Hindustani classical music
The Dattilam is focused on Gandharva music and discusses scales (swara), defining a tonal framework called grama in terms of 22 micro-tonal intervals (shruti[5]) comprising one octave.
Music also finds mention in Buddhist and Jain texts from the earliest periods of the common era[citation needed].
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.
The advent of Islamic rule under the Delhi Sultanate and later the Mughal Empire over northern India caused considerable cultural interchange.
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 (1253–1325), a composer in Persian, Turkish and Arabic, as well as Braj Bhasha.
At the royal house of Gwalior, Raja Mansingh Tomar (1486–1516 CE) also participated in the shift from Sanskrit to the local idiom (Hindi) as the language for classical songs.
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.
Raja Chakradhar Singh of Raigarh was the last of the modern-era Maharajas to patronize Hindustani classical musicians, singers and dancers.
Paluskar's contemporary (and occasional rival) 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,[10] 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 (modes), subsequent to the Melakarta system that reorganized Carnatic tradition in the 17th century.
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.
The performance is set to a melodic pattern called a raga characterized in part by specific ascent (aroha) and descent (avaroha) sequences, "king" (vadi) and "queen" (samavadi) notes and characteristic phrases (pakad).
The difference between sargam and solfege is that re, ga, ma, dha, and ni can refer to either "Natural" (shuddha) or altered "Flat" (komal) or "Sharp" (teevra) versions of their respective scale degrees.
A typical rendition of Hindustani raga involves two stages: Tans are of several types like Shuddha, Koot, Mishra, Vakra, Sapaat, Saral, Chhoot, Halaq, Jabda, Murki Hindustani classical music is primarily vocal-centric, insofar as the musical forms were designed primarily for a vocal performance, and many instruments were designed and evaluated as to how well they emulate the human voice.
The lyrics, some of which were written in Sanskrit centuries ago, are presently often sung in brajbhasha, a medieval form of North and East Indian languages that were spoken in Eastern India.
Dhrupad was the main form of northern Indian classical music until two centuries ago when it gave way to the somewhat less austere khyal, a more free-form style of singing.
Since losing its main patrons among the royalty in Indian princely states, dhrupad risked becoming extinct in the first half of the twentieth century.
Khyal, literally meaning "thought" or "imagination" in Hindustani and derived from the Persian/Arabic term, is a two- to eight-line lyric set to a melody.
This form was popularized by Mughal Emperor Mohammad Shah through his court musicians; some well-known composers of this period were Sadarang, Adarang, and Manrang.
Another vocal form, taranas are medium- to fast-paced songs that are used to convey a mood of elation and are usually performed towards the end of a concert.
Tappa is a form of Indian semi-classical vocal music whose specialty is its rolling pace based on fast, subtle, knotty construction.
Thumri is a semi-classical vocal form said to have begun in Uttar Pradesh with the court of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, (r. 1847–1856).
The themes covered are usually romantic in nature, hence giving more importance to lyrics rather than Raag, and bringing out the storytelling qualities of music.
Vocal music set to this mode of poetry is popular with multiple variations across Central Asia, the Middle East, as well as other countries and regions of the world.
The veena, a string instrument, was traditionally regarded as the most important, but few play it today and it has largely been superseded by its cousins the sitar and the sarod, both of which owe their origin to Persian influences.
Rarely used plucked or struck string instruments include the surbahar, sursringar, santoor, and various versions of the slide guitar.
