Music: form, tambura -Reply

[Henry Groover]

I would also recommend _Sonic Theology_ by Guy Beck, which deals
with musicology as well as the concept of naada-brahman (which as the
title suggests is the theme of the book).  Unfortunately I don't have a
copy handy and don't recall the publisher.  It came out very recently
(within the last 8 months or so, I believe).

Henry Groover

>>> Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh at umich.edu> 04/19/96 05:41pm >>>
	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.
>  >