Maestro’s trade tricks

Ilaiyaraaja conducts a masterclass at Goa, and reveals how he works on background scoring

Two hours before the 4 pm beginning of Ilaiyaraaja’s masterclass, people started lining up outside the doors of Panaji’s Kala Academy.

The hosts could have let the crowds in, but waited till it was almost four. Huge, restive crowds at film releases are a mark of prestige in southern India. This was, for all practical purposes, a first-day-first-show kind of event. Whistles and catcalls aplenty.

The maestro was conducting a masterclass at the International Film Festival of India, and the atmosphere was charged with anticipation. A masterclass is defined as “a class, especially in music, given by an expert to highly talented students”. After his class, which lasted a little over an hour and a half, the audience asked questions.

The interaction was more fanboy than musician. That was only to be expected. When Ilaiyaraaja’s orchestra began playing some snatches in preparation for the class, and it was already past four, a man in the audience shouted in Tamil, “You priests are here, but where is God?”

The audience enthusiasm was so high that at one point Ilaiyaraaja was forced to tick off a fan, “Don’t shout, ayya!” R Balki, ad man and film director (‘Cheeni Kum’and ‘Paa’), chatted with Ilaiyaraaja, getting him to reveal his music-scoring insights.

The composer, with 1,000+ songs to his credit, explained at least a couple of ideas that characterise his approach. So here is a summary of what he said.

Music pulls audience into film

The film is on the screen, Ilaiyaraaja said, but music pulls the audience into the film. Music can render meaning to an expressionless close-up of a hero, he explained. “He is thinking of his mother. He is thinking of his childhood. No, he is thinking of his lover. He is confused. Where? Which country is he thinking of? All these details we can give just in a close-up,” he explained.

Take dialogue patterns, turn them into music

Ilaiyaraja then played a piece from one of his favourite films, ‘Amadeus’, which he confessed to watching 27 times. The piece, taken from the second movement of Mozart’s 29th Symphony, comes immediately after a character says, ‘Go back to bed!’He translated that into music as ‘Taram taram taraa.’ His observation: the composer can create musical patterns on the basis of the dialogue preceding it. Music can be a counterpoint to dialogue. Ilaiyaraaja said ‘Amadeus’, the film based on the life of Mozart, had a specific brief: its
score could not use anything but the maestro’s music. He said it was the only film he had watched multiple times.

Composer’s ‘mean, wicked’ sense of humour

Ilaiayaraaja was at his mischievous best when Balki asked him to explain why he uses a particular orchestral arrangement for a particular scene. Why, for instance, does he create a ‘New York philharmonic’score for a rural scene? “Why should I explain my technique to you?”Ilaiyaraaja said, laughing. He said he was free to do what he wanted, but explained he wanted to make the film interesting for himself. In the process, he also said there was often little in the film that could hold his interest. That prompted Balki to say Ilaiyaraaja was often “mean and wicked” with filmmakers.

Shamitabh score on tissue

Balki spoke about the speed at which Ilaiyaraaja composes. For Balki’s film ‘Shamitabh’, Ilaiyaraaja wrote the notations for his songs on a piece of tissue that he picked up from the bathroom. The execution is something Balki marvelled at: the music for none of his films has taken more than 10 days, though he wished “it had gone on for months.”

Dramatic irony in music, and how it works in films

Balki then gave Ilaiyaraaja a situation and asked him to compose the score for it: A man is going through various places, walking through various spaces to kill his father. Ilaiyaraaja took less than 10 minutes to write down the score, telling the audience to remain quiet while he was at work. When the musicians played his notations, what emerged was a gentle melody in a 3/4 beat, reminding the audience of a lullaby. Balki asked him why he had composed something that was so gentle and soothing. To remind the murderous character of his father, Ilaiyaraaja said. The demo underlined how music could be ironic, and add dimension to the film that even the filmmaker would not have imagined.

Questions from audience

The first question came from a Kannada film buff, who wanted to know how he had composed the song ‘Yaarigaagi aata’ for the 1981 film ‘Bharjari Bete’. Ilaiyaraaja said the brief
demanded a ‘cabaret song’, but he did not want it to sound predictable. He showed how he had used an Indian raga (is it Puriya Dhanasri?), and made the beat choppy and modern.
Many questions followed, and the two questions he did not answer were related to who his influences were and what he had to say on the copyright controversy that put had him at
loggerheads with singer S P Balasubramanyam.