Our Forum

I

MUSIC AND MUSICAL RESEARCH

To THE EDITOR,

Triveni, Madras.

Sir,

Anent the article under the caption ‘Music and Musical Research’ by Mr. K. V. Ramachandran appearing in your issue of July-August 19i3, I am painfully forced to make the following observations and trust you will kindly find space for publishing the same in your valuable Journal.

The present generation ought at least to be grateful to the late talented Mr. Singarachari for the public good initiated by him, namely that of publishing the grammar of South Indian Music for the first time according to his lights. The fact of the matter is, that as regards South Indian Music, nay of all Indian Music, the grammar is so simple. The framework of any raga (melody type) can be simply expressed by the order of ascending and descending notes, within the octave (sthayi) named according to the twelve frets of the Veena, (for which however 16 names have been given in South India). Just as the grammar of a language comes late in its history, when the language acquires and evolves a decent method of expression of ideas, and the words get different shades of meaning, and just as the grammar can never give us the meaning of words, so also the grammar of Music can never be a substitute for its language. One may as well hope to become a great orator, or a great poet, by the mere study of grammar.

Musical art is different in certain aspects from the other sister arts of painting, sculpture; or literature. Though the ear is the guide and the sole judge of the art, conveying to us the emotional effect of music, the impressions are very transitory and evanescent and their retention so difficult. It is only of late, that gramophone records have come into vogue, to give us for a critical examination samples of raga improvisation and elaboration, as sung, say within the memory of the last two decades. All we have got to go by for any criticism is the music, in different styles, and in a large number of pieces, as sung today by the musicians and artists. While the sensory impressions given by pictures or sculpture of the various ages of human history can thus be discussed as they can be constantly referred to, in the case of melodic music however, an examination of past music is impossible, except as it is preserved in the voices of the men and women, and in the fingers of instrumentalists living today. If one has had the good fortune to learn from the great living masters, he would find that each sangathi (or sentence of a song) as he repeats it for the learner is not quite the same on each occasion. Nay, further, the artist, as he is singing or playing can rarely be his own critic (except when a discordant note ‘rushes’ in), only he feels that he was not in form when he had finished. On these considerations, therefore, it is easy for the reader to see how futile will be the study of the so-called history of melodic music, and of the more ancient text-books without any samples of music of the ancients, and we are beginning to see already as a result of such study, the squabble over the old words used in describing music, as they cannot be understood. The probable reason for the present decadence of music is that the 20th century torch-bearers lack the faith and the lofty idealism which inspired the past composers.

While on this subject, I may as well give my experience of the practice of the art (on the violin). The vocalist in learning the art from his teacher goes by the sense of hearing, and sets about the adjustment of the vocal chords to produce the sweet sounds as they follow one another, but in the case of the instrumentalists, either on the violin or the Veena (where the modulations of the human voice can be more or less accurately reproduced) the music will not come out by simply getting at the various positions on the frets of Veena. A manipulation of the tension of the strings has to be made, and thus a second sensory impression of the sense of touch supervenes. In the early stage, the would-be-artist simply attempts at producing the music as sweetly and correctly as possible, but when that stage of learning is reached when music is played without any look at the instrument or the fingers, and when the nervous and muscular responses to the correct intonation are good, a self-consciousness arises that the pitches of notes are not the same as those of the 12 frets of the Veena in the octave, and the characteristic notes of each raga do, more often than not, lie between some two frets of the Veena (or well-known positions on the violin). This is called srutignana and when this knowledge pours in into the consciousness of the player (and of the vocalist) the art sense suddenly develops in him and he is gladdened with the joy of his Own music. Mention of the so-called twenty-two srutis within the octave may be in a 2nd-century sloka, but srutignana is an experience gained by the practising instrumentalist never to be forgotten, and supreme in melodic music. The word srutignana connotes a finer perception than swaragnana, which is restricted to the knowledge of music described according to the 12 frets of the Veena within the octave. The names for these twenty-two srutis should have been given perhaps at a very much later age, when the Veena frets had to be fixed in hard wax, and the way even to recognise these names has now been lost to us. (In fact the modus operandis of this fixation of frets—or of melam as it is called is almost forgotten, and these tuners are, it is sad to say, fixing the frets now by the harmonium, which is entirely wrong). I can, on the statement of my late father, vouch for the fact that even the late Maha Vaidhyanatha Iyer once questioned to himself whether the ‘Sadharana Gandhara’ of South Indian ‘Thodi’ was the same as the ‘Shadsruti Rishabha’ of ‘Natai’ (though the frets are the same in the Veena in common parlance). It is necessarily, therefore, the instrumentalist who, by the very process of the mastery of technique, has a better sense of how the musical sounds are produced, in trying to imitate the human voice, as the sense of touch and of distances on the strings gives him witness to these srutis. Thus, the question of frequencies or ratios comes to the forefront, and thanks to Helmholtz, srutis can now be defined with a certain amount of accuracy. (Perhaps the writer of your article does not know that it is after the advent of Helmholtz that the tuning of the piano has been rendered perfect by the aid of the counting of ‘beats’). My article in the Journal of the Madras Music Academy, Vol. 2, No. 1 of 1931 makes references to these srutis in relation to the existing music of the present day, as evidenced in the various compositions in some of the more common ragas (or melody types). All this is but an aid to the memory of the raga type.

There are various types of beauty of the human face, a Japanese, Chinese, English, Welsh, Irish, and so on. But though the Japanese and Chinese are Mongols having common features, there are distinctive characteristics in each. Similarly, in the case of music these distinctive characters of ragas can be best described by reference to 22 srutis or more, which are present. It should be added, however, that melodic music can be written up (though roughly) only in relation to the notes as described by the 12 frets of the Veena in the octave and that melodic art is a whole, which can never be completely deciphered by any system, even of srutis or separated notes.

Research work to be fruitful should, therefore, be either on scientific grounds, or by a study of the various musical compositions as now sung under the different schools as handed down from teacher to pupil, while references to dead and long-forgotten books can only be of academic interest.

C. SUBRAHMANYA AYYAR

Member of the Board of Studies in

Indian Music, Madras University.

Calcutta, 12^th Oct. ’33

II

UDAY SHANKAR

To THE EDITOR,

Triveni, Madras.

Sir,

Uday Shankar’s recent visit to Madras seems to have, caused a mild sensation in the minds of the public, and a gentle flutter in the hearts of art-lovers, and there is quite a good deal of controversy in the papers about him and his art. Undue praises have been lavished upon him by a generous public and unmerited criticisms have been leveled against his dancing by well-meaning critics. All this is good and encouraging.

Friends, both those who warmly admired Uday Shankar and his art and also those who have adversely criticised his shows, have asked me as to what I think of his dances, and I can only repeat what I had said on another occasion that ‘in his case it was a triumph of showmanship over art, of artistic excellence over perfection of technique.’ By this I do not mean that he is an indifferent dancer but that he is more successful in his productions than in his performances.

Uday Shankar is by no means a classical dancer in the sense that he has been a keen and careful student of the classical dance-arts of India and a conscientious exponent of accepted abhinaya and nritta according to Bharata Natya. I do not think he ever claims to be a faithful follower of traditional forms and conventional usages in the art, but an artist who makes use of old motifs and suggestive gestures and poses for the expression of his inner urge as a dancer.

He is essentially a creative artist and not a mere traditional dancer. He is certainly no exponent of anyone particular type of Indian dancing, much less of classical Nautch dance of South India, for most obviously he has not the proper training and requisite talent for such. He is a concert artist who presents against simple, suggestive, beautiful settings, bits of themes of both classical and folk dances, and to that extent only he is an interpreter of Indian dancing in some of its aspects.

The very nature of his presentation makes it impossible for him to perform any one dance item to its completion, and classical dances of the type of Bharata Natya or Kathaka or Kathakali require not only years of training and practice but hours of display. This fact has been ignored by almost all those who have severely criticised him for taking liberties with the traditional forms and canonical laws of Bharata Natya and mutilating them so flagrantly. There is much to be said in favour of this view, but one cannot at the same time forget the artist’s objective and ignore his motive and purpose.

I agree with much of the criticisms of ‘Ganadasa’, which appeared in the last issue of Triveni, and share with that learned critic the hope that Uday Shankar would really do well to get a good grounding in the traditional style of Indian dancing, under an experienced teacher, before he is able to intelligently and successfully interpret this ancient art of Bharata and before he is able to create something great and unique of his own. As he is today, Shankar is a sensitive artist, a fine producer and a successful showman–a truly rare phenomenon in India–and to this side of his genius due credit must be given. India, today, needs more men of his constructive genius, and his pioneering work should be more sympathetically viewed and appreciated. It is also good to tell him where his faults lie, and if he means business he will indeed be much benefited by criticisms as well as by praises. I personally wish him good luck and success and more strength to his elbow.

Madras, 11 Oct. ’33.

G. VENKATACHALAM.