power of creating forms of ‘pure aesthetic values’,—it is not incapable of rendering and expressing concepts evocative of human emotions.

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Indeed, a school of psychologists, supporting the ordinary popular view, has strenuously emphasized on this function of music and some have gone to the length of declaring that music possesses an emotional power greater than that of speech itself and the expression of human emotion is its essential mission and glory. There is little doubt that music "can suggest and stimulate feelings akin to those produced by the vicissitudes of real life, and it can interest, fascinate, delight, or weary and displease, by what we can only call the purely musical quality of its sound patterns" (Vernon Lee). Musical experience has indeed proved to us that certain musical patterns, can well induce reveries peopled with a whole phantasmagoria of tender, weird, or alarming shapes,—reminiscences which one loves to recall, or shrink from recalling,—longings too unbounded to be called hopes—a submerged world of baffled endeavours, undirected passions, romances lived only in fancy. These take form again and again and become embodied in sound, emerging from the caverns of the mind where they have been biding their time of summons into the light of recognition. This phenomena of the evocation of human passions, sentiments and feelings (rasas in term of Indian aesthetics) is explained by psychologists by the theory of 'emotional memory'. As enunciated by M Ribot, this doctrine claims that emotional states divested of all their accompanying circumstances can leave behind them a memory of themselves.

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Feelings of love, fear, disappointment, anger, elation, disentangled and disassociated from its cause on the various occasions on which such feelings were experienced, attain an abstract emotional state, or form—which musical patterns can arouse and through them, by means of association "a kind of emotional reverberation," call up in each hearer his own particular images and ideas which once formed the settings of such emotional states when originally experienced by each individual.

c12.2

¹ Dr. W. Brown: "Music expresses an emotional life peculiar to itself. The emotions expressed are not the emotions of everyday life, nor are they even idealised forms of these emotions." The Quest, 1912.

c12.3

The patterns of Indian musical melodies claim to answer somewhat to these emotional abstract states or generalized forms of emotions visualized in dramatic forms with approximate "accompanying circumstances." The melody Toḍi [Plates XV-XX] is the emotional symbol of the "feeling of the country side." The human response to the call of nature is embodied in the image of Toḍi, the Indian pastoral symphony par excellence The melody of the early morning—Lalita, [Plate XXXVI] symbolises on the one hand,—the break of the night and the day, and on the other hand,—the separation of the lovers with all its pangs and sufferings told in all the poignancy of the dramatic situation. Here the, ‘emotion’ as well as its dramatic ‘setting’ or ‘circumstance’ or both indicated. In the version of Lalita [Plate XXXVII]—in which the offending lover returns at day-break after spending the night with a rival—the sorrows of love are given in an altogether different ‘circumstance’, or ‘setting’. Vibhāsa [Plate LXXXV], another of the early morning melodies,—pictures pangs of separation—in an analogous, though a somewhat different environment. The cockcrow is the sworn enemy of all love-carousals—and the melody is symbolised in the picture of a lover attempting to shoot the early cock with his bow and arrow. In a version of Lalitā [Plate XXXVII-D]—the feeling of the satiety of love (rati-tṛpti) is pictured in the symbol of a beautiful lady who has come out of her love-chamber early in the morning accepting the advent of the dawn as a logical termination of a chapter of love. Rāmakelī [Plate XXXII],—the melody of resentment, claims to concentrate within the orchestration of its peculiar notes—the emotion of an offended lady vainly assauged by her lover. Vasanta [Plate LX] in the dancing rhythm of its symphonic form, suggests the emotion of human-beings on the advent of the new spring. Likewise, —the manly and sonorous symphony of the Megha rāga [Plate LXV]—pictures the majesty of clouds—and the inevitable longings for love-union—that the rainy season invokes. Kānoḍā [Plate LI]—pictured in the image of a young lady—standing at the foot of the Aśoka tree—lean as a golden creeper and drenched in tears—is the lamentation of a heroine cut off from her lover by cruel fate. On the other hand, Bhūpālī [Plate LXXVI]—the evening melody,—is the silent joy of the lover as she meets her beloved at the door by her bed-chamber—with her present of flower-garland which she has been weaving for him during the long hours of the separation. In a version of Kāmoda, [Plate XLVIII] the melody suggests the rapture of love-dalliance symbolised in a pair of lovers, who on the pretext of picking lotuses, have selected the loneliest spot by the lotus-pond. And if in some of the morning melodies, passion and the sorrows of separation, receive undue emphasis, this is amply compensated by the conception of Bhairavī [Plate IV],--likewise a morning melody, which,--symbolized in the person of Pārvatī,--worshipping the image of Śiva--in a crystal temple, glorifies the unsullied purity of Love without Desire, and Passion purified by Renunciation. Such are some of the radiant images which flit across the vision of Indian musical imagination. Though rendered in obviously sensuous forms,--they transcend our sense-experience and transport us to a region of super-sensual ecstasy--an atmosphere of sublimated and spiritual emotion.