Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University by Edward MacDowell
page 45 of 285 (15%)
page 45 of 285 (15%)
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hold a very long-necked banjo.
It is to the Krishna incarnation of Vishnu that the Hindu scale is ascribed. According to the legend, Krishna or Vishnu came to earth and took the form of a shepherd, and the nymphs sang to him in many thousand different keys, of which from twenty-four to thirty-six are known and form the basis of Hindu music. To be sure these keys, being formed by different successions of quarter-tones, are practically inexhaustible, and the 16,000 keys of Krishna are quite practicable. The differences in tone, however, were so very slight that only a few, of them have been retained to the present time. The Hindus get their flute from the god Indra, who, from being originally the all-powerful deity, was relegated by Brahminism to the chief place among the minor gods--from being the god of light and air he came to be the god of music. His retinue consisted of the _gandharvas_, and _apsaras_, or celestial musicians and nymphs, who sang magic songs. After the rise and downfall of Buddhism in India the term _raga_ degenerated to a name for a merely improvised chant to which no occult power was ascribed. The principal characteristics in modern Hindu music are a seemingly instinctive sense of harmony; and although the actual chords are absent, the melodic formation of the songs plainly indicates a feeling for modern harmony, and even form. The actual scale resembles our European scale of twelve semitones (twenty-two _s'rutis_, quarter-tones), but the modal development of these sounds has been extraordinary. Now a "mode" is the |
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