General expodstheir fastidious taste and ardent listening that form the sustaining force
of our art. How we so silently and so obviously mingle as one with
the artiste and how even the finest turn of the singer registers a fillip
flashing like lightning on the faces of men and women in the audience
have been observed and remarked about by all Western visitors who
have dropped into our concert halls. Recently when your famous vio-
linist Menuhin visited our country at the invitation of our prime Mi-
nister, his tribute to our music was excelled only by his tribute to our
audience.
But those who have cultivated the art of expressing their musical
experience or appreciation in a manner which has substance, attrac-
tiveness and critical outlook are few and far between. That is, we do
not yet have a considerable body of able critics. At a lower level we
have all varieties of writings about musicians and performances. A
really powerful, competent and vigilant critical opinion is all the more
in need now to take care of our art in this transition period.
You have referred to musical therapy. In ancient Indian texts, the
soothing and curative properties of music are referred to; an old Indian
medical text asks sweet and good music to be played about when a
woman is in pregnancy. Except for a stray article or two on the subject,
no harnessing of the therapeutic possibilities of music have been
thought of in our government or private hospitals. Likewise, while
the softening and humanizing influence of music is recognized and not
infrequently enlarged upon, no prison or reformatory of our country
has yet begun trying music on the criminals.
The ennobling effect of music pertains only to the higher type of
music. In theme and rendering, on the other hand, music can be of
a lower category, which instead of contributing to the peace and poise
of the spirit, may excite and inflame passion. In our oldest scripture,
there is the interdiction against low voluptuous music and later, the
lower type of musician, devoid of culture, has been classed along with
the socially undesirable types. It is to guard against this degradation
that successive musician-saints of our country strove to keep the art
mated with the highest devotion and spiritual endeavour, and even in
apparent love themes enunciated the underlying analogy of the yearn-
ing of the human soul for its divine counterpart.
The significance of Indian music in the international sphere is again
this: its high philosophy as ajoga for the stilling of human passions,
the transcending of the fever of mundane preoccupations, and the
attainment of spiritual equipoise. For the consummation of this sub-
lime end our melodic art is indeed far more potent, the melodic art