Perception’s pointer to truth

JS Bach’s composition “Musical Offering” is a historic landmark for many reasons. Bach, in this significant piece of music, plays on human perception of pitch and tonality. The entire composition you feel is moving up in scale. It keeps shifting from one scale to the other – but this is an illusion Bach creates. It ends exactly where it begins. There is another piece of music, “Falling Bells” – in this you feel the pitch is falling, but it is actually rising. There are several melodic pieces where you experience a harmony, while it is actually a polyphony.

These illusions of hearing where you listen to sounds that aren’t present, is called an auditory illusion. The brain tricks your ears. This is true with words as well. You often tease people who make up words, singing as if it was authentic. ‘Phantom Words’ is also the result of the way you perceive lyrics and it is most often, as psychologists explain, something that comes from an individual’s mind.

Let me invoke a cliché. Isn’t it ever so common for a man to say to his beloved, your words are music to me? Or, even in more secular circumstances, the tonal quality of some voices creates the perception of ‘musical’ in the listener. What Diana Deutsche – a leading researcher of auditory illusions – says about such perceptions is startling. “The transformation is truly bizarre. You would think that listening to someone speak and listening to someone sing were separate things. It seems obvious: I hear someone speak when she is speaking, and sing when she's singing. But the speech-to-song illusion reveals that the exact same sequence of sounds can seem either like speech or like music, depending only on whether it has been repeated. Repetition can actually shift your perceptual circuitry such that the segment of sound is heard as music: not thought about as similar to music, or contemplated in reference to music, but actually experienced as if the words were being sung.”

If one were to extend the ideas of auditory illusion to Indian film music, you come by fascinating experiences. Working on the notions of perception and reality, film music composers have evolved a different aesthetics. On top of my mind is Madan Mohan’s “Chayee Barkha Bahar.”

The song has a breezy, lively opening, and is set to teentaal or aditala. In the opening orchestration, which lasts over a minute, you hear a mind-boggling variety of rhythm patterns and sounds. Charged with creative impulses, it would mesmerise even a traditional, classical percussionist. (I am imagining the late Palghat Raghu listening to this, only to go home inspired and compose a new rhythm pattern!) But the suspense of this upbeat, fast tempo actually is revealed when the main melody opens. The tempo of the languid, lilting melody – “Chayee Barkha Bahar” – is the real pace of the song. Madan Mohan creates an illusion of speed, by doubling the pace of the rhythm of the background score. For more clarity, which also offers a peek into Madan Mohan’s genius, listen to the interludes between the stanzas. Before each of the stanzas, there is a passage with just sitar and percussion – here Madan Mohan gives you a glimpse of the rhythm to which the song is originally playing out in his mind. According to Science the brain picks up notes that are played fast and also notices variations, whereas in slow speed when the notes are spread far apart, the melodic departures may go unnoticed. Composers like Madan Mohan create a landscape of intense slowness, built on an illusion of speed.

In Indian classical music, the absence of rhythm is in those portions of a composition which is meant to be unhurried and free flowing. Listen to “Ye Raate Ye Mousam” (Dilli Ka Thug, 1958) composed by Ravi. The song is an uninterrupted flow of musical ideas, like in an alaap, that is not backed by rhythm. You cannot hear rhythm in this entire composition except for the strumming of the guitar. The song creates the illusion of a stream of consciousness free verse, while it is actually set to a medium tempo dadra. The melody borrows its cadences from the invisible, unarticulated rhythm. The rhythm plays itself out in silence, but you can feel its waltzing momentum in the melody.

These invisible rhythms that shape our perceptions of whether a song is slow or fast is intriguing. Take for instance, “Naliva Gulabi Hoove” (Auto Raja, Rajan Nagendra). The song is in medium tempo, even the orchestral passages are set to the same rhythm. Yet, in our understanding, it is a slow song. Invariably, whenever the song is remembered it is sung in a pace much slower than the original. This is perhaps because of the Raga Shivaranjani. The raga is said to evoke pathos which creates the illusion of slowness in the listener.

Helmholtz, a German physicist who is known for his work on perception of sound, famously suggested that “perceptual awareness was built from a succession of unconscious inferences” and in music one can find innumerable examples that can decipher a listener’s response.

Neither the lyric nor the tune of “Olavina Priyalathe Avalade Chinte” (Kulavadhu, 1963) is slow. The poem is composed to a four-beat cycle, each phrase, “Olavina Priyalate, Avalade Chinte” adds up to four beats. But GK Venkatesh turns each word into a four-beat melodic phrase, constructing an illusion of slowness. Each word becomes a line in the melodic composition. The song is loaded with nostalgia. While the melody takes you through the chief sentiment, the orchestration – wistful, yet dynamic – builds a parallel narrative.

The unsaid in music shapes the said. Film music composers have summoned perceptive realities to reinforce reality. Their approach is circuitous, but rich and evocative. If you are watchful, you will get a glimpse of these visions in momentary flashes. This seems like the Advaitic route – arriving at the non-dual state of intrinsic oneness. Through musical tools and techniques, great composers seek to shatter the outer appearance to take us to the essence of their creative thought.

Inner Voice is a fortnightly column on film music