Music related questions

[DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA]

At 04:55 PM 5/17/98 PDT, S.Krishna wrote:

>This is an interesting point; however tyAgarAja seems to have used the
>sambOdhana at the end of the sentence frequently...as random examples,
>we have "nenaruncarA! na paini cAla......zrirAma!"
>(simhavAhini),"santamulEka soukhyamulEdu...."(sAma),"vinA nasakoni
>yunnanurA"(pratapavarALi)..in fact a large number of the krtis where he
>addresses his own heart/himself i.e. O manasA!" all have the sambOdhana
>at the end of the pallavi e.g. "rAmabhakti samrAjyam"(zuddhabangaLa),
>"nidhi cAla sukhama?"(kalyANI), "sangItajnAnamu bhaktivinA"( dhanyAsi)
>etc....
>

I tried to indicate why singing 'bAlakanakamaya' starting with
anupallavi is effective. If you sing it starting with anupallavi
you have agreement with conversational sentence structure and
intonation making it effective.I do not think I said that tyAgarAja
retained the conversational sentence structure in his compositions.
Various restrictions like yati and prasa are there for kritis
also and this will come in the way of any such attempt. In
'bAlakanakamaya' itself it is not there because saMbOdhana is in
anupallavi. I did say that there is a frequent blending of speech
intonation with rAga phrases. This has to be expected because telugu
being the mother tongue of tyAgarAja such blending will occur naturally
and automatically without any conscious effort on his part.

I wonder whether the same intonation and rAga phrase blending is
responsible for the popularity of pApanAzaM zivan's compositions.
The intonation of cajoling in 'kA vA vA' the intonation corresponding
to an inquiry in 'nAnoru vilayATTu bommayA' are unmistakable.

If you take the composition 'citraratnamaya' in kharaharapriya
the reason for singing it starting it with anupallavi is either
because tyAgarAja composed it to be sung that way only or the
disciples have settled for starting it with anupallavi instead of
singing it with an atIta graha. This is because 'mitri' at the start
of pallavi will be meaningless without the syllable 'sau' which is
at the end of the pallavi.

>The feature that you pointed out i.e. the rising trend in notes ( in the
>pallavi in this case) seems to be a feature common in the anupallavi of
>tyAgaraja kr*tis.
>

It is true that usually anupallavi is at a higher pitch than pallavi
though there are exceptions. This is because in a kriti also delineation
of raga is done and pallavi starts usally in madhya sthAyi and by the time
of anupallavi reaches tArasthAyi is reached. But this is there in tyAgarAja
kritis without violating the intonation.

Finally an artist is a creator. To create one should have freedom.
It is a freedom to do some thing or not to do something or to do
something unexpected (kartum akartum anyadhAkartum). We can analyse
what an artist has done and understand it. But we cannot make rules
about what an artist has to do. That will be interfering with his
freedom. Even the exceptions of an artist have a purpose.

regards,

sarma.

>REgards,
>Krishna
>
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