Melharmony Melharmony is a new approach to compositions and aesthetics that Ravikiran initiated in 2000 at the Millennium Festival in UK. He premiered some of his compositions applying this concept in collaboration with artistes of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. These were presented in various cities including London and Manchester in Oct 2000, billed as Global Echoes by the sponsors, Kala Sangam, one of the leading multi-cultural organizations in UK. Melharmony received overwhelming responses from listeners everywhere and the concert in Bradford was selected among the best five out of nearly 2000 events from around the world in the Millennium Festival and the artistes were invited for an encore in the Tate Modern Gallery in December 2000. Melharmony received critical acclaim from many quarters prompting the BBC Magazine to run a cover story titled 'BBC Melharmonic'!

Ravikiran has composed and presented several concerts with top caliber artistes from many parts of the world featuring Melharmony. He has arranged several Melharmonic pieces for performances by full sized, medium sized or chamber orchestras. Some of these are in collaboration with composers such as Prof Robert Morris and Charles Demuynck, Toronto, Canada.

Ravikiran's Melharmonic compositions bring a new dimension that endeavours to enrich both melodic and harmonic systems. Flavoured with exciting and often highly original rhythmic patterns, his compositions have started blazing a new trail in world music. One of his recent creations, Ujjwal, a full-fledged, first of its kind 45-minute long Melharmonic Concerto was presented in the Swar Utsav Festival at India Gate, New Delhi to an audience close to 20,000 people.

Ravikiran has since composed and presented several concerts in cities like Toronto, Boston and New Delhi, featuring melharmony, with top calibre artistes and groups from many parts of the world. His melharmonic compositions add a new dimension that serves to enrich both melodic and harmonic systems. Flavoured with exciting and often highly original rhythmic patterns, his compositions have begun to blaze a new trail in world music. His latest creation is Ujjwal, a full-fledged, first of its kind, 45-minute long Melharmonic Concerto.

Academic acceptance

On Nov 12, 2005, at The Society for Music Theory Conference, in Boston, USA Prof Robert Morris, one of the most distinguished musicians and composers in the West presented a paper entitled: 'Ravikiran's concept of Melharmony: an inquiry into Harmony in South Indian music'. Having collaborated with Ravikiran in creating or arranging several Melharmonic pieces, Prof Morris was able to elucidate the concept succinctly with excellent examples. This paper was warmly received by the delegates consisting of noted music theorists and musicologists from several parts of the world. Several opined that Melharmony had great potential in world music and this was probably the most significant paper presented about an Indian concept in the history of the SMT Conference. The conference also featured Ravikiran's recital of his Melharmonic pieces to the accompaniment of an audio disc that had the orchestration of the same.

The approach

Melharmony can be roughly understood as melody with harmony and chords that conform to the modal/scalar, sequential and ornamental principles of highly evolved melodic systems, such as the raga system of Indian music. The concept dictates that a composition based on a well-defined scale such as the raga, not only features chords and harmonies drawn only from notes permitted in the raga, but also highlights the sequence and typical ornamentation that bestow the raga its unique individuality and identity. Though this seems easy enough, it is seldom a reality in world music, for two reasons:

· Systems dependant only on melody scarcely venture out to the territories of chords

· Systems such as Western Classical that predominantly use chords follow a different set of aesthetics that do NOT shackle the composers into using notes native to any specific scale.

Thus the approaches to primarily melodic or harmonic systems are quite distinct, and while each sounds excellent to a person listening with the necessary aesthetic mindset, many aspects do not resolve themselves to a person from the other side of the fence. In other words, for someone who listens to Western classical or jazz or other systems with a raga in mind, certain chord combinations may appear to use notes quite foreign to the raga. Similarly, for someone attuned to harmonic systems, a purely melodic system may not sound wholesome all the time. Ravikiran's melharmonic approach aims to address at least some of these issues.

More significantly, he hopes to create a new set of aesthetics and rules of desirable chords with respect to each individual mode (raga) that will enable any composer in any part of the world to create Melharmonic compositions.