The story of Musee Musical’s trajectory in Chennai summons a vast canvas, traverses centuries and cultures, and features a Portuguese piano tuner, an English pianist, a French businessman and an Indian accountant.
In a quiet cul de sac off the maddeningly busy Anna Salai stands Musee Musical, founded in 1842, which has represented Trinity College, London, since 1901, and serviced and sold musical instruments with inherent passports to cross genres. Its signage has read ‘music saloons, pianos and organs’ since the days it was Misquith & Co, named for a Portuguese piano technician who established the Madras store near what is today Anna Square. It travelled further down the road to near Agurchand Mansion, and finally rooted itself near Cosmopolitan Club. The store is now housed in a red-tiled building with green awnings and an entrance that once let elephants stand tall, being as it was part of the elephant stables of the Parthasarathy temple. Beyond the double doors that open into it hang sepia photographs of the founders and legends who have lent it credence.
Brothers Kishore and Sachin Das, whose family now manages Musee Musical, tell the story of how a Gujarati family from Baroda that had made Madras its home 300 years ago became interlinked with a name to reckon with in the field of Western music education in South India. “Misquith ran a successful business across the subcontinent and Southeast Asia — branches were founded in Lahore, the Nilgiris, Bangalore, Rangoon and Penang,” says Sachin, an architect, as we walk around the tree-shaded property. “He sold his business in Madras due to ill-health and Edgar Raphael Prudhomme, a rich merchant, bought it and had it run by his friend Amy de Rozario, a pianist and music teacher. My grandfather Giridhar Das was the financial director. De Rozario moved it into this property in the 1930s, and it has been here since. When she died post-Independence, my grandfather bought the business.”
Trial by fire
The buildings, once part of the Dinroze Estate, also housed one of Chennai’s first Chinese restaurants, Chungking. The open ground that sits a baton’s throw across the store, was a parking lot but now has a building that serves as a living room for the classical music world — an auditorium, a recording studio and soundproof classrooms, where generations of students have practised, been examined and gone on to find fame. Kishore, CEO of Musee Musical, recites the names like a litany. “Ilaiyaraaja, Rahman, Anirudh, L Subramaniam and L Shankar and so many more have come here for classes or Trinity College exams. Their first successes have been here, which was why we decided to renovate the store after the fire of 2012 and not raise a new one. This building is enshrined with the values that have driven our business, and still draws students from across communities — we have police and income tax officers and homemakers who come here for music classes.”
Even in an age of digital retail, the store has shelves that bulge with the music scores of Bach and Mozart, and Strauss and Chopin, bought by customers who have walked its worn flagstone floors and sought counsel from salespeople. Musee Musical holds exams in music, rock, pop, drama, communication skills and English language and stocks over 100 national and international brands of instruments in glass-fronted crockery cupboards from the Misquith era.
“We are a pick-to-piano store, stocking Steinway, Boston and Yamaha pianos. We supply military bands and have serviced some rare instruments, including an 1823-vintage piano at the Air Force Club, New Delhi, a Steinbeck played by MS Subbulakshmi and a piano played by Tagore,” says Kishore, a classical guitarist himself.
New beginnings
But, before the open general licence of the early 1990s opened up the markets and allowed imports of musical instruments, Musee Musical went into a free fall and was paying nearly 330% tax as pianos came under the luxury category. It forced the brand to try a hand at manufacturing.
“When the British left, almost 60,000 pianos were taken back and no import was allowed in the 1960s. So, we ran the show with whatever was left till the 1990s,” says Kishore. “My father Haricharan, a lawyer and pianist, had it tough. He established a factory upstairs that made pedal organs for churches, but, in the long run, we didn’t have the infrastructure for manufacture or the technical knowledge.”
Policy change and a growing interest in music has placed Musee Musical at the helm of the Western music business in South India. “We want people to approach music as more than a hobby,” says Sachin. “We are looking at establishing a foundation to support students for higher learning and research in music and instrument. Classes and sales are our bread and butter but liasioning with international conservatories and training people for a career in music is our social responsibility.”
For this store, interwoven with much of the music that Chennai makes, that dream seems as solid as its 175 years of history.
- As part of the celebrations, Musee Musical has invited the Kharkov Philharmonic Orchestra to perform in December 2017. Over 70 musicians will play alongside the Lakshminarayana Global Music ensemble headed by Dr L Subramaniam.
- The store organises a ‘Meet the Musicians’ programme every two months, aimed at facilitating an interaction with well-known musicians. The first session featured Vikku Vinayakram.
- The store also has a 100-year-old three-string double bass, a centre table used at a banquet when Queen Elizabeth II visited Madras and a yellowing global directory of musical and piano salons across the British Empire.
- ER Prudhomme donated his house Fontenoy and the adjoining grounds in Kilpauk to charity. The house is now part of Mercy Home, a place for the aged, and on the grounds stands a church—Votive Shrine, raised as a ‘thanksgiving by the people of Madras for sparing the city the horrors of the Second World War’.
