Public lecture on "The Tanjore Enlightenment 1798-1832" ..., by Dr. Savithri Preetha Nair, Thursday, 18th August 2011, 4:00 pm
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sharada srinivasan
Aug 17, 2011, 8:16:49 AM8/17/11
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From: Contemporary Studies IISc <ccs....@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 5:02 PM
Subject: Reminder: [Talk] Contemporary Studies: Presents a Public lecture on "The Tanjore Enlightenment 1798-1832" ..., by Dr. Savithri Preetha Nair, Thursday, 18th August 2011, 4:00 pm
To: Raghavendra Gadagkar <ra...@ces.iisc.ernet.in>
Cc: ccs....@gmail.com
Dear All,
CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES
URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccsI
Invites you to a public lecture on "The Tanjore Enlightenment 1798-1832"
Speaker:
Dr. Savithri Preetha Nair
Visiting Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Studies
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore.
Date & Time: Thursday, 18th August 4:00 p.m
CCS Seminar Hall, IISc, Bangalore 12
(Note: We have shifted to the former JNCASR, near the Health Centre)
All are cordially invited
Tea/Coffee will be served at 3:30 p.m.
The enlightenment project was far from monolithic and Europe was hardly its limit. By their links to global networks at least a few Indian elites came under the impact of European intellectual developments at the turn of the nineteenth century, generating a revolutionary intellectual ferment, the specificities of which have not yet been wholly acknowledged or critically examined by historians of modernity, whose focus has predominantly been the European metropolis or its peripheries. Mapping the geographical location and circulation of enlightenment ideas, objects and knowledge over and across space is crucial to an understanding ‘how the Enlightenment was made and what, actually it was’. This lecture series aims to contribute to a greater understanding of enlightenment on the colonial “periphery” by examining the cross-cultural encounters at the Tanjore Court in South India under the reign of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832) in the fields of medicine, natural history, experimental philosophy and music.
Lecture IV: “European Airs”: Musical Modernity at the Tanjore Court under the Reign of Raja Serfoji II, 1798-1832
Abstract: Although the Maratha kings of Tanjore, without exception, were all great patrons of music, it was not until the reign of Raja Serfoji-II (1798-1832) that western musical instruments like the violin and the clarinet were incorporated into the indigenous musical tradition and the earliest known non-European military musical ensemble, the Tanjore Band, constituted. The paper argues that if the European discovery of Indian music at the Oudh Court in the late eighteenth century gave birth to the “Hindustani Airs” (Indian tunes, collected as oriental souvenirs, written in staff notation and arranged for Western instruments), the contemporaneous and even converse Indian or more specifically Tanjorean response to Western music was the creation of the hybrid genre called “European Airs” or “Nottusvara sahityas” (Indian songs set to Western tunes, for being sung or played on Indian instruments). Today this modern genre, with its origins in Tanjore, and best represented by the Jatisvaras of Muthuswamy Dikshitar has become part of the South Indian musical canon. Aurality (as opposed to ocularity) revolving around the making of the listening subject has figured only in recent years in the literature on modernity. The experience of modernity has largely been understood in terms of the visual: of technologies of vision, observation and the constitution of the observing subject. Locating the place of aurality in the shaping of modernity in a colonial context, the lecture explores the material and social matrices of music making in South India and in particular the Tanjore Court’s cultural response to Western music at the turn of the nineteenth century.
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Raghavendra GADAGKAR, PhD, FASc, FNA,
FNASc, FTWAS, Foreign Assoc NAS USA
INSA SN Bose Research Professor & JC Bose National Fellow
Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore, 560012, India.
------------------------------
----------------------------------
Chairman, Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore
Hon. Prof., Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
Non-resident Permanent Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Hon. Prof., Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata
Chairman, Research Council for History of Science, Indian National Science
Academy, New Delhi
----------------------------------------------------------------
Telephone (O): 91-80-23601429; 22932340; (R): 91-80-23601758
Fax: 91-80-23602121; 23601428
E-mail: ra...@ces.iisc.ernet.in
URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh
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Date: Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 5:02 PM
Subject: Reminder: [Talk] Contemporary Studies: Presents a Public lecture on "The Tanjore Enlightenment 1798-1832" ..., by Dr. Savithri Preetha Nair, Thursday, 18th August 2011, 4:00 pm
To: Raghavendra Gadagkar <ra...@ces.iisc.ernet.in>
Cc: ccs....@gmail.com
Dear All,
CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES
URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccsI
Invites you to a public lecture on "The Tanjore Enlightenment 1798-1832"
Speaker:
Dr. Savithri Preetha Nair
Visiting Fellow, Centre for Contemporary Studies
Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore.
Date & Time: Thursday, 18th August 4:00 p.m
CCS Seminar Hall, IISc, Bangalore 12
(Note: We have shifted to the former JNCASR, near the Health Centre)
All are cordially invited
Tea/Coffee will be served at 3:30 p.m.
The enlightenment project was far from monolithic and Europe was hardly its limit. By their links to global networks at least a few Indian elites came under the impact of European intellectual developments at the turn of the nineteenth century, generating a revolutionary intellectual ferment, the specificities of which have not yet been wholly acknowledged or critically examined by historians of modernity, whose focus has predominantly been the European metropolis or its peripheries. Mapping the geographical location and circulation of enlightenment ideas, objects and knowledge over and across space is crucial to an understanding ‘how the Enlightenment was made and what, actually it was’. This lecture series aims to contribute to a greater understanding of enlightenment on the colonial “periphery” by examining the cross-cultural encounters at the Tanjore Court in South India under the reign of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832) in the fields of medicine, natural history, experimental philosophy and music.
Lecture IV: “European Airs”: Musical Modernity at the Tanjore Court under the Reign of Raja Serfoji II, 1798-1832
Abstract: Although the Maratha kings of Tanjore, without exception, were all great patrons of music, it was not until the reign of Raja Serfoji-II (1798-1832) that western musical instruments like the violin and the clarinet were incorporated into the indigenous musical tradition and the earliest known non-European military musical ensemble, the Tanjore Band, constituted. The paper argues that if the European discovery of Indian music at the Oudh Court in the late eighteenth century gave birth to the “Hindustani Airs” (Indian tunes, collected as oriental souvenirs, written in staff notation and arranged for Western instruments), the contemporaneous and even converse Indian or more specifically Tanjorean response to Western music was the creation of the hybrid genre called “European Airs” or “Nottusvara sahityas” (Indian songs set to Western tunes, for being sung or played on Indian instruments). Today this modern genre, with its origins in Tanjore, and best represented by the Jatisvaras of Muthuswamy Dikshitar has become part of the South Indian musical canon. Aurality (as opposed to ocularity) revolving around the making of the listening subject has figured only in recent years in the literature on modernity. The experience of modernity has largely been understood in terms of the visual: of technologies of vision, observation and the constitution of the observing subject. Locating the place of aurality in the shaping of modernity in a colonial context, the lecture explores the material and social matrices of music making in South India and in particular the Tanjore Court’s cultural response to Western music at the turn of the nineteenth century.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Raghavendra GADAGKAR, PhD, FASc, FNA,
FNASc, FTWAS, Foreign Assoc NAS USA
INSA SN Bose Research Professor & JC Bose National Fellow
Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore, 560012, India.
------------------------------
----------------------------------
Chairman, Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore
Hon. Prof., Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
Non-resident Permanent Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Hon. Prof., Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata
Chairman, Research Council for History of Science, Indian National Science
Academy, New Delhi
----------------------------------------------------------------
Telephone (O): 91-80-23601429; 22932340; (R): 91-80-23601758
Fax: 91-80-23602121; 23601428
E-mail: ra...@ces.iisc.ernet.in
URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh
----------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
Centre for Contemporary Studies
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560012.
Centre for Contemporary Studies
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560012.
(Near Health Centre).
Phone: 91-80-2360 6559, 2293 2486
Chair: Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar
Phone: 91-80-2360 6559, 2293 2486
Chair: Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar
email: ccs....@gmail.com
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