German musicologist among Padma Shri winners: Who is Lars-Christian Koch?
Koch’s decades of scholarly engagement helped distinguish Indian music as a significant field of study in global ethnomusicology, which is the study of music and its interplay with broader culture.
Among the winners of the 2026 Padma Awards, India’s highest civilian awards, was German ethnomusicologist Dr Lars-Christian Koch, 66.
Koch was honoured with the Padma Shri for his deep engagement with Indian classical music over the decades. His writings have interpreted Indian music and instruments for the West, and improved their understanding within India, as well.
His decades of scholarly engagement helped distinguish Indian music as a significant field of study in global ethnomusicology, which is the study of music and its interplay with broader culture.
Koch’s storied career
Koch was born in 1959 in Peine, a quaint town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and completed his studies in ethnology, followed by a PhD in musicology in Bonn and later combining the two disciplines.
He has served as Head of Media, Ethnomusicology, and Visual Anthropology as well as the Berlin Phonogram Archive at the Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. In 2018, he became the director of both the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum of Asian Art, and integrated the two into the Humboldt Forum, which is housed at the Berlin Palace — once home to Prussian kings and German emperors.
The museum remains controversial due to its colonial-era acquisitions, including a bronze Natraja, among others, during European expansions. For his part, Koch has written on Buddhist music and done field work in India and South Korea with a focus on historical recordings and music archaeology.
Currently, Koch is also the director of the State Ethnographic Collections of the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) in Germany. He also serves as Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Cologne and as Honorary Professor at the University of the Arts, Berlin, besides holding guest professorships at the University of Vienna and the University of Chicago.
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Koch’s India connection
One of his most significant contributions is his 1994 PhD dissertation, which highlighted the rasa doctrine of contemporary North Indian classical music and compared it to the ‘Doctrine of affections’ widely used in the Baroque era in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe.
Koch detailed the classic Indian cultural text Natyashatra (written by Bharat Muni) and its understanding of aesthetic flavour and emotions as understood by an engaged audience through performing arts, with the navarasas (the nine key emotional states) at its heart. He compared it with the theory given by French scholar-critics at the Court of Versailles in France, who spoke of six basic affectations (admiration, love, hatred, desire, joy and sorrow) which, when used properly by a composer, can produce an involuntary response.
In doing so, Koch did not translate Indian cultural works indiscriminately in Western theoretical terms, but analysed them through a structured aesthetic system located in the Indian vocabulary.
Through his repeated visits to India, specifically West Bengal, Koch also focused on Rabindra Sangeet, or the songs written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore. His book My Heart Sings: The Songs of Rabindranath Tagore Between Tradition and Modernity examined Tagore’s music as not just a cultural anchor through its classical and regional traditions, but also looked at its modern ideas. His ethnomusicological perspective helped Tagore be better understood by both Indian and Western audiences.
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Another book by him (Sitar and Surbahar Manufacturing: The Tradition of Kanailal & Brother, published by the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin in 2011) tells the story of the instrument manufacturing tradition at the iconic shops in Kolkata’s Upper Chitpur Road in Burrabazar that began in 1930.
With photographs and in-depth details of the technicalities adopted by Kanai Lal, besides interviews about the manufacturing process, the book is significant in highlighting illustrious musicians such as Enayet Khan, Waheed Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar and Ustad Vilayat Khan who were particular about playing instruments created by the instrument makers in this shop.
Kanailal & Brother shut down in 1995 due to a lack of successors who could continue the craft. In telling their story and focusing on a single family of luthiers, Koch highlighted the significance of traditional instrument makers in India.
Suanshu Khurana is an award-winning journalist and music critic currently serving as a Senior Assistant Editor at The Indian Express. She is best known for her nuanced writing on Indian culture, with a specific focus on classical music, cinema, and the arts.
Expertise & Focus Areas Khurana specializes in the intersection of culture and society. Her beat involves deep-dive reporting on:
Indian Classical Music: She is regarded as a definitive voice in documenting the lineages (Gharanas) and evolution of Hindustani classical music.
Cinema & Theatre: Her critiques extend beyond reviews to analyze the socio-political narratives within Indian cinema and theater.
Cultural Heritage: She frequently profiles legendary artists and unearths stories about India’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
Professional Experience At The Indian Express, Khurana is responsible for curating and writing features for the Arts and Culture pages. Her work is characterized by long-form journalism that offers intimate portraits of artists and rigorous analysis of cultural trends. She has been instrumental in bringing the stories of both stalwarts and upcoming artistes to the forefront of mainstream media.
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