The concept of raga, the traditional basis of melodic composition and improvisation in Indian classical music, has become familiar to listeners and musicologists throughout the world, but its historial origins and early development have been little explored. The author draws on written documents from the pre-Islamic period in India, including musical treatises (especially that of the thirteenth-century theorist, Sarngadeva), literary works, and a remarkable inscription comprising musical notation. These documents bear witness to the development of the earlier ragas, which they name, classify, define, and in some cases illustrate with melodic examples. The melodies, which have not previously been studied in detail, form the focus of the book, which analyses their notation, musical structure and relationship to the theoretical tradition in which they are embedded, as evidence for the early history of melodic compostion and improvisation in the Indian tradition.

Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography An autobiographical exploration of the role and meaning of music in our world by one of India's greatest living authors, himself a vocalist and performer. Amit Chaudhuri, novelist, critic, and essayist, is also a musician, trained in the Indian classical vocal tradition but equally fluent as a guitarist and singer in the American folk music style, who has recorded his experimental compositions extensively and performed around the world. A turning point in his life took place when, as a lonely teenager living in a high-rise in Bombay, far from his family’s native Calcutta, he began, contrary to all his prior inclinations, to study Indian classical music. Finding the Raga chronicles that transformation and how it has continued to affect and transform not only how Chaudhuri listens to and makes music but how he listens to and thinks about the world at large. Offering a highly personal introduction to Indian music, the book is also a meditation on the differences between Indian and Western music and art-making as well as the ways they converge in a modernism that Chaudhuri reframes not as a twentieth-century Western art movement but as a fundamental mode of aesthetic response, at once immemorial and extraterritorial. Finding the Raga combines memoir, practical and cultural criticism, and philosophical reflection with the same individuality and flair that Chaudhuri demonstrates throughout a uniquely wide-ranging, challenging, and enthralling body of work.

Description: The first part of the book traces the history of Indian music and the continuity of its theory and practice for more than two thousand years. It is based on many years' research into the vast ancient Sanskrit literature of music. These valuable technical treatises, which lie in the form of scarcely catalogued manuscripts throughout the public and private libraries of India, had hitherto remained unemplored. Part Two transcribes and studies in detail 50 typical Raga-s. Each is preceded by a Sanskrit poem in translation which depicts the atmosphere; then follows an analysis of the scale, covering its intervals and expression, a study of the theme with its characteristic motives and finally a typical development. The present work is based on the author's two-volume Northern Indian Music published in London (but not America) some ten years ago, but long out of print and much sought after by students. It was described by Colin Mason in the Manchester Guardian as of immense value to any practical musician and an invaluable addition to the very scanty literature of fascinating and neglected subject . This new version contains a number of additional Raga-s; the earlier text has been extensively revised and many music examples redrawn for greater clarity and accuracy. Some abridgement has taken place, but only of material which appeared originally for the benefit of Indian readers unfamiliar with Western staff notation, those able to read Sanskrit, and specialists in Sanskrit literature. The book provides modern composers outside India with a source of new inspiration and enables practising musicians to play and study some of the endlessly variegated modes for which Indian music is unique.

This Is A Book Of And About The Classical Music Of North India, Among The Oldest Continual Musical Traditions Of The World. This Volume Introduces The Great Richness And Variety Of The Different Styles Of Music As Taught By One Of The Century`S Greatest Musicians, Ali Akbar Khan.

Offering a broad perspective of the philosophy, theory, and aesthetics of early Indian music and musical ideology, this study makes a unique contribution to our knowledge of the ancient foundations of India's musical culture. Lewis Rowell reconstructs the tunings, scales, modes, rhythms, gestures, formal patterns, and genres of Indian music from Vedic times to the thirteenth century, presenting not so much a history as a thematic analysis and interpretation of India's magnificent musical heritage. In Indian culture, music forms an integral part of a broad framework of ideas that includes philosophy, cosmology, religion, literature, and science. Rowell works with the known theoretical treatises and the oral tradition in an effort to place the technical details of musical practice in their full cultural context. Many quotations from the original Sanskrit appear here in English translation for the first time, and the necessary technical information is presented in terms accessible to the nonspecialist. These features, combined with Rowell's glossary of Sanskrit terms and extensive bibliography, make Music and Musical Thought in Early India an excellent introduction for the general reader and an indispensable reference for ethnomusicologists, historical musicologists, music theorists, and Indologists.

This is an advisable work of art and a real countributor to the movement towards greater understanding of Indian Classical Music. A Bible on Indian Music, a treasure of knowledge and ideas on the subject. Distils the essence of Indian Classical Music. This book deals with the communication of identical phrases and single notes projecting various shades within a particular raga or in different ragas. An admirable work of art and a real contribution to the know classical music movement.