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]