for students and lovers of Carnatic music
The period 1750-1850 was a golden era in world music, when some of the greatest musician-composers lived and enriched the field. In Europe, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann and others lived during this period and created the symphony repertoire. It is a significant coincidence that the Carnatic Music trinity—Tyagaraja (1767-1847), Muthuswami Dikshitar (1776-1835) and Syama Sastry … Read more
Custom SafeSearch – press and websites For up-to-date information from several leading periodicals and other websites, simply type one or several keywords such as a personal name or institution you want to learn more about (e.g. “carnatic”, “karnatak composer”, “hindustani musician”, “ragamalika”); optionally add a city or state (e.g. “Kumbakonam music”, “Madurai singer”, “Trivandrum music festival”, “Chennai music season”): … Read more
At first, this question seems easy to answer: just watch performers from either strand of Indian music and you’ll know Which is Which, merely going by the instruments in use, or how they dress and watching the body language involved: harmonium or sarangi vs. violin for melodic accompaniment for most vocal recitals, and tabla drums … Read more
Dr. Srinivasa Ayya Srinivasan, a dear friend of ours, and an Indologist at University of Hamburg, Germany, passed away on May 2nd, 2019. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Pia Srinivasan, who was a student of late Rajeswari Padmanabhan. We pay homage to his great soul with a few of his favorite compositions … Read more
In Tanjore as a Seat of Music (pp. 420-426), S. Seetha explains the scope envisaged by Venkatamakhi when presenting his mela arrangement >> Venkatamakhi while justifying the derivation of 72 melakartas by permutation and combination interestingly remarks that countries are many with people having variety of tastes and it is to please them ragas have been … Read more
The non-sacrificial, musical counterpart to Sāma-Gāna in ancient times was Gandharva-Sangīta, later Sangīta, which has three divisions; vocal, instrumental, and dance. Performed by “Gandharva” musicians in Indra’s heavenly court, earthly Gandharva-Sangīta was a replica of this celestial music. […] Gandharva-Sangīta was also associated with pūjā, a form of worship with non-Aryan or indigenous roots that … Read more
by Ludwig Pesch For this musicologist and author, there are good reasons to believe that Carnatic music matters, perhaps more than ever and almost anywhere in the world. So why not perform and teach it in the service of better education for all, for ecological awareness or in order to promote mutual respect in spite … Read more
The notion of a particular time prescribed for ragas (gāna kāla) plays a greater role in Hindustani music than for exponents of its southern counterpart where sārvakālika ragas prevail: ragas suited to any day or night time. A few ragas nevertheless continue to be associated with the moods indicated by song lyrics (notably in dance … Read more