Raga

The Raga or Rag ( Hindi: राग, RAG; Sanskrit: रागः, rāgaḥ ( masculine ), Tamil: ராகம், Ragam ( neuter ) ) provides the basic melodic structure of Indian music dar. This is a " sound personality ", which in turn is associated with a fixed tone scale, similar to the Western church modes.

The Raga prescribes the notes fit in to a music piece. Furthermore, the Raga are certain melodic and ornamental elements, and applicable for some tones Game provisions. The Raga contains two main tones ( 1 main sound, Vadi, and 2 main sound, Samvadi ) on which the melody start and end figures, and determine the expressive content of the raga. There are a myriad of traditional ragas, often a certain time of day (eg Todi - Morning Raga Desh - 21-24 clock ) or situation (eg Megh - Rain Raga Basant - Spring ) are assigned and match the emotional quality of their dates.

An important Indian musical form whose essential content is to develop a raga is also called Raga: Under Alap is defined as the introduction to the raga. The Alap unfolded and adorns the characteristics of a raga in relation to the melody ( phrases, important notes, tonal range, etc.). The main part is called Gat. Then put him in a rhythm instruments, also the Raga is in it then fully exploited and freely improvised in the frame.

History

In the ancient Indian Gandharva music theory to religious music, Bharata Muni, the first meeting was the turning point in his work Natyashastra, some basic concepts are called, are used in Indian music today. Basis of the comprehensive unit time were tala, the pitch svara and sung text pada. The term raga emerges not on here, he is first mentioned ascribed in the Matanga Muni work Brihaddeshi (6th - 8th century). From the 14th century the Ragas were classified according to their similarity to a unique scheme that has six male and six female Ragas Raginis the foundation. There were male and female names for individual ragas much earlier, the division could have started by gender before Matanga Munis time. The other ragas were derived therefrom.

Around 1620 Venkatamakhin developed a scale system for South Indian music, which contains 72 Melakartas. End of the 19th century, the music theorist Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande rejected the previous divisions and laid the foundations for the still valid today, is indicative of a new notation classification.

Scale

The scales of Western music using a maximum of 12 notes per octave. The Indian music is based, however, on the Shrutis ( microtones ), which divide the octave into 22 steps. Used per scale ( scale), there are seven main tones, called Svaras:

Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa

The "Sa " has the role of the root and the Svaras always refer to the "Sa ". The Svaras essentially correspond to the solfeggio and differ depending western music Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Si. However, a one-to -one mapping is not possible, since the pitch for one of the raga used depends, on the other hand, each musician has his own "Sa ". Sometimes the C of Western music is used as a "Sa ", but the "Sa " may be higher or lower. With the interaction of several musicians, all instruments are tuned to the root note of the dominant musician. Especially for vocal music, the "Sa " is often shifted by several whole tones. For group lessons often from experience, the teacher uses the G # as root, because in a heterogeneous group to vote for all singing the most comfortable intersection of the fundamentals on which all can settle, mostly the G or G # is.

Harmony

Indian music has no real polyphony. She puts less emphasis on chords, but attaches more importance to single tone whose relationship (interval) to the tonic is essential. Therefore, the concatenation of sounds plays the more important role, in contrast to the simultaneity of sounds in Western music.

Usually heard the keynote as a kind of " wall of sound " ( drone ) throughout a piece of music, so that the tension between the individual tones may very well be perceived with some practice.

Indian Notation of Ragas

Since the compositions are passed on orally, in principle, there is no precise in Indian music notation. The tones are only recorded in letters. To distinguish the 22 different Shrutis the Svaras be listed differently, eg by uppercase or lowercase letters, underscores, or trailing numbers.

In the following two Indian Ragas of notation are presented, one by Ali Akbar Khan, and one by Amjid Ali Khan. Here, the C is recognized as the root:

Another notation method ( with suffixes ) is described in the article Shruti.

Raga - scale system

In northern India, was developed in the early 20th century a binding scale system. Its current version is due to the Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande musicologist. The scale of ten ragas seemed sufficient to classify all North Indian melody types The following list of fact - Gruppenbildner results from his work Kramika Pustaka - malika (6 vols, 1919-1937 ):

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