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EASTERN & WESTERN MUSIC
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living principle, the consciousness which permeates my phy. sical body, and keeps it alive is real. The world around me is real. The unreality, the ignorance, the illusion, the falsity comes in when I begin to identify myself with my body, and to imagine a possessive relation with things, apart and distinct and separate from myself.
Ajit Prsaada Eastern and Western Music.
Mr. Anthonvis Klumper of Denmark, who has come to India to study indian music spoke thus at Ferozepur.
The Rigveda knew only three notes, which were raised to five in the Samveda. Soon after the number of notes was pulled up to seven, and 'ragas' and 'raginis in their thousands came into being, whose unwieldy number was reduced by a succession of composers, until we find Tansen giving them the characters they FOSSESS, to.day.
Western composers had a large canvas to work upon and moved from not to note. The Indian composers worked in a smaller compass and yet imported into it an astonishing measure of freedom and creation. The Indian artist had an ear for very delicate and subtle variations of which the Western mind was unconscious.
Indian music, said Mr. Klumper, was faced with a crisis. The harmonium and the piano were replacing the Vina and the Sitar with disastrous results.
It was time, concluded the speaker, that young Indian musicians realized the beauty and sweetness of their art and instead of imitating cheap western models turned to their ancient scriptures on the subject. Western music had already exhausted its melodic possibilities and was
turning to the East. Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat www.umaragyanbhandar.com
