In an earlier post, we offered the moving recollection by Musharaff Moulamia Khan, the youngest brother of Hazrat Inayat Khan, of how he began his musical education.  To complement this, here are some of his observations on Indian music in general.

I may perhaps add here a note on Indian music.  Indian music is very different from western music, although from a musical point of view the music of East and West are closely allied, being founded on the same tonal system and the same rhythm. Historically also they are allied, being both expressions of the same Aryan race. But they have developed in different directions.  Also the Indian music is immeasurably older.

In  India, music is performed to the few.  It is performed before a small circle of listeners in a room or in a temple, while in the West a singer is trained to make his voice heard in a vast theatre or hall and to reach hundreds of people.  And an orchestra or band can be heard throughout a park.

It takes years of training before a singer in India becomes skilled in his art. And before he can consider himself a musician and an artist he must also be a composer.  The Indian musician will tune his instrument in the presence of the few people who are seated round him to listen to him.  As he tunes it, he tries to feel his way into their minds and their moods.  He has no set programme to perform. He will choose a raga or melody which seems to him suitable for the moment, and he will improvise upon it, like a poet who chooses a certain subject which he thinks appropriate and then composes in the presence of his hearers a new poem on that subject.

The singer is trained to sing softly. We admire quality in the voice, and truth, purity of tone and flexibility in reaching the notes, which are caught as a ball is caught. Our way is a most natural way in music.

An educated Indian can only begin to understand and to enjoy western music after some time. The western voice production sounds to the eastern ear forced and unnatural.  It is like a hammering on the brain: the delicacy and feeling and expressiveness of the human voice seem lost in the effort of the production.  With highly trained singers this artificiality and harshness of voice become usually more noticeable, and the natural beauty of the voice seems to us to be sacrificed to technique and to volume of sound.

Although western singing is difficult to understand and unmelodious to Indian ears, at the same time the very highest western art can soon be understood and appreciated. For instance, such diverse examples as a symphony of Beethoven or the work of Mozart or of Händel are quickly admired. Also we were always keenly interested in studying the use of western musical instruments.

An Indian singer chooses his raga or theme, and constructs his own song upon it.  His improvisations prolong the emotion which the raga produces. By repetitions the value of the chosen melody is brought out and shown, and the singer stamps his own individuality and personality upon it. The repetitions correspond in a way to chords and harmonisation.

Our Indian ragas or classical melodies represent moods, or else they represent certain aspects of time or of nature.  A raga may be called a design or pattern or it may be called a poetical picture; or it may be described as a mathematical formula.  The knowledge of the construction of the raga is in itself an education.  For this reason in India music has always been considered inaccessible to the masses of the people.

The Brahmins* see in their music the culmination of their silence and their civilisation. For whoever understands the laws of sound, to him the whole of mysticism is revealed. Therefore the Brahmins guarded their music as sacred.  And with this point of view Moula Bakhsh** came into conflict twice: first as I have said, when he made efforts to learn the Brahmin art himself; and a second time when he wished to teach the Brahmin music, and when in order to teach it the better, he devised his system of notation and endeavoured to make written manuscripts of this music.  As I have said, it was for the introduction and perfecting of this system of notation that Moula Bakhsh became widely known in India.

But the Brahmin point of view was that their art would vanish if it were made general. It would be misunderstood, they thought, and would become degenerate in the process of of being made acceptable and intelligible to the uninitiated and the masses; for indeed it presents the final stages of their mathematical science, an idea that can be better expressed in music than in words, to those capable of receiving it.

But Moula Bakhsh’s view was that this ancient national music should be made known and spread, that the soul was already dying in it, that it was becoming more a dry system than a living art, and that it needed a new draught of life.  These were the principles that supported him in his work at the Gayan Shala.

*Brahmins are the priestly caste of the Hindu system.  Indian classical music is broadly divisible in two: the music of north India, influenced by but not at all restricted to the Muslim culture, and the Carnatic music of the south, nurtured in the temples of the Hindu religion.

**Moula Bakhsh was the grandfather of Musharaff, and he had a remarkable musical career. Before coming to Baroda (now called Vadodra) he spent some time in southern India, and was repeatedly rejected by Brahmin musical teachers on the grounds that he must first be born a Brahmin in order to learn Brahmin music.  He persevered, though, and in the end was allowed to sing in their temples, and was considered to be the re-incarnation of Tyagaraja, a legendary Hindu singer.  Moula Bakhsh was subsequently invited to the court of the Maharaja of Baroda, where he settled, and established the Gayan Shala school of music, which continues today as the Faculty of Music of the Maharaja Syajirao University of Baroda.