Ragas and Raginis: A Pictorial and Iconographic Study of Indian Musical Modes Based on Original Sources c5.24

c5.24

In a recent article, the same author has made another attempt to translate the idea of a rāga: "What is a rāga? It is an atmosphere, a musical colouring. This colouring is associated with a mood of feeling, a sentiment. It is often, also, associated with the time of the day, and it is quite obvious that the musical colouring should differ for dawn or dusk, for heat or for middle of the night . . . . . How is this musical colouring attained? How is the rāga to be defined in musical terms? . . . . . The rāga belongs to the realm of modes and of different scales. In modes, Indian music is extremely rich, but the rāga is not only the scale. The various explanations of the rāga have often been misleading, because they stop short or go too far. It has been sometimes said that the rāga is a mode; but the rāga is far more precise and much richer than a mode. On the same mode there are several rāgas. The rāga is therefore in that direction, but goes further. The rāga has been also likened to a skeleton of melody which is to be clothed with varied ornaments. But this goes too far; the rāga is much less fixed and much richer than a musical outline given; several melodies, all different, can be composed on the same rāga; so that the definition as regards melody is beyond the truth. The rāga is more fixed than the mode, and less fixed than the melody, beyond the mode and short of the melody, and richer both than a given mode or a given melody. It is a mode with added multiple specialities.”¹