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"Plea for Youth" - "Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves." "Take care of the juniors and the seniors will take care of themselves." How true!Music is a more democratic art than painting and other arts. Kindness and magnanimity towards beginners shown by really great artists who are too humble, too sincere and too good to indulge in envy. Here they are as great as their art. A truly great artist may be indifferent to lack of encouragement, but the thing that hurts him is that artists with less equipment carry away the laurels. Poverty and hunger will never make a great artist out of third-rate talent. But they can also never interfere with the growth of real gifts and talents, wherever they are. Good wine needs no bush. Without commentators, art will better serve its purpose. If the art is good it will not need any explanation. If it is bad, it will not be worth our while to listen to it. to enjoy a good dish we do not keep a book on cookery by our side.
The desire for great creative artists can be fulfilled only when their talents and genius are allowed to flourish for them to develop as artists. No special attention need be paid or protection given except that the demands of life do not strain their time and energy to such a degree as to be a handicap to their artistic growth. there should be freedom from cares, business and worries other than pertaining to their own art. they should not be harassed by the insecurity of life. Otherwise they in their turn will never become the makers of the next musical generation. it is good to remind master artists of their own lives, the struggle they had to put up to come up and more than all, the unforgettable and most important fact that hey had also to go through the mill, that they were not born as they are now at their height, that they were also junior musicians in their own days. If all the senior artists realise all this, if they are people with genuine kindness, tolerance and goodwill, they will do their best by the younger men in the art and profession of music. They owe it to these young artists to do it as gentlemen and artists.
The public also has an equal responsibility in the upbringing of the younger generation of musicians. It is very sad to see that during the performances of younger musicians there is no audience worth mentioning or even if those present sit in cold and severe silence. The musician feels like a prisoner in the dock. More than lucre and money, nothing goads youth to further achievements than timely, mitigated and well meant praise and encouragement. the young languish for love and sincere admiration and encouragement from their seniors and their public. It is really very heartening for these young artists that the Government of India are genuinely offering their best in awarding research scholarships to deserving young artists in all the arts, they can work without other worries towards the growth of their talents; so that they can wholeheartedly devote their time and energy to art and its development. Real gifts and talents should be nurtured wherever they are. But young people who are poorly placed in life should have greater chances of being selected to these scholarships, since their better placed fellow artists more than not tend to be indifferent to honest work because they are financially sound and secure.
The juvenile musician should realise many things. Primarily, he must have immense faith in the success of his endeavours and confidence in himself. there is a pertinent saying: "If you do not believe in yourself nobody else will". It has been found in all public professions and careers that riches follow the establishment of a sound reputation and hence, they should first try and secure an effective introduction to the listening public. Here, it is the duty of all musical organisations to see that no young artist is denied his or her fair share of chances for such introductions. It is very disheartening to see, for all who are interested in art, that on such occasions, the snobbery of listeners of big cities like Madras prevents them from attending such concerts or that when they do, they sit in cold judgement over the artist. Judgement of such artists' performances will not be fair if listeners forget to reckon with their age, experience, voice or the capacity of their medium. The young artists are caught in a vicious cycle. the organisers are very chary of engaging artists without a reputation and the artists can achieve any reputation only through getting engagements and platforms in such organisations. It is sadder still to find that even the organisers of events like temple festivals and Dusshera festivals, where the listeners do not pay to listen, request only well known singers or musicians to perform year after year, while there are many young deserving artists who long for a platform and public. The reputed artists for one are too busy to find time for accepting such requests, when the organisers press them for concerts, while the younger ones who ask for chances are refused. The point is that the organisers are more eager to achieve publicity than anything else.
Luckily enough for us there are with us musicians, who though quite young, are able to give us good listening - and at a fairly high standard of music too. Every book talks about the child being a father of the man, the youths of today being the citizens of tomorrow. But, when it comes to emerging artists for a programme or a series of concerts, only those who are already acclaimed as great artists are requisitioned. In all such series a decent percentage of the concerts should be assigned to young artists who show promise of a good future. It is fair and legitimate that even in their own interests, organisations should try and encourage such artists. The reason is not far to seek. It is a kind of undesirable musical snobbery that has descended on us, the public of cities like Madras. Too many performances throughout the year have cloyed over listening capacity. When we are confident we can hear top class artists as often as we like, we are naturally indifferent to the younger generation of singers, who literally languish for want of encouragement and support. This sort of musical nausea has produced a set of rasikas who go to the extent of thinking that the smaller the audience the younger artist draws to his concert, the higher the quality of music. This is only the pendulum going to the other side. Some rasikas have formed a sort of music circle, where chosen rasikas in limited numbers can listen to the musician without a mike. This is welcome as a kind of healthy opposition. There should be many more of this kind, because only through these small organisations can the younger musicians gan an effective, gradual introduction to the public. If we take care of the apprentices, the seniors will take care of themselves.
Improvement in youth is made impossible by conflict of interests, scarcity of facilities and lack of encouragement. It will never be owing to incapacity for progress. If the efforts and endeavours of such young people meet with encouragement and the admiration of critics and rasikas whose opinions carry weight, the beginnings of a promising career are well laid. After a certain stage, the only help such artists need is effective introduction to the larger public and timely, well-meant, constructive and kindly reviews from the press, and oral transfer between individuals and sections of the public. If the young musician has enough talents, capacity for taking pains and intelligence, it is up to him to make use of such opportunities in building up a sound reputation by a sufficiently sincere dedication to the art and through self analysis and the intelligent observations of interested and well meaning seniors and critics, go on improving the size and quality of his stock and performance so that eventually he comes to stay in the career and becomes of the "indispensables" in the world of art. Growth in any aspect of life has not been found possible without sacrifice in some other. An artist who wants to be outstanding will have to sacrifice the so-called pleasures of life. Otherwise, he will not have the stamina or energy to stand the strains of a busy profession and for constant musical "preparation". Though the study of lives of great men of genius in the field of art reveal that they had to fight against many odds such as lack of facilities sometimes dire poverty and like, they were genuine enough in their dedication to art to jump over these hurdles and eventually gain the fame and status due to their talents. It will be evident that poverty or other handicaps can never imperil the growth of genius wherever it is. In all such cases it is the bounden duty of musical organisations and the public to stretch a helping hand to these young artists, who, but for their timely encouragement, will wither away like a desert rose.
The combination of technique, inventiveness and the personality to work along one's own chosen routes, these constitute the base of originality along with the ability to assign these routes in a magnetic direction. Owing to the infinite range in the mind and personality of musicians, music is endowed with growth and development and hence it is the duty and rare privilege of genuine musical thinkers and artists to make the maximum use of God's gift and contribute their own facets to the multicoloured gem of music. In this angle, all attempts by the young people who practise their art in the direction of blindly following in the footsteps of their successful seniors are tragically sad. Only those artists will be great and successful who have the technique, personality and inventiveness, who know how best to get what they know and pass it on in those directions that will contribute to progress from the prevailing standard of achievement. The greatness of any musical genius lies in the logic of his thoughts, the precision of his expressiveness, and the force and impress of his unique personality. Tyagayya is revered for his great musical contribution, not for his contribution to philosophy or metaphysics.
Taste in music is not synonymous with one's likes and dislikes, for these interfere with true assessment of the greatness of any music. It can be called the power to discriminate between what is true and what is false, what is congruous and what is incongruous, what is logical and what is illogical. For this, the need for certain objective standards cannot be questioned. Each note may mean something to each person. But their arrangement in an organised manner should sound the same to those who have been trained to perceive it. Music can be said to be reasoning with sounds and notes. But the beauty, grandeur and grace of music depend on the relationship of these sounds, not on the sounds themselves. the principles of design and composition of colours in painting are almost the same when viewed on the basis of their effect on different persons. They are almost similar. Great music is a well thought out system of tonal relationships.
A young musician must make an analysis of the experiences of many people within the audience who are sensitive to the appeal of music, and should be a careful and deep study of the various styles and techniques in vogue in his own times, evolve his own style, which again should be made up of all the elements and qualities he has assimilated from the music of his own times and should nourish and develop his own individual style. There should be a harmonious fusion of all these factors. Otherwise it will be patchy, inconsistent and unconvincing. He should have effective intelligent and desirable powers of appropriation and synthesis. All this not easy without great natural gifts, intelligence, unswerving loyalty to ideals, the capacity to take infinite pain and more than all these, an unshakable belief in oneself. Another unmistakable sign of greatness is concentrated cohesion of perfection, showing no constructional weakness. Imitation of current trends is not illegitimate at the learner's stage. the learner should ultimately dissolve the trends he imitates, with a characteristic style of his own, when he becomes a mature musician. For all this, it takes every sound musician almost the whole of his youth and early middle age. Hence it is that it will be found on analysis of the lives of great musicians that only those musical reputations last that have been achieved when the musician has almost gone past his youth, and entered middle age. the artist, if he wants to create a lasting impression should either consummate a tradition or imitate another. In all cases of easy flowering of genius, unless it occurs in young men of uncommon balance and unusually high ideals, their genius peters out and they are denied the fulfilment anticipated of them.
More than style, the form the musician uses should be powerful enough to open up fresh avenues and scope for thought. The bigger artists require a large canvas to fill in their bigger thoughts and interpretation. they will never good as miniaturists. But, here if the thoughts are not really so great as the form, the result is something repelling, patchy and insecure. The public is quick to recognise this.
There must be a certain universality about all great music.
Criticism by contemporary musicians should be carefully analysed. the person who makes the criticism is worthy of study. If it is an equal aged, successful musician, it should always be taken with a pinch of salt. If it comes from aged seniors, who are also successful musicians, it can be said safely, to indicate that the young musician has made a mark - an effective mark in the profession, all the more so, the more adverse the criticism is, for the plain reason that unless the senior musician feels that he is getting a competitor in the rising young musician, he will not take any notice of him much less pass any criticism on his younger comrade in the profession. Curiously enough, criticism by equals tells us a good deal about themselves. It will be good to remember that the greatest musician has never completely escaped either praise or censure. Musical greatness should always be judged from the middle perspective neither from the top as the Chinese painters paint landscapes, nor from the bottom as the middle ages painted heaven and the angels, neither compare it with too long a past nor relate it to the too distant future. The bias this way or that amongst listeners is quite understandable - one professing its adherence to the old traditions, and the other to the new. Every movement in art is bound to have a major or minor conflict. It is unavoidable. It only shows that contemporary opinions are always coloured by some form of ideological partnership. The only evidence of a genuine rasika is that he or she will go to any music that is worth listening to, wherever and from whomsoever it is.
The opinions of contemporary musicians will not always be dependable. For, being musicians, they are so egocentric, insular and temperamental, that they are not genuinely concerned with the growth of personalities other than theirs. They are oblivious naturally to the logic of spheres other than those that pertain to their own fulfillments. They dont have the urge to undergo the discipline or to study the music of others with philosophic impartiality and the powers to subdue their own personal and temperamental preferences to that end.
To be a good artist, one should be a good appreciator. Disorganised presentation in art always produces unrest and uneasiness. The listeners find it easier to follow any presentation that is logically conceived, one step leading to another and presented in an aesthetically beautiful form. This is the peaceful joy of contemplating all art. It is easier for this comprehension to study any presentation that has no dead ends, no jarring, discordant notes or wrongly timed sequences, everything in natural relation to everything else. This holding together of the various parts results in an organic whole, the contemplation of which always gives aesthetic satisfaction. The dictates of good taste are not wholly an individual enterprise.
Material which in suitable for the purpose, whatever it is - good balance, unity of design and appeal in presentation - all these account for whatever is good art, which satisfied both the giver as well as the receiver.
The human mind is always slow in facing and working at new problems. So, if an artist tries any innovation, it should be presented gradually to the listeners.
The understanding of any art precedes its appreciation, and familiarity is the basis of all understanding. To get to know any art one has to familiarise oneself with all its idioms, its gestures and language. Greek architecture is appreciated because we are so familiar with it.
Culture consists in training for learned and refined behaviour, its attitude and its viewpoints. In other words, it is a sort of education. Apart from learning skills in various necessary and vital vocations, it is concerned primarily with the adult and older generations with the learning of attitudes and viewpoints, both in action, and in words and language. So the younger generation knowingly and otherwise emulates models of behaviour amongst the older and more refined of cultured elders and predecessors. This is how culture has grown from very early times to the present day. It is in this aspect that leaders in any aspect of life and art owe a responsibility to the coming generation - in the marshalling of their ideas, the code of their social conduct and behaviour, in the expression of their attitudes and viewpoints, models for emulation for present and future generations.
The master artist is an individualist. As such, he will be ill adapted to regimentation. The scientist probes and proves. The artist, on the contrary feels, conceives and creates. It is evolution that sustains and maintains art. Though fashions come and go, there is no sudden upheaval or revolution in art. Art has evolved by the handing down of the discoveries and experiments of one generation to its next. Hence, it is that no artist at any time can utterly disregard tradition except to his downfall.
Processing what one gathers from the part and the environment and with the gift of one's own imagination and the capacity of one natural gifts, one makes, as it were an alloy of one's own which none can analyse.
Good intelligence and aesthetic judgement help in rapid and accurate absorption of what is great in others and this along with genuine creative imagination will make a delectable alloy of an individual style. For this, long periods of sustained and able work and a formidable thoroughness are absolutely indispensable. The young artist should therefore study with pains and profit from as many techniques as possible and as intelligently, as his time and energies permit. His own technique need not be an ineffective copy of those he has studied. It should be one that suits his own artistic personality, ideals and interests.
