Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

(a) Vīnā and bīn.

A south Indian vīnā performance consists of several discrete musical items varying in duration from five minutes to an hour or more. Each musical item starts with ālāpana, during which no tāla operates and there is no percussion accompaniment; the tāla strings are struck for occasional timbral contrast with the melody strings. In longer musical items, ālāpana is followed by tāna, in which rhythmic patterns are built up by alternating strokes on the tāla and melody strings. In the compositions and subsequent improvisations that follow tāna, a tāla operates and the mrdangam (barrel drum) provides a percussion accompaniment. In this context, the tāla strings are struck to mark the main beats of the tāla only (for example in Ādi tāla – comprising 8 beats – they are struck on 1, 5 and 7). In the Mysore vīnā tradition this is strictly adhered to, though elsewhere, because of the influence of Hindustani sitār technique, innovators may tend to mark every beat of the tāla.

The bulk of the repertory comprises Kriti. The right-hand strokes (on the melody strings) of the vīnā represent the consonants of the song text. When a kriti is performed, lines of the song text are repeated (from four to 16 or more times) with progressive melodic development. Two consistent features of such development are the gradual increase in rhythmic density and the extension of the range of pitch movement, which build up excitement and tension in the listener. On the vīnā, this involves the left arm moving faster and farther up and down the neck. Towards the end of such developments the tension is released by alternating this material with a contrasting line of melody/song text, followed by a return to the first rendering of the original line. Spontaneous improvisation may occur within this, and wholly improvised items of repertory (pallavi) follow the same cyclical form.

The northern vīnā, or bīn (fig.8), is played by performers of Dhrupad, particularly in ālāp. Many of the techniques of portamento and the use of the cikāri (punctuating) strings used in the performance of ālāp, jor and jhālā (see below) originated in bīn technique. The bīn is also played in metric compositions with the pakhāvaj (barrel drum), but the subordination of instrumental to vocal style has resulted in an absence of distinctively instrumental compositional styles.

(b) Sitār and sarod.

The two main classical Sitār repertories, or bāj, comprising styles of metric composition (gāt) and associated performing practices, were established during the 18th century. The Delhi bāj is based on a style attributed to Masit Khan of the 18th century Mughal capital. His descendants later moved to Rajasthani courts, and the style is also called ‘western’ (pachāo, pachva), or masītkhānī. The masītkhānī performing style was dhrupad -influenced, with rabāb - and bīn -derived ālāp (introductory section), jor, thak and jhālā metric variational practices, including melodic or rhythmic transformation of the gat (sīdhī-ārī) and augmentation-diminution (thā-dūn), similar to dhrupad bāt (the tablā thekā for slow tīntāl in 19th-century Bengali sources is markedly like that of the pakhāvaj).

The ‘eastern’ (pūrab) or razākhānī bāj is attributed to Ghulam Raza Khan of Lucknow. The razākhānī style is probably closer to the sitār tanbūr than the dhrupad tradition: the ‘light’ rāgas that form part of it (such as Kāfi, Pīlū, Khamāj and Bhairavī) are melodically similar to Central Asian tunes. Performing practice included augmentation-diminution (thā-dūn), cross-string plucking (cher) and short stretches of melodic passage work (khucrā tān or upaj) derived from khayāl song and often improvised.

The terms masītkhānī and razākhānī, applied to gat, denote skeletal rhythmic plucking structures (slow and fast respectively) rather than specific melodic compositions by Masit Khan and Raza Khan. The most common razākhānī type begins on the 7th beat; some such compositions predate Raza Khan and are attributed in tradition (especially those in rāga Kāfī) to Amir Khusrau and may relate to sūfiāna rang. They were extended by 18th-century sitār players such as the brothers Lād Khān and Pyār Khān. There is a greater underlying similarity in the plucking rhythm of the first lines of the two gat types than is apparent today, when the tempo difference may be 8:1 or more; traditional sitār players, however, still refer to the two as dhīmā (‘moderate’) and dūnī (‘double’). Older gat from this period are often in two lines, corresponding to the sthāyī and mañjhā, not sthāyī and antarā, of the modern style. The mañjhā line is created in masītkhānī gat by triple repetition of the first sub-bar, comparable to the gat-dohrā (‘theme and doubling’) of Delhi tablā; the antarā is probably a later development influenced by vocal forms and created here by rhythmic imitation of the first two lines into the upper octave. Razākhānī gat shows more variety. The emerging classical gat repertory of the 18th century represents different stylizations of common material. This shows some affinity with the instrumental ‘teahouse’ music of north Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Table 16 represents the forms played in the modern sitār repertory. It displays the two movements (ālāp and gat-torā), principal sections (ālāp, slow and fast gat) and subordinate sections (jor and jhālā). Some optional procedures are grouped beneath each section. Full performances include all sections (1–6); shorter ones omit some (especially 2, 3 and 6). The introductory ālāp sometimes occurs alone, but normally elements of both ālāp and gat-torā are included; the order of sections is always maintained. Change to a related rāga sometimes occurs, while rāga-mālā (‘garland of rāgas’) with extemporized changes of mode is quite popular. A prastārikā (‘medley’) of gat in several tāla is now rare. The usual term for the complete performance is rāg, though the term gat was formerly used in this sense.

TABLE 16: Schematic representation of rāga form for the sitār
Ālāp	Gat-torā (with tāl)
1	2	3	4	5	6
a āocār ālāp	jor	jhālā	slow gat	fast gat	jhālā
b vistār alāp
c bandhan ālāp
			barhat
			bahlāvā	bahlāvā
antarā			antarā	antarā
			chand	tān
			boltān	boltān
		thonk	tārparan	tārparan
		cher	cherchār	cherchār
			ārī-kuārī
tān (muhrā)		tān	tān
			tīhāī	tīhāī
			āmad	āmad
			sīdhī-ārī	thā-dūn
				savāl-javāb
				sāth-sangat

The first section (ālāp) is devoted to the exposition of the mode through various techniques primarily derived from vocal music, above all portamento (miir), which is achieved through string deflection. Ālāp is without metre (tāla) or drum accompaniment and is always molto cantando. Āocār ālāp (1(a); uccār: ‘pronouncement’) is a brief announcement of the rāga through a few characteristic phrases, such as the pakar (Hindi: ‘catch’), and may lead directly to gat (4 or 5). Phrasal ālāp of various kinds (1(c); Hindi bandhān: ‘bound’; Urdu qāid: ‘strict’) comprises more extended development of such phrases centring on strong tones of the mode – the tonic (sa), melodic centre (vādī), secondary centre (samvādī) and often also the 5th (pa) or 4th (ma) degree of the scale. In 1(b), vistār or bistār (‘extended’) ālāp, these features of the rāga are elaborated in slow, rigorous developments through low, middle and upper octaves. In the middle octave, each note is introduced in turn in ascending scale order, and the development of each note is concluded by a rhythmic cadence (muhrā: ‘coming forward’). This form reflects the bīn–sūrbahār repertories; a generation ago a sitāriyā (sitār player) could play vistār of a rāga on the sūrbahār and then its gat-torā on the sitār tuned a 4th or a 5th higher. Ālāp -type development may also occur in gat sections (4, 5). In slow gat (4), vistār-type extension called barhat (‘increase’) or ālāpī is performed in free tempo against slow tablā metre. This feature is again relatively modern and derived from khayāl; in both khayāl and sitār performance it would follow an introductory āocār ālāp. Short phrasal ālāp occurring in gat sections is bahlāvā (‘divertissement’).

In jor (2; ‘joining’) and jhālā (3), there are various combinations of techniques that may derive partly from vocal nom-tom ālāp (which may itself derive from instruments), developing rāga through pulse and tempo. Rhythmic groupings are set up through tonal patterns and play made with departure and return to the beat; later stages concentrate on intensified patterns – larī and complex cross-rhythmic bol and thonk (‘hammering’).

Jhālā (‘a shower’), which cannot be earlier than mid-19th century on the sitār (when the cikāri strings were added), contrasts accelerated patterns on the melody strings and the cikāri, with accent either on the latter (ulat: ‘reversed’) at the end of ālāp (3) or on the former (sulat: ‘straightforward’) to conclude fast gat (6; some sources reverse these terms). The ulat with added complex bol is thonk jhālā. A former technique derived from sarod and rabāb, jhārā (also ‘shower’) played patterns similar to jhālā, but all on the main string. The sitār and bīn equivalent of the time was cher (‘excitation’), which contrasted melody string notes with fast patterns on open or fretted drones.

The metric gat compositions (4, 5) remain the heart of sitār repertory as models for the student and the nucleus of performing practice. In the mid-19th century these were quite separate traditions; in standard modern performing practice, both types of gat follow in succession. Tīntāl (a 16-beat rhythmic cycle) is the base for both bāj. In the 19th century, 12-beat Ektāl was the other main tāla for sitār (being symmetrical it was also good for thā-dūn; see below); today, gat in many tāla have been developed, notably by sitār players of the Allaudin Khan school.

There are many types of improvisational practice that occur as torā (‘breaks’) in gat playing. In gat-vistār, for example, the plucking pattern of the masītkhānī gat is kept up by the right hand, while the left hand moves elsewhere to provide different melodic elaborations. The older truly variational ones (sīdhī-ārī, thā-dūn) are less common today, but āmad (variation of the cadence) is still important. Chand, boltān and tārparan stress right-hand plucking and are similar to jor-jhālā techniques. Tān, mainly melodic bravura passages, have seen a great development following that of khayāl. Very rapid right-hand plucking has always been a feature of sitār playing, but with the left hand moving much more slowly, so that many small sets of repeated notes are heard. Concert virtuosos now often move the left hand as fast as the right. Cross-rhythmic work (ārā-kuārī: ‘cross-crooked’) and the triple rhythmic cadence (tihāī, tīyā) serving as a closing cue probably derive from drums and dance (kathak). Modern savāl-javāb (‘question-answer’) is antiphonal phrasing from sitār to tablā, leading to a climactic sāth-sangat (‘simultaneous [improvised] accompaniment’); more traditionally this denotes thematic imitation of sitār and tablā ‘breaks’.

As with the sitār, the historical centre of the Sarod repertory is composed of gat with variational and extensional ‘breaks’ (torā), primarily in Tīntāl. Medium-tempo gat were common in the traditional repertory, but today the sarod also plays slow masītkhānī and fast razākhānī gat types, like the sitār, and also in various tālas. Much of its performing practice is the same as that of the sitār, though the nomenclature may vary, and the sarod now performs the full form of ālāp, jor, slow gat, fast gat and jhālā. The jor and jhālā repertory in particular owes much to the rabāb–sarod tradition. Although in the past the number of sarod gharānā was small, the instrument now enjoys great popularity.