The Harmonium in North Indian Music

About the book The harmonium holds ambiguous reputation in India as well as in its “home continent” of Europe. There is an abundance of clear statements made by distinguished Indian musicians, theoreticians and also politics who time and again would decry the instrument. Rabindranath Tagore’s famous description of the harmonium as “that bane of Indian Music” is just one example. And yet, the harmonium is agrubly the instruments the instrument most widely used for accompanying the foremost medium of North Indian classical music, i.e. the human voice. Thus, by all appearances the anxiety about the harmonium’s potentiallt destructive impingement on traditional music is not shared by the majority of the musicians. The book seeks to understand the complex history of the harmonium on North India, analyse the apparent conflict between musical theory and practice and describe how the instrument is used in musical practice. Is the harmonium and instrument suitable for Indian music? Can it live up to the requirement suitable for Indian music? These questions pervade the whole book, at the end of which, they will appear in a whole new light.