Selected Performance |
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| Ragam-Tanam-Pallavi ("Tamarasadala Netri Tyagarajuni Mitri . . . ") set
in rāga Bhairavi and Aditāla. Performers: Ramnad Krishnan
(voice), V. Thyagarajan (violin), T. Ranganathan (mridangam),
V. Nagarajan (kañjira), and P. Srinivasan (tampura). |
| Ramnad
Krishnan: Vidwan/Music of South India, Songs of the Carnatic
Tradition (Electra/Nonesuch 9 72023-2). |
| Recorded in December
1967 in New York. |
| Tyagaraju
(1775-1835) was a Telugu Brahmin who came to prominence as
a composer and musician in Tanjavur. His particular sect,
the Smartas, made links between local devotional (bhakti)
traditions and Sanskritic tradition. |
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| South Indian musicians
associate a number of miraculous events with Tyagaraja, some of which,
no doubt, connected with his ecstatic worship. He described to his pupils,
his visions of the god, Rama on which occassions he composed new kritis.
He refused to sing or to teach court musicians who sang his compositions
after hearing others sing them. |
| However, some of his
pupils who became composers and musicians put his kritis into notation.
In this rāga-tānam-pallavi, Ramnad Krishnan (1918-73) uses the pallavi from Tyagaraja's kriti to the goddess Amba. The
text above shows something unusual about Tyagaraja: he used his own name
instead of a mudra (nom de plume). This performance also applies
a characteristic Tyagaraju approach by employing only a brief part of
the pallavi theme. (See Catlin 2000: 220-22 and Pesch 1999: 181-82.) |
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| Rāga Bhairavi |
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| Note that catus śruti dhaivat appears in ascent, while śuddha dhaivat occurs in descent. |
| The pallavi and following improvisations are in Ādi tāla. |
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| PERFORMANCE ORGANIZATION |