1.Eliot, T. S. (1971) Fragment of an Agon. The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909–1950 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). First published in Sweeney Agonistes, 1927, 1932, this quotation p. 83.Google Scholar

2.Auden, W. H. (2002) The Public v. the Late Mr. William Butler Yeats. In: E.Mendelson (ed.), The Complete Works of W.H. Auden, Prose: Volume II, 1939–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 3–7. First published in The Partisan Review (Spring 1939). W.H. Auden (2007) In Memory of W. B. Yeats. In: E. Mendelson (ed.), Collected Poems (New York: Modern Library), pp. 245–246.Google Scholar

3.Das Gupta, A. (2012) In Memoriam: Pandit Ravi Shankar (1920–2012). The Telegraph (Calcutta, India), December 18.Google Scholar

4.Clayton, M. (2000) Time in Indian Music: Rhythm, Metre, and Form in North Indian Rag [sic] Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 5. for example, notes how Western responses to Indian music, and its culture-specific handling of time and rhythm, have been bedevilled by one or the other of two clichés about Indians and their culture: ‘the Indian as backward, unsophisticated, and inferior to the European’ and ‘the Indian as spiritual, mystical, and capable of highly sophisticated thought inaccessible to materialistic Western minds’. It will be obvious that – whether consciously or deliberately – Ravi Shankar’s music and career reinforced the first half of the second stereotype.Google Scholar

5.Benjamin, W. (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, Third Version. In H. Eiland and M. W. Jennings (eds), Selected Writings, IV, 1938–1940., trans. H. Zohn and E. Jephcott (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), pp. 251–283. ‘Cult value as such tends today, it would seem, to keep the artwork out of sight […] With the emancipation of specific artistic practices from the service of ritual, the opportunities for exhibiting their products increase’ (p. 257, emphasis in the original).Google Scholar

6.Shankar, R. (1969) My Music, My Life, with an introduction by Yehudi Menuhin (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House. [First published by Kinnara School of Indian Music, Inc., 1968]). This passage, p. 18a. ‘A mode, or scale type, is defined in terms of the relationships between the fundamental, unchanging note – the tonic – and successive notes of the scale. This relationship between the tonic and any other scale note determines whether a note is the interval of a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and so on. And in order for the musician or the listener to understand and hear this relationship, in any composition the tonic must be sounded.’ (p. 18b). In a recent book, J. Powell (2011) How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond (New York: Little, Brown and Co.), confirms more broadly that ‘traditional non-Western music places far less emphasis on chords and harmony’ (p. 116). R. Shankar (1999) Raga Mala – The Autobiography of Ravi Shankar, Edited and Introduced by George Harrison (New York: Welcome Rain. First published 1995).Google Scholar

7.Some musicians do use rudimentary forms of notation, but these are personal and private rather than shared. Ravi Shankar’s teacher, Allaudin Khan, for example, is reported to have devised a notation method of his own in his early days, see van der Meer, W. (1980) Hindustani Music in the Twentieth Century (Amsterdam: Martinus Nijhoff), pp. 144–145.Google Scholar

8.‘In the mid-fifties, I do not think there was anyone in the horizon who was articulate enough to explain the finer points of Indian music, especially to the Westerners. The nuances, the differences, the depth and the spiritual qualities of our music … so I took upon myself the entire responsibility of it. And I am glad that I did because it opened up a whole new world for the West in terms of appreciating our music.’ Roy, A. (2004) Ravi Shankar. In: Music Makers: Living Legends of Indian Classical Music (New Delhi: Rupa and Co.), pp. 214–233. This passage p. 231a.Google Scholar

9.EMI 2-CD set, Shankar: Sitar Concerto and other works, 7243 5 72655 2, 1998, sleeve note, p. 4a.Google Scholar

10.Farrell, G. (1999) Indian Music and the West (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press) offers an explanation for why the sound of the sitar was found compatible by pop musicians: ‘The sitar, albeit remotely, was similar in construction and playing technique to the guitar, and the latter had become the pop instrument par excellence since the mid-1950s. Furthermore, the sound of the sitar mixed that of the acoustic and the electric guitar in one instrument. As Jimmy Page noted, the resonances of the sympathetic strings sounded like electronic feedback, and the strings could also be laterally deflected (a technique known as mind in Indian music) to produce a glissando and heighten the pitch, a ubiquitous technique in blues and rock guitar playing. The sitar easily functioned as another, or substitute, lead guitar with a mysterious, exotic sound. This is the role that it played in the majority of pop records on which it appeared’, p. 179.Google Scholar

11.Shankar, R. and Glass, P. (1990) Passages (Atlantic Records CD booklet, p. 2).Google Scholar

12.Ghosh, M. (ed.) (1960) The Natyasastra, I (Calcutta: The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal), Chapter 6, pp. 157ff.Google Scholar

13.Cf. Langer, S. (1953) Feeling and Form (Macmillan: New York) ‘The tonal structures we call “music” bear a close logical similarity to the forms of human feeling – forms of growth and of attenuation, flowing and stowing, conflict and resolution, speed, arrest, terrific excitement, calm or subtle activation and dreamy lapses – not joy and sorrow perhaps, but the poignancy of either and both... music is a tonal analogue of emotive life’, (pp. 80–81). P. Holroyde (1972) Indian Music: A Vast Ocean of Promise (London: Allen and Unwin) summarizes the concept of rasa into its three constituent elements: (a) sthayi bhava: a permanence in the steady-state where emotions remain in a latent form; (b) vibhava: that state that arouses the appropriate emotions; (c) anubhava: the experience that comes from physical expression and which gives rise to these emotions.Google Scholar

14.Pater, W. ([1877] 2005) The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (New York: Dover) ‘All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it. That the mere matter of a poem, for instance—its subject, its given incidents or situation; that the mere matter of a picture—the actual circumstances of an event, the actual topography of a landscape—should be nothing without the form, the spirit, of the handling; that this form, this mode of handling, should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the matter:—this is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in different degrees’ (p. 90). This is paraphrased by R. E. Jones (2007) Music and the Numinous (Rodopi: Amsterdam) to mean that ‘the ideal condition of art is for the matter to be inseparable from the form, so that the more effectively the material is fused in form the more splendid the work of art’ (p. 95).Google Scholar

15.Mandukya Upanishad (Online edition: http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/mand/Mandukya_Upanishad.pdf. Accessed 12 March 2013.)Google Scholar

16.Yampolsky, P. (Trans.) (1971) The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 164. According to R. Massey and J. Massey (1976) The Music of India (London: Kahn and Averill) in the 11th century Sangeet-makaranda, attributed to Narada, ‘anahata nada’ is referred to as ‘sound produced from the ether’ (p. 92).Google Scholar

17.Bor, J. (ed.) (1999) The Raga Guide: A Survey of 74 Hindustani Ragas (Nimbus Records with Rotterdam Conservatory of Music), p. 1.Google Scholar

18.‘I have heard many of the old greats and they never sang or played for too long. [...] This proves that you need to show the cream of the raga and not get caught in tedious repetitions and meaningless variations like that of a computer […] The real test is when you have been listening to a raga for over an hour … yet you feel it has just been going on for a mere ten minutes and you earnestly want it to continue […] if you can bring tears to the eyes by striking just one magical “sur”, that is so much more, and that is really the core of our music’ (Shankar interview in W. van der Meer (1980) Hindustani Music in the Twentieth Century (Amsterdam: Martinus Nijhoff), p. 229b).Google Scholar

19.Interviewer: ‘Is that the fundamental difference between you and your contemporaries like Vilayat Khan and Nikhil Banerjee? That you took risks with your music? That you explored new frontiers, did more radical experiments, attracted more ire?’ Shankar: ‘The difference between all of them and me is actually a very simple one. It is my double identity. When I play the sitar in the traditional gharana learned at the feet of Baba, I am very orthodox. On the other hand, when I compose original music, I am daring, radical. I use non-Indian instruments. I experiment. People often confuse these two identities of mine. They think because I am experimenting, I am no more pure, I am gone.’ P. Nandy (1999) The Rediff Interview/Pandit Ravi Shankar (Rediff on the Net. Online: http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/mar/23nandy1.htm. Accessed 14 March 2013). I am grateful to my friend and colleague Dr Saranindranath Tagore for numerous discussions on music over the last decade, and for drawing my attention to this and several other references cited here.Google Scholar

20.Nikhil Banerjee (1931–1986) was taught by the same guru as Ravi Shankar, and also learnt with Shankar’s main duet partner, Ali Akbar Khan. His response to musical experiments across cultures was scepticism about musical fusion. Here is part of an interview. Interviewer: ‘Pandit Ravi Shankar has done some interesting experiments with his Sitar Concertos, using symphony orchestras and such.’ NB: ‘No comment, no comment. But I definitely didn’t like that duet with Mr. Yehudi Menuhin, East Meets West. No, I’ve heard Yehudi Menuhin many times; in Western music he’s a different giant, but when he’s playing some Indian music it is just like a child. For a stunt, it’s OK, but I really disagree, I don’t like this idea. You cannot mix up everything! It is not possible.’ I. Landgarten (1986/1991) Nikhil Banerjee Interview, Part 2 (Online: http://www.raga.com/interviews/207int2.html. Accessed 14 March 2013).Google Scholar

21.Neuman, D.M. (1980) The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), p. 30.Google Scholar