ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the nature of the cross-cultural encounter of which the Hindostannie air is the trace, and its relationship to the 'common practice style' (CPS) of European music at the turn of the nineteenth century. Richard Leppert’s chronology would place the Hindostannie Air precisely on the cusp: a manuscript annotation to the Sophia Plowden book states that the songs were collected in 1786, though Ian Woodfield dates it on the basis of Plowden’s diaries to 1787–88. The obvious starting point for such a study would seem to be a correlation of the stylistic features of the Hindostannie air with those of its Indian source. Published in London and interpreted by people with no first-hand experience of the original, Hindostannie airs could only be read for what they literally were. The history of the Hindostannie air back in Britain is accordingly one of reassertion of the CPS, less and less deformed by the empirical impact of the other.
