Eternal India Encyclopedia

Eternal India encyclopedia

MUSIC.

madhyama, are higher than the vikrita

vilamba laya (slow) madhyama laya (me- dium) and druta laya (fast) and each is twice as fast as the preceding one. Thus madhyama laya is double (in speed) of vilamba, and druta double of madhyama . (In the parlance of a Karnatak musician laya is often called kala: vilamba laya is, hence, chowka kala.) A tala is constructed out of a choice, of three limbs or sections known as anga. These are different in duration. The three angas are anudruta, druta and laghu. The first is of one aksara and the druta of two. The third, laghu, is of a variable duration of 3,4,5,7, or 9 aksaras. Anudruta is counted by a beat druta by a beat and a wave of the hand; laghu by a beat and count of fingers: say, a laghu of five units by a beat + counting of four fin- gers. These three - anudruta, druta, and

which are qualified by the adjective komal (soft). In the other system, suddha is the lowest position and the variants are higher. However there is one thing common, neither Sa (Doh) nor Pa (sol) have any varieties; they are, there- fore, called achala (immovable). So, writing down the standard scales we have: Hindustani Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa 1 (play the white keys on the harmonium) C D E F G A B C 1 This is roughly the major scale of the west and is used in raga Bilval. Karnatak Sa ri Ri Ma Pa dha Dha Sa 1 (play the keys marked in fig.) C Db D F G Ab A C 1 .

Fig. One cycle or avarta of ten units (matras) divided as 2+3+2+3. This is Jhap tal of Hindustani music. Emphatic beat on 1, mild beats on 3 and 8, and a wave of hand. on 6. Beat 1 is sam and 6 is khali. Let us take a circle of ten beats (Figure) Careful scrutiny shows that this really is a 2+3+2+3 rhythm. Again, it is obvious that all the beats are not of the same quality. No. 1 is very emphatic; 3, 8. less so, 6 is vacant. The other beats are similar to one another. If you actually beat the rhythm as follows, a good idea of what this tala would sound like can be got. Give a strong beat on I, faint claps on 3, 8 wave the hand on 6, and count mentally the rest (2,4,5,7,9,10) naturally spacing the beats uniformly. What you now counted was one cycle of the tala known as Jhap tal in Hindustani music. One such circle of tala is called an avarta, meaning ' a cycle' or 'repetition'. Thus the whole concept of tala has been fitted into a scheme of temporal divisions. This is rigorously followed in Karnatak mu- sic; and while it is theoretically recognized in Hindustani music, in practice there are many deviations and exceptions. The basic part of the scheme is the quan- tification of time taken "to pierce with a pin one hundred lotus leaves placed one above another". 16384 ksanas is one anudruta and aksara, the practical unit of musical time and the brick out of which all further sections are constructed. (An anudruta is obtained as follows: 8 ksanas lava, 8 lavas - 1 kashta, 8 kashtas = 1 nimisha, 8 nimisha, = 1 kala, 2 kalas - 1 chaturbanga, and 2 chaturbhagas = 1 anudruta). The further combinations of immediate practical use to us are the druta (2 aksaras), laghu (4 aksaras ) and guru (8 aksaras). Now, the aksara (and hence the other groupings) have no objective time measure. That is one cannot measure it in terms of a watch or a metronome. It is purely subjective, though a certain traditional habit has given it an ac- cepted time length. Depending, therefore, on its duration the aksara can have three de- grees of tempo or laya . So, there are the

laghu have their signature thus. Anudruta : u druta : 0 laghu: 1

Since the laghu is of five kinds (jatis) with varying numbers of aksaras, it is shown as : 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 5 , 1 7 , 1 9 ,

The five are given individual names :

1.

= Tisra laghu (3 aksaras)

1 3

2.

1 4 = Chaturasra laghu (4 aksaras)

3.

= Khanda laghu (5 aksaras)

1 5

Sa 1

Sa Ri Ma Pa Dha

4.

= Misra laghu (7 aksaras)

1 ?

The suddha svara-s of Karnatak music.

5. = Sankeerna laghu (9 aksaras) Rhythm, like melody, has been raised to a high degree of sophistication. Besides the division and distribution of time in tala and the art of drumming, the compositions and their relation to tala, the cross rhythms and syncopations in actual performance are fur- ther facets of this fascinating but difficult art. So it was said that the first necessity in music was the control of rhythm, for otherwise "the song (and dance) will go out of control, like a wild elephant without the check of ankusa (the elephant driver's hook) and the knowl- edge of Time is unlimited and even Siva has not the capacity to cross over its Limitless- ness". One important adjective in the above list (pg. T-3) is suddha which means 'pure'. A Western musician would call this the 'natu- ral'. The adjective qualifies the position of a note in a scale considered as standard and in terms of which other variants are compared. We shall, therefore, call this the standard note and avoid the word suddha. There is another fact in the table which cannot escape our notice; the position of the suddha or standard svara in Hindustani and Karnatak music. In the former all standard notes, except 1 9

Raga Kanakangi : In theory and in practice Ri and Dha are called Ga and Ni. South Indian musicians will still call these as Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni. Raga Kanakangi employs these notes. Shruti: The concept of Shruti is the most significant but yet the most baffling aspect of Indian music and there are as many opinions as there are writers on the subject. For our present purposes, we shall understand a shruti to be a unit of measurement of the relation of notes in an octave. As a comparison, there are the semitones in Western music, twelve of them to an octave. Similarly, Indian music 'divides' a saptaka (Sa to s a ) into twenty-two intervals which are known as shrutis . (These are not necessarily equal in size, in fact they are not). Shruti intervals between consecu- tive notes in a standard scale are shown in the table on pg T-3 ; if all of them are added up they will total up to 22. In North India the major devotional forms are bhajan, keertan of Bengal and abhanga of Maharashtra. Bhajans are sung through- out the North. The subject is the praise of the Lord: descriptions of the lives and deeds of Rama, Krishna or Siva and beseeching Him for grace. Some of the finest bhajans have