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30 National Music of the World. |
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very recently walked about our London streets in the shape of the tabret, or small drum, diligently patted in time by a pair of ginger-bread coloured hands, the beat of which supported and carried off the dreary voice of the chanter. It is observable, however, that this effect, which is rhythm in its crudest form, has offered suggestion to composers in search of local colour. I may instance, as a singularly felicitous example, the Temple Revel in Sir M. Costa's ' Eli,' where the effect depends largely on the repetition of a dull rhythmical sound, sustaining a dance throughout a scene of strong and varied emotion.
In any event, this East Indian music is of homely quality, especially considered in regard to its execution. ' The natives,' writes the friend to whom I am indebted for three of the above specimens, 'have no ' knowledge of harmony. Their ideas go no further 1 than the nasnum and tom-tom, and their souls revel ' in the delightful sounds produced by them, which 1 are the horror of Europeans. At all their public festivals the tom-tom plays a principal part, these drums 1 being made of hollow trees, some of the size of a ' good-sized wine-cask. I have seen them so large as (to be placed on a waggon and drawn by oxen. The |
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