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The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish and the voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.
When thy words will take wings in songs from every one of my birds nests and the melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.
-Rabindra Nath Tagore
Such were the views of great music lover and expert Sri Rabindra Nath Tagore who regarded music as a source of delight as well as a source of uniting natural phenomena to soul or God making “Love is God and God is music” a meaningful phrase.
Music is present in every living and non-living beings – men, animals, birds, fountains, rivers, winds and even trees which produce the natural sound in sweet rhythmical way. The source of musical rhythm is the Nada.
One cannot say exactly when and how music came into existence. However, history of Indian music can be broadly divided into three periods, ancients, medieval and modern.
Ancient period means the Vedic Age which covered upto around 2000 B.C. Vedic literature says that during those times the sages used to sing and their wives used to play instruments like veena amongst the four Vedic scriptures, “Samved” was primarily music based. The ‘Mantras’ in Samved were recited in vocal form and were known as “Semgan”. In Semgan three types of swar i.e. tone were, anudatta (low pitch), udatya (high pitch) and swarit (between low and high pitches).
The age of Ramayana and Mahabharata is considered to be the golden age of Gandarbha music. Possibly during this era, the seven swars known as Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni came into being.
In the past vedic era, music was practiced during the Buddhist period. Even during the Maurya period, music was popular as evident from references in Mautilya’s famous treatise, Arthashastra.
Vatsayan during 200 B.C. asserted Indian music to be a total and unique assimilation of three aspects.
Geetam: Vocal music i.e. an expression of emotions through tune (vocal).
Vadyam: Percussion instrument music for the rhythmic values of music.
Nrityam: Dance, visualization with different physical or organic movements.
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What is Music
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