T G K MURTY

anahata dhwani

The source for all music is cosmic. When the mind is pure,concentrated, The inner voice is heard. There is none that does not hum. When that rytham is brought life become scintilating.

Narendra Nath inherited love of music from his parents. While his father Vishwanath Dutt taught him rudiments of Dhrupad and Dhamar — the raga music of ancient India, while his mother Bhuvaneshwari Devi, taught him the music of lighter genre such as “Krishna-Leela” depicting the pranks of Krishna - the toddler. Swamiji's contemporaries, Swami Abhedanand and Shyamanand mention that Narendra Nath also had intense training from Beni Gupta, Ahmed Khan, and Chhote and Bade Dunni Khan. He also learnt to play the Pakhawaj, an ancient Indian drum held horizontally and played with fingers, while squatting on the floor. Before he turned twenty, Narendra Nath was an accomplished singer in Dhrupad and a much sought-after Pakhawaj player. He participated in several concerts in Kolkata, then known as Calcutta.

Swamiji would get up early in the morning, tune his two Tanpuras (Indian drones) and sing a morning melody Ahir Bhairav, specifically a Tansen Dhrupad composition, to wake up the Ashramites.

He wrote a book on Indian music "Sangeet Kalpataru" while he was barely twenty! While the first edition bore his name as the author, the later editions published by the same publisher Baishnav Charan Basak quietly dropped the author's name (Narendra Nath Dutt) perhaps under compulsion and changed the title to "Sachitra Vishwa Sangeet" edited by the publisher himself!

Music – Highest Form of Worship

Swami Vivekananda in a Beam of Musical Light

Shankaracharya had caught the rhythm of the Vedas, the national cadence. Indeed I always imagine that he had some vision such as mine when he was young, and recovered the ancient music that way. Anyway, his whole life's work is nothing but that, the throbbing of the beauty of the Vedas and the Upanishads. Vivekananda

SANGEETA KALPATARU

Sangeetha and spirituality are closely inter connected. How? Let us see one incident. One afternoon in Belur math a brahmachari approached Swami Shivananda, direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna at that time Mahapurush maharaj was relaxing facing sacred Ganges and in meditative mood. The brahmachari asked him, ‘maharaj, please tell me how Sri Ramakrishna would instruct you all regarding spiritual practices such as doing japa and meditation? Instantaneously Mahapurush maharaj replied, ‘Thakur used to sing at dawn with such a divine fervour that even stones would melt away. Even his songs had such a divine power.’ Indeed Sangeetha as being the integral part of spiritual life. All the divine incarnations’ saints and sages of India are deeply connected with music. In fact large number of them was saint singers. For example in ancient times Narada and Tumbura, in medieval time Ramprasad, Tyagaraja, Purandaraasa etc.

High achievements in art, music, etc.,

are the results of concentration. . . When we hear beautiful music, our minds become fastened upon it, and we cannot take them away. Those who concentrate their minds upon what you call classical music do not like common music, and vice versa. Music in which the notes follow each other in rapid succession holds the mind readily. A child loves lively music, because the rapidity of the notes gives the mind no chance to wander. A man who likes common music dislikes classical music, because it is more complicated and requires a greater degree of concentration to follow it.---Swami Vivekananda

want to improve concentration ?

A NEW OPERA CONNECTING THESCIENCE-SPIRITUALITY-SANGEET AND SOCIETY –IS EXPLORED-EXPERIENCED –EXHORTED BY VIVEKANANDA

It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception

“You will ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty; they come un summon, directly, indirectly, – I could seize them with my hands, – out in the open air; in the woods; while walking; in the silence of the nights; early in the morning; incited by moods, which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.”

The demanding and challenging sound of his masterpieces stay as a strong call to adventure and a persistent annoyance that says, “wake up!”, “move!”, “transcend!” Beethoven could barely handle those voices in his head,, was the first sign of a highly intuitive soul.

“Dissatisfied with many things, more susceptible than any other person and tormented by my deafness, I often find only suffering in the association with” – Beethoven

Supra personal unconscious

. It is certainly true that without the sacrifice of man as he is, man as he was--and always will be-- cannot be attained. And it is the artist who can tell us most about this sacrifice of the personal man...

•An artist such as Tyagaraja , Vivekananda, Einstien, Beethoven etc draws on supra personal collective wisdom-impulses which help him find what is needed to solve artistic problems in the patterns he makes, and the images that will suggest the truths of life he portrays. The psyche seeks wholeness and has a sense of wholeness; it comes up with images of the whole, and the artist gratefully uses this sensibility in his work

This has a very deeper meaning not only to music, not to science but life itself as well human to lift himself to the divine. It is lack of this tuning which is a problem in the contemporary world, in the present day world, in the present day society.

SWAMIJI ON TUNING OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTSSwami Vivekananda the scientific genius used to say suppose there are few musical instruments of different type, if you tune them all too same frequency at that time even if any one of the instrument is touched all the instruments will hum instantaneously connecting all the instruments.