The Scattered Court

More about the book

According to political histories and popular memory, he was a failure of a king, who was forced to surrender his kingdom to the East India Company, on the eve of the Indian Uprising of 1857. On the other hand, in musical histories, he is remembered either as a decadent aesthete or a path-breaking genius. The Scattered Court excavates the place of music in his court in Lucknow and his court-in-exile at Matiyaburj, Calcutta (1856-1887). The book charts the movement of musicians and dancers between these courts, as well as the transregional circulation of intellectual traditions and musical genres, and demonstrates the importance of the exile period for the rise of Calcutta as a celebrated center of Hindustani classical music. .