Indian Classical Music vs Western Classical Music : My Take

I am not trained in the technicalities of music. I do not know the ragas, I can’t play any instrument, nor do I have any singing skills. I do have a sense of rhythm but that doesn’t not go beyond the easy 4/4 or 3/3 ones.  I cannot technically identify the complex micro rhythms of tala yet I can feel them. I am a music lover, music has lived with me for so many years, helped me grow, developed my aesthetics, made me mature, imbibed empathy in me, gave me spiritual joy, took me into raptures of physical pleasure and so on. The list goes on and on. Music has defined and redefined me in so many ways that I cannot express all that in words. Yet when it comes to express emotion about music it is so hard to write anything.

A bit of History …

The roots Indian classical music can be found in the Vedic literature, thoughts and Philosophy. Even before the ancient Natyashastra (the classic Sanskrit text on performance arts by Bharata Muni) was written much of the basic tenets of this musical form have been formalized. The oldest form still existing today is Dhrupad. Before dhrupad, there were probably other different genres of music, including “Sam Gana” or Vedic chants, but presently no body has any idea about the structure of those musical forms. It could be completely different than what we listen today. Other older forms are “Jati Gana” and “Prabandh Sangeet” but like Sama Gana, presently hardly anything is known about these categories. Been (Venna) was one of the main instrument in those days, at least since the birth of dhrupad. Been should not be confused with its present day form, look and feel of Veena, which is probably a 15th Century instrument. Carnatic music developed significantly during the Bhakti movement. From around the 12th Century, changes between Hindustani and Carnatic music began to occur due to Persian and Mughal influences in the north while Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in the south of India see the development of the Carnatic Sangeet. Moderately a new form of Hindustani music (Music of the North) appeared in early to mid 1700 century in Gowalior court under the patronage of king Muhammad Shah Rangile. This form is known as Kheyal. As the name suggests, form and elements of the music was highly influenced by Persian culture (Khyeal in Persian means Imagination). Development of Instruments like sitar and rabab, also hold their lineage from Persian tradition. Presently Hindustani music adopted several other lighter forms also, like thumri, tarana, kajri, and many others. However, till this day, there are some significant differences between Carnatic (music of the South) vs Hindustani (music of the north).

	Hindustani	Carnatic
Origins	North	South
	Vedic tradition	Bhakti tradition
Raga	6 principal ragas known as bandish and 10 modes or thaats.	Scales of 7 notes containing semitones and 72 modes or melankara.
Style	Gharanas singing style.	More vocal style even when played by instrument.
Words	Formal and not clearly articulated.	Words important in order to express emotion.
Improvisation	Specific format as to how improvisation takes place.	Improvisation is less restricted.
Tempo	Slow with long note values increasing in intensity.	Faster tempo that remains more constant with shorter note values.
Ornamentation	Ornamentation is used to enhance the emotion.	There is an oscillation between the notes to create a spiritual and more intellectual performance.
Instruments	Tabla, sarangi, sitar, santoor, and clarinet.	Veena, mridangam, mandolin, and jalatarangam.

However, western classical music history is more recent, can be extended around 1550 CE, a little further beyond the classical age. Music during those days, were more on polyphony, mass music for churches. (1450-1600) Renaissance Period: is when the thinking about music started changing. The music became more complex, sometimes more grand and secular, often played by small group of musicians known as consorts.  Probably, the most complicated form of western music appeared was during Baroque age (1600–1750 CE), a major change over the musical thought process took over, where there was obsession with decorations and added frills to just about everything and music was no exception. Complicated instruments like harpsichord, organ and lute family of instruments, and several complicated wind instruments shaped the musical tradition. Subsequently Western Classical Music forged its own path, gained in prestige and morphed into multiple forms of both instrumental and vocal.  Depending on the location of the European country, their musical identity also got severely influenced by the musical culture of the adjacent countries. Say in the case of eastern European countries, they were influenced by Arabian and Persian music.

What is common in both the cases is that the origin of the complex music is faith based.  The difference is the approach to the faith, in West the religion is much more organized, involving masses, pulling them to church in regular fashion. Whereas in India, religion is very individualistic, it is your own faith and can be pursued at your home in your own way.  This difference in approach to the religion, is what I think has reflected in the evolution of music. When multiple, voices jointly pray to God, in order for the prayers to be musically powerful to the ears and create high sense of beauty and aesthetics amongst the worshippers, you need to have them sing in harmony. On the other hand, in India, a lone individual, in his own seclusion, travelling through time or life at moments of devotion may pray to God in most melodious way known to him. To appeal to his God and to his own sense of high beauty and aesthetics. He doesn’t need another individual to sing in harmony with him as he is not wanting to be separate from God asking for God’s judgment. His sole goal of his existence is, as an individual, is to merge with God.

homophony vs. polyphony / melody vs. harmony

Western music is harmony and polyphony based. Harmony is when two notes of certain frequency gap are played simultaneously. Generally, to create harmony, one note and its proceeding third Major / Minor note is played, for example (without going into the details of what constitutes a major and minor scale), D and F# will create a harmony in major scale. If there are more than two notes are used, say D, F# and A is played together, it is called a polyphony. Harmony and polyphony are the central to Western music both Classical and popular. The whole structure of a composition piece is created around it ,  without them, this music will be  incomplete. The magic lies to a great extent in polyphonic composition, where counterpoint, harmony, and the texture created using multiple voices is critical. Melody exists in western classical music too, but from a broad perspective, is not the singular or defining focus of most of the works.

However, the garnish that completely distinguishes Indian Classical (both Hindustani and Carnatic) music from most of the other genres of music, including Western classical is the usage of Meend. Meend is the glide from one frequency to other one (like glide from Re to Ga). This glide gives an exclusive identity to Indian music (both popular and classical). That is why; Piano (a dominant instrument for Western Classical Music), which only allows generating discrete notes cannot play Ragas, the backbone of Indian classical music. Indian classical music is primarily homophonic, which means its focus is on melodies created using a sequence of notes. The magic that is primarily experienced is with the different melodies constructed within the framework of the Raagas. The Glide is like a single drop of water poignantly hanging in a moment of time or smoothly transforming itself from one form to other. It can smoothly glide through time; on the other hand, western classical music is like a waterfall, with multiple streams of water moving at varying pace, all gushing together in one direction, coordinated to flow in a harmony. For harmony, you need organization, for organization you need a shared goal which is the direction of the flow.

Symphony Vs Raga and Perfection Vs Improvisation...

Symphony, a western classical music construct, is a composed piece by a particular composer. The composer writes it down on paper, defining everything from the notes to number and type of musician who will play the music and how they will play. For the musicians it will be a performance. It requires enormous practice and perfection to synchronize with all the musicians playing together. Generally, in a symphony there are more than 200 musicians, they watch one person, conductor, who gives the instruction of when to play, how to play and stop in order to synchronize. This is an unreservedly an extremely difficult job for any not professionally trained musicians. It is practice of perfection, towards perfection. Additionally, for a concerto, lead musician has to remember all the notes for the composition, which may go beyond an hour. One mistake can ruin the whole synchronization of the music.

Ragas, on the other hand, are free flowing. Less than 4% part of the total presentation is composed, which is called bandhish (term used in Hindustani classical music, Carnatic will be have something similar) or the song. Everything else comes from the improvisation of musician. Same raga, by same musician could be very different in space and time, depending on the mood of musician and his/her response to the present environment. It is quite hard to imagine, that within few notes (for some raga, number of notes can be as few as 3, like Malashri) a musician plays non repetitive musical phrases for hours, seeking only the strictest fidelity to the mood of a raga. Indian classical music has two foundational elements, raga and tala (a cycle of beats centered around ‘Sam’ that repeats itself. Western Classical Music doesn’t use such complex beat cycles). The raga forms the fabric of a melodic structure, while the tala measures the time cycle, cadence. The raga gives an artist a palette to build the melody from sounds, while the tala provides them with a creative framework for rhythmic improvisation using time (Indian Classical Music makes extensive use of quarter-tones & microtones, usually referred to as ‘Shruti’. Western Classical Music has a few microtonal pioneers and has largely been restricted to using semitones).

On one hand the endeavor, in western classical music, is to display in modern framework, a long ago created frozen work of art as perfectly as possible, on the other hand, in Indian classical music, it is the creative process and creative work itself both are developed live in front of the audience. There is much more freedom, much more flexibility, all one needs to do is to keep the spirit of the music (as framed by a Raga), the very essence. In the modern rendition of a piece of western classical music one can argue that there is some element of individual interpretation (even though it has to be predefined) by the Musical conductor but by all means and purpose it is a team effort. It is because of these it is hard for the western classical music to adopt the freewheeling nature of Indian classical music. It’s like turning around an ocean liner versus a dolphin, jumping, dancing around one the waters of the ocean.

Nature, Spirituality & Real World Scenarios …

Indian classical music has a closer, intimate association with nature than Western Classical Music. Ragas have specific times of day or seasons of the year associated with them, while most of Western Classical Music doesn’t have any such characteristic. The roots of Indian classical music are the Vedic thought which epitomizes individualism and its spirituality. The intuitive belief in the idea of Brahamana and all the forces of universe are linked has deeply influenced very structure of Indian music, the formation of the essence of ragas. In Western Classical Music, the roots are more non-spiritualistic real world scenarios and events, in factors like individual episodic experiences, significant historical events in human history, entertainment, occasions with dance celebrations, and so on.

Vocals or Instrumentation..

In both Indian and Western classical music Vocals are used, but the way they’re treated in relation to other instruments is different. When vocals are used in Indian Classical Music, all the rest of the instruments are mere ‘accompaniments’ — there are Tanpooras that act like drones, harmonium that follows the tonality of the voice by providing chords, etc. Tanpoora and Harmonium creates the background color of the canvas of music, thus creating a texture, on which the singer (the artist) with his palette of colors (ragas) improvise spontaneously and create paintings (music). In other word the voices forms the basis of the structure and the artwork.

Western Classical Music, when vocals are used, the instrumentation still carries a lot of weight in the overall composition, it is just another addition, to all the other instruments, that are playing the structure of the composition. The term ‘voice’ is hence used in a generic way and doesn’t always mean human voice. A ‘voice’ can be any theme played by an instrument. So, one can have a four-voice fugue being played on the piano using two hands, where each hand is playing one of four voices at any given time.

It is always the surrender of the individual to the team in the western tradition, and the team in turn work to enhance the long ago written down composition of a past great musician. Unlike, Indian belief of that Brahma exists within every individual it is about man vs superman in western tradition. The superman being the Musician whose composed music is being played by the man (musician).

A series of events sliced by framework vs everything is connected and are relative to each other....

Western music is scale based (frameworks) with the frequency of each note being absolute. Although, it is said to be equal tempered, minute differences still exits. Hence, progression in C scale do not sound exactly same as that in C# scale. For a western classical composition, composers fix a scale before composing. Thus the notation follows equal tempered frequencies within an octave, which is divided into 12 notes (C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B). Probably this the reason in a Piano , which is the central instrument for Western Classical music we find that within one octave there are exactly 12 keys.

Indian classical music (is not equally tempered) is more dependent on relative distance between two notes. Whatever the scale may be, relative distance between notes (Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni) will be exactly same always. In a scale, only frequency of one sa and pa (sometimes ma or ni is also used) is fixed, other notes are played on the basis of these reference notes. They do not have absolute frequency. Thus it’s notation system is complicated and some times vary depending on the style of music that is being played. In practice of Khayal (Hindustani Classic- sub category of Indian Classical Music) , one octave is generally divided into 22 notes, called micro tones, or Shruti. Unfortunately nowadays, many of the Hindustani practitioners use only 12 notes, and avoid the usage of complex shruti, which is fairly good way of diluting the Hindustani music. Shruti is more finely defined in dhrupad (in case of Sadharani Geeti particularly), where each note can be divided into seven audible shrutis. Number of notes in this kind of division become 84 within a single octave, which is far beyond any kind of imagination in Western or any other form of music.

While both of them (music systems) arose from different traditions and are harbinger of different philosophies, outlook to life. Yet there is one common bond between them, which is of aesthetics, the worship of beauty.  Wrapped in raptures of ethereal beauty both form of music gives us intense pleasure and complete deep satisfaction of mind and soul. While there is some liberty of self-expression and creativity in striving towards perfection in representing the superstructure of melodies created by a genius, however it is always about praise. In taking a lower pedestal, looking up, praising and thanking the genius for giving us (individuals of limited personality) his great work.  This to me, of Western Classical Music- Us versus Him, this separation is while appreciating the beauty of the work do not touch me.  Too me what touches my soul is an artist with his/her own skill creating variations of melodic flourish and ornamentation all along endeavoring with his/her heart and soul to merge himself/herself to God. In the process inviting us, the audience to join the creative process and drown ourselves in the ecstasies  of music to unite with God. This is the central law of existence, unification of us (the artist, audience, the nature and everybody) with God and not cut ourselves adrift from God. This is fullest of self-expression, from heart to heart, from soul to soul and true beauty. Indian classical music brings this to me and for this only I listen , I enjoy I thrive in the spontaneous feeling .