East and West found harmony in The
Madras String Quartet’s presentation.
Photo: S.R. Raghunathan
Thoughtfully planned: The Madras String
Quartet
The String Quartet is one of Western
music’s most revered vehicles for the
performance of classical forms. Some of
the greatest composers, including Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven, and distinguished
composers of our own day, have used the
string quartet as one of the chief means
through which they may demonstrate their
skill and depth. Apparently, the String
Quartet as a form was born accidentally
when the 18-year old Franz Josef Haydn
was asked to compose music for four
amateur musicians who happened to be
staying at a stately home near Vienna.
Haydn agreed, and became fascinated with
this combination, and went on to write
68 string quartets in his career.
Other composers of his day and ever
since have followed. The term ‘String
Quartet’ refers both to the combination
of instruments playing, and to a
particular form of musical composition
played by the combination of two
violins, one viola and one cello.
The violin has been a staple of south
Indian music since it was introduced by
Baluswami Dikshitar, brother of
Muthuswamy Dikshitar, in the 1820s, and
soon became a respected solo instrument
in the Carnatic tradition, and the great
south Indian violinists are as respected
as those who perform on any traditional
Indian instrument. But other members of
the string family have not had such a
prominent voice in South Indian music.
But the Madras String quartet seeks to
redress that in some measure.
Started in 1993, with members already
involved with the film industry, the
Madras String Quartet (V.S. Narasimhan
and Hemanthraj Muliyil, violins; B.J.
Chandran, viola, and R. Sekar, cello)
seeks to establish itself as the finest
string quartet in India. The group
explores new frontiers in Chamber Music,
the relationship between the western
string quartet tradition, and the
tradition of string playing that has
developed independently here in the past
two centuries. This quartet was invited
by the Association of British Scholars
to offer a concert at the Music
Academy’s Mini-Hall on September 1. The
concert was presented as a concluding
event to the Madras Week celebrations.
In five sections
The concert was thoughtfully planned in
five sections. Part One, the
‘Introduction to the Concert’, opened
with a piece by Henry Purcell who also
wrote for combinations of strings. In
1680, when he was 18 years old, Purcell
wrote a set of Fantasias for viols, an
older western family of stringed
instruments. This piece was included to
show us the ancestry of the quartet.
While the sound of a modern string
quartet is foreign to this older music,
it was good to hear these poignant
harmonies and contrasting counterpoint,
which eventually led to music for the
string quartet as we now know it.
W A. Mozart, a younger contemporary of
Haydn, is noted for his 23-string
quartets of depth and intimacy. One of
his earliest essays in the form written
when he was 16 is the Quartet in G, K.
156, in three movements. For us, this
piece was what we know best as the sound
of a string quartet —musical ideas
shared more or less equally among the
four instruments in contrasting sections
played that evening with great intimacy.
The late 19th century composer Pyotr
Ilyich Tchaikovsky is known for large
scale ballets, symphonies, and opera.
But we heard the ‘Valse’ from his
Serenade for Strings, a lilting waltz.
Usually played by a large group of
strings, it was pleasant and
enlightening to hear the work played by
just four instruments, where the
interchange of melodies among the
players was delightful and easy to
follow.
The concert then moved on to what was
for this audience, if not for this
reviewer, more familiar ground.
‘Classical Music of South India—the
Context’ was the next section of the
concert, and the context was
demonstrated by the music of Dikshitar:
His ‘Vathapi’ in Hamsadhwani, in Adi
Tala was the pieces we heard. Dikshitar
was working around the same time as the
Viennese classical composers in the
West, and it was fascinating to hear
this music written by their revered
Indian contemporary.
All the Carnatic pieces on the programme
were arranged by V.S. Narasimhan
specifically for the quartet, and
revealed both differences and
similarities between western and eastern
musical thinking. Narasimhan was
certainly the solo voice, accompanied by
the other three members of the quartet,
with sometimes haunting harmony and
countermelodies appearing in the
accompaniment all with a strong and
sometimes surprising harmonic foundation
provided by the ‘cello.
Centre of culture
Because Madras was a centre of culture
throughout the nineteenth century it
naturally drew the major musical figures
of the day to its sabhas and salons. In
the third part of the concert, “The
Music Scene of Madras: The Concert
Format,” Tyagaraja’s ‘Gnaana
Mosagaraadha’ in the raga Purvikalyani,
in Rupaka tala, was arranged with
ingenuity by Narasimhan. Papanasam
Sivan’s ‘Eesane’ rounded off this
section’s items. The music, full of
delightful, almost jaunty melody, was
harmonised by Narasimhan with often
pensive harmony reminiscent to this
listener of Bartok. Throughout,
Narasimhan’s playing was never showy,
but always intimate and striving towards
an inner vision of perfection.
Although part four was called “Influence
of Western Music on Carnatic Composers”
Narasimhan’s arrangements showed that
one could hear all the Carnatic music we
experienced that night in terms of
western influence, by the very fact of
harmonising it. But specifically, he
chose Patnam Subramanya Iyer’s
‘Raghuvamsasudha’ and Tyagaraja’s
‘Sarasara Samare.’ It would have been
interesting to hear this music played
not as solo and accompaniment but rather
with all the players sharing more
equally in the way that Goethe described
the string quartet: Four rational
individuals having a conversation. This
is where the difference between western
and eastern musical thinking came across
most clearly. India has a solo musical
tradition, based on elaboration of
melody, whereas in the West, melodic
invention while important gives way to
harmonic elaboration. Most of the
Carnatic music arrangements on the
programme could be imagined as three
rational individuals agreeing with one
forceful if charming and humble
personality.
The contemporary Indian piece that
opened the fifth and concluding part of
the programme was by Lalgudi Jayaraman.
This was his Thillana with an alap
beautifully played on the cello,
preceding the piece, in which the four
members of the quartet shared more
equally in the conversation than in any
other of the Carnatic pieces on the
programme. The evening ended with a
Medley which included snippets from
famous western classical pieces as well
as Indian popular melodies. Its
intention was clearly to give the
audience a delightful “sweet” on the way
out the door, and in this it succeeded
admirably.
The whole evening was narrated for us by
Dr. S. Venkataraman of UNESCO with
concise, informative and engaging
explanations of each section as it
unfolded. His explanations as the
concert unfolded were welcomed additions
to the evening.