The World of Salil Chowdhury

I think we are moving away from our main subject.
Today, our subject of discussion is “Is it possible to do orchestration in Indian Music”? Yes it is possible. Well, it has been done. When the British first arrived in our country they brought many different kinds of musical instruments with them. We used to have the Scottish Highlander Bands. In Tagore’s house they had Organ, Piano and in those days it became a status symbol for people with good taste to have a Piano or an Organ. Then the Harmonium arrived.This Harmonium has actually revolutionised the Indian music. We never had any musical instrument which could play two or more notes at a time or together. Like this (demonstration playing in chords) currently nearly every singer including the Rabindra sangeet singer plays in this style. We were discussing chords a little while ago discussed by our late Buddhadeb Babu for example how to orchestrate music based on raag, whether one could use discordant notes or not. Well, I am sure he understands this much more than I do. However, I think that if we want to orchestrate a raag in the form of modal music and if we put more emphasis on counterpoint than harmony. By counterpoint I mean for example: two or three parallel counter melodies with different rhythms are playing along with the main melody and staying within the same scale of the raag. Salilda gives an example here by singing three types of counterpoints against one melody line. I will demonstrate to you later. What I was saying is that if we want to orchestrate raag sangeet (raag based melody), we can. I am a composer of modern songs and not a classical musician. I think that since the romantic music period had already started in our country with composer like Tagore who already created the groundwork we do not have to be bound by the constraints set by the classical raag structure. Those who specialise in classical music should continue in promoting the classical music we respect them. But those composers who want to orchestrate modern music, they must have modern thinking and modern outlook. Otherwise, it will not be possible. But we must keep the “Indianness”of the Indian music which means that the melody must sound like an Indian melody; it must “feel” Indian. We listen to western orchestration quite often. If we just copy that then what would be our own contribution ? Basically it means that if the melody has that Indian feel we can fit According to the Oxford Dictionary the definition of harmony is its decoration. That means the chord progression for it. Let me now say something about “Chord”. Buddhadeb Babu said earlier that two mutually discordant or contradictory notes make a chord is not really correct ornamentation around the melody. So, if the melody is “linear” then the harmony is creating a third dimension for the melody.