Hindustani and Western comparison · Lesson 10 of 10 · Context
GharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary, time and emotion
These three topics are context, not equivalences. Each one explains a Hindustani idea and sets it beside a Western one only as far as the sources allow.
- Strong:
- a shared feature you can count or measure
- Qualified:
- a useful analogy with clear differences
- Context:
- a contrast that teaches, not an equivalence
Topic 38 · Fit: Context
GharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary and interpretive schools
Learning objective: Understand a gharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary as a lineage of musical style, and set it beside named Western teacher-to-student lineages.
AUTRIM's glossary treats a gharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary as a lineage or school of musical training and performance, whose inherited practices shape how its musicians interpret music. Rao and Rao introduce gharanasGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary as one source of the variety in Hindustani performance.
Ragapedia's gharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary pages list archive musicians whom Raga Records' own notes place in a gharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary, with the publisher's words.
Western music has teacher-to-student lineages too. The open textbook Understanding Music says Schoenberg's ideas were developed further by his two famous students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and that the three came to be known as the Second Viennese School. Berg began studying with Schoenberg at 19 and became known for a style of his own.
A lineage can also pass between performers. A Library of Congress essay on Jascha Heifetz's early Victor recordings (1917–1924) names his teacher, the violinist Leopold Auer, and points to a piece Heifetz recorded in Auer's arrangement.
Listen and look
- WesternAlban Berg, Wozzeck, Act 3, Scene 2 (Understanding Music, 7.2 listening guide)Music by Schoenberg's student. The guide says the scene, in which Wozzeck kills Marie, is built as a variation on a single note, B. The same section has a guide to Schoenberg's own A Survivor from Warsaw (1947), so you can hear teacher and student side by side.Source: Clark, Heflin, Kluball and Kramer, Understanding Music: Past and Present (CC BY-SA 4.0, LibreTexts), 7.2: Expressionism and Serialism, Berg, Wozzeck listening guide
- WesternJascha Heifetz, acoustic recordings for Victor, 1917–1924 (Library of Congress essay)The essay points to Heifetz's recording of Beethoven's “Chorus of Dervishes” in an arrangement by his teacher, Leopold Auer. A pupil plays his teacher's version of the piece.Source: John Anthony Maltese, Acoustic Recordings for Victor Records—Jascha Heifetz (1917–1924), National Recording Registry essay, Library of Congress, p. 3
Times and bar numbers come from the linked source. AUTRIM's times are seconds into its video; Raga Records gives counter times or track lengths from its own booklets and programme lists. Ragapedia has not added its own timings.
Where the comparison stops
A named school is not a gharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary. The Second Viennese School is one teacher and two students who shared ideas about composing; a gharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary is a lineage of training and performance whose inherited practices shape how its musicians perform. Auer and Heifetz are one link between a teacher and a pupil, not a school. A gharanaGharanaA lineage or school of musical training and performance. Its inherited practices can shape how musicians interpret and develop music.Source: AG “gharana”. and 1 moreMore in the glossary describes provenance and style, not a rule of theory.
Dagar gharanaLucknow gharanaVishnupur gharana
Sources
- AUTRIM (NCPA), Glossary, “gharana”
- Suvarnalata Rao and Preeti Rao (2014), An Overview of Hindustani Music in the Context of Computational Musicology (author's manuscript), introduction, PDF p. 1
- Clark, Heflin, Kluball and Kramer, Understanding Music: Past and Present (CC BY-SA 4.0, LibreTexts), 7.2: Expressionism and Serialism, Second Viennese School and Berg paragraphs; Berg, Wozzeck listening guide
- John Anthony Maltese, Acoustic Recordings for Victor Records—Jascha Heifetz (1917–1924), National Recording Registry essay, Library of Congress, p. 3
Topic 39 · Fit: Context
Time of day and season
Learning objective: Learn the Hindustani convention that links raagsRaagA recognisable arrangement of notes and musical behaviour that guides melody. A raag’s identity involves how notes are used, not just a list of pitches.Source: N2 §2.1, pp. 14–15; §2.2.1, p. 15. and 1 moreMore in the glossary to times of day and seasons, and set it beside a Western work that portrays the seasons.
NIOS describes samay: raagsRaagA recognisable arrangement of notes and musical behaviour that guides melody. A raag’s identity involves how notes are used, not just a list of pitches.Source: N2 §2.1, pp. 14–15; §2.2.1, p. 15. and 1 moreMore in the glossary are traditionally assigned to times of day and to seasons. Day and night are divided into eight praharsPraharA roughly three-hour division used in traditional time-of-day associations for raags. These associations are conventions, not listening prohibitions.Source: N2 §2.2.10, p. 18. and 1 moreMore in the glossary of about three hours each. NIOS gives Yaman's time as the first watch of the night.
AUTRIM's aesthetics pages discuss this time theory as part of the tradition.
There is no Western time signatureTime signatureThe numbers in a score that specify written time units and their beat grouping. They do not state the tempo.Source: AB G1 §2; G3 §1; G5 §1. and 2 moreMore in the glossary or mode tied to a time of day. Western music can portray a season, though. IMSLP records that Vivaldi himself called the first four of his twelve violin concertos published in 1725 as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, Op. 8, “The Four Seasons”, each one portraying a different season.
Listen and look
- WesternVivaldi, Violin Concerto in F minor, RV 297, “Winter” (IMSLP)IMSLP's page has scores, including the 1725 first edition, and openly licensed recordings. Compare a piece that depicts winter with a raagRaagA recognisable arrangement of notes and musical behaviour that guides melody. A raag’s identity involves how notes are used, not just a list of pitches.Source: N2 §2.1, pp. 14–15; §2.2.1, p. 15. and 1 moreMore in the glossary that is assigned to a time of performance.Source: IMSLP, Violin Concerto in F minor, RV 297 (Vivaldi, Antonio): scores and recordings, first edition scores; recordings
Times and bar numbers come from the linked source. AUTRIM's times are seconds into its video; Raga Records gives counter times or track lengths from its own booklets and programme lists. Ragapedia has not added its own timings.
Where the comparison stops
The time convention is a performance tradition, not a law of sound. There is no basis for saying a raagRaagA recognisable arrangement of notes and musical behaviour that guides melody. A raag’s identity involves how notes are used, not just a list of pitches.Source: N2 §2.1, pp. 14–15; §2.2.1, p. 15. and 1 moreMore in the glossary or a mode only works at one time of day. Vivaldi's concertos depict seasons in their music; they are not a rule about when to play them, which is what samay is about.
Sources
- NIOS, Hindustani Music (242), Book 1, ch. 2: Elements of Raga, §2.2.10, p. 18
- NIOS, Hindustani Music (242), Book 2: Practical, ch. 1: Chota Khayal, p. 1
- AUTRIM (NCPA), Aesthetics, “Time theory”
- IMSLP, Le quattro stagioni (Vivaldi, Antonio): work page, work description; First Publication 1725
- IMSLP, Violin Concerto in F minor, RV 297 (Vivaldi, Antonio): scores and recordings, first edition scores; recordings
Topic 40 · Fit: Context
Rasa, emotion and listening
Learning objective: Separate what a listener feels from what music is meant to express, and avoid fixed emotion labels for raagsRaagA recognisable arrangement of notes and musical behaviour that guides melody. A raag’s identity involves how notes are used, not just a list of pitches.Source: N2 §2.1, pp. 14–15; §2.2.1, p. 15. and 1 moreMore in the glossary or modes.
Rasa is the aesthetic idea of a mood or flavour that art evokes. AUTRIM discusses rasa and how it has been linked to raagsRaagA recognisable arrangement of notes and musical behaviour that guides melody. A raag’s identity involves how notes are used, not just a list of pitches.Source: N2 §2.1, pp. 14–15; §2.2.1, p. 15. and 1 moreMore in the glossary.
Mathur and colleagues (2015) asked listeners to rate their own responses to recorded raagRaagA recognisable arrangement of notes and musical behaviour that guides melody. A raag’s identity involves how notes are used, not just a list of pitches.Source: N2 §2.1, pp. 14–15; §2.2.1, p. 15. and 1 moreMore in the glossary excerpts, and report that features of the music's structure were linked to those responses. The result is bounded by their listeners, recordings and measures.
Fritz and colleagues (2009) asked a different question: whether listeners recognise which of three basic emotions, happy, sad or scared, a Western piece expresses. That is recognising an expressed emotion, not reporting a felt one.
Where the comparison stops
Feeling an emotion and recognising one are different tasks, so these studies cannot be merged into one finding. Neither supports a fixed, universal emotion for any raagRaagA recognisable arrangement of notes and musical behaviour that guides melody. A raag’s identity involves how notes are used, not just a list of pitches.Source: N2 §2.1, pp. 14–15; §2.2.1, p. 15. and 1 moreMore in the glossary or mode.
Sources
- AUTRIM (NCPA), Aesthetics, “Ras”; “Rag and Ras”
- Mathur, Vijayakumar, Chakrabarti and Singh (2015), Emotional responses to Hindustani raga music: the role of musical structure, “Materials and Methods”, “Results”, “Discussion and Conclusion”
- Fritz, Jentschke, Gosselin, Sammler, Peretz, Turner, Friederici and Koelsch (2009), Universal Recognition of Three Basic Emotions in Music, Current Biology 19, Experiment 1 and Fig. 1A, pp. 573–574; Experimental Procedures, p. 575
Related pages
Ragapedia wrote these comparisons by combining separately cited Hindustani and Western sources. No source institution has endorsed them, and a musician has not reviewed this lesson.