Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 73

[Copyright reserved.
THE MUSIC OF JAVA
By J. KUNST
(Keeper of the Musicological Collection of the Royal Batavian Society in Java) ANYONE wishing to come to a clear comprehension of a kind of music that is entirely foreign to him is faced with a great many difficulties, however anxious he may be to appreciate its qualities, and however susceptible he may be to beauty in general. He must try to divest himself of all prejudice before approaching this world of strange sounds. If he has theories or preconceived ideas or axioms about æsthetics, he must try to forget them, as well as all the conventional conceptions with which he has grown up. To put down a specified rule for the state of mind and soul in which to enter into this new realm, or to prescribe what to forget and what to appreciate, would lead us into the domain of psychological analysis and of musico-technique. I do not propose to do this here for fear of our losing ourselves in this sphere of almost unlimited possibilities. I only wish to utter a warning against the familiar danger of following one's inclination to condemn in foreign music that which seems inferior to our own, whereas those elements which, as a rule, have been more or less neglected in our own music, with the consequence that our ears are not attuned to them, are generally not appreciated at their true value when they occur in this exotic music. For example, a common objection expressed by Europeans with regard to Javanese music is that it shows a certain primitiveness in the melody; a lack of development and growth in the form. They seem at the same time to be insensible to the delicacies of the rhythm and the wonderful shades and the variety in the drumming. On the other hand, the Javanese is sure to disapprove in European music of the, to his ears, wilful use of the tonalities, the lack of expression in our drum-play, the poverty of our percussion instruments; and, at first, he will be unable to take in the imposing tension of the melody, the touching climax-in a word, the essential psychic contents of our great orchestral compositions and of our chamber-music.
The preceding remarks bear partly on an essential difference, which we may define in the following way : Indonesian music is static ; modern European music dynamic. Western music is full of action and tension ; the great
* Lecture delivered at the Netherlands Legation in London on October 12, 1934. Sir Francis Younghusband presided
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