C:/ITOOLS/WMS/CUP-NEW/34731312/WORKINGFOLDER/KORNER-OPM/9781108843867C11.3D 214 [214–238] 1.11.2021 7:33AM 11 Italian Impresarios, American Minstrels and Parsi Theatre Sonic Networks and the Negotiation of Opera in Colonial South and South East Asia rashna darius nicholson ‘Music should be taught, if possible, in every school’, the Scottish mission- ary John Murdoch averred in his Hints on Education in India published in 1871. 1 It is on the fact that it is a direct moral and religious agency that music (by which is meant mass and part singing from notation) rests its claim to rank first among the subsidiary subjects of instruction ... But Music is not only in itself a direct moral agency and a medium for direct moral teaching; it is also the best auxiliary to the other moral and religious instruction of the school, because it repeats what has been already conveyed in a dogmatic or illustrative form and it does so with melodious and grateful associations. 2 By ‘repeating what [had] already been conveyed’ through other subjects, such as English literature, theology, geography and science but ‘with melodious and grateful associations’, colonial music education, according to missionaries, government officials and social reformists, ‘consummated and crowned the civilizing mission of the arts’. 3 In the Asian outposts of Empire, the music that was taught and played in missionary schools, theatres, opera houses and the homes of local merchants and European administrators functioned as a tool of power consubstantial with the higher authority of civilisation, Enlightenment ideals of reason and progress and the moral economy of imperialism. Katherine Bergeron describes how music, the practising of scales ‘in tune’ and playing in unison, regulates I would like to thank Axel Körner for his useful comments. All translations from Gujarati are my own. I have followed the ALA-LC transliteration system and have replaced Pha with Fa. 1 John Murdoch, Hints on Education in India; with Special Reference to Vernacular Schools (Madras [Chennai]: Scottish Press, 1871), 111. 2 John Murdoch, Hints on Government Education in India; with Special Reference to School Books (Madras [Chennai]: C. Foster and Company, 1873), 73. 3 John Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, 3 vols. (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1912), vol. 2, 1055. For a description of the civilising mission of the social reformist theatre in India see Rashna Darius Nicholson, The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage: The Making of the Theatre of Empire (1853–1893) (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). 214