Music of India

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About the Book It and Indian were to visit and who having net had never unit of hearing music in its utmost perfection-Ns ho had never witnessed an opera. or a c once] directed by an able musician. but had in never heard Hind beggars. and itinerant scrapers, such as frequent inns and I IN ever never to assert t hat the music of Europe as execrable. it would perhaps never have occurred to his hearer t hat he had heard online such music as lie should himself designate iv the same title. and the poor traveller's want of taste Ns could perhaps be the first and uppermost idea that would present it. But when %se possess the rat-testimonies of two enlightened travelers with respect to I he same subject, surely e may have reason to appear somewhat Skeptical. On, opinions given by Europeans on t lay music of India. I shall produce an example.

Preface It is impossible to convey an accurate idea of music by words or written language; that is, the various degrees of acuteness or gravity of sounds, together with the precise quantity of the duration of each, cannot be expressed by common language, so as to be of any use to performers, and as the musical characters now in use, which alone can express music in the manner that could be desired, is a modern invention, of course all attempts to define music anterior to the invention of this cygnet and concise method must have necessarily proved abortive.

How far the ancient philosophers of this country advanced towards the perfection of this science will appear in the course of this work; but as they were something similar to the awkward attempts made in Europe previous to the invention of the system now in use, they were insufficient for practice. The musical scale, invented by Magister Franco, and the time table, were both known here, and it only required a trifling degree of ingenuity to connect the one with the other, so that one individual character might instantly express both. This step was wanting, and it is this which has rendered all their treatises on music an unintelligible and almost useless jargon.

During the earlier ages of India, music was cultivated by philosophers and men eminent for polite literature, for whom us changes general directions and rules for composition sufficed, after a course of musical education acquired from living tutors; indeed, the abhorrence of innovation, and veneration for the established national music, which was firmly believed to be of divine origin, precluded the necessity of any other; but when, from the theory of music, a defection took place of its practice, and men of learning confined themselves exclusively to the former, while the latter branch was abandoned entirely to the illiterate, all attempts to elucidate music from rules laid down in books, a science incapable of explanation by mere words, became idle. This is the reason why even so able and eminent an Orient list as Sir William .Ions has failed. Books alone are insufficient for this purpose-e-we must Endeavour to procure solutions from living professors, of whom there are several, although grossly illiterate. This method, although very laborious, and even precarious, seems to be the only one by which any advance can be made in so abstruse an undertaking. Should the public consider this work as at all conducive to the end to which it achieves to aspire, it is the intention of the author to. lay before them specimens of original Ragas and Raginis, set to music, accompanied with short notices, which will serve to elucidate the facts advanced in this volume.

The causes which induced a defection of the theory from the practice of music in India will be developed in the course of the work, and it is sufficient here to notice that such a defection has actually taken place, and that a search for one versed both in the theory and practice of Indian music would perhaps prove as fruitless as that after the philosopher's stone. The similitude 'will hold still further if we take the trouble to second our search, with due caution, for there are many reputed Kemiagurs in this country, all of whom prove themselves to possess no more knowledge of the auriferous art, than the reader can himself possibly be possessed of.

A taste for the classics is imbibed by us from our school education. No philologer will, I believe, deny that impressions contracted in early infancy, or tender age, will, if possible, be effaced with the greatest difficulty.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages