Carnatic vs Classical
Carnatic and Classical are two forms of music in India. They are different in terms of their style, characteristics and the like. Carnatic music belongs to the south Indian states, namely Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. In fact it is more popular in these regions than in north India, which is predominantly characterized by Hindustani classical.
Classical music is another name given to Hindustani classical music. Carnatic music too is classical in its style. It differs from the classical music in the sense, that it pays more importance to the literary part of singing, that is, it gives more importance to the song as a whole during performance.
A song composed in the carnatic style necessarily comprises of a Pallavi, Anupallavi and one or two or more Charanams. Each of these parts of the song is given importance, while singing in the Carnatic style. This is not the case with classical music. In fact, the classical musicians give more importance to the raga part of music.
Carnatic music has its own way of delineating raga. It does with alapana in the beginning. Alapana consists in the elaboration of the particular raga in which the Kriti is composed. The alapana is followed by the rendering of Pallavi. It is followed by Niraval accompanied by Kalpita Svaras. Thus, manodharma sangitam forms the backbone of Carnatic music.
Manodharma is the creativity part of Carnatic music. The musician is given the liberty to explore the raga and the various aspects of raga finally concluding with the Kriti. He is given the liberty to choose the niraval from either the anupallavi or the charanam. It is indeed true that Carnatic music excelled in the compositions of some of the Vaggeyakaras that were good in writing and singing as well.
Some of the composers in the style of Carnatic included Tyagaraja, Syama Sastri, Muthuswamy Diskshitar, Swati Tirunal, Gopalakrishna Bharati, Papanasam Sivan and others.