How Theory transformed Carnatic music

Ideas and innovations in Indian classical music
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shankarank
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Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

How Theory transformed Carnatic music

Post by shankarank »

A good presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnKy8mh9Hk4

But still rAgAs gleaned theoretically - like the Simhendra Madyamam he mentions - still face limitations in expressing music - like for example the miSra cApu kritis in that rAgA are still unconvincing. They do not bring out the peculiarity of that odd rhythm - the tAla is just there as a technical requirement.

When he finally chose to present analogies from sciences on how theory is used to predict - he failed to mention the famous Dirac prediction of positron - the first ever anti-particle ( as well as the general concept of anti-matter) found with a paper and a pencil.

shankarank
Posts: 4041
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: How Theory transformed Carnatic music

Post by shankarank »

Jyotiswarupini - presented by Sanjay in his Charsur Album NGS - Dec 2000 concert - gAnAmuda pAdan - has some weightiness to it purely from the way the kriti has been laid out by kOteeswara Iyer. Plus Shri KRM embellishes very well taking advantage of it. There is a moment of exhilaration in his flourish at some point as he plays the patterns of 3 starting from 2 mAtra offset to reach samam with just tatom,tatom,tatom.. 6 times.

Nick H
Posts: 9379
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03

Re: How Theory transformed Carnatic music

Post by Nick H »

shankarank wrote:A good presentation...
A philosophical discourse on the relationship between theory and practice! :)

Thank you. I was able to learn quite a lot from those very few minutes.

vasanthakokilam
Posts: 10956
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01

Re: How Theory transformed Carnatic music

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Thanks shankarank for surfacing that talk here. The speaker is quite eloquent and concise at the same time which makes listening to what we all know already a great pleasure.

At a basic level, a theory starts with trying to put a framework around explaining what is observed ( practice ) but it is also expected to make predictions/expansions which practice can then validate. Venkatamakhin was a great theoretician of that kind.

He actually did one more thing than what the speaker had time to talk about. That I think shows how great a theoretician he was.

Having first created the 32 melas, he could have simply noted down vivadi ragas like Nattai as exceptions. There were not that many and so that may have been OK. But he is no ordinary theoretician, to him that would amount to a 'hack' and not a beautiful model that is self consistent and accommodated neatly everything that is known then.

So he introduced a general purpose vivadi scheme in his framework. With a good sleight of hand ( and a stroke of genius at that), he added the R3, G1, D3, N1 to create 16 symbols of out of 12 srutis. He wanted to keep the basic rule that a specific solfa syllable like S, R, G etc. can occur only once in a mela. That is, you can not construct a mela with both variation of R, G, M, D , N. You can only use one. That is the foundation on which he built his framework.

How does one keep that rule that is a foundation of his framework while also accommodating vivadi ragas that break that rule. Anyone else would have thrown up their hand and declare it as an unsolvable problem due to the blatantly contradictory requirements. He of course came up with a brilliant solution. His genius mind should have thought about it like this. "If I needed a mela with srutis "S small G big G M P...." which is not allowed, why don't I create an alias for Small G and call it R3 and rewrite it as 'S R3 Big G M P..' ?". Now the rule of 'one solfa symbol' is satisfied.
Similarly to accommodate "S Small Ri Big Ri M P", he created an alias for Big R as G1, so he could write it down as S Small R G1 M P there by again restoring the rule. He did similar things on the upper tetrachord with D3 and N1.

Is it an over reach? The 32 melas are good enough to explain the vast super majority of ragas and the 40 are needed to accommodate a few handful. A gutsy move indeed. My own hypothesis is he liked the aesthetics of his model, it is symmetric, well rounded with no rough edges etc. and he probably felt confident it is the right model.

In physics also people talk about aesthetics of theories. There may be two theories that explained everything equally well but people will be more prone to accept one that has good aesthetics: fewer concepts, nice structure, no willy nilly assumptions or exceptions etc.

As the speaker says, his scheme led to enormous adoption by latter day composers. I am sure Venkatamakhin would have been especially pleased that there are now compositions in Chalanattai and rasikapriya which are as vivadi as ragas can get.

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