Behind the Curtain: The Indian Classical Orchestra

The classic Bollywood films of the 1950s and 60s relied largely on the resources of the standard symphony orchestra. These movies brought classical music into the popular culture of the time. The use of orchestral music in old Bollywood movies preserved a time-honoured tradition in a fast-moving world.

An Indo-Western orchestra ensemble. Image source: Google

With the rise of electronic and hip-hop music in India, other genres of music are being overlooked; one such genre is classical Indian music. For contemporary music listeners, classical music is not even on their radar. It’s not avidly advertised on streaming services, online platforms, or current pop culture mediums. Nonetheless, bands like Masala Coffee and Shadow and Light have done astonishing work by bringing Classical Hindustani and Carnatic music to the forefront of mainstream music. This provides listeners with an alternative form of music that seems relatable and not far-fetched.

Although modern-day consumers may not actively listen to classical music, they are aware of the most famous classical pieces because they are so immensely ingrained in pop culture. For instance, if someone were to listen to the modern musical stylings of Laga Chunari Mein Daag or Shiv Shankara, they would be able to recognize the classical melody embedded in them. To completely understand how orchestras work, it is important to understand how different components make an orchestra great.

An orchestra is an ensemble made of four different types of instruments, namely string, percussion, brass, and woodwind. In a standard Western orchestra, string instruments could include the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. However, an Indian orchestra would heavily rely on sitars, tanpuras, sarangi, and other string instruments. The sitar player is one of the most important parts of the orchestra.

String players need the command of their conductors to play either soothingly or aggressively. In most cases, songs start with classical sitar music before switching to loud, fast-paced music played on the trumpet, clarinet, bass clarinet, or tremolo strings.

The second section is percussion, which may include a variety of instruments such as a gong, bass drum, snare drum, and many more. Similar to string instruments, Indian classical music features different types of percussion instruments such as tabla, dhol, mridangam and more. Although rarely used, the importance of even a single note from the percussion instruments could make or break a classical music piece.

Indian classical instruments used in an orchestra. Image source: Google

The third section of the orchestra is brass. The trumpet, the French horn and the trombone are considered brass instruments. There are only a few brass instruments that are mainly used in Carnatic music such as ekkalam and nadaswaram. Although always part of the orchestra, they rarely play solo, but uniquely bind the music together. Lastly, the often missed part of the orchestra is the woodwind instruments. This is because a lot of brass instruments also function as woodwind instruments like the bansuri or the shehnai. These mainly constitute this last section of the orchestra.

One person that is hugely responsible for keeping the music organized is the conductor. A conductor also gives cues to the musicians to keep them in check and controls the tempo of the piece being played. Some of the greatest conductors in the world such as Leonard Berstein, Herbert von Karajan, and Claudio Abbado may have had different techniques to conduct the orchestra but they were proficients in directing their orchestras to create great classical music. By orchestrating Tagore's Rabindra Sangeet and combining it with compositions by European classical masters, Indian conductor and violinist Abraham Mazumder can enchant the masses.

The live orchestras that accompanied silent Hindi films featured a good mix of Indian and Western instruments. Under the direction of composers like Ghulam Haider (Khazanchi, 1941), Anil Biswas (Kismet, 1943), and Naushad Ali (Anmol Ghadi, 1946), film songs began to become increasingly intricate in the 1940s. The 100-piece orchestra was first used in India by the Naushad film's music director. Even though using high-tech MIDI keyboards and other electronic devices is very popular today, the influence of orchestral music of the past cannot be ignored as it opened many doors for young musicians and composers.