The characteristic of Indian music is that it depends upon the creative talent of the musician in improvisation. An outline is given by the composer, and the musician fills it in as he pleases. Very little is given by the composer, the outline only, and the rest is the expression by the singer of his feeling at the time of singing. Music in India has always been used not as an amusement but as a means of mystical development. Therefore the sound of the instruments is faint, and even when several instruments are played together the effect is not produced by the chord, by harmony, but by melody. Each instrument has the melody.

There is very little written music in the East. Thee are many reasons for this. There is a system in the Sanskrit manuscripts, but there are very few who read it. The system must needs be a very complicated one, yet, that is not the hindrance. Notation would hamper the musician, and not leave him free to sing and play what his soul speaks. In India a singer, when he begins to sing, sings first the keynote. Then he repeats it over and over again so as to put himself so much in union with his instrument that his voice and the tone of the instrument may be one. Then he goes a little further and returns to the keynote. Then he goes a little further still, but always returns to the keynote.

The musician may take one raga and play that for hours, or he may go from one raga to another. But the more he plays one raga, the more he indulges in that, the more he impresses his soul with it, the more he will find in that. The ragas have sometimes been understood as scales. They are not scales but patterns of notes within the octave. There are four different sorts of ragas: ragas of six notes, ragas of seven notes, ragas of odd notes, and ragas of even notes, ascending and descending.

Different ragas have always been played at different times of day. The inner reason for this is that every time of day has its atmosphere, its influence on us. The material reason is that as evening dress is wanted at a banquet, because for so long the eyes have been accustomed to see it, so our ears have been accustomed for very long to hear these ragas at night, in the evening, or at midday. Several ragas are usually sung before dawn. In India before dawn, everyone goes to his work or to his devotions, and there he finds himself very much helped by the stillness of the hour, by the finer vibrations. At midday the noise from all around is much greater and stronger notes are needed. The ragas for midday are made all with natural notes. The ragas of the night are with odd notes. The ragas of the early morning are made with flat notes.

I have seen myself that in playing the Vina and singing the raga jogia in the early morning, when people were going to the temple and to the mosque, sometimes they would stop to listen and be rapt in the music. At other times with the same raga I did not even impress myself, according to what the mood was. In the old legends we find that in ancient times music had an effect not upon men or upon animals only, but upon things, upon objects, upon the elements. The flames of fire burst out or the waters stopped running when music was sung or played. In the poem of Tansen which you may have heard read and recited here many times, you will have heard that this was so. A person may ask, "Is this an exaggeration, or is music different now from then, or have we lost this art?" I will say that such singers as I have heard sing in India when I was a boy I never heard since in the next generation.

The singers of the ancient times sang the same raga, the same song, hundreds of times, thousands of times, a million times. It is by repetition of one thing, by association that we can produce in ourselves the creative power. To have acquired a great store of knowledge, so many songs, so many ragas is nothing. It is the power of producing from within oneself, of creating, that is great. Indian music gained very much by its contact with Persian music. It learned grace and the expression of Persian music. And it gained much from the beauty of the Arabic rhythm. After the rise of the Moghul empire it was much more beautiful than it had been before.

That it is very highly developed is shown by the rhythm also. There are rhythms of five and rhythms of seven, which are very difficult to keep, and there are songs in which no rhythm is apparent for some bars, but the musician keeps it in his mind and after several bars he comes in upon the right beat. There are rhythms which do not begin upon the beat, which always mislead the hearer. There are four different kinds of songs: the Dhrupad, the Qawal, the Tumri, and the Ghazal. The Dhrupad requires a special training of the voice, just as it is not everyone's work to sing opera music. The Qawal means imagination, the song of imagination.