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Notes on Indian Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

C. R. Day
C. R. Day*
Affiliation:
Oxfordshire Light Infantry
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Extract

Of all the Indian arts one of the most popular is that of music, and perhaps of them all the least known to Europeans. Almost every one who has been in India knows that native music exists, but there are comparatively few who recognise the deep hold that it possesses over Indian minds. Europeans, as a rule, leave India with the idea that the national music of the country consists only of noise and incessant drumming, varied, perhaps, by nasal drawling—equally repulsive as unmusical. That there is a real musical art—with an employment of various scales, abounding in rhythmical beauty and full of passionate expression, seems to many almost incredible. And yet this is so.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Musical Association , Volume 20 , 1893 , pp. 45 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1893

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References

∗ Pending the publication of the complete work, M. Grosset has published, under the title of “Contribution i l'Etude de la Musique Hindoue” (Paris : Leroux, 1888), a translation, commentary, and Sanskrit text of the 28th adhyaya of this work : most valuable to the student.Google Scholar

∗ “The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan.” (London : Novello, Ewer & Co., 1892.)Google Scholar

∗ Such javadis must not be confounded with songs of the same name sung during the dance Kartsar.Google Scholar

∗ Vids “Ueber das Wesin und der Worth des Wedlschen accentes,” in Transactions (Abhandlungen) of the Bavarian Academy, xiii. Bd., II Abth., 1878; issued separately, and sold by G. Franz in Munich, also “über die altindische opfermusik” in “Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft,” Leipzig, 1885.Google Scholar

† Vids “The Arsheyabrahmana” (Burnell), Mangalore, 1876; also “Catalogue of a Collection of Sanskrit MSS.” (Burnell). Pt. I, Vedic MSS. (London : Trübner, 1870.)Google Scholar

∗ The terms “prakriti” and “vikriti” are purely modem, and evidently are used in a different sense to their usual musical meaning; prakriti, in ordinary Indian music, meaning notes which contain their full complement of s'rutis, and vikriti those which have undergone change as regards this, and are consequently flattened or sharpened.Google Scholar

† These figures refer to the seven Sama-vedic notes, prathama, dvitiya, &c., just spoken of.Google Scholar

‡ A Matra in prosody means the time it takes to pronounce a short vowel.Google Scholar