Avartan in Western music score

Question

What is the term closest to avartan of Indian classical music in Western music score? Is it a phrase, or is it a bar? Or is there another term which denotes the cyclic ticking of musical time? How is it notated in the staff notation?

An avartan refers to one complete cycle of musical time in Indian classical music, just like we have a cycle of 60 seconds to measure one complete cycle of a minute. A percussionist plays the avartan again and again to keep track of the time, while singer moves through the octaves to merge back into the cycle at the first beat.

For more clarity, an avartan is divided into sections called vibhags which detail the rhythmic structure.

Perhaps it is similar to 3/4 or 4/4 rhythms, but I am not sure.

Answer 1

I don't know if there is an exact equivalent to the concept of aavartan in Western music, or what it would be called, but in practice, I make use of time signatures in a way that each measure functions as a single aavartan.

For instance, if I am notating a composition in Teentaal, I will use the time signature 16/4, where each matra is a quarter note. Similarly, for Ektaal, I use the time signature 12/4.

The denominator does not have to be 4, of course. I use it for convenience so that I can notate longer-duration syllables as half notes or whole notes, and shorter-duration syllables as eighth notes, etc., easily.

Here is an explanation of how I notate bandishes on the staff. I am not an expert at this by any means, but please feel free to make use of some of my ideas if you like.

Answer 2

How about if you compared it to a "12-bar blues"?

This is a common form with a fixed pattern [though with a billion variations]. It was the simple building block upon which all "Rock & Roll" was constructed, though it has many more forms that that.

4 bars of root chord, 2 bars of the 4th, 2 bars of the root
1 bar of the 5th, one bar of the 4th, 1 bar of the root, [1 bar of the 5th or stay on the root, optional].

Because it's so ubiquitous in 20th century Western music, it of course has more variations than could ever be listed.
If you remove all except the root & 5th in each chord [& probably even remove the 5th & just play the sequence of root notes], all Western musicians would still recognise it & be able to play along.

Played by a band, everybody knows the structure - you don't change that ever.
Though you probably never actually play the same thing twice, only the form remains the same, the contents change with every iteration.
Once as an intro, then once as a vocal passage, then a solo, then some more vocals, then someone else gets a solo… & round & round it goes until someone decides to call an end.
I've seen drunken open mic nights where this can go round for an hour, with people getting on & off stage as they decide they need another beer or another chance to shine.
Let's call it … informal.

So, 12 bars of an immutable chord sequence.
The bar is the bit that you count, "1, 2, 3, 4"
The cycle is each section of 12 bars.
A phrase is harder to define - maybe, any melodic structure played by any one player, that could be done in one breath [even if the instrument doesn't breathe].

I'll let the man himself close the show

"Well, it's a one for the money…"

Answer 3

TL;DR

"Avartan" is a special case of "Form," which is an abstraction without direct notational equivalent.

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Elaboration

@Pyromonk, in referencing this article on Avartan, and @Tetsujin and @Raagjazz in their answers, all address the same fundamental ideas, which I'll try to elaborate further here.

"Form"

In the Western-music analogies to avartan made so far, "12-bar blues" comes up several times. "12-bar blues" is an example of what is more generally termed "Form."¹ The "Form" of a piece of music is an abstract description of that piece's melodic, harmonic, and time structures, something like the floor plan of a building. Being an abstraction, however, "Form" which does not have a direct notational equivalent.

Form and Avartan

The particular form called the 12-bar blues, in traditional performance, is treated cyclically.² Such a performance would begin with a standard melody based on the underlying 12-bar blues form, followed by a variety of improvisations over that same form, and ending with a restatement of the original melody. Each time through the form would be analogous to avartan.

A difference

A significant difference is in the conception of time. The time sub-units (called "bars" or "measures") of a 12-bar blues are always of identical duration -- comprising the same number of equally-timed beats.³ The "avartan" of a 12-bar blues "in four" would be a total of 48 equal-in-duration beats, divided into 12 groups ("bars") of 4. Similarly, a 12-bar blues "in three", would contain a total of 36 beats, divided into 12 measures of 3 beats each. The time-signatures (3/4, 4/4) you mentioned specify the beat-duration of each measure.

EDIT: Addendum

One indication of cycles in staff notation is the repeat sign.

X:0
T:Repeat Sign
K:none
M:none
|: y y y :|

Typically the music notated between the repeat signs would be repeated one time (i.e., played a total of twice), but can be indicated for more or even indefinite repetions.

X:0
T:Specified number of repetitions
K:none
M:none
|: y y "repeat 3 times"y :|

X:0
T:Unspecified number of repetitions
K:none
M:none
|: "repeat until cue"y y y :|

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Based on your question, you might find Melharmony of interest as an intersection between Indian and European musical concepts. Melharmony, developed initially by N. Ravikiran and further elaborated by Robert Morris, interprets harmony and counterpoint from the perspective of melodic development as found in Indian music (among other cultures).

Wikipedia has some basic information, and my own introduction came from this article in Perspectives of New Music.⁴

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¹ "12-bar blues" is itself a group of related forms that share certain common traits. But for our purposes, I'm going to treat it as a single, archetypal form.

² Forms need not be cyclical. For example, a "fantasia" is a piece specifically without strict adherence to a canonical structure.

³ In theory, a 12-bar blues could be performed with measures of variable durations, adhering only to an agreed upon total number of beats in each cycle. However, this would be a rare exception historically speaking.

A recording that approaches this idea is Wynton Marsalis's interpretation of "Autumn Leaves" from the album "Marsalis Standard Time, Vol. 1" As composed, the piece begins with eight measure of four beats each. However, in this recording, the measure itself is the basic unit of time. The first measure is expressed with one beat; the second with two beats; the third with three; and so forth until reaching a eight-beat eighth measure. This process in then reversed in the second eight measures.

⁴ Chitravina N. Ravikiran. "Robert Morris and the Concept of Melharmony." Perspectives of New Music 52, no. 2 (2014): 154-61. Accessed August 24, 2020. doi:10.7757/persnewmusi.52.2.0154.

Answer 4

The only ‘cyclical’ equivalent I can think of would be jazz lead sheets where the ‘theme’ is presented with chords and repeated with variations on the pattern listed.

Fundamentally the issue here is that transcription of Indian music is not really standardised and it’s still a relatively unusual teaching method to learn from written music rather than by ear from a teacher or Ustad.

Ultimately most western music is not cyclical in the way that Indian classical music is and most forms of western music do not allow a theme to enter within a set timeframe and to be ‘revised’ by the performer through improvisation.

Given to play a full raga you would need to start by notating the alap- I’m not sure what you’d write down to cover that!