Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav Gandhian Scholar Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338 E-mail- [e-mail];dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoun…

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Gandhian Scholar

Gandhi Research Foundation, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09415777229, 094055338

E-mail- [e-mail];[e-mail]

 

 

INFLUENCE OF MUSIC

 

 

A student of the Gujarat Vidyapith asks: What has been the influence of music on your life? Music has given me peace. I can remember occasions when music instantly tranquilized my mind when I was greatly agitated over something. Music has helped me to overcome anger. I can recall occasions when a hymn sank deep into me though the same thing expressed in prose had failed to touch me. I also found that the meaning of hymns discordantly sung has failed to come home to me and that it burns itself on my mind when they have been properly sung. When I hear Gita verses melodiously recited I never grow weary of hearing and the more I hear the deeper sinks the meaning into my heart. Melodious recitations of the Ramayana which I heard in my childhood left on me an impression which years have not obliterated or weakened. I distinctly remember how when once the hymn “The path of the Lord is meant for the brave, not the coward” was sung to me in an extraordinarily sweet tune, it moved me as it had never before. In 1907 while in the Transvaal I was almost fatally assaulted, the pain of the wounds was relieved when at my instance Olive Doke gently sang to me “Lead Kindly Light”. Let no one infer from this that I know music. On the contrary it would be more correct to say that my knowledge of music is very elementary. I cannot critically judge music. All I can claim is that I have a natural ear for good homely music. I do not mean to suggest either that because the influence of music has been uniformly good on me it must act similarly on others. On the contrary I know that many people employ music to feed their carnal passions. To sum up, therefore, we may say that the influence of music will differ according to temperaments. As Tulsidas has sung: The Lord of Creation created everything in this world as an admixture of good and evil. But a good man selects the good and rejects the evil even as the fabled swan is said to help himself to cream leaving the water in the milk.