Each
one of the seven basic notes of the octave is associated in Hindu
mythology with a color, and the natural cry of a bird or beast-DO
with green, and the peacock; RE with red, and the skylark; MI with
golden, and the goat; FA with yellowish white, and the heron; SOL
with black, and the nightingale; LA with yellow, and the horse; SI
with a combination of all colors, and the elephant.
Three scales-major, harmonic minor, melodic minor-are the only
ones which Occidental music employs, but Indian music outlines 72
THATAS or scales. The musician has a creative scope for endless
improvisation around the fixed traditional melody or RAGA; he
concentrates on the sentiment or definitive mood of the structural
theme and then embroiders it to the limits of his own originality.
The Hindu musician does not read set notes; he clothes anew at each
playing the bare skeleton of the RAGA, often confining himself to
a single melodic sequence, stressing by repetition all its subtle
microtonal and rhythmic variations. Bach, among Western composers,
had an understanding of the charm and power of repetitious sound
slightly differentiated in a hundred complex ways.
Ancient Sanskrit literature describes 120 TALAS or time-measures.
The traditional founder of Hindu music, Bharata, is said to have
isolated 32 kinds of TALA in the song of a lark. The origin of TALA
or rhythm is rooted in human movements-the double time of walking,
and the triple time of respiration in sleep, when inhalation is
twice the length of exhalation.
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