Historical Development of Indian Music: A Critical Study c8.13

c8.13

The Western savants like Roussau, Harder and Herbert Spencer are of opinion that speaking with a raised voice was the beginning of song or music, i.e. music evolved from the raised voice speech in the most primitive society of all nations and a kind of speech-song or chant-like recitative was indeed to be found among the primitive men. Specially the Spencerian theory is an idealization of the natural language of passion. So, according to this theory, music is an extension of the primitive desire to communicate; consequently its whole artistic function is related to the communication of human emotions and passions. Rowbotham does not accept the views of Spencer and he points out that impassioned speech is the source of music and it works as a vehicle for everyday emotions. Wallaschek, on the other hand, advances the theory that the original musical impulse was purely aesthetic, growing out of the rhythm. Some others hold that the very ancient sound-language ‘is the older element from which developed both speech and song: speech striving towards free rhythm and music towards a more regulated one’. Dr. Burney is of opinion that music is anterior to word and language. He says in his *General History of Music*: ‘Vocal music is of such high antiquity that its origin seems to have been coeval with mankind; at least the lengthened tones of pleasure and pain, of joy and affection, must long have preceded every other language, and music. The voice of passion wants but few articulations, and must have been nearly the same in all human creatures, differing only in gravity or acuteness according to age, sex and organization, till the invention of words by particular convention, in different societies, weakened, and by degrees rendered it unintelligible’. In fact, we know very little about the true languages of the primitive cultures of different nations. Various races might have displayed the elements of sound-languages, but so far only a small number of examples have been collected.