Remembering Chatur Pandit Pt. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (August 10, 1860 – September 19, 1936) August 10, - A tribute to Great Musicologist, Pt. Vinshnu Narayan Bhatkhande on his Birth Anniversary Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande was born in August 10, 1860, into a Chittapawan Brahmin family in Walkeshwar, Mumbai, Maharashtra. He was educated at Elphinstone College in Mumbai and Deccan College in Pune. He graduated with a degree in Law in 1885 and joined the legal profession in 1887. Bhatkhande played flute as a young boy, but got further drawn into the subtleties of Hindustani music. He learnt sitar from Vallabhdas Gopalgiri and Buwa Damulji. He then became a member of the Parsi Gayan Uttejak Mandali, perhaps the first formal music club to have been established in Mumbai. Here, Bhatkhande learnt hundreds of traditional compositions from Raojibuwa Belbaugkar, Ali Hussein and Vilayat Hussein, all of whom were employed as teachers by the Mandali. Bhatkhande was also exposed to variety of musical styles, as he heard several vocalists and instrumentalists who visited Mumbai from other parts of India. Bhatkhande concomitantly pursued his academic education and became a lawyer. But his insatiable desire to pursue the learning of music and to work towards establishing a standardized system of music education, much along the lines of university education that he had experienced so closely, led him to study several books on Indian and European music. He made trips to various parts of the country, held discussions and exchanged ideas with other scholars and procured old treatises. He realised the disjunct between extant musical practice and the description provided in old treatises, was consequently motivated to codify information concerning prevalent musical practice and disseminate this on a mass scale in a classroom situation. In order to achieve this goal, he began adding more traditional knowledge to the large number of compositions that he had already acquired from the teachers at the Parsi Gayan Uttejak Mandali between 1884 and 1890. Between 1900 and 1907, he learnt several compositions of the Manrang gharana from the brothers Ashiq Ali and Ahmed Ali of Jaipur, and later, from their father Muhammad Ali Khan. He also acquired compositions from Ganpatibuwa Bhilwadikar. After travelling widely and having discussions with practitioners of various schools, Bhatkhande arranged all the ragas ofHindustani classical music across 10 musical scales, called thaats. Though the thaats do not encompass all possible ragas, they do cover the vast majority, and are a key contribution to Indian musical theory. The thaat structure corresponds to themelakarta system of raga arrangement in Carnatic music, the south Indian variety of Indian classical music. Bhatkhande devised a notation system to help document the material that he was acquiring. Experiments in creating systems of notation for Indian music had been carried out earlier in Kolkata and Baroda, but Bhatkhande’s contribution had far-reaching consequences. He began lecturing at the Parsi Gayan Uttejak Mandali and his notation system was put to use in the Mandali classes. In 1909, the Mandali published Swar Malika authored by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, which was a collection of rudimentary melodic structures using the system of notation devised by him. Later, the Mandali also undertook to publish the Gujarati translation of Bhatkhande’s Hindustani Sangit Paddhati. He was keen to procure and republish old treatises on Indian music. Thus, in 1911, with the help of his disciples Vadilal Shivram and Ratansi Leeladhar, he translated and published in Gujarati the old texts Sangeet Ratnakar and Sangeet Darpan. After 1916, Bhatkhande started a music class called the Shri Sharada Sangit Mandal in the premises of Good Life League, a Parsi organisation situated at Nanabhai Lane, Flora Fountain. His disciple, Vadilal Shivram, assisted him in the teaching. In order to achieve his goal of mass-education in music, Bhatkhande laid down a syllabus and prepared a graded system of teaching music theory and practice. His method was executed in music schools situated at Gwalior and Baroda. His system was also implemented at the Morris College of Music, which he had founded in 1926 at Lucknow. Keen to introduce music as part of the academic curriculum at the school and university levels, his efforts bore fruit and music was introduced at the primary level in Mumbai municipal schools. Bhatkhande suffered paralysis and a thigh fracture in 1933. He died on September 19, 1936.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 03:58:16 +0000
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