Karnataka Music Questions and Answers

Answer: B

'Bana-ma' denotes the raga Dheera Sankarabharanam, the 29th melakarta. Bana stands for five in the bhuta sankhya, so the raga is in the fifth chakra, Bana, and ma shows that it takes shuddha madhyam and is the fifth raga in that chakra (24 + 5 = 29). Maya Malavagaula is the 15th, Mecha Kalyani the 65th and Kharaharapriya the 22nd, so none of them fit that numbering. The keyed answer is Dheera Sankarabharanam.

Answer: A

The ancient name for an orchestra in India was Kutapa. The Natyashastra uses the word kutapa for the group of musicians, singers and instrumentalists, who sat together in the theatre and supported the performance. Brinda is a word for a group in later usage, Grama is the name of a basic scale of the old system, and Murchhana is a scale pattern derived from a grama, so neither of the last two means an orchestra. The keyed answer is Kutapa.

Answer: B

The adi tala varnam 'Ninnukori' in the raga Mohanam is credited by the key to Ramanad Srinivasa Iyyangar. Swati Thirunal, Patnam Subramanya Iyer and Pallavi Sheshayyar are other great names in Karnatak music who composed many varnams, but they are not given as the author of this one. So the key follows the composer named in the question's source, and the answer is Ramanad Srinivasa Iyyangar.

Answer: B

A raga is ubhayavakra when the movement of its notes is zig-zag (vakra) in both the ascent and the descent. Reethigavla (Reetigowla) is the ubhayavakra raga among the four: its phrases turn back on themselves in both directions. Begada, Gavla and Sri are the other ragas offered, and the key does not class them as ubhayavakra. The keyed answer is Reethigavla. In the answer the zig-zag is in both directions, and the question uses the word ubhaya, meaning both, to say this.

Answer: A

The uttama vaggeyakara is the composer who writes both the music and the lyrics, that is the author of both the dhatu and the matu. Matu is the text and dhatu the melody, and a vaggeyakara who creates both is the best kind, the uttama. One who composes only the music, or only the lyrics, is a lower kind of vaggeyakara, and one who writes the lakshana granthas is a theorist, not a composer. The keyed answer is the first option.

Answer: A

Tisrajathi Dhruva tala has eleven matras. The dhruva tala has four angas, a laghu, a drutam, a laghu and a laghu, written 1 0 1 1, and the jati of the laghu changes with the type: tisra jati laghu has three beats. So the count is 3 + 2 + 3 + 3 = 11. Ten would be the count for a different jati combination, fourteen is the count of the chatusra jati dhruva (4 + 2 + 4 + 4), and eight is too small. The keyed answer is eleven.

Answer: A

The anudrutam, the unit of one beat written as a U-shaped sign, is used in the jhampa tala, whose angas are a laghu, an anudrutam and a drutam. The rupaka tala has a drutam followed by a laghu, the ata tala has two laghus followed by two drutams, and the mattya tala has a laghu, a drutam and a laghu. None of these three contains an anudrutam, so the jhampa tala is the keyed answer. Because an anudrutam has only one beat, a tala that includes it is of an odd number of beats, as jhampa is.

Answer: B

An itaranama mudrakar is a composer who signs his compositions with a name other than his own. The key gives Swati Thirunal, who used the name of the deity Padmanabha as his signature, while Tyagaraja signed with his own name, Syama Sastri with Syama Krishna and Ramanad Srinivasa Iyyangar with a name of his own as well. The keyed answer is Swati Thirunal. Syama Sastri and Tyagaraja each signed with a name tied to their own identity, and this is what sets Swati Thirunal apart in the question.

Answer: C

Per the key, Mandari is a janya raga of the 51st melakarta. Among the options, the 63rd, 65th and 45th are other melakartas that are parents of different janya ragas. The janya raga takes a subset of the notes of its parent mela, and the 51st mela is the one whose notes fit the raga as the key reads it. The keyed answer is the 51st melakartha. A janya raga is always derived from a parent melakarta, so the question is a test of knowing the parent number, and the other three numbers name parents of other janyas.

Answer: A

The key gives Kedaram as an arohana vakra raga, one that has a zig-zag course in the ascent while the descent runs straight. Avarohana vakra and ubhaya vakra are the other kinds of zig-zag raga, with the crooked phrase in the descent, or in both. A shadava-shadava raga is one with six notes in both ascent and descent, which the key does not use for Kedaram. The answer is the arohana vakra raga.