Rigidly Rahmantic

Wedding Night

A.R.Rahman plucks the Harp strings intermittently, for the pinch of dilemma, hesitance, doubt and tension in Jalaluddin when he enters the room with a curious face, and shrunk eye brows. Jalaluddin is unable to guess Jodhaa’s mood. Jodhaa presses her toes against the bed, displaying an initial sign of rigidity and resistance. Without noticing it, Jalal removes his crown, keeps it aside and with some help from strings that play a soothing prelude sits on the bed. The sweet prelude paves way to a gorgeous melody that sweeps in its entirety on strings and eases Jalal. The bass registers of Cello section kicks in a staccato for Jalal’s dilemma to, or, not to, touch her.

When he does touch her hand, flourishing strings glorify the sense of first touch, but Jodhaa’s hand recedes. Mistaking her resistance for shyness, Jalal and Rahman proceed further. While Jalal attempts another touch, Rahman uses a mellifluous flute. Jodhaa recedes again. Ignoring the sign, Jalal takes his next step and leans forward to touch Jodhaa’s shoulders and so does Rahman, who culminates the layers of flute, strings and Harp into a lush, orchestral music. Just when Jalaluddin moves his hand closer to her shoulder, he realizes and so does Rahman, that Jodhaa is not interested. Jalal halts his action and Rahman stops his music.

All the flamboyance and sweetness sprinkled in the air by the music, vapours down to a monotonic bass line, lingering just to sustain the tension in the moment.

Love at First Sight

An exquisite cry of devotion is distantly heard when Adam Khan, Saadar Adaasi and others in the court are questioning Jalaluddin’s marriage with a Hindu Rajput Princess. Jalaluddin, hypnotized by the devotion and passion in the voice, follows the voice, and that leads him to Jodhaa’s Pooja room. Jalaluddin has not seen Jodhaa’s face yet. Jodhaa is sitting before the Idol of a Hindu deity and singing a Bhajan. Jodhaa’s face is still not visible from the direction in which Jalal enters the room. Mesmerized by her singing and devotion, Jalal walks around her and looks down. Rahman pauses for this one-in-a-million moment of magic on celluloid, when Jodhaa’s and Jalal’s eyes meet and lock for the first time. Those few seconds of silence is a real master stroke. The instant awe and speechlessness of Jalal in the moment of seeing his wife’s beauty for the first time could not have been conveyed any better. The pause allows the beauty of Jodhaa to sink-in in Jalal’s mind.

Rahman plays a stirring string section after the pause, speaking for staggered Jalal, whose inexpressible feelings are imploding within. The strings slowly fade into the main love theme. Plucks of Harp sound in sync with mind flaps of Jalal, who is standing there, without being able to understand what he feels inside; “Is this love?” - He seems to be asking himself. The strings begin to play the main melody of the theme when Jodhaa gets up and shows him the Pooja Aarti plate, and cello staccatos are perfectly in sync with the slight humour in the way Jalal stands curiously clueless of what he should do, in spite of Jodhaa gesturing him towards the plate with her eyes. Jodhaa takes the plate closer and asks him to apply Vermillion mark on her forehead for which Rahman plucks the staccatos again.

Jodhaa says ‘Sindhoor’ and the pleasing flute accompanies to Jalal’s relief as he now knows what to do and the lush, orchestral music closes in for the completeness of the moment, when Jalal applies Sindhoor on Jodhaa’s forehead. This is one of those scenes, in which every single note of music used by the composer reciprocates every frame conceived and captured by the filmmaker, elevating the emotions and eternally etching the moment in the minds of the audience.

Foreplay

In yet another private moment of Jodhaa and Akbar, which leads them to the ultimatum of In Lamhon ki song, Jodhaa wants to show something to Jalal; she has been learning calligraphy and she has written something to show her husband. Not so surprisingly, Rahman brings in the love theme in the very beginning of this episode. Jalal asks Jodhaa herself to read whatever she has written, and precisely when she says that a wife cannot spell out a husband’s name, a stirring string section – the one that was used when Jalal first saw Jodhaa eye-to-eye, begins to play here again. Repeating that strings piece is perfect here, because, then, it was the first time Jodhaa opened up her face for Jalal to see, and now, for the first time Jodhaa is opening up her heart to Jalal. The strings and Jodhaa’s love moist Akbar’s eyes, and when Jodhaa begins to spell the name “Jalaluddin Mohammed Akbar”, the love theme appears in its full glory for one last time in the film.

I initially wanted to post “Rigidly Rahmantic” and “Maestro’s Malleable Motifs” as a single post with “Ilaiyaraaja Vs A.R.Rahman” as title, but decided not to in the last moment, for obvious reasons.

Maestro's Malleable Motifs

Maestro’s Malleable Motifs

Version 1 – With a melody on flute fluttering its way over a tense layer of strings, the theme breezily emerges on soft yet dense strings. No accompaniments or counter melodies. Ilaiyaraaja hints the love theme just for the literal mention of the word “Love”. But, don’t we Tamil film watchers know from the very beginning what the two would end up being?

Version 2 – A relaxed evening at a Sea shore, Love theme on Saxophone

Version 3 – Love theme on piano - the one with most romantic sound of all instruments

Version 4 – The romantic twang of a Guitar supported beautifully by tender tinkles on bells

Version 5 – Love theme on Strings, again, but with additional supporting layers this one is quite different from Version 1

Version 6 – Love theme on Strings, but with deeply emotional chords this one is again totally different from Version 1 and Version 5

Version 7 – The love theme is modified just to an adequate extent to make us sense the hideousness just like how their love is kept hidden from the lovers themselves in the film.

Version 8 – Tickling the romance on tinkling bells.

Version 9 – Just the first few bars of the theme stated on strings

Version 10 – Love is in the air. Theme on Slow strings. The theme is played in a tempo much slower than that of Version 1 and Version 5, and sound far breezier than the other two versions.

Version 11 – Contemplative version on Piano where every key is hit with deliberate hesitance

Version 12 – The theme gets an exhilarating prelude, and soothing beats join in with velvety strings to create the most enchanting version of the theme.

Version 13 – A playful version with theme playing taking on a totally shape and form on a Saxophone

Version 14 – The hyper energetic and ecstatic melody running on piano and soaring strings race to quickly hit and hint at just the opening bars of the main theme

Version 15 – Phrases of the main theme played with longer pauses in between. Love is stuck.

Version 16 - How can a film with Ilaiyaraaja’s background score be complete, without the theme getting its moment on a Solo violin?

Version 17 – A flute joins in like a healer to the pain evoked by the Solo violin in this version.

Version 18 – Love theme in its entirety on somber strings

Version 19 - Love is in danger, Ilaiyaraaja uses just the first four notes of the theme to suggest that

Version 20 – The love theme on breezy strings again, and they lived happily ever after.

Version 21? – I could sense traces of the main theme in this piece, but I am not sure. This piece appears as the background longue music played in the restaurant in the beginning of the film. Is this piece a Jazz version of the main love theme?

I have written different theories to defend the composers who choose the melodies of the songs of the film to create background score cues.

Theory 1: Songs - at least those that are composed by composers, who put film maker’s vision above everything else - are now an integral part of the film’s narrative. The composer completes half of the film’s background score when he completes composing the songs for the film. These are songs made specific to the given situation of a given film and they cannot be used in any other situation of any other film. Composer need not break his head to compose new themes while writing the background score.

Theory 2: In Indian films, during the background music scoring stage, a composer would already have written all the songs of the film and would exactly know where each song is placed in the film. He would now have a clearer idea about the context and function of all the songs in the film. One of the most common scoring methods is using the melodies of the songs in the background score for scenes before, or for the scenes that immediately follow the actual song. There is no harm in this technique, as the song itself was conceived and composed for that specific situation in the film.

Composers may sometimes decide to write totally new musical themes without using melodies from any of the songs that were already composed for the film. Composer would write distinct themes for principal characters, for recurring situations, place, action and emotion. These themes would undergo a lot of variations in its form and shape along with its subject, throughout the film.

A composer composes the songs for the film even before the film is made. Though the songs are composed based on the characters and the situations in the film, with the strict 6-songs model in place, there is not always enough room in a film to create and use songs for all the principal characters and pivotal situations. For example, villains get no songs in Indian films. If a composer wants to trace the emotions and characteristics of a villain, there is no song’s melody to fall back on instantly. The composer must create a new theme for the villain character, which he could hint, develop or modify along with the way the antagonist’s character progresses in the story of the film.

However, I was always bewildered by Ilaiyaraaja’s penchant for writing new themes when he already has songs that he composed for the characters and their emotions. Last week, I was listening to Ilaiyaraaja’s exquisitely romantic background score for a mediocre film that has at least twenty different versions of the main love theme, and it suddenly struck me. I think I know why for some films Ilaiyaraaja chooses melody of the songs of the film for the background score, and for some, writes entirely new music material.

He creates a new motif for the background score because the melodies of the song that Ilaiyaraaja composed for the film may not be malleable enough to create varied orchestral versions to use them throughout the film. Most of these new musical themes that Ilaiyaraaja writes are made of short phrases which could be shrunk, stretched, transposed between octaves, played at different speeds and easily played on wide variety of instruments. But, can’t any given melody be tampered with in any which way a composer wants, especially when the composer is Ilaiyaraaja? I am not sure. Ilaiyaraaja picks the melody of a song from the film when it in itself has this malleability; otherwise, he creates a fresh malleable motif that he could comfortably play with for the background of the film. Keeping the phrases short could also be because of the length of the shots on which these themes must be played throughout the film. The theme should be short enough to be hinted at in a shot running just for five seconds, and also have the scope to be extended or developed when the shots are longer. Even if the melody as a whole is longer, the first few bars should have the ability to reveal the theme’s identity and the key emotion. It cannot go on and on to reach its inflection point. It should be short, crisp and make its point quick. To me these decisions seem to be made more for the mathematical precision than the emotion, though the emotion is always taken care of.

Hence in Mouna Raagam, Ilaiyaraaja, instead of using melody of the songs “Nilaavae Vaa” or “Mandram Vandha” for all those moments between Mohan and Revathi, goes for a new musical theme. Also, the songs are composed for a specific mood of the moment, but the theme in the background score has to accompany the journey the characters embark on while their relationship evolves from Point A and reaches Point Z. The theme should be able to evoke all the varied emotions they go through in the midpoints of the journey. I don’t think the melodies of “Nilaavae Vaa” or “Mandram Vandha” is capable of doing that. Whereas in Kaadhalukku Mariyaadhai, which is a straight forward love story, where the relationship between the two in love remains the same throughout, Ilaiyaraaja sticks to the main melody of the key romantic song of the film. But, the love theme of Ninaivellam Nithya which too is a straight forward love story contradicts my theory about Kaadhalukku Mariyaadhai. Ilaiyaraaja composes three astounding melodies “Neethaanae enthan pon vasantham”, “Rojaavai”, “Pani Vizhum” and yet composes a totally new love theme for background score of the film. I guess, in Ninaivellam Nithya, Ilaiyaraaja wanted to differentiate the love story from other love stories by creating a theme emphasizing on the backdrop of the love story – the mountain village. The tribal folk rhythm creates a unique identity to the film and the love story though the story itself is terribly cliched. Like I always say, all of these are just my theories; the real reasons could be entirely different.