Nallan Chakravarty Murthy belongs to a family of musicians and is vocalist, composer and author of half a dozen books on music and CDs too. The title of this book Apoorvaraga Kritimanjari is self-explanatory, denoting a compendium of compositions he penned in rare or untouched Janya ragas. He provided notation too to each of these compositions for making it easy for vocalists to follow, practice and present in concerts. The book contains hubndred compositions — 54 Suddhamadhyama Raga kirtanas and 46 Pratimadhyama Raga kirtanas .
Apoorva raga here meant rare ragas, used sparingly or not in circulation at all. Considering that Carnatic music got stabilized on a strong base during the era of Tyagaraja, Deekshitar and Shyama Sastry and got enriched by Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna’s innovations in the form of new ragas and new compositions, not many janya ragas are in circulation.
Muthy has tried to fill the void by penning as many as a hundred compositions taking all the janyaragas of the 72 melakartas. Besides he gave the number of melakarta from 1 to 72 in ascending order. This book helps musicians to go for their choice melarartha number and go on to practice the kirtana.
Murthy had already made his presence felt with his earlier works like Varnams in 72 Melakartas , Pada Varnams in five Ghana ragas and Noothana Satakeertana Swararavali another set of kirtanas.
Veteran musician and musicologist Mahamahopdhya Kolleigal R.Subramanyam observed in his note in appreciation says that during Purandarada’s period there were only 32 janya ragas in circulation, they scaled up to 45 and then to 216 during Thyagaraja’s period. Post-Thyagaraja, composers began writing kirtanas in more ragas.
During Brahmotsavas in Tirumala the priests who followed Agama Sastra in their chant of ‘Venkateswara Gadyam’ name some ragas like ‘Kanakangi’, ‘Ratnangi’, ‘Ganamurthi’, giving the lead for composers to write and compose kirtanas, says Kollegal. Now N.C.Murthy brings out Melakarta ragas that are rarely heard. Some of these raga names sound strange like ‘Sugatri’, ‘Kaamya’, ‘Chittakarshini’, ‘Bhamaravardhani’ and so on in Suddhamadhyama raga compositions and ‘Inavardhini’, ‘Bhavanipriya’, ‘Raamakali’, and many more in Pratimadhyama raga kirtanas.
For any musician this would be a research-oriented task to first find all those unused ragas and then write the raga’s notation and then pen compositions with notation as well. Murthy adapted smooth and simple style of writing the text of the kirtanas like that of Thyagaraja and Shyama Sastry and some Sanskrit words Deekshitar was known for.
This book is worth preserving by musicians and music students to keep their concerts fresh and novel.
A chemical engineer, Murthy’slove for music made him learn from late Nookala Chinna Satyanarayana. He won awards for some of his compositions, . He is well versed in Kannada and Hindi languages too and composed some kirtanas in Kannada. He is Asthana Vidwan of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham. Thus he is vaggeyakara in his own right.
APOORVARAGA KRUTIMANJARI
(Book’s cover picture is emailed along with)
Author: Nallan Chakravarthy Murthy.
Pages: 213. Price: Rs.500/- US $ 20
For copies, Contact: 040-27427600/ . Cell: 91772 29391
