Lawyer who nurtured music
SRIRAM VENKATKRISHNAN
| PIONEER Prof. Sambamurthi worked all his life to make musicology an integral part of Carnatic music. |
INNOVATOR Prof. Sambamurthi
Prof. P. Sambamurthi passed away on October 23, 1973. The Hindu published a detailed obituary on October 24 in which it recorded that the end came about at the Royapettah Hospital, Madras, after a brief illness.
The article first listed his awards and stated that he was a recipient of Padma Bhushan. And it went on to say, “Prof. Sambamurthi was honoured with the title of Sangita Kalanidhi at the 46th annual conference of the Music Academy, Madras in 1972. He was elected Fellow of the Sangeet Nataka Akademi in 1963 in recognition of his services to music.” It was an unprecedented list of honours and the Professor, as he was always known, deserved every one of them. He had worked hard all his life to make musicology an integral part of Carnatic music. And he began his endeavours at a time when music was largely an oral tradition with very little support for theory despite the various treatises on it and the proliferation of printed works in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
By then, the gurukula system was fast fading and even in the 1880s, there had been attempts by the Madras Jubilee Gayan Samaj to train students in music en masse by the establishment of schools for this purpose. Though this effort failed, the idea caught on and sporadic attempts were made in the 1900s as well. The Rev. H.A. Popley ran a summer school for music in 1918 which taught music to Christians. By 1921, this had become an annual feature, the entire course lasting six weeks.
In 1924, Sambamurthi, fresh out of law college, but more interested in music and better known as a performer on the flute, was invited to give ten lectures on the “Musical Forms in South Indian Music” at the summer school.
He so impressed the Rev. Popley that he was immediately appointed as a lecturer in the school. With Popley returning to London in 1926, Sambamurthi became Vice-Principal of the school and by 1927, became the Principal.
Not content with carrying on what the Rev. Popley had begun, Sambamurthi set about creating a syllabus for the school. The course expanded to comprise Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced and Honours sections and soon became a full-day school for the summer months, functioning out of various buildings in the city.
Created a syllabus
There were classes on theory and practice and each Friday, the students had to present, by way of public performances, what they had learnt. To introduce a fun element, Sambamurthi organised weekend outings to places of musical interest in and around Madras city.
Not everyone was impressed with such group singing. The noted critic ‘Kalki’ Krishnamurthy panned the attempt as monstrous but it was generally welcomed as an innovation. Encouraged by the response, Sambamurthi enlarged the summer course into a full five-year course. In addition, a Teacher’s Training Course was also introduced which became very popular among the music teachers of the Corporation Schools. Students began coming in from all over India and soon a separate course for instruments was also added.
The Music Academy, Madras, was started in 1928, with Sambamurthy as one of the founding secretaries. This body lobbied with the Government to introduce music as a regular course in colleges and in the Madras University.
The Queen Mary’s College (QMC) was the first to do so and Sambamurthi was appointed lecturer. At around this time, he was also asked to teach music in many schools of Madras, so much so that he had to evolve a rota system of teaching in all the schools and still continue as lecturer at the QMC and serve as Principal of the summer school! He of course, never practised law!
The Madras University funded his travel to Germany in 1931 to study at the Deutsche Akademie. In 1932, when the Music Department of the Madras University was formed, he framed its syllabus. Later he was to serve as its head for 25 years. From then on, there was no looking back either for him or for musicology. He wrote innumerable books, framed syllabi for several universities, helped the setting up of the Central College of Carnatic Music (now Isai Kalluri), was Professor of Musicology at the Venkateswara University and represented India at numerous music conferences abroad. He was also Director, Sangita Vadyalaya, Madras, from 1961 to 64 where he worked on creating and improvising music instruments. Sadly, the summer school that he put on the map, closed down in 1941. But it had served its purpose as a launch pad for musicology and systematic teaching of music.
(This article owes much to inputs from Dr M.A. Bhageerathi, faculty member of QMC, whose doctoral thesis was on Prof. Sambamurthi’s contribution to music theory.)
(The author can be contacted at srirambts@gmail.com)
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