South India
Carnatic
Compositions of Tyagaraja, Dikshitar and Syama Sastri: sargam with swarasthanas, beside the staff.
This room is being written.
Its tunes are being read from the original printed collections now, checked note by note against the scans. They will appear here as soon as each one is checked.
Why everything here is free to use
What is free, and what is not
The compositions of the Trinity are centuries old and belong to everyone: Tyagaraja (d. 1847), Muthuswami Dikshitar (d. 1835) and Syama Sastri (d. 1827). The same goes for Purandara Dasa (d. 1564) and Swathi Thirunal (d. 1846).
What can still be protected is a modern notated edition: someone's later notation, translation or editing of these songs.
So a piece is free here only when we read it from a notation that was published in 1930 or earlier and whose notator died before 1 January 1966.
Sources
- Subbarama Dikshitar, Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini (Ettayapuram, 1904, in Telugu). He died in 1906, so the original is free. Its modern English and Malayalam editions are not free; we do not read from them. We have not yet found a scan of the 1904 Telugu original, so this source is a lead.
How each piece is shown
- Sargam with swarasthanas (the twelve positions, from S, R1, R2 to N3), the raga, its arohana and avarohana, the tala and its angas, and the pallavi, anupallavi and charanam.
- A staff version beside it, with gamakas marked.
- Transposing means choosing your sruti: Sa can sit on any key.
- Every raga name and swarasthana is checked by a musician before the piece opens.