‘Swathi Mudra’ explores Swathi Thirunal’s legacy and has notations of his ancient compositions

Swathi Mudra, written by Carnatic musician Ajith Namboothiri, has replicas of original notations of Swathi Thirunal’s ancient compositions and explores his musical legacy

Carnatic vocalist Ajith Namboothiri’s tryst with Swathi Thirunal, a king among musicians and a musician among the kings, began during his student days at the Sri Swathi Thirunal College of Music.

Recently, he released Swathi Mudra, a book on the composer-musician’s body of work. Besides exploring Swathi’s musical legacy, the book, which runs into 1,232 pages, has notations of original compositions of the king-composer. Besides notations in Malayalam and English, it has a section with lyrics in Sanskrit (Devanagiri script).

Speaking about it, Ajith says: “The seed was planted in 1991 when I met Semmangudi Swamy (maestro Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer) to prepare an article on Swathi. My query was about the general perception that Swathi’s original compositions are lost and what we hear now are tunes set by musicians that came after Swathi. He told me that the tunes were already there in the book Balamritham and he had polished it,” says Ajith.

Balamritham was written by S Renganatha Iyer, son of Sankara Bhatt Sasthrikal, court musician during Swathi’s reign. It is believed to have original notations of the tunes composed by the king. “There started my search to find the book that was published in 1917. First I met RP Raja who had written New Light on Swathi Thirunal, considered one of the most authentic works on the ruler. A scanned page from Balamritham was in that book,” Ajith says.

Although Raja directed him to the person who had Balamritham in his collection, Ajith could not procure it. The wait continued until he met Chandrika Balachandran who runs a music school at Kuzhithurai in Tamil Nadu. “She had come home to invite me for an event and it was a coincidence that she had the book. It was a surreal moment when I finally got the copy and sang a few of the compositions as per the notations.”

But the book was in a bad condition and last pages were missing. After much effort, he found another copy with late P Harihara Iyer, a veena expert in Thiruvananthapuram, who lived on Dikshitar Street near Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple, where Renganatha Iyer used to stay. “That copy didn’t have the first few pages but the last ones were intact. So I scanned the pages from both the copies. However, my work was far from over since there were holes in some of the pages in these copies. The search for another copy led to a musician in North Kerala, who let me take the photo of those pages after much coaxing,” Ajith says.

Swathi Mudra has the replica of original notations of 125 compositions in Malayalam and English. “Apparently Renganatha Iyer had planned it as the first part of the compilation. But it seems he couldn’t bring out the second part,” Ajith adds.

The book also has Renganatha Iyer’s notations of the 12 kritis from Swathi’s ‘Kuchelopakhyanam’ Harikatha taken from the book Sangeetha Rajarangam.

Ajith observes that coming across the notations egged him on to do a detail study of Swathi’s legacy, which covers Indian classical music as a whole, having composed kritis in Carnatic and Hindustani styles.

“In 2017, I received the Central Government’s senior fellowship for my study on ‘Cultural nationalism in the Life and Music of Maharaja Swathi Thirunal’. He was known for hosting musicians from across India and abroad. Even then many people have said that the tunes attributed to Swathi were actually composed by the experts in his court and not him. I had to find the truth.”

Therefore Swathi Mudra has several findings to attest for Swathi’s ingenuity and genius. “One of them is the book Isaikkalai Vallunargal, written by Gomathi Sankara Iyer. It is based on diary notes of his father, Pallavi Subbayya Bhagavathar, a disciple of maestro Mahavaidyanatha Iyer, who used to frequent the rulers of Travancore. The book details how three rulers of Travancore — Swathi Thirunal, his nephew Ayilyam Thirunal and Vishakam Thirunal propagated art, culture and music during their period. The notes also say how Swathi used to compose the tunes and then let his court musicians fine tune it,” Ajith says.

He adds that doubts have been raised about how he could compose so many kritis at a young age – he died when he was 33. “In Swathi Mudra I have arrived at certain conclusions that vouch for his musical genius. He has composed over 300 kritis. While Mullammoodu Bhagavathar preserved the tunes, greats such as Muthiah Bhagavathar and Semmangudi Swamy took them to another level, popularising the compositions,” Ajith says.

The book was released in Thiruvananthapuram on October 21 and will have a global launch on November 4 a Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mylapore, Chennai.

Cost is ₹2,500. For copies, contact 9447374646 or swathilegacy@gmail.com

Published - October 24, 2024 10:58 am IST