Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

V. Chant

The word as sound is a concept basic to all domains of South Asian culture. Accordingly, a wide range of poetry is chanted in a variety of languages and in contexts ranging from entertainment to religious practice. Generally termed recitation, such poetry covers traditional epics such as the Hir ranjha chanted for Punjabi village audiences, Urdu poets presenting their works at mushā'iras (formal assemblies of literary élites) and poetic texts in all major Indian religions, from the scriptural chanting of religious specialists to congregational litanies. Some chant melodies are widely known, such as the Rām dhun used to chant the Rāmāyana, or the masnavi tune linked to the Sufi verses of Rumi. In all Indian music the relationship between music and poetry is of some importance, but in poetic chant this relationship is particularly significant.

Since in chant the word is of primary importance, it is necessary to approach chanted poetry through the word rather than through its musical realization. Performing style, form and, especially, rhythm are likely to be the principal musical means of conveying features of poetic structure and meaning as well as of recitational context. Rhythm, by governing the duration of pitch in time, further extends the influence of these poetic features to the melody. The tonal range and melodic motifs of chant melody are, however, subject to influence from widely disseminated popular and art music as well as regional traditional genres, all of which contribute to a common musical milieu.

Tarannum, the chanting of Urdu poetry, and Hindu Vedic chant (see §2 below) illustrate certain general principles underlying musical recitation, where features of musical style are determined by the characteristics of spoken language and poetic structure as well as by the context and meaning of the text.

1. Tarannum.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and one of India's 18 official languages. Its main centres are the cities of Pakistan and northern and western India, and Hyderabad in the south. As the literary language and lingua franca developed by the Muslims in India, it continues to represent South Asian Muslim culture. Urdu poetry, a highly formalized art, has a distinctly Persian flavour, since its symbolism and imagery as well as the poetic forms, metres and scansion rules are derived from Persian and Arabic models. The predominant form is the ghazal (see §IV, 2 above), a lyrical and philosophical love-poem, structured in couplets that are independent in content but linked by a common theme and a recurring rhyme pattern. As a favourite form of cultivated entertainment and self-expression this poetry is chanted in tarannum style both formally by poets at the mushā'ira (symposium) and informally by other Urdu speakers.

Tarannum is categorized as recitation, not singing or music, and it is appreciated only in terms of the poetry it supports. Accordingly it appertains to the respected sphere of the poet and not to the socially inferior realm of the professional musician. This strict separation of chanting from singing exempts tarannum from the Islamic religious censure of singing and instrumental music; hence it is the only form of secular ‘music’ widely practised by South Asian Muslims.

The music of tarannum is dominated by the text. The style of performance emphasizes aspects of verbal communication: words are pronounced as in spoken declamation and even consonants are enunciated according to their natural duration in speech. The rhythm and tempo of speech are generally maintained. The smallest formal unit, the poetic line, is normally free from interruption and internal repetition, but complete lines are repeated and pauses are introduced as part of the spontaneous interaction between reciter and audience. Voice production is highly idiosyncratic, reflecting the reciter's speaking voice rather than a standard vocal model, such as exists in singing. To some extent the vocal quality of tarannum is determined by the predominance of long vowels in the poetic vocabulary and of long syllables in the metric structure.

Tarannum is strictly strophic in formal structure. Each couplet contains two contrasting tunes that correspond to the sthāyī–antarā principle of north Indian art music. The first, non-rhyming line of the couplet is generally set to an antarā -like tune with a high tessitura (the upper tetrachord of the octave); the second, rhyming line is set to a sthāyī-like tune with a low tessitura (the lower tetrachord, with tonic emphasis). The melodic cadences of both tunes often correspond.

The rhythm of tarannum is derived from the poetic metre (exx.17 and 18). The complex metric system of Urdu poetry, rooted in Arabic prosody, is based on a variety of long–short patterns. In the musical realization of the poetic metre the long and short syllables form the basis for long and short durational units. Both the duration and the mutual relationship of these units are highly variable, which accounts for the rhythmic diversity of tarannum. This variability may express semantic as well as structural factors in the text. The relationship between long and short durational units may also be consistent, resulting in rhythmic regularity and a tendency to replace length with stress (see ex.18).

Melodically, tarannum belongs in the context of north Indian semi-classical music and is subject to the influence of the current musical environment, including popular recorded music. The melodic content extends from motifs with a narrow tonal range to rāga-types. Chant tunes are characterized by their portability (a tune can be ‘carried’ from one poem to another) and potential for variation. The same tune may be adapted to poems which differ widely in length and metrical scheme (exx.17 and 18). Conversely, the same poem may be chanted to more than one tune. There thus exists a repertory of reciting tunes that performers modify in accordance with the poem and their own personal style. Poets also create new tunes of their own, thereby enriching the repertory. Specific melodic and rhythmic settings may thus become attached to particular poems and associated with the personal reciting style and vocal profile that poets cultivate as part of their creative personality. Another facet of performance is declamatory freedom to interrupt and repeat verse lines within a poem as part of a reciter's interaction with the audience.

Tarannum recitation has also been extended to kavisammelan, assemblies for the recitation of Hindi poetry that follows Sanskrit-derived formal principles. Today tarannum is internationally disseminated by touring poets who recite at mushā'iras held in South Asian communities in North America, Britain and the Gulf States.

2. Sāmavedic chant.

The sāmavedic chant is commonly supposed to represent the earliest surviving form of Indian music; it has been traditionally regarded by theorists as the source of all Indian art music. This claim must be treated cautiously, however, since there must have existed numerous other musical elements and influences in religious, secular and ceremonial practice from very early times.

The four Vedas (veda primarily means ‘knowledge’) are collections of early Sanskrit hymns and ritual texts originating in the religious beliefs and practices of the early Aryan settlers in South Asia. The hymns of the Sāmaveda – the Veda of ‘chants’ or ‘melodies’ (sāman) – are for the most part also contained in the primary hymn collection of the Rgveda. However, in the Sāmaveda they are rearranged in two series of verses (ārcika), the first according to the deities they address and the poetic metres used, the second according to the ritual and liturgical contexts in which the verses are recited. There are no musical directions, but special song-manuals (gāna) of more recent origin give melodies in notation, as well as the modifications to the basic text – lengthened and additional syllables etc. – which are employed in the sung versions of the hymns.

In earlier and ancient sources many sāmavedic ‘schools’ (śākhā) are said to have existed. The transmission of the melodies and their performance procedures was sustained by strict training within each school, and strict and orthodox accuracy within each of them was crucial for the efficacy of religious ritual. Three such schools survive today, called the Jaiminīya or Talavakāra, the Kauthuma and the Rānāyanīya. The gānas, and other later practical handbooks of performance attached to the different schools, appear to have been compiled as mnemonic aids to a primarily oral tradition. The other handbooks include works on timing, metres, pitch varieties and ritual uses of the chants and the magical and apotropaic lore related to them. In some of these Vedic ‘ancillary’ Sanskrit texts can be found a tendency to relate some features of sāmavedic recitation and music, and its notation, to the later post-Vedic pitch systems. Research over the last century has increasingly supported the view that textual study and present-day field observation can illuminate each other, and pioneering studies by J.F. Staal (1961) and Wayne Howard (1977 and 1988) have thrown much light on the relation of practice and theory.

The sāman verses can be performed in private recitation or in a more open ritual context of the sacrifice. At the more elaborate of the great public (śrauta) sacrifices the priests sing a number of stotra s, laudatory compositions formed of complexes of verses from the Vedic hymns. The portions (bhakti) of each of the composite stanzas (stotrīya) are performed by one or more of a trio of specialist sāmavedic priests called the prastotr (introductory singer), udgātr (principal singer) and pratihartr (responsorial singer). The verbal text is modified in various ways to fit the prescribed melodic form in a melismatic style; it is possible that the melodies existed already and the verses had to be ‘set’ to them. On the basis of the texts and the practical manuals, up to eight different methods of ‘alteration’ have been identified, and the different recensions of the sāmavedic śākhā, and different traditions even within each of these, show a variety of ways of adapting the texts within the essential rules of practice. In the Kauthuma manuscripts the Sanskrit text is accompanied by an interlinear numerical notation of five figures, and in the Rānāyanīya by a syllabic notation, in which the symbols are used to indicate musical phrases. Ancient sources name seven ‘tones’ (svara s, not to be confused with those of post-Vedic musical systems), and it seems that the figures and letters refer to items in a repertory of phrases or motives. The gāna texts use the figures also as mnemonic indications of gestures (mudrā) made with the thumb and fingers of the right hand, these being themselves partly a mnemonic means to assist in the learning and transmission of the sāman melodies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

J.F. Staal: Nambudiri Veda Recitation (The Hague, 1961)

W. Bright: ‘Language and Music: Areas for Cooperation’, EthM, vii (1963), 26–32

A. Ahmad: Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford, 1964/R), 73ff, 218–62

R. Qureshi: ‘Tarannum: the Chanting of Urdu Poetry’, EthM, xiii (1969), 425–68

A. Parpola: ‘The Literature and Study of the Jaiminīya Sāmaveda in Retrospect and Prospect’, Studia Orientalia, xliii/6 (1973), 1–33

J. Gonda: Vedic Literature: Samhitās and Brāhmanas (Wiesbaden, 1975)

W. Howard: Sāmavedic Chant (New Haven, CT, 1977)

M. Witzel: ‘Materialen zu den Vedischen Schulen’, Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik, no.7 (1981), 109–32; nos.8–9 (1982), 171–240; no.10 (1984), 231–37

J.F. Staal: The Vedic Ritual of the Fire Altar (Berkeley, 1983)

G.H. Tarlekar: The Sāman Chants: a Review of Research (Baroda, 1985)

W. Howard: Veda Recitation in Vārānasī (Delhi, 1986)

W. Howard: The Decipherment of the Sāmavedic Notation of the Jaiminīyas (Helsinki, 1988)

G.U. Thite: Music in the Vedas: its Magico-Religious Significance (Delhi, 1997)

I Write I Recite, HMV (India) 7EPE 1274 (n.d.) [incl. disc notes by S. Badayuni and H. Jaipuri]

India, Subcontinent of