A conversation between Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein

All-
I came across this on the web, and I thought it might be of interest.
Rabindranath Tagore is an Indian author and musician and we all know the
other fella.

EINSTEIN: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it
is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

TAGORE: There is in human affairs an element of elasticity also, some
freedom within a small range which is for the expression of our
personality. It is like the musical system in India, which is not so
rigidly fixed as western music. Our composers give a certain definite outline,
a system of melody and rhythmic arrangement, and within a certain limit
the player can improvise upon it. He must be one with the law of that
particular melody, and then he can give spontaneous expression to his musical
feeling within the prescribed regulation. We praise the composer for his
genius in creating a foundation along with a superstructure of melodies, but we
expect from the player his own skill in the creation of variations of
melodic flourish and ornamentation. In creation we follow the central law of
existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from it, we can have
sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the fullest
self-expression.

EINSTEIN: That is possible only when there is a strong artistic tradition
in music to guide the people's mind. In Europe, music has come too far
away from popular art and popular feeling and has become something like a
secret art with conventions and traditions of its own.

TAGORE: You have to be absolutely obedient to this too complicated music.
In India, the measure of a singer's freedom is in his own creative
personality. He can sing the composer's song as his own, if he has the
power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law
of the melody which he is given to interpret.

EINSTEIN: It requires a very high standard of art to realize fully the
great idea in the original music, so that one can make variations upon
it. In our country, the variations are often prescribed.

TAGORE: If in our conduct we can follow the law of goodness, we can have
real liberty of self-expression. The principle of conduct is there, but
the character which makes it true and individual is our own creation. In
our music there is a duality of freedom and prescribed order.

EINSTEIN: Are the words of a song also free? I mean to say, is the singer
at liberty to add his own words to the song which he is singing?

TAGORE: Yes. In Bengal we have a kind of song-kirtan, we call it-which
gives freedom to the singer to introduce parenthetical comments, phrases
not in the original song. This occasions great enthusiasm, since the
audience is constantly thrilled by some beautiful, spontaneous sentiment
added by the singer.

EINSTEIN: Is the metrical form quite severe?

TAGORE: Yes, quite. You cannot exceed the limits of versification; the
singer in all his variations must keep the rhythm and the time, which is
fixed. In European music you have a comparative liberty with time, but
not with melody.

EINSTEIN: Can the Indian music be sung without words? Can one understand
a song without words?

TAGORE: Yes, we have songs with unmeaning words, sounds which just help
to act as carriers of the notes. In North India, music is an independent
art, not the interpretation of words and thoughts, as in Bengal. The
music is very intricate and subtle and is a complete world of melody by itself.

EINSTEIN: Is it not polyphonic?

TAGORE: Instruments are used, not for harmony, but for keeping time and
adding to the volume and depth. Has melody suffered in your music by the
imposition of harmony?

EINSTEIN: Sometimes it does suffer very much. Sometimes the harmony
swallows up the melody altogether.

TAGORE: Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A
simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of
color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination
with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy
their value.

EINSTEIN: It is a beautiful comparison; line is also much older than
color. It seems that your melody is much richer in structure than ours.
Japanese music also seems to be so.

TAGORE: It is difficult to analyze the effect of eastern and western
music on our minds. I am deeply moved by the western music; I feel that
it is great, that it is vast in its structure and grand in its
composition. Our own music touches me more deeply by its fundamental lyrical
appeal. European music is epic in character; it has a broad background and
is Gothic in its structure.

EINSTEIN: This is a question we Europeans cannot properly answer, we are
so used to our own music. We want to know whether our own music is a
conventional or a fundamental human feeling, whether to feel consonance
and dissonance is natural, or a convention which we accept.

TAGORE: Somehow the piano confounds me. The violin pleases me much more.

EINSTEIN: It would be interesting to study the effects of European music
on an Indian who had never heard it when he was young.

TAGORE: Once I asked an English musician to analyze for me some classical
music, and explain to me what elements make for the beauty of the piece.

EINSTEIN: The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the
East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

TAGORE: Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer is beyond himself.

EINSTEIN: The same uncertainty will always be there about everything
fundamental in our experience, in our reaction to art, whether in Europe
or in Asia. Even the red flower I see before me on your table may not be
the same to you and me.

TAGORE: And yet there is always going on the process of reconciliation
between them, the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.


John Starrett
http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jstarret