The music of Hindostan - Ibiblio

13 INTRODUCTION
form a dim cluster in deep shadow.
The sight of their serious faces,
and the fixed look with which they regard each other rather than
any actual sound, tells you that the concert has begun.
" A note is held on pianissimo, almost too high for the ear to
distinguish, like the opening phrase of Lohengrin, and then through
several and various developments passes into a rhythmic movement
without any increase in the body of sound. Astonishing it is,
this almost silent music issuing from such powerful strings !
It is
like the buzzing of a fly imprisoned in your hand, or the rustle of
a moth^s wing against a window-pane, or the death struggle of a
dragon-fly. One of the players holds in his mouth a little steel implement,
and by the vibration of his
cheeks produces the sound of
a whispering fountain. Another, on one of the largest of the
guitars, coaxed by the hand as if the player were afraid of it,
up on the same notes a prolonged Tuwhoo !
keeps
like the blurred note of
an owl, whilst a third instrument, muted, gives the sound of the surf
on a distant beach. Then there are taps on the edge of the drumhead
with the finger tips which your ear can hardly detect. Suddenly
jerks and jolts, utterly unexpected, introduce a mad fit of two
seconds duration ;
the strings vibrate at their full length, and these
same drums, struck differently, utter deep, dull sounds like the lumbering
stampede of elephants over hollow ground, or the rumbling of
a subterranean torrent in some boiling chasm. Then in a moment all
grows quiet again, and relapses at last into the whisper with which
it
began.
'^
Seated cross-legged on the ground a young Brahman with
wonderful eyes holds between his knees an object whose lack of
finish contrasts strangely with the refinement of the rest. It is
a rough earthenware jar containing pebbles, and its
fits closely to the convex of his bared chest.
large opening
The volume of tone
increases or diminishes according as he leaves the jar open or closes
it by pressing it to his body.
His extraordinarily agile fingers draw
from it sounds now twittering, now booming, or again, when the
pebbles rattle inside, hard and dry like pattering hail.
'^
When the melody of one of these guitars makes itself felt above
this clamorous silence, it is with a sort of wail by which the sound
is dragged from one note to the next, an intense and passionate
moan of rising grief, and the sobbing melody instead of being
drowned is reinforced by the tumult of the unearthly drumming.