Ludwig Pesch

Ludwig Pesch (1955) is a German-born musicologist, educator and musician. As pupil of flautist Ramachandra Shastry (1906-1992), musical heir to the great traditions of Tyagaraja and Sarabha Sastrigal, he became a scholar under the Indo-German Cultural Exchange Programme and the German Academic Exchange Service. He completed his Diploma Course in Carnatic Music (First Class) at Kalakshetra and performed alongside his guru for several years. At the same time he co-founded Sampradaya, a music documentation centre and archive in Chennai. He also initiated an architectural research project on Indian chamber theatres in conjunction with several Indian organizations which resulted in Sittrarangam, the Small Theatre Madras. (See “Small theatre” on www.natyasala.mimemo.net for more information.)

Since his training at Kalakshetra in Chennai he is based in Amsterdam. Thanks to the guidance of several authorities on Carnatic music, he was able to author “The Oxford Illustrated Companion to South Indian Classical Music”. Most prominent among his guides were Vidya Shankar and S Rajam (both 1919-2010) for questions pertaining to the application of theory to performance and teaching; and TR Sundaresan (1963) for the intricacies of laya in relation to tala theory.

In 2000 he was presented with the Cross of the Order of Merit conferred  by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany “for his outstanding contribution to cultural relations with India”. An active participant in Europe’s dialogue with India, he received the Rabindranath Tagore Cultural Award (Kulturpreis) of the Indo-German Society (DIG) “in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the spread of knowledge about India’s spirit and life”.

He continues developing carnaticstudent.org from an e-learning programme commissioned by the distance education department of Lueneburg University in Germany in 2001.

Since 2002 he has been a visiting lecturer at the departments of indology and music at Wuerzburg University in Germany. He has collaborated with performers and academics affiliated with other European universities. These joint efforts resulted in an ongoing exploration of the intrinsic qualities of Carnatic music; and this in a manner that lends itself to teacher training programmes (www.aiume.org). On these lines he has authored many articles, lectures and workshops such as those hosted during the world conferences of the International Society for Music Education (ISME).