रवीन्द्रनाथ ठाकुर

Rabindranath Tagore wrote both the words and the music of some two thousand songs, and then spent decades arranging them — first by occasion, later by mood — into the collection he called Gitabitan. He is the only author this archive has: every lyric here is his, and so is every tune.

He did not, however, write them down. Notation was a slower art than composition, and the poet sang faster than anyone could transcribe; the songs survive in Swarabitan because a succession of relatives, students and colleagues sat with him and set the melodies on paper. The notators listed on these pages are those people.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, largely on the strength of Gitanjali — a book which is itself, in Bengali, a book of songs.