be brought into alignment with contemporary musical practice. Various melodic and rhythmic structures found their way art music. All music became and music passed into oblivion as did the and its paraphernalia. The totality of melody came to be referred to alone. The arbitrary, archaic and prolific made way for the engendered by the Haridasas. These were further refined based on the principles of the ten vital elements called . Prominent composers At the height of the Vijayanagara empire great saint-composers like Purandara Dasa, Sripadaraya, Vyasaraya, Vadirajatirtha, Kanaka Dasa, Tallapakam Annamacharya and his descendants, and Nijagunashivayogi flourished. Musical forms, the , the , the , the , the , the , the , the , the and the developed and found wide currency during this period. The 'nonet' Throughout the Vijayanagara period, theory and musical practice kept pace with each other closely. Great musicologists like Vidyaranya, Salva Gopa Tippendra, Kallinatha, Kumbhakarna, Ramamatya, Laksmanarayana, Pandarika Vittala, Somanatha, Locana Jha and Hrdayanarayanadeva contributed to musical theory of both North and South India during this period. Tanappacharya, Govinda Dikshita and Venkatamakhin made foundational contributions from Tanjore about a century later. Each work of these scholars records a revolutionary and seminal concept or development which cumulatively resulted in modern Carnatic music. Nine musicological treatises of great significance were composed in the Vijayanagar period and these have been called the Vijayanagara or the 'Vijayanagara Musicological Nonet'. Sangitasara The first of the is Vidyaranya's , composed in the second half of the fourteenth century. The work dealt with, among other things, the fifteen and their fifty as well as certain types of singers. Some of this even found its way into Govinda Dikshita's (), authored in the early seventeenth century. Taladipika The second of the nonet (chronologically) is the . Authored in the mid-fifteenth century by Salva Gopa-Tippendra, brother-in-law of king Praudha Devaraya II and a viceroy of Mulbagal, the work deals at great length with the tala. It describes over a hundred desi talas including some of the author's own inventions. Most importantly, the concept of (ten vital elements of tala) is elucidated for the first time in the work. This innovation was to prove so influential that, following its explication, all temporal activities in music and dance came to be organized and consolidated under these elements. Sangitakalanidhi To the same period belongs the third work of the Nonet, Kallinatha's , a versatile commentary on