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A sheet of Carnatic music with staff notation prepared by A. M. Chidambara Pillai

Perhaps the name that should be remembered most is the Ave Maria Press that A.M. Chinnaswami Mudaliar, an official in the Government of Madras’s Secretariat, set up in Pudupet c.1892 and had his brother, A. Ayyaswami Mudaliar, manage. He set up the press to print a periodical, Oriental Music in European Notation, focusing on recording Tyagaraja’s kritis in staff notation, the first time such an effort had been made with Carnatic music. The sad part of Chinnaswami Mudaliar’s contribution is that the press as much as the indifferent sales of his pioneering work – even as single sheets – made him a pauper.

What might well have been the first Carnatic music book to be printed was the Sangita Sarvartha Sara Sangrahamu that came out in 1859 from Bhuvanagiri Rangiah Chetty’s Janasuryodaya Press at 91 Govindappa Naicken Street. It was reprinted in 1885 in Barur Tyagaraja Sastri’s Girvanabhasharatnakara Printing Press. Some 19th Century Madras printing presses were Kalaratnakara, Kalanidhi, Vivekavilakka and Alpiniyan. In the early 1900s, a publishing house, Dowden & Co, used the Peerless Press to print several music books. Another well-known Madras press doing such work at the time was Adi & Co. Other early 20th Century printing presses in Madras included Nattrramilvilas, Chandrika and in Tanjore the Lawley Electric Printing Press. Also doing such printing but better known for being the leading Telugu publisher in Madras till recent years was the Vavilla Ramaswami Sastrulu & Sons press in Washermanpet.

Specially set up around this time to print musical books was the Raja of Ettaiyapuram’s Vidya Vilasini Press in Ettaiyapuram c.1900, soon after Jagadeveera Rama Venkateswara Etappapa ascended the throne in 1899. It was particularly established to print Subbarama Dikshitar’s Sangita Sampradaya Pradarsini, but went on till his death in 1906 producing other music books of his. It also printed much of Subramania Bharati’s writings. Like the Vavilla Press, the Vidya Vilasini Press has gone into the history of printing in Tamil Nadu, but the others I’ve mentioned are forgotten names.

The most interesting bit of learning during the last few weeks on printed music has been that at least one of S. Vedanayakam Pillai’s Christian musical creations in the Carnatic idiom was printed and published by the Muhammadu Samadani Press in Karaikal in 1887! Need more be said for an age of secularism.

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