When the history of Karnatak music of the last one hundred years, roughly, comes to be written (such a history, one may say, is already overdue, since the few privileged souls that have heard the music of the last three generations, are fast disappearing from amidst us), there would no doubt be a separate chapter on the great flautist of nearly sixty years ago, namely Sarabha Sastri. Sarabha Sastri has already become a legend, and numerous are the stories that are related about his extraordinary virtuosity. As in the case of musicians like ‘gottuvadyam’ Sakharama Rao and Manpoondiya Pillai, whose mastery over their instruments could not find a parallel, Sarabha Sastri’s music on the flute seems to have been peerless. We do not hear of another flautist being mentioned in the same breath as Sarabha Sastri.
Sarabha Sastri was blind. As in the case of many gifted artists, the physical handicap acted not as a brake but as an impetus to his imagination. Deprived of the vision of a world where beauty and ugliness exist in startling proximity, Sarabha Sastri seems to have created for himself an empire of melody where each ‘swara’ and ‘raga’ walked in the splendour of its beauty. Accounts of Sarabha Sastri’s musical genius, even after one allows for the inevitable exaggeration that passage of time accretes, are an index of a creative mind of rare sensibility which felt and communicated the vision of a beauty that transcended mere art.
Sarabha Sastri’s disciple, Palladam Sanjeeva Rao, attained a mastery over the instrument which was second only to his teacher’s. Since very few among the living would have had the great good fortune to have listened to Sarabha Sastri, we can form an impression of what Sastri’s music must have been only from our acquaintance with Sanjeeva Rao’s music. Palladam Sanjeeva Rao had been an active influence in the field of Karnatak music for over forty years, and until his death a few years ago, was given the pride of place in the Tyagaraja Aradhana Celebrations at Tiruvayyar. Perhaps even this institution of Tyagaraja Aradhana has developed largely owing to the initiative and fervour of Sanjeeva Rao, for in him Bangalore Nagaratnammal found a kindred spirit, which like her own, was imbued with devotion to the great composer.
Palladam’s music was, at all times, lively and colourful. There is something in the quality of the sound that a flute produces which makes it the least likely to bring out the pathos of experience. Palladam did not attempt to bring out the pathos of experience in his music, and hence found the flute ideally suited to his purpose of musical evocation of other moods such as joy, piquancy, supplication and tranquility. In keeping himself within the known bounds of possibilities, Sanjeeva Rao displayed a control over the instrument, which was satisfying if not startling.
But the startling control over the instrument was reserved for that ‘enfant terrible’. T.R.Mahalingam had come into prominence even in the early forties when he would have been just a quarter as old as Sanjeeva Rao. In Sanjeeva Rao and Mali, there stood confronted the old and the new in Karnatak music. But the interesting aspect of this confrontation was that the old affected a liveliness of spirit which seemed a little hollow, whereas the young seemed to display a turbulence and gravity which appeared quizzically out of part. You could not have imagined two musicians of more widely different temperaments than Palladam Sanjeeva Rao and Mahalingam.
‘Mali’ brought into Karnatak music a Dionysian element as against the Apollonian classicism of Palladam. He passed beyond the known possibilities of the instrument a supple and eloquent medium to express a vision of life that included the pathos of an existentialist ‘angst’. Where Palladam had delineated a ‘raga’ by methodical extension in form, Mali delineated a ‘raga’ by organic extension in feeling. Where Palladam built and shaped, Mali nurtured and quickened.
But Palladam and Mali were not the only wielders of the flute who distinguished themselves at this time. There was Tiruppambaram Swaminatha Pillai who struck a mean between them. There was inevitably a synthetic quality about Tiruppambaram’s music, but it was not wholly compounded. At its best, it was sedate, dignified and sincere. Tiruppambaram was for a long time associated with the music department of the Annamalai University and later joined the College of Karnatak music. He was an ideal teacher. He took an active part in the ‘Tamil Isai’ movement and was largely responsible for popularising the compositions of Muthu Thandavar. He took a leading part in the research of ancient Tamil pans and tried to reconstruct the glory of Tamil music within the framework of Karnatak music.
Palladam’s style has been inherited by a large number of the younger flautists of today like V.N.Rajan and Radhakrishna. Mali is too individualistic to found a school, but he has made over a great deal of his idiom to young Ramani, Tiruppambaram’s style is nobly set forth in T. Viswanathan’s music.
Viswanathan’s concert from AIR, Madras last Friday was largely reminiscent of Tiruppambaram’s style. His best was ‘Mohanam’, in which in the lower octave he achieved a weight of utterance which seemed to issue from a ‘bansuri’ instead of from a flute. There was nothing hackneyed in his presentation of the ‘raga’. The ‘Hemavati’ and ‘Kambodi’ which followed were ample but somehow lacked the implicit conviction which the Mohanam carried to the listener. The Tyagaraj kriti in Kambodi was rendered with feeling and sensibility. The Padam ‘Parulana mata’ in ‘Kapi’ was superb.
The ‘Ragam Tanam and Palavi’ in ‘Anandabhairavi’ by G.N.B., which was broadcast from the AIR, Madras on Thursday last revealed the musician at his near best. There were comparatively few lapses from the ‘sruti’. But in an artist like G.N.B, even such lapses are amply compensated for by the spaciousness of imagination and sincerity of feeling. There is a depth and clarity about his phrases which communicate to his delineation of a ‘raga’ enduring substance and weighted feeling. His ‘brikas’ do not stand out from the more leisurely passages, but move with the grace of a gentle breeze over a cornfield. The ‘alapana’ in slow tempo enables the artist to savour each note and phrase. There is noting furtive in his movement, nothing affected in his stances, nothing leaden about his reaching out. He combines urbanity with crispness, grace with adroitness. One might almost be tempted to shout, “Ole, Ole” – his music breathes much of the spirit of a fiesta.
There is altogether so much mystic stuff written about “Nadopasana” and the communion of the soul with the Brahman through the sound issuing from one’s navel (sic!) that one does not always feel sure whether one is reading about music or some yogic discipline. I am thankful to the few musicians who keep music within the manageable and pronounceable limits of art and human expression. G.N.B. is one such who would not have any mincing mysticism in his music. Of the music that issues from the navel, I am not competent to judge, for I do not have such obsessions about the navel. I should any day be glad to find in such music an illustration of some obscure principle of the vital breath forcing its way up the vertebral column-but to treat it as art, as an expression of human feeling and ideals, is beyond one.
G.N.B. helps me to face this cant of mysticism without a feeling of guilt. There is so very little pretension in him, so very little getting under another’s skin, musical or spiritual. He is that all important thing in art -an artist of basic sincerity and integrity.
Three weeks ago I had referred to the C Major scale as the only mode surviving in Western music. But I wonder whether there is not another mode out of which the minor scales are constructed. This seems to correspond to the Karnatak raga “Natabhairavi” if the intervals between the notes are any indication. The mode is formed by playing all the white keys, that is all the notes of the natural scale beginning from A. Minor by successive transpositions of the lower and the upper tetrachords. This mode is not retained wholly in its ancient form, since in its harmonic form A minor sharpens its seventh degree and in its melodic form both the sixth and seventh degrees are sharpened in ascending and resorted to their original pitch in the descending. In other words, the harmonic minor would sound like ‘Kiravani’ and the melodic like ‘Gaurimanohari’ in ascending and ‘Natabhairavi’ descending. I would admit that this all a little too confusing, but as a matter of theoretical interest, one might be tempted to identify snatches of a ‘raga’ in Western music or conversely snatches of a scale in Indian music.
AEOLUS, 9 June 1963
Aeolus - Articles and Critiques 