SUDHANSHU's MIDNIGHT MORNING - WITH MUSIC ...
Dr Sudhanshu Bhushan
Senior Policy Advisor – ( 15th April 2023... ) at New Zealand Red Cross Auckland, New Zealand Job Description - Policy classification, Consulting & Strategy
12.10 AM - GOOD DAY TO YOU WITH MIDNIGHT OF EARLY MORNING !!
MORNING WITH SOFT CLASSICAL NOTES OF MY MUSIC -
Mozart - Symphony No. 41 in C major, Jupiter - IV. Molto allegro (Bohm)
Music for delicate souls Rachmaninov Pianoconcerto no 2 Adagio Khatia Buniatishvili
O what a fine piano play by Khatia Buniatishvili
AND NOW HINDUSTANI MUSIC
Raga :Kedara in Vilambit and Drut "Kedara - Ustad Amjad Ali Khan"
Kedar at Sunrise? It seems outrageous but I was listening this music in my early rise today – Saturday weekend at sunrise. What a soft melody through SAROD of Ustad Amjad Ali Khan.
RAM DHUN – Vaisnav vajan - Amjad Ali Khan and Bismillah Khan Duet 1/ 4
SPIRITUALITY IN HINDUSTANI MUSIC
The “spirituality” of Hindustani music has been rather cynically marketed as its distinguishing quality to the international music community. This claim can be considered with two prefatory observations.
First, though Hindustani music may have features conducive to the semblance of "spirituality", it is not clear if it is uniquely equipped to capture the supra-aesthetic potency of music, Second as I think there is a point out in the spiritual significance of a work of art which also depends importantly, on what kind of a person the individual contemplator is, and not only on what the work itself may be said to contain.
We may identify the two dimensions of spirituality, the secular and the non-secular.
The secular manifestation of spirituality can surface in the exploration of the ”formless" raga -form with the objective of its embodiment in communicable form. This is an inward looking, meditative, process, demanding immense grammatical alertness, independent thinking, recall, organization, integration and imagining. At its best, the process is intellectually demanding, and emotionally exhausting. In this process, as it progresses and shapes the exposition of the raga through the agency of the genre in which it is performed, audiences may become aware of a profundity. The necessity of this process to performance may, therefore, be conducive to a semblance of spirituality.
The non-secular connotation of spirituality refers to the life of the spirit, or feelings that are religious, sacred, holy or divine. Such aesthetic perceptions are possible in the rendition of explicitly devotional song-text, the melodic charm of the rendition, a visible serenity in the rendition and a contagious immersion of the musician (tadatmya / oneness) in the act of contemplation.
There appears to be a third dimension to this notion of spirituality associated with Hindustani music, though not entirely unrelated to the two discussed above. The eminent musicologist, Ashok Ranade, had once said to me in personal conversation -
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There is a uniquely Indian relationship between the musician and his art, and we should never lose sight of it when we write about Hindustani music.
He was evidently alluding to something more abstruse than the universal anxiety of artists relating to the effective delivery of aesthetic value to their audiences.
The influential German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen probably refers to this feature of Indian music in his book Towards a Cosmic Music, when he says:
When a musician walks on stage, he should give that fabulous impression of a person who is doing a sacred service. In India . . . when a group of musicians are performing, you don't feel they do it to entertain you. They do it as a holy service. They feel a need to make sounds, and these sounds are waves on which you ride to the eternal.
The phenomenon Stockhausen describes arises possibly from the sense of diffidence - and even awe - with which the Indian musician approaches the task of performing a raga. To quote Ustad Vilayat Khan (private conversation):
A raga is bigger than the collective imagination of all the musicians who have ever lived, or will ever be born.
Faced with so daunting an object of contemplation, the only possible stance for a musician is total surrender. Being a ”formless form", and a source of inspiration, the raga is easily viewed as a Divinity to whom the musician prays, entreating it to descend into its melodic form. This idea is verbalized in the Ragavibodha of Somnatha (CE 1609):
That is called rupa (form) which by being embellished with sweet flourishes of svaras brings a raga vividly before one’s mind. It is of two kinds - nadatma (one whose soul or essence is sound), and devamaya, one whose soul or essence is an image incarnating the deity), of which the former has many shapes, and the latter has only one.
William James is apparently on the same wavelength:
"The “divine” mean(s) . . . such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely .... The personal attitude which the individual finds himself impelled to fake up towards the divine . .. shall have to confess to at least some amount of dependence on
sheer mercy .... "
- The Varieties of Religious Experience, Collier 1961
In a general sense, then, the "holy service" stance can be seen as an expression of the sanctity of a musician's relationship with his art, which is seen as a manifestation of the Infinite. But, the idea could be philosophical more than theistic. It is consistent with the Hindu doctrine of karma, which deals with causality in a uniquely Indian Way. And, causality is relevant to this context because the artistic endeavour assumes specifically intended aesthetic effects.
According to this doctrine, every human thought, word and deed has consequences, for which the individual is accountable in eternity. Even those activities man pursues for pleasure are not ”karma neutral". But, because man is limited in his ability to control, or even anticipate, these consequences, every aspect of life deserves a reverential deliberateness of conduct. In a man of Wisdom, this becomes a habitual pattern of behaviour, and can suggest as it does to Stockhausen - the stance "of a person who is doing a sacred service".
The obvious beneficiary of such a stance is rasa because the process of musical creation is driven by the musicians self-actualization aspirations, with the need to plea se audiences becoming incidental. Such a stance will also deliver music of higher moral value because it will address the nobler - rather than the baser - emotional propensities and dispositions latent in human nature.
To assess the probability (or otherwise) of encountering such reflections of “spirituality” in the present context, I defines spirituality thus:
What exactly is meant by spirituality? It is an invasive orientation of one's whole being and attitudes . . . (which) could take the form of an intense yearning for the divine . . . a pervasive colouring of one's whole being . . . (which) calls for tadatmya (intense oneness) with the act in question . . . (which is the result of) lifelong practice of the art of melody and rhythm (resulting in) the spiritualization of one's conduct and attitudes in daily life . . . (reflected in) their lives and personalities (being) blessed with what the Bible speaks of as ”riches of the spirit" and the Bhagavad-Gita as daivi sampada (Divine Wealth).
I wonder with considerable justification, whether such attainments, or even aspirations, can reasonably be expected from musicians pursuing art music as a profession.
MUCH LOVE
Sudhanshu