Book review: Resonances of the Raj
A few years ago I was at an event where the British tabla player and record producer Kuljit Bhamar jokingly said to the audience, “whenever I see concerts advertised as East meets West, I think to myself, haven’t we met before?”
Nadlini Ghuman’s short, scholarly, and entertaining book Resonances of the Raj examines the deeper history alluded to in the joke, provoking a fresh examination of musical history that reveals some surprising facts. The book focuses on six people from English musical history that were influenced by Indian music between the years 1897-1947, long before The Beatles collaborated with Ravi Shankar or Miles Davis added tabla and electric sitar to his band.
Some of the influences Ghuman explores are fascinating. For example, listen to the iconic music of the Star Wars films scored by the celebrated American composer John Williams, and you are likely to imagine epic space battles and lightsaber duels. What you are not likely to imagine is the sacred Sanskrit hymns of the Indian Rig Veda, despite the music containing threads that can be traced back to them.
The thread that connects John Williams to Indian music is the English composer Gustav Holst, who wrote the famous suite The Planets. Holst’s dedication to studying Indian music was demonstrated by his effort to learn Sanskrit, opening him to the influence of a world of ancient Indian philosophy and mythology. As a young man he composed choral hymns taken from the sacred Rig Veda and employed South Indian scales called melākarthas to explore harmonies distinct from those offered by western scales.
In the book, Ghuman studiously demonstrates how Holst’s prior work with the Rig Veda, in addition to his somewhat taboo interest in astrology, influenced the powerful opening Mars movement of The Planets. On listening to the Mars movement one can hear where John Williams found inspiration and influence for his Star Wars soundtracks, but less immediately obvious is that the source of his inspiration had roots in India. Holst played down this connection at times, aware that some in Britain viewed him as excessively influenced by India.
Holst was helped in his Indian music studies by a lively and pioneering character called Maud MacCarthy, an Irish classical violin virtuoso who suffered a career ending injury at an early age. She then proceeded to make a brave solo trip to India in 1907 to study with some of the leading gurus of the time, returning to England to provide packed-out presentations of the music she had studied. MacCarthy broke with the somewhat removed, traditional approach of studying non-western music at the time, opting instead to learn in an immersive way directly from teachers and practitioners of the art, ultimately winning the respect of her peers as the top composers of her day sought her out.
One such composer was Edward Elgar, who composed a large-scale orchestral composition called The Crown of India, staged in 1912 to celebrate the visit to Delhi of King George V and Queen Mary. Even a seasoned defender of the empire might struggle not to be embarrassed by its imperialistic and orientalist aesthetics, which invoke the notion of empire as a civilising mission. Nevertheless, Ghuman demonstrates how this composition offers valuable insights into how the British perceived themselves at the time, and if one manages to look beyond the subject matter, it contains passages of musical excellence from a superb composer.
In the second half of the book Ghuman brings to light lesser-known composers such as Amy Woodforde-Finden, Kaikhosru Sorabji, and John Foulds.
Amy Woodforde-Finden’s music offers little for the modern listener. A hugely successful songwriter of orientalist music in the Edwardian period, she tapped into a taste for exoticism that helped defined the aesthetics of her age. Despite this Ghuman points out she “offer(s) the social historian a glimpse of popular beliefs concerning nation, empire and India in the last period of the British Raj”.
Kaikhosru Sorabji’s music by contrast is intriguing and idiosyncratic. A recluse, after hearing a bad performance of his work he banned the public performance of his music for much of his life! His piano music, original and kaleidoscopic, meanders through endless melodic variations in a journey that often lacks any clear destination.
John Foulds, in addition to the aforementioned Maud MacCarthy, are perhaps the greatest revelations of the book. It is something of a cliché to say that a composer is under-appreciated, but in Foulds’ case it seems justified. He offered a daring and experimental edge to English music in interwar Britain. He and MacCarthy formed a powerful collaborative partnership and eventually married, though their relationship ended in tragedy shortly after relocating to India, when Foulds died from cholera in Calcutta just as World War II was starting to erupt.
Foulds piano piece Gandharva-Music, written in 1929, which he considered naive in its simplicity, could almost pass for contemporary composition nearly a century later. It is an early example of the stripping down of certain elements of music that occurred after World War II, especially in the United States, examples of which can be found in the work of composers such as Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Ghuman explains that the composition depicts “music angels, gandharvas, who grace the upper corners of centuries of Indian paintings and sculpture.”
John Foulds, in addition to the aforementioned Maud MacCarthy, are perhaps the greatest revelations of the book. It is something of a cliché to say that a composer is under-appreciated, but in Foulds’ case it seems justified. He offered a daring and experimental edge to English music in interwar Britain. He and MacCarthy formed a powerful collaborative partnership and eventually married, though their relationship ended in tragedy shortly after relocating to India, when Foulds died from cholera in Calcutta just as World War II was starting to erupt.
Foulds piano piece Gandharva-Music, written in 1929, which he considered naive in its simplicity, could almost pass for contemporary composition nearly a century later. It is an early example of the stripping down of certain elements of music that occurred after World War II, especially in the United States, examples of which can be found in the work of composers such as Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, and John Adams. Ghuman explains that the composition depicts “music angels, gandharvas, who grace the upper corners of centuries of Indian paintings and sculpture.”
Through the six characters that make up Resonances of the Raj, one feels transported back to a time in history whose events continue to reverberate into our present age. The history comes to life in rich detail through the characters’ stories, analysis of their music, and photographs, showing that while the truth in this case is not necessarily stranger than fiction, it is far more interesting, complex, and multifaceted than the modern mythology of East meets West.
Resonances of the Raj by Nadlini Ghuman is published by Oxford University Press. You can order a copy here.