The Context Quarterly e journal of language, literary and cultural studies Publication details and instructions for authors: http://www.magnuspublishing.com This is an Open Access Journal distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Stylistics and Music Dr. Uddhav Ashturkar Nashik Published online: 01 October 2015 Article Number: TCissn.2349-4948/2.4a085 To cite this article: Ashturkar, Uddhav. Stylistics and Music. The Context, 2.4 (2015): 469-473. Web. 2015 Author(s); licensee Magnus Publishing. The electronic version of this article is available at: http://www.magnuspublishing.com/thecontext/2349-4948-85.pdf Abstract The aim of this paper is to show how music can be analysed stylistically. Considering music as a type of language one can apply the tools of stylistics to vocal as well as instrumental music. Eventually, stylistics can be a helpful friend to go to the profundity of musical understanding. Keywords: music, human life, emotion, stylistics 469
Stylistics and Music Dr. Uddhav Ashturkar Music and Human life Music is an integral part of human culture. If we wish to explore into the history of a human society, we cannot extricate ourselves from its culture. Subsequently, we are compelled to look into the history of the fine arts of such community. The culture itself contributes in making a country or community unique from the other ones. Literature, music, painting, sculpture and architecture all these fine arts highly contribute to enrich the culture of a community. In the course of time people will forget the great emperors and monarchs but they will never forget the great artists in the field all the above fine arts who always tried to make the human life happier than it was before. Every artist added something of his own to make the human life more beautiful and meaningful at all levels. On this ground, classical music in India is a unique feature of her people. Right from the Vedic periods, music has become an inseparable part of India s culture and life. In a way or the other, music accompanies people in India from birth to the last breath. This dominance of music is one of the reasons behind choosing the area of Indian classical music for the present study. Indian classical music is chiefly based on melody and rhythm, and not on harmony, chords, counterpoint and other basics of western classical music. The system of Indian music known as Raag Sangeet can be traced back nearly two thousand years to its origin in the Vedic hymns of the Hindu temples the fundamental source of all Indian music. Being deeply rooted in the region of religion, music for us is Naadbrahma i.e. sound is God. And this Naadbrahma is reflected through ragas. The framework of a raga is established by tradition and inspired by the creative spirits of master musicians. The artist has total freedom within the framework and the rules of a particular raga. Since raga is an abstract term, it cannot be explained in a few words. A raga can be termed as a scientific, precise, subtle and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar ascending and descending movement consisting of either a full seven note octave, or a series of six or five notes or a combination of any of these. The great masters of Indian music have attributed specific moods and emotions to each raga. Thus through rich melodies in Indian classical music, every human emotion, every subtle feeling in man and nature can be musically expressed and experienced. Style, in its simplest meaning, is a way of doing things. The term stylistics has been derived from the word style. Stylistics is a discipline which studies literature from linguistic point of view dealing with the style markers in a text. Moreover, style depends on a foregrounding of some selected feature or a set of features. So the word style itself has relatively technical connotations. Style is one of the oldest and most tormented terms in literary criticism; its meaning is controversial and its relevance 470
disputed. We must assume that style is a standard feature of language. And music is a kind of language. Therefore, all the technical tools of stylistics can be applied to music, too. Like architecture, sculpture, painting and literature, music is a major fine art. Literature makes use of words i.e. language, and music makes use of sounds. As many words come together and form a phrase or a sentence, similarly the musical sounds (naad) come together and form a musical phrase or a musical sentence. All this shows the similarity between the art of literature and the art of music. This study has founded its basic fundamental assumption on this ground. While literature makes use of words (language) as a medium of expression, music uses the musical notes for expression. The words used in literature have their meanings. It means we can use dictionaries to find out the meanings of the words but there is no dictionary for finding out the meanings of the musical notes because the notes are individually meaningless but when they form a group they create a particular rasa. The present study makes the analysis of the selected ragas on the basis of rasa and not the meaning. This is the chief limitation created by the subject under discussion. The scholars of ancient literary theory talked much about the theory of rasa. A rasa is nothing but a sublimed emotion created in human mind. There are nine rasas in Indian aesthetics. Each rasa creates a typical emotion. They are as follows: Name of the rasa Shringar Hasya Karun Raudra Veer Bhayanak Bibhatsa Adbhut Shant Emotion created rati (love) haas (laughter) shok (pathos) krodh (anger) utsah (enthusiasm) bhay (fear) jugupsa (nausea) aashcharya (surprise) nirved (no emotion/silence as the original status) According to Maharshi Bharat there are only four dominant rasas shringar, raudra, veer and bibhatsa and they themselves creates other four respectively hasya, karun, adbhut and bhayanak. In Indian music only four main rasas have been acknowledged. They are shringar, veer, karun and shant. They say that these four rasas inherently include all other rasas. The Indian Dramatics mentions that each musical note creates a particular rasa. They are as follows: 471
Sa, Re veer, raudra and adbhut Dha bibhatsa and bhayanak Ga, Ni karun Ma, Pa hasya and shringar In his book Hindustani Sangeet-Paddhati Pt. V.N. Bhatkhande has categorized the rasas according to the musical notes as follows: Twilight ragas having komal Re and Dha shant and karun rasas Ragas having pure Re and Dha shringar rasa Ragas having komal Ga and Ni veer rasa This shows that the musical notes (swaras) are the creators of different rasas and this has been proved by Indian raagasangeet over the centuries. In his Poetics the Greek philosopher Aristotle talks about the theory of catharsis i.e. purification of the emotions like excess pity and fear through watching tragedy. In a sense, Indian theory of rasa can be called the counterpart of catharsis. The Mode of Stylistic Analysis The recordings of the ragas played by the abovementioned artists have been minutely listened to and their stylistic analyses have been made on the basis of the following aspects: 1. Presentation of the alapchari 2. Presentation of Jod-jhala 3. Use of the resonance of the instrument 4. The compositions of the gats 5. The stroking style 6. Sound quality of the instrument 7. Loyalty to the grammar of the raga 8. Technicalities of music like meend, gamak, murkis etc. 9. The aesthetic aspect and overall effect The present researcher very well knows that like a literary text, each performance of the artist has its own universe. Each element of the performance contributes to the whole of it and the effect is counted in the totality of the raga recited. In other words, every performance is a single unified whole. The relevance of the constituent units like alap, jod, jhala, gat etc. is determined by their contribution to the total emotional content of the presentation. So a stylistician cannot take anything less than the entire 472
musical performance as his methodological whole. Finally, he is bound to relate the relevant musical structures at various levels to the totality of the aesthetic outcome of the musical performance. The chief intention of this analysis is not to evaluate the artists or show their shortcomings, but to show their style-markers academically. All the six artists are internationally acknowledged stalwarts in their field. All of them have created their own status in the realm of music. Their difference from each other is their true strength and beauty, too. It is an established fact that music lies in the actual performance and their performance is coloured by their thinking and mental prowess as well as their genius employed in their creativity. Indian classical music is the field of first-hand enjoyment and the same enjoyment further leads us to the authentic musical, artistic, aesthetic and academic honeymoon. If somebody could enjoy this work with the same mood, the present researcher will feel contented on this project. This would be the real fruition of this study. Works Referred Amonkar, Kishori (2009), Swararthramani, Pune, Rajhans Prakashan. Raychowdhury, Vimalakant (1881), Raag Vyakaran (Grammar of Music), New Delhi, Bhartiya Jnanapith Sebeok, T.A. (1960), (ed), Style in Language, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press. Short, M.H. (1985), Who is Stylistics? in Focus on English, July 1985, 1:3 (British Council) Turner, G.W. (1973), Stylistics, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin. Widdowson, H.G. (1975), Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature, London, Longman. 473