The Harmonium and its checkered history in India
maddy06.blogspot.com
maddy06.blogspot.com
Being a fretless, bowed, string instrument, the violin is exceptionally good at the gāyaki ('as sung') style and in bringing out the ornaments, or gamaka, that are so pervasive in Indian classical music.
With the violin, there are some modifications to playing style and tuning compared to Western classical and baroque music: pizzicato is extremely rare, and col legno rarer still. The GDAE strings are tuned to x, x + 5, x', x' + 5 respectively, where x and x' are any note and that note an octave higher. Typically x = D♯, E, or F in violin solos, and x = the vocalist's/main artiste's choice of śruti when accompanying.
It is for precisely this reason that the harmonium and similar keyed instruments like the piano are eschewed in Indian classical music (barring a handful of exceptions). With so much focus on melody and ornamentation instead of harmony, multiple simultaneous keypresses are incongruous in Indian classical music, and the piano is unable to do any trill, glissando, or equivalent gamaka that the violin, flute, or even the mandolin can. Electronic keyboards are somewhat less frowned upon, because the synthesiser can approximate gamakas.
That said, even today, many conservative listeners will not accept anything but the violin, which has been part of Carnatic music for more than two centuries.
[1]: https://maddy06.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-violin-in-carnatic-...
An addendum: My comment has a slight Carnatic bias. The harmonium still exists in Indian classical music today, but it is significantly more popular in Hindustani music than in Carnatic music.
For context, I’m trained in Hindustani music and have given a number of performances and have family and friends who have done the same for Carnatic music. My experience is that Harmonium is very common as an accompanying/supporting instrument - probably precisely for the reasons you specified. Harmony is great, it doesn’t mimic to do the vocal variations - just support the singer doing it as well as possible.
What I’ve actually seen is that use of Harmonium as an accompanying instrument is much more common across the spectrum (both north and south) than Violin for classical and semi-classical - though unlike Violin it’s almost never used solo. OTOH I’ve never seen violin being used in Hindustani.
Mea culpa. As a trained Carnatic vocalist and violinist, I let my biases through. However...
> Harmony is great, it doesn’t mimic to do the vocal variations - just support the singer doing it as well as possible.
But the harmonium in Hindustani doesn't have harmony. I know enough Hindustani music to understand that only melodies are played, and almost never harmonies. Especially when the artiste is performing alap.
> use of Harmonium as an accompanying instrument is much more common across the spectrum (both north and south)
Like I said, it's far, far more common in Hindustani than in Carnatic. If some South Indian concert uses it, it's usually for bhajans, or, like you said, 'semi-classical' or 'light music'. The violin is de jure and de facto the default accompanying instrument for Carnatic music.
> I’ve never seen violin being used in Hindustani.
Kala Ramnath, V G Jog, N Rajam, M S Gopalakrishnan (although he was much more famous in Carnatic circles). The violin is not as common as the sitar in Hindustani music, but it definitely exists, and is increasing in popularity... Also owing to the reasons I mentioned.
> I know enough Hindustani music to understand that only melodies are played, and almost never harmonies. Especially when the artiste is performing alap.
I think is broadly true, but anecdotally speaking, myself and people I’ve trained under use harmony and love harmony for hardcore Hindustani classical. It’s a bit of a shame that more don’t use it, but I wouldn’t underestimate it either.
The harmonium has disappeared entirely from the carnatic concert stage actually.
I could understand if you’re talking about the harmonica , but a harmonium seems odd for either context.
Found some examples of 'portable' harmoniums in use
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This last one is not a real live video but an old movie song (actor enacting a role, not really playing the harmonium himself, actual music is recorded in a studio with a few more accompaniments) ...but kind of depicts a common street scene in south Indian city of old days, with creative license
That’s quite a difference in burden.
Favorite quote in the article: “They (the middle class of the cities) glory in cheap and horrid prints made in bulk in Germany and Austria, and sometimes even rise to Ravi Varma’s pictures. The harmonium is their favorite instrument. (I live in hope that one of the earliest acts of the Swaraj government will be to ban this awful instrument).” — Nehru
Read more about her and read her “unveiling of isis”. If you follow the history of western esotericism, she was an incredible and world changing intellectual.
Then again, the fascination with occult forces really has not aged well.
Just wait… so much of it is not what people think it is.
The harmonium story is a metaphor for an invasion of Western instruments (mostly during the early 20th century) that couldn't reproduce local music traditions. Developments like the guitar replacing the oud and other non-fretted string instruments have playd out in many places (though I don't know of any place banning the guitar :-)
What is interesting (and appropriate for HN) is that the "dematerialization" of music production from the shift to digital frees up musicians to explore all these facets without being constrained by instrumental limitations (though we must keep in mind that constraints are a major trigger for creativity).
https://chandrakantha.com/forums/?p=post%2Fnotes-on-the-harm...
As the article says though, the main limitation of this kind of instrument is that it cannot generate glissandos (meend) and ornamented notes (gamaka).