Danielou and Raga Tunings

>>According to people I've spoken to at the Indian Cultural Centre here
>in
>>London, Danielou's ratios are divergent from actual tuning practice and
>are
>>definitely not accepted by Classical Indian musicians
>
>Really? They are virtually identical to the ratios I've seen propounded
>by S. Ramanathan and countless others. Can you tell us what the Indian
>Cultural Centre says?
>

I'm afraid my information from the Indian Cultural Centre is only anecdotal
and anyway I'm sure they as a body do not have an official line on tuning.
As far as I know in the Indian Classical tradition, tuning like technique
and style is passed on from master to student and there will be differences
between various sub-traditions. Some players may tune according to a five
limit system similar to the one explained by Danielou and the other sources
that Paul Erlich mentions. Others may do otherwise. Anyway there is often a
difference between what musicians actually do and what the tuning theorist
says they should be doing.

In "The Grammar of South Indian Music" by C. Subrahmanya Ayyar (Madras
1976), the author gives a sruti system (22 note chromatic scale from which
ragas are extracted) which includes 7/6, 7/5 and 7/4, going beyond the 5
limit that Danielou would like to impose.

I would be interested to hear of other books that give ratio analyses of
the tunings used in Indian Classical Music.
Brian Lee


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End of TUNING Digest 1559
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