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SWATI TIRUNAL
The greatest figure in Kerala's musical tradition who
ranks one among the greatest personalities in the history of the Karnatic
system of Indian music is Swati Tirunal. He wrote eight works, six of
them in Sanskrit and two in Malayalam. They are mostly hymns and commentaries.
His greatest contribution was in music. His musical compositions are supposed
to number over five hundred.
 Swati's
ambition was to assimilate the best in all traditions and reutilize the
native heritage. He invited to his court Kannayya, the disciple
of Tyagaraja; the brothers Vadivelu, Meru Swami from Maharashtra; Lakshmana
Das from Gwalior and Suleiman and Allauddin who were the exponents of
the Hindustani music.
Swati has given songs in Sanskrit, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada
and Malayalam. Besides 'Kritis', typical of the south, he has composed
Dhrupads, Tappas and Khayals. Several of the compositions are in rare
ragas like Saranganatta, Lalita Panchamam, Mohana Kalyani Dvijavanti and
Gopika Vasantam. Some of these sacred songs are epitomes in a miniature,
of the Ramayana and Mahabharata. One of his brilliant achievement is Ragamala
on the ten incarnations of Vishnu. Each stanza is a different raga. In
many of his compositions he worked the name of the raga into the lyrical
text in such a way that it becomes a word meaningfully fitted into narrative.
He managed it in Ragamalas and in one instant, in a ragamala in Hindi.
The syllables pertaining to percussion instruments have been skillfully
interwoven into the texture of some compositions like Nrityati in 'Sankarabharanam'
and Sankara Sri in 'Hamsnandi'. The starting point in his kritis are varied.
In Smarajanaka he has used atitagraha i.e. the song starts before the
first beat of tala, slow and fast tempi are dexterously interwoven in
kritis like Karunakara in Begada and Bhogindra in Kuntalavarali.
This virtuosity reached astonishing heights in the class
of compositions known as Varnams. They are longer composition than kirtanas.
Here Swati tried to weave the phemomes sa, ri, ga, ma which are the standard
notation for the scale notes, into the lyrical text where they become
accented and therefore conspicuous phonetic elements of words meaningfully
used.
Swati was aiming at some pervasive spread of musical
culture. He laid down what ragas should be sung or rendered in instrumental
music every day at the Padmanabha temple, Trivandrum. He composed kirtans
for this daily service. He composed a Garland of nine gems, nine compositions.
One for each day of Dussehra festival. He had cadjan leaf copies made
of these compositions and distributed them to other centres in the state
as well as outside it.
The stabilization of classical music in daily and seasonal
ritual was a historical stop in the evolution of Kerala's musical tradition.
Swati introduced the Harikatha or sacred recital from Maharashtra with
the help of Meruswami. He invited Meruswami to his court especially for
this purpose. The ruler himself wrote three extended compositions for
such recitals. He has used Abhangas, Dinders and Chhands which are Marathi
song moulds. Swathi used to compose songs in Malayalam and simple
Sanskrit.
In every one of his kirtans, Swati preferred to use
the name of the family deity, Sri Padmanabha. For him, the human soul
becomes the maiden consumed by passionate longing for union with God's
love. One of the kirtans expresses the emotions of a love lorn maid as
the night deepens and each of its eight divisions goes by without her
lover arriving. It is a ragamala of eight ragas. The first raga is Sankarabharanam,
the mode usually sung at nightfall and the last is Bhupala, the raga sung
at the hour before dawn. The poetic tissue is rich in the familiar conceits
of the Sanskrit tradition. Swati also brought in many Bharata Natya exponents
from the neighbouring state, Tamil Nadu and contributed to the dance tradition
in Kerala by composing fifty padams in Malayalam.
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