Hindustani classical music
Hindustani classical music is the classical music of the Indian subcontinent's northern regions. It is played on instruments like the veena, sitar and sarod. It diverged in the 12th-century from Carnatic music, the classical tradition of southern India. While Carnatic music largely uses compositions written in Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindustani music largely uses compositions written in Sanskrit, Hindustani, Braj, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Bengali, Rajasthani and Punjabi and even Persian, Lucknavi
and, Turkish, etc.
Knowledge of Hindustani classical music is taught through a network of classical music schools, called gharana. Hindustani classical music is an integral part of the culture of North India and is performed across the country and internationally. Exponents of Hindustani classical music, including Ustad Bismillah Khan, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Ravi Shankar have been awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award of India, for their contributions to the arts.
History
Around the 12th-century, Hindustani classical music diverged from what eventually came to be identified as Carnatic classical music. The central notion in both systems is that of a melodic musical mode or raga, sung to a rhythmic cycle or tala. It is melodic music, with no concept of harmony. These principles were refined in the musical treatises Natya Shastra, by Bharata, and Dattilam.In medieval times, the melodic systems were fused with ideas from Persian music, particularly through the influence of Sufi composers like Amir Khusro, and later in the Mughal courts, noted composers such as Tansen flourished, along with religious groups like the Vaishnavites. Artists such as Dalptaram, Mirabai, Brahmanand Swami and Premanand Swami revitalized classical Hindustani music in the 16-18th century.
After the 16th century, the singing styles diversified into different gharanas patronized in different princely courts. Around 1900, Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande consolidated the musical structures of Hindustani classical music, called ragas, into a few thaats based on their notes. This is a very flawed system but is somewhat useful as a heuristic.
Distinguished musicians who are Hindu may be addressed as Pandit and those who are Muslim as Ustad. An aspect of Hindustani music going back to Sufi times is the tradition of religious neutrality: Muslim ustads may sing compositions in praise of Hindu deities, and Hindu pandits may sing similar Islamic compositions.
Vishnu Digambar Paluskar in 1901 founded the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, a school to impart formal training in Hindustani classical music with some historical Indian Music. This was a school open to all and one of the first in India to run on public support and donations, rather than royal patronage. Many students from the School's early batches became respected musicians and teachers in North India. This brought respect to musicians, who were treated with disdain earlier. This also helped spread of Hindustani classical music to the masses from royal courts.
Sanskritic tradition
and Narada from Hindu tradition are accomplished musicians; Saraswati with her veena is the goddess of music. Gandharvas are presented as spirits who are musical masters, and the gandharva style looks to music primarily for pleasure, accompanied by the soma rasa. In the Vishnudharmottara Purana, the Naga king Ashvatara asks to know the swaras from Saraswati.While the term raga is articulated in the Natya Shastra, it finds a clearer expression in what is called Jati in the Dattilam, a text composed shortly after or around the same time as Natya Shastra. The Dattilam is focused on Gandharva music and discusses scales, defining a tonal framework called grama in terms of 22 micro-tonal intervals comprising one octave. It also discusses various arrangements of the notes, the permutations and combinations of note-sequences, and alankara or elaboration. Dattilam categorizes melodic structure into 18 groups called Jati, which are the fundamental melodic structures similar to the raga. The names of the Jatis reflect regional origins, for example Andhri and Oudichya.
Music also finds mention in a number of texts from the Gupta period; Kalidasa mentions several kinds of veena, as well as percussion instruments, the flute and conch. Music also finds mention in Buddhist and Jain texts from the earliest periods of the common era.
Narada's Sangita Makarandha treatise, from about 1100 CE, is the earliest text where rules similar to those of current Hindustani classical music can be found. Narada actually names and classifies the system in its earlier form before the Persian influences introduced changes in the system. Jayadeva's Gita Govinda from the 12th century was perhaps the earliest musical composition sung in the classical tradition called Ashtapadi music.
In the 13th century, Sharangadeva composed the Sangita Ratnakara, which has names such as the Turushka Todi, revealing an influx of ideas from Islamic culture. This text is the last to be mentioned by both the Carnatic and the Hindustani traditions and is often thought to date the divergence between the two.
During the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal era
The advent of Islamic rule under the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire over northern India caused considerable cultural interchange. Increasingly, musicians received patronage in the courts of the new rulers, who, in turn, started taking an increasing interest in local musical forms. While the initial generations may have been rooted in cultural traditions outside India, they gradually adopted many aspects from the Hindu culture from their kingdoms. This helped spur the fusion of Hindu and Muslim ideas to bring forth new forms of musical synthesis like qawwali and khyal.The most influential musician of the Delhi Sultanate period was Amir Khusrau, a composer in Persian, Turkish and Arabic, as well as Braj Bhasha. He is credited with systematizing some aspects of Hindustani music and also introducing several ragas such as Yaman Kalyan, Zeelaf and Sarpada. He created six genres of music: khyal, tarana, Naqsh, Gul, Qaul and Qalbana. A number of instruments also developed in this time.
Amir Khusrau is sometimes credited with the origins of the khyal form, but the record of his compositions does not appear to support this. The compositions by the court musician Sadarang in the court of Muhammad Shah bear a closer affinity to the modern khyal. They suggest that while khyal already existed in some form, Sadarang may have been the father of modern khyal.
Much of the musical forms innovated by these pioneers merged with the Hindu tradition, composed in the popular language of the people in the work of composers like Kabir or Nanak. This can be seen as part of a larger Bhakti tradition which remained influential across several centuries; notable figures include Jayadeva, Vidyapati, Chandidas, and Meerabai.
As the Mughal Empire came into closer contact with Hindus, especially under Jalal ud-Din Akbar, music and dance also flourished. In particular, the musician Tansen introduced a number of innovations, including ragas and particular compositions. Legend has it that upon his rendition of a nighttime raga in the morning, the entire city fell under a hush and clouds gathered in the sky so that he could light fires by singing the raga "Deepak".
At the royal house of Gwalior, Raja Mansingh Tomar also participated in the shift from Sanskrit to the local idiom as the language for classical songs. He himself penned several volumes of compositions on religious and secular themes and was also responsible for the major compilation, the Mankutuhal, which outlined the major forms of music prevalent at the time. In particular, the musical form known as dhrupad saw considerable development in his court and remained a strong point of the Gwalior gharana for many centuries.
After the dissolution of the Mughal empire, the patronage of music continued in smaller princely kingdoms like Awadh, Patiala, and Banaras, giving rise to the diversity of styles that is today known as gharanas. Many musician families obtained large grants of land which made them self-sufficient, at least for a few generations. Meanwhile, the Bhakti and Sufi traditions continued to develop and interact with the different gharanas and groups.
Modern era
Until the late 19th century, Hindustani classical music was imparted on a one-on-one basis through the guru-shishya tradition. This system had many benefits but also several drawbacks. In many cases, the shishya had to spend most of his time, serving his guru with the hope that the guru might teach him a "cheez" or two. In addition, the system forced the music to be limited to a small subsection of the Indian community. To a large extent, it was limited to the palaces and dance halls. It was shunned by the intellectuals, avoided by the educated middle class, and in general, looked down upon as a frivolous practice.First, as the power of the maharajahs and nawabs declined in the early 20th century, so did their patronage. With the expulsion of Wajid Ali Shah to Calcutta after 1857, the Lucknavi musical tradition came to influence the music of the renaissance in Bengal, giving rise to the tradition of Ragpradhan gan around the turn of the century. Raja Chakradhar Singh of Raigarh was the last of the modern-era Maharajas to patronize Hindustani classical musicians, singers and dancers.
Also, at the turn of the century, Vishnu Digambar Paluskar and Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande spread Hindustani classical music to the masses in general by organizing music conferences, starting schools, teaching music in classrooms, devising a standardized grading and testing system, and standardizing the notation system.
Vishnu Digambar Paluskar emerged as a talented musician and organizer despite being blind from age of 12. His books on music, as well as the Gandharva Mahavidyalaya music school that he opened in Lahore in 1901, helped foster a movement away from the closed gharana system.
Paluskar's contemporary Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande recognized the many rifts that had appeared in the structure of Indian classical music. He undertook extensive research visits to a large number of gharanas, Hindustani as well as Carnatic, collecting and comparing compositions. Between 1909 and 1932, he produced the monumental four-volume work Hindustani Sangeeta Paddhati, which suggested a transcription of Indian music, and described the many traditions in this notation. Finally, it suggested a possible categorization of ragas based on their notes into a number of thaats, subsequent to the Melakarta system that reorganized Carnatic tradition in the 17th century. The ragas that exist today were categorized according to this scheme, although there are some inconsistencies and ambiguities in Bhatkande's system.
In modern times, the government-run All India Radio, Bangladesh Betar and Radio Pakistan helped bring the artists to public attention, countering the loss of the patronage system. The first star was Gauhar Jan, whose career was born out of Fred Gaisberg's first recordings of Indian music in 1902. With the advance of films and other public media, musicians started to make their living through public performances. A number of Gurukuls, such as that of Alauddin Khan at Maihar, flourished. In more modern times, corporate support has also been forthcoming, as at the ITC Sangeet Research Academy. Meanwhile, Hindustani classical music has become popular across the world through the influence of artists such as Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Vikash Maharaj.