Introduction to the Study of Indian Music: An Attempt to Reconcile Modern Hindustani Music With Ancient Musical Theory and to Propound an Accurate and ... Indian Musical Intonation
E. Clements
Paperback
(Forgotten Books, June 17, 2012)
The time is perhaps far distant when it will be possible to write a connected history of Indian music, tracing its origins, development, and old age. It is clear, however, that its golden age that period so short in the history of any art cycle, and so prepotent in determining the modes of both art and life for long subsequent periods must lie far back from the present. Not improbably, that golden age coincided with the moment of greatest achievement in drama, Kalidasa, and for the theory, Bharata. Long anterior to this, however, music was a most highly cultivated perhaps the most highly cultivated of Indian arts, and to the present day it has remained the most continuously vital and most universally appreciated art of I ndia. (T aking together what has been lost, and what remains, music is, then, the most complete expression of the soul or genius of the Indians a mirror faithfully reflecting their inner life. That Elnglish Orientalists and educationists have so long ignored this music, is the measure of their misunderstanding of I ndia. While it is true that, until modern times, music has remained in the best sense one of the most popular of Indian arts, it is also true, though with exceptions, that it has been neglected and despised, for example, by A urangzeb, as well as by more modern puritans. But the music remained too intimately associated with religion, with the drama, and With life, whether courtly or popular, and was too faithfully guarded by the traditions of the guilds for it to be possible that it should die out altogether. There are to be found even now, for the most part at the courts of Indian rajas, or in specially musical towns like Lucknow, Tanjore, and Poona, a few ustads who are artists of high, and even of supreme rank ;but they belong to an order that is passing away.(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)About the Publisher Forgotten