MAKING MUSIC

India Empire – February 2005.

The Science of Music
By Subhra Mazumdar

Among the things rated to make for good living, the dice is heavily loaded in favour of good books, good tea and good company. But that is a very English way of defining such a lifestyle. For arriving at a truly Indian experience one would have to include the corollary of good music to define the gentle and subtle art of fine living. For discerning connoisseurs good music is dearly a matter of fine tuning performance with the backup of research.

One major institution where this dual aspect has been understood and carried forward is the Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata. In layman terms, this is regarded as an institute that nurtures Indian music along the traditional guru shishya parampara system, and has as its objective the preservation and promotion of Indian classical music. Bt behind the arc lights, an equally vibrant segment of its work is centred around the concept of blending the art of music with the science of music. Recognising the fact that musicality is enhanced by scientific research into areas such as voice production and documentation, the Academy has added immense values to its teaching of music.

Outwardly of course, the Sangeet Research Academy (or SRA, as it is better known) appears to be like any other college of music learning. At any given hour of the day students move about the campus humming a tune or carrying a tanpura or strolling around in sociable groups. Situated in what is locally referred as Tipu Sultan’s haveli, this 200-year-old building is a double-storeyed mansion of massive proportions built in the architectural style of British colonial architecture. Reliable historical sources proclaim that despite its linkage with the ruler of Seringapatnam, Tipu Sultan had never set foot into its hallowed precincts. It was after Tipu’s defeat in 1799 that the exiled sons of the Sultan had been housed in this haveli under the watchful eye of British Governor-General Lord Wellesley.

In its current metamorphosis, besides the main building, the compound houses a sprinkling of yellow cottages that serve as the homes of gurus and as seats of music instruction where disciples gather each day to learn classical music according to the style of their guru’s lineage. If one were to eavesdrop into this unique classroom scenario, one would be privileged to a behind the scenes music concert or a competition recital in the making. As tanpuras strum, the guru sets off the opening notes of a Thumri rendition; then, at a slight gesture from him, his disciples repeat the lyric in a style of their own creation.

As the voices mesh together and warm up to further innovative developments, the undercurrent of research in their training becomes apparent in the modulated tonal quality of the singing. Instead of stray harsh notes creeping into the presentation, the voice of the singer has a chiseled finish, courtesy the research division of the Academy. With its digitally monitored recording equipment, the sounds of both musicians and instrumentalists are reproduced for the performer so the raw edges that disturb the smooth flow of musicality can be spotted and ironed out. With newer tools, the fractal dimensions are increasingly put into use in recording random fluctuations in the produced acoustical signals created by the human voice. Going one step further, these finer acoustical signals have also been linked to behavioural patterns for purposes of deeper research. The studies take into account the paradigms of perception and analysis of tonality with regard to each singer. The research examines the musicality of a singer by taking note of such variants as nasality, voice quality, intonation, loudness and stress so that the finished sound has been ironed out of extremes in any one area of excess. Thereafter, constant riyaaz, the cornerstone of any musical learning in the classical form, gives off a harmonious blending of expertise and musicality, till it becomes second nature for an SRA performer.

Veering away from individual monitoring to a wider ambit, SRA has created a scientific research department for research into musical acoustics. According to computer engineers who man the department. “There are plenty of measuring sounds. In fact, this work was using a written account of Shruti delineation, the SRA has used actual musical renditions by 50 representative gurus from different schools of classical music and recorded Shruti deployment by them in a selected set of ragas. This controlled and coordinated effort has been an ongoing project over the last few years.

In addition to vocalists, having a number of instrumentalists on the panel of gurus has begun a process of standardization for grading the quality of individual musical instrument pieces. As the making of musical instruments is a cottage industry, with each musical instrument made to order, there is a non-standard specification of quality in the range of products. As with all cottage industry products, the tradition of handing down the art of manufacture within the family has led to a diminishing of instrument makers. SRA has begun a tanpura quality evaluation process by mapping out the string vibration of each piece. A close look at the improvements done to instruments such as the sarod or sitar by master musicians has assisted the Academy in this task.

The in-house gurus form a resource that has helped technical research acquire an application-based angle. “For long, debate has raged on whether we need a shruti harmonium. While the debate still runs among musical circles, SRA has benefited from the opinion of our gurus who come from different schools of music and thereby augment the work of research, propagation and preservation,” says an SRA spokesperson.

At the state-of-the-art audio documentational division, the Academy has recorded the rationalization of the raga structure, using its own storehouse of recordings to research into the various lakshanas or recognition notes of each raga. The next stage is a compilation of compositions delineating the various facets of the basic ragas, to be used for instructional purposes, widening the scope and approach to music of its learners. The Ford Foundation stepped in asking SRA to compile a staggering 5,076 compositions sourced rom the living musicians of important gharanas or schools of music like Gwalior, Agra, Atrauli, Jaipur, Rampur-Sahaswan, Bhendi Bazar, Banaras and Delhi. This treasure trove has preserved for posterity a source of knowledge teetering on the brink of extinction.

On a quiet afternoon, after the rigour of riyaaz, the central and archival libraries are a favourite haunt of the musician scholar. They have a sizeable range of books, records and tapes on music when time permits, some walk into the tape library where there are copies of some of the earliest gramophone recordings made in India . The core content of musical recordings is that of the ustads of yesteryears, which are delightful to hear as they bring back nostalgic surges of styles now forgotten.

Several books and papers have swelled the coffers of this institute. These range from subjects of intense academia to offerings for the general readers. A popular addition is the Nur Ratnakar, a bibliographical survey of writings on music in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and Hindi. A more recent addition is Amir Khusrau’s Prose Writings On Music, which includes a segment on the etiquette of music and its aesthetic appreciation.

Perhaps the SRA’s most successful outreach has been in the realm of virtual reality. Its web portal began as a fledgling offer in September 2001 and now has a record number of hits to its credit. Fans across the globe have access to its comprehensive, interactive and informative makeover. The most popular of its sites has been the ‘artist of the month’ series where 52 minutes of music are available on every singer featured. The site has collected the music of doyens such as Zohra Bai as well as lesser known and promising talents. Each day, the mail box is inundated with entries from places as far removed as ‘a remote hilltop in Santa Cruz in California’ to practicing musicians from Pakistan residing in Glasgow and others nearer home.

The actual depth of the research and development by SRA was given a nod when the Ministry of Science and Technology acknowledged the institution as a scientific research institution. Through its sensitive and sophisticated acoustics laboratory, the department has been collaborating with the Indian Statistical Institute and Jadavpur University on research projects involving various musical techniques like pitch, timbre and shruti as it is applied by various schools of Indian music. Such research has gleaned interest abroad and attracted the attention of the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

Above all else, the SRA approach to scientific research has extricated technical applications from the clutches of dry scientific study and sustained it within an atmosphere that straddles the world of music, the world of tradition and history, in a haveli that keeps alive the name of one of Indian history’s bravest sons.