Page:The Music of India.djvu/153



INDIAN AND WESTERN MUSIC Captain Day, whose example might well be followed by other military men in India, says : —

'Almost every traveller in India comes away with the idea that the music of the country consists of mere noise and nasal drawling of the most repulsive kind, often accompanied by contortions and gestures of the most ludicrous description. But in certainly two-thirds of such cases, the singing and dancing witnessed has been of the commonest, and the performers of the most abandoned and depraved of the city ; and the traveller has therefore received a false impression, which may abide through life, or impede the progress of a more correct appreciation of the real value of Indian music. Bat it is hardly fair that an art so little really understood, even among the natives of India themselves, should be judged by such a criterion and then put aside as worthless, because solitary individuals have been deceived by parties of outcast charlatans whose object is mere gain. For that Indian music is an art, and a very intricate and difficult one too, can hardly be denied. But to appreciate it one must first put away all thought of European music and then judge of it by an Indian standard, and impartially upon its own merits ; of ths ingenuity of the performer, the peculiar rhythm of the music, the extraordinary scales used, the recitatives, the amount of imitation, the wonderful execution and memory of the performer, and his skill in employing small intervals as grace. Then when we hear old slokas and ghazals, songs written hundreds of years a^o, sung with the same sweet dream/ cadences, the same wild melody, to the same soft beats of little hands, and the same soft timkle of the silver cymbals, we shall perhaps begin to feel that music of this kind can be as welcome and tasteful to ears accustomed to it as the music of the West, with its exaggerated sonorousness, is to ui ; and so our contempt will gradually give way to wonder, and upon acquaintance possibly to love. For this music, let us remember, daily gives pleasure to as many thousands as its more cultivated European sister gives to hundreds. There is hardly any festivity in India in which some part is not assigned to music, and for religious ceremonies its use is universal.'

In judging of Indian music one must enquire whether it contains those musical qualities which ensure an artistic appreciation from the cultured. When discussing this matter with an acquaintance once he said to ms, There