British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Jonathan Katz
Reviewed work(s):
Music of the Raj: A Social and Economic History of Music in Late Eighteenth-Century
Anglo-Indian Society by Ian Woodfield
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 10, No. 1, Music and Meaning (2001), pp. 131
-133
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060779
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R E VIE W S 131 R E VIE W S 131
lists of
publications
and
recordings
see
Powers et al., 2001; Arnold, 2000:108-9,
161, 235, 1008-11),
while the disco-
graphy gives
little indication of how the
recordings might
be obtained, whether
they
are still
commercially
available and
what format
they
are in. The
extremely
useful index has been
sensibly
combined
with a
glossary,
which also
gives
alterna-
tive
meanings (for example, "pallavi (1)
the
opening
section or first theme of a
composition
...
(2)
the sole theme of a
ragam-
tanam-pallavi
elaboration"), all of
which are well cross-referenced.
All in all, this book contains some
excellent reference material, clearly pre-
sented in a
scholarly
fashion
(each South
Indian term, for
example,
is
strictly
transliterated), and as a bonus there are
colour
plates
of
paintings
of famous
South Indian
composers by
S.
Rajam.
For
a
handy
reference volume on Kamatak
music, then, buy
this one, but
staple
Chapters
2-4
together
to avoid
wallowing
in the mire of
mysticism
and
speculation.
References
Arnold, Alison
(ed.) (2000)
The Garland
encyclopedia of
world music, vol. v,
South Asia: the Indian subcontinent.
New York: Garland
Publishing.
Catlin, Amy (1985) "Pallavi, kriti of Kar-
natak music:
evolutionary processes
and survival
strategies".
National Cen-
tre
for
the
Performing
Arts
Quarterly
Journal 14.1:26-44.
Powers, Harold et al.
(2001) "India".
In S. Sadie and J.
Tyrrell (eds)
The
New Grove
dictionary of
music and
musicians, pp.
147-272. London:
Macmillan.
Tharpar,
Romila
(1966/1990)
A
history of
India: volume one. London:
Penguin
Books.
MARIA LORD
Marial @
insightguides.
co. uk
lists of
publications
and
recordings
see
Powers et al., 2001; Arnold, 2000:108-9,
161, 235, 1008-11),
while the disco-
graphy gives
little indication of how the
recordings might
be obtained, whether
they
are still
commercially
available and
what format
they
are in. The
extremely
useful index has been
sensibly
combined
with a
glossary,
which also
gives
alterna-
tive
meanings (for example, "pallavi (1)
the
opening
section or first theme of a
composition
...
(2)
the sole theme of a
ragam-
tanam-pallavi
elaboration"), all of
which are well cross-referenced.
All in all, this book contains some
excellent reference material, clearly pre-
sented in a
scholarly
fashion
(each South
Indian term, for
example,
is
strictly
transliterated), and as a bonus there are
colour
plates
of
paintings
of famous
South Indian
composers by
S.
Rajam.
For
a
handy
reference volume on Kamatak
music, then, buy
this one, but
staple
Chapters
2-4
together
to avoid
wallowing
in the mire of
mysticism
and
speculation.
References
Arnold, Alison
(ed.) (2000)
The Garland
encyclopedia of
world music, vol. v,
South Asia: the Indian subcontinent.
New York: Garland
Publishing.
Catlin, Amy (1985) "Pallavi, kriti of Kar-
natak music:
evolutionary processes
and survival
strategies".
National Cen-
tre
for
the
Performing
Arts
Quarterly
Journal 14.1:26-44.
Powers, Harold et al.
(2001) "India".
In S. Sadie and J.
Tyrrell (eds)
The
New Grove
dictionary of
music and
musicians, pp.
147-272. London:
Macmillan.
Tharpar,
Romila
(1966/1990)
A
history of
India: volume one. London:
Penguin
Books.
MARIA LORD
Marial @
insightguides.
co. uk
IAN WOODFIELD, Music
of
the
Raj:
a social and economic
history of
music in late
eighteenth-century
Anglo-Indian society.
Oxford:
Oxford
University Press, 2000.
274pp.,
6 illustrations, 8 musical
exx., 7 tables, appendices, bibliog-
raphy,
index. ISBN 0-19-816433-5.
(hb. ?45.00).
This
stimulating
blend of social and
musical
history
is a
study
of amateur
and
professional
musical life in
"Anglo-
Indian"
society
of the late 18th
century
-
that is, the
English
residents in India
generally working
for the East India
Company.
The main focus is on Calcutta,
a centre that
grew remarkably
and
rapidly
in the course of the 18th
century.
In his
previous published
work Ian
Woodfield has examined both the Euro-
pean
musical culture that was fostered at
this time in India and also the
beginnings
of a
European
interest in the
indigenous
music of India
-
an interest cultivated
differently by
men and women and
destined, after a brief but
energetic
period
of cultural and artistic interaction,
to fade
away.
Warren
Hastings,
the
famous
governor-general
of
Bengal,
was
an enthusiastic
patron
of
scholarship
and
the arts and had himself
sung
"Hindus-
tannie"
tunes; after the
1780s, however,
there was a fast decline in the
English
interest in Indian music and dance and,
as Woodfield
puts it, "the
policy
of non-
interference in Indian life, long
fostered
by
the
Company,
now itself came into
question,
and there was a
growing
tendency
to
promote
the introduction of
Western musical
practices."
It is a
story
told in another context
by
Kenneth Ball-
hatchet in Race, sex and class under the
Raj
(London, 1980), a
story
of
hardening
lines of cultural division in the course
of the 19th
century
linked to social, reli-
gious
and
ideological developments
back
in
England.
IAN WOODFIELD, Music
of
the
Raj:
a social and economic
history of
music in late
eighteenth-century
Anglo-Indian society.
Oxford:
Oxford
University Press, 2000.
274pp.,
6 illustrations, 8 musical
exx., 7 tables, appendices, bibliog-
raphy,
index. ISBN 0-19-816433-5.
(hb. ?45.00).
This
stimulating
blend of social and
musical
history
is a
study
of amateur
and
professional
musical life in
"Anglo-
Indian"
society
of the late 18th
century
-
that is, the
English
residents in India
generally working
for the East India
Company.
The main focus is on Calcutta,
a centre that
grew remarkably
and
rapidly
in the course of the 18th
century.
In his
previous published
work Ian
Woodfield has examined both the Euro-
pean
musical culture that was fostered at
this time in India and also the
beginnings
of a
European
interest in the
indigenous
music of India
-
an interest cultivated
differently by
men and women and
destined, after a brief but
energetic
period
of cultural and artistic interaction,
to fade
away.
Warren
Hastings,
the
famous
governor-general
of
Bengal,
was
an enthusiastic
patron
of
scholarship
and
the arts and had himself
sung
"Hindus-
tannie"
tunes; after the
1780s, however,
there was a fast decline in the
English
interest in Indian music and dance and,
as Woodfield
puts it, "the
policy
of non-
interference in Indian life, long
fostered
by
the
Company,
now itself came into
question,
and there was a
growing
tendency
to
promote
the introduction of
Western musical
practices."
It is a
story
told in another context
by
Kenneth Ball-
hatchet in Race, sex and class under the
Raj
(London, 1980), a
story
of
hardening
lines of cultural division in the course
of the 19th
century
linked to social, reli-
gious
and
ideological developments
back
in
England.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.10/i 2001
This brief
phase
of
experimentation
and
enlightenment
is
perhaps
the most
fascinating part
of Woodfield's more
general
account of musical life, its
personalities,
socioeconomic conditions
and artistic
high
and low
points.
He
draws on a
superbly
rich collection of
sources, for in addition to the scattered
remarks on musical life in well-known
published
accounts of
English scholars,
administrators and travellers, he has
found much
promising
material in the
unpublished correspondence
of some
prominent
individuals and families. It is,
for instance, only through unpublished
sources that we discover that Robert
Clive and his wife were keen musical
enthusiasts and it stands to reason that,
in
long periods
of travel and of isolation
from home, music was one of the solaces
and
absorbing
diversions of
Company
servants and their families.
The richest
pickings
are to be had from
the
correspondence
of three
generations
of the Fowke
family,
now held in the
India Office collection at the British
Library.
Francis Fowke was Resident in
Calcutta in the 1780s and a keen amateur
musician who, under the influence of the
polymath
Oriental scholar William Jones,
published
a
description
of the Indian vTna
in the Asiatick Researches. His sister
Margaret,
born in 1758, became one of
the most active musical hosts and
spon-
sors and, while on leave with her brother
in Benares, she took
up
the
pastime
of
collecting
Indian musical material,
a
pursuit
in which she
corresponded
with another
important collector, Sophia
Plowden. The
transcription
and
adapta-
tion to Western
understanding
of the
Indian vocal melodies thus collected is an
intriguing
and in some
ways tantalizing
episode
in the
history
of ethnomusico-
logical
endeavour. Some of the material
found its
way
into
published
collections
and further into
compositional
ideas that
appeared
in
print
in London in the
early
years
of the 19th
century.
The main
reaction in
England
to this material
appears
to have stemmed from a more or
less
superficial curiosity
for the exotic,
but Woodfield shows, from
exchanges
of
letters between the Fowkes and such
acquaintances
as
Hastings
himself and
Clive and William Jones, that the
recep-
tion in India was based on a
genuine,
if
short-lived, interest in and
appreciation
of
a different musical idiom. Nevertheless, a
telling preoccupation among
the
English
residents with a
supposedly implied
harmonic basis in this music and the con-
stantly perceived
need to fit the melodies
to the
tuning
and
accompaniment
of the
harpsichord
indicate a certain
persistent
cultural barrier. Never before has so much
documentary
evidence
appeared
for the
artistic and intellectual
thought
that went
into this
early ethnographic exercise, and
we are much in Professor Woodfield's
debt for
bringing
these letters to
light.
Other
chapters
in the book contain
detailed and varied information on the
practical
circumstances of musical activ-
ity
in India
-
the often
precarious supply
and maintenance of instruments, the social
and hierarchical subtleties and inter-
relations of different kinds of musician
and the nature of domestic and
public
concert
activity.
Here we have concert
programmes,
details of
subscription
series
and some critical material that shows
something
of the
preoccupations
and
tastes of the time. The colonial
society
reflects, albeit
against
a remote and exotic
background,
much of the aesthetic senti-
ments of
contemporary England.
This
was a
period
in which musical taste was
often divided between
supporters
of the
"ancient"
-
that is, baroque
-
and the new
galant styles
in Western music. Woodfield
presents
evidence that at least in the
Indian context this division is
partly
observable in terms of
gender:
men
defended the "ancient" music, sometimes
indeed to the exclusion of women from
132
REVIEWS
133
REVIEWS
133
concerts and soirees, while there are clear
indications that women
performers
culti-
vated and
promoted
the new
virtuosity
and rhetoric, particularly
of the
keyboard.
Another
insight
is that while women
played,
involvement with the "scientific"
side of music
-
theoretical
examination,
study
of instruments etc.
-
was often
notionally
left to the men. The Fowke
letters
usefully
confirm what we can read
in both fictional and educational
writings
on social
practice
of the time, but there
is also more than a hint that families like
the Fowkes were
capable
of some inde-
pendent thought.
In the last
part
of the book we are
given
a view of what
happened
to mem-
bers of this
society
when
they returned,
with their increased
prosperity,
enhanced
social status and widened
experience,
to
Europe.
Now we find the Fowkes and oth-
ers
actively encouraging
the
development
of musical taste and
competence
in their
sons and
daughters, employing profes-
sional
teachers, supervising (though
it
may
be at a distance
-
for
example,
from
London to
Eton)
the children's
practice,
and
rejoicing
in their
progress.
The
Fowkes
provide, among
other
things,
a case
study
to illustrate how influential
the
family
tradition could be in determin-
ing
the
development
of taste and musical
occupation.
Woodfield's book takes its
place alongside
the best of
documentary
studies of socio-musical
history,
such as
R.
Leppert's
Music and
society (1987)
and D. Rohr's still
unpublished
thesis on
the careers of British musicians between
1750 and 1850, "A
profession
of artisans"
(1983).
JONATHAN KATZ
Wolfson College, Oxford
Master
of
the
Queen's Scholars,
Westminster School
Jonathan. katz @ westminster org. uk
concerts and soirees, while there are clear
indications that women
performers
culti-
vated and
promoted
the new
virtuosity
and rhetoric, particularly
of the
keyboard.
Another
insight
is that while women
played,
involvement with the "scientific"
side of music
-
theoretical
examination,
study
of instruments etc.
-
was often
notionally
left to the men. The Fowke
letters
usefully
confirm what we can read
in both fictional and educational
writings
on social
practice
of the time, but there
is also more than a hint that families like
the Fowkes were
capable
of some inde-
pendent thought.
In the last
part
of the book we are
given
a view of what
happened
to mem-
bers of this
society
when
they returned,
with their increased
prosperity,
enhanced
social status and widened
experience,
to
Europe.
Now we find the Fowkes and oth-
ers
actively encouraging
the
development
of musical taste and
competence
in their
sons and
daughters, employing profes-
sional
teachers, supervising (though
it
may
be at a distance
-
for
example,
from
London to
Eton)
the children's
practice,
and
rejoicing
in their
progress.
The
Fowkes
provide, among
other
things,
a case
study
to illustrate how influential
the
family
tradition could be in determin-
ing
the
development
of taste and musical
occupation.
Woodfield's book takes its
place alongside
the best of
documentary
studies of socio-musical
history,
such as
R.
Leppert's
Music and
society (1987)
and D. Rohr's still
unpublished
thesis on
the careers of British musicians between
1750 and 1850, "A
profession
of artisans"
(1983).
JONATHAN KATZ
Wolfson College, Oxford
Master
of
the
Queen's Scholars,
Westminster School
Jonathan. katz @ westminster org. uk
MARTIN CLAYTON, Time in Indian
music:
rhythm, metre, and
form
in
North Indian
rag
performance.
Oxford: Oxford
University Press,
2000. xx, 230pp.,
musical exx.,
figures, bibliography, index, CD.
ISBN 0-19-816686-9 (hb. ?45).
Although English-language publications
on formal
aspects
of Hindustani music
have included studies of
rag, genres
and
aspects
of tabla and
pakhavaj perform-
ance, Martin
Clayton's
Time in Indian
music constitutes the first focussed
explo-
ration of Indian
rhythm per
se. In this
volume the British
ethnomusicologist
provides
a
remarkably insightful, original
and
rigorous exploration
of matters relat-
ing
to
rhythm
and metre in North Indian
music, both
subjecting
his immediate
topic
to close
scrutiny
and
relating
it to
appropriate broader, cross-cultural theo-
ries. The result is a book which, while not
destined to become a best-seller, makes
quite
a fresh and
stimulating
contribution
to Indian
musicology.
Clayton's
first
chapter
is the most
philosophical
in orientation, exploring
among
other
things
the
way
in which
aspects
of Indian
rhythm,
such as
cyclic-
ity, might
be said to reflect
ideologies,
such as ancient Brahmanical
concepts
of time.
(Reference to Becker's, 1979,
article on
cyclicity
in Javanese music
and
cosmology
would have been
appro-
priate here.) Perhaps
like
many
ethno-
musicologists,
I tend to be at once
intrigued by
and often
sceptical
of such
hypothetical homologies
between sound
structure and social
structure, and I was
generally gratified
to find
Clayton
con-
cluding
that such
correspondences
are
quite
difficult to
support
in the case of
Indian
rhythm.
I
particularly appreciated
Clayton's suggestion (presented
in the
conclusion)
that
music-making represents
less a reflection of
ideologies
than a
"continuous
process
of our
engagement
MARTIN CLAYTON, Time in Indian
music:
rhythm, metre, and
form
in
North Indian
rag
performance.
Oxford: Oxford
University Press,
2000. xx, 230pp.,
musical exx.,
figures, bibliography, index, CD.
ISBN 0-19-816686-9 (hb. ?45).
Although English-language publications
on formal
aspects
of Hindustani music
have included studies of
rag, genres
and
aspects
of tabla and
pakhavaj perform-
ance, Martin
Clayton's
Time in Indian
music constitutes the first focussed
explo-
ration of Indian
rhythm per
se. In this
volume the British
ethnomusicologist
provides
a
remarkably insightful, original
and
rigorous exploration
of matters relat-
ing
to
rhythm
and metre in North Indian
music, both
subjecting
his immediate
topic
to close
scrutiny
and
relating
it to
appropriate broader, cross-cultural theo-
ries. The result is a book which, while not
destined to become a best-seller, makes
quite
a fresh and
stimulating
contribution
to Indian
musicology.
Clayton's
first
chapter
is the most
philosophical
in orientation, exploring
among
other
things
the
way
in which
aspects
of Indian
rhythm,
such as
cyclic-
ity, might
be said to reflect
ideologies,
such as ancient Brahmanical
concepts
of time.
(Reference to Becker's, 1979,
article on
cyclicity
in Javanese music
and
cosmology
would have been
appro-
priate here.) Perhaps
like
many
ethno-
musicologists,
I tend to be at once
intrigued by
and often
sceptical
of such
hypothetical homologies
between sound
structure and social
structure, and I was
generally gratified
to find
Clayton
con-
cluding
that such
correspondences
are
quite
difficult to
support
in the case of
Indian
rhythm.
I
particularly appreciated
Clayton's suggestion (presented
in the
conclusion)
that
music-making represents
less a reflection of
ideologies
than a
"continuous
process
of our
engagement