By setting up a musicology department and offering graduate classes, NCA will hopefully bridge the gap between theory and practice of music, writes Sarwat Ali.

In these days of doom and gloom one good news is that National College of Arts in Lahore has taken the brave initiative to start graduate classes in musicology from its next academic year.

The classical forms of music in Pakistan have suffered for a variety of reasons, least being the fact that there has been no institution for transmission of music knowledge to younger musicians. Many attempts have been made both at the level of institutions and individuals for setting up a framework which trains and educates musicians -- but none has met even the minimum modicum of success. The other major reason is that there is not sufficient creative input in the classical forms for them to be representative of a contemporary artistic awareness. Most of what we hear in the form of classical music is repetitive, a churning out of the given compositions and musical forms. The real causes, though, could lie deeper than this general descriptive reading of the situation. Probably the classical forms are not in sync with the emotional and hence aesthetic demands of the current times, and there has probably developed a large chasm between the theory and practice of music which needs to be bridged by genuine scholarship.

National College of Arts has been in the forefront of art education in the country. For decades it was the only institution that offered initially a diploma and then a degree in various disciplines of the visual arts, and of late it has expanded its domain by including other subjects. It will elevate itself by introducing Masters degree courses in the subjects already taught at the college.

The college has worked from the very beginning on the stated principle that all arts share a common base with the difference resting only in the manner of expression and the medium. It may appear on the surface that architecture and painting have little in common but it is rooted in the fertile soil of an artistic sensibility. Architecture is as much a matter of painting and design as it is of engineering.

The need for an institution of music has always been felt, and strongly so, but unfortunately nothing came out of all previous attempts. Even classes at the Arts Councils, both national and provincial, have not approached the complicated process with any degree of sensitivity. Khurshid Anwar in the 1970s had drawn out a plan to address this problem and had put on paper the proposal for retaining salient characteristics of traditional ustad-shagird nexus without losing out on the contemporary methods involved in the transmission of musical knowledge but nothing came of it as well.The traditional system was based on the ustad-shagird complex relationship where education was not separated from the way of living. It was in the modern sense a very informal and personalised method where the shagird imbibed not only the musical knowledge but also the value system that framed and nurtured the entire outlook of the ustad. This system was undone by the colonial system of education that set aside formal education conducted in the classroom from life as lived outside the four walls of the school.

The decline of classical forms of music in Pakistan is now complete and perhaps provides a reason for looking at the problem anew. It should go beyond patchwork and restoration of a beautiful structure that has crumbled by looking at the causes that made the structure to collapse. This department of musicology at the NCA, which will offer a graduate degree, can be this process of discovery. It will look at the theoretical basis and then study the broad hiatus that has developed between the practice and theory. This will be research in the true sense as conducted in the institutions of higher learning.

The very reason that this subject has not been taught and researched at the college and university level can be the impetus of looking at the problem in its entirety, involving and examining the dynamics of history, society, and the individual's intricate relationship that forms the basis of human life. Perhaps this course will be able to place the theory and practice of music in the larger framework of society in its historical development.

The arts in Pakistan or for that matter all education has a very distinct slant of the theoretical outlook that has evolved in the more advanced countries of the world. An attempt is thus made to understand our history, society and its present configuration along with its myriad problem within that context. Some of the issues are understood in that perspective, but others which are not are either ignored or just dropped due to lack of comprehension. Music too has been studied on the ground rules laid down in the last 200 years of our history, and the absence of theory too can be attributed to the lack of a proper comprehension. Probably these research-oriented courses at the college will generate a debate that will look afresh at some of these basic problems.