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Sri Mutuswami Dikshitar and Sri Vidya (2 of 8)

13SEP

Sri Dikshitar and the Western Music

While the Dikshitar family lived in Manali, a Zamindari near Madras, the family
enjoyed the patronage of the Zamindar Muddukrishna Mudaliyar and his son
Venkatakrishna Mudaliar (sometimes referred to as Chinnaswami). The Zamindars were
closely connected with the East India Company as its Dubash (interpreters); and in
that capacity they often called on Fort St. George the seat of the Company in South
India. Since the Zamindars were reputed art connoisseurs, they were regularly
invited to Fort St. George to listen to the European Airs played by the Irish
bands. The bands played simple Celtic marching tunes, lilting melodies, easy on the
drums and bagpipes and flutes.

The zamindars would sometimes take along with them the Dikshitar brothers, who were
in their teens, to listen to the “English” bands. That was how Muthuswami Dikshitar
and his younger brother Baluswami came to gain familiarity with the Western music.

During this association, it is said, that at the suggestion of Col. Browne who
was in the service of the East India Company, Muthuswami Dikshitar composed the
text in Sanskrit and Telugu for well known Western tunes. He also composed other
songs in Sanskrit and Telugu based on Western notes. The collection of these
compositions numbering about forty later came to be known as “Nottuswara
Sahithya“. Nottu is Telugu/Tamil transformation of the word Note. It is a unique
genre of music.

A list of about forty of the Nottuswara works of Dikshitar is given in the website
KarnATik

The noted scholar musician Shri M.R.Shankara Murthy has , however, in his book ,
listed 30 nottu songs, in addition to eight other songs. Please also check

http://maddy06.blogspot.in/2010/09/nottuswara-muthuswamy-dikshitars.html

Of these about forty compositions of “Nottuswara sahithya“, the notation is

available for only thirty-six compositions. The text or sahithya for these
compositions are in Sanskrit and Telugu and they are in the form of verses or
songs. They do not have segments of Pallavi, Anupallavai and Charanam, as one would
find in the classic kriti format of Carnatic music. The compositions are not in
Shankarabharanam per se ; but are based on simple melodies and devoid of the
ornamentation (gamaka) that is characteristic of Carnatic music.

These songs or verses are in praise of the different Gods and Goddesses of
different holy places, such as Srirangam, Tirupathi, Kanchi, Madurai, etc.

[The songs are praise of Ganesha (1),Saraswathi (2), Shiva (11), Vishnu/Krishna
(5), Devi (10), Skanda (4), Anjaneya (1), Rama (6)]

Curiously, those songs composed during the end years of the 18th century bear the
“Mudra” or the composer’s signature as “Guruguha”. That was several years before
Dikshitar composed his first kriti, as Vak_geya Kara, (Srinathadi guruguho
jayath...) on the hills of Tiruttani (around 1809). The “Nottuswara “songs were
thus the forerunners of Dikshitar’s monumental classic compositions; and Dikshitar
had decided upon his signature, Mudra, quite early in his life, even before he left
for Varanasi.

Among these songs, about thirteen of them were replicas of well-known European
songs/tunes of those days. Dikshitar set Sanskrit words to the music of those
songs. These were the songs:

Sr.

No.

Song commencing

with words

Replica of the song or the tune01Shantatam_PahimamSangita ShyamaleBritish National

Anthem “God save the King/queen “02Vande MeenakshiIrish melody “Limerick”03Vara
shivabalam“Castilian Maid” by Thomas Moore04Peetavarnam BhajePersian verse “taza
ba-taza nau ba-nau” which B. H. Palmer and Gertrude Bell made into pleasant English
jingle.05Jagadeesa guruguha“Lord MacDonald’s Reel”06Subramanyam Surasevyamthe
regimental march of the Grenadiere guards, the senior foot guards regiment of the
British Army-“British Grenadiere”07Kancheesam Ekambaram“country
dance”08Ramachandram RajeevakshamEnglish song “Let us lead a life of
Pleasure”09Sakala suravinuhatune of “Quick March”10SakthiSahitha Ganapathimsong
“Voulez Vouz Dansers”11Sowri VidhinuteEnglish song “oh Whistle and I will come to
you, my lad.”12Kamala VanditaPlayful tune of ‘Galopede’ folk dance where men and
women in two lines dance briskly13Shyamale MeenakshiNursery rhyme ”Twinkle twinkle
little star” based on French tune Ah! Vous dirai-je

As regards the rest of the songs composed by Sri Muthuswami Dikshitar, they were
all based on the Western scale of C Major, which corresponds to the scale of
Shankarabharanam of Carnatic music and Bhilaval that of Hindustani music. [The
songs were not, however, in Shankarabharanam or Bhilaval per se.] These were
independent works based on western notes; and were not replicas of European tunes.

All the forty or more songs were set to Tisra Eka Tala (three units) or Chaturasra
Eka Tala(four units) which corresponds to ¾ and 4/4 timings of the Western Music.
The range –Shruthi – of these songs is generally in middle octave.

The songs were written in Telugu script. The preserved manuscripts of the songs
were, years later (around 1832), presented by the well-known musicians of that
period Kuppaiah and Seshaiah to Charles Philip Brown (an officer of the East India
Company, who did remarkable work in classical Telugu literature) while he was at
Madras. They were called a collection of “Jathi_swaramulu”. It appears those songs
were, at the time, used as lessons for the beginners. One of them was the popular
Sanskrit song “Vara Veena Mrudu Pani” in Raga Mohanam which was converted into
a Gitam. The song is practiced as Gitam by all beginners, even today.

A manuscript preserved in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Chennai,

labelled as Manuscript no. D. 2536 contains twenty of such songs of Dikshitar,
written in Telugu script. Of these, twelve are composed in Sanskrit language and
the other eight are composed in Telugu language. The Sanskrit songs which were the
replicas of the European Airs carry English captions and bear the mudra as
“Guruguha”.

Smt. S A K Durga, Professor Emeritus at the University of Madras, writes in

the Journal of the Indian Musicological Society (January 1, 2011):

A study of the melodic content of the European airs in those composition shows that
a few melodies are reels and jigs from Irish folk tunes, since in the Western band
at the Collector’s Office there were Irish musicians at that time… There are some
changes from the original European melodies and the melodies of Nottuswara
Sahithyam compositions in European airs, for example the one in Castilian mode, a
folk tune that was transcribed by Benjamin Carr (1768-1831). In his book, the
composition appears notated in 3/8 meter (Carr’s musical miscellany in occasional
numbers, 1812). The song in Lord McDonald’s reel, Jagadeesa Guruguha, has two
sections. The original A and B lines are switched with an additional word to pick
up to the first beat of the song. One finds that these compositions are not a
homogenous collection of British airs but there is diversity in their melodic
content from the original tunes.

These earlier compositions of Muthuswami Dikshitar also throw light on his mastery
in synthesizing two different music cultures. .. His compositional attitude in
worshipping the different deities at different shrines is also revealed in
his Nottuswara Sahithya-s. The choice of the Sanskrit language for these
compositions reveals his spirit of national integration.

Although written by Muthuswami Dikshitar in the late 18th century when he was in
his teens, before he started to compose kriti-s, a few of these songs were first
published as Nottuswara Sahithya in Sri Manali A.M. Chinnaswami Mudaliar’s work
“Oriental Music in Staff Notation” (1893), that is nearly sixty years after
Dikshitar’s death (1836) . In their first appearence in print , the songs were
published without any caption. The text was printed in English, Telugu and Tamil
characters.

After this, Sri Subbarama Dikshitar, the grandson/ the adopted son of Baluswami
Diksihtar, published these in his Prathamabhyasa Pusthakamu in 1905. (Later, there
appeared a few more publications with notation.) The book contained both
theoretical and practical aspects of elementary teaching methods; and is relevant
to the music field even to this day.

In this book , Sri Subbarama Dikshitar included thirty-two compositions, under the
title “Nottaswara sahithyamu” with Swara-notation, as technical
compositions/lessons for beginners (Abhyasagana). He did not however mention the
titles of the European Airs which served as the models for some of the songs. It is
likely that these songs were practiced, not as songs adopted from the Western style
, but as simple Karnatak melodies composed with the scale
of Sankarabharanam, without any microtonal ornamentation . During the late 19th
and early 20th century, these songs meant for the beginners were taught in place
of Gitam, to fameliarize the young learners with melodic movements or phrases in
the scale.

Subbarama Dikshitar’s monumental compendium Sangeeta Sampradaya

Pradarshini, published in 1904, also contains references to the Nottuswara
Sahithya.

Some scholarly articles have been published on the subject. For instance, Prof. P.
Sambamoorthy has published an article in the Journal of the Music Academy, 1951,
and Dr. V. Raghavan has contributed another article on “Nottuswara sahithyam” of
Muthuswami Dikshitar in 1977 in the Journal of the Music Academy . I wish these
were put on the net for the benifit of a larger number of music lovers and general
readers .

Chitraveena N Ravikiran remarks that while referring to the influence of Western

music many talk only of his “English note” compositions; but few realize that its
influence is more pervasive and is subtle. One can notice it in the way the
movements of the song proceed, he says.

Fort St George on the Coromandel Coast. Belonging to the East India Company of
England

Continued in Part Three

Sri Dikshitar and Hindustani music

Resource:

Homage to the Great Composer – Sri Muthuswami Dikshitar by– Dr.S.A.K.Durga

http://www.readperiodicals.com/201101/2692214731.html

http://tributes.sangeethapriya.org/dikshithar/downloads/groupkrithis.html

All pictures are from internet

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Posted by sreenivasaraos on September 13, 2012 in Music, Muthuswami Dikshitar, Sri

Vidya

Tags: Dikshitar and Western music, music, Mutuswami Dikshitar, Nottu swara
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2 responses to “Sri Mutuswami Dikshitar and Sri Vidya (2 of 8)”

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September 16, 2014 at 5:03 am

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Reply

sreenivasaraos

September 16, 2014 at 2:31 pm

Thank you Flora, I can understand.

Take your time . Come back again; and read it at your leisure.

Cheers

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