A Great Violinist

Art, in its pure and exalted form, is the greatest gift of the gods to mankind. In spite of its seeming diversity and its elastic and pervasive ground, it epitomises all the elements that appeal to the eye and ear and enthrall the heart, whatever form the release of the emotions may take. The Artist pours forth his soul in matchless lines on the canvas, or draws out of his flute or violin the song of his heart in cascades of melody, and forgets his identity in the serene contemplation of nature’s handiwork. He has flashes of Illumination and shares its glow and warmth with others. The painter plies his brush while the musician wields his magic wand. The painter is never satisfied unless you share the joy and beauty of his creation, while the musician feels dejected if you remain irresponsive to his ecstatic moods. What is, therefore, the basic ground of all this emotional reciprocity and responsiveness is the unique appeal which art in any form makes to the human mind. In every sphere art preserves past traditions and also rescues them from premature decay.

Among those who have preserved past traditions in all their pristine purity and brought to bear their influence on their art, Dwaram Venkataswami Naidu is one of the foremost. Prof. Naidu has rescued instrumental music from the ruts into which it had fallen, due to a too rigid subservience to out-moded conventions. He has also given new life and freedom to the instrument he wields with consummate ease. Under the deft touches of his fingers, the bare strings, dumb and immobile by themselves, spring into life, and the bow which wrings rare symphony and melody out of them does the rest of the miracle. Prof. Naidu had the making of a genius even in his youth; his zeal and natural flair for music was quite in unison with the traditional love of his family for the fine arts, and these found ample fulfilment in the young and ambitious boy as he grew into manhood.

Born in 1893 in the congenial atmosphere of Bangalore Cantonment, Prof. Naidu was lucky to have a father and brother deeply devoted to the worship of the fine arts. He tried to study books but the monotony of them scared him away. He found the greatest joy in hearing his father or brother practise on the violin. The soft and captivating timbre of the violin so won his tender heart that he preferred its charms to poring over textbooks. Very early in life, he put away his school books; and he found a ready and sympathetic response from his brother, Krishniah Naidu, who was himself a good violinist. With an inborn ear for the subtleties of sound and an intuitive aptitude for the arts, young Naidu devoted all his time and energy to the practice of the violin under the loving care of his brother. At this time, the Naidu family had to migrate to Visakhapatnam, but the young violinist had already mastered the fundamental technique of this art, and even developed a distinctive slyle in the handling of the bow.

Once he mastered the beginner’s routine, he blazed a new trail. He brought to bear on his exposition an uncommon skill and originality. No wonder Prof. Naidu rose in public esteem and was hailed as a prodigy. Today he is universally acclaimed as the supreme master of melody, equally at home in Oriental and Western modes. He combines in his style the finer points of both, without sacrificing the basic ground of Carnatic music. Here is a synthesis of both Eastern and Western styles of music, perfected by his own daring genius.

Having undergone preliminary training under the loving care and guidance of his father and brother, Prof. Naidu foresaw the great potentialities that lay hidden and untapped in this art, and concentrated on probing into its mysteries with the thoroughness and fervour of a votary. Early in his career, he had rare chances of listening to the music of famous artists like Anantharama Bhagavathar, Konerirajapuram Vythianatha Aiyar, and Sangameswara Sastri, including violinists like Thirukodikaval Krishna Aiyar and Trichy Govindaswami Pillai. Fortifying himself with these inspiring experiences at an impressionable age, he began to sharpen and quicken his own manodharma, fixing his peerless vision ahead. His fame began to spread in his own Province. From far-off Vizianagaram to Bezwada, his name became a household word and everyone talked of the amazing precocity of the young violinist who could reach the heights of the old giants at such an early age. The Maharaja of Jeypore, a discerning patron of arts, was one of the earliest to recognise the genius of Prof. Naidu and he presented him the first of a series of gold medals that were heaped by the public on this young rising star. In 1919, he was appointed Professor of Violin in the Maharaja’s Music College at Vizianagaram and later succeeded the famous Narayanadas in the Principalship. By this time his fame began to spread to South India which is the acknowledged nursery of all that is best in Carnatic music.

In the early period of the present century, Kakinada provided an ideal forum, through the Saraswathi Gana Sabha, for all young and aspiring artists to show their skill and enlist public approbation. Young Naidu gave his first public performance under the auspices of this Sabha and he at once attracted the attention of all music-lovers. Thereafter, Prof. Naidu became a rage in all music Sabhas at Madras and elsewhere and accompanied several great artists of the South. From 1920 onwards, honours and tributes came to him unsought; medals, titles and civic receptions were poured on him from one end of the country to the other, indicative of the love and esteem the art-lovers of South India had for this unique exponent of instrumental music. The biggest honour that any artist could covet came to him in 1957 when he was awarded the title of “Padma Sri” by the Central Government in recognition of his supremacy in violin.

But Prof. Naidu has not allowed this growing public esteem either to disturb his concentration or induce him to rest on past conquests. His mind is a vast store-house of dynamic energy from which he draws the thread of his music almost to a point of ecstasy. The more you hear him the more you feel the impact of the depth and vitality of his imaginative power which revels in subtleties and naive interpretations of the beautiful and the sublime. He is never satisfied with merely repeating the most obvious: he recreates and embellishes the core and the outlines of a raga with a rare glow. His art is of the type that grows and thrives on hitherto uncharted fields and through the magic wand of his bow he produces a striking pattern of symphony. He has the skill and deftness of a born artist: he communes with the gods and brings down paradise to earth in his delicate and adroit delineation of the finer and subtler aspects of a raga. In a sense, he strikes a casual listener as the very antithesis of the old orthodox type born and nursed in air-tight compartments, and he invariably breaks away from hidebound traditions only to replenish his art with fresh beauty and fragrance. He is an artist every inch.

There were giants in this field before the advent of Prof. Naidu, like Subbaraya Aiyar, who had the unique privilege of accompanying renowned artists like Coimbatore Raghava Aiyar and Mahavaidyanatha Aiyar of immortal fame. Following in their wake came Thirukodikaval Krishna Aiyar, another titan among violinists, and after him it looked as though there was an abrupt end to the illumination fostered under the leadership of Patnam Subramania Aiyar. Luckily for us, the music tradition has not ceased to percolate, though the hiatus between one milestone and another lingered for a while, only to yield place to another saga of musical lore with all its freshness and variety, handed down to us by Coimbatore Raghava Aiyar.

With loving loyalty, the link with the hoary past has been kept alive by the artists of the present generation, of whom Prof. Naidu is one of the foremost, Endowed with a keen and receptive mind, Prof. Naidu, solely guided by his own manodharma, has developed a technique which constitutes a happy synthesis of all that is appealing to the ear, whether it is purely a Carnatic or Western brand or an amalgam of both. And very early in his career he gave up accompanying any musician on the violin; being an individualist, he always prefers a solo performance.

Perhaps it may be considered a wrong approach to compare Prof. Naidu with other artists in his line, but a study of their methods is worth recording in assessing the art of this great master. A gifted artist, Thirukodikaval Krishna Aiyar wielded his bow like Arjuna, keeping rigidly within the ambit of his versatile scholarship. His imagination so overpowered the pure artist in him that he would stop and sing for a few seconds and resume the bow again to continue his overtures with the Muse. He was an outstanding genius with a distinctive personality of his own. While Krishna Aiyar invited you to share the joys withhim in his flights of imagination, Prof. Naidu is content to withdraw himself and allow his art to speak for itself. The volatility of the one is only equalled by the controlled emotion of the other.

Govindaswami Pillai was the doyen among the violinists of his day. Almost unrivalled in this art, he held the field as the most virile exponent of a style in which he combined melody with astute handling of the bow. His interpretation of ragas was daringly original both in conception and portrayal and was a faithful projection of his own bonhomie personality. He revelled in short, crisp, vibrating notes, sparkling chips hewn and perfected from his anvil, and overpowered us with the ecstasy of an animated being. Prof. Naidu is almost Pillai’s equal in this respect, with this small difference, that one drew largely his inspiration from the art itself, while the Professor merges himself into the very core of the sound, builds his picture out of the stirrings of his soul and invests it with promethean fire. Both these artists belong to the same class and have achieved distinction by their individuality and style.

Judged even by the most rigorous standards, Prof. Naidu is entitled to a foremost place among the contemporary exponents of instrumental music. Apart from his unrivalled mastery in play, which by itself is no common achievement, he has given to us an enchanting poem through his instrument. A story was current that Prof. Naidu’s supremacy is mostly due to the violin which he is alleged to have purchased at a fabulous price in an European market. This fiction was easily swallowed, since this instrument is of foreign origin and lends colour to the story. But the truth is that Prof. Naidu purchased the violin he is using even today for a bare Rs. 10 at some public auction. There is no witchcraft or sleight-of-hand in his play, nor is there any hidden secret which he alone can tap from the instrument to the amazement of his audience. Only, God has endowed him with an ingenuity to make the violin reveal the grand epic of his soul.

In striking contrast to the hypnotic spell he casts over his audience, Prof. Naidu is a man of utmost simplicity. Reserved by nature, he prefers to commune with himself and his art to any academic dissertation on music except with a chosen few. He strikes one as a lonely man immersed in the depths of his own soul, building up, remodelling and replenishing his manodharma and sharpening and concentrating mainly on ‘laya’ and ‘sruti,’ the very apotheosis of classical music. There is no set pattern in his delineation of any raga or song: it varies with his moods like a rainbow. Those who have heard his interpretation of ‘Subha Pantuvarali’ or ‘Mukhari’, ‘Bilahari’ or ‘Varali’, or any other raga for that matter, cannot miss the artist’s craftsmanship in touching the very springs of a piece and releasing a sparkling flood of melody therefrom to the delight of every one. Prof. Naidu is a true worshipper of Nada and his art is a faithful reflection of his unswerving devotion to it.

Age has not abated his ardour, nor has the suppleness of his fingers suffered in vigour or vitality in spite of advancing age. His handling of the bow which he wields with ease, and from which he draws the maximum effect, is always refreshing and amazingly original. You can invariably perceive sparks of originality in his development of a raga or the rendering of a keertana, subtly interspersed with sharp arrows of swaras, aglow with rare rhythm and resonance.

Luckily for the present generation of music-lovers, Prof. Naidu, is with us to entertain and enthrall. He has trained a large number of artists, inspiring them with his own idealistic outlook, and his own daughter, Sri Manga Thayaramma, is one of his promising disciples. His home is a veritable store-house of rare books and treatises on music, both Eastern and Western, and he is familiar with both systems. The bow is his mascot; the strings are his food, and his fingers respond instinctively to the stirrings of his heart.

There were giants in the past–those who ruled and dominated over the hearts of men in different times in succession. Prof. Naidu is the nearest approach to Veena Dhanammal in richness of melody, imaginative faculty and creative craftsmanship. Can there be a greater tribute to Prof. Naidu’s art than this!