Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c5.23

c5.23

Philippe Stern ("La Musique Hindoue", *La Revue Musicale*, Mai 1923, p. 31, 55-6) thus defines a rāga:—"It is the deepening of the idea of mode . . . . . . . that which gives not only the mode but also the choice of principal notes, the degrees to be avoided, the difference of the descending and ascending movements, the prescribed sequences, the movement, this ambient, this coloration, this peculiar physiognomy, this personality constitutes the rāga (lit. the taint). A rāga, when transcribed in notes, should include the rise, fall and often the prescribed sequences. It can be taken for a melody. Often however an actual melody is given as an example and we have there the appearance of a skeleton on account of the fact that the Indian notation does not generally indicate the ornaments. We are simply told that—it is that rāga. Indeed, but quite a different melody might also be that rāga and give that ambient. The Indian musician is in a situation which is analogous to that of the sculptor of the Middle Ages, who being a prisoner of the canons of religious iconography, tried there to specialise thoroughly in certain types, marked his personality with details so very striking for the initiated that these types remained enclosed within a limit, and he following the same rules created either a mediocre work, or a masterpiece."