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HARMONIUM

 

In 1854, Henry Mason and Emmons Hamlin founded the Mason & Hamlin Company in Boston, Massachusetts. Henry Mason came from a musical family. His father was the famous composer and educator Lowell Mason, a visionary who was the first to bring music into the public schools of America. As a publisher of hymns, he became known as the “father of American church music.” Emmons Hamlin was not a musician, but a brilliant mechanic and inventor. While working at the melodeon factory of George A. Prince in Buffalo, New York, Hamlin invented a way to voice organ reeds, so that they could imitate the sound of a clarinet, violin or other musical instruments.

 

Thus, having developed his discovery to perfection, he and Henry Mason formed their own company for the purpose of manufacturing a new musical instrument that they called the “organ harmonium.”

 

The beginning combination of limited production and capital but great attention to detail paid off, and the first instruments proved to be extremely successful. Thus the partners were well on their way to becoming major players in the field.

 

From the organ harmonium, the company graduated to the American Cabinet Organ, a product that would earn Mason & Hamlin first prize at the Paris Exhibition of 1867. The fact that a small American company won the top prize over their much larger, more established European competitors astounded the music world. The fact that they continued to win year after year was even more astounding. It wasn’t long before Mason & Hamlin had established a worldwide reputation for excellence. Many European firms then started to copy the Mason and Hamlin way of making such reed Organs.

 

Based on the success of the Mason & Hamlin “organ harmonium” at the Parisian Exhibition, many European builders of reed Organs, as well as totally new firms appearing on the scene, started to build the American type of suction reed organ, as it had become the main competitor to the wind pressurized harmonium. The Europeans did not adopt the American name “reed organ” but kept the simple name of “harmonium.”

 

The first Indian harmonium was apparently built by Dwarkin, who established a workshop in 1875.

 

The most widely-known and used free-reed aerophone instrument in India is the harmonium and had been imported from the West. No foreign instrument, however, has caused such a commotion as the harmonium and none is used so extensively, be it in classical, light, film or folk music. It is probably the most commonly used instrument in northern India.

 

The harmonium was brought to India either by Western traders or by religious missionaries and musicians in the late nineteenth century. It was first introduced and included within Indian music compositions in the west Bengal area, and from there it spread all over the country.

 

The harmonium of India is not the heavy and large pedaled instrument of Europe, but has been reduced to a small portable box, which is approximately two feet by one foot and about nine to ten inches high, the back of which opens to act as the bellows. On the top is a keyboard like that of a piano, but with a much smaller range, usually of about three octaves. It is played by the right hand, while the left works the bellows.

 

The Indian harmonium is a keyboard instrument on which twelve semitones of the tempered scale are fixed in all the three octaves: mandra, madhya and tara. On these keyboard instruments, only straight notes can be played with grace notes and quarter-tones not being possible. There is also no possibility of a slur, meend, or gamaka being played on the harmonium, which creates the main essence of Hindustani music. This manner of performance is essential to maintain the spirit of Hindustani ragadari system. Yet, it is possible to preserve the continuity of the music to some extent by a skillful handling of the bellows and finger pressure on the keys. When the harmonium is paired with the human voice or the sarangi's sound, the coupling creates the unique and exquisite Hindustani music.

 

Although the Indian scale of music of twelve semitones is nearly the same as that in Western music, there are certain vital and perceptible differences between the two. The Indian concept of "swara" does not relate it to a specific pitch point, but to a pitch-range with variegated possibilities of shades and nuances. No keyboard instrument can respond to this concept of "swara."

 

For these reasons, the harmonium was banned in music broadcasts over the National network from March 1, 1940. Some purists like Ameer Khan, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Begum Akhtar, etc., went on to even favor the harmonium as an accompaniment as against the sarangi, because they found its notes were unsagging and constant. Its uncanny popularity, therefore, led the government to seriously review the question of its use in broadcasts of classical and light music, and ultimately in October 1970, after an exile of over three decades, the government had to issue a directive partially removing the ban on the harmonium in the broadcasts of classical and light classical music on the national network. Though the harmonium is not used as much in the current "Carnatic" music system, its current version is capable of providing a whole range of tonal excellence which is rare in other instruments. A top quality harmonium has two, three and even four sets of reeds. The instrument covers three to four "octaves," encompassing sub-bass, bass, medium and high. The instrument is larger and has built-in devices to filter the air through two compartments. The merit of this arrangement is that when the air is blown into it, it does not strike the reeds aggressively. From the airtight compartments, the wind emerges softly through the reeds when a key is pressed. In earlier days, the instrument was equipped with only a single piece reed board. This made the sound strident and harsh. Present-day harmoniums have three reed boards joined together with the provision for air-release in a zigzag fashion, ensuring softness of tone and melody.

 

Farrukh Fateh Ali Khan (Urdu: فرخ فتح علی خان‎) (December 25, 1952 – September 9, 2003) was a player of the harmonium in Qawwali and also was a member of a well-known family of Qawwali musicians. He was the younger brother of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the son of Fateh Ali Khan, the nephew of Mubarak Ali Khan, and the father of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan,

 

Tulsidas Borkar (born 18 November 1934, in Borim, Goa) is an Indian musician, known for playing harmonium solo and his syle of accompanying in Hindustani rag sangeet and allied forms .The Government of India awarded him the civilian honour of the Padma Shri in 2016.

 

Mehmood Dhaulpuri is an Indian musician of Hindustani music, known as a leading exponent of Harmonium, an Indian variant of the Pump organ. He was an accompanist to renowned Hindustani vocalists such as Parveen Sultana, Bhimsen Joshi, Jasraj, Girija Devi, Kishori Amonkar and Ustad Ghulam Sadiq Khan. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2006, for his contributions to Music,making him the first harmonium player to receive the award.

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