Remembering Rabindranath Tagore Volume - High Commission of ...

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Remembering Rabindranath Tagore
In the third and last phase 1921-1941 Tagore was the most productive, composing around
850 of the total number of 2232 songs that he was credited with. 13 In many ways these
songs can be called typical Rabindrasangeet. By now he had developed his own style drawing
on multiple inspirations and adapting them to become essentially his own. Raga based
music still moved him intensely but he was able to make spontaneous adaptations from
them.
In 1912 Tagore had travelled to England with Gitanjali, a collection of his English translations
of an assortment of his poems. The translations were not done with any seriousness but
undertaken largely as he was recovering from an illness. However they came to receive
unprecedented popularity in Europe winning him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.
Yet the original music component of these poems which were primarily songs, remained by
and large unknown. As Zenobia Jiminez, the Spanish translator of Tagore’s Gitanjali wrote:
“We all wish that we could have some idea of the music of your songs but as there seems to
be no possibility of hearing it and the poems are so full of music in themselves, the young
composers we know have all their own favourite songs inspired by your poems.” 14
The eminent writer, Buddhadeva Bose had pronounced confidently, “Tagore is definitely
the world’s greatest lyric genius.” 15 In other areas of his literary excellence he might have
had rivals but in song composition he felt, Tagore had sustained over sixty five years, a lyric
fervor, the sophistication of which was only to enhance with age. Tagore’s music was not
merely another dimension of a multifaceted creative artist. It represented the very essence
of his artistic being. Tagore declared that music being the most abstract of all the arts,
just as mathematics was in the region of science, musical expression was the purest and
most unimpeded form of creative expression. 16 And it is in his songs that the evolution
of the poet from what he called a state of being into one of becoming is best captured. 17
The sheer genius of Tagore in composing music for the thousands of songs that he wrote
himself was rare also by western musical standards. Such compositions of verse and music
by one artist in the genre of the European ‘lieder’ music can be credited to only a handful
of composers. According to Satyajjit Ray, the famous film maker, Tagore’s songs, although
quintessentially Bengali, were very original. They represented his personality, which grew
out of his entire upbringing. Ray wrote: “As a Bengali I know that as a composer of songs,
Tagore has no equal, not even in the West, and I know Schubert and Hugo Wolf.” 18
There was almost a mystic realisation in Tagore that he was composing songs at the behest
of a superior will force for serving a larger purpose. When he was seized of this musical
energy words and lyrics poured forth unbidden and he remained surprised at what he had
himself composed. The unique quality of Rabindrasangeet is its evocative flavour. So steeped
in Rabindrasangeet is Bengali consciousness even today that, informal gatherings of Bengalis
- in India, Bangladesh and in the scattered Bengali diaspora abroad - almost invariably
veer towards celebrating Tagore through his songs. When the skies darken with the first
monsoon clouds or the first spring blossoms appear on fresh green branches, songs from