Today happens to be the birth day of Tiruppamburam Natarajasundaram Pillai. An eminent Nagasvara vidwan and musician of a high caliber, he is one of those musicians over whom the dust of history and passage of time has settled. Here is a small tribute of remembrance to him, his music, his lineage and contributions (translated/summarized primarily from Dr.BM Sundaram's Mangala Isai Mannargal).
Tiruppamburam Natarajasundaram Pillai was born on 15th December 1869 as the son of a nagasvaram vidvan Swaminatha Pillai.
He and his brother Tiruppamburam Sivasubrahmaniam were put under the tutelage of Injikkudi Kumarappillai. After their having learnt the nagasvaram, their father wanted them to increase their keertana repertoires and located Umayalpuram Duraswamy Ayyar and Sattanur Panchanadha Iyer who were then considered the repositories of Tyagaraja and Dikshitar’s compositions, respectively.Swaminatha Pillai brought these two musicians to his town and made his sons learn under them. Natarajasundaram Pillai and Sivasubrahmanya Pillai started the tradition of nagaswaram rendering as a duet. It was said that Ramanathapuram Srinivasa Iyengar and Sarabha Sastri were among those fond of their music. Sarabha Sastry is also said to have shown his harikatha nirupanams to Natarajasundaram Pillai to seek his opinions on them. The tavil vidvans who accompanied them include Srivanchiyam Govinda Pillai, Mannargudi Pallupakkiri Pillai, Ammapettai Pakkiri Pillai Vazhuvur Muttuviru Pillai etc. Among nagasvara vidwans, it was the more popular approach to learn musical compositions as svaras and ignore the role of sahitya as it was not applicable to an instrument. However the composition will shine only if the sahitya elements are incorporated with the necessary blowing techniques such as akaram and tuttukaram at the appropriate places. Natarajasundaram and his brother were said to be famous for playing compositions on the nagasvaram keeping in mind the sahitya bhava, as well.
Another giant Veena Dhanammal also learnt her repertoire of Dikshitar Krtis from Sattanur Panchanada Iyer and is said to have spoken highly of the raga bhava that she found in Panchanada Iyer's renditions. Once, after many years Natarajasundaram Pillai came to visit Dhanammal and suggested that they should sing together a few Dikshitar kritis that they had learnt from their Ayya. It is said that both sang and found, that after all those years there was not a whit of difference in their versions. Both had retained the music to the minutest sangati.
Natarajasundaram Pillai published a collection of Dikshitar compositions as he learnt from Sattanur Panchanada Iyer (who in turn learnt from Tiruvarur Shuddha Maddalam Tambiyappa Pillai) titled Dikshita Kirtana Prakashika. This edition was in Tamil and contained 50 notated compositions of Muttuswami Dikshitar. It serves today as an authentic cross-reference of the compositions of Dikshitar outside of the Subbarama Dikshitar lineage. The famous flautist Tiruppamburam Svaminatha Pillai was his son. He passed away in the year 16.11.1938.
Over the last year, a few of us have been working on generating an electronic edition of his Dikshita Kirtana Prakashika(the English version of which will be released in February around the same timeframe the original Dikshita Kirtana Prakashika was released in 1936).
Tiruppamburam Natarajasundaram Pillai
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raviraj
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Thanks to Vidya, we would be able to see this long forgotten , earliest Tamil work covering a trinitarian's compositions with notation, coming from the period when the default lingua franca was telugu. Apart from being the repository of close to 200 Dikshitar compositions via an authentic lineage, a few other points about this nagasvara vidvans stand out:
1. They were the earliest nagasvara duo, a conception of their father Svaminatha Pillai ( another titan from an other era).
2. They had also in their possession an number of manuscripts, notating whatever they learnt by hand, a rarity among vidvans. Their collection was apparently comparable to the one of another nagasvara vidvan, Rakti Veerusvami Pillai ( the composer of the Kalyani Adi tala varna "Vanajakshi"). In fact it was through the Tiruppamburam manuscripts that it was conclusively confirmed that the Vasanta krithi "Sri Kamakshi kataakshi" (mis)attributed to Subbaraya Shastri, based on the appearence of the word "Kumara", was actually a composition of Tiruvarur Ramasvami Pillai ( whose mudra Vedapuri, appears as well in the composition).
3. Compositions like the chaturdasa ragamalika " Sri Visvanatham" or the ethereal "Hastivadanaya" in Navaroz were popularized by the duo. IIRC they had also learnt the Ramasvami Dikshitar's magnum opus the 108 raga tala malika, which none knows/renders today. It was apparently last heard of when, in the 1960's Subbarama Dikshitar's disciple Seranmadevi Subramanya Sastrigal rendered excerpts of it in the Music Academy.
Raj
1. They were the earliest nagasvara duo, a conception of their father Svaminatha Pillai ( another titan from an other era).
2. They had also in their possession an number of manuscripts, notating whatever they learnt by hand, a rarity among vidvans. Their collection was apparently comparable to the one of another nagasvara vidvan, Rakti Veerusvami Pillai ( the composer of the Kalyani Adi tala varna "Vanajakshi"). In fact it was through the Tiruppamburam manuscripts that it was conclusively confirmed that the Vasanta krithi "Sri Kamakshi kataakshi" (mis)attributed to Subbaraya Shastri, based on the appearence of the word "Kumara", was actually a composition of Tiruvarur Ramasvami Pillai ( whose mudra Vedapuri, appears as well in the composition).
3. Compositions like the chaturdasa ragamalika " Sri Visvanatham" or the ethereal "Hastivadanaya" in Navaroz were popularized by the duo. IIRC they had also learnt the Ramasvami Dikshitar's magnum opus the 108 raga tala malika, which none knows/renders today. It was apparently last heard of when, in the 1960's Subbarama Dikshitar's disciple Seranmadevi Subramanya Sastrigal rendered excerpts of it in the Music Academy.
Raj
Last edited by raviraj on 15 Dec 2008, 20:37, edited 1 time in total.
