Please note: this event has passed
Image by: Bequest of Balthasar Reinhart, Museum Rietberg, Zurich, 2005.83, © Foto Rainer Wolfberger, courtesy Museum Rietberg, Zürich.
The Courtesan and the Memsahib
Khanum Jan was a celebrity musical diva in Lucknow in 1780s North India. Famed for her beautiful singing and dancing, Khanum became famous again in the twentieth century because of her close musical interactions with a remarkable Englishwoman, the wife of a British East India Company Officer, Sophia Plowden.
Through Plowden’s papers and extraordinary collection of Khanum’s repertoire, and using Indian sources from the late eighteenth century, Katherine Schofield has been able to reconstruct songs from the Lucknow court as they may have been performed 230 years ago, in both Indian and European versions.
In this webinar, Katherine tells the story of these two women, and harpsichordist Jane Chapman joins her to perform some of Khanum’s music — the “Hindustani Airs”.
If you are studying GCSE or A-Level Music or History, this webinar will give you a fascinating insight into intercultural relationships in eighteenth-century India. The intertwined stories of two extraordinary musical women, the Courtesan, Khanum Jan, and the Memsahib, Sophia Plowden, give us an inside view of this sadly short-lived moment of intercultural unity in late Mughal India.
Please note – this webinar may also be of interest to current music students.