The complete radio interviews can be consulted on the archives site.
TRANSCRIPTION
Interviewer: Des chiffres et des sons, how do you see Alain Daniélou?
Alain DANIÉLOU: That’s the fundamental problem with music. Music is a very curious phenomenon because, when all is said and done, we hear only the relationships of sounds, the relationships of frequencies. These are numerical ratios. And how is it that numerical relationships have a psychological action that can move us? And what’s interesting is that in Indian theory in particular, where we’ve gone into great detail, we’ve been able to analyse what’s really going on, that we’re sensitive, we have mechanisms that react to certain numbers, certain ratios of numbers.
This is the basis of all aesthetics. Why do we find some beings more beautiful than others? Certain statues better proportioned? There is a very curious phenomenon that we perceive directly, certain numerical factors as having an emotional and psychological effect. This is what I set out to analyse in my work on Indian music.
Interviewer: Semantics.
Alain DANIÉLOU: In musical semantics. And then, when I came back to the West, I realised that here, we were totally ignorant because we live on an aberrant theory which is the temperament where all the intervals are wrong, but that, for example, a good singer of Lieder doesn’t listen to the piano. He is very careful. It’s a rhythmic sound, but he looks for moving intervals. And if you then notice why a B flat suddenly bursts out like something that startles you, you realise that it’s exactly the same interval that you find in Indian music.
That’s why I think we need to revise our approach to music to make it much more effective anyway, and in fact Indian music tries to create a psychological state.
Interviewer: So, is it subjective or is it for everyone?
Alain DANIÉLOU: It’s absolutely objective, there’s nothing subjective about it. We then realise that certain ratios that are linked by a factor of two, for example, give us an octave. An octave is neutral. We say it’s the same note. Yet it’s a different note. So a factor of three, like a fifth, is a stimulating, active relationship and all the highly emotional relationships are linked to factor five. This is a very curious thing that also explains why there are numbers like, for example, the golden number in architecture, which is also the number five. You can see this in all aesthetics.
I was very amused to see that in the Italian village where I live, people say: “But why do these old walls with their scattered windows have this sort of attraction, this sort of charm? And when I asked my village mason to widen a window, he said: “But I can’t. I’m not tall enough. I don’t have the height. Do you understand? And because it continues the window to exactly the ratio of the golden ratio and basically, I think, it’s something that allows us to study our reactions very deeply in all areas and I think it’s an area that has been very poorly explored, at least in the West.
Interviewer: And poorly respected, because I don’t think that in contemporary architecture, the golden ratio is the rule.
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, but also, we don’t have the same kind of charm that we find in ancient architecture or in the proportions of a Greek temple, for example. That’s the difference between the Madeleine and the Parthenon.
Interviewer: The comparison, yes, obviously. So, Alain Daniélou, we recently celebrated your 20th birthday, and the least we can say is that it’s been a busy life, and not a sedentary one. The first thing we can say is this.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Certainly.
Interviewer: And I asked myself, all this extremely learned work, all these journeys and all this accumulated experience, how do you see it today? The sum of all that, you must be a very changed person if you think back to your extreme youth.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Not really.
Interviewer: Not really?
Alain DANIÉLOU: I think that, from childhood onwards, we have certain tendencies that we gradually try to realise throughout our lives. And if you’re lucky enough to fall into…
Interviewer: That’s it, you mustn’t bully them.
Alain DANIÉLOU: That’s why, for me, my fulfilment came – although I was very reticent about my childhood environment – it was in the Indian environment that I found a way of being, a way of thinking that corresponded quite deeply to my nature.
Interviewer: Yes, so let’s talk a bit about your childhood. Are you from Brittany, a Breton family?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, my family is Breton, although my mother is from Normandy. So I’m not a pure Breton.
Interviewer: It’s not very far.
Alain DANIÉLOU: No.
Interviewer: It’s still the West, it’s not the East, and the parents are very different.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, on all levels, because my mother was a very Catholic person who was very active in education.
Interviewer: She’s the one who created the collèges Sainte-Marie.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, and even another religious that she had created with Pius X at a time when religious orders were not allowed in France. My father, on the other hand, was a Red, probably a Freemason, but in any case very left-wing and very anti-clerical. So it was quite a strange mix. And then, a very funny thing, my mother belongs to one of the oldest aristocratic families in Europe. We published the 1000th anniversary of a Norman family, which is my mother’s family, and my father was a commoner.
There was also the extraordinary difference that my mother didn’t want us to go into her husband’s awful environment, and she didn’t want us to go into hers either, because we weren’t born there ourselves… we weren’t born there.
There was a rather curious kind of isolation in this family, which was perhaps also an advantage, because at that time people managed to maintain their independence of mind and freedom.
Interviewer: His balance, yes. So, I think you had a fairly solitary childhood because you were fragile.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, I was…
Interviewer: Which apparently then disappeared.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but that disappeared when I started doing sport and dancing. At that point, all of a sudden, I completely transformed my sickly child state and became a very vigorous and athletic boy. Which is very nice, because it gives you a lot of opportunities in life.
Interviewer: Yes, absolutely, it’s a strength. But what I was wondering is that I have the impression that the solitude of your childhood was very beneficial, because it seems – as far as I know – that no one really influenced your abilities or your desires. So you studied piano on your own and read a lot.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, and I’ve also been painting since I was 12, and I learnt to play the piano practically on my own. And that was an absolutely marvellous experience for me, because there’s an association with certain works that I adored with great intensity and certain circumstances, certain landscapes from my childhood that have remained very fixed in my mind.
Interviewer: Was it in Brittany? Was it in France?
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, it was in different places because Brittany was not an ideal climate for a child, what was considered a physical child at the time, or I don’t know what. So I was sent with someone, a teacher, to teach me Latin or a few rudiments of grammar, sometimes in one place, in an old château in Auvergne or in eastern France, in places…
Interviewer: Various.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Various, yes. Basically, I was very happy living with trees and animals and birds. It was all an extraordinary opportunity for me.
Interviewer: Yes, and the Catholic religion was never very important to you, even as a child.
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, in any case, I was a priori hostile. When I was a child, you know, I loved… I had a very Dionysian instinct, I adored trees. I used to make little shrines to invoke the deities of the forest.
Interviewer: But it’s a bit mystical all the same.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but then, as my family understood absolutely nothing, I said to myself: “I don’t belong to the same world”. Basically, it was fine. I remember I was always very determined, as a child, not to let myself be influenced by my environment.
Interviewer: And then you left for the United States?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to an American college, which was a great discovery for me about a very free way of life, and so immediately I illustrated the college’s annual book. I sold watercolours everywhere and suddenly I discovered that after all, I was somebody, I could do something and I really liked that America.
Interviewer: And it was when you came back from America that you worked with Charles Panzéra on the vocals?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, so I worked with Panzéra for several years and it was a very nice thing to do because he was a wonderful singer of Lieder.
Interviewer: Melody, yes.
Alain DANIÉLOU: And melody. We got on very well. He really liked the way I sang and it was a very interesting experience.
Interviewer: And it was purely dilettante, I mean, you weren’t thinking at all of doing… what career did you have in mind at the time? What career did you have in mind at the time?
Alain DANIÉLOU: In fact, I never envisaged a career. That’s my big flaw.
Interviewer: Yes, that’s what I thought, yes. That’s what saved you.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Maybe that’s what saved me. I was passionate about things. I worked like a madman without ever making a plan: How can I do this? What will it lead me to? How can I organise my life, etc.?
Interviewer: In other words, you had benefited from a financial situation that was, I would say, suitable for such material freedom, right?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, of course.
Interviewer: That’s it. Because I think quite a few people have similar instincts, but it’s not always easy. So how did dancing come about?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Just like that, another whim, another madness. I absolutely wanted to study ballet. I went to see Nijinska, who directed me to the old Légat, who had been Nijinsky’s teacher, and so for several years I worked passionately on classical dance. And then I started to create things that were very personal for me. I had different partners and I gave quite a few recitals and concerts. Then I went off to the Orient and, my God, another career fell apart.
Interviewer: Yes, it was replaced by another career. The piano, I read that at one point – I think it was in the United States – you earned your daily bread to some extent by playing in cinemas?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, well, that was…
Interviewer: Is it anecdotal?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, quite simply. You know, in those days, films were silent, so there was a cover behind a little curtain, and there was a pianist…
Interviewer: Who was following the action.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Who followed the action and improvised things, and so I had a bit of fun doing that. It’s funny. So it did some very funny things to me that, many years later, when I saw certain films, I would say to myself: “Well, that’s extraordinary. I’ve never seen that part of the film. I was busy at my keyboard
Interviewer: Busy with other things. But then, in terms of music, piano, classical, shall we say, I think you’ve included a Schubert impromptu in your programme.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, for me, Schubert is the pinnacle of music. Schubert and Liszt are the musicians I played most lovingly in my youth.
Interviewer: And can you tell me why? Was there an idea?
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, that’s very difficult. How can we express ourselves? If music serves a purpose, it’s because it can’t be expressed in words.
Interviewer: In terms of numbers and sounds, is there perhaps a connection?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but that’s very difficult because the nuances by which an artist manages, despite the absurd system of the piano scale, to express feelings are very difficult to analyse because they involve questions of touch, volume of sound, rhythm, the way you wait a tiny moment before one note or another. This is a system that is very difficult to analyse.
Interviewer: But even so, everyone recognises that there is a certain voluptuousness – well, I think everyone recognises it, perhaps in my case – in Schubert’s modulations, for example, so that must have something to do with what you’re studying.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, of course. But then, I think there’s work to be done, but it’s very difficult to do because you’d really have to…
Interviewer: But that’s not what scares you, that it’s difficult.
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, but then, this is an area where so much analysis and experimentation is needed. Yes, all of a sudden you’d have to devote a few years to it. It’s not very easy, and I’ve dealt with so many other aspects of music where it was easier to understand the real problem of the nature of sounds and their influence than to tackle something that is very closely linked to interpretation, because it has to be said that in music, interpretation plays an absolutely fundamental role.
Interviewer: In all kinds of music.
Alain DANIÉLOU: In all kinds of music, if you listen to a violinist or a pianist, after three bars you know whether you agree or not.
Interviewer: If that suits you or not, yes. So, this is L’Impromptu Opus 142 No. 2, A flat major, I think, by Murray Perahia.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, for me he’s a musician I understand. Most musicians, I rebel because my experience was so personal that it’s rare that I meet artists with whom I completely agree on their interpretation.
Interviewer: Schubert, we were listening to the Impromptus Opus 142 No. 2 in A flat major, played by Murray Perahia.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, and you can feel it very well in a real performer. All of a sudden, every single thing that smells like a repetition is not a repetition at all. It has a different colour, different nuances of touch. You feel the melodies one through the other and then, from time to time, cries that are real cries. I find it very moving. He captures Schubert’s astonishing sensitivity very well.
Interviewer: And this freedom too.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, of course. Fortunately, it doesn’t belong to the era of mechanical pianos.
Interviewer: And do you still play the piano?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but almost not because, you understand, instruments are a pity. If you don’t have the time to work several hours a day, you betray yourself and the work, alas.
Interviewer: But the pleasure of playing for yourself, right?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but even for yourself, if you play…
Interviewer: If you’re not satisfied, you’d better not do it.
Alain DANIÉLOU: It’s better not to. If you don’t do things perfectly well, you’d better not do them at all.
Interviewer: And did you also work on composition at that time?
Alain DANIÉLOU: A little, yes.
Interviewer: With Max D’Ollone?
Alain DANIÉLOU: With Max D’Ollone, yes, who was a great friend. But I didn’t get much use out of it, except for orchestrating the Indian national anthem.
Interviewer: That’s something.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, of course.
Interviewer: So, I think that during this period, you hung out with all – let’s put it crudely – the crème de la crème of the intelligentsia, including the artists.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but it just happened. Deep down, I was always a bit of an outsider, very innocent, and obviously I met a whole milieu of very interesting people, people like Cocteau, like Maurice Sachs, like Max Jacob, and in all these circles in which I found myself involved, all that remains today is Henri Sauguet, my very dear friend. Alas, all that world has vanished.
Interviewer: Gone. And, Sauguet, you wanted to hear the sonata.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, I’m very fond of Sauguet. He’s a very real and sensitive person, and above all he has such a sense of humour. And that’s something that surprises me in today’s world, because it was a very creative time, but nobody took themselves seriously. We did it as if it were a joke and we made wonderful things. Whereas now, people do very mediocre things and they consider them to be works of genius.
Interviewer: Capitales.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, well, that’s a bit surprising. Personally, I prefer a lighter attitude to the values of what we do.
Interviewer: And it was around this time that you made your first trips to the Orient?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, it just so happened that a childhood friend invited me to Afghanistan and said: “My father has become King, why don’t you come and see me? Obviously, it was quite amusing.
Interviewer: You can’t refuse.
Alain DANIÉLOU: You can’t refuse. It was then that I met Raymond Burnier, who was interested in photography and very keen to go on this trip with me, and we went to Afghanistan together. We did some crazy things, including an extremely dangerous trip to the Pamirs where we should never have gone, which created a lot of problems. Then, crossing India, that was the dazzle, the wonder. That’s when we went to Rabindranath Tagore’s house for the first time, and he made us feel so welcome. After that, every year, in one way or another, we returned to Shantiniketan and then, little by little, we became Indians.
Interviewer: Yes, well, of course, this is the second part of the programme devoted to that. Was it a good time at the King’s house?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes and no. You know, when you’re unprepared, when you’re completely naive young people, going to an oriental court, you don’t realise at all what’s going on and the different powers that be, and so on. The King very kindly advised us to make this trip to a virtually unexplored region. The Prime Minister forbade it. Anyway, there were all sorts of complications. It was quite fun and quite enjoyable.
Interviewer: First movement of Henri Sauguet’s sonata in D major by Billy Eddy. Alain Daniélou, did you make music with Sauguet then?
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, not really. Not at all, I knew him like that.
Interviewer: Purely friendly, not musical.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but I really like the lightness of it. Really, people like him wrote music like everything else he did, with the air of having fun as if it were entertainment, and behind the entertainment, very deep and beautiful things come out. I think that’s very nice.
Interviewer: Henri Sauguet also had one merit, and that was that he was very fond of cats. For me, he’s related, all the photos you see of him, always a cat or a Siamese cat with him.
So, from the moment you made that first trip to India, you settled there, not immediately, but you came back in the meantime?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, first of all because Tagore asked me to work with his friends in Europe, who were also very interesting people, Paul Valéry, Paul Morand, Romain Rolland, Benedetto Croce.
Interviewer: That you didn’t know at the time?
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, but I went to see him, André Gide too, on Tagore’s behalf, and we tried to make a little association of these characters, but naturally we weren’t able to organise it properly and it didn’t lead to much. But in fact, from then on, practically every year, we went back to Tagore and we made some incredible journeys: once, we went by car, which was pure madness, crossing Iraq, Iran, Beluchistan, which was a desert where no one had been for 20 years ; and then, another time, we went round the world, passing through America, Japan, China and so on, always with the fixed point of returning to Shantiniketan, to the place where Tagore gave us a very pretty house.
Interviewer: And what was Tagore like?
Alain DANIÉLOU: He was a very funny and likeable person, very creative and never taking things too seriously. When he made great humanitarian and political speeches, I used to say to him: “You know, Gurudev – that’s what we called him – I don’t believe in it very much. He’d say, “Me neither. He immediately made the opposite speech with just as much skill.
No, he was a very light person. He loved young people. He created this kind of school. He hated schools, but he created a school where practically all the people who went on to play a role in India’s social and political life passed through. At night he would compose his poems, which are all songs, and then in the morning he would call some of his students and sing them his poem, which they would try to write down, and so on. There are thousands of them.
Interviewer: Yes, that’s quite extraordinary. So, at that point, you were very far removed from European music or you were already very involved in Indian music, weren’t you?
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, not really.
Interviewer: Not at that time. What year was that, roughly?
Alain DANIÉLOU: That is to say, it was a form of music, in short, in the mood of Tagore, it was rather – let’s say – a music, a bit of very refined popular song, but it wasn’t really…
Interviewer: Yes, learned music.
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, and it was only when I moved to Benares that I began to study Indian music seriously.
Interviewer: And you hadn’t learnt to speak Hindi and Sanskrit either. It wasn’t there yet.
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, not yet, just a few words of Bengali, because we spoke Bengali. But it was only later that I said to myself: “Finally, to understand something, you have to speak the language well” and I started to learn Hindi.
Interviewer: And, Alain Daniélou, why do you want to hear the second movement of Beethoven’s violin concerto, which I see on your programme here?
Alain DANIÉLOU: I don’t know, I’m wary of trying to analyse…
Interviewer: Was it purely musical pleasure?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Musical pleasure, sensitivity and emotion, yes.
Interviewer: And you’ve chosen a performer we don’t hear very often, who is Uto Ughi.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Well, because Uto Ughi interests me enormously, because he’s one of the very few violinists who plays in tune. And that, for me, with my Indian ear, all of a sudden Uto throws a very high note when almost all the others are approximate, are a bit off. He gets it exactly right and pierces you like a needle, and that’s why I really like this interpretation.
Interviewer: And now he’s playing with the London Symphony Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch. And Alain Daniélou, you were comparing – while we were listening to this – this violin with a rather special instrument that you were telling me about.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, this is an instrument that I had built by my friend Stefan Kudelski, the famous builder of Nagras, which is an instrument that gives the 52 intervals in the octave, which correspond to all the possible data for analysing sounds. So it’s true that these are the intervals that are used in Indian music, because in Indian music there are three E-flats, a harmonic third and a Pythagorean third. All these intervals are not at all arbitrary; they correspond exactly to the possibilities of multiples of the numbers 2, 3 and 5, which are apparently transmission codes from our ear to our brain.
So, on this instrument, you can analyse very well what musicians really do, whether they know how to use sad B flat or tender B flat or happy B flat. It’s very striking. And I’d love to do it once if I had the time for something by Uto Ughi, because he’s a musician whose accuracy in the intervals is very striking.
Interviewer: So, you were talking earlier about your Indian ear. So it developed as you became more and more familiar with Indian music, as you listened to it and even practised it, since you play the Vînâ.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, no, I’ve studied it very thoroughly over a number of years.
Interviewer: Yes, I can imagine that.
Alain DANIÉLOU: And obviously, it’s a completely different kind of experience.
Interviewer: Yes, so the ear has changed. Your ear has been trained. Now it doesn’t let anything through.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, it has certainly become much more refined in certain areas, and that’s why I’m sometimes revolted by approximations.
Interviewer: The Western ear.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Western ears don’t count any more because they’ve become so used to intervals that are absolutely wrong from the point of view of sound psychology.
Interviewer: So these are notions that you can instinctively recognise, even if you don’t know music very well?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, of course. Absolutely, in fact, these are not arbitrary things at all. They’re psychological realities. And when people play or sing out of tune, which everyone has the right to do, we try to reconstruct the right interval by thinking.
Interviewer: Yes, I sing out of tune, but I hear just as Michel Simon used to say.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Exactly, yes, which is true. We’re looking for something. Maybe we don’t quite get there, but what we’re looking for is certainly what corresponds to fundamental psychological data.
Interviewer: Yes. So we’ve come to that now. Almost the entire programme now will be devoted to oriental or far-eastern music, except for the end. So, you’ve settled in Benares. Why there, and how did you decide?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Like everything else I do, it’s all down to chance, luck or destiny. Quite simply, Benares is one of the great centres of traditional culture. It’s home to the great scholars and many of the great musicians. If you wanted to go deeper into this civilisation, it was the best place to do it.
So I settled there. I learnt the language with passion, as I do everything, until I could really speak and write Hindi like French. And then to study Sanskrit, which is the language of high culture, and at the same time to study music with a great Vînâ player. I learned to play the Vînâ and also this whole way of conceiving musical improvisation which is this way of assimilating completely, of identifying with a series of sounds which is the Raga, which is the mode and to such an extent that you then wander through the notes of this mode with fantasies, ornamentation, but absolutely without being able to get out of it. It’s really a very particular kind of concentration of thought, which in a way means that some people regard it almost as a yoga experience, an almost mystical experience.
Interviewer: And this stay there lasted about fifteen years?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, it has been going on for a very long time.
Interviewer: And it has shaped everything else in your life.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Of course, that’s where I got my education and learned all the things that interest me and that I’ve tried to express.
Interviewer: Now, when you think back to that decisive turning point, do you think it was really completely down to chance?
Alain DANIÉLOU: You can’t say, you know. I think I’ve said on occasion: “You don’t understand your childhood until you’re middle-aged, all the same, there’s a kind of destiny that means you follow a certain current and perhaps have a certain usefulness. I don’t think that’s entirely by chance.
Interviewer: Indian music is the oldest in the world?
Alain DANIÉLOU: That’s difficult to say. In any case, it’s a form of music that was common to India, the Middle East and the Mediterranean world in the earliest periods and, basically, Greek theory is very close to Indian theory. But, of course, it’s only just that, as in all fields, India has really preserved this way of thinking and conceiving music in a very lively way and at a very high level. That’s really an extraordinary thing, and it’s the only one of the great civilisations of antiquity that has survived.
What remains of Egypt? What remains of Mesopotamia? What remains of Greece, or even of ancient Rome? No, in India we find… in fact, we can only understand these ancient civilisations if we take up the Indian parallels. I think that India, Indian culture, is of fundamental importance even for all the forms of study of our time.
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Interviewer: So now we’re going into Dhrupad. This is North Indian vocal music, and we’ll be hearing records that were famous, the Unesco Collection that you founded, I believe.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, it’s a collection. I’ve made three successive collections. When I came back to the West, I realised that the great Vînâ musicians were not known at all. Nobody knew about them. People talked about them as if they were folklore. So I tried to see how I could give this music its rightful place. I did this in two ways, one by making a record and the other by organising concerts for the musicians.
At that point, I got the Unesco name, which was very useful in the sense that for Asian or African countries, it was a prestigious name. So, for the musicians who were registered, they gained credit in their country.
Interviewer: And are these records being reissued?
Alain DANIÉLOU: We’re trying to republish them.
Interviewer: Because they’re hard to find.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, alas, there have been some rather sad fights between the Berlin Institute, which I founded, and UNESCO. People want to take over the work instead of continuing it. It’s a bit sad, but in the end, I think we’ll get there. Everyone realises that these are very important monuments and we’ll eventually find a way of re-releasing them on cassettes and compact discs.
Interviewer: Yes, let’s hope so. So, to begin with, you chose an Asavari Raga.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, early in the morning.
Interviewer: So, I read in… because I have several of your books, but not all of them, which are very learned, but there are some that are absolutely accessible, particularly this one, where there are also poems called Dhrupad published by Nulle part. So, a Raga means something that pleases or moves.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, that’s right. It’s a musical mode that has a definite psychological action.
Interviewer: Yes, but I think Dhrupad is the noblest and highest form of music, isn’t it?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Dhrupad, as part of a Raga, is one of the noblest, most learned and most expressive forms of song. It is music that is not at all light, but which, on the contrary, is music in depth.
Interviewer: Obviously, we won’t be hearing all this Raga. We’ll take it… I think you want to take it at the end of the âlâp. I’d also like, for listeners who aren’t familiar with it, to say what the âlâp is.
Alain DANIÉLOU: The âlâp is simply a musical stroll through the structure of the mode, without any kind of obligation or framework or anything. It’s really a way of experiencing the whole atmosphere. Then, within that, there are rhythmic forms or poems that are also sung, and so on. So the âlâp is the first thing to establish the atmosphere.
Interviewer: That’s right. What about the performers, then, who are very famous?
Alain DANIÉLOU: I think we’re talking about the Dagar brothers here.
Interviewer: Yes, absolutely.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Well, Mohinuddin Dagar and his brother Aminuddin were – you could almost say – the last of the great Dhrupad singers. Mohinuddin was a musician I considered to be absolutely sublime among the great musicians of our time. Unfortunately, he has passed away and his brother is carrying on the tradition to some extent, but it doesn’t have the same value.
Interviewer: And there are dynasties of musicians in India? Are there many?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, always. Music, after all, is a traditional form of teaching, and it’s always families who sometimes take on foreigners, but who assimilate them into the family, just as Ravi Shankar assimilated himself into the family of his master Alauddin. In fact, he ended up marrying his daughter. The result is traditions and schools with different styles and ways of performing.
Interviewer: We can go back a long way, then.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Some of them go back a long way, to what are known as Gharanas, in other words, traditional schools, and there are some that go back – not very far from what we know – but as far as the 14th or 15th century. For India, it’s not far.
Interviewer: Dhrupad, Raga Asavari, a game?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes.
Interviewer: Obviously, by Mohinuddin and Aminuddin?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Dagar.
Interviewer: Dagar, here it is, taken from a record in this Unesco collection. So, Alain Daniélou, those who say that this music is monotonous are not telling the truth, because there are a lot of things going on.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Of course, it’s a whole development. After all, it’s like a symphony, well …. there are all sorts of parts that express certain ideas.
Interviewer: Between the âlâp and what we’ve just heard, obviously…
Alain DANIÉLOU: Of course, the âlâp is essentially the mode, the mood and then, all of a sudden, this song Ani sunai ba suri gahana”, means I arrive and I hear the sound of the flute, it’s Krishna playing in the morning.
Interviewer: Yes, well, we’re not supposed to be listening to that at this hour.
Alain DANIÉLOU: No.
Interviewer: It would do us more good to listen to it when we wake up, it would undoubtedly help us. Now we’re going to come back to the raga – I wish it were you – Sindhi Bhairavi.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Sindhi Bhairavi, yes.
Interviewer: Which we heard a few notes of earlier, at the start of the programme, played on the sarod by Ali Akbar Khan. So, the sarod?
Alain DANIÉLOU: The sarod is a relatively recent instrument, but it has a very beautiful sound and is very expressive. It’s an instrument without a fingerboard, in other words, it’s like a violin. You have to slide over the strings, which are on a metal plate, and it’s a very beautiful instrument.
Interviewer: Relatively recent, what does that mean?
Alain DANIÉLOU: It doesn’t predate the 16th century.
Interviewer: Of course, that was earlier on. We were listening to Ali Akbar Khan at the Sarod, Raga Sindhi Bhairavi, at the end of the morning.
Alain Daniélou, I read in your book on North Indian music that not only are the modes classified according to the time of day to which they belong – dawn, morning, noon, afternoon sunset, etc. – but they can also be seasonal.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes.
Interviewer: They can be, and the most important, you say, are those of spring and the rainy season. What’s very strange, then, is that you write: “There are also modes associated with natural phenomena such as rain and fire, whose evocative power is considered to be very strong, and legend has it that a famous musician, Gopal Nâyaka, forced by the emperor Akbar to sing the mode of fire, died of burns from the flames that came out of his body”.
And even today, many people consider that the out-of-season mode of the rains can cause showers. Now, at the moment, that’s not the case.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, in any case, my master never wanted to play the fire mode for me, he was afraid. He explained to me how it was and what to do, but he himself never wanted to do it.
Interviewer: I‘m sure you were careful not to try it yourself.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, well, it’s pointless. But why not? In the old days, here in the Catholic Church, we used to hold rogations to bring rain, and sing songs that could invoke the deities and bring you rain. Does it work? These are mysterious things.
Interviewer: All we hear is music from North India.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes.
Interviewer: So the two big ones, South India and North India, are very different?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, in theory these are similar types of music, but they probably come from very different origins and have very different styles. I used to live in the North of France and the music I really love is Northern music.
Interviewer: But all we hear is Dhrupad?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Oh no.
Interviewer: No, right now, the Raga Alri lalita
Alain DANIÉLOU: No, it’s a development of Raga, but Dhrupad is a sung form.
Interviewer: Quite different, yes. Only sung.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but there are equivalents.
Interviewer: Yes, that’s right. And besides, while we were listening to the sarod, I was wondering if the dream of singers isn’t to have an instrument really in their voice.
Alain DANIÉLOU: In other words, the voice is the main instrument in Indian music and, basically, vocal or string instruments copy the voice.
Interviewer: Copy the voice, not the other way round.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Not the other way round. And fundamentally, in religious music, this is not allowed. The oldest music is content with the rhythm of the drums and the voice.
Interviewer: And when you say the oldest, it goes back to…?
Alain DANIÉLOU: That must go back thousands of years.
Interviewer: So, Ravi Shankar on Sitar and Chatur Lal Tablâ. Ravi Shankar is a long-time friend of yours.
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, for a very long time. I knew him before he studied music.
Interviewer: And in this book, “The Music of North India”, there’s a very young man, a teenager, very handsome in fact, his position is really very graceful, who we know is generally older?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, it was a very long time ago.
Interviewer: Did you meet him there?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, at the time I took this photo…
Interviewer: Did you take the photo? I mean, is that when you took it?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, from that time, and he tried his hand at music in the troupe of his brother, the dancer Uday Shankar. But he hadn’t begun to study music seriously, which he did only a few years later.
Interviewer: Music from Iran, Persian music, a poem by Saadi, sung by Golpayegani, accompanied on the Tar by Nour Ali Boroumand. It’s rather sad to listen to that, isn’t it?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, it’s a shame.
Interviewer: In your text, you speak of this country as the cradle of the oldest and greatest cities and civilisations.
Alain DANIÉLOU: All of a sudden, great civilisations are handed over to barbarians and fanatics who destroy everything with incredible stupidity.
Interviewer: Alain Daniélou, you took the same approach in Japan. You took your Nagra.
Alain DANIÉLOU: In Japan, I didn’t even need to record myself because there were recording facilities there too. In fact, I spent a lot of time in Japan. It’s also an extraordinary civilisation with resources that are often unsuspected, that come out one thing at a time, what’s there in this culture that, fortunately, hasn’t been destroyed, whereas in China there’s very little left. Japan has really been very privileged in this respect.
Interviewer: So, what you’ve chosen is Gagaku. So that’s music we haven’t heard for centuries.
Alain DANIÉLOU: It was court music.
Interviewer: Reserved for the Emperor, right?
Alain DANIÉLOU: To the Emperor, but you mustn’t… it’s a bit of a legend because there were also Gagaku groups in certain temples. So it wasn’t music. It was imperial Gagaku that you couldn’t hear, but there were other schools of the same genre. But in the end, it was still music of a fairly sacred nature.
Interviewer: And what do you think of this music, Gagaku?
Alain DANIÉLOU: For me, it’s obviously more difficult. You don’t get into Japanese or Chinese music in the same way that you get into Indian music. It’s a slightly different sensibility to ours.
<MUSIC>
But with a little practice, you come to appreciate it. As always, it’s through the peaks that you can communicate. It’s not at the lower levels. That’s where people very often make the mistake of saying that you have to adapt things to make them understood, to reduce them to Western understanding. This is completely false. It’s only when you’re really faced with a masterpiece that you’re dazzled, whatever your background or culture.
And it’s probably one of the oldest orchestral forms in existence. What’s more, music was composed and written long before it existed in the West. All the same, it’s quite interesting for us.
Interviewer: So, what you’ve recorded here is the Tokyo Imperial Palace Orchestra. The Gagaku ryko, by the Tokyo Imperial Palace Orchestra, again taken from this UNESCO collection, this “Anthologie musicale de l’Orient” created by Alain Daniélou.
So, what are the numbers and sounds in this Japanese music?
Alain DANIÉLOU: It’s like everywhere else. It’s very difficult to talk about music theory until the basics are defined. And I think that, unfortunately, in everything we call musicology today, we completely ignore this very curious phenomenon, which is the transmission codes from our ear to our brain that create the emotion we feel in music.
So, in order to try and understand all musical systems, we would have to start again from a completely different basis, based on an audio-psychological reality that has never been considered at all. At that point, we would suddenly realise that there are things in common between all musical systems because they are human realities.
Interviewer: And here I can’t help thinking about Johann Sebastian Bach’s research. I mean, we know that he was very interested in numbers. There have been studies on this. Did you follow him?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Not many, but I know that Bach, for example, on his organ, had two keys for A because he didn’t accept tempered modes for the organ, whereas he did all his work for the tempered harpsichord and, in fact, these pieces for the organ are written only in a few keys so that he too could have just intervals.
Interviewer: So, Alain Daniélou, after these long stays in the East and the Far East, you came back to Europe and settled in Italy rather than France. Was there a specific reason or…?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, because deep down, Italy remains the only truly pagan country, despite the presence of the Vatican, and I feel much more at ease there. There’s a deep-rooted humanity that’s not so different from an Eastern humanity where, I mean, religion is a question of rites or magic or superstition, which is the real religion, and not at all of morals. So in Italy there are also magical places and sacred places, just like in India, and these are places where I feel at home.
Interviewer: That you know.
Alain DANIÉLOU: That I know well.
Interviewer: And I think you also know Sylvano Bussotti who lives not far from you, don’t you?
Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, that’s true.
Interviewer: Near Rome, in the Roman countryside.
Alain DANIÉLOU: In the Roman countryside, yes, and we see each other quite often. He’s one of the rare musicians who has also taken an interest in my research and has even produced works using my famous instrument and my 52 sounds. Whatever his music in general, in any case, he’s open-minded in that respect and I think he has a real sensitivity, which is the most important thing for me.
Interviewer: So, at the end of this programme, which was quite a challenge because it involved listening to music for which the notion of time is so vast, and shortening it, let’s play some extracts. “Siciliano” from Sylvano Bussotti’s Memoria for 12 male voices, performed by the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, conducted by Clytus Gottwald, brought the programme to a close. Des chiffres et des sons” by Alain Daniélou, whose 80th birthday we were celebrating a little late? And next week, our guest will be Vincent Bioulès.