Seven strings, one building
Tirumakudalu Chowdiah was the violinist who gave Carnatic music its seven-stringed voice. Where convention held four, he played seven — a larger, louder instrument of his own devising that could hold its own against any ensemble, and that became inseparable from his name.
When the Academy of Music set out to commemorate him, it did not build a statue. It built the instrument. The auditorium takes the violin's outline in concrete and plaster, at the scale of a public building — the body, the scroll, the pegs, the fingerboard, all legible from the road.
The hall opened in 1980 through the persistence of Sri K. K. Murthy, then chairman of the Bangalore Development Authority, whose memorial festival the Academy still programmes every November.
A memorial that you do not visit so much as step inside.
It was at a Sri Rama Navami music festival, at Sheshadripuram, many years ago, that I listened to a concert by Dr. M. L. Vasanthakumari. I realised that while many top artistes give us great aesthetic pleasure by their superior art, we do nothing to perpetuate their memory once they depart from this world. This led to an ambition to build a suitable memorial to late Mysore T. Chowdiah, the violin maestro of national eminence — a son of Karnataka, and an intimate friend of my father, late Sri K. Puttu Rao, Advocate and great connoisseur of music.
So I thought of utilising the name and resources of the Academy of Music. As my dream was to build a violin-shaped music hall, it had to be located in such a place that it would be conspicuous and attract the attention of even visitors from abroad. As luck would have it, a site was traced nestling below the level of the Sankey Tank Road, in the Gayathri Devi Park Extension; the Corporation authorities were good enough to give it to the Academy on a 99-year lease.
At first the very thought of a violin shaped building looked an impossible task for the architects, and from small donations the Academy could hardly raise a few thousands. Undeterred, on an auspicious day during 1974 the ‘guddali pooja’ was performed and the work started — but the meagre funds were spent on a few pillars, and work came to a grinding halt for some years.
It was September 1976 when I once again set the ball rolling, with small donations, a loan from the Syndicate Bank, and help in every possible way from the Government of Karnataka and the Bangalore City Corporation. As the cost of construction went on increasing, the Government was approached again and a further loan given. Thus the building took its shape, a fitting monument to that immortal artiste, the inventor of the seven-stringed violin. To me it is a dream fulfilled, and a vindication of the maestro’s friendship with our family.
— Sri K. K. Murthy