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Rhythm and Time-Measurement in South Asian Art-Music: Some Observations on tāla

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1980

D. R. Widdess
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Extract

The Sanskrit word tāla, and its common vernacular forms tāl (Hindi) and tālam (Tamil), denote, in musical terminology, both rhythmic organization in general, and specific patterns of organization. Among various non-musical meanings the most significant, perhaps, is ‘slapping the hands together or against one's arm’ (Monier-Williams), since in Indian art-music, patterns of claps and silent gestures with the hands are traditionally used for beating time. The earliest Indian musicological texts show that this practice was already elaborately developed by the early first millennium a.d. In modern practice, tāla implies a steady pulse-beat: no fluctuation of this pulse is permitted, apart from a tendency to accelerate in the north Indian tradition, and music in free tempo (such as ālāp) is not considered to exhibit tāla. Tālā further implies a pulse organized into measures, each measure containing the same number of pulse-beats; the first beat of each measure, called sam, is accented, and is regarded as the culmination of the preceding measure as well as the beginning of a new measure. The measure is therefore conceived, in Indian terminology, as a cycle (āvārd or āvartanam).

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 107 , 1980 , pp. 132 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 See my forthcoming article ‘Tāla and Melody in Early Indian Music: a Study of Nānyadeva's Pānikā Songs with Musical Notation’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, in press.Google Scholar

2 In early theory the terms caturaśra, etc., apply to rhythmic structures comprising so-many units (kalā) of 2, 4 or 8 beats each. These structures and the kalā unit are no longer current, but the binary/ternary/irregular distinction can usefully be applied to the metrical basis of modern tala. 9 units (kalās or beats) has always been regarded in the Indian tradition as an irregular grouping, never as a compound ternary structure.Google Scholar

3 H.S. Powers (article ‘India’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, London, 1981) relers to the segments as ‘beats’ of unequal length, presumably because each segment is marked by a hand-beat (or silent gesture). In this paper, however, ‘beats’ refers to pulse-beats, by definition equal.Google Scholar

4 This is especially the case in ternary metres, where hemiola-type ambiguities are characteristically exploited. Thus in the south Indian Rūpaka tāla of 6 beats, grouped 2 + 4 in the clap-pattern, melodic rhythm tends to alternate between 2 + 2 + 2, 3 + 3, and even 1½ + 1½ + 1½ + 1½. In the north Indian Cautāl of 12 beats, grouped 2 + (2) + 2 + (2) + 2 + 2, the rhythm of vocal compositions (dhrupad) is typically 3 + 3 + 3 + 3. That hemiola is an ancient characteristic of Indian music is indicated by the clap-patterns for two ternary tālas attested in the early first millennium a.d. (Nāţyaśāstra 31.9–11, 17–20 (Baroda edition)), in which claps for right and left hand fall alternately:Google Scholar

5 A silent wave can be used to mark the beginning of a particular segment or segments in north Indian tālas; the segments so marked are termed khālā (‘empty’). In an important group of tālas, a khālī segment divides the cycle into two equal and balancing halves, as follows: 3 + 3 (Dādrā), 4 + 4 (Kehervā), 5 + 5 (Jhaptāl), 6 + 6 (Cautāl/Ektāl), 7 + 7 (Dhamār/Dīpcandī/Jhūmrā), 8 + 8 (Tintāl).Google Scholar

6 Op. cit. (note 3).Google Scholar

7 The south Indian Jhampā tāla of 10 beats is divided 7 + 1 + 2 in the clap-pattern; the melodic rhythm, however, is normally 5 + 5 (Powers, op. cit.). The north Indian Dhamār tāl of 14 beats is divided 5 + 2 + (3) + 4 in the clap-pattern; the typical melodic rhythm, however, is 3 + 4 + 3 + 4 (as in Dīpcandī and Jhūmrā tāls).Google Scholar

8 N. A. Willard (A Treatise on the Music of Hindoostan, 1834; reprinted in S. M. Tagore, Hindu Music from Various Authors, 3rd edition, 1965) makes a valuable distinction between what he terms ‘rhythm’ (i.e. music bound to a fixed qualitative or quantitative rhythmic pattern), and ‘the modem musical measure’ (i.e. music bound more loosely to a certain metre, as in western art-music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). He associates ‘rhythm’ with music in irregular metres and with songs in which the text follows a quantitative verse-metre, but points out that in classical (dhrupad and khyāl) songs the texts are mostly in ‘dignified prose’, and that the melodies therefore ‘resemble more the style of the modern musical measure’ (ibid., 49f.).Google Scholar

9 Other tālas in which short segements accumulate towards the end of the measure include the south Indian tālas Jhampā (7 + 1 + 2 and variants), Tripuţa (of which Ādī is one variant), and Āţa (4 + 4+ 2 + 2 and variants; cf. northern Cautāl).Google Scholar