Enjoying MD's compositions

Muthuswamy Dikshitar happens to be my favourite Carnatic composer over a period of time due to reasons very well known to classical music lovers. The specific reasons I love his compositions for:

a. Erudition - the breadth and depth of his knowledge on a lot of traditional things (music, philosophy, purANic literature, Samskrtam, prosody)

b. Handling of many rare mAyA mALava GauLa janya ragas some of which were becoming almost extinct

c. The sheer gait (and weight) of his compositions is something that is compared to the movement of an elephant

d. His visualizations of various ragas is very definitive and defining. I love especially the start of the charaNams where typically he places phrases that descend from madhyama sthayi to the mandra sthayi panchama at least and that phrase alone is enough to get one to go into a meditative mood

e. Lots of quaint small ragas were handled by him. I love his versions of any raga that he touches. I have a special attraction to the following rare ragas that he touched:

• ardradEsi
• mangalakaisiki
• mechabauli
• kannadabangAla
• ramakali
• sAmantam (I have heard 2 of his compositions in this one - very rare)
• ghantA
• kiraNAvaLi
• gurjari
• hindoLavasantam
• jyOti
  

f. He was a well-travelled man for his times. He visited a lot of places throughout India - a lot of South Indian temples, Kasi, Kashmir (maybe more in the North). He had imbibed the styles of North Indian music also and composed very beautiful krtis in some of them. He was also exposed to some amount of European music in Chennai, though I regret he may not have been exposed to Bach etc. If he had been, it would have been great to see what would have come out of his creativity as a result.

g. He was an Advaitin and his compositions are a doorway to reflection and a serene meditative state

Jyotiraga

[Hardcore Carnatic post]

I am making it almost a habit to listen everyday to the below comprehensive treatment by the BV Raman/Lakshmanan brothers, of the vivaadi (= characterised by dissonance) raga 'Jyotiraga' (minorly different from JyotiswarUpiNi - melam 68) - composition by my favourite composer Muttuswami Dikshitar, and the emotions it stirs inside are fabulous in consonance with the elevation that is associated with the word 'Jyoti'. This can be a very tricky raga to handle and needs great creativity to elaborate - they have treated it as closely as possible to Jyotiraga but still they are singing some Jyotiswaroopini phrases I think - not that I mind, since there is immense beauty in either raga.

rAmE bharatapAlita - BVR/BVL - MD

I always feel thunder and lightning and fire (jyoti) inside my mindscape when they sing the fast swarams in the elaboration starting from around 18 mins into the rendering. Their sense of rhythm is impeccable and I have not seen better use of short and long swarams as well as they have done - very methodical and educative. The fact that the talam itself is a short-long talam (5 beat cycle: khanda chaapu) makes this very interesting. I can say that when I hear the swarams with the beautiful mridangam sounds mingled with them, it is verily like lighting up 10000 walla chara vedi's one after another. And whenever the violin follows the ideas expressed by them perfectly and everytime it meanders around the dissonant combination descending from the pure Antara Gandhara to the majestic Shatshruti Rishaba, I am reminded of the flight of a hawk when it glides without flapping its wings ("I soar, I am a hawk" like Shakespeare says) and the word associations in my mind immediately wake up and suggest the 'Volare! Cantare!' song...

Addendum:

Listened to it again. It's a guess but I think they were describing the contours of the flame when they were singing the swarams. I notice multiple phrases that are arranged like dns,snd|pdn,ndp
|mpd,dpm etc (around 21.00). Also the notion/abstract concept of raga itself is placed in the category of fire among the elements (according to Abhinavagupta, if I recollect correctly from a talk by Prof. SK Ramachandra Rao on ananyaculture.org) - hence jyotiraga will hold a very special place going ahead in my heart.

[The Prof said - Shruti is assigned the category of Earth since it sustains music like the earth sustains everything, Swara is assigned the category of Water since it flows (IIRC), The raga as said is in the category of fire (I forget the exact association), the Words/Composition is in the range of the Wind and the Bhava is in the same category as the boundless skies - I didnt understand some part of what was said in this context there (since it was in Kannada), hope someone can help]

Isaac Asmiov's "The Last Question"

I had read a short-stories collection by Asimov some years back, and happened to re-read this now, from

The Last Question

Very nicely done story (one of his own favourites) with pieces falling in place well, once you reflect on the earlier scenes after the climax is revealed...

The butterfly koan

Once Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Tzu. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Tzu. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu. Between Chuang Tzu and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Am thinking...

Chap 23 from HHGTTG

I am reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and this is the most outrageously comic chapter so far, that leaves me laughing like crazy...take a bow Douglas Adams....

The background is that the earth has already been destroyed to make way for a galactic highway...and also there is a hint before this that says humans were only the third most intelligent species on Planet Earth...

Chapter 23

"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reason.

Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as assuming attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived.

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backward somersault through a hoop while whistling the "Star-Spanngled Banner", but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioral research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans.

from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams

Must watch - Temples of the South

This is a wonderful video in google which documents some of the greatest achievements of South Indian architecture and especially those of Rajaraja Chozha. The video is 52 mins long and is a treasure and more than that it is certainly one documentary that makes one feel a sense of pride about one's own country in these times of the entire country shooting itself in the foot with a demeaning view of its own history.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3647180062330419712&q=india

Slap in the face of Manmohan Singh

I just read this piece that gives the resignation letter of Pratap Bhanu Mehta from the Knowledge Commission - a lucid expression of the views of a person who has a better sense of social justice than these politicians ruling the country and having no idea of how to approach such an issue sensibly. At last, Manmohan Singh is no statesman too, just a cowardly petty politician who cannot come out in the open and have a debate on this issue...

Pratap Bhanu Mehta's resignation letter