1st Edition
Dhrupad: Tradition and Performance in Indian Music
Dhrupad is believed to be the oldest style of classical vocal music performed today in North India. This detailed study of the genre considers the relationship between the oral tradition, its transmission from generation to generation, and its re-creation in performance. There is an overview of the historical development of the dhrupad tradition and its performance style from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and of the musical lineages that carried it forward into the twentieth century, followed by analyses of performance techniques, processes and styles. The authors examine the relationship between the structures provided by tradition and their realization by the performer to throw light on the nature of tradition and creativity in Indian music; and the book ends with an account of the ‘revival’ movement of the late twentieth century that re-established the genre in new contexts. Augmented with an analytical transcription of a complete dhrupad performance, this is the first book-length study of an Indian vocal genre to be co-authored by an Indian practitioner and a Western musicologist.
Ch. 1 What is Dhrupad
Ch. 2 The Historical Emergence of Dhrupad Style
Ch. 3 Tradition and Style: Th Four Banis
Ch. 4 The Transmission of Tradition: The Dagar Heritage
Ch. 5 Alap and Tradition
Ch. 6 An Alap Performance in the Dagar Tradition
Ch. 7 Composition and Tradition
Ch. 8 Performing the Composition: Rhythmic Variation and Improvisation
Ch. 9 Dhrupad in the Modern World: Tradition, Performance and Revival
Appendix 1: PrincipalDhrupad Tals
Appendix 2: Dhrupad Lineages
Appendix 3: Alap and Dhrupad, Rag Multani (Transcription)
Biography
Ritwik Sanyal is a retired professor of the Department of Vocal Music, Banaras Hindu University. He also a recipient of one of India's highest civilian honours, the Padma Shri. A disciple of the late Zia Mohiuddin and Zia Fariduddin Dagar, and a leading exponent of the Dagar dhrupad tradition, he performs and teaches dhrupad internationally, and is a composer of new dhrupad compositions, with many CD recordings to his credit. He holds a PhD in musicology and is the author of Philosophy of Music (1987) and Dhrupad Panchashika (2015). In 2013 he received the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi National Award (New Delhi) for Hindustani Classical Vocal Music.
Richard Widdess is Emeritus Professor of Musicology in the Department of Music, School of Arts, SOAS University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He specialises in the musicology of South Asia, with reference to the history, theory and analysis of vocal music traditions in North India and Nepal. He is the author of The Rāgas of Early Indian Music (1995) and Dāphā: Sacred Singing in a South Asian City (2013).
"A significant contribution to Indian musical studies, breaking new ground in documentation and analysis, and in its fruitful approach to collaborative musicological method. For its systematic definition of a musical domain it should become required reading for students of North Indian music, but beyond this it supplies a wealth of new material which will lay the foundations for further research."
Jonathan Katz, Ethnomusicology Forum"A model for the sort of joint undertaking that should occur more often in the field of ethnomusicology... the definitive monograph on its subject." Peter Manuel, Music and Letters
"Dhrupad is a notable attempt to develop a "context-sensitive music analysis" that can uncover the "inner logic" of the music and identify "formal archetypes" within it, and it presents a carefully nuanced and extremely detailed view of dhrupad from many angles. Sanyal and Widdess's coauthorship is to be lauded, and readers may hope that it will be as much an inspiration for future collaborative projects as it is a valuable resource for the student of dhrupad." Matthew Allen, The Journal of Asian Studies
"The authors consistently and successfully integrate disparate but important strands of historical, theoretical, and practical knowledge throughout the narrative...In addition to its meticulous historical research, the extensive performance analysis emerges as its most significant contribution."
Natalie Sarrazin, Notes
