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Bishnupur

Musical Heritage

Unique Musical Gharana

During the reign of King Raghunath Singha II(1 702-12), the pure dhrupad style of music was taught and cultivated at Bishnupur.

Bishnupur gharana

History

Bishnupur gharana was introduced during his time. Ramshyankar Bhattacharya was the one who started this style of music. He had many disciples. Some of the noteworthy people among those were Jadu Bhatta, Anantalal Bandyopadhyay, Kshertramohan Goswami. Gopeswar Bandyopadhyay, Surendranath Bandyopadhyay, Radhikaprasad Goswami, Jnanendraprasad Goswami,Satyakinkar Bandyopadhyay, Rameschandra Bandyopadhyay, Asheshchandra Bandyopadhyay Durgaprasad Goswami, Gokulchandra Nag, Nityananda Goswami, Bindhyabasini Devi, Subodh Nandi, Gourhari Kaviraj, Bhaskar Bhusan Nandi, AhidasChakraborty, Dr. Debabrata Singa Thakur enriched Bishnupur Gharana not only in Bengal and in India but also in Europe.

It is noted that the first residential music school of Bengal was established at Bishnupur in 1885 A.D. by the patronage of Maharaja Ramkrishna Singha Deb(1876-89) and Anantalal Bandyopadhyay, who was the first rector of this school. This was the first music school in Bengal and the second music school in the entire India. Ramprasanna Bandyopadhyay, Gopeswar Bandyopadhyay and Surendranath Bandyopadhyay established a music college at Bishnupur in 1945 with the help of the people of Bishnupur and Ramsaran Mukhopadhyay of Bishnupur donated rupees forty thousand for the construction of the building of this college. So it was named as Ramsaran College of music. Gopeswar Bandyopadhyay was the first principal of this college(1945-1963) and after his death his younger brother Surendranath Bandyopadhyay was the second principal of this college(1973-1978).

Bishnupur Gharana has a very simple, pure and artistic style which uses many ornaments(alankar) such as gamak, laykari, upej etc. All of the songs are written in four tuk or stanza. The sentiment (rasa) is very serene. There are also Santa, Veer, Karun, Sringer and Vatsalya rasa in these dhrupad songs.

Rabindranath Tagore loved and admired Bishnupur gharana. He learnt dhrupad music from Jadu Bhatta. He also composed lots of Rabindra Sangeet following the raga-raginis and tala system of Bishnupur gharana.