Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (English: Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande; born- 10 August, 1860, Mumbai; died- 19 September, 1936) was a scholar of ‘Hindustani classical music’ in India. His name is taken with great respect as the greatest modern Acharya of classical music. Bhatkhande, a completely selfless and dedicated music seeker, made the first modern attempt to organize, classify and standardize Hindustani classical music through a scientific method. He did the important work of traveling across the country to collect bandishes from the maestros, discussing with them on various ragas and determining their standard forms and writing many scholarly books unveiling the mysteries of musicology.
Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande was born in a Chitpavan Brahmin family on 10 August 1860 at a place called Balkeshwar in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). He received his BA degree from ‘Elphinstone College’, Mumbai in 1883. After this, he passed the LLB examination in the year 1890. Later, he also served as a lawyer in the High Court of Karachi for a brief period.
Bhatkhande was passionate about music from the very beginning. His musical journey began in 1904, in which he toured hundreds of places in India and searched for literature related to music. He listened to the music of great singers and prepared their notation and published a series of books named ‘Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati Kramik Pustak-Malika’, which has six parts. For classical knowledge, Vishnunarayan Bhatkhande wrote four parts of Hindustani Sangeet Paddhati, which was published in English as ‘Bhatkhande Sangeet Shastra’, in Marathi language. He also wrote books named ‘Lakshya-Sangeet’ and ‘Abhinav Raag-Manjari’ in Sanskrit language and shed light on the characteristics of ancient music and the misconceptions prevalent in it. Vishnunarayan Bhatkhande accepted the Thaat-Paddhati, considering his pure Thaat as ‘Bilaval’ and classified many ragas in ten Thaats.[1]
In the year 1916, Bhatkhande organized a huge music conference in Baroda, which was inaugurated by Maharaja Baroda. In this, music scholars seriously discussed many facts of music. In this event, the proposal to establish an ‘All India Music Academy’ was also accepted. The important speeches related to music given by Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande ji in this music conference have been published in English as a book named ‘A Short Historical Survey of the Music of Upper India’.
Due to the efforts of Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, music conferences were held at many other places and music schools were established. Among these, ‘Maris Music College’ of Lucknow, which is now known as ‘Bhatkhande Music Vidyapeeth’, ‘Madhav Sangeet Mahavidyalaya’ of Gwalior and ‘Music College’ of Baroda are especially noteworthy.[1]
Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande devoted most of his time to music. He rendered great service to music through his tireless efforts and illuminated Indian music with a new light and passed away on 19 September 1936.