Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy : Help please ?
Hello friends,
I have been listening to old film music for more than two decades now. My focus has been more on the vintage Hindi film music scene than Tamil but the last few years, I have dived in some depth into the ocean of old Tamil film music. Some rambling :)...
While I acknowledge the brilliance of composers like G.Ramanathan and S.V.Venkatraman, I think Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy really took Tamil film music to the next level. Their orchestration in particular is quite brilliant and extremely sophisticated. Even during their early years, films like "Maalayitta mangai" show a distinctly modern and unique style of music arrangement. They have done in Tamil what the likes of Anil Biswas and C.Ramchandra did in Hindi. Somehow this brilliance diminished considerably after the duo split. Neither of them in their independent films showed the same spark. Yes, their compositions were still top-notch perhaps but orchestration-wise, I dont think so. Maybe its got to do with the times.. I dont know.
I have been trying to collect the entire output of this great composer-duo but sadly there is little documentation I have been able to find on their filmography. Would any member here be aware of some kind of listing of all the films/songs the duo composed ? I am also willing to purchase any commercially released books. I would much appreciate this help.
And of course, if any of you can point me to any music collectors who are willing to share their music at some price, I would be much grateful. I have located a couple of such people in Chennai but if you can let me know more, I would be very grateful to you.
Thank you for your help :)
Sathya
