savithri ragam
Raghu Toppur
L. Shankar, in "Who's to Know ?" has a composition in this
obscure ragam. I'd really like to see the raaga-lakshana...
thanks in advance.
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Raghu Toppur
Raghunath K Rao
The raga is certainly obscure (in that it is not usually sung),
but I think the chaya is very beautiful. Savithri is symmetrically
defined as :
S G3 M1 P N2 S
S N2 P M1 G3 S
It is a janya of Harikambhoji. Bahudari without the D2 is Savithri,
but the Chaya is very different in the use of the Nishada. In Bahudari
there is a lot of stress of on the D2 and in the the N2 is always
approached (in the avarahona) via the D2 (usually with a soft glide).
Of course in Savithri, there isn't any D2.
Anybody out there with Savithri's similarities and differences with
other ragas? Has anybody heard any other Krithi's in this raga?
Any recordings other than L. Shankar's rendition of "Ananda Nadamadum"?
I thought his swaras (especially in Ragamalika) in this piece were far
out! Comments?
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Hari Subramanian
|> The raga is certainly obscure (in that it is not usually sung),
|> but I think the chaya is very beautiful. Savithri is symmetrically
|> defined as :
|> S G3 M1 P N2 S
|> S N2 P M1 G3 S
|>
|> It is a janya of Harikambhoji.
Given that the swara for Savithri given above is correct, how can it
be a janya of Harikambhoji? Nishadham is totally different in them.
IMHO, for Savithri to be a janya of Harikambhoji, it should have N1.
Correct me if I am wrong.
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Raghunath K Rao
>In article <1992Feb13.2...@iitmax.iit.edu>, ths...@iitmax.iit.edu (Raghunath K Rao) writes:
>
>|> The raga is certainly obscure (in that it is not usually sung),
>|> but I think the chaya is very beautiful. Savithri is symmetrically
>|> defined as :
>|> S G3 M1 P N2 S
>|> S N2 P M1 G3 S
>|>
>|> It is a janya of Harikambhoji.
>
>Given that the swara for Savithri given above is correct, how can it
>be a janya of Harikambhoji? Nishadham is totally different in them.
>
>IMHO, for Savithri to be a janya of Harikambhoji, it should have N1.
>
>Correct me if I am wrong.
It is the Kaishiki Nishadha of Harikambhoji. I thought it was represented
by N2.
Krishna Kunchithapadam
>
>|> The raga is certainly obscure (in that it is not usually sung),
>|> but I think the chaya is very beautiful. Savithri is symmetrically
>|> defined as :
>|> S G3 M1 P N2 S
>|> S N2 P M1 G3 S
>|>
>|> It is a janya of Harikambhoji.
>
>Given that the swara for Savithri given above is correct, how can it
>be a janya of Harikambhoji? Nishadham is totally different in them.
>
>IMHO, for Savithri to be a janya of Harikambhoji, it should have N1.
>
>Correct me if I am wrong.
>
I think the confusion above is because of an axiomatic
clash between Subramanian and Raghunath Rao. In Carnatic music,
there are 3 different kinds of Rishabha, Gandhara, Dhaivata and
Nishada notes. In the Hindusthani system, each of these notes
have only 2 manifestations, the Komal and Sudha varieties. Hence
the N1/N2 notation is sufficient in describing the scale of
Hindusthani ragas. In any case, the melodic possibilities of both
systems is identical -- it is simply by definition that
Hindusthani musicologists classify all their notes into 2
varieties while Carnatic musicologists choose the 3 version
scheme.
In Carnatic music, however, we need to distinguish
between the 3 types of notes and hence an N1/N2/N3 notation is
required. The <note>1 is always a Sudha note. As for the Nishada,
N1 = Sudha Nishada (as in Kanakangi)
N2 = Kaisiki Nishada (as in Harikambhoji)
N3 = Kakali Nishada (as in Sankarabharanam)
I prepared the following list of notes and their
notation, along with the approximate equivalents in Western
classical music. This notation is the most commonly used one, and
it is quite powerful.
In any case, specifying the Janaka mela raga of a janya
raga is sufficient information for us to derive the actual notes
used in the raga. The use of N1/N2/N3 is redundant. This
information is useful only if the mela raga (and the notes in its
scale) are not well known.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
A short note on the notation used for Carnatic ragas
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The most widely used system of notation for Carnatic
ragas is one where the 16 notes are mapped onto 12 distinct swara
sthanas (or frequencies). The Hindusthani tradition recognizes
only 12 notes, hence many of the descriptions of Hindusthani
ragas you see on RMIC will be different from mine.
The octave is divided into 12 distinct notes or swara
sthanas (swara = note, sthana = position). In the Western
classical tradition, the scale is a pure chromatic one -- that
is, the ratio of the frequency ratio between any 2 adjacent notes
in the 12th root of 2, approx 1.0595. In Indian music, the pure
chromatic scale is not followed and the frequency ratio between
any 2 adjacent notes can take on different values -- but all
these are the ratio of small integers. Musicologists all over the
world recognize the importance of the chromatic scale in harmonic
or orchestrated music and the importance of the non-chromatic
scale in melodic music.
The notes in the Carnatic ragas are named as below. I
have also provided a table of frequency ratios in both Indian and
Western classical music and the correspondng notes in the
chromatic scale.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Note f-ratio Notation chromatic f-ratio
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shadja 1.0 s C 1.0
Sudha Rishabha 16/15 r1 D-flat 1.0595
Chatursruti Rishabha 9/8 r2 D 1.1225
Sudha Gandhara " g1 " "
Shatsruti Rishabha 6/5 r3 E-flat 1.1892
Sadharana Gandhara " g2 " "
Antara Gandhara 5/4 g3 E 1.2599
Sudha Madhyama 4/3 m1 F 1.3348
Prati Madhyama 45/32 m2 F-sharp 1.4142
Panchama 3/2 p G 1.4983
Sudha Dhaivata 8/5 d1 A-flat 1.5874
Chatursruti Dhaivata 27/16 d2 A 1.6818
Sudha Nishada " n1 " "
Shatsruti Dhaivata 9/5 d3 B-flat 1.7818
Kaisiki Nishada " n2 " "
Kakali Nishada 15/8 n3 B 1.8877
Shadja 2 S C 2
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You can see that 16 different notes are mapped on to only
12 swara sthanas. The note pairs of (Chatursruti Rishabha - Sudha
Gandhara), (Sadharana Gandhara - Shatsruti Rishabha),
(Chatursruti Dhaivata - Sudha Nishada) and (Kaisiki Nishada -
Shatsruti Dhaivata) have the same frequency ratio with respect to
the tonic note. The second note in each of these pair is termed a
vivadi note (vivadi for discordance). The Mela ragas using these
notes came into existence only about 300 hundred years ago and
compositions in these ragas are still very rare.
You can also see a small, but significant, frequency
ratio difference between the Indian classical and Western
classical notes. This, in addition to the fact that most
compositions in Western music, rarely use gamakas (by oscillating
the notes around its primary frequency), makes most of these
compositions sound like the unornamented playing of raga
Sankarabharanam to the "Carnatic" years. On the other hand, many
people who have been trained in the Western tradition would first
think that incorrect notes are being played in Indian ragas since
they are able to clearly perceive the minute frequency
differences between the chromatic and melodic scales.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
End of note
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-- Krishna
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Krishna Kunchithapadam kri...@cs.wisc.edu |
| Department of Computer Sciences |
| University of Wisconsin, Madison |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
