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why should'nt IR be called ''THE'' indian film music composer of the century

Topic started by k.arunprakash (@ 213.17.49.218) on Wed Jan 23 06:17:52 EST 2002.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

the only composer with incredible versatality,matchless in quality,i think he should be rated as ''THE'' indian film composer of the century.what do u feel guys?

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Naaz (@ 24.76.127.63) on: Thu Jan 31 23:53:37 EST 2002
  
  VR - maybe, just maybe (and this is pure speculation and I cannot produce any verifying document) the reason the Symphony has not been released as a commercial album is because the RPO might have specified such a thing in their contract with IR. After all, remember they only provided the orchestra. The had no other creative input in the project as they did not "commission" it. It might have had to do with attaching their name to a work that was not an "original" RPO undertaking.
  (The RPO is employed to do film backgroud scores, private albums, BBC stuff - so they are like a commercial "band" for hire, but only for "classically" oriented stuff.) They also, of course, offer their own "season" of RPO concerts of originally commissioned or classically renowned music through the year. (Which, incidentally, they release in the form of commercial CDs/Tapes.)
  
  
• From: avr (@ 143.127.3.10) on: Thu Jan 31 23:59:20 EST 2002
  
  Naaz :
  
  Its there on IRs site if u mentioned. Why there was never a release of the records - goodness knows why. Westerners have always been shoddy in their attitude towards Indians.
  
  Ravi shankar has AFAIK not composed any symphonies.
  
  
• From: avr (@ 143.127.3.10) on: Fri Feb 1 01:00:45 EST 2002
  
  SOURCE:
  http://www.dhadkan.com/cgi-bin/dhadkan/profiles.cgi?artistID=709&jnd=F
  
  CLIP FROM DHADKAN.COM.
  
  Illaiyaraja
  
  
  "What music talks about is just man in all his different aspects (that is feeling, thinking, breathing, suffering)". These words could be ascribed very aptly to Illaiyaraja. The one truly avante garde composer leads a relaxed life in Chennai with his wife and three children.
  
  In a land of prolific composers, Illaiyaraja, the diminutive music composer from south of India has a phenomenal record of having scored music for more than 750 movies, which include composing songs and also the background track for each one of these movies in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi and English.
  
  Background
  
  His musical output has been outstanding and phenomenal. Ever since 1976,when he started his career in film music, hailing from a village Pannaiapuram in South India, with no formal education either in music or otherwise, Illaiyaraja has been a path breaker. From then onwards, his evolution and progression to the present level of writing a full-scale western classical work is gradual but in gigantic progression.
  
  At first he was termed just as a folk tune charmer. Not one to indulge in complacency, he finished a music course at the Trinity College of Music, London in a record six months time earning a Gold Medal in classical guitar and piano. Then slowly he started showing his knowledge of Carnatic (Indian) classical music. And his orchestrations also started showing a beautiful mix of melody and powerful arrangements. Purists may not have liked it. But all his works including the Vedic Chants (in which he made an 8-year old girl chant the Vedas, against the tradition) are still hot selling albums.
  
  There is also the irrefutable fact that he elevated film's background scoring to an art form. So much so, even the themes he used in the films background music became humming tunes. And even today there is no one like him who can carry an entire film on the strength of his background music alone - the success of at least 100 movies in India have been solely due to his background score. Innovations in chords, progression of chords, strings, percussion, points & counterpoints, harmony, melody, polyphony, bass in the foreground, waltz like movements, baroque style & symphonic interludes- there is nothing this man has not interpreted in his own inimitable grandiose style.
  
  With his arrival on the scene, for the first time in India, we got a complete music director who does every thing-composing, orchestration, arrangement of instruments and writing notations. A music director, who unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, is independent of faceless musical arrangers who are aplenty in the Indian film industry. That is, in the Indian context, Illaiyaraja’s music alone is one hundred percent his own creation.
  
  He has also composed his own krithis in Carnatic music, even performed in a concert during one of the December sessions in Madras. They are available as an instrumental album - all the krithis played by the prodigy Mandolin U Srininivas.
  
  Apart from this, over the last two decades, Illaiyaraja has composed three independent instrumental albums:
  1. How To Name It?
  2. Nothing But Wind
  3. India 24 Hours
  
  All these three albums (apart from his innumerable scores in movies) have proved his unique genius. For the first time in the annals of the history of music, fusion had been explored and exposed in depth by Illaiyaraja.
  
  Style
  
  Though fusion has been attempted by many others, these were the first successful attempts, where somebody has altered and shaped the meaning of fusion into its actual interpretation and has given this interpretation not only self- expression but also a correlation of the traditional and modern techniques in music.
  
  These albums are symbolic of a beautiful mix of east and west. But not in the context of a "novelty item" or a fusion of East and West in ways which have already been explored. Both these albums are full of melodies, haunting tunes and challenging orchestrations. He has used Western classical and Indian classical music in an unprecedentedly explorative fashion, which even today remains unparalleled. For instance, in ‘Nothing But Wind’, the piece ‘I love Mozart’ features an elegant Raag Kalyani blissfully coexisting with Mozartian strings section, each retaining their native depth and intricacy. But the sad part was that these two interesting works did not reach all the possible audience throughout the world because of poor marketing.
  
  Achievements
  
  And in the year 1993, he became the first Indian to compose a full-fledged Symphony in Western Classical Music. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London, played his Symphony composition under the baton of conductor, Sir John Scott - this is also the first occasion when an Asian's Symphony has been played by the RPO. Illaiyaraja used an 80 piece classical symphony orchestra of the RPO and the music is in five independent movements. The conductor Sir John Scott and others from the RPO have confessed that the Symphony was written in less than a month's time, which is something unheard of.
  
  Since then he has been given honorary doctorates in three universities for his achievements, namely the Arizona State University, USA (Cultural Doctorate in Philosophy of Music), Madurai Kamaraj University; apart from this, being conferred Honorary dual citizenship of both India and the USA.
  
  Thus Illaiyaraja joins the elite ranks of other Indians in the international classical music scene like the conductor Zubin Mehta, Pandit. Ravi Shankar, L Subramaniam, et.al. What makes Illaiyaraja very unique is that while the others are all performers primarily, he is a composer. His recent work Guru (Malayalam), in which the Hungarian Orchestra plays all the compositions, is ample testimony to his growing, expanding and evolving repertoire.
  
  Equally adept at Indian classical, Western classical and modern music, Illaiyaraja’s works have won him praise and accolades from great artistes like Zubin Mehta, Paul Mauriat, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia (a reknowned flautist from India), Joseph Egar, L. Subramaniam and critics like Victor Rangel Rebeiro (a respected musicologist in the United States of America). Naushad Ali, veteran composer of the 50s and 60s, confesses, "What this man has achieved is 100 times more than anybody else in his profession has done so far - only time can tell the quantum of his achievements".
  
  And more than two decades of this discipline and single minded devotion to his profession has now earned him the soubriquet of India's most versatile and prolific composer, way ahead of his time.
  
  Illaiyaraja cannot be termed a film music director. He is a composer who happens to be working in the film medium all these years. He is one of the most original composers India has produced and the most creative one at that.
  
  Future
  
  Joseph Egar of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra prophesized thus, a decade ago, "This man's music will be heard throughout the world over the next millennium." The man has been keeping a low – profile since the emergence of A. R. Rahman from his own troupe. He has recently composed the score for Kamal Hassan’s Hey Ram and ‘Janmon ki Jwala’ and the title track are reminders that he is only lying low. For how long, nobody knows.
  
  
  
  
  
• From: AVR (@ 143.127.3.10) on: Fri Feb 1 03:41:11 EST 2002
  
  In this article however, I object to the comparison being made with Ravi Shankar - or saying that Ravi Shankar is a performer and not a composer. In pure classical music, the artist unfolds the nuances of the raaga spontaneously. So all classical singers and instrumentalist are composers too - except that they do not really compose what we call "SONGS". Its something much more.
  
  Yes, its true that IR is not just a film composer and that he is known for his terrific knwoledge of classical music and the ability to produce notations spontaneously. However he still cannot be compared to Ravi Shankar - its comparing mangoes and apples. The domains are different.
  
  
• From: kavi (@ 202.126.148.36) on: Fri Feb 1 04:17:10 EST 2002
  
  IR ''THE'' indian film composer of the century. raw music never be added to that level. Matured but not to the level of even best in a year.
  
  
• From: kp (@ 202.9.149.158) on: Fri Feb 1 05:49:32 EST 2002
  
  no way.......definitely not the INDIAN COMPOSER OF THE CETURY
  
  wat do u think ppl like,rd burman,msv,naushad...etc are??
  
  
• From: ST (@ 193.114.79.185) on: Fri Feb 1 06:36:51 EST 2002
  
  IR is not even worth for the South Indian composer of the century. It's complete ignorance & inadequate knowledge of other composers leads to make weird ideas like this.
  
  
• From: ashok (@ 156.153.254.41) on: Fri Feb 1 07:40:00 EST 2002
  
  WELL IR is "THE" indian film music composer of the century
  
  THE PERSONS WHO ARE SAYING AGAINSTS HIM MAY NOT HAVE HEARD HIS COMPOSIONS, OR MAY NOT BE INTERESTED TO LISTEN AN COMPOSITIONS OTHER THAN THEIR FAVOURITES.
  
  WELL I AM HEARING OR LISTENING TO SONGS AND MUSIC FOR MORE THAN A DECADE OR SO, BUT THE QUALITY MUSIC I FOUND IN RAAJA'S MUSIC IS SIMPLY EXCELLENT AND UNIQUE FROM OTHERS.
  
  
• From: krk (@ 128.107.253.44) on: Fri Feb 1 07:56:12 EST 2002
  
  Dr.BALAMURALIKRISHNA -" As far as i am concerned, i would say Ilaiyaraja is the composer of
  the century. If there is one single authority on 'orchestration' it can only be ilaiyaraja.
  
  JOSEPH EAGER, Conductor, World Symphony Orchestra -"His music will be heard through
  the twenty-first century" predicted at a function to release the CD of his album
  Nothing But Wind in New York in 1988.
  
  NAUSHAD ALI (doyen of hindi film music)- ,"That this man has achieved is 100 times more
  than what any of us have achieved; only time can tell the quantum of his achievements."
  
  KAMAL HASAN - "Ilayaraaja is the best composer of the century"
  
  
  No doubt, Raaja is the BEST composer of the century.
  
  

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