A Sonic Autobiography of Moods: Music by Vivek Venugopal
Classical musician/composer Vivek Venugopal introduces his latest piece Moods for Violin and Piano, Op. 15, where he finds musical relief to accompany a myriad of life’s temperaments faced during the pandemic.
Vivek Venugopal is an autodidact composer, guitarist, and producer, currently based in Hyderabad. His compositions feature sophisticated harmonies and unconventional rhythms, and he is influenced by a mélange of genres and traditions of music including Western Classical, Jazz, and the ethnic musical traditions of India, Brazil/Latin America, Andalusia, Mali, Armenia, Persia, and Celtic Music. He unites all these diverse influences in an idiosyncratic fashion in his compositions, but he primarily identifies with contemporary classical music.
Apart from being a composer, Venugopal has a unique approach to the steel string Acoustic Guitar and has performed across India. He is also the co-inventor of a new instrument called the ‘Visitar’, which is a steel string guitar with 8 strings, tuned to A1 D2 A2 D3 G3 A3 D4 G4. The instrument features several innovations, and Venugopal is currently working on some new pieces for this unique instrument.
Venugopal’s latest piece is from his ‘Visita’ project is Moods for Violin and Piano, Op. 15 (full streaming release on August 26, 2022). In anticipation for the release, he shared the movement “Blissful” with The Chakkar below. Venugopal also describes the story behind this latest work:
I have attempted to evoke and encapsulate a myriad of temperaments in Moods for Violin and Piano, Op. 15. I wrote this piece—which consists of seven movements, and consequently, at least seven moods—over a couple of months in the summer of 2021. The world was intensely gripped by COVID-19 at the time, and after writing for several bigger ensembles, I was forced to move back to a humble ensemble of just two instruments. Furthermore, they had to be instruments that were readily available in India (unlike, say the bassoon); and in this manner, I chose the violin and piano.
Vivek Venugopal with Nadine Jo Castro and Nourhe Khate
After the piece was ready, I approached two accomplished musicians, Nadine Jo Crasto, a pianist and Nourhe Khate, a violinist, and after a couple of rehearsals, we went into the studio. It was a joy to work with them, and they brought the music to life!
Each movement has a little story behind it, and the piece plays out like a sonic autobiography of sorts. This is actually the case with most of my music. Even though music is an abstract invention that has no inherent meaning per se, I understand my life and make sense of it through music. “Pensive & Hopeful” was the ‘status quo’ mood that I was experiencing, at the time, like many others I assume. “Depressed & Angry with Suppressed Rage” is roughly about an unfulfilled relationship that ended abruptly. “Bliss” expresses a restrained but realistic form of happiness. “Uncertain, Confused & Desolate (with Covidian Angst)” was written in three days, where I believe I could finally translate what I felt during those Covidian times—the entire 1.5 years of our dystopian existence—into a little more than 1.5 mins of music.
Crazy as it sounds, the semi-eerie music also seemed to be a ‘sonic premonition’ to a minor illness that I faced immediately after completing the movement. The next movement, ‘Whimsical Randomness & Existential Absurdity’, which I wrote after I got better, was about trying to make sense of the random and seemingly ‘idiopathic’ illness. “Romance” and “Lost & Disenchanted with a Glimmer of Hope” are more or less self-explanatory: the former was about a brief romance, and the latter is about the general feeling of being lost, disenchanted and fatigued after living through a pandemic.
Another indirect goal of this piece was to evoke and express moods and sonic worlds in the manner of Indian Classical music, but in a contemporary western classical context, with harmonic sophistication (as opposed to the drone based, melodically and rhythmically rich form of Indian traditions).
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Vivek Venugopal is an autodidact composer, guitarist, and producer, currently based in Hyderabad. His compositions feature sophisticated harmonies and unconventional rhythms, and he is influenced by a mélange of genres and traditions of music including Western Classical, Jazz, and the ethnic musical traditions of India, Brazil/Latin America, Andalusia, Mali, Armenia, Persia, and Celtic Music. You can find him on Instagram: @visitamusic and Twitter: @visitamusic.
