Contrasting Techniques

In this study of violin playing techniques in western classical and south Indian classical music Dr.Lalitha elaborates her understanding of contrasting techniques used in playing the violin in two distinct musical traditions. The violin was a late and foreign entrant in Indian classical music. The book in its framework and methodology adopts what one may identify as an ethnomusicological perspective. A catalogue of terms, of notations and scores and a wholly unimaginative analysis of the various schools of music identified with certain techniques of playing makes this book a strange mélange of musical description, which is devoid of any social or historical context. In a sense the arrangement of the book is somewhat typical of old fashioned scholarship on Indian music, that speaks inevitably of the intrinsically spiritual dimensions of music, and which makes no attempt whatsoever to incorporate more recent perspectives or to address some of the larger issues in the making of aesthetics and techniques in modern times.