Rabindranath Tagore Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The eighteen Songs are Daniélou's response to the Poet's request that Western audiences should not only share the lyrics, but also their accompanying melodies, in a musical context more familiar to them. Up to now, very few readers and fans of Tagore have been aware of his impressive musical production. In India, his melodies are a well-known heritage, taught in schools and performed both at home and in concert halls, far beyond the borders of Bengal. Even the national anthems of India and Bangladesh, both text and music, are his creation. The universal nature of the message of Tagore, Nobel Prize for literature in 1913, is clear from a very first reading. His poems are directed to all, intimately and collectively, while the music reflects the influence of classical and semi-classical styles in vogue at the time of his artistic training: the khyal, the dhrupad, the devotional music of the Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and of the mystical Bauls, the wandering poet-musicians of Bengal. The vocabulary, the ways in which it is transmitted and performed, the very sonority of Indian music, differ greatly from its western counterpart. First as a musician and then as a musicologist, Daniélou was familiar with both languages and, at that time, was the only person alive capable of carrying out Tagore's request and provide the world with its first specimen of musical fusion. In France, the 19 th century had been marked by a certain exoticism, whether naturalistic (Bizet) or manneristic (Félicien David, Meyerbeer, Massenet, Delibes, Saint-Saëns) and thereafter the Parisian avant-garde was not lacking in noteworthy examples of arrangements of melodies from distant parts, inserted in a complex, modern harmonic and instrumental framework (Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel). Although the attitude toward " exotic " material during the Romantic era had the same traits as a pretty drawing-room watercolour and, during the 20 th century, of conscious borrowing, Daniélou's position was wholly new and different, even from the rigorous conceptions of musicians and ethno-musicologists such as Bartòk, Kodaly and Brăiloiu. Indeed, the mandate Daniélou had to carry out was a very precise one, and he tackled it with the respect and humility of an amanuensis; at the same time, his humility does not make his contribution flat and dull and he manifests his considerable experience as a musician familiar with the repertory and styles of his period, making simultaneous choices of feeling and reason. Amongst these many choices, the first and most evident is his choosing the piano as an accompaniment, and the second is the consequent reference to genres such as the romantic German lied and the French chanson, symbolist and impressionist. At the same time, Daniélou never hid his preference for Schubert, Fauré, Duparc. Such forms, seemingly essential considering Daniélou's historical context, operate perfectly when it comes to Tagore: Lied and chanson are chamber music or, better still, for the home in the sense of Hausmusik, a concept very close to Tagore's own in India, where the Rabindra Sangeet (literally: Music by Rabindranath, understood as a lyrical-musical corpus) was and is frequently accompanied by a simple harmonium in the context of the home, rather than the concert hall. A sentimental and reasoned approach, suggested by Daniélou's own example, experimented and consolidated over the past five years, constitutes the peculiarity of an editorial project aimed at spreading and facilitating a musical work that has long been avoided and misunderstood by western performers. Attempts at having it performed by famous musicians left both performers and Daniélou himself dissatisfied. Nowadays, western musical circles are more receptive and better prepared than they were a