Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India
Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858

This is the first history of Indian music and musicians during the transition from Mughal to British rule, c.1748–1858.

Katherine Butler Schofield (Author)

9781009048521, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 August 2024

344 pages
24.4 x 17 x 1.8 cm, 0.594 kg

'Katherine Schofield's path-breaking account of music and musicians from the late Mughal period is a lesson in music history and historiography for musicians, music scholars and students in India. Her detailed analysis of texts written in multiple languages as well as pictorial sources will enlighten students and performers like myself about trajectories that moulded Hindustani music to the shape we experience today. This book will also go a long way in breaking myths and stereotypes about Muslim practitioners of this music that have for so long coloured our understanding of the past.' Aneesh Pradhan, Tabla player, composer and author

Based on a vast, virtually unstudied archive of Indian writings alongside visual sources, this book presents the first history of music and musicians in late Mughal India c.1748–1858 and takes the lives of nine musicians as entry points into six prominent types of writing on music in Persian, Brajbhasha, Urdu and English, moving from Delhi to Lucknow, Hyderabad, Jaipur and among the British. It shows how a key Mughal cultural field responded to the political, economic and social upheaval of the transition to British rule, while addressing a central philosophical question: can we ever recapture the ephemeral experience of music once the performance is over? These rich, diverse sources shine new light on the wider historical processes of this pivotal transitional period, and provide a new history of music, musicians and their audiences during the precise period in which North Indian classical music coalesced in its modern form.

Introduction: 1. Chasing eurydice: writing on music in the late Mughal world
2. The Mughal orpheus: remembering Khushhal Khan Gunasamudra in eighteenth-century Delhi
3. The rivals: Anjha Baras, Adarang and the scattering of Shahjahanabad
4. The courtesan and the Memsahib: Khanum Jan and Sophia Plowden at the court of Lucknow
5. Eclipsed by the Moon: Mahlaqa Bai and Khushhal Khan Anup in Nizami Hyderabad
6. Faithful to the salt: Mayalee Dancing Girl vs. the East India company in Rajasthan
7. Keeper of the flame: Miyan Himmat Khan and the last of the Mughal Emperors
8. Orphans of the uprising: late Mughal Echoes and 1857.

Subject Areas: Baroque music [c 1600 to c 1750 AVGC3]