This is a collection of biographies, some of which long and some brief, of some 720 specialists who have eminently contributed to the South Indian variety of classical music, the 'Carnataka Sangeetham'.
Appropriately titled 'A GARLAND', these meticulously braided sketches on Carnatic composers, musicologists, vocalists, instrumentalists and hymnodists will serve as an authoritative guide on the lives and work of these specialists. It will also provide an inspiring starting point for researchers, music lovers and students, discerning and otherwise.
The most natural purpose of a biography is to tell the reader 'This is what we know about this man'. This book does that, peppering many a biography with anecdotes, incidents, etc. However, since music and the craft of music are inseparable, Parts I and III in this book deal in detail with all the other-than-biographical aspects of music craftsmen. These are precisely what any music enthusiast, fresh or senior, would be interested to know about.
Shri Rajagopalan's 'Garland' is a fitting tribute to the Ocean of Carnataka Sangeetham, teeming with such great artistes as Kshetragna, Purandaradasa, the Trinity. Sarabha Sastri, the Bharatis, Semmangudi, M.S. Subbulakshmi, Chittibabu, Yesudas.
It is thanks to my long association with the patrons of Carnataka Sangeetham, if not with Carnataka Sangeetham itself, that I have been assigned the task of writing a foreword to such a great work as this. Accepting the task more as an act of pious compliance with the dictates of the Blessed, I venture to say, it will be a unique experience reading through this more-than-a-compendium like work. May the posterity amply gain from the gargantuan effort put in by Shri Rajagopalan making this thesaurus.
There are books on the theory of music. There are biographies of some individual composers and musicians. There are a few collections of more than one or two biographies. Revered Subbarama Dikshitar did bring out brief facts of seventy-seven lives in 1904. Abraham Pandithar in 1917 and later Prof. P. Sambamurthi recorded some facts likewise. The venerable Dr.U.Ve. Swaminatha Ayyar thought of bringing out a collection on the lives of eminent musicians but his noble life was a fight against the clock and the calendar. His weighty contribution attracted the notice of the Lord and he was withdrawn to be by His side before he could take up the work. The 'Who's Who' of musicians has but a limited coverage, scope and content. Thus, there is no compilation of biographies in English giving details of past and present composers, musicians and musicologists for universal reference and circulation. Hymnodists were hitherto a neglected tribe. Hence, I took up the arduous task of collecting and collating the biographies of all from libraries, newspapers, magazines and books and by contacting many artistes in person and by post. I visited places like Tiruvarur, Anandatandavapuram, Marudanallur, Govindapuram, Varanasi, Kanchipuram and Tirupathi but could not extend my visits further owing to constraints of finance. My work, analogous to that of a pearl-diver who gathers the oysters and not make them, has gone on like that of a dedicated ant prior to the onset of the monsoon. Mine has not been the role of a critic. I have also not the ear to listen to or the inclination to gather demeaning details. ('Human stories are always welcome to the prurient palate.') Focus thus is on the man, the God's creation and not on the creations of man though they figure conspicuously.
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