DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5834#0082
HINDOO MUSIC.
61
which it was adapted. The only thing possessed by
modern Europeans, which bears any resemblance to
the music of the ancients, is the Gregorian canto
fermo, modelled upon what was supposed to exist
among the Romans before the decline of art. In this
chant the same variety of modes exists as in the
music of antiquity, and the same names have been
applied to each. Modern writers usually mistake
these modes for different keys, though they all be-
long to one key, being composed, to speak intelligibly
to a modern musician, of the different scales of the
diatonic heptachord.
These same modes exist in the Hindoo music, and
therefore many of them will not carry a regular modal
harmony, such as distinguishes all modern European
music, which contains only two modes. Thus the
Hindoos, like the Greeks and Arabs, sing only in
unisons ; though in the native concerts I have some-
times distinguished a third or a fifth struck upon the
final note. But this is mere instinct; the human ear
naturally conceives these harmonic intervals, and this
is so true that I have heard bands of Mozambique
negroes, whose music is strictly that of nature, sing
in three parts, and their ear led them instinctively
to the common chord, and the chord of the dominant
seventh. The Hindoos pretend to musical science,
and are, therefore, disposed to reject that which
Nature teaches them. The consequence is, that when
they light unconsciously upon and sound a harmonic
interval, with its fundamental note, it breaks the mono-
tony of their unisons, and they consider it a blemish.
The practice of music is universal. There appears
o
61
which it was adapted. The only thing possessed by
modern Europeans, which bears any resemblance to
the music of the ancients, is the Gregorian canto
fermo, modelled upon what was supposed to exist
among the Romans before the decline of art. In this
chant the same variety of modes exists as in the
music of antiquity, and the same names have been
applied to each. Modern writers usually mistake
these modes for different keys, though they all be-
long to one key, being composed, to speak intelligibly
to a modern musician, of the different scales of the
diatonic heptachord.
These same modes exist in the Hindoo music, and
therefore many of them will not carry a regular modal
harmony, such as distinguishes all modern European
music, which contains only two modes. Thus the
Hindoos, like the Greeks and Arabs, sing only in
unisons ; though in the native concerts I have some-
times distinguished a third or a fifth struck upon the
final note. But this is mere instinct; the human ear
naturally conceives these harmonic intervals, and this
is so true that I have heard bands of Mozambique
negroes, whose music is strictly that of nature, sing
in three parts, and their ear led them instinctively
to the common chord, and the chord of the dominant
seventh. The Hindoos pretend to musical science,
and are, therefore, disposed to reject that which
Nature teaches them. The consequence is, that when
they light unconsciously upon and sound a harmonic
interval, with its fundamental note, it breaks the mono-
tony of their unisons, and they consider it a blemish.
The practice of music is universal. There appears
o