Popular culture in historical times

[rotting bones]

I'm not sure what you mean here. My understanding is that Indian music uses pretty much the same tones and semitones as European music... occasionally however chopping them in half. The ragas are IIRC much like what European music calls modes.

(But I'm assuming Bengali music is derived from traditional Indian music, and perhaps it's derived from Islamic music instead?)

I'm not a music theorist. Here's what I understand:

1. Indian Classical music uses ragas instead of scales. Each raga is intended to evoke a specific mood rather than satisfying mathematical properties.

Somewhat expected example given what I just said: Western scales have 12 equally spaced semitones in each octave, calculated by math. Ragas are constructed by selecting from up to 22 intervals to form the notes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shruti_(music) These intervals include microtones that are shorter than the semitones in Western scales: https://dhrupadmusic.com/indian-western-music.html Is this what you meant by "chopping them in half"?

Weirdest example I can think of: Unlike scales, each raga has conventions that are more like organic traditions than abstract theory. The vakra ragas like Bhimpalasi and Khamaj have different numbers of notes when ascending and descending. My understanding is that this ought to be shocking to Western music theorists.

2. Bengali folk music uses Indian Classical techniques, Middle Eastern techniques, Western techniques, and whatever else Bauls, Tagore and friends thought would create a richer mood. I have never seen research on the subject.

[bradrn]

My understanding is that Indian music uses pretty much the same tones and semitones as European music... occasionally however chopping them in half. The ragas are IIRC much like what European music calls modes.

The first sentence is sort of vaguely correct (as long as you keep in mind that the actual tuning is very different), but the second is oversimplified to the point of being wrong. Rāgas are often compared to modes, but they’re really ‘more than’ modes: they consist of, not just a pitch set and a root note, but sets of melodic contours, conventions for which notes follow which, ornaments, and so on, none of which is part of the Western conception of ‘scales’ or ‘modes’. I think this is what rotting bones is getting at here:

Weirdest example I can think of: Unlike scales, each raga has conventions that are more like organic traditions than abstract theory. The vakra ragas like Bhimpalasi and Khamaj have different numbers of notes when ascending and descending. My understanding is that this ought to be shocking to Western music theorists.

I’ll concur that the ‘different number of notes’ thing is indeed a big difference between Indian and Western music theories. In Western music theory, the melodic minor is considered highly unusual for having a single note different when played ascending vs descending; in Indian music, most rāgas go well beyond this, often having several different ascending and descending patterns, each with different sets of notes.

For more, you can consult e.g. https://raag-hindustani.com/Scales1.html.

[rotting bones]

See, I always thought modes are Thaat. The Wikipedia article actually has a table listing the correspondences between Thaats and Western modes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaat But then it says a Thaat is a "parent scale" that is not used for composition.

[zompist]

My understanding is that Indian music uses pretty much the same tones and semitones as European music... occasionally however chopping them in half. The ragas are IIRC much like what European music calls modes.

The first sentence is sort of vaguely correct (as long as you keep in mind that the actual tuning is very different), but the second is oversimplified to the point of being wrong. Rāgas are often compared to modes, but they’re really ‘more than’ modes: they consist of, not just a pitch set and a root note, but sets of melodic contours, conventions for which notes follow which, ornaments, and so on, none of which is part of the Western conception of ‘scales’ or ‘modes’.

I think Western music is more like that than you think, especially in its origins. E.g. Wikipedia defines a mode thus (emphasis added): "Its most common use may be described as a type of musical scale coupled with a set of characteristic melodic and harmonic behaviors." And it goes on to quote Aristotle:

But melodies themselves do contain imitations of character. This is perfectly clear, for the harmoniai have quite distinct natures from one another, so that those who hear them are differently affected and do not respond in the same way to each. To some, such as the one called Mixolydian, they respond with more grief and anxiety, to others, such as the relaxed harmoniai, with more mellowness of mind, and to one another with a special degree of moderation and firmness, Dorian being apparently the only one of the harmoniai to have this effect, while Phrygian creates ecstatic excitement.

Exactly the same sort of impressionistic descriptions apply to ragas.

Classical Western music does have "conventions for which notes follow which"; we just call it something else, harmony. If you're a classical composer writing in D major, you can't just randomly write notes, you're following a bunch of rules. I think there's a good deal of obfuscation and exotification in the Wiki article on ragas. I quite agree that ragas are not scales. I think "modes" is pretty close if you look more at Greek or medieval practice than modern.

For some reason the multiple modes of medieval music were lost, leaving just major and minor scales-- though even today these have differing emotional and not just arithmetical associations. Ragas have kept their ancient variety.

[rotting bones]

For some reason the multiple modes of medieval music were lost, leaving just major and minor scales-- though even today these have differing emotional and not just arithmetical associations. Ragas have kept their ancient variety.

Ragas have increased their variety with time, and as scholars tried to classify them.

I vaguely remember that, starting from the Renaissance, the West deliberately tried to make elite music more "rational" like they imagined the Greeks to be. Didn't white marble statues only become a thing from the Renaissance? The actual Greek statues were painted. Maybe for sociological reasons, a lot of Italians felt a great outburst of narcissism, and they were looking for something in their past to justify it.

Either way:

1. The texts of Indian Classical music explicitly list 22 perceptible intervals. Maybe this is my misunderstanding, but this seems very different from the 12 equal semitones in Western music to me.

2. My impression is that scales have some practical bearing on composition in Western music, whereas Indian Classical music uses thaats (scales or modes or whatever) only to classify ragas (modes or melodies or whatever) and for no other purpose. And even that classification barely fits. (Edit: And the guy who created that classification died in the 1930s or so.)

Classical Western music does have "conventions for which notes follow which"; we just call it something else, harmony.

I'm pretty sure music theorists would take issue with that. According to Western music theory, Indian Classical music doesn't have harmony. Or to put it another way, there is no systematic harmonic theory in Indian Classical music. There are elements of harmonic tradition internal to each raga.

Or to put it in a way no one else has before: There is no Indian Classical music like there is a Renaissance musical tradition. Each locality in India had a slightly different musical tradition. Each tradition was codified as a family of ragas. What happened in the West is that lots of elites were convinced of the superiority that Renaissance humanists claimed for themselves, and worked to replace their local musical traditions with the putatively superior alternative.

[rotting bones]

I think there's a good deal of obfuscation and exotification in the Wiki article on ragas.

This is normal for all articles on Indian traditions. It is normal for the original source texts in Indian traditions.

Sadly, my musical training was limited to singing Rabindrasangeet while playing the harmonium (the accordion thing). I was never taught music composition.

[zompist]

I vaguely remember that, starting from the Renaissance, the West deliberately tried to make elite music more "rational" like they imagined the Greeks to be.

Sure, some people did, and then other musicians worked to get the emotions back in.

Didn't white marble statues only become a thing from the Renaissance? The actual Greek statues were painted.

Yep!

1. The texts of Indian Classical music explicitly list 22 perceptible intervals. Maybe this is my misunderstanding, but this seems very different from the 12 equal semitones in Western music to me.

Yes, those are the 22 śruti (what I informally called chopping the notes in half). But you can also talk about 7 svara to an octave, which is equivalent to the 7 tones of Western scales. There's also the svaragrāma which adds 5 more notes... equivalent to the 12 tones and semitones of Western musicology.

The Wikipedia article on śruti leaves me more confused than enlightened. They are obviously microtones, but don't seem to have a fixed interpretation, and I don't know why there are 22 and not 24. (Except, Carnatic music apparently does have 24.)

Classical Western music does have "conventions for which notes follow which"; we just call it something else, harmony.

I'm pretty sure music theorists would take issue with that. According to Western music theory, Indian Classical music doesn't have harmony. Or to put it another way, there is no systematic harmonic theory in Indian Classical music. There are elements of harmonic tradition internal to each raga.

This sounds like judging Indian classical music by Western standards... which I think would be extremely frowned upon in modern music schools, especially ones that do ethnomusicology.

If you are learning or enjoying Indian music, it's best to use Sanskrit (etc.) terms... but that doesn't make for easy comparisons with other systems. The śruti article also, to my mind, shows the danger of relying too closely and uncritically on one tradition: it asserts that 22 śruti are the closest notes the ear can distinguish, which is written in an old source somewhere but is nonsense. People have played with all sorts of divisions, e.g. 53 notes per octave.

[bradrn]

My understanding is that Indian music uses pretty much the same tones and semitones as European music... occasionally however chopping them in half. The ragas are IIRC much like what European music calls modes.

The first sentence is sort of vaguely correct (as long as you keep in mind that the actual tuning is very different), but the second is oversimplified to the point of being wrong. Rāgas are often compared to modes, but they’re really ‘more than’ modes: they consist of, not just a pitch set and a root note, but sets of melodic contours, conventions for which notes follow which, ornaments, and so on, none of which is part of the Western conception of ‘scales’ or ‘modes’.

I think Western music is more like that than you think, especially in its origins. E.g. Wikipedia defines a mode thus (emphasis added): "Its most common use may be described as a type of musical scale coupled with a set of characteristic melodic and harmonic behaviors." And it goes on to quote Aristotle:

But melodies themselves do contain imitations of character. This is perfectly clear, for the harmoniai have quite distinct natures from one another, so that those who hear them are differently affected and do not respond in the same way to each. To some, such as the one called Mixolydian, they respond with more grief and anxiety, to others, such as the relaxed harmoniai, with more mellowness of mind, and to one another with a special degree of moderation and firmness, Dorian being apparently the only one of the harmoniai to have this effect, while Phrygian creates ecstatic excitement.

Oh god; this is excessively bad even for Wikipedia. The Ancient Greek ‘modes’ are not the same thing as modern modes. (Despite the latter having confusingly been given their names.) Aristotle is not talking about modern Western music! Western modes are rather a scale + a choice of root note, or equivalently a sequence of tone/semitone sequences from some starting note. The mode alone implies very little about melody, though it implies more than a scale does.

(Source: I play jazz music. Admittedly I’m a drummer, but I’ve picked up a lot and done a fair bit of research on my own.)

Classical Western music does have "conventions for which notes follow which"; we just call it something else, harmony. If you're a classical composer writing in D major, you can't just randomly write notes, you're following a bunch of rules.

I think you misunderstood what I meant by ‘conventions for which notes follow which’: ragas are actually associated with specific melodic contours (or melodic fragments, you could say) which must be used in any song in that raga. I’m not denying that Western music has rules! But this is something which deserves to be elaborated on in more depth…

(Warning: looks like I wrote another essay — sorry! I hope it’s all ended up clear.)

So: harmony is something very different to any concept in Indian music. (I see rotting bones agrees.) In fact, I consider it nothing less than the unique defining feature of Western music theory, which distinguishes it from Indian, Chinese and other music theories. Of course all music theories have rules which must be followed, but the actual rules are very different, as are their effects.

Let’s try to be precise here: what defines harmony? To me, it builds on top of intervals, which are pairs of notes. Certain intervals sound consonant, and others sound dissonant — these being technical terms specific to Western music theory (and which have changed meaning over time; they are grounded in physical measurements but only to some extent). I’m sure there’s similar concepts somewhere in Indian music theory, but they’re far less important, the reason being that Indian music tends to be monophonic. By contrast, Western music almost always have multiple lines of music going on at once, so they need to sound good together. (We reify such more-or-less consonant subsets of notes as chords.) The goal of harmony is, basically, to make sure that notes which are close together are consonant, or conversely to strategically create tension and interest via deliberate dissonance. In Western music this is extended even to monophonic songs: you can always write down at least a bass line which is implied by the harmony, which isn’t just ‘stay on a single note indefinitely’ (as is the case for Indian bass lines, played on the tanpura).

(Also, Western harmony involves movement between different chords: this is really important and I discuss it more below.)

There is an additional wrinkle in Western conventions: we like using absolute note values. This is why you can contemplate a ‘classical composer writing in D major’ in the first place — even though there is no aural difference between D major and C major and G# major (at least since the introduction of equal-temperament tuning), we still like to identify notes by reference to a standard pitch (usually 440 Hz, as I’m sure you know).

Leaving that aside, it’s clear to me that ragas and harmony are restrictive in different ways. As I said above, ragas restrict the melody itself, and its emotional tones. By contrast, Western music lets you write almost any melody with almost any emotional meaning in any key or mode (the nearest concept to a raga) — Pachebel's Canon sounds nothing like Hotel California, but both are in D major.

In exchange, harmony gives you a different restriction: at any point in a song you are restricted to a specific subset of the possible notes, which sound good with each other. If you have a song where some part of it has Cmaj harmony, you can’t unrestrictedly use a D note there, because that’s a horrible dissonance. What you can do is move to Gmaj in the next part of the song, which has a large overlap with Cmaj but allows D. This repeated movement is what gives Western music its interest: even a tune like ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ discernibly moves between two or three chords. (That’s also what lets you write a bass line for it, as mentioned above.)

This has many consequences, but there’s three which I want to highlight here:

• Constant harmonic movement means that you can modulate between different keys: simply move through a chord / subset of notes which is common to both of the keys. And you can do this again and again and again, limited only by your imagination in finding tricky subsets of notes. By contrast, in Indian music, it would be inconceivable to switch ragas in the middle of a song even once.
• The extreme of Western reliance on harmony is reached in songs like Jobim’s One Note Samba, where the melody stays on only one note while the entirety of the interest lies in the harmony. (Admittedly it can’t stay on one note for the entirety of the song, but it’s pretty close.) This is the polar opposite of Indian music, where the tanpura (bass line, as mentioned) stays on a single grounding note while the melody moves around dramatically within its own constraints.
• There is one subgenre of Western music which I feel is closest to Indian music. This is modal jazz, where the entire song has only one or two chords in the harmony, held for long periods of time. The natural consequence is that there’s much more focus on melody — not to the extent of Indian music, but you can certainly tell how certain notes become very highly charged with feeling given their contrast with the background.
  
  (My favourite examples of modal jazz are probably Freddie Hubbard’s Little Sunflower, and John Coltrane’s brilliant version of My Favourite Things. You can compare the latter to the non-modal version made famous by The Sound of Music to see the difference.)

One nice summary of this which I once saw somewhere: ‘In Western music, you can make the audience gasp by moving to a different chord. In Indian music [and in modal jazz!], you can make the audience gasp by moving to a different note.’ Oversimplified, of course, but I think this gets to the essence of the difference.

For some reason the multiple modes of medieval music were lost, leaving just major and minor scales-- though even today these have differing emotional and not just arithmetical associations. Ragas have kept their ancient variety.

I’m not an expert in musical history, but my understanding is that the loss of mediaeval modes is closely connected to the rise of complex harmonies. The above essay should have made clear why — as restrictions on harmony were tightened and elaborated, restrictions on melody had to be loosened to compensate. Otherwise there would have been too many restrictions, and music would have been impossible to write!

[rotting bones]

bradrn: Thank you for the explanation. You spared me from trying to explain chords.

zompist: What you should take away from the Sruti article is that ragas don't agree on what the notes sound like. The words for the notes don't always refer to the same pitch even within a raga. The confusion is the answer.

The notes are conventions selected from 22 theoretical intervals. They are not mathematically spaced. Also, southern ragas have 16 names for sound varieties compared to the 12 names for sound varieties in the northern ragas.

I wonder what would happen if a language leaned hard into pluricentrism and incorporated every register spoken over a wide area without regard for mutual intelligibility. It would be like the Arabic "language" except each "dialect" would be dissociated from localities, assigned a mood and potentially learned by anyone interested.

[zompist]

Oh god; this is excessively bad even for Wikipedia. The Ancient Greek ‘modes’ are not the same thing as modern modes.

Yes, I'm aware, nor did i say anything suggesting that Greek and medieval modes were the same. I'm tempted to tell you in turn that "dissonance" has a long troubled history of its own in Western music, much more complicated than your summary implies, but I think we're already explaining things to each other that we all already know.

[rotting bones]

My question is: Why are there so many names for sound varieties? A lot of common ragas use only 5 notes, the Pentatonic scale of folk music worldwide. Is it just cool to have a lot of words, or do some ragas actually need the terminology?

(Personally, I have been taught to sing a few ragas, and I have never heard anyone use so many names. But then, I don't have extensive training.)

[bradrn]

Oh god; this is excessively bad even for Wikipedia. The Ancient Greek ‘modes’ are not the same thing as modern modes.

Yes, I'm aware, nor did i say anything suggesting that Greek and medieval modes were the same.

Ah, I see you said ‘especially in its origins’. I don’t think it’s a good comparison at all, though: as mentioned, I think that Ancient Greek music is entirely different to modern Western music in very many ways.

I'm tempted to tell you in turn that "dissonance" has a long troubled history of its own in Western music, much more complicated than your summary implies, but I think we're already explaining things to each other that we all already know.

Yes, I do know this. I sort of gestured at it by mentioning that the meaning of ’dissonance’ has changed over time, but of course that’s skipping over a lot of very interesting history. (Which is fine because I was mostly talking about Western music as it’s practiced today.)

(Let me add that I have no idea how much music theory you already know; I felt it was better to explain more rather than less.)


Also, one thing here:

As I said above, ragas restrict the melody itself, and its emotional tones.

I ran my post by someone who knows a bit about Indian musical theory (albeit Carnatic more than Hindustani), and he said that this isn’t entirely true of all ragas — some are very much less restrictive with few emotional connotations, working very much like Western scales. But there are definitely many ragas which are much more restrictive, in a way which is foreign to Western musical concepts.

[Torco]

our tradition comes from medieval european music

I'd say Western music originates even earlier, with Greek theories of tuning. The Bengali songs I listen to most of the time don't actually use the Western scale.

I meeeeean.... i know us westerners love saying that their traditions go back to greece, but I don't really think it holds in this case. at least, there's no clear continuum of practice between whoever wrote sekilos's song and ourselves. we get the word from greeks but i mean, yeah, i suppose ascent is like that, you could say our tradition somehow derives from ancient greek music, in the sense that modern democracy derives from athenian democracy.

I'm not sure what you mean here. My understanding is that Indian music uses pretty much the same tones and semitones as European music... occasionally however chopping them in half. The ragas are IIRC much like what European music calls modes.(But I'm assuming Bengali music is derived from traditional Indian music, and perhaps it's derived from Islamic music instead?)

as bradrn points out, mode here is polysemic: when a violist says mode they mean something very different from what a historian of music means when they speak of the modes of ancient greece, or the church modes.

see but using tones and semitones [or something similar] is not that special or weird, and is not identical with "the western scale": though of course there's no such thing as *one* western scale, there's something that may as well be: the modes of the major scale. this basic template of tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone holds true for all the euro classical music calles modes: of the modes of western music, none are, say, semitone-tone_and_a_half-semitone-semitone-tone-tone_and_a_half, which apparently is called raga lalita in indian music. and finding common scales isn't evidence of relatedness anyway: the pentatonic seems to have been discovered many times over. ragas are modes or scales in the sense that they're answers to the question of "which notes are we using here", but not a lot more: in this sense, they're more like arabic maqam.

whether other traditions have harmony the way european music has harmony is... highly dependent what you mean by harmony. when western classical guys say harmony, they mean something indian music kind of does not have. And ragas and maqams, strictly speaking, are different from what a western musician is going to do if they just jam out to the octave species that correspond to those ragas. ragas and maqams are more like improvisational frameworks, complete with conventions and the rest of it.

... though then again, so are the modes of the major scale, with their preference for root-fifth-root movement and stuff like that. i don't know, man, it's weird.

My question is: Why are there so many names for sound varieties? A lot of common ragas use only 5 notes, the Pentatonic scale of folk music worldwide. Is it just cool to have a lot of words, or do some ragas actually need the terminology?

(Personally, I have been taught to sing a few ragas, and I have never heard anyone use so many names. But then, I don't have extensive training.)

the answer is: ragas (at least sometimes) are more than sets of notes.

[bradrn]

ragas and maqams are more like improvisational frameworks, complete with conventions and the rest of it.

I really like this description! It’s accurate and de-exotifies the situation, while at the same time making clear that it’s a different concept to anything in Western music theory. It makes me wonder why I never thought of it in these terms before…

(I get the impression that maqams are closer to Western scales than ragas are, though.)

[Torco]

thank you, though on the other hand I feel as if it has a problem: western classical is extraordinarily non-improvisational, to the point where classical musicians that want to improvise end up publishing their improvisational albums under such rubrics as "jazz violin" or stuff. this wasn't always the case (see partimento) but this improvisational streak kind of ended with the end of the baroque and the classical conservatories, the celebrity composer, orchestras etcetera.

so classical western scales *were* frameworks for improvisation just like maqams and ragas are, they just stopped being so more because western classical stopped improvising than because of any inherent difference.

[zompist]

see but using tones and semitones [or something similar] is not that special or weird, and is not identical with "the western scale": though of course there's no such thing as *one* western scale, there's something that may as well be: the modes of the major scale. this basic template of tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone holds true for all the euro classical music calles modes: of the modes of western music, none are, say, semitone-tone_and_a_half-semitone-semitone-tone-tone_and_a_half, which apparently is called raga lalita in indian music. and finding common scales isn't evidence of relatedness anyway: the pentatonic seems to have been discovered many times over. ragas are modes or scales in the sense that they're answers to the question of "which notes are we using here", but not a lot more: in this sense, they're more like arabic maqam.

I think there are two opposing tendencies: to make as many distinctions as possible and emphasize how strange and otherworldly Indian music is; or to find the commonalities despite the very different terms or emic theories involved. You guys seem to me to overemphasize the unity of Western music and gloss over the similiarities between it and Indian music. And apparently you think I'm reducing Indian music to Western terms— I'm not at all, I fully recognize when Indian musicology is different; I just also want to point out where it's similar, and I don't think exotification does other civilizations a favor.

I've already pointed out that both Indian and Western music are based on 12 tones. (The 22 or 24 are an elaboration, just as the 12 are an elaboration of an original 7.) I'd maintain that it's only prejudice, on both sides, that makes Indian, Islamic, and Western into isolated, unrelated silos in music or othe aspects of culture. We share a lot of history, including a hefty dose of Greek influence. (Europeans were also influenced at least somewhat by Romani music.)

There are also basic physics and physiology that inform what sounds good to humans. The very notion of an octave is common because a 1:2 frequency ratio sounds nice. A 3:2 ratio does too, and as it happens both English and Sanskrit call it a fifth (pañcama).

western classical is extraordinarily non-improvisational, to the point where classical musicians that want to improvise end up publishing their improvisational albums under such rubrics as "jazz violin" or stuff. this wasn't always the case (see partimento) but this improvisational streak kind of ended with the end of the baroque and the classical conservatories, the celebrity composer, orchestras etcetera.

This is an example of overemphasizing the unity of Western music. Before printed music, there was a good deal of improvisation; and as you admit yourself, improvisation flourished in popular music. And it's just not true that classical music forbids improvisation. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt were great improvisers. This claim is like saying that "Western Literature" means 19th century French.

[rotting bones]

I've already pointed out that both Indian and Western music are based on 12 tones. (The 22 or 24 are an elaboration, just as the 12 are an elaboration of an original 7.) I'd maintain that it's only prejudice, on both sides, that makes Indian, Islamic, and Western into isolated, unrelated silos in music or othe aspects of culture. We share a lot of history, including a hefty dose of Greek influence. (Europeans were also influenced at least somewhat by Romani music.)

To me, this seems to be focusing on abstract counts like 7 and 12 instead of what they represent. If you want to focus on numbers, southern ragas have 16 instead of 12. These are just names for varieties. A lot of ragas have 5 or 6 instead of 7. This doesn't necessarily change the scale, since a song could refrain from using certain notes despite using the same scale.

The 22 is not important in itself. What it shows is that Indian music theory expects to distinguish pitches by perception instead of ratios. This concrete practice distinguishes Indian scales from the Western scales created after Renaissance humanists rediscovered Pythagorean tuning.

[rotting bones]

I ran my post by someone who knows a bit about Indian musical theory (albeit Carnatic more than Hindustani), and he said that this isn’t entirely true of all ragas — some are very much less restrictive with few emotional connotations, working very much like Western scales. But there are definitely many ragas which are much more restrictive, in a way which is foreign to Western musical concepts.

Did he name one? Given the rasa theory of aesthetics, I'm having trouble imagining them as traditional ragas. I feel like someone wanted to write a song in a new scale, and it was assigned to a theoretical raga in hindsight. They must only train music composition students in those.

Then again, it's hard to generalize over ragas. That's why the scholars have given up.

[rotting bones]

This sounds like judging Indian classical music by Western standards... which I think would be extremely frowned upon in modern music schools, especially ones that do ethnomusicology.

Indian Classical musicians perceive this as "freedom" from preconceived notions of consonance.

[rotting bones]

I meeeeean.... i know us westerners love saying that their traditions go back to greece, but I don't really think it holds in this case. at least, there's no clear continuum of practice between whoever wrote sekilos's song and ourselves. we get the word from greeks but i mean, yeah, i suppose ascent is like that, you could say our tradition somehow derives from ancient greek music, in the sense that modern democracy derives from athenian democracy.

There is no historical continuity. Renaissance humanists read about Greek theories of music in books and tried to reinvent them. Pythagorean tuning was only one of these. More importantly, they were impressed that Greeks reported being moved by music in ways that their own church and folk music did not. They didn't want only music that glorified God or kept the time in communal festivals. They wanted music that can (for most of them, metaphorically) call down fire from heaven, tame wild beasts and impart primordial wisdom.* The attempts to rediscover a lost tradition of music that can move the soul of man eventually culminated in the classical opera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghrClhT5sfA

ragas and maqams are more like improvisational frameworks, complete with conventions and the rest of it.

Zompist is right about improvisation in Western music having ended very recently.

the answer is: ragas (at least sometimes) are more than sets of notes.

By sound variety, I mean the names of the notes with modifiers like "pure ma". I suspect the sound variety terminology is used to verbally explain the differences between ragas. E.g. "Play a more pure note here." I have no evidence for this.

* There are similar legends in Indian Classical music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tansen#Mi ... nd_legends Here's a 20th century song based on a raga that was said to be able to call down rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo9ug4rLaSY (Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malhar#Legend) I wonder if parts of Wonderboy are based on Indian Classical theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL4HSiGvk68