‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen had many nicknames, 'pop icon', 'folk icon of the 60's', 'Lord Byron of Rock 'n' Roll'. 'Poet of Pleasure and Pain'. 'Legendary Ladies Man', 'Maestro of Melancholy', 'Canada's High priest of Poetry'.

Leonard Cohen was dedicated to being a songwriter, though he wrote two novels and several books of poems, to me, he is the quintessential lyric poet. The poet of song, the 'lord of song'.

Cohen's poetic lyrics or his tunes didn't fit into any genre of music or recognisable format ever since his debut in 1967 with 'Songs of Leonard Cohen', which came out in the same year as the first albums by the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie, his work stood apart and was different from everyone else in the world of Rock and roll, folk, country music, skiffle or anything else. The depth of his lyrics, his care of the language, the philosophies he drew upon and his poetic craftsmanship were absolutely unique. Though one did hear in his music plenty of Spanish guitar, and Spanish Oudh and references to the Spanish poet whom he revered, Frederico Garcia Lorca. 

Alan Ginsberg coined the term Lyric poet, to describe Bob Dylan’s songs which he admired, Ginsberg felt that poetic songs bring poetry to a great number of people who would otherwise never have voluntarily strayed into reading poetry.

Writing a lyric is a different discipline from writing poetry, it is the marrying of poetry and melody. And unlike poems, lyrics of songs usually look bland on a page without the structure or the musical form holding them in place. Lyrics are not meant to be read like a poem, but to be heard, they're to be sung. Even so, many of Cohen’s words, like those of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Paul Simon and Tom Waits, among the rocking, folk, or other genre bending lyric poets I’ve come across, can often, but not always, be read on a page without the brilliant music they write, and still be considered poetry.

The beauty is that in addition to his spare, elegant and precise words, Leonard Cohen wrote attractive and sometimes catchy melodies that just fitted the words so well that one can't imagine the words separated from the melody. 

A fitting description of the craft of a lyric poet is - the merging of language with melody.

Leonard Cohen’s songs Suzanne, So Long Marianne, Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye, Sisters of Mercy, Famous Blue Raincoat, Dance me to The End of Love, Everybody Knows, Bird on A Wire, I'm Your Man, If It Be Your Will, Take This Waltz, Chelsea Hotel, Joan of Arc, Democracy, The Stranger Songs are just a few of my favourites from his 'Tower of Song'.

Here's what Pico Iyer wrote about Leonard Cohen in 1998. "Cohen has always made a practice of defying every category--he's a community of one--even as he has moved from poems to novels to songs: the only writer I know who managed to become an international singing sensation, the only #1 performer who's also been a prize-winning poet. He tops the charts in Norway and Malaysia, and you hear his spirit behind every new generation of poet-songwriters (there are 12 tribute albums to him worldwide). He defined the Sixties for many of us, with songs like "Suzanne" and "Bird on a Wire"; he caught the bravado of the Eighties ("First We Take Manhattan"), and, having already plunged deep into the time out of time ("Night Comes On"), he then summarized the Nineties ("The Future"). ~ Pico Iyer

But this essay is not about Leonard Cohen, it's about a song he wrote in 1984, ‘Hallelujah’, one of the songs in an album called 'Various Positions'.

The lyrics of the original version of Hallelujah from ‘Various Positions’ was culled to four verses at the last minute before it was recorded, from the 80 verses that Leonard Cohen had written over the course of ten years. 

‘Various Positions’ was not a commercial success, nor was the song Hallelujah, noticed at the time. The producer said the album was a mess, especially after hearing Hallelujah, which he didn’t like at all, and reluctantly released Various Positions to limited markets in Europe in 1984 and America the following year (I got the cassette Various Positions from Rhythm House, Bombay in 1988 and couldn't get enough of all the songs in the album - 1. Dance Me To The End Of Love  2. Coming Back To You  3. The Law  4. Night Comes On  5. Hallelujah  6. The Captain  7. Hunter's Lullaby  8. Heart With No Companion  9. If it be your Will)

Hallelujah didn’t make an impression on the radio or the pop charts where Cohen was competing against the music of Michael Jackson and Madonna. Not even when Bob Dylan who liked the song when he heard it and sang it at a few concerts in 1988. John Cale performed his own version of the song in his tribute album to Leonard Cohen ‘I’m your Fan’ in 1991, and then Jeff Buckley sang his version of the song in the 1994, when it was noticed, but the song really took off when Rufus Wainwright sang it, modelled on the John Cale version of the song, in the animated movie ‘Shrek’.

Though the song and its title, to me, is confusing with its uncommon mix of images and thoughts, it still somehow holds together as a song.

"Hallelujah" in modern English, is a shout of praise or thanksgiving to express happiness that a thing hoped or waited for has happened.

Salman Rushdie would many years later note that “only Cohen would rhyme ‘Hallelujah’ with ‘what’s it to ya?’” In fact, every verse is built around the central not-quite-rhyme of “you” and “Hallelujah,” as if the pronunciation of “you” that’s necessary is a recurrent punch line built into the rhythm of the song. Cohen has said, “They are really false rhymes,” “but they are close enough that the ear is not violated.”)

The original version of the song in Various Positions has some biblical references, suggesting the stories of Samson and Delilah from the Book of Judges ("she cut your hair") as well as King David and Bathsheba 
("you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you"). 

Cohen has always been ambiguous about what his "Hallelujah," with its sexual scenery and its religious symbolism, truly "meant." When asked, Cohen has said, "This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled,". "But there are moments when we can ... reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah." “I wanted to push the Hallelujah deep into the secular world, into the ordinary world,” he once said. “The Hallelujah, the David’s Hallelujah, was still a religious song. So, I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion.”

Canadian singer K.D. Lang whose effortless, version of Hallelujah Leonard Cohen liked, said in an interview shortly after Cohen's death, that she considered the song to be about "the struggle between having human desire and searching for spiritual wisdom. It's being caught between those two places” 

Now this brilliant and beautiful song, with its inspired ascending melody, has been recorded, arranged and reinvented countless times and performed by every type of singer, and sung on all occasions. It has become a secular hymn. A modern standard.

Here are the lyrics of the song

Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah'

Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the lord of song
With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

Some additional verses sometimes performed instead or after the original second verse

But baby I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor
You know, I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me do ya
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah  Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen original 1984 version 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1rB_XvrM5Q

Jeff Buckley  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8AWFf7EAc4

Rufus Wainwright 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQK4YfiPj1Q

K.D. Lang - Leonard Cohen felt 

"It's really been done to its ultimate, blissful state of perfection."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE

A HARD RAIN’S GONNA FALL

A SOCIAL-PROTEST, FOLK BALLAD

To be distinct in character, works of literature, novels, plays and poems use poetic and literary devices such as imagery and symbols to help convey and illustrate the overall theme of the stories to readers, viewers and listeners. 

Musicians, poets and lyricists use alliteration and repetition to help certain verses become indelible in the listener's mind.

Bob Dylan’s allegorical Folk Ballad, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" shows how these literary devices are used to express his views on war. At first listen, the song, is ambiguous. It is cryptic and obscure. Yet it is poetic.  It is full of imagery and symbols, alliteration and repetition. 

"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" was one of three social protest songs Dylan recorded on ‘The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan', which he wrote at the age of 21 in 1962 at the time of USA’s unnecessary and illegitimate war in Vietnam.

The  Vietnam war, called (in Vietnam) the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”, was a protracted conflict from 1954 to 1975 between the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, the 'Viet Cong', against the government of South Vietnam and its ally the United States. 

The economic and human costs of the long inhuman conflict in Vietnam was apocalyptic. It was a barbarous, inhuman and exhausting war for all involved, and claimed between 2.5 million to 4 million lives, most of them Vietnamese civilians, however, in the end, the 'United States' was defeated and withdrew from Vietnam. 

The line in the song, “I met a young woman whose body was burning” was prophetic and prescient, because it was ten years later, in 1972, that the world would see the unforgettable photo of the little Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, running naked from her napalmed village. This image would drive home to the world, the horrors that that US was inflicting on Viet Nam.

Bob Dylan was perhaps also concerned about a possible nuclear war, as tensions between Russia and the U.S., which came to be called the Cuban Missile Crisis, peaked in October 1962. And ‘Hard Rain’ could possibly refer to nuclear-rain - radioactive fallout.

HARD RAIN’S A’ GONNA FALL

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? 
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warning
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing
Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Oh, what will you do now, my blue-eyed son? 

Oh, what will you do now, my darling young one?

I’m a-going back out ’fore the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the colour, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-going to fall

Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXn9ZKPx6CY

Patti Smith - Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize performance 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941PHEJHCwU

JAZZ MUSIC IS LIKE GOOD CONVERSATION

In truth, the art of all music is the art of listening. 

     Listening is what musicians do, whether it is western classical music, or Indian classical music. Listening is vital, especially in ensemble music, and in music where there is an element of improvisation.
Jazz is not esoteric, difficult music to listen to. Jazz is just music that has to be listened to attentively. 

     "Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate upon it in order to get the most of it. You must absorb most of it. The harmonies within the music can relax, soothe, and uplift the mind when you concentrate upon and absorb it. Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls of those who play it was well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body"  ~ Horace Silver – pianist and composer

     Jazz compositions are highly structured and completely planned pieces of music, at the same time, jazz is a musical art form that is partly planned and partly spontaneous, this means that jazz musicians in an ensemble play to an agreed upon musical theme, and while playing the tune, the musicians in the band add their own ideas to it in a musical dialogue, spontaneously improvising as they go along.

Recognizing Jazz

     To recognize jazz music, the music should swing, or, have passages of improvisation, or, have intriguingly placed flattened, dissonant, (blue) notes, and/or, create a variety of emotions.

.     Jazz Swings - it has a rhythm that makes you sway and swing, rather than rock back and forth, like the Duke Ellington song title says, ‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing’. 
.     Jazz has passages within the arrangement for musical improvisation.
.     Jazz has some flattened, dissonant and what are called blue notes in odd places within the composition.
.    And Jazz creates and conveys a variety of emotions in the listener.

Jazz is a journey of inventiveness and discovery

     "The essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing & instrumental personality." Mose Allison

      Jazz performers, whether they are vocalists or instrumentalists, are highly disciplined because jazz is a relatively complex music with several musical, technical, intellectual, and emotional elements happening in the music simultaneously, that's why jazz is called a musical art form.

Jazz could be said to be the art of listening and co-creating music.  

     Jazz musicians get together and play to a set musical theme - the planned part - and while playing the theme as planned, each musician adds their thoughts and ideas to the overall theme through their voice or musical instrument by listening to the last soloist and carefully responding.
Jazz musicians exchange ideas by evaluating and responding.  

     Every jazz musician learns to listen; it is a key skill which they deliberately develop and work on. It’s a jazz musician’s discipline to listen carefully and respond suitably. They exchange ideas, and this  sharing requires evaluation and response. ‘Evaluation’ is listening and understanding to what the others have said or played, and ‘response’ is in the clarifying, acknowledging, and retorting befittingly. Each musician adds to the ideas of the soloist; taking the thought further; continuing the thread, or, by re-joining with a new idea that is relevant to the theme which is in turn taken up and responded to by the musician who takes the next solo. What they improvise is always relevant to the conversation they're having.
Jazz musicians have good conversations. 

     Each soloist in the conversation responds to the mood of the music and to the other musicians in the conversation by extemporizing musical notes from their instruments; first creating a phrase, then a sentence and going on to creating a whole paragraph.      
     The beauty of the discipline of jazz, is that each musician plays an agreed upon number of measures, sometimes four, or eight, twelve or more measures. Each musician complies with the discipline, all the while being thematic, and, within the arrangement and sentiment of the tune. So, in every good jazz session, whether the musicians are playing standards or new compositions in a formal setting, or in an impromptu jam session, they listen to each other and improvise, but they keep the theme in mind and add their own ideas to the theme.
Listening to jazz
     For a lover of jazz, listening to jazz is an absorbing and immersive experience. To listen to Jazz and all music in which there is improvisation, is to listen to great technical prowess by the musician and to revel in the creativity of the musician one is listening to, in her/his ability to improvise and innovate while making complete sense.
     A jazz lover is accustomed to listening carefully/attentively to music and therefore is open to listening to all music, specially that which is involving. And due to this attentiveness to music, hears beauty in all types of music and is especially taken in/up by music which stimulates emotions and the intellect.

     A jazz lover often likes the classical music of their region, whether it is European Classical music or Hindustani classical, or Carnatic classical, or regional music from any of the continents on the planet. They even like pop music, folk and rock music. Jazz lovers usually like everything that catches the fancy of their intellect. However, their greatest musical preference is, more often than not - jazz.  
     Listening is not only the priority of the musician, but it is also that of the listener. Jazz is the art of intelligent musicians. But as Art Blakey says, "It takes an intelligent ear to listen to jazz." 

MOODS FOR VIOLIN & PIANO, OP. 15

MOODS FOR VIOLIN & PIANO, OP. 15 

COMPOSED BY VIVEK VENUGOPAL - VISITA MUSIC

     The whole narrative and concept behind Moods for Violin and Piano by Vivek Venugopal - Visita Music, is that each piece is written to explicitly pinpoint moods, and express them through music.

     The composer has therefore named each mood in the seven short compositions that make up this album. The moods are: pensive and hopeful, blissful, uncertain, confused and desolate, whimsical randomness and existential absurdity, romance, and, lost and disenchanted with a glimmer of hope. 

Vivek Venugopal - Visita Music

     Moods for Violin & Piano, Opus. 15, can be considered a contemporary western classical version of the moods that Indian ragas evoke, so instead of reviewing each piece, or each mood, as the composer has conceived them, we will only describe the music generally so that the listener has some level of understanding of the music, and we’ll leave it to listeners to interpret the moods as they choose while they listen.

     A general alert: when one listens to any classical music, Indian or Western, the listener must necessarily engage with the music with greater intensity than when listening to, say, pop music. And to appreciate western music, especially classical music, one needs to be able to recognise and appreciate harmony, the simultaneously sounded tones in chords, and the variations of harmonic devices that composers and musicians use - the intervallic and chordal elements that are used in the accompaniment to melodies.  

     In Moods for Violin and Piano, the composer voices melodies and creates interesting textures with subtle changes in dynamics or volume of individual notes in the melodies.  The violin and piano interact cohesively - with the violin taking tasty, tuneful linear melodic lines, with the piano as the chordal and rhythmic partner, using contrapuntal voicing, artistically distributing spaces, notes and chords. Of course, the piano does take the lead melody too, but continues as the chordal and rhythmic partner.

     To this writer/listener, Moods for Violin & Piano, Opus. 15, suggests a sound track, or incidental music that would suit a movie melodrama, or theatrical performance in any country, any language. The music is universal. 

Nadine Crasto

Nourhe Khate

     Finally, both musicians who have performed on this recording are Indians, one based in Mumbai and the other in Nagaland. The pianist, Nadine Crasto is a Steinway Artist who graduated with a Masters from the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the violinist, Nourhe Khate from Nagaland, graduated with a Masters from Trinity Laban Conservatory, London. It goes without saying, playing instrumental duets requires teamwork, cooperation and mutual respect, and these two musicians, are on the same page musically, so these compositions are in good hands.

Vivek  Nadine  Nourhe

Cover Painting:  Naina Maithani

Listen to Moods For Violin and Piano

Blissful - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b27A1paqAE4

Romance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06MRZolhOcM

Pensive and Hopeful - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDmsAuU1mZI

ELEMENTS OF MUSIC

MELODY, RHYTHM & HARMONY

     This is a shot at sketching out the elements of music to a casual listener who may want to know a little more about what music is made of.
     Since the basics of music is the basis of all music, we will outline the difference between ‘Western’ music and ‘Indian’ music with reference to Hindustani and Carnatic classical music.

     All music is essentially melody and rhythm. Melody is the most memorable part of a song. Rhythm is the ‘pulse’ which makes the melody interesting. By combining the two music is created. 
     Melody is nothing without a beat to discipline it, and the rhythm or beat is nothing but a pulse without a melody to make the rhythm meaningful.
     Melody can be thought of as the top of a pyramid. 

     “Melody is to music what a scent is to the senses” - Marcus Paus.
     Melodies or tunes, are the sweet and agreeable series of high and low-pitched tones that are played or sung for various durations of time that one can easily catch, hum or whistle. 

     Rhythm is the backbone that defines melody.
     To discipline the variations of time in which each note is played, the tune is divided into rhythmic pulses or beats. Music makes ‘sense’ only when melody and rhythm is combined. It’s the second element of music that makes music, music!

     Rhythm measures the movement of sound - It’s how music is systematically divided into beats, a regulated succession of strong and weak pulses that measure the motion of the tune and create symmetry through “an order of movement”.
     Rhythm is music’s pattern in time, the regular, repeated pattern of beats, meter, tempo, and speed of the beat that drives music forward.
   Indian classical music.

     “Though Hindustani and Carnatic are considered to be the two main traditions of Indian music, there is only one music in India – the music of the raga” Raghava R. Menon – The Penguin Dictionary of Indian Classical Music.
     Hindustani & Carnatic classical music use just rhythm and melody. The music of the raga is always made by a melody maker and a rhythm maker. 

     There may be accompanists on other melody instruments such as a violin or flute or harmonium or sarangi supporting the soloist (lead melody musician), but they shadow the soloist, and support the soloist by playing the melody. 

     The only other musician and instrument on stage is usually, a tanpura, which provides the drone in the key in which the raga is being played.

     The only true accompanists are the rhythm players. Percussionists. Typically, ‘tabla’ in Hindustani and ‘mrindangam’ in Carnatic! Though very often, especially in Carnatic music, more percussion instruments are used in performances.
     In Indian classical music the rhythm or beat is called Tala (pronounced taal) and the basic rhythmic structure is very complex. Tala is a rhythm cycle which consist of a number of syllables in repeated patterns on which particular beats in the meter are emphasized. 

     Because of the use of only two elements of music, and two performers, the melody maker and the rhythm maker; both the performers can be very flexible and creative in performance, so both, the melody and the rhythm player can generate intricate patterns of very creative and exciting rhythms and melodies while playing together and while improvising on a raga. In fact, one could say there is a profound and scintillating exhibition of mathematics and science in Indian classical rhythms. 
     Harmony. The foundation of Western Music.
     Harmony is, when different voices and different instruments sound different notes simultaneously, and together are pleasing to the ear - sweet toned and harmonious. Polyphony, (in music, the simultaneous combination of two or more tones or melodic lines (the term derives from the Greek word for “many sounds”). Brittanica
     In all Western music, playing notes that are melodious and sound good together is the norm. When these notes are stacked and played together, they are called chords.
    The 12-tone scale is used in both Indian and Western music. Within the 7 natural notes in the scale and the 5 extended tones of the twelve scale degrees, the simplest harmonious notes played together are the 1st, 3rd & 5th notes in a scale, that is, Sa, Ga & Pa, or, Do, Me & So, or, C, E & G in the standard scale of C on a keyboard. The first voice, Sa, or Do or C, high-pitched, the second slightly lower in tone corresponding with Pa, or So, or G, and the third slightly lower at Ga, or, Me, or E, and the fourth taking the low end of the scale. In vocal music, these pitches are called Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass.

     The idea of harmony opened up whole new vistas of musical ideas and possibilities of orchestration.

Musicians began to write music incorporating all the 3 or 4 tones at the same time; composing melodies that used four voices together, and, as they went along, began to find other harmonious combinations and blends of notes or ‘chords which inspired more musical explorations with more instruments, progressing from a keyboard playing four different harmonious notes to create a single melody, to small groups of instruments playing together, to very large groups of musicians playing a huge variety of instruments in a symphony orchestra which would include several violins, violas, cellos, double basses, piccolos, flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trombones, trumpets, tubas, harp, drums, tympani, cymbals and gongs and xylophone.
     This led to sections of instruments coming in at different timings or places in the music. Different sections of diverse instruments brought in tones, textures and timbres, and different sounds and resonances, to create balance and contrast in the music.
     This disciplined and harmonious blending of notes, and the clever balancing of the sounds of various instruments which add colour and texture to a piece of music by a whole orchestra is called orchestration. 
     Classical music is all about harmony and orchestration. Classical composers pre-plan every detail of the composition. The musicians do not improvise, they play their part. The whole orchestra or ensemble plays tunefully and harmoniously what the composer has imagined and written for them to play and sing.

     Harmony in western music is a hard disciplinarian. Just as rhythm is in Indian music, because the musicians always play in coordination with other musicians in large or small ensembles and still adhere to the principles of harmony within the structure of the music.  

     The rhythms of western music are rather staid compared to Indian classical music, because the musicians always play in coordination with other musicians.
     In jazz music too, while improvisation is a major component, and compositions have spaces for singers or instrumentalists to ad lib and take improvised solos, it is still a highly coordinated endeavour for musicians to play their part within the many instruments in a band and the chordal and harmonic structure of the music.
     The discipline of harmony holds true even for a solo performance, for example a guitar soloist, or piano soloist, or even if one takes a jazz piano trio, all three musicians – piano, bass and drums have to stay in harmony with others in the group and within the structure of the understood chord changes and the fixed rhythm, to synchronize and harmonize.
     Arrangement is the unheard ingredient of western music i.e., in Afro-Cuban, blues, country, dance music, European, folk, gospel, hip hop, hymns, jazz, Latin, pop, R&B, rock, rock and roll, soul, and other forms of music.  
     The arranger custom designs rhythm and harmonic structure of a well-known tune to suit the style and voice of the singer or lead instrumentalist and the backing band according to its size and the number of instruments to bring out the best of the tune and from the musicians, while give the melody musical variety.  
    The three elements of music - Melody, the top of the pyramid. Rhythm, the backbone. Harmony, the base of a pyramid that helps support the melody and rhythm. Harmony is the foundation that gives rhythm and melody substance.