Melody of the duck instrument

SUGANTHY KRISHNAMACHARI

Having learnt the oboe, Martina Leopoldt is keen on mastering the nagaswaram.

Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

unusual: Martina Leopoldt.

Ever since I dipped into our collection of records, to listen to the New York Philharmonic playing Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf,’ conducted by Leonard Bernstein, the oboe has been, to me, synonymous with the duck. That’s be cause, it is the oboe that represents the duck in this piece. When I tell oboe player Martina Leopoldt this, she laughs, and says, “It’s not just you. Many of my friends in Germany call it the duck instrument too.’”

Martina is in Chennai to give finishing touches to her thesis for a post-graduate degree in Musicology. She is a student at the University of Leipzig, and the topic of her research is ‘Nagaswaram — ritual and religious connections in music — especially in connection with the Tiruvaiyaru Tyagaraja festival.’ She took the help of Prof B.M. Sundaram and Injikkudi E.M. Subramaniam for her thesis.

Curiosity kindled

When she was eleven, Martina decided to learn how to play the oboe. “An oboe teacher had just arrived in Ilmeneau, the small town in which I lived. Just out of curiosity, I enrolled for oboe lessons. My face would turn red when I played the oboe. My friends would tease me and say, “You are not only playing the duck instrument, you even look like a sick duck!”

How did she get interested in the nagaswaram? “When my grandfather visited Chennai in 2005, he bought a nagaswaram for me. I didn’t know a thing about it, until 2007, when I visited India, and learnt how to play it.”

She filmed the nagaswaram players at Tiruvaiyaru this year, and at the Tiruvannamalai and Chidambaram temples. “I even went trekking up to the Sorimuthu Ayyanarappan temple in the Mundanthurai sanctuary in Tirunelveli. This temple in a forest has a nagaswaram and thavil player, while many temples in more accessible places don’t have ritual nagaswaram playing. They say they lack funds. I also wanted to visit the Agastya temple, but the permission from the Forest Department didn’t come in time. So I couldn’t visit that temple.”

“In the West, we usually don’t use microphones for classical music concerts. But you have microphones in your sabhas, and that spoils the quality of your traditional music. Why aren’t your auditoriums designed keeping acoustics in mind?” she wonders. She’s a girl with very strong views on adhering to the traditions of music. Surprising in one so young. Martina is only 22.

In the 17th century the oboe made its way into concert halls. Today the nagaswaram too is heard in sabhas, a development Martina is not happy about. “The nagaswaram is the loudest wind instrument in the world. And your sabhas provide amplification for the nagaswaram too! Indians seem to have such a fascination for technology. I even heard an electronic veena. I didn’t like it one bit,” complains Martina.

She laments that in Europe, Hindustani music is known more widely than Carnatic music. “I couldn’t find many books on Carnatic music in our libraries, but there were many on Hindustani music.”

“Bollywood music is popular in India, and A.R. Rahman has used the oboe in a song in the film Jodha Akbar. That might make the oboe popular here!”

Martina plans to continue nagaswaram lessons under Balamurali, who studied in Annamalai University, and now lives in Germany. Once she submits her thesis, she’s going to come back to India, to train under Injikkudi Subramanian. And of course, there’s also that trek to the Agastya temple that she missed this trip, but is determined to do soon.

Comparative study

In a lecture recently organised by the Centre for Ethnomusicology, Martina spoke of the role of the oboe in every period in the history of Western music, and then of the similarities and differences between the oboe and the nagaswaram. Some highlig hts:

Like the nagaswaram, the oboe is a double reed instrument of the woodwind family. It’s made of a wood called grenadilla, which comes from Africa. “Of ten pieces of the wood, roughly one will be suitable for making an oboe. That’s why the oboe is expensive. An oboe costs 8000 Euros!” Martina explained. “Reeds have to be changed every week, and each reed costs 20 Euros, but I make my own reeds.”

The oboe too has a conical bore, but the reeds of the nagaswaram are thicker, which makes the latter more difficult to play.

Amazing ability

“No oboe player will be able to play for more than two hours at a stretch. And I am amazed at the ability of nagaswaram players who play continuously for more than six hours in temples,” Martina observed.

The modern oboe has 45 keys, and therefore one cannot produce gamakas on it. But the baroque oboe has only three keys, and is more like the nagaswaram, because you can produce microtones on it.

In the baroque oboe too sound is produced mainly with the oral cavity, as in the case of the nagaswaram. Both the nagaswaram and the oboe originated as outdoor instruments, although the nagaswaram was used in religious processions and the baroque oboe in military processions.

S.K.