Santoor

The Santoor in the Hindustani Tradition

The santoor is a trapezoid-shaped hammered dulcimer with around 100 steel strings arranged across 25 wooden bridges. Each bridge carries four strings tuned in unison, so a single mallet stroke sounds four strings together, producing the instrument's characteristic shimmer. The santoor belongs to the Chordophone family and holds a distinct place in Hindustani classical music as the only major concert instrument played by striking its strings rather than plucking or bowing them.

From Sufiana Mausiqi to the Concert Stage

The instrument's ancestry lies in Persia, where the santur served devotional and court music for centuries. Reaching Kashmir through Central Asian exchange, it became the foundation of Sufiana Mausiqi, the mystical music of Kashmiri Islam, where players accompanied Sufi poetry and devotional gatherings. For most of its history in India the santoor remained a regional instrument, unknown on the Hindustani concert stage and considered unsuited to classical demands: struck strings cannot sustain or bend pitch the way a raga requires.

Pandit Shivkumar Sharma and the Classical Transformation

Pandit Shivkumar Sharma (1938–2022) changed that. He encountered the santoor at thirteen and spent years modifying the instrument and developing techniques to meet the requirements of raga performance. He expanded the range to three chromatic octaves and developed a method of approximating meend (pitch glide) through rapid alternating strokes between adjacent bridges. He learned to control resonance through damping so that melodic lines stayed clear. His first Hindustani recital on santoor was in 1955. The Sangeet Natak Akademi Award came in 1986, followed by the Padma Shri in 1991 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2001. His collaborations with flautist Hariprasad Chaurasia produced recordings that reached audiences well beyond the concert hall.

Construction: Wood, Bridges, and Strings

Indian concert santoors are built from walnut, the traditional tonewood of Kashmir. The trapezoid body is hollowed to form a resonating chamber; its sloped sides allow the two hands to reach different registers without one arm crossing the other. Twenty-five wooden bridges cross the body, dividing the string field into bass (right side) and treble (left side) registers. Four strings run over each bridge, tuned in unison and anchored to tuning pegs on the far edge of the body. Treble strings are steel; bass strings are brass-wound steel. The wooden mallets, called mezrabs, are 25–30cm shafts of walnut or maple with curved or padded tips, held between the fingers with a loose grip so the wrist can deliver a controlled bouncing stroke.

Playing Technique: Mallets, Damping, and Meend

The player sits before the instrument, which rests on a low frame, and uses both hands to produce melodic lines: the right hand covers the bass register, the left the treble. Struck strings continue vibrating until stopped, so the player must damp strings throughout the phrase to prevent pitches from running together. This balance between sounding and stopping requires coordination that takes years to acquire. Meend, the continuous pitch slide that raga grammar demands, the santoor produces through rapid alternating strokes between adjacent bridges, creating an auditory illusion of glide where no physical pitch bend occurs. No other instrument in Indian classical music approximates pitch bending this way.

Performance Context

A santoor recital follows the standard Hindustani format: alap (slow, unaccompanied raga development), jor (rhythmic development without a fixed cycle), jhala (fast climax section), and gat (composed piece with tabla accompaniment). The instrument's short decay suits alap in particular: phrases resolve into silence between notes, giving the opening section a meditative quality. In gat sections the percussive attack delivers fast passages with crystalline clarity.