World Premiere: January 28, 1971

Most Recent HSO Performance: This is the HSO's first performance of this work.

Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, timpani, percussion, 2 harps, celeste and strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cello, and bass

Duration: 40'

Sitar Concerto No. 1 (1970)

Ravi Shankar

(Born April 7, 1920 in Benares [now Varanasi], India Died December 11, 2012 in San Diego)

“Ravi Shankar: musician to the world, whose rare genius has opened the ears and minds of millions to the wondrous aesthetic of India’s ancient musical tradition, adored musical ambassador whose incomparable artistry has created bridges of understanding among the peoples of the earth.” Thus was the contribution of Indian sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar to the culture of humankind summarized in the citation accompanying the honorary doctorate presented to him by the Regents of the University of California in 1985. 

Shankar was born in 1920 in Benares (now Varanasi), and began his training under his eldest brother, Uday, one of the country’s leading performers and scholars of traditional dance. In 1931, Uday took Ravi and several others family members to Europe to establish a dance company in Paris, which enjoyed phenomenal success on its world tours during the following years. In 1935, the noted performer and teacher Allauddin Khan joined the troupe, and began Ravi Shankar’s formal training in music. Three years later Ravi left Uday’s dance company to begin a rigorous seven-year apprenticeship with Khan at Maihar, where Khan was the chief court musician of the Maharaja. Shankar began appearing as a solo sitarist in 1939, and he soon demonstrated extraordinary gifts for interpreting the technique and the spirit of the complex ragas and talas — the essential melodic and rhythmic components — of Indian music. He quickly gained prominence throughout the country, and in 1949, was named director of music by All-India Radio and composer-conductor for its new instrumental ensemble. He left that position in 1956 to tour internationally as a sitarist and composer.

Shankar subsequently collaborated with such diverse musicians as Beatle George Harrison (who was also his student), Yehudi Menuhin, Zubin Mehta and Philip Glass, and he became a veritable icon of cross-culturalism and Eastern sensibilities in the 1960s with performances at the Monterey Pop Festival, the Concert for Bangladesh and Woodstock. He founded a music school in Bombay in 1962 and another one in Los Angeles five years later, published a memoir in 1968, and edited a guide to learning Indian music; in 1997, he was named Regent’s Professor at the University of California. He continued a full schedule of composing, touring and recording almost until his death in 2012 in San Diego. 

Among Shankar’s many distinctions are the Padma Vibhusan and the Praemium Imperiale, the highest awards bestowed on an artist by, respectively, the governments of India and Japan, honorary membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, membership in the United Nations International Rostrum of Composers, fourteen honorary doctorates, and nomination as a member of the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of Parliament; in 2013, he won his fourth World Music Grammy Award, for The Living Room Sessions, Part I; he received a Lifetime Grammy Award that same year. Shankar’s compositions include: three concertos for sitar; music for flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, violinists Yehudi Menuhin and Joshua Bell, and the Japanese virtuosos Hosan Yamamoto (shakuhachi, a vertical bamboo flute) and Musumi Miyashita (koto, a zither-like instrument with a long, slender wooden body); film scores, most notably for Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, for which Shankar received an Academy Award nomination; an opera-ballet (Ghanashyam) for the City of Birmingham (England) Touring Opera; and hundreds of pieces for solo instruments, voice and ensembles.

Shankar embodied in his performances and compositions the basic philosophical and artistic tenets of Indian music, which hold, he said, that “individual consciousness can be elevated to a realm of awareness where the revelation of the true meaning of the universe — its eternal and unchanging essence — can be joyfully experienced.”

In 1970, Shankar bridged the cultural gap between Indian and Western music in the Sitar Concerto No. 1, which he premiered at Royal Festival Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor André Previn on January 18, 1971. Rather than being primarily harmonic or contrapuntal, its music is linear in nature, threaded around a continuously unfolding and richly colored skein of melody that is shared between soloist and ensemble. Shankar has written about the style characteristics and expressive essence of Indian music, and his thoughts provide insightful background to the Sitar Concerto No. 1:

“Indian classical music is principally based on melody and rhythm, not on harmony, counterpoint, chords, modulation and the other basics of Western classical music. The system of Indian music known as ‘Raga Sangeet’ can be traced back nearly 2,000 years to its origin in the Vedic hymns of the Hindu temples, the fundamental source of all Indian music. Thus, as in Western music, the roots of Indian classical music are religious. To us, music can be a spiritual discipline on the path to self-realization, for we follow the traditional teaching that sound is God — Nada Brahma. By this process, individual consciousness can be elevated to a realm of awareness where the revelation of the true meaning of the universe — its eternal and unchanging essence — can be joyfully experienced.

“The tradition of Indian classical music is an oral one. It is taught directly by the guru to the disciple, rather than by the notation method used in the West. The very heart of Indian music is the ‘raga’: the melodic form upon which the musician improvises. This framework is established by tradition and inspired by the creative spirits of master musicians. Though Indian music is modal in character, ragas should not be mistaken as modes that one hears in the music of the Middle and Far Eastern countries, nor be understood to be a scale, melody per se, a composition or a key. A raga is a scientific, precise, subtle and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar ascending and descending movement consisting of either a full seven-note octave or a series of six or five notes (or a combination of any of these) in a rising or falling structure. It is the subtle difference in the order of notes, an omission of a dissonant note, an emphasis on a particular note, the slide from one note to another and the use of microtones together with other subtleties, that demarcate one raga from the other.

“There is a saying in Sanskrit — Ranjayathi iti Ragah — which means, ‘that which colors the mind is a raga.’ For a raga to truly color the mind of the listener, its effect must be created not only through the notes and the embellishments, but also by the presentation of the specific emotion or mood characteristic of each raga. Thus through rich melodies in our music, every human emotion, every subtle feeling in man and nature can be musically expressed and experienced. Although there are 72 ‘melas’ or parent scales upon which ragas are based, Indian music scholars have estimated that, with all their permutations and combinations, there exist over 6,000 ragas! 

“Next to be considered are the ‘talas’ or ‘rhythmic cycles’ of a raga. There is unique intricacy and rhythmic sophistication in Indian music. There are talas ranging from a three-beat cycle to 108 beats within a cycle! While there are talas having the same number of beats, they differ because the division and accents are not the same. Like ragas, talas also have their own characteristics. 

“The traditional sitar recital begins with the stately and serene exploration of the chosen raga. After this slow, introspective, heartfelt, sometimes sad beginning, the musician moves on … as the rhythm enters and is developed. Innumerable variations on the raga’s basic theme are elaborated. While the artist has complete freedom to improvise, he may do so only as long as he does not leave the format of the raga and tala. The step-by-step acceleration of the rhythm, which often includes rapid dialogue between sitar and tabla [the traditional accompanying drum], culminates as it becomes more and more playful and exciting. Often as part of a recital, the musician may choose to play in a freer style that is completely romantic, sensual and erotic.”

Each of the four movements of the Sitar Concerto No. 1 (based on four traditional ragas — Khamaj, Sindhi Bhairavi, Adana and Manj Khamaj ) mirrors the thematic elaboration and expressive progression from “serene” to “exciting” that Shankar indicates above.

©2022 Dr. Richard E. Rodda