Dec 23 2025 to Dec 23 2025 6 p.m.

Where

Museum of Art & Photography (MAP)

Kasturba Road, Bengaluru 560001

Event Description

A Mughal Songbook: Art, Music and Empire, is an upcoming display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It reveals the intricate pages of the illustrated songbook, which is a book that gave rise to a cross-cultural appreciation of Hindustani music. 

Containing seventy-seven songs written in Persian, Urdu, Classical Hindi, and Punjabi, this manuscript offers a window into the visual and performing arts of late Mughal South Asia, illuminating the relationships between singers, dancers, courtesans, poets, and the books and objects they cherished. 

At the core of A Mughal Songbook is the story of Sophia Elizabeth Plowden (1751–1834), and her exquisite book of lyrics and music notation, dated 1787–88. In it, Plowden recorded and illustrated the music she encountered in North Indian courtly gatherings during a period of transition between the Mughal and British Empires. 

The illustrated songbook ultimately gave rise to the colonial phenomenon of ‘Hindustani Airs’ – Hindustani songs adapted and performed by British elites on the harpsichord. This talk will give audiences a sneak peek at this upcoming exhibition and re-enliven the sensory world of Islamic and South Asian art, evoking the sounds, images, and textures emerging from late Mughal culture.

This event is in collaboration with Art, Resources and Teaching Trust.

Dr Vivek Gupta
Dr Vivek Gupta is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at University College London. His work extends across Indian and Islamic art, visual culture, and literature, with key publications in Muqarnas, South Asian Studies and Archives of Asian Art.

His most recently organised Shahzia Sikander: Unbound at Jesus College, Cambridge (2021–2022), and was awarded a residency at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Tashkent. He is currently working on the forthcoming exhibition, A Mughal Songbook: Art, Music and Empire, on view at the Fitzwilliam Museum, 8 September 2026–7 March 2027. His first monograph is Wonders of Hindustan: Artists and books in the early modern world.