A Kolkatan discovers new songs by Tagore

They were English hymns set to Western classical music, composed for an American Church

The songs being performed at Victoria Memorial Hall on Wednesday.

The Eastern Quadrangle of the Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) on Wednesday witnessed a historic event when three recently discovered English songs by Rabindranath Tagore were performed live for the first time before hundreds of people.

One of the new songs, ‘There are numerous strings in a lute’, was sung by Debasish Raychauduri, a Tagore researcher and artiste. Before performing the songs, Mr. Raychauduri recounted to the audience how he came across these songs.

The researcher was working on a project exploring the links between Unitary Associations in America and the Brahmo Samaj, the Hindu reform movement founded in the early 19th century, when he stumbled upon the songs a couple of years ago.

When some members of the Unitarian Universalist Association told him that Tagore had written the songs as hymns for the Association, he decided to visit their church and examine their hymn book. He travelled to Pittsburgh, where the Association had one of its oldest churches, set up in 1905.

“Going through the pages, I was struck by the phrases and words used by Tagore. The hymn book was titled ‘Singing the Living Tradition’ and had been published by the Unitarian Universalist Association from Boston, where we found two more songs written by Tagore,” Mr. Raychaudhuri said. The later two songs were published as prose poems in 1918.

Working with musicians

When he returned to India, he was surprised to find that the tunes were set to western classical music. He was convinced that the tune to the song ‘There are numerous strings in a lute’ was composed by the poet himself. But he believed that the poet may have collaborated with western musicians for the tunes of the other two English songs, “Now I recall my childhood” and ‘Your mercy O Eternal’.

These were probably composed in the winter and spring of 1912 and 1913 during his stay in America. Mr. Raychauduri said that the poet was close to the Unitarian Universalist Association and it was likely that he composed these for them. “The themes are unmistakably Tagore’s. They reflect his philosophy during the Gitanjali phase,” he said. The discovery has caused great excitement not just among Kolkata-based Tagore scholars and exponents of Rabindra sangeet but also among the general population. “It’s a great find,” said Pramita Mallick, noted exponent of Rabindra sangeet.