Whither musicology? Amateur musicologists and music writing in Bengal

This article examines amateur writing on music in nineteenth-century Bengal, focusing on two men of musical eminence, Sourindro Mohun Tagore and Krishnadhan Bandyopadhyay. While existing research has given disproportionate attention to Tagore, little effort has been made to locate him or his contemporaries in a network of knowledge-practices. This article explores Tagore’s imperatives of writing about music and reform through its linkages with sociality, musical practice and patronage. The article challenges both assumptions of his uniqueness and marginality, and contrasts his musicological career with that of Krishnadhan Bandyopadhyay to bring out their internal differences. Interrogating Krishnadhan’s subjectivity, I approach alternative registers of music writing—linguistic, formal and social—as part of ongoing processes of print and public modernity. Through this, I engage a larger debate on Indian musicology informing theory and practice, reflecting in turn on the regional formation of musical publics.