In his book of memoirs Rabindranath speaks of a paper on music which he read on the eve of his departure for England (he was then only seventeen years old), and his comments on it are illuminating:
"I tried to explain," he says, "that the real purpose of vocal music was by means of the time to interpret and explain the words.… The written part of my paper was small; and almost from beginning to end I tried to maintain the agreement by singing the tunes that express different feelings. Well was I repaid when the chairman, old Reverend Krishna Mohan Bandhopadhyaya, said to me 'Hail, Valmiki nightingale!' This was, I think, because I was still very young, and his heart was melted by hearing all those songs sung in a childish treble. But the ideas I then expressed with so much pride I should now recognise to be false."
He goes on to speak of his first impressions of our music and of the singers he heard during that first visit to Europe:
In our country the first thought is of devotion to the song; in Europe the first object is the voice, and with the voice they perform miracles.
But the singing left him quite untouched:
Later, I managed to acquire some taste for European music, but I still feel the difference. European music is, so to speak, mixed with the actualities of life;…
