(fl c1545). Indian musician and poet. The name-form is a sobriquet; his original name is obscure. Amidst the copious legends and traditional hagiography surrounding the name, little is known for certain about Tānsen’s life; more precise details and an accurate chronology may be possible only when the relevant Sanskrit and Persian sources have been properly assessed. Nevertheless, it seems that he was born in Gwalior, perhaps in a village called Behata not far from the city, that he trained there and served as court musician at Reva. He attained great fame and was already advanced in years when he was taken into the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (ruled 1556–1605), who conferred upon him the title Miyām (‘master’); this title figures in the names of some prominent Hindustani rāga attributed to his invention, such as Miyām kī Todī and Miyām Malhār. Abul Fazl, the chronicler of Akbar's reign, recorded some details about Tānsen’s career at court, referring to his unparallelled musical prowess. Tānsen was said to be a disciple of the saint-singer Svāmī Haridās; the religious and devotional element in his training was invoked to account for the fabulous powers his performances were said to possess, and the magical effects of his singing gave rise to a mass of legendary tales. His renown as a performing artist was such that in more recent times numerous singers and instrumentalists have attempted to show either familial or pupillary descent from him. Thus, for instance, the so-called senia gharānā of sitār players, starting around the beginning of the 19th century, claimed historical links with Tānsen, and the performers within this tradition added the designation sen to their names. Some evidence of Tānsen’s poetic gifts may be found in the song texts attributed to him; these texts have survived in dhrupad performance traditions. Tānsen has sometimes been credited with the authorship of three works on music theory, but such attributions are almost certainly false.
See also India, §II.
K.C.D. Brahaspati: ‘Tānsen’, Composers, ed. V. Raghavan (New Delhi, 1979), 75–88
R.A. Krishna: ‘Portraits of Tansen, the Monarch of Music’, Dhrupad Annual, iii (1988), 7–9
F. Delvoye: ‘Tānsen and the Tradition of Dhrupad Songs in the Braj Language, from the 16th Century to the Present Day’, Dhrupad Annual, vii (1992), 2–6
F. Delvoye: ‘The Verbal Content of Dhrupad Songs from the Earliest Collections, III: Dhrupad Songs Attributed to Tānsen in Court-Musicians' Repertoires’, Dhrupad Annual, ix (1994), 1–12
JONATHAN KATZ