Ornamentation in South Indian Music and

the Violin
By Gordon N. Swift

This article was first published as “South Indian Gamaka and the Violin” in Asian Music, the
journal of the Society for Asian Music, Volume XXI-2, 1990.
Introduction

Introduction
n first hearing the violin played in the South Indian classical

O (Carnatic) style, listeners often remark how well instrument

and music suit each other. The violin's unfretted fingerboard
and player's relaxed left-hand hold seem ideal for executing the vari-
ous gliding and wavering gamakas (ornaments) which characterize
Carnatic raga. Investigation reveals a specific reason for this good
fit: each type of gamaka matches a distinctive violin technique.

This article is based on material drawn from the author's doctoral dis-
sertation (1989), which explores the thesis that types of melodic orna-
mentation shared by South Indian and other musics can be matched
with shared principles of violin fingering. This correspondence helps
to explain why the violin appeals to the various peoples who have
adopted it. And it accounts, at least in part, for the instrument's power
as a vehicle of communication and influence between musical tradi-
tions.

In particular, the three broad classes of modern South Indian gam-

aka—slides, deflections, and fingered stresses—correspond to the
three types of left-hand movement which are intrinsic to the violin:
shift, oscillation, and fingerfall. This parallel was key to the author's
dissertation, and the present article describes it in detail.

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 2

Overview of Literature on Gamaka

Overview of Literature on Gamaka

he standard translations of gamaka as "ornament" (used in

T this paper) and "embellishment" are both inadequate, to the

extent that they suggest something incidental added on to
what is fundamental. For gamaka is itself a fundamental element of
raga.
Gamaka performs an integral, rather than decorative function in
Indian music. Theoretically, one can define a svara simply as a
scale degree . . . , but in practise a svara is properly defined only
when taking into consideration the gamaka(s) traditionally associ-
ated with it. Gamaka is what gives a raga its unique character.
(Viswanathan 1974:1/150)

So svara and gamaka are intimately linked. Svara is not a discrete

note in Western terms, but a scale degree and all its associated
melodic movement, or gamaka.

As an organic manifestation of raga, gamaka has affective power, and

can directly influence the listener's state of mind.
The gamakas, or grace notes—the many different ways of sound-
ing, embellishing, and resolving notes—are the subtle shadings of a
tone, delicate nuances and inflections around a note that please and
inspire the listener. . . . The ornaments are not arbitrarily attached to
a melody; rather, they seem to grow out of it.
(Shankar 1968:23)

Gamaka animates a svara, imparting motion and life to the scale

degree. This dynamic quality leads the contours of a particular gam-
aka to vary from one context to another, depending on the preceding
and succeeding svaras.
The moment a gamaka clothes the Swarasthana [note position in
the octave], the latter is quickened into life. For the gamaka builds

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 3

Overview of Literature on Gamaka

up a relationship with neighbouring members of the family [of

svaras] to the right and to the left. (Ayyangar 1972:148)

Its subtle and variable nature makes gamaka highly problematic, at

best, in any notation of Indian music. At times, the effort to convey
such intricate, fluid melodic movement by means of fixed-pitch signs
may seem quite futile. And this is especially true of the densely orna-
mented Carnatic style. When a South Indian musician does use nota-
tion, it serves only as an aid in remembering a piece already learned
by hearing and imitating another musician. A detailed notation of
gamaka isn't needed. Letters represent the svaras which form the
main structure of the melody, and these summon up the appropriate
gamakas in the musician's memory.

On the other hand, theorists have long labored to notate this music as
accurately as possible. Over the past four centuries they have pro-
posed various solutions to the notation of gamakas, often using sym-
bols attached to svara-letters. But the symbolized gamakas must first
have been defined and distinguished from each other.

Writing in the early thirteenth century, Sarangadeva lists fifteen gam-

akas in his Sangita-ratnakara, the most important musical treatise of
India's medieval period. Sarangadeva describes many of his gamakas
in terms of their execution on the vina—the fretted plucked lute
which has been an emblematic Indian instrument from ancient times.
But so little is known now about the actual sound of this period's
music that modern writers can only make free interpretations of
Sarangadeva's definitions, discussing the ornaments in terms of mod-
ern music and the technique of the modern vina (Powers 1959:1/127-
128).

A major advance in the written description of gamakas came in

Somanatha's Raga-vibodha (1609). The famous fifth chapter of this
work lists 23 symbols for use in vina notation. Somanatha describes
the execution (vadana-bheda) of the corresponding ornaments, and

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 4

Overview of Literature on Gamaka

he gives musical examples of 51 ragas in svara-letter notation.

According to Harold Powers, "this section is the only example before
modern times of any Indian music in notation sufficiently detailed to
be interpreted at all" (ibid.:1/40).

In her study (1976) of this chapter of the Raga-vibodha, E. te Nijen-

huis reproduces Somanatha's ornaments and musical examples in
Western staff notation, and translates his detailed ornament descrip-
tions (1976:2/64-67). Nijenhuis correlates some of Somanatha's
gamakas with Sarangadeva's and with modern ornaments. (In a
related effort, V. Ranganayaki has conducted an exhaustive compari-
son (1981) of the gamakas of the Raga-vibodha with earlier and later
compilations of ornaments.)

Somanatha's 23 ornaments include a striking variety of sounds and

musical events. Like Sarangadeva, he describes them in terms of vina
technique; but this doesn't mean that the ornaments applied only to
that instrument. "It would appear . . . that by Somanatha's time the
vina had acquired a style of performance similar and comparable to
that of the voice" (Ranganayaki 1981:232).

Subbarama Diksitar's Sangita-sampradaya-pradarsini (1904) is a

treasury of compositions in the family tradition of its author's great-
uncle, the saint-singer Muttusvamy Diksitar (1775-1835). In this
work the younger Diksitar introduced a new threefold classification
of ornaments. His grouping was taken up by later writers, and it will
be the central feature in the discussion of violin technique here. The
three classes are: slides (jaru or ullasita), deflections (gamaka), and
fingered stresses (janta). (Note that the more specific meaning of
gamaka here should not be confused with its use as a general term for
all ornamentation.)

According to Ranganayaki, Diksitar's work attempted to reconcile the

15 gamakas of the written theoretical tradition with ten from the oral

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 5

Overview of Literature on Gamaka

tradition. That is, he lists 15 but assigns symbols to only ten (Ranga-
nayaki 1981:345).

Mrs. S. Vidya further describes this set of ten ornaments in an article

on gamaka symbols in notation (Vidya 1943). Seven of the orna-
ments appear yet again, with symbols, in a collection by C. S. Ayyar
(1955) of compositions by Tyagaraja (the most famous Carnatic
saint-singer, 1767-1847). The preface of this work discusses violin
technique in some detail and will be referenced below.

In his dissertation on the South Indian tradition (1959) Harold Powers

analyzes the melodic functions of a similar set of ten ornaments,
using the threefold grouping first described by Subbarama Diksitar.

Powers divides the slides (jaru) into functional and stylistic types.
The functional slide connects two significant pitch areas in a phrase,
while the stylistic slide involves a single significant pitch—as in the
attack of an initial note, or the release of a final note. He divides the
deflections (gamaka) into three types: those which serve to prolong a
note, those which contribute to melodic movement, and those which
are specific to the technique of a particular instrument. The fingered
ornaments (janta) he describes as stresses which emphasize relatively
stable, stationary tones (Powers 1959:1/chap.7).

In her dissertation, V. Ranganayaki discusses ten ornaments known in

the oral as opposed to the literary tradition (1981:343). She identifies
three types as most important: jaru (slides), gamaka (shakes), and
ravai or brika (turns and mordents). Her third type exemplifies Dik-
sitar's fingered stresses, so these represent the same three classes
described above.

Finally, in his ground-breaking work Raga Alapana in South Indian

Music (1974), T. Viswanathan presents a similar list of ten ornaments
with examples of each in svara-letter form. His list is a distillation of
the earlier writers' gamakas together with Viswanathan's own knowl-

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 6

Overview of Literature on Gamaka

edge as a preeminent performer and scholar, and these ten are treated
here as the established modern ornaments (Viswanathan 1974:1/152-
153). Table 1 presents them, grouped for analysis by the author into
the three broad classes.

As Nijenhuis points out, many of these modern gamakas can be cor-

related with ornaments in the Raga-vibodha (Nijenhuis 1976:1/2-3).
And three of them (one from each of the three main groups: ullasita,
a slide; kampita, a deflection; and sphurita, a stress) are found even in
the thirteenth-century Sangita-ratnakara. So there emerges a line of
continuity through 700 years of theoretical writings—not just for
these three specific gamakas, but also for the types which they repre-
sent.

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 7

Overview of Literature on Gamaka

TABLE 1.

CLASSIFICATION OF CARNATIC ORNAMENTS

Jaru/Ullasita Irakka-jaru - descending slide

(Slides) Etra-jaru - ascending slide

Nokku - stress from above on successive

(non-repeated) tones
Odukkal - stress from below on successive
Gamaka
(non-repeated) tones
(Deflections)
Kampita - oscillation
Orikai - momentary flick, at the end of the
main tone, to a higher tone

Ravai - turn from above

Sphurita - stress from below on repeated
Janta
tones
(Fingered
Pratyahata - stress from above on
Stresses)
repeated tones
Khandippu - sharp dynamic accent

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 8

Fingering Techniques in South Indian Violin

Fingering Techniques in South Indian Violin

his section discusses specific techniques by which the Car-

T natic violinist executes the various classes of ornament. (The

author is a practicing violinist and a longtime student of Car-
natic violin. Remarks on technique in this article draw on direct
study with, or close observation of, several South Indian artists of the
violin—including V. Thyagarajan, T.N. Krishnan, L. Shankar, L. Sub-
ramaniam, and Lalgudi Jayaraman.)

According to most accounts, the earliest master musicians to success-

fully adapt the violin to Carnatic music were Balasvamy Diksitar
(1786-1858), disciple and younger brother of the saint-singer Muttus-
vamy Diksitar; and Vadivelu (1810-1845), one of the Tanjore Quartet
(four brothers, all famous musicians). Both men studied the Western
style of playing the violin before going on to experiment with apply-
ing the instrument to their own music.

The Carnatic violinist, sitting cross-legged, braces the instrument

lightly between chest and hollow of the right ankle, where the scroll
of the violin rests. The left hand is thus freed from having to support
the instrument as in the Western hold, and the player moves with ease
among the various positions. (The term "position" on the violin
refers to the placement of the left hand relative to the end of the fin-
gerboard. In first position the index finger is at an interval of a sec-
ond above the open string; in second position it is a third above the
open string; and so on.)

Barbara Benary (an accomplished player of both Western and South

Indian classical violin) has traced the development of left-hand tech-
nique during the century-and-a-half since the violin's assimilation
into the Carnatic tradition. She describes a progression from the ini-
tial style which used mostly discrete fingered notes in the Western
manner (the "four-finger" style), through a slide-based ("two-finger")

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 9

Fingering Techniques in South Indian Violin

style, to the sophisticated blend of slides, oscillations, and fingered

clusters which is found in the playing of today's concert artists
(Benary 1971:38).

C. S. Ayyar comments on a typical method in the preface to his Tya-

garaja collection:
The fingering technique with 4 fingers enables one to produce the
gamakas . . . highly enriched with a sense of true notes without any
dissonance. . . . The 1-finger and the 2-finger technique now-a-days
adopted in the first grip position on the four strings, I regret to add,
entirely kills the emission of the full and pure tone of the violin. . . .
The usual grip positions used by the South Indian in European ter-
minology are the 1st and the 3rd, the fourth being restricted to the
steel [i.e., the highest] string only. (Ayyar 1955:iii)

The passage invokes a standard justification for using all four fingers
of the left hand: this preserves the integrity of the various svaras in
the raga. If only one or two fingers are used, then a slide from one
svara to another blurs together all the intervening pitches—destroy-
ing by "dissonance" the true colors of the raga. (Of course it could be
argued that the voice itself, after which instrumentalists model their
playing, has only one "finger," yet this does not prevent vocalists
from showing the raga in its true colors.)

Various motions of the hand and fingers are used for the different
classes of gamakas. The first class considered here is jaru, the slides;
it includes etra-jaru (ascending) and irraka-jaru (descending). These
slides vary from quite short to very long, and are usually executed on
the violin by one finger as it tracks a movement of the forearm up or
down the violin neck. The whole hand, thumb included, moves with
the finger in an outright shift from one position to another. A crucial
element here is the thumb's movement, although this may not be
obvious in very short slides. In some mordent-like ornaments, the
hand (with thumb) returns immediately to its former position; in other
cases, the slide leads to and ends in a new area of melody elaboration.

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 10

Fingering Techniques in South Indian Violin

Powers calls the ornaments of the second class—gamaka—"the most

characteristic of South Indian music" (1959:1/149). They include
nokku, odukkal, kampita, and orikai. These are often termed "deflec-
tions," after the associated vina technique of deflecting or pulling the
string sideways to modulate the pitch. On the violin no such tech-
nique exists; instead these ornaments are produced by short slides up
and down the string, or by rolling a fingertip (or a group of adjacent
fingertips acting as a unit) forward and backward. The deflections
are usually executed without changing position, that is, with the
thumb stationary. But some broad kampitas (oscillations) may be
played on just one finger, by sliding the entire hand back and forth
between two positions.

According to Benary, the wrist is the foremost source of motion for

the wide variety of oscillations, rolls, and short slides which comprise
the deflection class.
If . . . two svaras are connected by a gamaka, they should blend into
a continuous sound. Finger one slides up to cover most of the inter-
val between its former position and the place where finger two will
be. But finger two cannot come down sharply. It must take over
smoothly from finger one. The fingers are touching sides and their
tips are adjacent. The smooth transition between the two fingers is
accomplished by a rolling motion of the wrist. It is the same
motion by which, in the western technique, hand vibrato is made.
Only here the motions are much slower and more deliberate.
(Benary 1971:73)

All manner of kampitas are made with this general motion. They
range from the microtonal, in which the oscillation is so narrow that
(as in Western vibrato) it does not impinge on either of the neighbor-
ing half-tones, to the broad wave whose limits are an interval of a
third apart. The microtonal kampita may be executed by one finger
alone, rolling on its tip, or by two fingers lying very close together.
The larger waves may use one, two, or more fingers, depending on
the size of the interval and on the player's fingering style. When three

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 11

Fingering Techniques in South Indian Violin

fingers are used, the middle one of the three joins in the rolling con-
tact with the string. The goal is always to transform the sequence of
finger-contacts into a continuous glide.

This description applies to the playing of most violinists; a variation

can be seen in the technique of L. Subramaniam. He strives for less
motion in the wrist and hand, and more motion among individual fin-
gers. For instance, in an oscillation between one note and another a
whole tone distant, he prefers to keep the lower finger in its place and
to slide through the entire interval with the higher finger. His explana-
tion for this technique is that it allows the hand as a whole to remain
calm and relaxed, while ensuring accurate intonation by fixing one of
the limits of the oscillation (personal communication).

The third class of ornament is janta, the fingered stresses; these

include sphurita, pratyahata, ravai, and khandippu. The violinist
produces jantas with fingers placed precisely along the string at scale
degrees of the raga, rather than placed together with sides touching as
for deflections. Thus the different tones involved (in a turn, for exam-
ple) can be sounded quickly, distinctly, and in tune.

In practice, the ten ornaments do not fall neatly each into one class as
depicted in Table 1. For example, nokku and odukkal are described
there as stresses, but their typical execution (by rolling or sliding)
puts them in the deflection class rather than among the crisp fingered
stresses. Orikai, too, has attributes of both deflection and stress. A
broad kampita executed on just one finger partakes of slide as well as
deflection. And khandippu, a dynamic accent which is classed with
the fingered stresses, may be executed on the violin with an explosive
slide or roll up and then back down again, rather than by simply fin-
gering the upper limit of the ornament.

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 12

Intrinsic Elements in Violin Fingering

Intrinsic Elements in Violin Fingering

his section describes left-hand motions which are intrinsic to

T the violin—fingerfall, shift, and oscillation—and correlates

them with the classes of Carnatic gamaka. Most of the
sources quoted here on technique belong to the European classical
tradition. This is because Western classical violinist-teachers have
written the most detailed works on violin technique. But the author's
study of violin and fiddle styles in several musics around the world
has failed to uncover other motions so basic as the ones described
here.

Of course, each violin style uses a particular blend of these tech-

niques, emphasizing some and underplaying others. In Carnatic
music, shifts and oscillations are more common than the discrete fin-
gered pitches of jantas. Most pitches in Western classical music are
of the discrete type, and oscillations are less various, represented
chiefly by vibrato. In some fiddle styles, the player remains entirely
in first position, thus eliminating shifts. And the ornaments of the
Persian classical style, while profuse as in Carnatic melody, consist
mostly of trills, grace notes, and arpeggiated figures—all discrete
pitches—rather than the sinuous slides and oscillations of the South
Indian style (Zonis 1973:109,114).

The key used here to identify common elements in different violin

styles is the concept of wave motion described by violinist and
teacher Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999) in Violin: Six Lessons with
Yehudi Menuhin (1971). He observes that "the three main functions
of fingerfall, shifting and vibrato will be seen to be not only related,
but to proceed from a waving action, varying in amplitude from a nar-
row vibration to a broad scope" (1971:108).

Since vibrato is an oscillation, these "main functions" are the three

intrinsic motions identified above. And they correspond to the three

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 13

Intrinsic Elements in Violin Fingering

classes of Carnatic ornamentation. Fingerfall is the motion involved

in janta, those stresses and turns which are fingered as in Western
music. Shifting, like jaru, uses a sliding movement up or down the
fingerboard. And vibrato is an example, within a very narrow com-
pass, of the motion used in gamaka, the deflections. This match
between musical style and instrumental technique is what gives the
violin such a natural place in the Carnatic ensemble.

The reader may easily experience the basic wave motion by following
Menuhin's directions:
Hold the left hand in the playing position, without the instrument,
with loose wrist, palm facing you, and wave it as if saying goodbye
to yourself. . . .See that the wrist and fingers are completely soft,
offering no resistance. Now induce a passive waving of the hand by
moving your forearm back and forth. . . . To introduce a circular
swing into the continuing waving of the hand, add a sideways oscil-
lation of the elbow and arm. (ibid.:109-110)

Menuhin analyzes the physical movements involved in fingerfall,

shifting, and vibrato, to show how they all derive from this wave
motion. For example, the trill, an ornament which partakes of both
fingerfall and vibrato movements, "grows naturally out of our exer-
cises in waves, the wave movement now becoming smaller and faster
to resemble an oscillating pivot movement" (ibid.:122).

Each time the hand changes direction in the whip-like motion

described above, fingers and wrist move contrary to each other. At
these moments the wave acquires a circular or rotating quality, as
when the top of a breaking ocean wave curls down toward the beach
while the bottom is sucked up and out. Likewise, on the violin the
wave motion manifests itself in rotating gestures along the finger-
board. The rotations tend to alternate, moving in one direction and
then back in the opposite direction.

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 14

Intrinsic Elements in Violin Fingering

This alternating movement is most easily seen in oscillating orna-

ments like vibrato and Carnatic kampita, but it is ever-present. For
example: A shift may be thought as a large rotation in which the fore-
arm serves as radius, elbow at the center. Oscillations are repeated
back-and-forth rotations on a smaller scale.

And plain fingered notes are produced through even subtler rotations,
in which the wrist and the fingertip on a stopped note act in opposi-
tion to each other. A falling finger is part of a rotation up the finger-
board (toward the player), while a rising finger is part of the reverse
(away from the player). Fine movements of the wrist muscles accom-
pany and oppose these finger motions: on fingerfall the wrist bends
very slightly away from the player, and on fingerlift the wrist moves
toward the player.

The Physiology of Violin Playing (1971) by Ottó Szende and Mihály

Nemessuri gives a scientific basis to Menuhin's analysis. Using elec-
tromyography—"the automatic photo-registration of muscle action
potentials"—they observed muscles and nerves involved in playing
the violin. Their results are presented according to a now-familiar
threefold division of muscle actions involved in stopping (i.e., finger-
fall), vibrato (oscillation), and change of position (shift).

In a comment to violin teachers, the physiologists conclude that the

various muscle functions are interrelated: a student's progress in
learning any one function is dependent on progress in the others.
To attain the thumb relaxing its clutch-like action [as in stopping]
constitutes a persistent problem. . . . The holding of the violin itself
becomes really responsive only after vibrato and changes of posi-
tion have been mastered. (Szende and Nemessuri 1971:73)

It is their common origin in the wave motion that links the three left-
hand functions together. A student gradually gains more facility with
each function, and with holding the instrument securely but without

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 15

Intrinsic Elements in Violin Fingering

tension, by working with the wave in its various magnitudes or

frames of reference. Table 2 summarizes this discussion.

TABLE 2.

RELATION OF WAVE MOTION, VIOLIN TECHNIQUE, AND

CARNATIC ORNAMENT CLASS

Wave motion Violin technique Ornament class

Great Shift Jaru (Slides)

Medium Oscillation Gamaka (Deflections)

Janta (Fingered
Small Fingerfall
Stresses)

Of course, the physiology of Carnatic violin playing is somewhat dif-

ferent from that of Western playing because of different postures and
holds. The author knows of no such scientific study of muscle move-
ments in the Indian hold. But the reader may acknowledge by now
the coincidence between basic violin techniques and classes of Car-
natic gamaka. To fill out these connections, the remainder of the dis-
cussion here draws on comments by Western writers as well as on
Carnatic practice.

Motions involved in the janta ornaments are familiar to Western vio-

linists: precise, rapid fingerfall and fingerlift in a vertical plane, exe-
cuted while the hand as a whole remains in one position. The fourth
finger, which is naturally the weakest, deserves special attention.

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 16

Intrinsic Elements in Violin Fingering

Leopold Mozart was esteemed in his time as a master violin teacher,

and in 1756 he brought out the first edition of A Treatise on the Fun-
damental Principles of Violin Playing. There he gives timeless advice
on the problem fourth finger: "This finger, because it is the weakest
and shortest, must by unremittingly earnest practise be made stronger,
a little longer, more expert, and more useful" (1948:190). Some Car-
natic violinists use the fourth finger rarely or not at all. Others, like
Western classical players, build its strength through exercises and
regular use.

Like janta, the movements of the jaru (slide) class of Carnatic orna-
ments have their counterparts in Western playing: portamento and
glissando. The Hungarian-born violin teacher Carl Flesch (1873-
1944) discusses these techniques in his Violin Fingering (1966):
When two tones are connected by gliding, this may be a matter of
either necessity or choice. The unavoidable type is designated glis-
sando; the optional type portamento. Glissandi accompany any
change of Position in a series of rapid notes and should be as incon-
spicuous as possible, since they have no expressive value; they
merely represent a technical necessity. Portamenti, however, pro-
duce a gliding sound by which the player deliberately connects two
tones and intensifies their expressive power. (1966:329)

In The Principles of Violin Fingering (1967), Soviet violin teacher

amd musicologist I. M. Yampolsky (1905-1976) makes the same dis-
tinction between glissando and portamento, and he describes three
kinds of portamento. In one type, the lower finger sounds its note and
slides into a new position, the higher finger then dropping onto its
note. In another type, after the lower finger's note has sounded, the
higher finger slides into its note as the hand arrives in the new posi-
tion. And in the third type, the first note, slide, and second note are
all made on one finger.

The third type, "produced by the direct slide of the same finger from
one note to the other, gives a particular expressiveness to the sound,

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 17

Intrinsic Elements in Violin Fingering

similar to the expressive effect of portamento in the human voice"

(Yampolsky 1967:121). It is, in effect, the jaru of Carnatic music.

In fact, all three kinds of portamento are types of slide. Further, any
shift of position involves a slide—whether it is audible as in porta-
mento and glissando, or inaudible as when the player shifts on one
string while bowing a different (open) string. Common to all is a
movement of the whole hand along the violin neck. Since in the
Western hold the thumb is critical to supporting the violin, slides are
constrained somewhat by concern that the instrument not fall while
the thumb is in transit between positions.

Yet slides are inherent in the violin by virtue of its fretless finger-
board. One practical consequence of this design is what Barbara
Benary calls the "one-string aesthetic," a feature of her Carnatic vio-
lin teacher's style in which even wide-ranging phrases were often
played entirely on one string. Leopold Mozart describes the same
ideal:
The positions are used for the sake of elegance when notes which
are Cantabile occur closely together and can be played easily on
one string. Not only is equality of tone obtained thereby, but also a
more consistent and singing style of delivery. (1756:132)

Yampolsky too invokes the "one-string aesthetic" for cantilena pas-

sages.
In cantilena (at slower tempi) it is possible to choose a fingering
which allows a greater number of shifts with the aim of increasing
expressiveness. . . . One should aim at preserving uniformity of tim-
bre by playing the phrases as far as possible on one string.
(1967:125)

He recommends restricting the use of the fourth finger in such pas-

sages, because of "(a) its comparative physical weakness, (b) the lim-
itation of the extent of vibrato possible, (c) its unreliability in the
higher positions" (ibid.:127). These are the very reasons why Car-

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 18

Intrinsic Elements in Violin Fingering

natic violinists, who play with a vocal or cantilena ideal most of the
time, tend to use the fourth finger in fingered stresses but not in slides
and oscillations, unless it is supported by the other fingers.

Of the three classes of Carnatic ornaments, gamaka (deflections)

involve motions which are exploited least in Western classical tech-
nique. These motions generally do not involve outright shifts of posi-
tion. Here the thumb stays in position on the violin neck, though it
may well move from side to side, or slip further underneath the neck
at times. The fact that the thumb remains basically in place provides
a feeling of security in the hold, and this in turn frees the player for
other movements of the hand.

In Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching (1985), teacher and edi-

tor Ivan Galamian (1903-1981) describes a comparable motion in the
Western hold—the "half shift."
In the half shift, the thumb does not change its place of contact with
the neck of the violin. Instead it remains anchored, and by bending
and stretching permits the hand and fingers to move up or down into
other positions. This type of motion, the half shift, can be used in
many instances where the fingers have to move into another posi-
tion for a few notes only. Properly applied, it can greatly promote
facility and security. (1985:23-24)

The deflections, which include oscillating ornaments, clearly display

the wave motion which permeates both Carnatic and Western violin
technique. Vibrato is a prime example. Every classically-trained
Western violinist has a physical understanding of this oscillating
movement. But the player is usually taught to think of vibrato as a
natural attribute of every tone sustained long enough to be vibrated.
When viewed instead as a specific ornament (as it was before the
nineteenth century), vibrato takes its place as a very narrow, relatively
rapid oscillation—just one member of a large family comprising
shakes, rolls, and oscillations of various widths.

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 19

Conclusion

Conclusion
his article has described Carnatic gamaka types and has cor-

T related them with distinctive violin techniques. These links

help to account for the violin's rapid assimilation into the Car-
natic ensemble, and for its enduring popularity there. The techniques
discussed represent the basic left-hand motions which may be used in
playing the violin in whatever style—they are intrinsic to the instru-
ment.

These motions are of three types. Shifts (e.g., Carnatic jaru, the
slides) are made with a sliding movement of the whole hand, includ-
ing the thumb, to a new position. Oscillations (e.g., gamaka, the
deflections) are executed by rolls or short slides with the thumb in
place, though it may bend or stretch. And fingerfall (e.g., janta, the
fingered stresses) is accomplished with crisp stopping and release of
the string by individual fingers, the thumb remaining still.

This study has an implication for Western violinists who want to

develop elements of technique which may have been underplayed in
their own training. There is no way that a violinist working in the
Western hold can achieve the free fluidity of left-hand movement that
is possible in the Carnatic playing position. This constraint is due to
the role of the Western player's thumb in supporting the instrument:
whenever the thumb moves, support is unstable until it comes to rest
again.

But experimentation with the techniques described here—audible

slides, and oscillations of various widths and speeds, using the half-
shift as a source of security in the hold—can enhance any violinist's
ease and confidence in moving about the instrument. This is one
example of how the violin, through far-flung adaptations to different
musics of the world, may itself act as a vehicle of practical communi-
cation between them.

Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 20

References Cited

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Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 21

References Cited

Powers, Harold S.
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Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 22

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Ornamentation in South Indian Music and the Violin 23