Kriti

The kriti is the central compositional form of Carnatic music, the classical tradition of South India: a devotional song in three sections, pallavi, anupallavi and charanam, set in a raga and tala and composed in Telugu, Sanskrit, Tamil or another South Indian language. Fixed by the Trinity of composers, *Tyagaraja*, *Muthuswami Dikshitar* and *Syama Sastri*, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the kriti is at once a composed text and a framework for improvisation, around which singers build niraval and kalpana svara. It remains the core repertoire of the Carnatic concert, sung by every vocalist from *M. S. Subbulakshmi* onward.