Page 207 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation
P. 207
182 Bel et al.
Many tunes, for instance, have scale features akin to raga Bhairavi al-
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though they diverge in their melodic phrasing (anga) and emotional
content.
Still, Indian musicology has more to offer than a scale system.
Pandit Dilip Chandra Vedi (1901–93) suggested guidelines for a ra-
tional approach to the traditional raga system in north India (Van der
Meer 1980). Characteristic features (laksana) may be summarized
. .
as follows:
1. Time-independent Criteria:
i. Tonal structure: scale, consonance/dissonance, micro-
intervals (sruti).
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ii. The relative occurrence frequencies of notes (bahutva and
alpatva in a broad sense).
2. Time-dependent Criteria:
i. Notes more frequent in the beginning (graha) or in the end
(nyāsa) of phrases.
ii. The most frequent note on accentuated beats (vādī).
.
iii. Short melodic patterns (alankāra).
iv. Characteristic melodic phrases (tāna).
It is obvious that all the aforementioned criteria—except perhaps
.
alankāra—only apply to musical material consistent with an idea
of tunefulness achieved by classical musicians at the cost of years of
formal training. It does not make sense to speak about the relative
occurrence of a note when that note cannot be identified! A typical
example (also found in other popular traditions outside Europe) is a
commonplace ‘confusion’ of the minor and major third intervals above
the tonic, namely ‘ga’ and ‘komal ga’ in sargam notation. Is it legitimate
to name it a confusion, or is it just a case of ordinary variability that
Western ears, whose sense of modality has been reduced to perceiving
.
the minor/major dichotomy, tend to overestimate? Even alankāra
create problems because in vocal classical music they are constructed
on relatively stable tonal positions that may be recorded as ‘notes’.
Figure 6.1 displays a short phrase of raga Āśa sung by a female per-
former and transcribed by Bel’s melodic movement analyser (MMA).
The Western staff notation and the ‘extended’ sargam notation on