Tagore’s Musical Legacy

Anindita Mazumder

The last few years have witnessed a surge of creativity and quite a few singer-composers, including some celebrated ones, who have tweaked the tune and orchestration of Tagore’s original compositions. Let us walk back in time to see how Tagore reacted to such deviations in the past.

Earlier majority of the celebrated singers preferred to treat Tagore’s compositions merely as lyrics and sung these in accordance to classical ragas. However, the poet regarded his compositions as complete and mortified by such blatant “steamrolling” he took legal recourse. On October 5, 1926, an agreement was signed between him and the Gramaphone Company with clauses saying: “The Company shall pay to the composer (Tagore) or his nominee a royalty of eight annas for each double sided record of any of the composer’s songs or recitations manufactured or to be manufactured by the company provided always that the company shall at all times be at a liberty to determine the selling price for all records the subject of this agreement.” It was also decided that henceforth Tagore would first listen and approve every record and many distortedly rendered discs were destroyed. Prafulla Chandra Mahalanobis had to get Tagore’s approval for the records and related this interesting anecdote.

Pankaj Mullick had composed the music for a Tagore’s poem, Diner seshe ghumer deshe for a film, Mukti. He turned a bit nervous while singing it before the poet for his approval. At some point his voice simply deviated from the accompanying sarangi. While leaving the sarangi player mildly chastised him, saying, “Pankajbabu, yeh apne kya kiya (What did you do?); to which Mullick replied in broken Hindi: “Are bapu tumi kya bujhega, kiska gane me sur bosana. Aar gaite para, ei jathestha hai (You cannot appreciate to whose words I have composed music. And singing? Whatever I could manage is enough.)”. The poet, however, appreciated his music.

After Tagore’s death Rathindranath formed Visva Bharati Music Board and a new agreement was signed in 1945 paving the way for using the crest of Visva Bharati on the label design and the royalty was fixed at five per cent of price per double-sided record. The sixty-years-long copyright finally expired in 2002.