The Music of Hindostan c8.s2.11

c8.s2.11

But the practice does not appear to have attractions for Tyagarāja; he resists them at any rate in a song beginning Nidāsānu, a word which would have suggested four notes of the scale.¹ Neither does he seem to be particularly in love with Svaras. Svara in the South, Sārgam (i.e. Sa, Ri, Ga, Ma) in the North, means a rapid passage in which the notes are sung to the sol-fa names instead of to words as an amusing feat of skill. It takes the place of our cadenza, and like that was occasionally added by another hand. Svaras occur in only four of his sixty songs.