(b Calcutta, 1840; d Calcutta, 5 June 1914). Indian musicologist, educationist and patron of Indian music. He was a descendant of one of the wealthiest and most influential families of 19th-century Calcutta; his grandfather, father and elder brother were all renowned for their patronage of the arts. (Rabindranath Tagore belonged to another branch of the family.) He was educated at Hindu College, Calcutta, the leading centre for British-style education, which had been founded by his grandfather, Gopi Mohun Tagore. Subsequently he made an intensive study of Indian music with K.M. Goswami and L.P. Misra, specializing in the sitār (1856–8). In order to prepare himself for studies in comparative musicology, he engaged two Europeans (names unknown) as his instructors in Western music.
Tagore sponsored or co-authored the production of some of the first general music treatises in Bengali (Goswami’s Sangīta sāra, ‘The Essence of Music’, 1868) and music instruction books (Yantra kshetra dīpīka, 1872). Such vernacular publications, produced and promoted by the Calcutta élite, were an important part of the renaissance in Bengali culture which took place in the 19th century. Tagore founded several schools of music in Calcutta beginning in 1871, and supplied music teachers and books to these and other public and private schools at his own cost. His publications ranged from music treatises in Sanskrit and Bengali to explanations of Indian music for a colonial audience. These publications were aimed at British and European orientalists both in India and in Europe as well as the Bengali intelligentsia centred in Calcutta.
Tagore was also instrumental in promoting interest in Hindustani music among the middle-class educated élite of 19th-century Calcutta. He endeavoured to promote Indian music in the West as a symbol of India’s classical heritage, comparable to European art music in artistic and academic value. As part of his efforts to disseminate Indian music, he maintained extensive correspondence with learned societies, museums, scholars and monarchs in Europe and the United States. He is known to have influenced the work of the pioneering Belgian organologist V.-C. Mahillon and he donated collections of instruments to museums throughout the West, manufactured in accordance with his theories in the Yantra kosha (1875). There remains controversy as to whether these instruments reflect historical or contemporary practice. One of his most useful works, Hindu Music from Various Authors (1875), is a compilation of English writings on Indian music. It has kept scarce items, including writings by Sir William Jones and Augustus Willard, available to scholars. Although he never left India, Tagore’s work was internationally recognized and he received an honorary doctorate from Oxford in 1896.
Jātīya sangīta visāyaka prastāva [A proposal concerning national music] (Calcutta, 1870)
with K.P. Banerjea: Yantra kshetra dīpīka, or a Treatise on the Setar (Calcutta, 1872, 3/1890) [in Bengali]
Aektana, or the Indian Concert, containing Elementary Rules for the Hindu Musical Notation (Calcutta, 1875)
ed.: Hindu Music from Various Authors (Calcutta, 1875, enlarged 2/1882/R) [incl. ‘Hindu Music’, 339–87]
Sangīta-sāra-sangraha [Theory of Sanskrit music] (Calcutta, 1875)
Yantra kosha, or a Treasury of the Musical Instruments of Ancient and of Modern India, and of Various Other Countries (Calcutta, 1875/R) [in Bengali, with Eng. notes]
Six Principal Rāgas, with a Brief View of Hindu Music (Calcutta, 1876/R)
Short Notices of Hindu Musical Instruments (Calcutta, 1877)
Gīta praveśa: or Hindu Vocal Music in Bengali (Calcutta, 1883)
The Twenty-Two Musical Srutis of the Hindus (Calcutta, 1886/R, 2/1887)
List of Titles, Distinctions and Works of Raja Sir Sourindro Mohun Tagore (Calcutta, 1895)
A Short Account of Raja Sir Sourindro Mohun Tagore with a List of Titles, Distinction and Works (Calcutta, 1899)
Universal History of Music: Compiled from Diverse Sources, Together with Various Original Notes on Hindu Music (Calcutta, 1896/R)
C.B. Clarke: ‘Bengali Music’, Calcutta Review, lviii (1874), 243–65
F. Chrysander: ‘Dr. Tagore’s Streitschrift gegen C.B. Clarke’, AMz, new ser., xiv (1879), 561–5, 577–83, 657–60, 689–94, 705–12, 721–4
F. Chrysander: ‘Verzeichnis der Werke und Publikationen von Dr. S.M. Tagore’, ibid., 537–40
J.W. Furrell: The Tagore Family (Calcutta, 1892)
C. Capwell: ‘Musical Life in Nineteenth-Century Calcutta as a Component in the History of a Secondary Urban Center’, AsM, xviii/1 (1986) 139–63
C. Capwell: ‘Sourindro Mohun Tagore and the National Anthem Project’, EthM, xxxi (1987) 407–30
J. Bor: ‘The Rise of Ethnomusicology: Sources on Indian Music c.1780–1890’, YIFMC, xx (1988), 51–73
N.A. Jairazbhoy: ‘The beginnings of Organology and Ethnomusicology in the West: V. Mahillon, A. Ellis, and S.M. Tagore’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, viii (1990), 67–80
C. Capwell: ‘Marginality and Musicology in Nineteenth-Century Calcutta: the Case of Sourindro Mohun Tagore’, Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology, ed. B. Nettl and P. Bohlman (Chicago, 1991) 228–43
G. Farrell: Indian Music and the West (Oxford, 1997)
DAVID TRASOFF