EAST MEETS WEST
Western Influence on Indian Music

By Emmie te Nijenhuis

In 1870 Rþjþ aurþndramohana Thþkura (1840-1914) founded the
first Indian music school in Calcutta. He was one of those
prominent Indian intellectuals who had received a bi-cultural
education and hoped to promote traditional Indian culture by
Western methods. Since he had studied Western as well as Indian
music, he believed in music notation and books. For use in his
Bengal Music School he and members of his staff wrote manuals on
singing, on sitþr, violin and harmonium playing, and on drumming.
In Hindustþni music the harmonium had then already been accepted
as an accompanying instrument in vocal recitals, a function
originally attributed to the sþragþ. Likewise, in Karþak music
the Western violin became a rival of the vþþ in vocal concerts.
The violin had adapted itself very well to the graceful, lavishly
ornamented South Indian melodic style. With a changed tuning of
the strings and a predominant glissando technique, it could
follow every twist and turn of the voice. It became a generally
accepted accompanying and solo instrument in South Indian concert
practice. The introduction of the harmonium, however, led to
severe disputes. Much criticized though it was, it was able to
gain a foothold and was favoured as an accompanying instrument by
humrþ singers. Although the notes of this keyboard instrument
are fixed, deft harmonium players are very clever in imitating
difficult vibratos (in rþgas such as darbþri-kannada), consisting
of notes which the actual keys cannot produce, by manipulating
the air supply.

DIFFERENT NOTATIONS
In his books Thþkura wrote Western staff notation (ex.: Fifty
Tunes, Calcutta 1878 and Specimens of Indian Songs, Calcutta
1879), but in his music school he advised the teachers to use an
Indian syllable notation devised by his own music tutor, K.M.
Gosvþmi. The British school inspector preferred the Western staff
notation and some Indian musicologists, such as K.D. Banerjee
(Gita Sutra Sar), continued to use it. As a matter of fact, staff
notation lends itself very well to analytical purposes. It can
offer us minute melodic and rhythmic details of one particular
performance. However, performing Indian music, an art which has
been orally transmitted for more than two thousand years, cannot
be learnt from such detailed scores. Melodic and rhythmic
structures, even main phrases and variations of pre-existing
compositions, are never completely fixed, but achieve their final
shape only in performance practice. The traditional way of
learning this art consisted of private tuition, in the olden days
of daily lessons from one teacher. Only by close contact with the
teacher, by patiently listening and repeating notes and phrases
of the master, could one step by step learn the characteristic
elements of certain rþgas, tþlas, and compositions as part of one
particular style of performance. In this context a simple
syllable notation sufficed as an aid to the memory.
In the course of time Indian musicologists like V.N. Bhþtkhae
felt the need to lay down more details of the melodic line in
notation. Modern South Indian scholars have tried to use the
Western symbols of pralltriller, mordent, glissando, etc. Already
in the seventeenth century in his Rþgavibodha, Somanþtha presents
in his music examples illustrating contemporary vþþ technique a
system of symbols indicating the musical ornaments. However, so
far no uniform system of ornamental notation has been developed
in India. The reason such a uniform system has never been
accepted in India may be explained by the fact that in Indian
music most of the embellishments are characteristic of an
individual style of performing, which is sometimes continued in
certain family traditions (gharþa). Besides, in Indian music the
embellishments are always part of the melodic line and play an
important role in the transition from one note to the other,
whereas in Western music they are more often ornaments of the
individual notes.
In European musical history, as a result of an increasing
predominance of the keyboard instruments (organ, harpsichord,
piano), we see a tendency to fix the pitch of the notes. In the
course of time Western theoreticians devised various types of
musical temperaments, which they described in terms of string
divisions, frequency ratios, and cents calculations. So the first
Western scholars and musicians, the eighteenth century indologist
William Jones and the harpsichord players Margaret Fowke and
William Hamilton Bird, were very much pitch-oriented. They wanted
to fix the notes and tried to make staff notations of Indian
melodies.

WILLIAM JONES
In the musicological Sanskrit texts that were available like
Dþmodara's Sagþtadarpaa (16th c.), Somanþtha's Rþgavibodha
(1609), William Jones found materials which he believed could
explain the tone system of the contemporary Indian music.
Unfortunately all these Sanskrit texts discuss the music of their
own times in terms of the ancient Indian tone system described in
Chapter 28 of Bharata's Nþyaþþstra (ca. 1st c. B.C.; first
translation in 1888 by the French musicologist J. Grosset). This
led to the notion that there was only one way to understand the
notes of the Indian scales and modes. All 18th and 19th century
scholars, both Western and Indian, were convinced that the octave
should be divided into 22 units (þruti) as prescribed in the
ancient Indian tone system and that only in this way one could
fix the pitch of the notes of contemporary rþgas. Nobody had
noticed that in the history of Indian music the tone systems and
musical temperaments had changed several times. With the advent
of the fretted string instruments (vþþ) during the middle ages
(11th -13th c.) and after the introduction of the chromatic frets
on the lute (16th c.), the temperaments had to be adjusted and
systems of 22 þruti units became virtually impossible to
maintain.
The archaic terminology of the Sanskrit musicological works
caused a great deal of confusion in the pitch-oriented minds of
the 19th and 20th century Western musicologists. In comparative
musicology and ethnomusicology all kinds of ingenious
calculations were made to prove the existence of the ancient
Indian "quartertone" in modern practice. It is a pity that many
renowned modern Indian musicologists have followed this Western
craze. Fortunately, in the West and in India itself scholars are
starting to realize that only a careful study of India's musical
history and an unbiased observation of the actual music practice
will bring true scientific results.