vasanthakokilam wrote:
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Just because, for the past several years, many C-musicians have not been holding long notes does not mean that CM does not easily allow this. In fact, the very definition of amsa swara and nyasa swara implicate the holding of the note either during the phrase or at the end. Perhaps there has been a gradual change in the CM listener taste...
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I was going to write something like that myself and you have captured my thoughts much better than I could have. There is definitely a difference between HM and CM on this holding pattern, but there are several ragas in CM mainstay where such amsa and nyasa swara aesthetics are paramount. thenpaanan is quite knowledgeable and I am now curious why he holds that opinion. May be his point is the difference in degree of long held notes between the two systems, in terms of length and frequency of occurrence.
Thanks kindly for the compliment. I wasn't trying to say anything profound. CM does not usually permit holding long notes _flat_ except for pa and sa. One can hold the long notes but the notes have to be oscillated correctly. I wish I had the artistry of Coolji in wielding audio files to demonstrate the point.
Take the case of Kalyani as was mentioned earlier -- it serves as a good example for contrasting the treatment between CM and HM as well. A typical starting phrase in Kalyani would be something like GDPMGA.. with a rest on the ending ga (nyaasa as it is called). But this ga has to be oscillated/shaken to be authentic. Indeed the subtle differences between ragas are to a great extent stored in the way we shake these nyaasa swaras. Compare it, for example, to the way you would treat the ending gandharam in the sankarAbharaNam phrase SR~GA--. But I digress. I was simply pointing out that CM does not like these notes to be held without oscillation. In neither case could you get away holding a flat GA. In kalyANi the only note I can think that does not always _need_ to be oscillated is Ni, especially if it is leading to Sa (though there are plenty of contexts where the kalyANi nishAdam has to be oscillated as well). Of course you can hold flat notes in transition, within phrases, etc -- I am only talking about the long notes. In contrast, the HM Yaman allows every held note to be treated as flat as well as oscillated (with its own characteristic gamakas). The greatest exposition of Yaman without oscillation is the mind-blowingly meditative 70-minute ALAp (no jhOD-jHAlA, no nothing, just unaccompanied AlAp) on rudra veena by Ustad Zia Moiuddin Dagar. He explores every "angular" feature of yaman -- i.e. all kinds of intervallic jumps, note-striking, octave effects, etc that one never gets to hear otherwise. Interval jumps are hard to appreciate if the notes are being oscillated but here you get to hear the pure thing.
As to the other comment about CM tastes changing -- I presume they do all the time but I do not know if that has been a big factor in this particular aspect. I recall two different instances where this point about oscillation has been called out. In a concert by the great TViswanathan where he was performing right after a HM performance by Harold Powers, he pointed out that even though the notes in CM and HM are the same we have to shake the notes in CM. I cannot recall the exact words he used but it was approximately "it is as if we are hyper all the time in Carnatic music". The audience laughed but the point is a very deep one. The other example is from the other great CM pedagogue of our times, Shri SRJ. In a lec-dem where he explains kalyANi he says with characteristic flair "the monkey has to shake the branch" referring to the characteristic shake of the gAndhARa.
-Thenpaanan
