Person · Carnatic composer
Tyāgarāja
Also known as Thyagaraja, Tyagaraja Swami, Saint Tyagaraja
The most prolific of the Carnatic trinity, with some seven hundred kritis surviving of a claimed twenty-four thousand. He wrote in Telugu at a Tamil town, refused a Thanjavur court appointment, and made the kriti — pallavi, anupallavi, charanam — the standard form southern classical music has used since.
- Date
- 1767 – 1847
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Tradition
- Kriti corpus; Tyagaraja Aradhana tradition
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His brother is said to have thrown his Rāma idols into the Kāveri over the refusal of the court's patronage, and several kritis are read as responses to that quarrel. The Ārādhana at Thiruvaiyāru each January is now the largest recurring gathering in Carnatic music.
Connections (2)
- Samadhi atTyāgarāja tradition, Thiruvaiyaru
Tyāgarāja lived his whole life at Thiruvaiyāru on the Kāveri and is buried there, and the Ārādhana held at the samādhi each January gathers several thousand musicians to sing the five Pancharatna kritis in unison. It is the largest recurring event in Carnatic music and one of very few occasions where the whole profession performs the same pieces together, which is a considerable afterlife for a man who refused a court appointment and lived on alms.
- Court associationMuthuswāmi Dīkshitar
Tyāgarāja, Dīkshitar and Śyāma Śāstri were born within five years and a few streets of each other in the Kāveri delta, and between them made the repertoire that Carnatic music still performs. There is no record that they ever met. They wrote in three different languages — Telugu, Sanskrit and a mixture — to three different deities, and each solved the problem of what a South Indian devotional song should be in a different way.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Tyagaraja”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
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