This paper was first given in the Department of Social Anthropology The Queen's University, Belfast, on 10 February 1993Google Scholar

1 Head, Raymond, ‘Corelli in Calcutta: Colonial Music-Making in India during the 17th and 18th Centuries’, Early Music, 13 (1985), 548–53 Previously Owain Edwards had considered the place of Indian tunes in the published works of an Indian army officer after his return to England ‘Captain Williamson's Compositions Fashionable Music by an Army Officer’, Music Review, 42 (1981), 116–29.Google Scholar

2 Bor, Joep, ‘The Rise of Ethnomusicology Sources on Indian Music c. 1780-c 1890’, Yearbook for Traditional Music, 20 (1988), 51–73.Google Scholar

3 Farrell, Gerry, Indian Music and the West (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar

4 Woodfield, Ian, English Musicians in the Age of Exploration (Pendragon Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar

5 Woodfield, Ian, Music of the Raj A Social and Economic History of Music in Late 18th Century Anglo-Indian Society (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar

6 Leppert, Richard, ‘Music, Domestic Life and Cultural Chauvinism Images of British Subjects at Home in India’, Music and Society, ed Richard Leppert and Susan Cleary (Cambridge, 1987), 63–104 (p 79)Google Scholar

7 An important aspect of the Hindostannie air not considered in this article concerns the problematic issue of transcription Given the fundamentally different melodic and rhythmic systems of Indian music, to say nothing of instruments and performing styles, the avowed aim of producing ‘authentic’ versions of the originals was destined to fail comprehensively But the attempt raises interesting questions In what circumstances were the transcriptions made? Is it possible to determine anything at all of the character of the Indian originals? To what extent did European transcribers feel justified in deploying elements of their own musical vocabulary not normally associated with short salon pieces for example, drones, parallel writing or unusual key signatures? These issues were addressed in my paper ‘Collecting Indian Songs in Late Eighteenth-Century Lucknow Problems of Transcription’, delivered at the Conference on ‘Music Syncretism’ organized by the International Council for Traditional Music (UK Chapter), at The Queen's University, Belfast, Department of Social Anthropology and Ethnomusicology, in April 1994Google Scholar

8 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, E4, 235Google Scholar

9 Ibid., E5, 9Google Scholar

10 Ibid., E5, 44Google Scholar

11 Ibid., E4, 543.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., E5, 53Google Scholar

13 Ibid., D546/25, 1 The ‘prince’ mentioned here may be identified as the son of the Mughal emperor Jahandar Shah (Mirza Jawan Bakht) who had fled to Lucknow and was settled at Benares.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., E7, 37.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., D546/25, 48.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., E5. 59Google Scholar

17 Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Powis 1990 Deposit, box marked ‘Clive of India’, bundle 30Google Scholar

18 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, E5, 63Google Scholar

19 Ibid., E5, 65Google Scholar

20 Ibid., D546/25, 2Google Scholar

21 Ibid., E5, 72 The two letters from Sir William Jones to Margaret Fowke are not included in The Letters of Sir William J ones, ed. Garland Cannon, 2 vols (Oxford, 1970). But they fit in exactly with Jones's known itinerary during his voyage up the Ganges to Benares and back E5, 63, the letter from Lady Jones to Margaret Fowke, was written from ‘Bangelpore’ on 6 January 1785 No 395 in the published edition (dated 7 January 1785) is from Sir William to Warren Hastings from ‘Bhagelpor’ E5, 65 from ‘Maldah’, another stop on the journey, should follow no 395, and E5, 72 (by which time Sir William was back in Calcutta) follows no 396. D546/31, fol 2 (from the Ormathwaite correspondence) is a letter from Sir William to Francis Fowke concerning his contribution to the transactions of the Asiatic Society It is dated 4 August 1787 and should be inserted before no 464, a long letter to Earl Spencer which mentions the slow progress of the Society's first volume In D546/26, 1, Francis Fowke refers to Sir William's illness ‘I dined yesterday with Sir W^m and Lady J He is grown quite fat and rosy, but the heliaphobia continues strong upon him’ [30 March 1785].Google Scholar

22 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, E5, 67Google Scholar

23 Ibid., E5, 75Google Scholar

24 Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Powis 1990 Deposit, box marked ‘Clive of India’, bundle 30.Google Scholar

25 Mildred Archer and William Archer, Indian Painting for the British, 1770–1880 (London, 1955) This interest was not confined to women D546/26 contains a letter written by Francis Kowke from Monghire on 10 April 1785 in which he expresses delight at a set of drawings ‘Those of Bootan [Bhutan] are extremely curious and picturesque ‘Google Scholar

26 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, E4, 556 See E9, 144 for a letter from Hogan to Margaret Fowke about some unnamed drawings – obviously of the musical instrumentsGoogle Scholar

27 Ibid., E7, 22Google Scholar

28 Ibid., E7, 23Google Scholar

29 Ibid., E5, 76. The chorus of the song mentioned in this letter was enduringly popular. Taza ba taza, nao ba nao The Famous Song of the Persian Poet Hafin, Translated from the Original Melody by O G Phipps was published in London in 1857 For other references see Dyson, Ketaki, A Various Universe A Study of the Journals and Memoirs of British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent, 1765–1836 (Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, 1978), 343, 345Google Scholar

30 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, F127/94Google Scholar

31 MS 380 See Francis Wormald and Phyllis Giles, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Additional Illuminated Manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum Acquired between 1895 and 1979 (Cambridge, 1982), i, 394–5Google Scholar

32 A Lieutenant Bellas from Cawnpore is recorded at Lucknow in 1793 See Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, A Fatal Friendship The Nawabs, the British, and the City of Lucknow (Oxford, 1985), 162–3 Alternatively a musician named ‘Bellows’ is recorded as having set new basses to some Hindostannie airs in Calcutta in 1785 See above, Francis Fowke's letter of 29 March 1785Google Scholar

33 This individual is not known, but Llewellyn-Jones, A Fatal Friendship, 27, notes that the Braganca family, two members of which were recorded as piano tuners in Lucknow, were long-term residents of the cityGoogle Scholar

34 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, E5, 76.Google Scholar

35 Webster, Mary, Johan Zoffany, 1733–1810 (London, 1977), 79, discusses Poller's oriental interests and Zoffany's portrait of him.Google Scholar

36 Bird, William Hamilton, The Oriental Miscellany (Calcutta, 1789) Head,‘Corelli in Calcutta’, noted the lack of any reference to Margaret Fowke in this publicationGoogle Scholar

37 British Library, Add MS 29171, fol. 363Google Scholar

38 Crotch, William, Specimens of Various Styles of Music (London, c 1808–15), 13Google Scholar

39 Jones, Edward, Lyric Airs Consisting of Specimens of Greek, Albanian, Walachian, Turkish, Arabian, Persian, Chinese, and Moorish National Songs and Melodies (London, 1804), 25Google Scholar

40 On the cult of the picturesque in India, see Archer and Archer, Indian Painting On European reactions to Indian art, see Muter, Partha, Much Maligned Monsters A History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar

41 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, D546/31, 130Google Scholar

42 See Davies, Cuthbert, Warren Hastings and Oudh (London, 1939), for a detailed account of the East India Company's relations with Oudh and in particular with its two rulers Shuja-ud-Daulah and Asuf-ud-DaulahGoogle Scholar

43 On Claud Martin see Hill, Samuel, Life of Claud Martin (Calcutta, 1901) On the social relations between Asuf-ud-Daulah and the English and the general cultural atmosphere see Spear, Thomas, The Nabobs A Study of the Social Life of the English in Eighteenth Century India (London, 1932), 82–5Google Scholar

44 Kippen, James, The Tabla of Lucknow (Cambridge, 1988), 16 The reference is from Allyn Miner, ‘Hindustani Instrumental Music in the Early Modern Period: A Study of the Sitar and Sarod in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Benares Hindu University, 1981).Google Scholar

45 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, F127/94, entry for 18 SeptemberGoogle Scholar

46 Williamson, Thomas, The European in India (London, 1813), commentary to Plate 15Google Scholar

47 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, E5, 76 ‘Johnstone’ may have been Richard Johnson, a friend of Sir William Jones with a good knowledge of Persian and a keen interest in oriental studies See The Letters of Sir William Jones, ed Cannon, ii, 624, no 2 Another possibility is Charles Johnstone who went to India in 1782 See Buckland, Charles, Dictionary of Indian Biography (London, 1906), 224. A third possibility is George Johnstone, assistant at the Lucknow Residency from 1783 to 1794Google Scholar

48 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, F127/94, entries for 21 and 26 AprilGoogle Scholar

49 Williamson, The European in India, commentary to Plate 15Google Scholar

50 Edwards, ‘Captain Williamson's Compositions‘Google Scholar

51 India Office Library, East India Company Records, Bengal Inventories, L/AG/34/27/8Google Scholar

52 Ballhatchet, Kenneth, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics, 1793–1905 (London, 1980), 123, 157–9 Dyson, A Various Universe, Appendix B, includes a selection of descriptions of nautch dancers, many of them hostile.Google Scholar

53 Willard, Augustus, A Treatise on the Music of Hindoostan-(Calcutta, 1834), 24, repr in Sir Sourindra Tagore, Hindu Music from Various Authors (Calcutta, 1875, 2nd edn, 1882, repr 1965)Google Scholar

54 On Jones see Mukherjee, Soumyendra, Sir William Jones A Study in Eighteenth Century British Attitudes to India (Cambridge, 1968).Google Scholar

55 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, E5, 76Google Scholar

56 Ibid., B187 (loose letter) ‘Comac’ may be identified as Colonel Jacob Camac, who retired at the end of 1782.Google Scholar

57 Ibid., D546/25, 1.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., E5, 65Google Scholar

59 I am very grateful to Dr D A Swallow, Curator of the Indian and South East Asian Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, for obtaining the opinion of R Skelton, former Keeper of the Indian Department, that the miniatures of Fitzwilliam Museum MS 380 ‘are exactly what one would expect in Lucknow in the 1780s’ Private communication, 10 July 1991Google Scholar

60 Robert Hardgrave, Jr, and Stephen Slawek, ‘Instruments and Music Culture in Eighteenth Century India. The Solvyn Portraits’, Asian Music; 20 (1988), 1–92 See also the views of Hood in Frank Harrison, Mantle Hood and Claude Palisca, Musicology (Englewood Cliffs, N J, 1963). —Google Scholar

61 Kippen, The Tabla of Lucknow, 20Google Scholar

62 Bird, The Oriental Miscellany, introductionGoogle Scholar

63 India Office Library, European Manuscripts, F127/94, entry for 18 February.Google Scholar

64 Chase, Gilbert, A Guide to the Music of Latin America (2nd edn, Washington, 1962), 14Google Scholar

65 Woodfield, English MusiciansGoogle Scholar

66 Examples are given in Head, ‘Corelli in Calcutta’, and Bor, “The Rise of Ethnomusicology'Google Scholar

67 Spear, The Nabobs, 140.Google Scholar

68 Ibid., 141Google Scholar

69 Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, 4. The continuing need for the English lower classes (who made up the rank-and-file of the Indian Army) to have access to Indian women went without question It became one of the most divisive social issues of the nineteenth centuryGoogle Scholar

70 Spear, The Nabobs, 129Google Scholar

71 Leppert, ‘Music, Domestic Life and Cultural Chauvinism’, for example, takes little account of this striking regional variation in attitudesGoogle Scholar