Hindustani Sangeet a...
Hindustani Sangeet and a Philosopher of Art
usic, Rhythm, and Kathak Dance vis-a-vis Aesthetics of Susanne K. Langer by: Sushil Kumar SaxenaThe book seeks to weigh some basic facts and concepts of Hindustani Sangeet (music, rhythm and Kathak dance) against the art theories of Susanne K. Langer, an eminent aesthetician of the recent past, incorporating numerous illustrative references to Hindustani sangeet.
Original price was: ₹850.00.₹765.00Current price is: ₹765.00.
ISBN: 9788124601808
Year Of Publication: 2001
Edition: 1st
Pages : xiii, 383
Bibliographic Details : Bibliography; Index
Language : English
Binding : Hardcover
Publisher: D.K. Printworld Pvt. Ltd.
Size: 23 cm.
Weight: 700
The book is decidedly the very first of its kind. It seeks to weigh some basic facts and concepts of Hindustani sangeet (music, rhythm, and Kathak dance) against the art theories of Susanne K. Langer, an eminent aesthetician of the recent past; but nowhere without meticulous attention to the text of her writings. The expression theory of art has for long dominated the history of aesthetics. At the hands of Langer, however, the theory takes a new turn. She conceives of art not as a direct self-expression of the artist’s immediate affective state, but as a symbolic expression of his knowledge of what she terms variously as felt life, sentience, or forms of feeling. Drawing freely upon examples from the region of Hindustani sangeet, the present book accepts Langer’s protest against the popular view of artistic expression, but contends that there is a good deal in our music and dance which has nothing to do with feeling, and is admired simply because of its sweetness, clarity, shapeliness, and accordance with grammatical norms. In the chapter on music, while discussing Langer’s emphasis on commanding form in a total performance, the author proposes a quite new definition of raga which seeks to integrate the various points in its traditional characterizations. The third chapter too, which deals with Langer’s view of rhythm, is not merely explanatory, but ventures to propose a fresh and fairly defensible definition of rhythm. The closing chapter, devoted to dance, not only essays to meet some key objections to Langer’s writing on this art, but clarifies some atypical language that she uses in this context: apparition of vital powers; the dynamic image; virtual realities; and the created, superhuman dance-personality. But perhaps the two most striking features of the book are: first, a lucid exposition of the essentials of Langer’s aesthetics in the opening chapter; and, second, abounding illustrative references to Hindustani sangeet.
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Langers Theory of Art : Some Essentials
Art as Expression
Langer on Expression: Some Questions
Creation of Art
Some Basic Distinctions
Artistic Expression as Logical
Art as Symbolic
Livingness and Organic Character of Art
Organic Form and Rhythms: Primary, Secondary
An Important Distinction
Art-Reality Difference (Contd.)
How Art can (yet) Symbolize LIfe
Sources of Livingness in Art
Felt Life and Art: A Parallel
Organic Unity and a Poem
Transformation of Life in Art
The Poem-Again
Life or Import of a Work of Art
The Expressed in Art: Interpreting Langers View
Form in Art
Form, Artistic Import, and Logical Intuition
Some Critical Remarks
Art and the Forms of Feeling
Langer on Poetry: A Criticism
Residual Disagreements
2. Of Music: Langer and an Indian Genre
Raga in Indian Music
Composition in Music
Musical Elements and Acts in Life
Objectivity of Composition (or Bandish)
Commanding Form Composition or Raga?
Is Full-Blown Alapa a Form?
Langer on Music and Feeling
The Great Office of Music
The Crux of Langers View
The Value of Music
Tonal Structures and Forms of Feeling
Is Music Essentially Non-Representational ?
Music, Pure Duration, and Lived Time
Is the Import of Music Symbolic ?
Intuitive Seizure of Musics Import
But, then, how is Musics Sensuous Form Symbolic ?
An Alternative: The Beautiful in Music
Illusions in Music and its Great Office
Musics Substantial Qualities
The Unity of Musical Form — Illustrated
Identical Gestalts with Unlike Expressiveness
How is a Work Individual ?
Artistic Form as Vital, Organic
Art-Elements and Life-Acts Anew
Dialectic, Phase Principle, and a Works Unity
Virtual Time (or Growth) in Music and in non-Occurrent Arts
But is All Virtual Motion in Art Growth?
Substantive, Bodily Character of the Art Symbol
3. Imaging Time in Music: Langer and Hindustani Rhythm
Introductory
The Autonomy of (Hindustani) Rhythm
` Langer on Rhythm
What is Rhythm: A Proposal
Three Critical Questions
Rhythm and Life in Drama
4. Magic in Movement: Langer and Kathak Dance
What is Kathak?
Langer : The Basic Negations
Langers Positive Views
Gesture as the Basic Abstraction
The Dynamic Image
Tensions and Other Elements in Dance
Power as Incarnate, Radiated
Expression in Dance and Drama
Some Seeming Oddities
Summing Up
Bibliography
Index
- Sale!Bharatiya Chau-Nritya Original price was: ₹3,800.00.₹3,420.00Current price is: ₹3,420.00.
Chhau dance has an unbroken relation with the essence of Indian culture. This dance form that flourishes in the forest-areas of Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal has already attained widespread acclaim, internationally, as an art. By its distinct confluence of the classical and folk traditions, this art form has carved a niche for itself of being counted as the dance of the traditional and classical discipline. It is based on the foundation of martial art techniques. The most striking features are the multi-coloured, splendid, artistic and attractive masks and magnificent headgears that form part of the decoration and costume design. It consists of dance movements called as nritta-karanas as described in Bharata’s Natyashastra and hand gesticulations as found in Nandikeshvara’s Narityashastra, and is also endowed with varied regional movements of folk forms. This dance form depicts movements of day-to-day activities, gaits of animals and birds, and symbolic gestures accompanied by the war-drums and music giving an experience of the sweet fragrance of the regional music forms. The plot is generally drawn from the Ramayana, Mahbaharata, and various other Puranas and poetry. It is thus a combination of a rich tradition of artistic creativity that has naturally attracted the mind of all age-groups at the national and international arena.
The author has collected authentic information by visiting those places where this dance form is traditionally taught and practised. The author has met the teachers of chhau dance, the designers of masks and costumes, and spent time to gather information to be made available in a single place. In the present text, chhau dance has been presented for the first time elaborately with indepth and authentic details. Along with the presentation of the historical and cultural aspects of chhau dance, its performing aspect, content of plot, costumes, physical gesticulation, instruments and instrumentalists, regional styles, the three distinct styles of chhau its history, folk tradition and other details are elaborated in nine sections. The 200 photographs in this edition reiterate the richness of this art with greater authenticity and thus prove to enliven this traditional art form.
Vol. 1 ISBN: 8124606463, 9788124606469
Vol. 2 ISBN: 8124606471, 9788124606476 - Sale!Hindustani Sangeet: Some Perspectives Some Performers Original price was: ₹600.00.₹540.00Current price is: ₹540.00.
There are three major ways of looking at Hindustani sangeet. An easy-to-follow discussion of its basic concepts is one. A truthful and sympathetic, yet not merely laudatory, account of the life and art of some of its masterly exponents is another. Both these approaches have been fairly common so far. The third way, which has not yet received the attention it deserves, tries to dwell upon Hindustani music, rhythm, and (Kathak) dance explicitly in relation to philosophy and philosophers of art. It is from this point of view that the present book should be welcome. It does not, however, overlook the first two approaches. Besides quite a few essays that explore the aesthetical aspects of Hindustani music, the book takes a renovative look at Kathak dance, and engages the reader in a discussion of how far our music can be regarded as spiritual. These and some other key features should make this book acceptable to both rasikas and musicologists.
- Sale!Art as Dialogue Original price was: ₹200.00.₹180.00Current price is: ₹180.00.
This refreshingly original work presents a totally new methodology for understanding the concept of aesthetic experience. The traditional model of explaining this experience through the dichotomy of the creator, beholder or critic on the one hand, and the object of art, on the other is challenged and replaced by the new model which the author prefers to call dialogue a dialogue between the subject and the object, I and Thou. The epistemological and ontological methods which rely heavily on the bifurcation of the subject and the object fails to reveal the true nature of the experiential whole that forms the real core of aesthetic experience. The authors innovative methodology holds the promise for transcending the bounds of all such limitations and distinctions. Most significantly, the conception of art as dialogue is stipulated to work not as a means, but as an end, i.e., the consummation of art-experience itself. In this scheme the principle of relationship, not the substance, constitutes the reality of aesthetic experience and the model allows one to encompass within its scope the pre-linguistic, linguistic and trans-linguistic phases of the relationship between the man and the art. Dr. Biswas long training in Phenomenology and Existentialism makes his study of Martin Buber and Michael Polanyi lucid and stimulating. And his immense interest in Modern Indian Philosophy results in a superb analysis of Tagores and Radhakrishnans aesthetic approach
- Sale!Hindustani Music Today Original price was: ₹600.00.₹540.00Current price is: ₹540.00.
Stating that Hindustani music should be rightly termed Art music and not classical music, the book begins by discussing the features of Art music and presents an approach to appreciating Hindustani music. It provides a detailed understanding of the components of the raga experience in Hindustani music, including their time theory and the role of Gharanas of the musical tradition.
It deals with genres of raga-based vocal music which have been performed over the last five centuries: Dhrupad, which has its moorings in devotional music; Khayal vocalism shaped by Sufi influences; the thumree, which originated as an accompaniment to the Kathak dance; and the tappa, adapted from the songs of camel drivers in the north-west frontier. It takes up the use of instruments in Hindustani music, especially the Rudra Veena, Sitar, Surbahar, Sarod, Santoor, the Shehnai, Pakhawaj, the Hawaiian Guitar and many others, giving an account of their origin, performing styles and lineages relating to them.
Throughout, the emphasis is on contemporary trends in Hindustani music and its prospects in the future. It mentions the significant practitioners of Hindustani music, both vocal and instrumental.
The volume will interest lovers of Indian music and also scholars who want to have a greater understanding of its traditions, its contemporary appeal and trends in practice. - Sale!Cinema Through Rasa Original price was: ₹1,500.00.₹1,350.00Current price is: ₹1,350.00.
Cinema Through Rasa discusses the important works of the world cinema in the light of Rasa Siddhānta of the Indian classical aesthetics. Rasa Siddhānta was first mentioned in Bharata Muni’s Nāṭyaśāstra – the ancient treatise on dramaturgy. This book catalogues the major cinematic works in the light of Abhinavabhāratī – a tenth-century commentary on the Nāṭyaśāstra by the great Kashmiri Śaivite philosopher Abhinavagupta. Further, it outlines the links between puruṣārtha, the cultural value system of life pursuits in Indian tradition, and aesthetics while citing examples from the works of major directors such as Orson Welles, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alfred Hitchcock, Carl Dreyer, Charlie Chaplin, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Bresson and Satyajit Ray.
Using contemporary scholars’ interpretation of non-dualistic Kashmir Śaivism tradition, Cinema Through Rasa aims to serve as a tribute to Abhinavagupta’s genius, a commentary on important ideas such as rasa, nature of emotions, cinema and beauty along with a tryst with the masterpieces of the world cinema. The meaning of this book is summarized by this verse – na hi rasād r̥te kaścid arthaḥ pravartate – the medium of cinema, though modern, should be seen as resting in the power of rasa without which nothing makes any sense.
This book is a translation of the original Hindi book Abhinava Cinema, which was first published in 2016. Abhinava Cinema was lauded as innovative, path-breaking and a must-read for students of literature and cinema studies by scholars and critics.
