Raga Ritigaula: A Study of Improvisation and Discourse in Indian Music

This book, authored by the late Princeton music scholar Harold Powers, discusses a single Indian rāga called Rītigaula. Rītigaula’s pitch structure, conventions surrounding its performance, and its treatment in historical Indian music treatises are comprehensively described. Powers’s unique approach to theorizing rāga examines rāga structure and meaning in this monograph too, from the perspective of musical communication and discourse. From within this perspective, Powers shares his thoughts about music’s connection to language, and the relationship between rāga expression and linguistic communication.

Somangshu Mukherji is Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Michigan.