Carnatic Classical Music

      History of Carnatic  Classical Music 

Carnatic Classical Music or Carnatic Sangeet  is the south In­dian sys­tem of music. It has a rich his­tory and a very sophis­ticated theo­retical sys­tem. 

We can start our dis­cus­sion of the his­tory of Car­natic Sangeet with Purandardas (1480-1564). Purandardas is con­si­dered as the father of Carnatic Sangeet. He is given acknowledgment for the codification of the technique for edu­cation, and is likewise credited with seve­ral thousand melodies. 

Venkat Mukhi Swami (seventeenth cen­tury) is the fantastic scholar of Carnatic music. He was the person who devel­oped the melakarta sys­tem. melakarta is the sys­tem for classifying south In­dian ragas. 

Carnatic music truly ac­quired its pres­ent structure in the eighteenth cen­tury. It was the period of Carnatic music when Thyagaraja, Shamashastri, and Muthuswami Dikshitar com­posed their fa­mous creations. Beside those, Various other music­ians and com­posers improved this trad­ition. Name of some famous  per­sonalities worth mention are  Gopala Krishna Bharati, Narayan Tirtha, Papanasam Shivan, Swati Tirunal, Annam­acharya, Mysore Vasudevachar,  Uttukadu Venkatasubbair and Arunagiri Nathar,  

      Theory  of Carnatic Music 

  Carnatic music has a profoundly devel­oped theoretical sys­tem. It depends on a comp­lex sys­tem of ragam (raga) and thalam (tal). These des­cribe the intri­cacies of the melodic and rhyt­hmic frames res­pectively. 

  The melodic establishment is the ragam (raga) which is ba­si­cally the scale. The seven notes of the scale are Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha and Ni. How­ever, un­like a basic scale there are cer­tain melodic restrict­ions and obligations. Each ragam (raga) has a par­ti­cu­lar way that it moves from one note to another. 

  The ragams are ordered into var­ious modes. These are re­fer­red to as mela, and there are 72 mela in Carnatic sangeet. The mela are con­ceptually si­mi­lar to the that is of North In­dian music. There is how­ever, a significant contrast. South In­dian scales permit chro­matic structures that are not al­lowed in Hindustani sangeet. For insta­nce it is per­fectly accept­able for the initial three notes (i.e., Sa Re Ga to all be approximately one semi­tone separated. It is these per­missible structures which permit there to be so numerous mela. 

  The tal (thalam) is the rhyt­hmic foun­dation to the sys­tem. The south In­dian tals are de­fined by a sys­tem of clap­ping and waving, while this is significantly less impor­tant in the north. North In­dian music­ians characterize their tals by their theka.