art theory 2 paper

7/31/2019 Art Theory 2 Paper

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characterised by a turbulent narrative that had several loop-

holes and gaps, but the fact that this so-called strictly 'Indian

music' was a construct no more than 200 years old.

One of the ways that the classical tradition of indian musicand its pristine history was constructed was, as i mentioned

before, through mythology and this mythology which was

hindu mythology(hence also very clearly the way in which

this classical tradition was known as and referred to by the

colonials and orientalists as 'hindoo' music; locating the

episteme of this classical tradition/discourse not in terms of

geographical boundaries or an anthropological culture, but

rather in its very religious origins and religious nature[a very

unique phenomenon as far as a tradition of music was

concerned since this had not happened anywhere else in

history]), a mythology that gave instruments to the gods and

which was to not only circumscribe this classical music

tradition within religious discourse and hence ascribing it the

duty of worship but also one which then located the

beginnings of this very tradition to an eternal, cosmic past.

However, the very reason why, possibly the need tolocate(or relocate) this music tradition to such a glorious

past was not necessitated only by nationalist fervour and

hence a need to revive a 'national tradition' but also for the

simple but crude fact that what was characterised as Indian

music by the colonial orientalists was at first not only not

accepted, but positively admonished as barbaric and

uncultured(this very fact which while ofcourse was a

discourse that imperialism and colonialism on the wholewere supported by, but one which especially also

necessitated the very urgent need in nationalists to prove

otherwise!)

While the music tradition in the subcontinent was very

clearly a combination of several traditions(ranging from


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however due to the rather dominant tradition of writing

down music the oral transmission of music would have been

in large only of a more temporary form and very

specialized).

One of the supreme difficulties that not only colonial

scholars, but subsequently even Indian musicologists

encountered as far as the anthropological study of the music

traditions of the subcontinent are concerned was the fact

that it was extremely difficult to collect music in written

form, let alone construct geneological archives of seperate

traditions and their evolution. The reason for this ofcourse, is

located in the long-standing oral tradition of passing on

'knowledge' in general(this ofcourse which is not as we

realize an 'indigenous' tradition or a generalization of the

subcontinent but rather a tradition that is more specifically

located within brahmanical discourse and pedagogy). This

while clearly being a very fundamental difference between

the western and indian music traditions, hence not only

affected the their transfer from generation to generation and

their archival practices, this was also as we realize also

responsible for the way music was performed. However

while historically the oral-tradition was possibly the

dominant mode of the transmission of musical information in

the sub-continent we must here too not make a

generalisation. as Harold Powers(in his essay 'Sargam

Notations and Rag-Ragini theory') observes:

"in India, just as in Europe, ancient and copius tradtions of verbal

discourse about music have been transmitted across the generations in

writing, often long after the performing traditions with which they may

have once have been connected have vanished or evolved out of all

recognition, and they are almost always provided with examples in

sargam...but Indian musical practice, unlike that of post-medieval

europe, does not include a tradition for prescriptive music in written

notation which can serve as check, guide and nourishment for the


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written theoritical tradition"

Hence while Powers does admit to the existence to written

notation in indian musical tradition too, he is specific

regarding the purpose that each of them purportedly serve.

he gives the example of the fifth chapter of'Raga-Vibodha'

of Somanatha from 1609 and comments on the sargams that

are provided by Somanatha:

"but even here the examples are of possibility rather than actuality.

Somanatha's elaborate notations were constructed to support an

aesthetic claim; they are demonstrative, not prescriptive."

Powers quotes Richard Widess who tries to explain the

indian notation form:

"writing in general has never been held in such esteem in India as in

Europe...however, many systems of 'oral notation' exist and have

existed since ancient times. these systems use solmization or other

mnemonic syllables, and are primarily recited or sung, although they

can be written down if necessary or in some cases indicated by hand-

gestures..notations of this kind normally capture one parameter of

music: in melody, the base sequence of pitches[i.e. scale degrees],

without detailed indications of ornamentation, rhythm or even octave

register..."

[In the same essay Powers discussing the use of notations

refers to Cristle Collin Judd's expression of 'silent listening'

which she uses to explain the purpose of prescriptive

notated music, and as powers explains "it is meant by what

is written and must ultimately be imagined in the mind's ear

if it is to be of any use."]

Further discussing Somanatha's work, Powers observes thedevelopement of the not only the concept of the raga but

the very novel way that somanatha has devised the system

that is for examples not categorized and grouped according

to scale-types, but rather according to the suitable times of

the day to perform them; he also discusses Somanatha's


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Devamaya which comprises of 51 dhayanas(pictorial

translations of the same raga), each verse which represents

the raga in the picture of a divine person and about ten

which are nayaka-nayika figures. here again, Powers

explains how somanatha's notations are not prescriptive, butrather demonstrative whereby "..that the visible icon may be

used a way of focusing on the audible form, that the audible

icon may call to mind the visual form."

Western classical music is based on the melody and which

interestingly it is the melody which since the 70s

characterized Heavy-metal music in Britain and became

known as the 'riff' which is essentially an under-lying tune,

that gives the ground to the music and to the song being

performed. In contrast to western classical music, Indian

classical music or what has come to be characterized as

such, is based on the raag and taal. there are theoritically an

infinite number of raags which are possible. In general public

performances, artists barely use more than 20 odd raags

while they may be proficient in more than 200. What is

considered to be the number of actual raags that are; it

might number into several hunderds. Unlike the melody in

western classical music the raag is not a 'tune' but rather a

set of notes which are constant in the aaroh(rising) and the

avroh(descending). These set of notes which can be

endlessly performed in infinite variations and improvised on,

also ofcourse constantly supported by a beat which is the

taal, that can be 6 beats(Dadra), 7 beats(Roopak) or

8(Keherwa) and so on.

W.G. Raffe in his essay 'Ragas and Raginis: A Key to

Hindu Aesthetics' proposes very fundamental questions

regarding the raga system and addresses it not merely in

the technical sense of it being or as far as notation; rather he

tries to locate the aesthetic theory of ragas through Hindu


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mythology and iconography. Raffe characterises the raga as

stimulating rasa and also being facilitated influencing bhava.

he takes the example of Krishna:

"Krsna, for example, carried in his four hands the conch shell, the

creative fire, and their emanation in the flute from which he produces

the music of creative formation. Here he is Lord of the Solar Dance-and

conse-quently the raja of the rdga, the stimulator of rasa"

He takes another example regarding the conception of

distances and time in hindu mythology and makes an

ineteresting observation:

"In regard to distances, reckoning was carried out by means of the

flexible cord for long distances and the rigid rod for short distances.Multiplication was easier than division, for high mechanical accuracy is

technically difficult and needs metal. The Hindus could contemplate

periods of "millions of years" but they could not measure "millionths of a

yard" in material form. The nearest em-pirical approach was the Hindus'

venture into microtones of the scale in the sruti, or "sureness" of

sound."

Raffe unlike a possibly more technical and chronological,

historical study of the formation of the ragas; he sees the

developement of the ragas as almost characteristic of the

'Indian' mind since he makes certain general comments

regarding the inevitable propensity of the hindu musician

who would:

"...accept them[natural phenomena] as regular natural rhythms,

capable of appearing at certain times of the year, and therefore to be

celebrated in answer-ing or affirmative musical rhythms; in short, in the

appropriate raga (mood) that belongs to the bhava of nature.or to the

dominant rasa (or emotion) of man at that time.."

However my point here is not to necessarily critique Raffe's

at times extremely generalising views, rather at more than

one occassion his correlations especially of the circular Sri-

Yantra diagram which he says is the symbolic rendering of


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the rasa by an even larger circle which is that of the

impersonal bhava or moods of nature; these correlations

which not only highlight the religious origins of this musical

tradition but also help to understand the role of mythology in

the conception of ragas in music and the techniques of theirpictorial representation in the ragamala paintings. Raffe also

goes on to posit this(the inseperable nature of the raga and

rasa) as the very essential difference between western

music "whose end is harmony" and where "the emphasis of

the motif is firstly upon form and not upon emotion: that is

to be gained by the phrase and the stress arising in longer

passages." and the Indian classical tradition. he goes on to

say:

"The Hindu raga is created not only from a traditional "cluster of notes,"

but from an initial position in its own scale. It is, so to say, both mood

and chord; both emotion and means of expressing emotion. In this fact

it differs from the European musical motif, which is limited solely to its

technical form, and has not accepted an intrinsic emotional scheme or

relation, but creates instead a social bhava or group mood by

complexity and volume of sound."

Raffe's essential thesis throughout the entire essay isessentially the correalation between the raga and the

season, and hence he formulates the presence of the six

basic ragas and their manifested raginis as symbolic of the

essential six seasons of the subcontinent. He believes that

because the ragas and their mood are essentially the

'sounds of nature', they can not only be recovered but it is

also the very reason why they are constantly associated with

the gods and other divine figures. Maud Macarthy says:"..to the Indian mind the word raga conveys also more than a mere

arrangement of notes. The whole of nature is alive, ensouled, pulsating

with purpose and being...The ragas and riginis are not mere names.

They are real beings, living in the subtler worlds, and they cannot

manifest on earth unless they are properly invoked, that is, unless the


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arrangements of notes to which they lend their names are duly

performed. Hence the care with which the Indian musician enunciates

its raga before he begins a song, and his displeasure if he hears

someone putting in what is, to him, a wrong note. Allowing for

exaggerations and superstitions of all kinds, we still find many rigas

which produce distinct and peculiar psycho-physiological effects.."

The essential conclusions that Raffe comes to regarding the

ragas and their origins is that:

"(1) The meaning of the term raga is found centered in its power of

reckoning or measuring (a) the original set of six strings (supposing we

accept the six-season calendar) and adjusting (b) their mutual relations,

together with (c) their subsidiary relations within each scale, named as

raginis.

(2) The technical usage is found in the actual measurements of string

lengths (according to substance) and tuning in internal relation. The

scientific theory behind this practice is derived from the system of

thirty-six tattvas; or alterna-tively the 108 tattvas-these two totals being

related as raga = 36 and ragini = 108-and the right theory developing in

a system of nature music and the pic-torial system of ragmdla as a

mythos of nature powers.

(3) The development of raga to ragini is a necessary consequence of the

earlier emanations. Brahman produces Vach, his (its) creative voice,

which in turn ema-nates the six leading ragas (related as dual modes of

the triguna; the positive and negative modes of the tamasic, sattvic,

and rajasic qualities inherent in energy and matter. The successive

emanation of sound (as nama, or idea) produces by necessity the life

(ripa or form)."

These inferences and conclusions that raffe draws while, on

the hand may be viewed as highly mystical, but ont the

other hand effectively mythological roots of the concept andpractice of the raga with arithemetic necessity. however,

even though he realizes the possiblity of deriving the nature

of all the ragas and raginis through the six essential ragas by

the correlation with the six seasons, he only barely and does

not infact realize the complexity of classifying them in a


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manner 'scientific' that the early nationalist musicologists

wished to. while one of the possible solutions was the

arbitrary grouping of the ragas and raginis through broad

bhava and rasa based classifications, modern musicology

itself demanded something far more concrete strictlyrational and scientific; this as we see being the very

foundation of the debates over a classification of music, the

terms of which were already set by colonial 'scientific'

musicological practices.

In one of the excerpts from the 'Proceedings of the musical

association'(1911-1912) Maud Macarthy(whom i quoted

above) presented a lecture which outlined the very many

reasons for the unique nature and quality of the raga, taal

based indian classical music and extoleld its virtues calling it

not just equal but some of its qualities as being superior.

Macarthy makes an interesting distinction between

'convention' and 'tradition'.

"There are two lines along which we may study Indian music, the

conventional and the traditional. By conventional I mean the thing which

is done, the thought which is thought, on the authority simply that

somebody else has done or thought it. By traditional I mean that quality

which is inherent, essential; and which may be studied to a great extent

independently of passing forms and phenomena. Tradition is

discoverable in tendency, not always in result. It does not compel to

action or thought just because somebody else has done or thought,

although these too may be included in the term. It is stable,

conservative, yet ever manifesting in new ways....Now the majority of

Indian musicians, and the majority of writers on Indian music, Eastern

and Western, are inclined to study rather the conventional than the

traditional aspects of the art. And convention, as we all know, is acorpse. "

The above quoted lines are significant not because they

state the now commonly assumed conception of tradition

and culture as not just a stagnant relic, but rather a moving

evolving corpus of discourse; rather(which is evident from


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several portions in the transcript where she tries to highlight

the similiarities and points of contact between Western and

Indian classical music and the core of which she also says

lies in the essential Aryan foundation) it is actually the very

conflict that indian muscicians and musicologists wereencountering in the advent of modernity and the

contradictions they encountered in this very battle to

balance tradition but not allow it to 'degenerate' into mere

convention, ironically conventionitself which was both

enabled by and rendered unstable by the notation system.

In any case the classification of ragas has been not only a

very tedious but a hotly debated issue as i mentioned

before, owing to the question as far as what parameters to

be chosen to classify them i.e. whether in terms of melodic

affinities, pitch-class collections employed or according to

symmetrical, hierarchial schemes; equally as much the

question which was regarding the very effort to notate indian

classical music, a question that was of prime importance

especially in the late 19th and early 20th century. while on

the one hand the authentic and indigenous methodologies of

preservation, archiving and transmission were being sought

for(here i am referring to the oral-tradition)and an express

need to communicate musical information in the 'indigenous'

manner was considered necessary to define the musical

tradition within a broad imagined national tradition, on the

other hand owing to the rapid pace of modernity and influx

of distant traditions of music(from europe) notation was

realized as now(both by bhatkhande and paluskar)

necessary to preserve the classical tradition which was nowunder the threat being corrupted and being stripped of its

authentic core. The paradox between tradition and the

modern archive is very evident. In any case the issue of

notation, the methodologies to be employed and the very

question of whether or not to undertake this project was one


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of the most, if not the most important issue that was

discussed at the very first all india musical

conferences(1916-1925) organised by both Bhatkhande and

Paluskar.

David Trasoff in his essay 'The All-India Music

Conferences of 1916-1925', explains the composition of

these conferences which no doubt were nationalist in

character and were spearheaded by a new emerging middle-

class hindu elite who "had been forging a linkage between

the arts and the creation of a national consciousness for

several decades prior to the intiation of this series of

conferences. Music offered a particularly potent symbol

through which to challenge the intellectual hegemony of

european cultural models, a challenge which was

nevertheless expressed in terms that mostly confirmed the

boundaries of that hegemony. these terms had were initially

dictated by the discoveries and subsequent publications of

lte 18th century and early 19th century european scholars.."

and hence the very paradoxical circumstances under which

the rehaul of the classical tradition of music was taking

place.

This only led to the rather urgent desire, as trasoff outlines

from the musicologists and musicians in these conferences

to devise a method to establish indian music on a 'scientific'

basis. Not only was this to present indian music as 'credible'

but also scientifically and objectively accessible to all. this

was going to be possible according to the scholars only by

adopting an indigenous notation system or the Western staffnotation; this would enable(which was listed as the first goal

in the appeal of the general secretary of the lucknow

conference) the standardization of ragas and raginis, both by

the notation system and a methodology which would escape

from contradictions based on melodic affinties and pitch-


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based classification. Besides the notation system itself, the

new technology of sound was realized as offering a

possibility to record music and hence not only preserve

music through gramaphone records but also use it as a

teaching tool. In any case the conflicts between preservationand tradition was to remain a sore-spot, however one which

not only enabled the historical investigation into the

evolution of music but also posed the very modern problem

of attempting to balance tradition on the tight-rope of

modernity, technology and the archive.

Submitted by:

Ivan Iyer(4th semester)

2011-2012


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art theory 2 paper

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