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From: jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Inspiration and mood in Indian Music
Message-ID: <5294@tekecs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Apr-85 13:29:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekecs.5294
Posted: Tue Apr 30 13:29:22 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 2-May-85 01:09:48 EDT
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Most of my (very limited) Indian music listening has been to North Indian
music; reading this article made me recall some strong impressions of it.

Some of my favorite pieces were to ragas which primarly used the notes of
a scale (pardon my mixing of Eastern and Western constructs) which is
dissonant with the drone, so I'm not sure how much of a "tonic" it is.
For example, F# major scale (or A or E) against a C drone. My understanding
was that these tend to be used at sunrise or sunset, when nature is most
fluid and unsettled.

On the other hand, in other pieces I have heard, the fifth above the drone
was used in a dominant fashion, and the fourth also (but less often) seemed
to have special importance. So it all depends on the raga being used, as you
might expect.

Another observation I have made is that, at least in North Indian music,
the melodic lines seem to "follow" the "rules" of Western counterpoint.
In particular, the rule that a melodic leap in one direction is to be followed
by stepwise motion in the opposite direction seemed strong. A powerful
illustration of this (for me) was this: In one class I took, a piece of
vocal music was played in which, in a rhythmically climactic part, the singer
sang Db-F-B (ascending both times) against a C drone. Practically the entire
class gasped. Needless to say, these three notes were part of the raga 
(although not with that contour), but the (very) unusual melodic
motion combined with the delicious dissonance thus created had an electric
effect. (They way the notes were sung helped, too, but I don't want this to  
get too long...)
						Jeff Winslow