PIRINIWAN MANGALLAYA🍂
Dr. Premasiri Khemadasa (late), One of the pinnacles of Sri Lankan music, is a great personality and a world renowned music composer, known as "Khemadasa Master". Exploring the various styles of music around the world Khemadasa endeavored to develop a unique style of music. 🎶🎼
He combined Sinhala folk tunes, Hindusthani music, Western music and many other streams of music in his compositions while adapting them to fit contemporary music.🎶
Piriniwan Mangallaya පිරිණිවන් මංගල්යය 🎼
'' Piriniwanmangallaya'' also known as Piriniwan manchakaya , the world first Buddhist Cantata was influenced by the liberetto from folk poems (accompanied with dancing forms practiced in the low country region of Sri Lanka) and applied Sri Lankan folk melodies along with North Indian Classical music and certain elements from western music to depict the grieving sense of Lord Buddha’s
Death.🍃
It was one of the most revered and famous musical compositions of the local and foreign Buddhists in his musical career...
The music is composed to reflect the identity of Sri Lankan music and was released in 1993 as a high volume cantata using a wide range of local instruments and Sri Lankan voices.🔊🎤
The presence of operatic and harmonic vocals in his music is explained by his vast knowledge of opera and harmony. In his lifetime he made many experiments with techniques of singing and playing, which include the use of asymmetric patterns of beats, revolutionary harmonies and novel techniques of playing musical instruments such as the sitar.
Kemadasa Master,has used both western and eastern musical instruments to emphasize the theme. The use of oriental instruments like play for funerals at Sri Lanka is a cultural interpretation and it is a good combination to emphasize the miserable feeling caused by Lord Buddha’s’death. Similarly, he has played oriental flute and Sitar as interlude parts. Mixture of those instruments has been done exceedingly well. 🎶
Moreover Kemadasa master composed the melody of funeral march by using Percussion instruments called Hewisi (Dawula, Thammattama and Horanewa) in performing the occasion of Lord Buddha’s death. Playing these percussion instruments is a tradition of ordinary local funerals.
(Hewisi troup)📯
🎹First Notation For Keyboards 🎹
🎼Violin Notation - Composed by Dr. Kemadasa🎼
(This is Written according to the western music notation system)
Moreover, where the vocalist is considered, singing Sri Lankan folk melodies according to
western style has resulted in a strange impression and has created a certain amount of
disharmony to the theme of the play. Additionally, the way in which ordinary people perceive
the death of the Buddha, especially grief associated with it has not been adequately
expressed, perhaps due to the use of six voice ranges as in the western Cantata form.🎶🎵
( Choir members of the Buddhist Cantata< Piriniwan Mangallaya )
I think,. some of soprano singing parts are not suitable for this composition. Furthermore, it is filled with,harmony and slight canonical entries and some of them are indescribably complicated with toning of folk melodies.
🎵🎶
Sri Lankan folk melodies do have a limited notation systems and it is
rather difficult to develop that into a western Cantata style.🎶🎼
If you wanna try this.. please go through this link ...
