Any Eastern equivalents of Western classical music greats?

As a casual lover of classical music, today I found myself wondering about my ignorance of similar works of art from the East. Are there any universally accepted “classical music giants/geniuses/greats” from the East? Was there a Chinese Beethoven? An Indian Bach?

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Colibri
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I’ve wondered about this too. And I don’t buy the idea that Asians get the same experience from their music that we get from Beethoven. Some people believe that, and it makes no sense to me.

I only know about Indian classical music, so I’m only commenting on that. To generalise massively: Indian classical music is split into two broad genres, Hindustani (or north Indian) and Carnatic (or south Indian).

Hindustani music is very much an improvisational style, with less emphasis on the recital of pre-existing compositions. That’s why you don’t really find a listing of Hindustani composers, although there certainly are very famous performers. Perhaps the best-known was Tansen, (Tansen - Wikipedia) who, as court musician of the Mughal emperor Akbar, was famed for his singing - the most famous story about him is that he was singing a particular style with such energy that he caused all the candles in the room to spontaneously burst into flame. It’s difficult to think of anyone else who has influenced Hindustani music more than Tansen.

Carnatic music, by contrast, places more emphasis on the recital of compositions by other people, so there’s perhaps more of a parallel to Bach here. The most famous composers of Carnatic music include:

Purandara Dasa (Purandara Dasa - Wikipedia), more or less equivalent to Tansen in his influence over the genre, and was reputed to have composed over 50,000 songs

Annamacharya (Annamacharya - Wikipedia), more or less contemporary with Purandara Dasa, and credited with roughly the same number of compositions

Tyagaraja (Tyagaraja - Wikipedia) who composed many of the most widely performed and popular songs today

These three have directed Carnatic music quite extensively; and it’s hard to think of anyone who quite matches them either in versatility or fame. Carnatic music does, of course, have its own roster of exemplary performers, including Maharajapuram Santhanam, D. K. Pattammal, M. L. Vasanthakumari, M. S. Subbulakshmi, Lalgudi G. Jayaraman, L. Subramaniam, L. Shankar, T.N. Krishnan, M.S. Gopalakrishnan, and honestly quite a long list which I can’t be bothered to type out any more of!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prominent_Carnatic_artists

The habit of listening to dead classical composers was born in the 19th century, when works of Bach and Mozart were performed in public. And their works were already being forgotten. This gave the dead people a new prestige: not only are they famous, people actually listen to their music. So it’s not only interesting to hear who is famous, but also if their works are still played in a fairly authentic manner?

Interesting question, and one that’s slightly difficult to answer in this context without going into a bit of musical history, theory and philosophy.

In short: many Hindustani schools of music attempt to trace their history back to Tansen, for the prestige it brings them, and while the variation between these schools is not huge, it’s distinctly there, so it would be very difficult to say which - if any - of them is closest to his style of singing. Certainly some of the ragas he invented (such as Miyan ki Todi or Rageshwari) are widely performed, but again, since a raga isn’t a composition but a scale or mode around which a certain emotive mood is associated, it’s very difficult to know exactly how he sang them. There’s a long, continuous tradition of singing that reaches back to his era, and there’s good reason to think it’s relatively unchanged, but I think that’s about as certain as anyone can be.

Carnatic music is a little easier, since the compositions were both distinct songs as well as written down, as was the structural framework in which they were composed, such as tempo. The languages they were composed in are still widely spoken and so we can be pretty sure we hear accurately what Purandaradasa composed.

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Thanks. I listened to the three carnatic composers you listed. I really enjoyed some of it, although I must admit that a lot of it blended in with what I’ll describe as a “generic sitar-y kind of sound” or “generic-sounding indian vocalization with some percussion” (please forgive how incredibly ignorant that sounds). I wonder whether Indians receive western music similarly? Are there any specific pieces that are particularly reflective of greatness, the way, say, Beethoven’s 9th stand’s out above his 1st?

I am not really well-versed with Chinese orchestra pieces, but there are a couple of well known tunes and composers.

Here’s a more famous piece, dated to the Ming dynasty. It is based on an older piece, dating to the end of the Three Kingdoms period, that was lost when the last person who knew it was executed for political reasons.