Cultural Leaders of India : Composers

In our country we are familiar with a large number of devotional poets whose outpourings are part of our music heritage and some of them have an important place in the history of or music and the evolution of musical forms. And it is difticult to draw  line between these devotional poets and the composers who form the subject of this volume. The galaxy of composers in this volume includes Jeyadeva of Gita Govinda fame, Annamacharya who shares with Purandaradasa the honour of being the Pitamaha of Karnataka music, Kshetrajna. a specialist in madhura bhakti, Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, the trinity of Karnataka music, Maharaja Svati Tirunal, the royal composer from Travancore and Gopal Krishna Bharati, whohas won immortal fame by his composition on Nanda, the untouchable. Amir Khusrau who is a product of the blend of two cultures, Haridas and Tansen. the pionears of the highest Hindustan music, Dhrupad, these three are outstanding names in the history of Hindustani music. Haridas was a saint-singer who sang only of God and for God only