the chaturdandaprakasika

there seems to be an interest from the other BN thread in the systematic organization of carnatic music. if there is an interest i can put together an article that shows how the 72 melakartha scheme came about and in terms of organization (organization only; this is not a statement about the aesthetic qualities of the music), how it is more complete and superior to the hindustani thAt scheme. but the starting point for any of this discussion is the chaturdanda prakAsika written in the 17th century by venkatamakhin where he shows for the first time in recorded history the complete evolution of 72 melakarthas.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:there seems to be an interest from the other BN thread in the systematic organization of carnatic music. if there is an interest i can put together an article that shows how the 72 melakartha scheme came about and in terms of organization (organization only; this is not a statement about the aesthetic qualities of the music), how it is more complete and superior to the hindustani thAt scheme. but the starting point for any of this discussion is the chaturdanda prakAsika written in the 17th century by venkatamakhin where he shows for the first time in recorded history the complete evolution of 72 melakarthas.

Please do so. thanks.

in CM a raga can have at most seven notes. these are denoted the shadjama, rishaba, gandhara, madhyama, panchama, dhaivata, and nishada. unlike western classical music, the notes in CM do not have absolute frequencies. however, once you fix the frequency of the first note, the shadjama, for a given raga, the frequencies of the other notes are fixed by defintion. further in CM, the shadjama (S) once fixed also fixes the panchama (P) frequency. for the rishaba there are three choices each a microtone with a slightly differing frequency (R1, R2, and R3), the gandhara also has three variants (G1, G2, and G3), the madhyama has two variants (M1 and M2), the dhaivata three (D1, D2, and D3), and the nishada three (N1, N2, and N3). follow me so far? alright, now it turns out that R2 and G1 have the same frequency and so they cannot occur together in a melakartha raga, likewise R3 and G2, D2 and N1, and D3 and N2. thus a sequence like S R1 G3 M2 P D2 N2 is allowed whereas, S R3 G2 M1 P D1 N3 is verboten.

to recap, the notes and their relative positions are thus: S, R1, R2=G1, R3=G2, G3, M1, M2, P, D1, D2=N1, D3=N2, N3

and remember the first rule that notes with equal frequencies are not allowed in a melakartha. another rule is that in melakartha ragas, only notes increasing in frequency in ascent and decreasing in frequency in descent are allowed. thus a sequence like S G3 R1 M1 (called a vakra pattern) is disallowed. if you now do the math (left as an exercise in combinatorics), you'll discover that only 72 possibilities exist. these form the melakartha ragas and form the tonal DNA of carnatic music.

from these are derived endless possibilities which include deleting notes, introducing vakra patterns which form the janya (offspring) ragas. thus any janya raga has a corresponding parent in the melakartha scheme. it turns out that some janyas can in principle be derived from more than one parent. in that case, the assignation of a parent is somewhat arbitrary and is based upon other aesthetic criteria.

the guy who organized all this in a coherent way for the first time was venkatamakhin in his chaturdandi prakasika. in principle all the ragas of HM can also be derived from the carnatic melakarthas. more to follow.....

nice!

i am reminded of ramesh mahadevan's articles on carnatic music. part 4 has some stuff that rashmun may appreciate.

http://dhanyasy.org/go/2010/05/31/carnatic-intro-1of4/
http://dhanyasy.org/go/2010/06/05/carnatic-intro-2of4/
http://dhanyasy.org/go/2010/06/19/carnatic-intro-3of4/
http://dhanyasy.org/go/2010/07/18/carnatic-intro-4of4/

bw wrote:nice!

i am reminded of ramesh mahadevan's articles on carnatic music. part 4 has some stuff that rashmun may appreciate.

http://dhanyasy.org/go/2010/05/31/carnatic-intro-1of4/
http://dhanyasy.org/go/2010/06/05/carnatic-intro-2of4/
http://dhanyasy.org/go/2010/06/19/carnatic-intro-3of4/
http://dhanyasy.org/go/2010/07/18/carnatic-intro-4of4/

I only read part 4 and that too in portions but it was a fun read. Thank you.

That's a good explanation, thanks Max.