Music: form, tambura

[Madhav Deshpande]

	I would like to add another book by B. Chaitanya Deva : 
Psychoacoustics of music and speech, The Music Academy, Madras, 1967.  It 
contains some of the same material as referred to by Srini, but has some 
more chapters dealing with "the psychology of the drone in melodic music".
	Madhav Deshpande

On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, Srinivasan Pichumani wrote:

> 	1. Is there any book/articles available which discuss this form or four
> 	elements in Indian music?  I havn't found any.
> 
> If you are looking for general books, this may be useful
> 
> 	Author:         Nijenhuis, Emmie te.
> 	Title:          Indian music : history and structure
> 	Published:      Leiden : Brill, 1974.
>  
> 
> 	2. Is there any book/articles available that deals with the "drone"?
> 	       I havn't found any.
> 
> B.C.Deva's article "The Emergence of the Drone in India music"
> (Journal of the Music Academy, Madras, 1952) is about the only
> extensive one I have seen on this subject.  It is reprinted in
> his book "The Music of India: A Scientific Study".
> 
> This book also carries a reprint of his other article titled
> "Tonal structure of the tambura" from the same journal (1956).
> 	
> 	3. Contain "classical indian literature" any reference to the tambura?
> 
> The first article cited above says that the specific drone
> instrument, tambura, is not found in literary or pictorial
> sources till the end of Middle Ages (?). 
> 
> Certainly, other instruments like the vINa, yAzh, flute, etc 
> were used as accompaniment to vocal music, and possibly served 
> as a sort of drone too.  And there were other folk instruments
> like the ek-tAr serving the same function.
> 
> But, it is not till the 15th, 16th centuries that, due to various 
> dramatic changes, the tambura-style drone becomes indispensable.
> Some of these changes are - music making based on a fixed tonic
> rather than modally shifting the tonic, associating S permanently
> with the tonic thus rendering it invariant and analogously the
> fifth or P.
> 
> -Srini.
> 
>