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Doreswamy Iyengar | |
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| Born | Mysore Venkatesha Doreswamy Iyengar 1920 Gaddavalli,Hassan,Kingdom of Mysore |
| Died | 28 October 1997(1997-10-28) (aged 76–77) Bangalore, India |
| Occupation | Musician |
| Known for | Veena |
| Children | D. Balakrishna |
| Awards | Padma Bhushan Sangeetha Kalanidhi |
Mysore Venkatesha Doreswamy Iyengar (1920–1997) was aCarnatic musician and one of the greatest exponents of theveena in modern Indian history.[1][2]
Doreswamy Iyengar was born to aTamilbrahmin family in Gaddavalli, a village inHassan of the erstwhileKingdom of Mysore (in the present-dayKarnataka State of India). His grandfather, Janardhana Iyengar, sang compositions of the Dasa saint-poets, includingPurandaradasa. He was a son of Venkatesha Iyengar, a learnedvainika and royal musician at the court of theMaharaja of Mysore.[3]
Iyengar started learning the veena from his father at an early age and soon became a disciple ofVeena Venkatagiriyappa, a friend of his father. Doreswamy performed in the presence of the then Maharaja,Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV, at the age of 12 for the first time. A few months later, he was appointed the juniorvidwan in thepalace orchestra. He then passed the examination in advanced theory of Western music conducted by theTrinity College London and at 16, was nominated the court musician of Mysore, the youngest to win the honour. Iyengar, who was never interested in studies, managed to secure aBachelor of Arts degree fromMaharaja's College, Mysore, with the help of his friend,R. K. Narayan. He was married at the age of 12 to Sharadamma.[3][4]
Iyengar gave his first public performance in 1943 at the Bangalore Gayana Samaja.[citation needed] He served as the Producer with theAll India Radio (AIR) inBangalore starting 1955. He was reluctant to carry on considering the bureaucratic and organisational demands of the post, and that he perform for the AIR at need, alongside auditioning and selecting musicians for the same. However, he was persuaded to stay bySemmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, who was a chief producer with the AIR based inMadras (now Chennai), assuring him of flexible hours and fewer burdens of administration. Iyendar put togetherGita Bharati for the AIR, Bangalore, which juxtaposed the compositions ofTyagaraja andMuthuswami Dikshitar with the Bengali songs ofRabindranath Tagore, based on their musical structure. These unusual pieces had been composed by Tagore after his trip to southern India in the 1920s that included a visit to the Mysore court.[3] Other programmes produced by Iyengar included those where he set to tunes to poems of many Kannada-language poets suchG. S. Shivarudrappa,N. S. Lakshminarayan Bhat.[5] Iyengar later became the firstKannadiga andvanika to perform for AIR's national programme.[3]
Iyengar participated in music conferences including one inShiraz, Iran, in 1969, where he was also invited to perform at the Shiraz Persepolis Festival of Arts as a guest artist. He performed at the Festivals of India event in Germany and theSoviet Union; in the latter, he presented his five veena recitals (pancha).[3]
Concerts of Iyengar, accompanied byChowdiah on theviolin, became very popular.[5] He also performed duets with other violinists such asLalgudi Jayaraman,T. N. Krishnan andM. S. Gopalakrishnan, and vocalists such asM. Balamuralikrishna andK. V. Narayanaswamy. He participated in manyJugalbandis, including with popular Hindustani classical instrumentalists such asUstadAli Akbar Khan,Mallikarjun Mansur andAmjad Ali Khan.[3] Iyengar was regularly accompanied onmridangam by V. S. Rajagopal.[citation needed] The noted vainika C. Krishnamurthy was one of Iyengar's main disciples, alongside his sonD. Balakrishna.[3]
Iyengar composed music foroperas, notably to those ofP. T. Narasimhachar, such asGokula Nirgamana andHamsa Damayanti. He also scored music for a few Kannada-language films, notablySubba Shastry (1966).[3]
In an age when most of the other vainikas had started using the contactmicrophone, Iyengar stuck to the acoustic Veena.[6] He was againstamplification as he felt that it robbed the music of its nuances and often distorted the tone.[3] Iyengar's style of playing is sometimes referred to as the Mysore style.[citation needed] This distinctive style is marked by the movements from one note to another being achieved with the playing fingers (the index and middle fingers of the left hand) parted. This, along with his prolonged, medieval string plucking style enabled him to achieve the continuity of sound.[citation needed]
Iyengar's son Balakrishna recalled that despite his father being "a purist, he listened to western music andFritz Kreisler was one of his favorites.[5] Members of his family recalled that his all-time favorite pieces were by German and Austrian musicians.[3] TheUniversity of Mysore conferred upon Iyengar an honorary doctorate in 1975.[citation needed] Iyengar died ofhepatitis C on 8 October 1997.[3]
Iyengar was awarded theMysore State Sahitya Academy Award in 1970,[7] thePadma Bhushan by theGovernment of India in 1983,[8] theSangeetha Kalanidhi of theMadras Music Academy in 1984, theSangeetha Kalasikhamani of the Indian Fine Arts Society in 1994, the Sangeetha Kalarathna of the Bangalore Gayanasamaja, and the Chowdiah National Memorial Award.[3]
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