THE HOME OF "COLOUR MUSIC."

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2404, 9 March 1915, Page 2

THE HOME OF "COLOUR MUSIC."

AN INDIAN ART. More people than Kipling have pointed out the difference between the East and the West in customs, morals, religion, and practically everything that affects the human race, and the unlikelihood of their ever meeting on common ground. Only time can prove the falsity or otherwise of that summing up, and one is inclined to believe that with the growth of knowledge on both sides, particularly on that of the Western side, a better comprehension and tolerance is beginning to make itself felt with both. It is not altogether curious that one of the fundamental differences _ that exists between these two great divisions of the races of the world is to be found iu music, because it is in music usually that the most intimate expression of tho soul of a people is to be found. Indian sculpture, painting, and architecture have been more or less before the world for the past ten or twenty years (and misinterpreted), but it is only of very late times that Indian music has been thought worthy of study, and yet it has remained the most vital and most universally appreciated art of India, through all the long centuries of her existence.

Always the Indian mind has associated sound with tremendous hidden forces. In the ancient teachings we are told that the world first took form to tho utterance of sound, and also that it disintegrates should the right keynote bo struck. It is an interesting and proved fact that should a certain note ■ be stmck in a room all the glass objects will fall to pieces, because that sound is their own keynote. The same thing can apply to other objects, but luckily experimenters have found that it is extremely difficult to get the right keynotes of these separate things, otherwise we might live in a very crumbling world indeed. Old Indian legends are full of the wonders that were achieved by the sound of music, _ rain, being drawn down by the singing of Rags (not the rag of the present day it need hardly be said), and even darkness felling in mid-day by the singing of a Rag set apart for night. Writing upon Indian music in an article which appeared in a number of the "Nineteenth Century" Mrs. Haigh pointe out that music plays an infinitely greater role in the life of tho Indian peoples than in that of the West, although as an art it may not be 60 systematically cultivated by thorn. With the European it is a thing that stands outside his life, is wholly external to his normal routine; it gives him pleasure and 'interest according to his taste and understanding, but it is not expected to mould his character or determinded is conduct. The Indians regard it altogether differently. To such an extent is music an accompaniment- of existence that every hour of the day and season of tho year has its own melody. Mirasis (bards) wander ab6ut the Punjaub like the minstrels of tho Middle Ages. They are among the retinues of the great. At marriages, fairs, and religious festivals they aro in great request, and in everyday life they figure largely in the foreground. The purpose of Indian music is its service to the people from the highest to the lowest without regard, and never was there a more democratic art than musio as practised in the land of aristocracy, India.

The writer goes on to point out that the true national music of India has been handed down by oral transmission and, concealed from foreign observation, has preserved its unbroken tradition. The greater freedom which this has given was considered even more essen-: tial to musio than literature, and tli# musician would have nothing to do with a system of slavish memorising that depended on a written score, holding that the introduction of a fixed and more elaborate system of notation was destructive to the very nature of Indian music.

It is only quite recently that we have been hearing something of "colour music," and yet with the Indian mind there has always been the alliance of music with painting. "There have always been individuals to whom music conjures up some vision of colour or design, and the modern development of colour music shows that tins is by means an abnormal experience," writes Mrs. Haigh. "To the Eastern mind this association was essential and natural, and is taken into account in domestic and workshop production." From some Eastern studies sho gives the following description of the making of a Kashmir shawl:—

"The weaver actually possesses no copy of the design. The manuscript of a melody lies before Mm, and from this lie weaves the pattern that we se®. A Kashmir loom is really a little orchestra, and each shawl a symphony _of colours, the men as they work chanting the stitches in monotonous plain-song. The connection ■ between colour aud sound is fundamental in Indian artfabrics —though tli© point has never been investigated so far as we know— and furnishes the key to that power of combining and harmonising in which they,are so supreme."