What is Carnatic Music?

Modern Development | Ordinariness & Spectacle | Standard Format

Originating in hymns from ancient Vedic texts, Indian Music has since split into a North Indian and a South Indian style. Northern Islamic and Sufi influences shaped the North Indian branch into what is now called Hindustani. The southern branch came to be known as Karnatak music, named after the region of South India, Karnataka. The later British anglocized the spelling to Carnatic, though Karnatak is still sometimes used.

Modern Development

Carnatic music is studied and performed in pieces called Krithis. The modern Krithi was standardized by the composer Purandara Dasa (1484-1564). His influences on the development of Carnatic Music spans well beyond the Krithi. He also standardized the traditional approach to learning Carnatic Music, and composed the common set of exercises to develop beginner skills.

Ordinariness v. Spectacle

Before the early-to-mid twentieth century, casual music-making was much more common. Musicians would sing or play an instrument on their front porches for a few hours a day, and people would gather around to learn and to enjoy. Listeners would come and go whenever they pleased, and the music would go on as long as the musician felt.

Today, public music-making is much more formal. Musicians dress up and perform on stage in a hall under bright lights, with microphones, speakers, and a distance audience. The main performer(s) may be singers, violinists, flutists, or veena players. They are accompanied by a percussionist on mridangam and a violinist (if the main musician is not a violinist). Performances are much more about pleasing the patrons rather than scholarship and divine inspiration.

Standard Concert Format

As musicians became more aware of their roles as performers for an audience's limited attention span, time limits and forms started to become standardized. The form that prevails today is similar to the dramatic narrative structure.

Exposition & Rising action

The performance often begins and ends with a prayer.

The first piece ("item") is usually a fast-paced drill sung in two speeds. Students of Carnatic Music start learning a number of such drills once they become intermediate-level musicians. The drills emphasize beat stability, speed control, melodic control, and rhythmic understanding. The fact that a performance includes such a drill at the beginning shows the importance of scholarship and skill in Carnatic Music.

The second, third, and fourth items are usually quick pieces with little improvisation at the beginning and end of each. Each piece should be in a different beat structure (Thalam) and a different scale (Ragam), and they should be by different composers and preferably in different languages--all, of course, for variety and display of knowledge.

Following this is an item called the "sub-main," or the second most important piece of the performance. Musicians will usually precede this piece with an elaborate, free-form scale (Ragam) improvisation, and after the song's completion they will usually improvise on one line with multiple melodies (called Niraval). Niraval is immediately followed by a series of improvisations of the notes in the scale, similar to the Ragam improvisation but set to the beat of the song. The final Swaram improvisation is the most climactic moment in the piece, with the musician often trying to build suspense with complicated note combinations that he then seamlessly connects with a pre-composed finish.

Climax

An intermediary piece or two might precede the "main" piece, which follows the same format as the sub-main, but with even more elaborate improvisations. The main piece can range from forty-five to ninety minutes long, depending on the mood and stamina of the musicians that day. At the end of this piece, the percussionist performs a solo. The emphasis here is on rhythm and mathematics; the percussionist blends improvisational rhythm with mathematically challenging pre-composed finishes. As this piece ends, so does the performance's emphasis on scholarship.

Denouement

Traditionally the last portion of the performance is geared more toward the masses who do not understand Carnatic Music or who prefer lighter, more folksy songs. Most musicians are reluctant to spend more than twenty minutes performing a series of light pieces with no improvisation and little rhythmic complexity. The final piece is a return to scholarship with a Thillana--a highly rhythmically structured piece usually set to dance, but included in concerts for variety and liveliness.

CARNATIC MUSIC LEARNING PROGRAM: Beat and Rhythm