Excerpts from Tagore’s Letters & Diaries.
To Dilip Kumar Roy, a renowned musician of Tagore’s time:
6 February 1938

I have changed my opinion umpteen times. If the Creator also had not done so, to-day’s musical soirées would be classic dinosaur’s roar with samba of the tusked mammoths which would be so frightening that even the votaries of muscular rendition of dance/music would retreat from its venue. If my flair to change my opinion remains unimpaired till my last day, I’ll know that I still have hope to survive, else, my funeral should be arranged at the marble landing of the Ganges where, in our country, is the maximum crowd.

Translator’s note:

It may be claimed, Tagoreana comprises earth’s most sophisticated music and dance, wording the ineffable, which had a spell on the Bengali culture for decades and rightly accepted at least by a large number of them as the ultimate of aesthetics. Now, the apprehension goes that this has only been a passing phase for Bengali culture, which is being fast overtaken by the earlier crudity along with the upstart mod culture from the West. The music and dance which now-a-days dominate the Bengali stage are no less frightening than that apprehended by Tagore.

Originally published in the Bulletin (May 2010) of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture.
Translation by the author.

References and Source
The January-June 2003 issue of “Shrayan” a compilation from Tagore’s letters and diaries. by the editor of the magazine Mr. Pathik Basu.