Person · Bharatanatyam court musicians · India
Thanjavur Quartet
The 'Tanjore Quartet' — the four Maratha-period Thanjavur court musicians Ponnaiah (1804-1864), Chinnaiah (1802-1856), Sivanandam (1808-1863) and Vadivelu (1810-1845), four brothers who codified the modern Bharatanatyam dance-concert repertoire under the patronage of Thanjavur Maratha king Serfoji II (ruled 1798-1832). The brothers were disciples of Muthuswami Dikshitar (one of the Carnatic music Trinity). They systematised the Bharatanatyam margam (sequential concert programme — alarippu, jatiswaram, shabdam, varnam, padam, javali, tillana) that remains the standard concert order to this day. Vadivelu, the youngest, invented the Tyagaraja-style sabha-concert format at the Travancore court (1830s). Their compositions constitute the foundational Bharatanatyam concert repertoire.
- Date
- 1800–1860
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Patron dynasty
- Thanjavur Maratha / Travancore
- Condition
- historical persons; living repertoire
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 10.790, 79.140
About the place
Placed at Thanjavur, the Maratha court where the four brothers served and where they fixed the margam, the concert order of Bharatanatyam still followed today.
Connections (1)
- Teaching lineageRukmini Devi Arundale
The sequence Bharatanatyam performs — alarippu, jatiswaram, shabdam, varnam, padam, tillana — was arranged by the Thanjavur Quartet at the Maratha court in the early nineteenth century, and Rukmini Devi learned it from Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai, a nattuvanar of that line. What she changed was the setting, the costume and who was allowed to dance; the repertoire and the grammar she took whole from the hereditary masters.
On these journeys
- Classical dance geographies — court, temple, sattra, gharana, village
- Carnatic music memory — Vijayanagara to the Kaveri delta to Madras
Sources
Sangeet Natak Akademi and modern dance historiography on the Thanjavur Quartet.
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