GAT-TOR?

GAT-TOR? Gat-Tor? (gat, Hindustani, "form" or "movement of the body in dance" + tor?, Hindustani, "an ornament for the wrists") is instrumental music in North Indian classical music, particularly for the sitar and sarod, in which a composition alternates with improvisations. Masit Khan, who lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, popularized this form of performance, and one of the most important of these composition patterns bears his name. Gat, as a reference to a way of walking, also refers to a kind of drum composition for tabla and a category of dance movements.

In sitar and sarod performance traditions, gat refers specifically to a kind of precomposed melody and to the entire measured section of the performance (as contrasted with the unmetered ?l?p section) that such precomposed melodies commence. A gat presents the r?ga (underlying melody) in a composed melodic form and often illustrates the qualities of the t?la (underlying time cycle).

Gats are commonly composed of one or more sections, each of which will be in its own specific register.

The most important of these sections is the sth?'? (Sanskrit, "steady") and is usually limited to the lower and middle registers (purv?ng). Complementing the sth?'? is the antar? (Sanskrit, "contrast") which serves as a counter theme and usually explores the middle and upper registers (uttar?ng).

Most commonly, the beginning of the sth?'? (the mukhr? [Hindustani, "face"]) emphasizes beat one (sam) of the tala in such a distinctive way that musicians often repeat only this part of the gat, especially when they get to the final and fastest portions of the performance.

Two standardized rhythmic patterns for gat are common. In Masitkh?n? gat (gat in the style of Masit Khan) the mukhr? begins on beat 12 in slow or medium-tempo T?nt?l and cadences on the sam in a tripartite rhythm. R?z?kh?n? gat (gat in the style of the Raza Khan family, notably of Ali Raza) and other fast-tempo gats tend to be less regular than Masitkh?n?. This more specific use of the word gat as a composition refers to a rhythmic pattern of plectrum strokes (usually mnemonically represented by the syllables d? and r?). These gats also imply melodic shape so that, over all, the term has a matrixlike quality encompassing metric, rhythmic, pitch, and kinesthetic organization.

GAT-TOR? (MELODIC SOLOIST WITH TABLA)

The notion of tor? encompasses the elaborations that contrast with the recurring gat. Explorations of the r?ga, t?la, and the limits of the performer's technique occur in the tor?'s that come between statements of gat. These improvisations (sometimes known as t?n [extension]) usually exhibit the virtuosity of the performer. In the broader structural context of performance, the gat marks the point at which the drummer enters and, in alternation with the improvisatory tor?s (especially in some performance traditions), where the drummer solos. Vice versa, when the melodic soloist is improvising or playing precomposed elaborations, the drummer maintains the time with a thek? representing the t?la.

After the melodic soloist has finished with his or her solo variations and improvisations, performances sometimes feature various kinds of interaction between performers, commonly the soloist and the drummer. Perhaps the most notable of these is the saw?l-jaw?b (Hindustani, "question-answer"), a telescoping responsorial format. Sometimes this occurs between two instrumental soloists, one of whom states a musical line in one musical medium while the other repeats it, translating the musical line into the characteristic shape of his or her medium. The most common version of saw?l-jaw?b is between a melodic instrumental soloist and a drummer.

Gordon Thompson

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Miner, Allyn. Sitar and Sarod in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1997.