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dated June 8, 1957: Menuhin on Indian music

Mr. Yehudi Menuhin, the world famous violinist, has said that Indian music seeks to release man from the baser emotions so that his mind and spirit are free to rise to the spheres of meditation and liberation. He told London's Asian Music Circle, of which he is President, that Indian music varied from that of the West in the completely different way in which it created an atmosphere of dedication of artist and audiences. Mr. Menuhin was introducing sitarist Ravi Shankar at the opening of a programme of three concerts that Ravi Shankar gave in London. The noted violinist said that since he came across Indian music four years ago, it had become an integral part of his life. He added that Indian music sought the release of the individual through individual discipline while Western music involved much more collaboration of various elements. Indian music had set out and kept up the spirit of individual purity so well that it had never become the vehicle of combined effort. The harmonic structure of Western music enabled many people and many elements to combine together. Indian music on the other hand had always maintained the purity of the melodic line of the individual. Its improvisation was perhaps its greatest appeal to the West. This improvisation was comparable to the capacity of a poet to allow free play to his imagination, and the mastery of the great Indian musicians over their medium was so great as to be able to give play to their imagination in completely perfect form. The atmosphere of an Indian musical concert was very elusive, and it took a very great deal of cooperation from the audience. "You must not expect to be forced, as you would be by a symphony, into a passionate sense of being. The music here seeks to release you from the baser emotions so that mind and spirit are free to rise to the spheres of meditation and liberation."

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