| Contents |
Supplying the market. The export trade in instruments ; The distribution of music -- Professional musicians in India. The governor's band ; French horn duos and wind bands ; Free-lance players -- The woman amateur. The transport, tuning, and maintenance of keyboard instruments ; The piano student ; The young singer ; The domestic concert party ; Glee singing ; Issues of gender -- The male dilettante. String-playing ; 'Ancient' music in India ; The Calcutta catch club ; The public concert ; The 1797 Handel celebration -- The encounter with Indian music. The kingdom of Oudh and the 'Hindostannie' air ; Star performers from Kashmir ; The art of transcription ; The translation of texts ; The performance of 'Hindostannie' airs ; Reception ; The study of Indian instruments -- The return to England. Anglo-Indians on the Grand tour ; Nabobs and the Italian opera ; The fashionable piano player ; Anglo-Indian quartet parties ; Burney, Hastings, and Haydn ; The next generation: an early nineteenth-century musical education -- Appendices. Examples of musical instruments listed in the Bengal inventories, 1760-1785 ; French Horns in the Bengal inventories, 1760-1785 ; Subscription series promoted by William Bird in 1789. |
| Abstract |
This book is a study of musical life in late eighteenth-century Anglo-Indian society, based on the unpublished correspondence of an extended network of families. The writers of these letters - amateurs with a passionate commitment to the art of music - provide a perceptive commentary on many of the major issues of the day: the stylistic change from Baroque to Galant, the replacement of the harpsichord with the pianoforte, the establishment of the musical canon, and the growing economic and cultural influence of women musicians. Among the topics discussed are the transport, tuning and maintenance of instruments, the relationship between amateur pupil and professional teacher, the conduct of the domestic musical soiree, the role of glee singing in courtship, and the musical education of children. An account is also given of the growth of an expatriate musical culture among the European inhabitants of early colonial Calcutta, and the musical tastes of major Anglo-Indian figures such as Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, and Sir William Jones are assessed. English attitudes to Indian music is an important theme, especially as manifested in the fashion for 'Hindostannie' airs, transcriptions of Indian melodies in European musical language. The study concludes with an examination of the musical lives of wealthy 'nabobs' back in England, where they immersed themselves in Italian musical culture, taking the Grand Tour, supporting opera at the King's Theatre, and employing fashionable Italian teachers for their children. |
