The SCALES OF INDIAN MUSIC : A Cognitive Approach to that Melakarta

• Pages: xii + 438
• Format: HB
• ISBN: 9788173052712
• Edition: 1st
• Publisher: ARYAN BOOKS INTERNATIONAL
• Size: 19 cm x 25 cm
• Product Year: 2004

This book is about a delicate and complex subject - a comparative study of the structure of ragas (modal scales intimately connected with musical forms) in the North and South India, and the modes of classifying them. The Thats (Parent Scales) of Hindustani music and seventy-two Carnatic Melakartas have been carefully dealt with. The author has studied the pitch value of each note and has also tried in a logical format, to ascribe about four thousand plus raga scales, under the fitting mela structure. Beyond the descriptive and analytical aspects of the work, the author could detect in guise of conclusion, certain laws of taxonomy common between those related to ragas with reference to the Thats/Melakartas and those currently in vogue in contemporary cognitive research. This work, it is hoped, would prove to be a boon to musicians and students of music in acquiring a thorough and systematic knowledge on the subject, and will enlighten the reader with innumerable traditional, old, obsolete rediscovered and newly-created as well as renamed ragas.