Page:The Music of India.djvu/158

 4. Further in Indian composition the melody is dependent upon the relation to certain fixed notes which vary according to the raga. It sets no store by any progress through notes which suggest harmony, whereas western melodies tend to circle round the notes which are harmonically related to the tonic. As a result imitation at different levels, so common in western music, is very rarely found in Indian music, and the two tetrachords are seldom identical in the character of their constituents.

5. As we have seen Indian music lays great stress on grace-gamaka — 'curves of sound.' These are not mere accidental ornaments as in western music, but essential parts of the melodic structure.

6. The use of microtones in Indian music and the general absence of the tempered scale gives a very distinct flavour to it. To those whose ears have always been tuned to certain fixed intervals, this occurrence of quite different intervals, some of them most strange to western ears, alters the whole feeling of the music. Mrs. Mann says, 'Western music is music without microtones, as Indian music is music without harmony.'

7. We have already noticed the difference in time- measures and this is accountable to a very considerable extent for the strangeness of Indian music to so many. Varieties of duration do not come naturally to ears which are habituated to varieties of accent.1

8. Another difference that has a great deal to do with our appreciation or otherwise of music, is the matter of emphasis upon certain external qualities. Western music rightly has come to lay very great emphasis upon tone and timbre, whereas Indian music passes these by on the other side and gives all attention to execution and accuracy. The melody is not determined by canons of charm or pleasure, but by adherence to certain fixed standards ; and the quality of tone in which the melody is sung or played does not have the importance that it does in the west. 'The Indian singer is first a musician and secondly