The Notes Metal, Stone, Silk, Bamboo,
Pumpkin, Earthenware, Leather And Wood.
So that they have metallic
sounds, wooden sounds, silk sounds, and so on.
Of course, under
these conditions they cannot produce any melody; their music
consists of an entangled series of separate notes. Their imperial
hymn, for instance, is a series of endless unisons. But we Hindus
owe our music only to living nature, and in nowise to inanimate
objects. In a higher sense of the word, we are pantheists, and so
our music is, so to speak, pantheistic; but, at the same time,
it is highly scientific. Coming from the cradle of humanity, the
Aryan races, who were the first to attain manhood, listened to the
voice of nature, and concluded that melody as well as harmony are
both contained in our great common mother. Nature has no false
and no artificial notes; and man, the crown of creation, felt
desirous of imitating her sounds. In their multiplicity, all
these sounds - according to the opinion of some of your Western
physicists - make only one tone, which we all can hear, if we know
how to listen, in the eternal rustle of the foliage of big forests,
in the murmur of water, in the roar of the storming ocean, and even
in the distant roll of a great city. This tone is the middle F,
the fundamental tone of nature. In our melodies it serves as the
starting point, which we embody in the key-note, and around which
are grouped all the other sounds. Having noticed that every musical
note has its typical representative in the animal kingdom, our
ancestors found out that the seven chief tones correspond to the
cries of the goat, the peacock, the ox, the parrot, the frog, the
tiger, and the elephant. So the octave was discovered and founded.
As to its subdivisions and measure, they also found their basis
in the complicated sounds of the same animals."
I am no judge of your ancient music," said the colonel, "nor do I
know whether your ancestors did, or did not, work out any musical
theories, so I cannot contradict you; but I must own that, listening
to the songs of the modern Hindus, I could not give them any credit
for musical knowledge."
"No doubt it is so, because you have never heard a professional
singer. When you have visited Poona, and have listened to the
Gayan Samaj, we shall resume our present conversation. The Gayan
Samaj is a society whose aim is to restore the ancient national music."
Gulab-Lal-Sing spoke in his usual calm voice, but the Babu was
evidently burning to break forth for his country's honor, and
at the same time, he was afraid of offending his seniors by
interrupting their conversation. At last he lost patience.
"You are unjust, colonel!" he exclaimed. "The music of the ancient
Aryans is an antediluvian plant, no doubt, but nevertheless it is
well worth studying, and deserves every consideration. This is
perfectly proved now by a compatriot of mine, the Raja Surendronath
Tagor.... He is a Mus.
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