Kritis and Symphonies on Madras
Anil Srinivasan is the kind S Muthiah refers to — though Anil is obviously more talented than Sashi Tharoor ever will be.
Yesterday’s Madras week event was Anil Srnivasan’s commentary and rendering of Kritis and Symphonies with a Madras connection. The two aspects of the evening, though presented in a seamless manner, had two distinct flavors. Anil is an accomplished pianist and a competent consultant who sells his accomplishment quite well. He did hold the audience’s attention with some wonderful history of western music from this great city. Repeating it here would only make it sound less than what has been claimed and defeat its purpose. I encourage you to read on the first string quartet from these parts and the influence of Carnatic music on early European composers from Madras.
There was also the Kritis part, with compositions on the two famous temples –Kapaleashwarar and Parthasarathy.
My more accomplished music lover friend tended to dismiss the history connect as forced and the music, average. Since there is a reason Muthiah made his observation, I concluded, the city needs its share of shallow people whose hyperbole will be the necessary self perpetuating myth. I do have a role to play. And I am.
Tags: Madras Music, Madras Week
August 21st, 2008 at 4:16 am
Interesting, yes.
Now I wonder where 25 years of training go to. And very back breaking research ( for instance - try finding about the history of western classical music in any of our libraries here or even online, my erudite friend) which still yielded only scanty information.
And if remembering melas, janyas and their equivalents, PLAYING THEM on an instrument that normally does not take it appears to you to be shallow and hyperbolic - I really wonder what sort of impossible standards you set for us paltry performers.
Good luck.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:44 am
Anil, I guess you have not read the post. I urge you to do so.
In case you have, I suspect my writing is worse than what I had imagined.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:39 am
Failed praise can be confused with failed puke. And what can be shallow and hyperbolic at the same time?
August 21st, 2008 at 7:47 am
ithukku enna parikaram?
August 21st, 2008 at 8:57 am
I think we should ask theothernilu.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:16 am
The comments on this are funnier than the post itself….
August 21st, 2008 at 9:45 am
Nilu
I guess I don’t follow much of your post, to be honest. Half of it seems to indicate that you enjoyed the event. You then conclude your piece saying that the city needs shallow people ( and I quite agree - shallow AND hyperbole???) and you dismiss the music and the history.
And why hide behind a music lover friend? You do have your own opinion, don’t you?
August 21st, 2008 at 9:47 am
And in any case, I forwarded this to the Madras Week people. Perhaps it will serve as useful feedback and they can hunt for “deeper” individuals ( to use your expression).
Or perhaps you and your music lover friend who very clearly knows far more than I do (on music history - western music - madras, whatever) could help them out.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:27 am
“you and your music lover friend who very clearly knows far more than I do”
Ha ha ha! Not at all clear, and quite untrue on top of it. Neither of them has touched a musical instrument in their lifetime, and one of them learnt all he knows from a set of cheap 25 rupee audio cassettes on Appreciation of Western Classical Music by some hack Parag Khanna or suchlike that I randomly unearthed in a dirty cupboard in New Delhi. Ivangalukku ivvalov mariyadhai ?! Naya paisavukku vakku illai
You pay no attention to their prose Srinivasan, they are at best cut-paste geeks who will preface everything with Taleb says, Dante says, Rees says, as if Taleb is selling paan beeda in their agraharam, Dante is the kudumi mama at the hanuman temple and Rees runs the idli kadai. You just play the piano Srinivasan Sir, forget about hunt for deeper individual shallow individual. In any case these two are as shallow as they come.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:46 pm
I am not Nilu’s more accomplished music lover friend, so knocking me down is completely unnecessary. Parag Trivedi did teach me most of what I know about western classical, and would have taught many more people, but for his untimely death in 2003. There is no need to slam a dead music lover like him and another city like Mumbai, which plays more Bach in a day in Parsi Colony than this city has played in its 369 years.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:08 am
apologies on the mistaken identity. but you can’t expect me to pass up on juicy nuggets like 25 rupee trivedi cassettes carefully hidden away in godrej bureau. i’m sure if you visit amioun zoo you’ll find secretly stashed away feathers of a black swan accounting for all that ludic fallacy tripe from that polymath windbag.
August 22nd, 2008 at 7:17 am
kudumba sandai is svarasyam. but this Srinivasan person seems most annoyed.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
At an intellectual/musical level, I dont know how we can apologize to someone who writes as well as this, or has grown up this way:
http://madraspianist.blogspot.com/2008/06/growing-up-with-tmk.html
Maybe we can offer to carry his piano somewhere. A piano kavadi of some sort.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:44 am
That is true. I guess we can blame my anjam class english teacher.
I will wait for TON to give a better parikaram.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:51 am
I suppose that one thinks that I am shallow, and indulge in hyperbole, it is tough to blame it on bad English.
Good luck to all of you. I am not annoyed - just hurt.
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
Srinivasan Sir, one final attempt. Nilu’s intentions were right, but his writing was terrible. The apology we owe you is for writing a confusing piece, even though his intentions in promoting your event were admirable. As can be seen from his previous post, he admires the whole Madras week initiative, including the Madras photo walk series.
The entire post is written with an analogy to the S Muthiah piece. The Madras book club was worth promoting, even if it was done with an event and audience that was shallow/hyperbolic
In the Nilu piece, the contrast between you and Sashi Tharoor, and the second para show that he clearly thinks the event was really wonderful. He does not think your audience was shallow/hyperbolic, he is trying some self-deprecation here in saying, he himself is shallow/hyperbolic, but even if he talks about the event, it is a good thing, as the event itself is admirable and worth promoting.
So, the analogy IS:
Madras Book Club – Anil Srinivasan
Shallow/Hyperbolic Audience – Nilu
And IS NOT:
Madras Book Club – Venue
Sashi Tharoor – Anil Srinivasan
Shallow/Hyperbolic audience – Good Audience
S Muthiah – Nilu
After a few single malts, the analogy works. But I promise not to come anywhere near music criticism again.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Long winded and a bit fuzzy, but for the sake of harmony ( and thats not meant to be a musical allegory, before we get into any more Sashi Tharoor take offs or the metaphors therein), I will give in and say truce. Good luck as I always say - and keep an open mind - this is really a wonderful city ( and we DO have a lot of committed western music lovers - and perhaps a far more orchestrated cultural scene than Bombay does, with due respect to Parsi colony - I lived there myself for 2 years, before someone attacks me for that too).
August 23rd, 2008 at 4:17 am
If my attempts at self deprecation need 18 comments to clarify, I must really sue my school.
October 16th, 2008 at 4:18 am
All this made interesting reading…but I wonder how Madras Book Club came to be involved with Mr.Srinivasan’s music. In fact, I was sorry to have missed the music event as I was out of station. If I remember right, this programme was a part of the Madras week conducted at Taj Coromandel and the only programme during the week organised by the Madras Book Club was at Taj Connemara for the launch of V Sriram’s Historic Residences of Chennai!
Well, I suppose people do get confused with the ‘Taj’ prefix