OCTOBER 2007 MUSIC JOURNAL - FEATURE

East is East & West is West? by Joy Norman

‘Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet …’

The well-known opening line of Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Ballad of East and West appears questionable when one considers the German musicologist Walter Wiora’s theory of global music. Wiora envisages a world which is musically unified in its first and fourth ages. He speculates that in the first age the world was musically homogenous, as many cultures roughly shared an early history of music. During the next two periods, divergent cultures sang and made music appropriate to their social and aesthetic values. In the fourth and final age, termed the ‘global industrial culture’, all types of music in the world converge again through forces initially predominant in the West, including technological, economic and political. Wiora hypothesises that as a result of these and other developments, the effect would be the combining of various non-Western musical world cultures, who value their own indigenous music as much as the cultural music of the West. Because of changes emanating from around the globe, there appears to be a willingness to syncretise different styles of music, seen today in the culture of popular music, and in what is termed ‘classical music’. The perception is one of a conscious intent to convey a sense of integrated unity among mankind’s diverse musical styles. Although this idea is culturally new to the West, it was an historical political factor of survival in the Indian sub-continent.

There appears to be two broad distinct systems of music: the Eastern or melodic system, and the Western or harmonic system. The former is ancient, and the latter less than four centuries old. Nevertheless, it would appear that some musical concepts are common to both. For example, H A Popley considers that the Indian Gandhara scale from the Kandahar area shows an affinity with the Greek Doric and Mixolydian scales, which may have been the result of musical fusion. It was a highly creative time around 300 BC-100 AD in the Greco-Buddhist period. Popley and other authors compare the division of the Indian scale of 22 quarter-tones or scrutis with that of the Greek scale of 24 small intervals. As history points to considerable trade and communication between the Greek and Persian Empires and India, it is not surprising that their musical systems would have absorbed sounds from one another. But documentary evidence about music from India is rather obscure. One factor was the distinct oral tradition in the Indian sub-continent, whereas the Greeks wrote everything down. During this period, contact between the Greeks and Indians was through the intermediary courtesy of their Persian hosts. The district of Kandahar was a centre of Greco-Indo culture, as shown by its sculptures, as well as those in Taxila (near Rawalpindi), where it is said that Alexander the Great was halted in his conquests. An early reference to music is made by Panini, an Indian theorist who lived around the time that Alexander was in Taxila in 326 BC.

The music of the Land of Bharat, India, cannot be divorced from its philosophy and the culture into which it is inextricably woven. (The countries which make up the sub-continent are India, Pakistan and Bangladesh: in referring to ‘India’, the other two countries are included.) A great deal of literature points to a remarkable feature of Indian culture – its ability to integrate many apparently dissimilar facets into a unifying philosophy. Historically it is evident how the art, music and religion of various races or conquering peoples had been assimilated into this vast continent of South Asia. Indeed, with the advent of missionaries from Europe to India in later centuries, here was a tapestry already soaked in several centuries of ‘foreign’ influences, upon which a Western-style concept of music was soon to be imposed and later absorbed. Curt Sachs is of the opinion that what distinguishes Indian music from the music of Europe is its surprising ‘stability, tenacity and inertia’. Music in the West, by contrast, has developed at an amazing rate from parallel organa to Bach and Byrd, through Mendelssohn, Howells and John Taverner (born 1944), to Reich and Glass.

Modern scholarship still has problems deciphering records which show how music developed in the Indian sub-continent. What can be assumed is that over the centuries (as in any developing nation), there evolved art forms of music, both vocal and instrumental, as well as dance techniques. In view of these developments, rules were established which were to have an influence on the expanding arts, and moreover on the appreciation of the effect of music on the mind.

Hinduism believed that the origin of music lay in its mythological creation by Brahma, so it was accepted that music was divinely inspired. As Michael Holroyd has written, music became an ‘instrument in the realisation of God; a song was a mantra, a vocal tool of worship which could lead to an identical consciousness in worshipper and deity’. This belief has continued down through the centuries, as Hinduism evolved and developed. The concept of divine sound (though different in a theological context) eventually extended to Christianity, where the composer Joseph Gelineau thought that ‘music is something divine, and that melody is the daughter of God’. In Hinduism, music followed the harmonious flow of nature and was created in association with deities and seasons. The early tribal peoples sang their plainsong to glorify the five godly principles of energy on which humanity was dependent – the sun, air, fire, water, and energy or the ether. This sacred music was learnt from memory and handed down through the centuries. The learning of art forms, be it in secular or sacred forms, demanded a worshipful dedication from the pupil to his master, the guru. It demanded intense respect toward age and tradition, long periods of discipline, and precise memorisation of technical knowledge. There was no margin for error, so strong was this creative discipline.

During the Gupta period in India (300-500 AD), there was an explosion of architecture, sculpture and painting. These arts combined to create Indian ‘opera’ – the temple with its sacred art, and the ‘stage’ with its secular art, were the schools of Indian music. This was at a time when Pope Sylvester (330 AD) and St Ambrose (374-397 AD) were working on musical theory in Europe. And while a religious revival was taking place in the seventh and eighth centuries in South India, where there was a flourishing music school, Gregory the Great in Rome was developing plans for music in religion. Contrary to Western beliefs, there were already many musical theoretical sources in India, as indicated by various authors, both Indian and European.

Music said to be the oldest of all arts, was and is acknowledged by many to have absorbed elements from the universe’s existence. It was also thought to be coeval with creation. These abstract sounds Pythagoras described as ‘the music of the spheres’. Shakespeare’s poetic vision was that the ‘smallest orb in heaven’ which moved, made music. The idea that the sound of heavenly music could not be heard as long as the ‘muddy vesture of decay enclosed the soul’ is reiterated in The Merchant of Venice. This music is precisely what Indian sages referred to as unstruck or inaudible sound, anahata, and of which Kabir writes in his poetry:

‘There .... the whole sky is filled with sound, and there that music is made without fingers and without strings.’

The power of sound – ahate, struck, and anahata, unstruck – was said by Arnold Bake to influence the course on human lives ‘leading to total bliss with the divine’.

Over 4,000 years of development occurred in different parts of India, which resulted in a variety of philosophical theologies. It can be said that unlike the Bible, which is a ‘library’ of books, the sacred Hindu scriptures are ‘a library of libraries’. The Vedas, of which there are four, are a collection of philosophy, hymns, stories, rituals and magic, which were composed and collected over centuries. The term Veda means insight and knowledge. The Rig Veda or Songs of Praise contains over 1,000 sacrificial hymns, and were devoted to the many gods of nature. A comparison can be made to those of the European mythical gods; for example, Dyaus/Pitri was the equivalent to Jupiter or Zeus, and Varuna to Uranus. The collections of melodies for chanting were in the Sama Veda. The Vedas were analysed and explained later by Aryan priests in The Brahamas, so as to clarify perplexing rituals contained in the Vedic religion of the time. Contemporary theologians then began to explore the philosophical meaning of life – their existence in terms of humanity and of God. These texts in the Upanishads were a collection of philosophical dialogues much in the same way as the works of Plato and Aristotle. Upanishad meant ‘to be sitting near’, in that the disciples sat near their masters for tutorials, and argued the topic of the day or time as they were later to do in Greek public places. There were around 108 texts, of which only 10 to 15 were considered; these dealt with the spiritual ideas behind the physical realities of life.

With the advent of Buddhism and Jainism (c. 500 BC), there was a decline in the sacrificial system; and with the interchange of new religions, a new change to Indian philosophy occurred. Christianity, five centuries later, played a part in this fusion of ideas, in that its theological emphasis was on the devotion to God the Supreme Being. Bhakti Yoga focused on devotion to God, borrowing Christian concepts.

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata were Hindu epics which were orally transmitted down through the centuries, and only published in the 19th century. They were recited and sung and acted. The Mahabarata consisted of almost 100,000 verses, and the Ramayana of approximately 24,000 verses. Together their length can be compared to The Odyssey and The Iliad. The Puranas, or Stories from Ancient Times, a continuation of the epics, dealt with the creation of the cosmos, the recreation of the cosmos after its destruction, the genealogies of the gods, sages and kings, and the ages of the world and their rulers. The Puranas was looked upon as a handbook to Hinduism; it included guides about caste duties, festivals, pilgrim sites and stories of the gods. The Bhagavad Gita or The Song of the Lord, or The Divine Song – not unlike the Psalms in the Old Testament – was a small part of the Mahabharata which was added later. It brought together the numerous strands of the beliefs and practices of Hinduism. A latter section of the Mahabharata was the Bhagavad Gita, in which there were texts of Bhakti worship. These songs of devotion were songs composed and sung in the languages of the people, and by the people, unlike the great epics which were chanted by priests in Sanskrit –like the lauds of Francis of Assisi, which were sung in the vernacular rather than the Latin of the church.

The sacred scriptures, beginning with the Rig-Veda which culminated in the two epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, followed by the Gita, were closely connected with music over a long period. Its author Valmiki refers to the humming of the bees as the music of stringed instruments, the thunder of clouds is compared to the beating of drums, and vocal music is like the low moaning of elephants. There are also descriptions of Lakshmana listening to music of the vina and other stringed instruments, and accomplished singers as well as Ravana chanting Vedic hymns. There is also mention of jatis, the ancient ragas and various musical instruments. In the Mahabharata the seven notes or svaras of the Gandhara Grama is referred to, as well as the theory of consonance (Gandhara was a great distance from the heat of Hindu development; there is currently a lot of research on the music from that area). The verses in both works were chanted in musical patterns known as Samagan – sam meaning melody, and gan meaning to sing verses. The vocalisation of sound was an act of worship, which identified the singer with God/Brahma. Arnold Bake mentions the metaphysical theory of sound in the Samgitaratnakara which showed the position of music in the religious system of India. The Sanskrit term samgita embraced vocal as well as instrumental music, and music for dance. These three art forms formed a triad, of which vocal music was the apex.

I turn now to three salient concepts of music inherent in Indian as well as early European music – melody, ornamentation and harmony.

Melody and Modality

Melody, with its system of scrutis or microtones as components of tones and semitones, rested on a succession of notes related to each other. This melodic line was reinforced by the intricacies of ragas or scales and talas or rhythm patterns. The melodic line in the early sacred chants followed the text in exact detail, the words prescribing the rhythm and flow and allowing no deviations in intonation. Initially the compass ranged from speech to singing from two notes, which in the Sama Veda eventually increased to seven notes. The chants in the Rigvedic hymns employed three accents denoting pitch, and these accents indicated a minor or a major third, the middle note being the udatta, the lower note the anudatta, and the upper note the svarita. The Saman chant was the earliest known Indian tetrachord, which was conceived as beginning from the highest note downwards. The chant pivoted on two notes, the udatta and the anudatta; according to Popley, in the course of time the interval of a fourth was established. This, both Popley and Sachs believe, led to melodies organised in a framework of a falling fourth. Two tetrachords, one disjunct and the other conjunct, were formed by descending steps or jumps, with the prevailing note as the common denominator. While the conjunct tetrachord shared the prevailing note, resulting in seven notes, the disjunct tetrachord followed a tone apart, resulting in an octave.

Of crucial importance to the melodic line was the Indian raga or scale on which the tune was based. Popley quotes A H Fox Strangways, who described the raga as ‘an arbitrary series of notes characterised, as far as possible, by proximity to or remoteness from the note which marks the tessitura [general level of the melody], by a special order in which they are taken, by frequency or the reverse with which they occur, by grace or the absence of it, and by relation to a tonic usually reinforced by a drone’. The term raga referred to melodic colour or atmosphere and was a combination of notes which made up melody-like scale patterns; more precisely, the notes which made up the raga were taken from a thatt or mela or mode. The raga expressed a sentiment, and each note evoked a special expression vital to the other notes. The three important notes in a raga were the starting note or graha, the predominant note the amsa also called the vadi, and the ending note or nyasa. The amsa was described as ‘the soul of the raga’. The samvadi, the second axial note, was a fifth or a fourth from the vadi. The other notes were known as anuvadi. The raga was structurally made up of notes in an ascending order or aroha, as well as in a descending order or avroha.

A sacred chant or song sung in many ways stayed within the well-defined limits of the raga. The octave or saptak consisted of seven notes or swaras, and may be equated to the Western sol-fa system. In Indian mythology, these names were said to be represented by the sounds of birds or animals, and have been described in ancient works by secular music theorists.

The Saptak or Octave of a scale
Shadai - Sa - C
Rishabha - Re - D
Gandhar - Ga - E
Maddhyam - Ma - F
Pancham - Pa - G
Dhavat - Dha - A
Nishad - Ni - B

The ragas had always been associated with religious practice: when they were used in secular music, they still retained their deep and spiritual nature because of the Hindu perception that all sound was divinely inspired.

Various authors suggest that during the Vedic period the Land of Bharat possessed the most perfect scale from which other modes were derived by a shift of the fundamental note. Many propose that the ancient Indian and Greek systems of music were fundamentally the same in terms of modes, and that the Doric scale of the Greek tetrachord was almost identical in form to the oldest form of the Indian tetrachord. Professor Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy’s study shows that many of the ragas had their counterparts in Western mediaeval ecclesiastical scales -

Indian and European Modes

Svara - Mode - Modern Indian - Ecclesiastical
Sa - C - Bilava - Ionian
Re - D - Kafi - Dorian
Ga - E - Bhairavi - Phrygian
Ma - F - Kalyan - Lydian
Pa - G - Khamaj - Mixolydian
Dha - A - Asavari - Aeolian
Na - B - - Locrian

In Western musicology these modes developed into scales, taking the C ‘natural’ scale as the standard. According to Stephen Duncan, the Bilaval that, or mode on which the Bilaval ragas are based, is similar to the Western diatonic scale. Modal Indian music existed by the relationship of the notes to each other, especially the fundamental and prevailing tones, which like the sound of the bagpipes, was always present in the background or continually sounded. The melodic line with its srutis contained within the confines of the raga was essentially and initially vocal.

Ornamentation

Embellishment – namely, in the uses of alamkaras or ornamentation, and gamaka or grace notes – was an integral part of the non-harmonic microtonal music of the Land of Bharat, and was elaborate. Professor Martin Jenni and others are of the opinion that certain ornamentation in the gamaka system could be seen as the equivalent to embellishments in European music; eg, the kampita ahata, also known as the humpitam, was likened to the appoggiatura, while the kampita gamaka was comparable to the quilisma. There were also turns and slides. Embellishment in Indian monody by the chanting priest could be compared to that in early European Christian monody. The embellishment of melodic figures by the cantor, or by highly specialised vocal masters or priest-cantors, are points of contact with the richly-developed culture of the Indian gamaka system.

Harmony

In monodic Indian music, the concept of harmony has to be interpreted in a number of ways. There was a psychological response to harmony in the construction of the melody through the build-up of note to note, to notes, to phrases, and the rendering of continuous musical phrases which were linked. Any break or pause detracted from this sensation of harmony. Another meaning of harmony in Indian music is the continuous sounding of the drone which supported the melody and acted as an accompaniment. It acted as a ‘static gravitational tonal centre’ from which the melody and the rhythm returned and departed. The drone was supplied by the tambura, whose sounding strings were tuned to the lower fifth, the two key notes and the octave below. In the well-tuned tambura, the fifth harmonic as a clear overtone arose as soon as the last string of the lower octave was sounded, thus there was the implication of an omnipresent harmonic effect. Importantly, the harmony was always based on the fundamental tone, later to become the tonic in Western music. The richness of the svara or musical note was due to the real presence of its overtones; thus, every note was said to be harmonious in itself. The vina, sitar, sarangi and other stringed instruments had their own drone strings which were struck regularly during playing, thus adding to the overall timbre effect. A further interpretation of the concept of harmony is featured in group singing in unison or of the octaves. Arnold Bake equates the singing in three octaves to ‘the low being the breast register, the middle octave the throat register, and the high octave the head register’. The three registers or sthans were the mandra, the equivalent to the bass; the madhya, which corresponds to the tenor or alto; and the tar, or treble register.

The harmony of combining voices had a powerful appeal in Indian music. These concepts of harmony combined with melody were the basic elements which resulted in song as the natural expression of man’s emotions.

A little has to be said about another feature, that of rhythm. One has only to refer to Martin Clayton’s book Time in Indian Music (Rhythm, Metre and Form in North Indian Rag Performance) to see how extensive this subject is. Briefly, just as the raga denoted a system of melodic organisation, so the term tala (tal or measure of time) referred to a system of rhythmic expression. A tala comprises a set number of beats or matras which are divided into cycles, and in performance, hand signals are used to indicate the main beat, the minor beats and the silent beat or rest. A tala could be several bars in Western terms with different time signatures.

Rhythm was seen as an additive concept, developed from the prosody and prose of poetry in its earliest time. Philip Glass explains:

‘In Western music we divide time – as if you were to bake a length of time and slice it the way you slice a loaf of bread. In Indian music ... you take small units, or ‘beats’ and string them together to make up larger time values.’

Today, as we wonder and puzzle over what is happening to ‘our’ music – where it is going, how it is developing, are we able to confront and deal with different art forms – we may do well to quote in full Kipling’s verse, written in 1889:

‘Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgement Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!’

Joy Norman MA ARCM belongs to the ISM’s Suffolk Centre, and is a member of the Society’s Specialist Sections for Musicians in Education and Professional Private Teachers.

Bibliography
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Wiora, Walter (1965) The Four Ages of Music New York: Norton

 

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