Showing Music and Musical Thought in Early India by Lewis Rowell

Language: English
Pages: 425

About the Book
Offering a broad perspective of the philosophy, theory, and aesthetics of early Indian music and musical ideology, this study makes a unique contribution to our knowledge of the ancient foundations of India's musical culture. Lewis Rowell reconstructs the turnings, scales, modes, rhythms, gestures, formal patterns, and genres of Indian music from Vedic times to the thirteenth century, presenting not so much a history as thematic analysis and interpretation of Indian's magnificent musical heritage.
In Indian culture, music forms an integral part of a broad framework of ideas that includes philosophy, cosmology, religion, literature, and science. Rowell works with the known theoretical treatises and the oral tradition in an effort to place the technical details of musical practice in their full cultural context. Many quotations from the original Sanskrit appear here in English translation for the first time, and the necessary technical information is presented in terms accessible to the nonspecialist. These features, combined with Rowell's glossary of Sanskrit terms and extensive bibliography, make Music and Musical Thought in Early India an excellent introduction for the general reader and an indispensable reference for ethnomusicologists, historical musicologists, music, theorists, and indologists.
About the Author
Lewis Rowel, professor of music theory at Indiana University, has written extensively on Indian music and on the philosophy of music.
Contents
PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

ABOUT THE FRONTISPIECE
1.INTRODUCTION

1.1Music and Musical Thought Early India

1.2The Divisions of Music

1.3Microcosm and Macrocosm

1.4Chronology and Source
2 THOUGHT

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Continuities of Indian Thoug