Was Swathi Thirunal real?

[shreyas]

I was not able to find this thread anywhere, so here goes:

I have heard people saying that since swathi thirunal was a king (even though he was very knowledgeable about art and language) his ministers composed all of his songs for which he took credit.

I have also heard that Semmangudi invented Swathi Thirunal's popular songs Deva Deva and Pankaja Lochana as a way to get his tunes more popular...

Any clarification on this?

[MaheshS]

Just Google for Swathi Thirunal controversy or Semmangudi V S Balachander

All these allegations have been proved false.

[Sachi_R]

There are a number of posts on this in Rasikas.org

Prince Rama Varma himself states that the musical tunes =varNamettu of the EXTANT Swathi Thirunal songs have been added to his sahitya by musicians like HNB, SSI, BMK, MSI and so on.

[ajaysimha]

this is a very old question i had in my mind.

some of the popular dance compositions in some books attribute to tanjai nalvar and some books attibute the same to swathi thirunal maharaja.

[Sundara Rajan]

Here is another version: The Tanjore Quartets , disciples of Muthuswami Dikshitar, served in the court of Swathi ThirunAL. Some of the compositions attributed to Swathhi ThirunAL were actually composed by one of these four.

[SrinathK]

Regarding ST, he was of course real. There are lots of official documents handled by him in the records.

Now about the music, I hope you realize that whatever happened to the music of all great composers through history also happened to him.

In general virtually none of the music of any composers around or before the 19th century that were not named the Holy Trinity survives in its original form - everything before them has changed to modern tunes as the original music is long lost.

ST was unique in that he composed across both HM and CM in many different compositional forms.

[arasi]

My question is: are we, the rasikAs making up a composer called Swati Tirunal?
Honestly, what is to be obtained by this futile speculation?
I own up though, that all my compositions were really by a bunch of individuals: my mailman, the Avon lady and the united parcel service man