Arab Music: A Survey of Its History and Its Modern Practice 1789699320, 9781789699326, 9781789699333

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents Page
Part 1
Historical background
Introduction
The legacy of past centuries
Egypt and Mesopotamia
From the third century BCE to the seventh century CE.
Arab music before the arrival of the Islam.
The Bedouins
Mecca and Medina
Musical instruments
The early Islamic period and the Umayyad Caliphate (600 - 750)
The muḳannaṯ
Damascus
The Golden Age of the Abbasids (eighth and ninth centuries)
Music at the court of Harun ar-Rasid
The emergence of Andalusia
Music theory
The beginning of the Andalusian music tradition: Ziryāb
The tenth to the thirteenth century
Music theory in the Mashriq
Al-Fārābī
Al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad
Ibn Sīnā
Developments since the tenth century in the Maghreb
From circa 1250 to 1600
Musical life
Music Theory
The basic tone range
The basic scales jins and šadd
Transposition of modes
Rhythm
Forms of compositions
The organization of the modes and cosmology
Musical instruments
From the late fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century
From 1850 to the end of the twentieth century
The period of the Arab renaissance, the nahḍa
The twentieth century
The lyric theatre
The music film and Muḥammad ʿAbdū-l-Wahhāb
The radio and Umm Kulthūm
The turāṯ or musical heritage
The seventies, a change of generations
Part 2
Part 2
The Modern Time
Introduction
The tone system
Temperament
The jins
The maqām
The number of maqāmāt
The tonal structure of a maqām
The main maqāmāt
— Rāst
— Bayātī
— Sīkā
— Huzām
— Sabā
— Nahāwand
— Nawā aṯar
— ʿAjām
— Ḥijāz
Modulations
Meter and rhythm
Simple binary awzān
Simple ternary awzān
Some compound awzān
aqsāq ṯaqīl:
aqsāq:
dawr hindī:
nawaḳt:
dawr kabīr turkī:
samāʿī ṯaqīl:
ʿawīs:
The classical urban music
The tradition of Iraq: al-maqām al-ʿirāqī
The classical tradition of Syria and Egypt, the waṣla
The instrumental forms of the Syrian and Egyptian tradition
The taqsīm
The bašraf
The samāʿī
The lūnga
The dūlāb
The taḥmīla
The vocal forms of the Syrian and Egyptian tradition
The mawwāl
The dawr
The layālī
The uġniya
The muwaššaḥ
Classical traditions in North Africa: the nawba
The Moroccan nawba tadition
The Algerian nawba tradition
The Tunisian nawba tradition
Popular music
Firqa songs
The Egyptian šaʿbī
The Egyptian gīl
The Algerian raï
The Moroccan šaʿbī (chaâbi)
The Arab hiphop
Folk Music
The Middle East
The Bedouins
The sedentary population
Non-metrical songs of the sedentary population.
Metrical songs of the sedentary population
The music of the inhabitants of the eastern and southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula
The Maghreb
Vocal Music
Instrumental music
Bibliography
Discography
List of recorded music
Websites
Index

Citation preview

Arab Music A survey of its history and its modern practice

Leo Plenckers

Arab Music A survey of its history and its modern practice

Leo Plenckers

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Summertown Pavilion 18-24 Middle Way Summertown Oxford OX2 7LG www.archaeopress.com ISBN 978-1-78969-932-6 ISBN 978-1-78969-933-3 (e-Pdf) © Leo Plenckers and Archaeopress 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com

Contents Sources of illustrations������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� iv Foreword������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� v Recorded Music������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� vi Transliteration of the Arabic letters��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� vii Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������1 Part I: Historical background�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������5 Introduction���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������5 The legacy of past centuries������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������6 Egypt and Mesopotamia�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������6 From the third century BCE to the seventh century CE.�������������������������������������������������������������9 Arab music before the arrival of the Islam.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������11 The Bedouins �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������11 Mecca and Medina���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������12 Musical instruments�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������12 The early Islamic period and the Umayyad Caliphate (600 - 750)�������������������������������������������������14 The muḳannaṯ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17 Damascus������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������18 The Golden Age of the Abbasids (eighth and ninth centuries)������������������������������������������������������19 Music at the court of Harun ar-Rasid�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������20 The emergence of Andalusia���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������23 The beginning of the Andalusian music tradition: Ziryāb��������������������������������������������������������24 Music theory�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������24 The tenth to the thirteenth century��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������28 Music theory in the Mashriq���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������28 Al-Fārābī�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������28 Al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33 Ibn Sīnā���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33 Developments since the tenth century in the Maghreb�����������������������������������������������������������34 From circa 1250 to 1600������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37 Musical life����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������39 Music Theory������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������43 The basic tone range�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������44 The basic scales jins and šadd�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������46 Transposition of modes������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������49 Rhythm����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������50 Forms of compositions��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������51 The organization of the modes and cosmology��������������������������������������������������������������������������55 Musical instruments�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������58 From the late fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century������������������������������������������������������������������59 From 1850 to the end of the twentieth century��������������������������������������������������������������������������������71 The period of the Arab renaissance, the nahḍa��������������������������������������������������������������������������73 i

The twentieth century��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������76 The lyric theatre������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������76 The music film and Muḥammad ʿAbdū-l-Wahhāb���������������������������������������������������������76 The radio and Umm Kulthūm �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������78 The turāṯ or musical heritage�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������79 The seventies, a change of generations���������������������������������������������������������������������������80 Part 2: The Modern Time���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 82 Introduction�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������82 The tone system�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������82 Temperament�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������84 The jins����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������85 The maqām���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������87 The number of maqāmāt����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������87 The tonal structure of a maqām����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������87 The main maqāmāt�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������88 — Rāst�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������88 — Bayātī �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������89 — Sabā �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������89 — Sīkā �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������89 — Huzām �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������89 — ʿAjām ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������90 — Nahāwand �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������90 — Nawā aṯar �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������90 — Ḥijāz ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������91 Modulations�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������91 Meter and rhythm���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������92 Simple binary awzān�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������93 Simple ternary awzān���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������94 Some compound awzān������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������95 dawr hindī: ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������95 nawaḳt: ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������95 aqsāq: ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������95 aqsāq ṯaqīl:�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������95 samāʿī ṯaqīl: ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������96 ʿawīs: ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������96 dawr kabīr turkī:������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������96 The classical urban music���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������96 The tradition of Iraq: al-maqām al-ʿirāqī ������������������������������������������������������������������������������96 The classical tradition of Syria and Egypt, the waṣla��������������������������������������������������������101 The instrumental forms of the Syrian and Egyptian tradition����������������������������������103 The taqsīm���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������103 The samāʿī ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������108 The bašraf���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������108 The lūnga�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������111 The dūlāb�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������112 The taḥmīla�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������113 ii

The vocal forms of the Syrian and Egyptian tradition������������������������������������������������114 The mawwāl������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������114 The layālī ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������116 The dawr ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������116 The uġniya ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������123 The muwaššaḥ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������127 Classical traditions in North Africa: the nawba �����������������������������������������������������������������128 The Moroccan nawba tadition�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������131 The Algerian nawba tradition�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������133 The Tunisian nawba tradition�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������136 Popular music���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������137 Firqa songs��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������137 The Egyptian šaʿbī ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������145 The Egyptian gīl�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������148 The Algerian raï�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������152 The Moroccan šaʿbī (chaâbi)��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������155 The Arab hiphop ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������159 Folk Music���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������162 The Middle East �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������163 The Bedouins����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������163 The sedentary population �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������167 Non-metrical songs of the sedentary population. ������������������������������������������������167 Metrical songs of the sedentary population ����������������������������������������������������������172 The music of the inhabitants of the eastern and southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������173 The Maghreb����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������175 Vocal Music������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������175 Instrumental music�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������179 Bibliography���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 180 Discography����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 186 List of recorded music������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 189 Websites����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 192 Index���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 193

iii

Sources of illustrations 1: photo: Rogier Nieuwenhuys. 1968 2, 3, 4: Hickmann (1961) 5, 6, 7: Rashīd (1984) 8: Pamplona Museo de Navarra Hispano-Arabo 9: photo: Sarah Skinner 10, 11: Collaer (1983) 12: Monasterio de El Escorial 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20: Farmer (1966) 14: Farmer (1929) 15: Guettat (2000) 21, 23: Shaw (1738) 22, 47: Poché (1995) 24: www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/ Adriaen Matham 25: Russell (1794) 26, 30, 32, 33, 34: Lane (1895) 27, 29, 31: Villoteau (1826) 28: Getty Museum, California Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska 35, 36: Hachlaf (1993) 37: ? 38: Multimedia.thenational.ae/hitoryproject/?page_id=99 39, 56: Collaer (1983) 40: photo: Scheherazade Hassan 41: www.syrianhistory.com /en/photos/2448 42: www.Marsnjak.com (Syria 294) 43: www.imarabe.org/sur un air de nouba 44: www.ecoledemusiqueandalousemostaganem.com 45: dodoresurrected.wordpress.com/page/2/ 46: Rouanet (1905) 48: Voix de l’orient EFPVA 106 49: Wikipedia: English: kadim Al Sahir [file:Kazem Main.jpg] 50: Wikipedia: miṣrī: Šaʿbān ʿAbd ar-Raḥīm [file: Šaʿbān ʿAbd ar-Raḥīm2.jpg] 51: Wikipedia: English: Khaled (musician) [file: Cheb Khaled performed in Oran on July 5th 2011.jpg] 52: www zohramaldi.fr/wordpress/?p=21516 [Festival Mawazine 2011 de Rabat : Safy Boutella] 53: Wikipedia: deutsch: Dam (band) [file: DAM at DC Hard Rock Café.jpg] 54: Touma (1989) 55: photo: Dwight F. Reynolds

iv

Foreword Around the middle of the nineteenth century the first monograph of Arabic music appeared in German. The material that the author, Rafael Georg Kiesewetter, had at his disposal, consisted of a number of treatises on Arabic musical theory and a few musical notations made by European researchers and travelers during their stay in the Arab world. His study focused on the theory of music; the musical notations were regarded by him as minor details, showing the remnants of culture flourishing in the past; so he put them in an appendix. Since then, the musicological understanding of the Arabic musical culture has changed significantly, due to fact collecting musical data has become increasingly possible. In the last decades the Internet in particular has contributed to this enormously. Many Arabic musical genres are freely accessible on line and information about performers, instruments, theory and the like can easily be obtained. Yet is not easy for someone interested in Arab music to build up a general and coherent picture of Arabic musical culture on the basis of the many but often not related pieces of information found on the internet. For that purpose a book still is a better medium, especially in combination with the potential of the Internet. That idea slowly evolved in the author’s mind, resulting in a book, which, after a description of the history, the musical theory and the major classical traditions, offers a tentative survey of the extensive field of the popular music and of some aspects of folk music. I make no claim to be exhaustive; for many details, the reader had better turn to the relevant websites on the internet. Some of these are listed at the back of this book. On the other hand I discuss the various musical genres by analyzing a piece that I consider to be representative. To this purpose musical notations are added as well as transliterations and translations of the Arabic song texts. Thanks to modern technology, the music of many notated examples can be listened to on the internet via the website of Archaeopress, others, due to legal restrictions, only directly via Youtube. However, these have often replaced earlier performances, and consequently differ from the notated versions. Unfortunately some songs and instrumental pieces are no longer available. This book would not have been written, without the instance of Joost van Leeuwen, head of the Dutch publishing house Bulaaq, which specializes in publishing books on Arabic literature and culture. Thanks to his gentle insistence the original Dutch edition appeared some years ago. I also owe many thanks to the Arab musicians, composers and theorists, whose artistic and intellectual property I have made use of in composing this book, particularly Sala Raouf and Afra Mussawisade, who introduced me to the wonderful world of maqām and īqāʿ. I am grateful to Djûke Poppinga for translating the greater part of the song texts and her advice on many problems regarding the Arabic language. I also thank Willem Stoetzer, Maarten Kossman and Vertaalbureau Sahra for their translations of several lyrics. My colleague Anne van Oostrum was very helpful in providing material for the chapter on Egyptian music. Wieland van Eggermont was the first critical reader of the completed manuscript. His comments and suggestions have been very valuable. The same goes for Scheherazade Hassan, Virginia Danielson and George Dmitri Sawa, who read the English translation. Dwight Reynolds must also be mentioned here for his kind permission to use a fragment of his website on the Sīrat Banī Hilāl. Finally, I am very grateful to Hanny Groenhart-Dammers and Lia Twint, who helped me with the translation.

v

Recorded Music Recorded music is referenced throughout the text. A List of Recorded music is provided after the Bibliography and Discography at the end of the volume. Where permissions have been attainable, these recordings are available to access freely via the DOI links provided in the text and in the List of Recorded Music. Other recordings are referenced by the physical media on which they were accessed when preparing the text. All available recordings can be accessed at: http://doi.org/10.32028/9781789699326-REC00

vi

Transliteration of the Arabic letters

ArabictransliterationPronounciation ‫ ا‬ = ā ‘a’ as in French: Paris ‫ ب‬ = b ‘b’ ‫ ت‬ = t ‘t’ ‫ ث‬ = ṯ ‘th’ as in English thing ‫ ج‬ = j, g ‘dj’ = g (Egyptian) ‘g’ as in English: grade = ž (Moroccan) ‘j’ as in French: jambe ‫ ح‬ = ḥ h ‫ خ‬ = ḳ ‘ch’ as in Scottish: loch ‫ د‬ = d ‘d’ ‫ ذ‬ = ḏ ‘th’ as in English: although ‫ ر‬ = r ‘r’ ‫ ز‬ = z ‘z’ ‫ س‬ = s ‘s’ ‫ ش‬ = š ‘sh’ as in English: she ‫ ص‬ = ṣ emfatic ‘s’ ‫ ض‬ = ḍ emfatic ‘d’ ‫ ط‬ = ṭ emfatic ‘t’ ‫ ظ‬ = ẓ emfatic ‘z’ ‫ ع‬ = ʿ a strong glottal stop ‫ غ‬ = ġ ‘r’ as in French: Paris ‫ ف‬ = f ‘f ’ ‫ ق‬ = q, ’ emfatic ‘k’ = (Egyptian:– or ’) a weak glottal stop = g (Moroccan) ‘g’ as in English: ‘grade ‫ ك‬ = k ‘k’ ‫ ل‬ = l ‘l’ ‫ م‬ = m ‘m’ ‫ ن‬ = n ‘n’ ‫ ه‬ = h ‘h’ ‫ و‬ = w, ū, ō consonant: ‘w’; vowel: u; in dialect also ‘o’ ‫ ي‬ = y, ī, ē consonant: y; vowel: ‘ee’; in dialect ook ‘a’ as in English: name vii

viii

Introduction The music of the Arabic-speaking population of the Near East and the North coast of Africa is the subject of this book. The language is an important, if not the most important criterion applied when defining the subject. As a result, traditions of larger and smaller minorities (such as the Berbers and Kurds) as well as the important and related music cultures of the Turks and Persians have remained beyond the scope of this book, although they had a great impact on the Arab culture in the past. In fact, Near and Middle East knew for many centuries a music culture, in which the differences in language played no role. Arab, Persian, Byzantine and later also Turkish art music traditions show an historical development, which was marked by reciprocal influences ‘not only in the domain of nomenclature and theory, but also, broadly in such areas as performance practice, modal structure and types of instruments employed.’1 In the early twenties of the last century this unity of music culture has partly come to an end after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, not least due to all sorts of political developments. Musicians began to restrict themselves more and more to the regions of their own language area and to regard themselves as Turkish, Persian or Arab musicians. The musical cooperation between musicians of these different regions is nowadays perceived as rather cross-cultural. Besides language, history also plays a role in the definition of the subject. Arab music can be traced back to the period before the rise of Islam on the Arab Peninsula. Music flourished in the commercial centres of Mecca and Medina where singing girls played an important role in the promotion of music. Musical forms, practiced by the Bedouins, such as the camel-driver’s song ḥudā‘ or ḥidā‘ are mentioned by early writers such as Ibn Ḳurradāḍbih (820-911). Lute, flute, shawm, and tambourine were some of the many musical instruments in use.2 Since the seventh century Arab music spread jointly with the religion of Islam and the Arabic language across the Middle East, the Near East and North Africa. In its historical development it was further influenced by and enriched with elements of Persian an Turkish art music as well as of the local music cultures that it met during this cultural expansion. Arab music essentially is a vocal art and as such it is closely related to Arab poetry. The human voice is considered the most suitable musical instrument to arouse and express emotion and feelings both autonomously and as a vehicle for lyrics. Instrumental music serves mainly as preludes and interludes in vocal compositons, and instrumental forms as bašraf and samā’ī go back to Persian and Turkish models.3 Arab music possesses a number of characteristic features, in which it differs from Western music, but which it shares with Persian, Turkish and Central Asian music. A first feature to be mentioned is the essentially monophonic structure of the Arab music, which means that the musical expression is mainly concentrated in the melody and the 1

Wright, O., 1980: I, 514. Farmer, 1929 : 4 3 Touma, 1989 : 136 2

1

Arab Music rhythm. Unlike in Western music, polyphony and harmony hardly occur. The tuning system is different; it is not solely based on the diatonic tuning (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si) but in addition to the whole tone and the semitone it also contains a third fundamental tone stepin between, which differs from one country to another, but approximately may be concieved as a threequarter tone step. As a result, Arab music has a much larger variety of basic scales than Western music, where since the seventeenth century the tone system mainly rests on two categories: major and minor. The common term in Arab music to indicate the tonal characteristics of a piece, however, is not scale but maqām,4 a more complex concept, which we may define as melodic mode; the term will be discussed more in detail in the second part of this book. A second feature relates to the manner in which the musical time of a composition is organized. The Western concept of ‘measure’ is rather inadequate or inappropriate. Musical time is expressed in cycles that are distinguished from each other by rhythm, dynamics, timbre and tempo. These cycles or rhythmic modes are called awzān (sing: wazn) or īqāʿāt (sing: īqāʿ). A last feature to be mentioned is the oral nature of almost all Arab music. Traditionally, music in the these regions is transmitted through listening, remembering and vocally or instrumentally repeating and through learning in a master-disciple relationship.. This form of transmittance and distribution involves a large variety of performances and a continuing emergence of variants. Improvisation, variation and ornamentation are important and esteemed skills for a musician in the Arab world. Nowadays Western music notation is known and used in the Arab world. In the course of the twentieth century it has been introduced into and adapted to urban music practice and from there taken over in the entertainment industry. However, the position of musical notation in the Arab world can hardly be compared with its position in European music. An Arab notation is not considered to be a detailed prescription of a composer or an interpretable yet invariable starting point for a musical performance but rather a reminder or educational tool. The notation of compositions was initially focused on the classical repertoire in particular; a musician notated simply the version he knew by heart or transcribed a recording he had at hand. Notations of the same piece, therefore, may vary considerably, as can be seen by comparing the following two notations of the beginning of a classical, Egyptian composition. Within Arab music culture a clear musical dichotomy may be distinguished, a dichotomy that coincides with the usual division into East (Mashriq), with the core countries Egypt, Syria and Iraq, and West (Maghreb), enclosing broadly Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The musical distinction between the two regions had probably come to a conclusion already in the thirteenth century, when in the Mashriq Baghdad and other important cultural centers had adopted the Persian court music, while in the cities along the northern coast of Africa the Arabo-Andalusian music tradition was practised. The most striking difference between the two musical territories is the tuning system. In the Maghreb – except for the Tunisian classical music – diatonic tuning (i.e. the tone steps are similar to those used in Western music) is practised, while in the Mashriq the use of three-quarter tones is widespread. 4

The basic meaning of maqām is ‘place’. Another term for melodic mode is naġma (tone, melody).

2

I,1 TAÍMILA SUZNÀK Ñ.al-MahdÐ

I,1 TAÍMILA SUZNÀK

                         

     

Introduction



                     

   

                   

   

                          

                            

  

    

  

   

                      



                    

                    

     3 3

Beginning of taḥmīla sūznāk; to the left the notation according to ʿAbd al-Munʿim ʿArafa (1976:81) and to the right the notation according to Ṣāliḥ al-Mahdī (1990:193).

A wide variety of traditions and genres exists in the Arab world within the dichotomy between Mashriq and Maghreb. These can roughly be classified into three categories: art music, popular music and folk music, although the boundaries among them are not sharply drawn. Many forms of musical expressions can easily be sorted into more than one category. The first category, art music, includes the music that is traditionally practised and appreciated in particular by city dwellers, including the elite and the aristocracy in the various centers of power in the Arab world. There are several local traditions, e. g. in Baghdad, Aleppo, Cairo and Tunis, each of which has its own history of development regarding style, form, repertoire etc. The second category, popular music, owes its existence and spreading substantially to mass media and is produced with the primary goal to be consumed and appreciated by large groups of listeners. This music does not require intensive attention from the listener, but it appeals quickly, flatters the ear and is easily remembered. Although most compositions of this category - unlike those of art music- are short-lived, there are exceptions that remain popular and survive as evergreens.5 The radio station of Cairo was for decades the main producer and broadcaster of Arab or rather Egyptian popular music. The third category, folk music, is the music that is practised in relatively small communities and is perceived within such communities as their own. Generally, Arab folk music is simple, rarely using a scale of more than five tones. It is also limited in terms of the musical time; simple binary and ternary rhythmical patterns dominate. A favorite musical instrument is the qaṣaba (flute), which is generally played in combination with the bandīr (frame drum). The combination of zūrnā (oboe) and ṭabl (two-headed drum) which can be heard on many festive events throughout the Arab world and beyond, is also very popular. The urban popular songs of Umm Kalthūm, ʿAbdu-l-Wahhāb and Fayrūz are widely spread and appreciated in the Arab world.

5

3

Arab Music In order to bring some structure into the diversity of the subject this book is divided into two parts. The first part is a historical sketch, in which we have traced the origin of certain features and elements of the contemporary Arab music as far as the data, handed down through the ages, have made it possible. The second part dwells first in broad outlines on the melodic- and rhythmic-modal system6 that forms the basis of contemporary Arab music, followed by numerous discussions of important traditions and genres, based on representative musical examples. The discussions include an analysis of the chosen example - a composition or improvisation - and relevant socio-historical data that are not or just briefly discussed in the historical section of this book. The music of each discussed music example can easily be found on the internet as indicated in the book.

1 Two Tunisian musicians, a drum player and an oboist, are about to play at a festive village gathering. The drum player uses two different sticks, while playing the two headed drum (ṭabl). In his right hand he holds a rather firm stick fit for heavy beats on the skin on the right hand side; in his left hand he holds a flexible reed with which he plays quick rolls on the other side of the drum. The player of the oboe (zūkra or zūrnā) uses a special breathing technique that allows him to breathe in and out, without interrupting his play.

Modes are the basis of a modal system. Modes are specific melodic and rhythmic patterns, which a musician takes as a starting point for a composition or improvisation and in accordance with which compositions and improvisations are ordered.

6

4

Part 1

Historical background Introduction Until the early twentieth century music was only transmitted orally in the Arab world. There was no need for a notation system because fixing a piece of music, other than by memory, was regarded as superfluous and even interfering with the free expression of musical imagination. Consequently, before the twentieth century musical notations only occur in two types of writings: Arab music theory treatises and reports of European travelers and researchers. However, these sources are too few in number to obtain an idea of how Arab music has sounded in the past and to write a music history of the Arab world comparable to that of Europe. Therefore we will remain ignorant of the development of and changes in many forms of the composition and techniques, genres and specific performance practices throughout the centuries. We only have secondary sources of literary and iconographic nature that give us information about the music theory, the musical instruments, the musical life of certain periods and the role that music has played in the Arab-Islamic society. Nevertheless even this information is very incomplete and unbalanced. The sources, according to number as well as kind, are irregularly distributed in the course of time. Literary data and philosophical treatises are the main source to get some insight in the musical life of the early Arab civilization to the tenth century, meanwhile theoretical writings form the core for the following period to 1500 and European researchers’ reports contain essential data for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Western research on Arab music started in the second half of the nineteenth century but gained momentum in the first half of the 20th century, when the historian Henri George Farmer (1882-1965) published in 1929 ‘A History of Arabian Music to the XIIIth Century’. On account of this book, which remained a standard work for the period, and numerous other publications of his hand Farmer may be regarded as the founder of the historiography of Arab music. Another important scholar to be mentioned here is Rodolphe baron d’Erlanger (1872-1932) , who contributed to the Western knowledge of Arab music by translating into French important Arabic treatises on music by al-Fārābī, Ibn Sinā, Ṣāfī ad-Dīn, Aš-Širwānī and al-Lāḍiqī. His major work ‘La musique Arabe’ in six volumes includes, besides the translations of these treatises, a survey of the modern melodic and rhythmic modal systems. In the early Arab historiography the music of Mecca, Medina and the region that surrounds these cities at the beginning of the seventh century was defined as the threshold of the Arab music history1. In the Near East and Middle East flowering music cultures that later on would be integrated in the Arab world or would exert a lasting influence on it, had at that time already existed for centuries. The Arab flute, nāy, had already been played in Mesopotamia and Pharaonic Egypt and an important theoretical concept, the jins (tetrachord) had already 1

Farmer, 1927:5 referring to Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih: ʿIqd al-Farīd.

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Arab Music been mentioned as genos in the Greek music theory. For that reason we will start this historical sketch with a brief survey of what we know about the remote musical past of Egypt, the Near East and Middle East. The legacy of past centuries Egypt and Mesopotamia Some oldest civilizations of mankind originated in the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris and in the valley of the Nile. Only a few written sources with regard to the music of these areas have been left to us but a large amount of visual material has been preserved. They give us an idea of the way in which music functioned in those societies, how and to what extent those music cultures gained either entirely or partly their pursuance in the later period of their Arab sequel. Music played a large role in public and religious life; religious and court ceremonies, military parades, state banquets and royal hunts were often accompanied with music. Pictures of musical performances in a less formal atmosphere are rare but they do occur. The most commonly used instruments were: harp, which occurred in different shapes and sizes, lute, flute, double clarinet, double oboe and drum in various forms. The harp was still played in the fifteenth century in the Arab world. Today its descendants can be found in among others in southern Iraq, the Gulf region, south of Egypt and in Sudan. The lute, also called spike lute - because the handle is entwined into the membrane covering the resonator – is still in use as folk instrument in many parts of the Arab world. This also applies to the flute and the double clarinet. The flute is an end-blown single straight bamboo tube, generally with six finger holes. The double clarinet consists of two parallel pipes, which are usually equally long, tied together and its bell is made of two goat horns, which are hollowed out and mounted on the two ends. The aulos has two loose tubes, each of which is held in one of the two corners of the mouth, while playing. The drums that hitherto have remained popular are the frame drum and the goblet-shaped drum. From the few surviving written sources it can be deduced that around the eighteenth century BCE diatonic tuning, which is the basis of both the Arab and the European tuning system, already existed. An important evidence of this is provided by a clay tablet2 from that time excavated at Ur (Mesopotamia); it contains a kind of manual for tuning different scales on the harp.3 The mathematical foundation of this tuning dates from many centuries later and is traditionally attributed to Pythagoras (sixth century BCE). It is based on the observation that two strings, the lengths of which are in the ratio of 1:2, produce the most perfect consonance, the octave and two strings in the ratio of 2:3 make a fifth. Like their Greek predecessors Arab music theorists used these data in order to provide a clear mathematical description of their tuning method as a basis for their tone system. The first notation of a piece of music dates back four centuries later and has been found in Ugarit (West Syria). It contains text and music of a hymn dedicated to Nikkal, the goddess of orchards. 2 3

Claytablet UET VII 74. Dumbrill, 2005: 47-69.

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Historical background

2 A small ensemble of seven seated musicians. Three instrumentalists play the flute, the clarinet and the arched harp. Between them sit four so-called cheironomists (Greek: cheiros = hand), who all make the same gesture with their right hands. The meaning of this is not known. The first cheironomist on the left holds his left hand against his ear, an indication that he is also singing. Even now, some three millennia later, many singers in the Arab world make the same gesture while singing. Likewise, the manner in which the flute player and clarinet player hold their instruments is no different than it is done in the modern Arab world.

3 A three-thousand-year-old Egyptian burial gift, which shows a domestic musical performance. An aristocratic couple, surrounded by two harpists playing their instruments and three girls who appear to accompany their performance with rhythmic clapping.

4 Old Babylonian female figure playing a frame drum. The frame drum is held with the left hand by the rim in such a way that the fingers can be used independently to play on the edge of the skin. This playing method is still practised in the Middle East.

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Arab Music

6 Drawing from a Egyptian mural from the fourteenth century BC. The three female musicians playing the double oboe, the long-necked lute and the arched harp are depicted accurately. Unlike those of the double clarinet, the two pipes of the double oboe are not bound together, but are inserted into the mouth separately. The finger-holes are not clearly distinguishable. The lute is played with a plectrum. The sound box, possibly a turtle shell, is covered with a skin; the neck, which is ‘laced’ through the skin has six frets, possibly made from strips of gut tied tightly around the neck; the tassel at the top of the neck marks the point where the string is fastened, probably by means of a tuning-ring made of cloth or hemp. A second tassel hangs from a noose that serves to lift the string so that it can vibrate freely. Considering the number of tuning-pegs, the large arched harp appears, to be a fourteen-string instrument. The way the harpist holds her hands betrays some aspects of her playing technique: with her right hand she strums the fourth string seen from the right hand side of the picture; simultaneously she presses with the thumb of her left hand on the same string in order to obtain the correct pitch.

5 A terracotta relief of an angular harp played by a seated Mesopotamian musician. On an angular harp the sound box and string holder form either a right or an acute angle. Compared to the Egyptian bow harp the angular harp is held upside down, with the sound box directing upwards. The instrument is played with both hands. Supposedly, the strings are plucked with the fingers of the left hand and muted with the fingers of the right hand. The instrument has seven strings; the lengths of the innermost and the outermost string have a ratio of 1:2 (octave). The strings are fastened around the neck by means of tuning-rings. The oldest images of the angular harp have been found in Mesopotamia and date back to the twentieth century BC. After the fourteenth century BC they also show up in Egypt. Then they spread over the entire Near and Middle East. In the first centuries of the second millennium AD the instrument falls into disuse.

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Historical background From the third century BCE to the seventh century CE. The conquest by Alexander the Great (356323 BCE) marks for Egypt and the East Coast of the Mediterranean Sea the beginning of the Hellenistic civilization, which later will leave its mark on both the Byzantine Empire that comprised the eastern part of the area around the Mediterranean Sea and that of the Sassanids, who ruled the Middle East from 224 to 651.

7 Four Assyrian musicians playing and dancing face to face. Detail of a larger relief also depicting several soldiers and two horses. The position of the four musicians, their waving hair and the lifted heels of the two figures to the right suggest that they are dancing or moving to and fro rhythmically. The first figure on the right holds a frame drum in his left hand. While tapping gently with the fingers of his left hand on the edge of the instrument, he beats the centre of the drum skin with his outstretched right hand. This manner of playing resembles the way the bandīr, the Arab frame drum, is played today. The figure behind the drum player carries a five-string (?) lyre. The only visible parts are the crossbar at the top of the instrument to which the strings are fastened, and the two straight arms. The player holds a plectrum in his right hand. The musician in front to the right plays a different type of lyre, which he presses against his body with his right arm. There are seven strings attached to the crossbar. One of the two supporting arms is long and curved; the other one is short and merges into the sound box. The strings are plucked with the fingers of both hands. The musician behind the lyre player strikes two small cymbals together.

That is why we can discover several instruments that were used in the Hellenistic and later Roman period in the eastern Mediterranean, even centuries later in the Arab music. The most important of these was the aulos (double oboe), which was already in use in Pharaonic Egypt. Probably the last evidence of aulos playing - an ivory table on which a Moorish-Andalusian ivory carver depicted a musician playing this instrument - was found en preserved in the eleventh century in Pamplona. Another popular Hellenistic instrument, which has disappeared, is the lyre. However, the name of one of the two Greek lyre types, kithara, has been preserved in North Africa. The traditional lute is called kuwayṯara or kwīṯra in Algeria.

Many elements of Hellenistic music theory can be found in Arab music. Thus the term jins as well as its concept, which play an important role in Arab music, directly go back to the Greek term genos, and its musical meaning: tetrachord. It entails a succession of four consecutive descending tones, in which the interval between the highest and lowest tone is a perfect fourth and the interval between two successive tones is either a whole tone or a semitone (1-1 - ½, 1 - ½ - 1; ½ - 1-1). They form the basis of larger scales, the modes, made by two tetrachords and an additional tone to complete the range of an octave.4 In ancient Greek music the modes functioned as the basic melodic material in the same way as the church modes and the major and minor scales do in Western music. 4 The major Greek modes are Dorian (e1 – e), Frygian (d1 – d) and Lydian (c1 – c). Unlike in European medieval music theory these scales are always shown in descending form.

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Arab Music As to the concept of musical time with notions like tone duration, metre, rhythm and tempo, Arab music theory is also based upon the Greek one, which in turn had its roots in the Babylonian theory. In their attempts to describe this subject both theories restrict themselves to vocal music. The main starting points are the prosody and in relation to that the view that metre in poetry and rhythmic patterns in music are closely related and are governed by identical temporal principles. In early Arab music theory these assumptions seemed to serve the purpose but in the ninth century the contours of a system of musical rhythmic cycles (īqāʿ, pl. īqāʿāt) that detached itself from prosody, became visible. Al-Fārābī (872-950) was the theoretician who laid the foundations for this. The extent of the influence from Persia and further East is difficult to ascertain. In any case, two instruments that are widely distributed in the Arab world have been imported from these areas: the lute (ʿūd) and oboe (zūrnā). The lute with its resonance box in the shape of a half pear, a short neck and four strings presumably originated from India and became known in Persia among others by the agency of the music-loving king Shapur I, who ruled the Sasanid Empire from 241 until 272. Around the same time the zūrnā appeared at the Persian court. Unlike the aulos, it consists of only one chanter. In the following centuries the zūrnā and the lute (originally also known as barbaṭ in Arab writings) spread further to the West. Since then they are the most common instruments in the Arab music culture.

8 Detail of an ivory box made in 1004 for a civil and military ruler, during the Caliphate of Hisam II. Three musicians are depicted. The one on the left plays a wind instrument, made of two pipes. This is probably a double oboe as the player keeps the two pipes in his mouth separately, whereas with the double clarinet the two pipes are bound together. The figure in the middle plays a lute-like instrument, the figure to the right a horn (būq).

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Historical background Arab music before the arrival of the Islam. The term Arab music, in the narrow sense of the word, indicates the music that is practised by the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula, the city residents and the wandering Bedouins. The oldest records are rare and date only from the ninth century, although they reach back to the fifth and the sixth centuries, the era which is indicated as the jāhiliya, the time of ignorance, when humanity still lived in darkness and had no knowledge of Islam. The jāhiliya , however, was not a primitive, poor and uncivilized era. The two important cities on the Arabian Peninsula, Mecca and Medina, were prosperous trade centers situated on the caravan roads that connected the North and the South of the peninsula. Their inhabitants, just like the members of the itinerant Bedouin tribes, owned a flourishing culture, in which poetry and music took an important place. The Bedouins The oldest known type of Arab music is the ḥudā’. Its genesis is first described in ‘The book of entertainment and music instruments’ (Kitāb al-lahw wa-l-malāhī) written by the geographer Ibn Ḳurradāḍbih, who was born around 820 in Khorasan and died in 911 in Baghdad. This work is one of the first writings on music that has been handed down. Ḳurradāḍbih narrated that at the time of the jāhiliya a master, called Muḍar ibn Naẓar, punished one of his slaves with a hard slap on his hand. The slave, bellowed with pain, cried: ‘yā yadayyāh, yā yadayyāh’ (O, my hands, o, my hands). His screams had a remarkable consequence: a herd of camels, pasturing in the vicinity, stirred and started treading at the pace of the lamentation.5 Thus a new rhythm opened up and became the base of the caravan or camel-driver song, the ḥudā’, which soon became known as the singing genre of the wandering Bedouins.6 Yet, the ḥudā’ was not the only song type of the Bedouins. A very popular genre was the qaṣīda, a poem which could contain hundred or more verses, all of them following the same rhyme and metre and being divided in hemistiches. The traditional qaṣīda consists of three parts: an introduction with love as the main theme, followed by a description of a camel, and finally, depending on the occasion for which it had been composed, a praise song, a satire, a song in glorification of the tribe or a song dealing with another appropriate topic.7 The qaṣīda was composed and performed by the šāʿir, the poet-singer, who was an important and honored figure of the Bedouin tribe. Especially his talent for extemporization was highly esteemed. A gifted šāʿir was expected to come up with an appropriate verse at the proper moment and to perform it. Women played an important role in the Arab music culture. They sang war songs to rouse the warriors of their tribe, when they had to fight a battle against a hostile tribe. If the campaign went less successful and lives were lost, they sang their songs of lamentation to express collective sorrow.

5 According to another version reported by al-Masʿūdī it was Muḍar who fell of his horse and broke his hand (Shiloah, 1995: 5). 6 Shiloah,1995: 5. 7 Idem: 4

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Arab Music Mecca and Medina In the cities Mecca and Medina musical life was reigned by the qayna (pl. qiyān), the gracious professional singer, who belonged as a slave girl to the household of a rich citizen or worked in one of the many entertainment centers of these cities. She practised the ġinā, a term that may best be translated as ‘professional song art’. The qiyān most often came from Persia or from the area which stood under the authority of Byzantium, where they had received their musical education; the verses they sang, however, were always written in Arabic. Useful sources of information about qiyān are, in addition to the earlier mentioned Kitāb al-aġānī, the Treatise on the singing girls (risālat al-qiyān) by al-Jāḥiẓ (776-868) and the Book of Brocade (Kitab almuwaššaḥ) by al-Wašša (d. 936), who in his book includes ‘advice to refined women regarding dress, ornament and appropriate modes of expression in mixed company.’8 The first three kinds of singing were, according to the historian Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (860-940) the naṣb, the sinād and the hazaj. He states, quotating Hisham Ibn al-Kalbi (d.819), that ‘the naṣb is the song of the Rukban and the female slaves; the sinād consists of long periode and many melodies (melisms). As regards to the hazaj, it has an easy and lively character that helps to dance.’9 Terms like naṣb, sinād, hazaj, and many other Arabic denominations of musical kinds can best be compared with well-known musical terms such as waltz, tango and blues. In all these cases it is about a musical genre with a particular rhythmic flow, a specific measure, and a definite tempo, creating together a characteristic mood. The regularly returning poetry festivals were peaks in the cultural life in Mecca and Medina. Poets from near and far gathered there together in order to compete for the first prize for the best qaṣīda (pl. qaṣā’id). Sometimes the poets themselves recited but just as often they left the performance to a reciter, the rāwī, or they contracted a singer, a muġannī. Already during the jāhiliya Mecca was considered to be a religious centre, where from time immemorial the kaʿba, a holy black stone in a small cube-shaped building, had been honored. At the rites around the shrine prayers were recited and at the annual pilgrimage into this place religious songs of a simple musical structure were performed. Musical instruments The rare pieces of information concerning Arab music from pre-Islamic times are mainly singing related. Musical instruments, which were mostly used as accompaniment, are only mentioned incidentally. The most important instrument was the lute, of which two types were known. The oldest one, called kirān or muwattar, was a small lute provided with a relatively long neck and a resonator covered with a skin; it was not very different from the lutes depicted centuries earlier in the Egyptian royal tombs. The second type, the present Arab lute, comes into use in the course of the sixth century. Initially this instrument, of which the body is entirely made of wood, was called barbaṭ. At the Persian court it had already been known by that name since the second century. 8

9

Nielson, Lisa. Visibility …. p 76 Jargy, 1971:13.

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Historical background Other instruments were the ṭār or daff, the small frame drum and the qaḍīb, a stick used to knock or pound the beat of the music. The most important wind instruments were the mizmār, a type of oboe, and the qaṣaba, the flute. In art music the name qaṣaba has been replaced by the Persian word nāy. In the traditional music of the Maghreb the term qaṣaba has been preserved.

9 The ʿūd, played here by Carmine T. Guida, is the main instrument of Arab music. It is a so-called shortnecked lute, which means that the neck is shorter than the length of the body. Al-Fārābī attributed its invention to the biblical figure Lamech; later authors also point to Greek scholars and philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato and Ptolemy. It was probably in the course of the seventh century that it spread in the Arab world from Persia. It had four strings; a fifth one is supposed to have been added to the instrument in the ninth century by both al-Kindī and Ziryāb in the ninth century, or a century later by al-Fārābī. The modern ʿūd usually has five double gut strings and one - the highest - single string; a pear-shaped body with a wooden soundboard, in which are carved three sound holes or roses; a bridge, glued to the lower end of the soundboard, to which the strings are attached; and a peg box at an almost right angle to the neck, with tuning pegs inserted laterally. The most common tuning of the strings is d – g – a – d1 – g1 – c2. The ʿūd is played with a plectrum.

10 Nāy player. The modern nāy is not very different from the instrument that was played at the time of Hārūn ar-Rašīd by a virtuoso such as Barṣawmā. It is made of a cane stem which consists preferably of eight or nine internodes of equal length and has a diameter (bore) of approximately 2 cm. The nāy is end-blown and has a sharp rim at its upper end. A thumbhole is placed half way on the back side of the instrument; on the front side of the lower end are six finger-holes. The distance between the third and the fourth finger-hole is often larger than the distance between the other holes. A nāy player usually has several nāyāt of different lengths and tunings at his disposal. The folk version of the nāy is called qaṣaba or gasba. Generally, this instrument is shorter and has a wider bore than the nāy.

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Arab Music

11 This Tunisian musician plays the ṭār, a small frame drum with a wooden shell in which five ‘jingles’ (pairs of little cymbals) are mounted. The word ṭār is onomatopoeic, as the sound of the word ending on -r mimics the sound of the cymbals after the instrument is struck. The more general term for the instrument in the Mashriq is also onomatopoeic: daff or duff. When playing the instrument the player moves it rhythmically to and fro, causing the jingles to produce a continuous gentle tinkle.

The early Islamic period and the Umayyad Caliphate (600 - 750) The foundation of the secular power of the Arabs and their unprecedented cultural flowering were laid in the first decades of the seventh century, when Mohammad started the preaching of Islam. Mohammad, born around the year 570, was a member of the tribe of the Qurayš, which exercised power in Mecca already since the fifth century. Somewhere in his forties he received the first of a series of divine revelations which he he transmitted orally to the members of his tribe. Only later on these were written down. Initially Mohammad’s revelations met with great hostility. In 622 he was even forced to leave his native city Mecca and to take refuge in Yathrib, the present-day Medina. Here his religious teaching was well received by the citizens and the year 622 became thus the year of the hijra (the migration), as it is still called since then. It also has become the year 0 of the Islamic era. Mohammad died in 632, ten years after the hijra. In the meantime the inhabitants of the Hijaz, the area around Mecca and Medina, had been converted to Islam and they had formed a political unity. Under the guidance of the caliphs, that is to say the successors of Mohammad, their territory expanded rapidly. Within a few decades Egypte, Syria, Iraq and Persia had been conquered by Arab generals. Consequently the political power of Mecca and Medina, as well as their prosperity and wealth, increased enormously. The citizens of these cities spent more and more of their money and time on luxury and recreation. The first caliphs, who contented themselves with a sober and ascetic life style, tried in vain to stop this development. As a result of the influx of captured slaves, who brought all kinds of new skills and knowledge from the newly conquered areas, the two holy cities became cultural melting pots. Likewise, the music scene came under various external influences. The Makkan song festivals became splendid events, where musicians, often slaves form the newly conquered territories, competed 14

Historical background with each other and tried to surprise and amuse their audience with an original song or improvisation, a skillful singing or playing technique, a modern instrument or a new sound. In the second half of the seventh century the Umayyad dynasty acceded to power. The government centre moved to Damascus and the political role of the holy cities Mecca and Medina came to an end. At the same time their prosperity as well as their reputation as authoritative centers of entertainment and musical creativity continued unabated. It even seems that the very loss of the political power gave rise to the artistic and musical development. Such a belated cultural flowering would occur more often in the Arab realm: first in the tenth century when Baghdad lost its military power but kept its poitical position and remained the superb centre of culture and refinement for a long time; subsequently in the eleventh century, when – after Córdoba had failed to keep the central power in Moorish Spain in 1027 – all kinds of small principalities that tried to surpass each other in splendor and pomp and to pinch off each other’s musicians, rose. Because Mecca and Medina were the most important holy cities of Islam, it is not surprising that the religious leaders looked on sadly how many of their fellow townsmen enjoyed a fairly self-indulgent conduct. It had to be controlled. That is why a debate started about the place of music in the Islamic world and arguments were fabricated to bring discredit to music. These arguments may be summarized in the following way: music is too easy a vehicle for the diffusion of embarrassing song texts; music distracts from Islam; music is an invention of the devil. However, not a single clause can be found in the Quran – the highest religious authority – which explicitly prohibits or disapproves the making of music or the listening to it. Ultimately music, with the exception of Quran recitation, was not prohibited (ḥarām) in Islam but nevertheless, up till now, it has been considered to be condemnable (makrūh) by some religious or political movements. Yet, in the first decades of the seventh century there were no or only a few religious objections against musical activities. Nevertheless, some prudence was called for, as experienced by three singers who had sung some satirical songs on Mohammad shortly before his return to Mecca. They were condemned to dead. Two of them, Sāra and Qarība, could avoid punishment but the third singer, Qurayna, was less fortunate and was executed for her crime.10 Still, in the seventh century, the qiyān, the professional female singers, lived in easy circumstances and enjoyed great popularity. The most beloved among them were ʿAzzat alMaylā’ and Jamīla. ʿAzzat al-Maylā’ (d. ca. 705) received her first education by two famous qiyān from the jāhiliya: Šīrīn and Rā’iqa. But for her career two Persian singers: Našīṭ and Sā’ib Ḳaṯīr were of major importance. ‘She [ʿAzzat al-Maylā’] took over their melodies, made them suitable for new Arabic texts and introduced in this way rhythmic and metric song (al-muwaqqa’ wa-l-mawzūn)’ wrote Abū-l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, the most important author on music from the ninth century, in his ‘Book of Songs’ (Kitāb al-aġānī)11. The first part of this phrase is obvious: ʿAzzat al-Maylā’ put Arabic texts on Persian melodies. However, the meaning of the second part is not so clear. For it is hardly plausible that Arab music did not know any form of metric or rhythmic order 10 11

Farmer, 1929:37. Jargy, 1971:21.

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Arab Music before ʿAzzat al-Maylā’’s appearance. So we better consider the terms muwaqqa and mawzūn as referring to new rhythmic patterns that at that time became ’hot’. Many anecdotes about ʿAzzat al-Maylā’ are documented. One of them reports that ʿUmar ibn Abī Rabīʿa, a poet of mostly erotic verses, was intoxicated by her recitation of his poems to such a degree that he tore up his clothes and dropped down unconsciously. ʿAzzat al-Maylā’ was not only a gifted and bewitching musician but also an inspiring music pedagogue. She was counted among her student’s celebrities such as Ibn Misjāḥ and Ibn Surayj, who will also be mentioned later on. Jamīla (d. around 720) was somewhat younger than ʿAzzat al-Maylā’. She was also educated according to the song tradition of the qiyān in Medina and influenced by the Persian musicians Našīṭ and Sā’ib Ḳaṯīr. Jamīla was the first singer who set up a music school for qiyān by herself. This must, undoubtedly, have been a profitable enterprise, because a fine educated singer was worth ten times an ordinary girl slave. A future qayna had to meet a lot of requirements: a pure voice, physical beauty, musicality and intelligence. The students, schooled by Jamīla, distinguished themselves by their comprehensive musical skills and high degree of general knowledge. Regularly Jamīla performed with her qiyān. Al-Iṣfahānī described in his ‘Book of Songs’ a concert that she organized for a cousin of the prophet Mohammad. She arranged her students, each with a lute, in two rows one after the other and sat down in the middle. The concert started by a laudatory song in honor of the family of the prophet. Then she sang together with her pupils a number of other songs, several of them on the lyrics by the earlier-mentioned poet ʿUmar ibn Abī Rabīʿa. With great success, as ‘all persons present went into rapture (ṭarab), when Jamīla sang; they started to clap their hands, stamp on the ground with their feet and sway with their head, while singing the following lines: We sacrifice ourselves to you, o Jamīla, in order to protect you against all evil… how splendid are your song and your words.’12 Music schools such as Jamīla’s soon were founded in Mecca and also in Basrah, a distinguished centre of culture in the south of present Iraq; yet throughout the seventh and eighth century Medina remained by far the most important centre. Even in the ninth century, when Baghdad came to power, education in Medina remained leading. Only after the tenth century the qaynatradition seems to become less important, at least judged by the number of names that has been handed down since. In the West of the Arab world, in Andalusia and in North Africa, the tradition seems to have been persisted somewhat longer. In the twelfth century Seville was still known as the training centre for qiyān, who found employment mainly in North Africa. Traces of the qayna are probably still to be found in Morocco and Egypt. In Morocco there are the šayḳāt (sing. šayḳa; lit. female leader), the professional singers, who form music groups and perform at family celebrations and official ceremonies. In the same role we find in Egypt the ʿālima (lit. learned woman).

12

Idem, 1971:12.

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Historical background The muḳannaṯ Around the middle of the seventh century a new figure emerged in the musical life of the Hijaz next to the qayna and ša’ir (poet): the muḳannaṯ. This name, which indicates ‘effeminate’, is designated to a male professional musician, who clearly distinguished himself in dress and manners from members of the same sex. This figure, known in Persia and Byzantium for a long time, belonged to the lower social classes and was often a slave or the child of a slave or freedman. Many muḳannaṯūn (singl. muḳannaṯ) were of Persian origin, although born and raised in the Hijaz. They usually followed their musical education in one of the qayna schools. Some managed to win great fame as a musician.13 Ṭuways (632-710), the ‘little peacock’, was the first known muḳannaṯ. Born to Persian parents, he grew up in Medina, where as a child he became familiar with the songs and the singing style of the resident Persian slaves. Allegedly he adapted Persian melodies to suit Arabic texts. It is however not clear what this change really implied and to what extent his way of adapting Persian melodies differed from what ʿAzzat al-Maylā’ previously did. Around the middle of the seventh century Ṭuways began to make a name for himself. The genre in which he excelled was the hazaj, supposedly a genre of light character. At his performances he preferably accompanied himself on the daff, the small square frame drum. Despite the victory that he gained as a musician, Ṭuways led a precarious life. When the governor of Medina opened a witch-hunt against the muḳannaṯūn, he found it advisable to flee from the city and retreat into Suwayda, where he died embittered.14 Another famous singer during the Umayyad period was Ibn Misjāḥ. He was born in Mecca and made a study trip to Persia and Syria, where he learned new techniques and styles. He studied also the music of the Byzantines. As a result he fused Persian, Arab and Byzantine elements to create a new style, which he practised in his performances in Mecca. His star rose rapidly, as a result of which he got into trouble with the religious leaders in Mecca, who denounced him to the governor of Mecca. However, the governor feared to get his fingers burned in this matter and sent Ibn Misjah to Damascus, where he had to justify himself personally to the caliph. The caliph ordered him to perform a recital, by which he got so impressed that he let Ibn Misjah return unpunished to Mecca with a princely gift. There Ibn Misjah died probably around 715.15 Ibn Surayj (634-726) was a slightly younger singer than Ibn Misjāh. He was of Turkish origin but born in Mecca, like Ibn Misjah, to whom he was apprenticed. He spent some time in Medina, where he took lessons from Ṭuways and attended to the concerts of ʿAzzat al-Maylā’. Initially, he was first of all known for his improvisations (murtajil) and the way he accompanied himself on the qaḍīb (a stick used to beat the rhythm). He became truly famous only after the age of forty. In 684 he became acquainted with ‘the Persian lute’, the ʿūd farisi, which was taken along to Mecca by Persian construction workers. He immediately saw the possibilities of this instrument, trained himself to play it and went down in history as the first lute player Farmer, 1929:44-46. Farmer, 1929:52-53. 15 Idem:77-78. 13 14

17

Arab Music of Mecca. Later on Ibn Surayj spent some time at the court of caliph al-Walīd I (668-715) in Damascus, where he enjoyed great prestige and celebrated great triumphs.16 The most famous musician in the seventh century was undoubtedly Maʿbad (d. 743). He was born in Medina; his father came from black Africa. He was trained as a tresurer, but soon decided to devote himself entirely to music. Thanks to the lessons of Sā’ib Ḳaṯīr and Jamīla he evolved into an all-round musician. Countless times he was invited at the court in Damascus to perform for the caliph. The respect he there enjoyed was tremendous. This is evident from the fact that caliph al-Walīd II and his brother attended Ibn Surayj’s funeral ceremony. Several of his songs remained famous for a considerable period.17 The data on the above mentioned musicians we owe mainly to Yūnūs al-Kātib (d. ca. 765), the first musician of Arab origin. His own writings have been lost but many details have later been handed down by al-Iṣfahānī in his ‘Book of Songs’ and so remained preserved. From these notes we may conclude that musical life in Mecca and Medina was under strong Persian influence: many musicians and qiyān were of Persian descent and trained by a Persian musician or made a study trip to Persia. We can only guess about the exact nature of the Persian musical influence but it probably comprised the technical side of singing, which means such matters as voice control, phrasing, articulation, and ornamentation; surely also topics of a more idiomatic character such as melodies, rhythms, and musical forms; and finally the playing technique of one or several instruments. Some statements by later writers (such as the fourteenth-century historian Ibn Ḳaldūn) even suggest that what was sung in Mecca and Medina was actually a form of Persian music, fitted out with Arabic texts. Damascus Next to Medina and Mecca, Damascus, where the caliph held court, played also an important role in the Arab music culture albeit primarily as a consumer. As a center for musical education Damascus was of no importance. The Umayyads were, with the exception of pious ʿUmar II, great music lovers and they often invited musicians to give a concert. Music did not yet have a well-defined place in court life – it was the Abbasids who laid down the rules for this - and musicians were not included in any rank of the court hierarchy. Religious and socio-political considerations may have withheld the Umayyads to do so. The musicians had advantages as well as disadvantages due to their unclear social condition. They were sometimes royally rewarded. Indicative of their precarious position there is a story in the ‘Book of Songs’ about a private performance by Maʿbad for caliph al-Walīd II (706-744). The happening took place in a private room of the palace in Damascus, around a water basin that was filled with rosewater mixed for the occasion with musk and saffron. The caliph sat down by the pool, sent all attending courtiers and servants away, seated Maʿbad on the opposite side of the basin behind a curtain and ordered him to sing some songs. Maʿbad obeyed and started to sing. The caliph listened and got after a while so entranced that he pushed the curtain aside, took off his perfumed cloak and plunged into the pool to drink a few sips of water. Then he sat down again, put on another cloak and asked Maʿbad again to sing a few verses. Afterwards, the caliph rewarded

16 17

Idem: 79-80. Idem: 80-82.

18

Historical background him with 15,000 dinars but at the same time he made Maʿbad understand to keep silent about what he had seen.18 This story is not only interesting because it provides insight into the discretion that was expected of musicians and the high rewards they could receive but also because it refers to a particular practice at the court, namely making musicians play behind a curtain, a practice originally from Sasanid Persia that was later introduced at the court of the Abbasids in Baghdad and that of the Moors in Spain and possibly even at the court of the Spanish King Philip V. Every night for about twenty years, when the monarch laid himself down to rest, he had his court singer Farinelli, standing behind a curtain, sing a few arias. The story about Maʿbad’s concert for caliph al-Walīd II is indicative of the hedonistic lifestyle of the future Umayyads, their unbridled hedonism and their extravagance. The consequences of their conduct were of course disastrous. In 750 one Abū-l-ʿAbbās seized power and had the whole family of the Umayyads killed. Only one member, ʿAbdu-r-Raḥmān managed to escape the massacre. He fled to Spain, where the Arabs had been reigning already for forty years, and established there a new Umayyad dynasty, which would reign Andalusia for another three centuries. The Golden Age of the Abbasids (eighth and ninth centuries) The new dynasty founded by Abū-l-ʿAbbās (reg. 750-754) would control the Arab world for more than five centuries. The civic center was no longer Damascus but a more eastern situated, newly built city: Baghdad. It was founded in 762 by caliph al-Manṣūr and developed ever since rapidly as well as economically as politically and culturally into a metropolis. The flowering period of the new empire encompassed roughly the last decades of the eighth and the first of the ninth century and coincided largely with the reign of caliph Hārūn ar-Rašīd (reg. 786 - 809), the monarch known in the West by ´The Tales of a Thousand and One Night’ and his alleged relationship with Charlemagne. The seat of the government from which the vast Arab Empire was ruled, displayed an unsurpassed opulence and sophistication. Yet its spiritual climate, in which art and science could prosper and the greatest musical and literary talents could flourish undisturbed, was perhaps more important. Our knowledge about the musical life during the Golden Age of the Abbasids is largely owed to the aforementioned writer Abū-l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (897-967). He was born in Isfahan and died seventy years later in Baghdad. Little is known about his life but we know that he was a man of the world, a libertine and a feared and sharp satirist. His life’s work, the ‘Book of Songs’, gives a detailed overview of the history of Arab music that starts in the pre-Islamic period and ends at the time of the early Abbasids. It is organized as an anthology of song texts, each one accompanied by a variety of information about the composer, the poet or details about the creation of the song. Al-Iṣfahānī put about a hundred musicians on the stage from the end of the sixth to the ninth century. All song texts are also complemented with some concise instructions on melody and rhythm but these are too short to get an idea of the ​​ original song melody. Al-Iṣfahānī has collected his data by gathering oral information from friends 18

Jargy, 1971:28-29.

19

Arab Music and descendants of singers and by referring numerous other writers, whose works he cites precisely and comprehensively. Many of these original works have been lost and it is only due to the ‘Book of Songs’ that certain fragments are handed down. Al-Iṣfahānī treats his sources very carefully. So he consistently mentions all versions of a story known to him, corrects obvious errors and mentions trustfully when he could not retrieve or verify certain data. The most important information for his work came from ‘The Great Book of Songs’ (Kitāb al-aġānī al-kabīr) by Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī (767-850), who has entered history as the greatest musician of the early Abbasid period. For the format and structure of his book al-Iṣfahānī took another work as a model, namely ‘The hundred selected songs’ (Al-mi’at ṣawt al-muḳtara) by Isḥāq’s father Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣīlī (742-804). As a third source may be mentioned ‘The Book of Songs’ (Kitāb fi-l-aġānī) by Prince Ibrāhīm al-Mahdī (d. 839), a contemporary of Isḥāq Mawṣilī and moreover his great rival. It took Al-Iṣfahānī several decades to write his book. Once finished, he received great appreciation from his contemporaries. From the ruler of Syria, Sayf ad-Dawla (reg. 944 -. 967), who held court in Aleppo and was renowned as a protector of the arts and sciences, he received a thousand pieces of gold as a reward. Shortly thereafter caliph Ḥakam II al-Mustanṣir (reg. 961 -. 976), who reigned in Córdoba, sent him the same amount of money. Music at the court of Harun ar-Rasid Due to the ‘Book of Songs’ we can sketch a fairly detailed picture of the important role that music played in the ninth century at the court of the caliph in Baghdad, a role that reaches back to the ancient Persian court.19 The Persian rulers regarded music as an integral part of court ceremony. The three ranks that were open for musicians in the court hierarchy were probably adopted from the Persians. The highest rank was reserved for the best singers, the lowest – as a rule - for the instrumentalists. The musicians worked in rotation according to a duty list (nawba); they had to be present on fixed days. The more beloved a musician was, the higher his rank and the more often he had to stay in the immediate vicinity of the caliph. Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī, the favorite musician of Hārūn ar-Rašīd, was expected to be present permanently. So the position of the musicians at the court of the Abbasids differed significantly from the one they had during the reign of the Umayyads. In Baghdad the position of a court musician was fiercely coveted, for which only the most talented and best trained musicians were eligible. Initially the best training programs were offered in Medina and Mecca but gradually Baghdad became important. It was here that Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣīlī (743-804), a Persian musician of noble origin, trained in Mosul and Basra, founded a music school that soon would outflank all other training centers. Music teaching was a profitable job for professional musicians. A well-trained qayna was worth many times more than what her owner had invested in purchasing and training. Ibrāhīm alMawsili had probably made his pile with his school and had no trouble paying 30,000 dirhams, plus many precious gifts, to ʿĀtika bint Šuhda for his son’s musical training that lasted seven years. 19 For a more detailed account of the court music and the musical life in the Abbasid era, see, Sawa, 1989 and Neubauer, 1965.

20

Historical background Music education was extensive and thorough. It did not only include musical techniques such as singing, instrumental playing and composition but also theology, law, medicine and literature. A good general knowledge was essential for a court musician. The caliph demanded a lot from the members of his court. When the affairs of state were done, he wanted to be distracted and amused not only by singing and playing but also by pleasant and interesting conversations. The musician often was the nadīm, the companion of the caliph, who knew to combine good manners with a pleasant and witty conversation. He had to be well versed in literature, poetry and various branches of science, be acquainted with the preparation of food and drinks and had to know how to play chess and to breed horses. Some medical knowledge was appreciated as well as a high degree of generosity. It goes without saying that only a few courtiers met the high demands of the caliph. Those who did got a very special position at the court. For many years the aforementioned Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣīlī was Hārūn ar-Rašīd’s nadīm, companion. After his death in 804 his son, Isḥāq, acquired the same position of trust by the side of the caliph and his successors. Generally the musicians came in action only at the end of the day when the state affairs were done. The usual term for a musical gathering was majlis aṭ-ṭarab. As a rule it took place at a predetermined time but it could also be spontaneously organized. It was held in the caliph’s private rooms, in the palace gardens or during a boat-trip on the Tigris. The majlis had sometimes an official character; on these occasions the musicians were separated from the caliph and his guests by a veil. When the atmosphere became more relaxed, the caliph ordered the curtain to be slid aside. The curtain was not used on less formal occasions or when the caliph himself wanted to play, as caliph al-Wāthiq (reg. 842 - 847) eagerly did. The majlis took place according to a fixed pattern, in which all musicians – in order of their rank – sang a song. In the break between two songs the caliph drank a raṭl20 wine. When everyone had had his turn, a second round (dawr, lit. round, or nawba, lit. turn) was held, although it did not often take place, as the caliph could order a musician to repeat a song that particularly pleased him one or several times. Besides he was sometimes halfway through the first dawr already as drunk as a fiddler. For the most part the songs were executed by one performer; choral singing did not occur but sometimes the song text required antiphonal performance. The song repertoire, from which the choice was extensive, included both old and new songs. Regularly the caliph commissioned a new song that had to be ready the next day or sometimes the same evening. For new compositions that turned out to be popular, regal rewards were given. The more delight the caliph took in a song, the more often he had it repeated. Consequently, he ignored musicians whose compositions appealed less to him. At a majlis the art of improvisation was incidentally practised, often as a sort of a musical contest. A majlis did not proceed according to fixed rules. Serious and cheerful songs, fast and slow ones were sung without any order. As a rule, the caliph himself chose the next song but sometimes he granted the choice to the musician whose turn it was.

20

A unit of weight, corresponding to the weight of a quarter litre of wine.

21

Arab Music Generally a singer accompanied himself on his instrument, which was usually a plucked instrument such as the ʿūd, the ṭunbūr (lute with a long neck) or miʿzafa (lyre). The bowed rabāb, a precursor of our violin, was not played at the court; it was regarded as a rural instrument. Sometimes a musician performed his song murtajilan (improvised). This term could among others mean that he sang without any accompaniment or that he himself performed a rhythmical accompaniment on the daff (frame drum) or the qaḍīb (stick). Even if the musical background was provided by another musician, the performance was called murtajilan. Instrumentalists were less highly regarded than vocalists. Instrumental music as an autonomous genre did not exist; instruments served to accompany the singer and to play introductions and interludes. A good all-round musician himself played his own accompaniment. Instrumentalists therefore were regarded as flawed singers. However, there were of course exceptions, such as the lute player Zalzal and the flutist Barṣawmā, who were highly esteemed and loved at the time of Hārūn ar-Rašīd. Their repertoire presumably consisted of improvisations, instrumental arrangements of songs and possibly autonomous instrumental solo pieces. The combination of two instruments giving contrasting timbres, such as nāy and ʿud, is once mentioned in the ‘Book of Songs’ as accompaniment for a song. Autonomous instrumental ensembles, with the exception of the military band, are nowhere explicitly mentioned. Music was also an important topic of conversation at a majlis; performed compositions were elucidated, commented on and criticized, furthermore all kinds of theoretical and practical subjects of music were discussed. A favorite subject of dispute was the question how faithful a song was executed to its style. There were two opposite opinions. One was voiced by the professional musician Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī, the other by Ibrāhīm al-Mahdī, an extremely talented amateur musician and Hārūn ar-Rašīd’s half-brother. Isḥāq clung to his opinion that classical works had to be performed as faithful as possible to their original style. He blamed Ibrāhīm for his disrespect in this matter and for his desire to play to the gallery. But Ibrāhīm al-Mahdī did not care what the other thought: ‘I am a prince, and the son of a prince, and I sing as I please. I choose from the classical repertoire what appeals to me; I practice the art of singing for my pleasure and not as a profession; I sing for myself, not for others.’21 To this the professional musician Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī had no answer.22 Al-Iṣfahānī has paid much attention in the ‘Book of Songs’ to this conflict between Isḥāq alMawṣīlī and Ibrāhīm al-Mahdī, a conflict that several researchers later attempted to define by dichotomies such as conservative-progressive, classic-romantic, or as Arab-Persian. All these differences -as well as personal animosity- were perhaps involved. In any case, after the death of both musicians the battle was over and done. Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī is still known as the greatest musician of Arab music. He is portrayed in the ‘Book of Songs’ as an all-round musician, known for his great memory. He seemed to known over a thousand songs. He was also a prolific composer, who would have composed between four hundred and six hundred songs.23 Jargy, 1971: 39. For a (German) translation of relevant correspondence between Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī and Ibrāhīm al-Mahdī, see Neubauer,1965: 64-70. 23 Farmer: 124-126. 21 22

22

Historical background He received part of his education at his father, Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣīlī’s school but was also taught by the qayna ʿĀtika bint Šuhda and the lute player Zalzal. Later on he taught a great number of students himself. His voice was not exceptionally beautiful; his performance and expression on the other hand were second to none, as well as his knowledge of the classical repertoire. He was not only a performer of music but also a composer and a musicologist; he collected songs and biographical data of many musicians. Later writers on music regard him as the founder of the Arab music theory. Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī was a man of universal knowledge and possessed great qualities in many areas outside the music. He was well-versed in literature, possessed an extensive library (eighteen boxes of books) and was known as a competent and honest lawyer, which caliph al-Ma’mūm (reg. 813-833) made sigh: Were Isḥāq not so publicly known as a musician, I would have appointed him a judge (qāḍī), for he is more deserving of it than any of the judges that we now have, and he surpasses them all in virtuous conduct, piety and honesty.’24 He enjoyed great fame as a diplomat. One of the tales of the ‘Thousand and One Nights’ recounts how he was sent by the caliph to Basrah on a mission to find out why the taxes were not paid on time and to induce the local commander to comply with his financial obligations. From the early days of the Abbasids the names of many musicians have come to us thanks to al-Iṣfahānī, but here we will only mention Zalzal (d. 791), in his day the greatest lute virtuoso. He was Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣīlī’s personal accompanist. One of the most important musical deeds that are attributed to him is the reform of the tuning system and the introduction of the socalled neutral or Zalzalian third (a third that lies in between the major and the minor diatonic third). Zalzal would also have designed a new type of lute (al-ʿūd aš-šabbūt = the fish-shaped lute), smaller, narrower and shallower than the hitherto usual Persian lute. Zalzal’s life was not always easy. For more than ten years he was held on bread and water in the dungeon, because – for unknown reasons – he had brought the anger of the caliph on himself. The emergence of Andalusia In the history of Arab music the ninth century is not only the era of great prosperity in Baghdad and the rest of the Middle East, it was also the century in which the foundation of a musical culture was laid on the Iberian Peninsula. Its tracks can still be found in the entire Arab world. This foundation could take place after the Arab conquest of North Africa in the second half of the seventh century and the subjugation of the Iberian Peninsula – named al-Andalus (Andalusia) after its former conquerors, the Vandals – at the beginning of the eighth century. In 755 ʿAbdu-r-Raḥmān, the last descendant of the Umayyads, disembarked here. He had narrowly escaped from ʿAbbās, who had the Umayyad family murdered several years earlier. ʿAbdu-r-Raḥmān proved himself an able ruler and soldier and he knew to get power in Spain in a short time. His successors brought Spain to prosperity. Their power and prestige increased in the following ages to the extent that ʿAbdu-r-Raḥmān III (reg. 912 - 961) adopted the title of Caliph, to which he felt to be entitled by his pedigree. By this act he defied the sovereignty 24

Farmer, 1929: 124.

23

Arab Music of Baghdad’s caliph and brought about the separation of the Arab Empire into an Eastern and a Western Caliphate. In 1031 the power of the Umayyad caliphs in the West comes to an end, and politically Spain falls apart into a number of petty kingdoms that deplete each other by endless quarrels. In the period form the thirteenth century till the end of the fifteenth century the poitical power of the Arabs declined and finally led to the definite loss of Spain for the Arabs in 1492. The beginning of the Andalusian music tradition: Ziryāb The history of Arab music in Spain may be started in 822, when the singer Ziryāb (789 - 850) made his appearance at the court of Córdoba. Ziryāb, whose real name was Abū-l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Nāfiʿ, came from Baghdad, where he was one of Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī’s most promising students. His musical talent might even have been so great that Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī saw his own career in jeopardy and driven by jealousy he plagued Ziryāb’s life out to such an extent that Ziryāb went to try his luck elsewhere. Through Aleppo and North Africa, Ziryāb finally settled in Córdoba, where he joined the Umayyad prince ʿAbdu-r-Raḥmān III and became his favorite musician. This ultimate biography was only written down in the seventeenth century by alMaqqarī in his ‘The Breath of Perfume’ (Nafḥ aṭ-ṭīb) after having been increasingly exaggerated in the preceding centuries. Al-Maqqarī narrated that Ziryāb’s musical memory was huge and included ten thousand songs. He was also a talented lute player and is said to have added a fifth string to the instrument. Ziryāb was not just a performer, like many other major Arab musicians, but also an outstanding teacher. He founded a conservatory, where many qiyān received their training. As a result Spain was gradually able to fulfill its own need for skilled musicians. The supply of singers from Medina thereby gradually declined and musicians, who were trained in Andalusia, were more and more often employed in North Africa. In the Arab historiography Ziryāb is considered to be the founder of a specifically Western Arab music idiom. This idiom also denoted as Hispano-Arabic or Arabo-Andalusian differs in several respects from the eastern one. Most typical is the absence of the third of Zalzal (the third that lies in between the minor and the major diatonic third). In fact, only the Pythagorean diatonic tuning is practised in the West. Another difference relates to the structure, extent and terminology of the melodic-modal system. A characteristic genre in the Western Arabic idiom is above all the nawba, a vocal suite that comprises several movements, each typified by a specific rhythmic pattern. However, there are no data based on which Ziryāb’s contribution to the creation of this specific Western Arabic idiom can actually be determined. It is very likely that he was known in his time as a striking and colorful personality, as a gifted poet, astronomer and geographer whose choice in clothes, table manners and etiquette set the tone at court. Ziryāb presumably died in the middle of the ninth century. Music theory During the course of the ninth century an independent Arab music theory evolved. Al-Kindī and Ibn al-Munajjim were the first theorists whose treatises have been preserved. Al-Kindī (ca. 790 - ca. 874) received his training as a physician and philosopher in Basrah and Baghdad and then worked at the court of various caliphs. He maintained close contacts with the scholars of the bayt al-ḥikma, the ‘House of Wisdom’, which was founded in 830 in Baghdad 24

Historical background with a view to translating and studying scientific works handed down from classical antiquity. Among the writings that were translated from Greek via Syriac into Arabic, were also many treatises on music because the Mousiké was considered in Greek and Hellenistic antiquity as a science. Al-Kindī was one of the first theorists who studied it and elaborated on it in his treatises. In these treatises he develops his ideas on music based on his natural philosophy, and his views on the cosmological relations of music. Like the Greek natural philosophers he believed that the cosmos was structured according to harmonic ratios that could be found among others in the ratios of string lengths and the corresponding diatonic tones. The diatonic series of seven tones in the octave was therefore regarded as a reflection of the system of the seven celestial bodies, which were in tonal order: Saturn (g), Jupiter (a), Mars (b), Venus (c), Mercury (d), the sun (e) and the moon (f). In his cosmological conception an important place is reserved for the lute, of which he explains in detail the structure and the ratios. Thus the shape of the body reflects the vault of heaven, and the four strings of the lute, along with the four pegs and the four finger positions (including the open string) correspond to the twelve elements that correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Furthermore, al-Kindī relates the four strings of the lute with the seasons, the four elements - earth, water, air and fire - and the four humors (humores) - black bile, phlegm, yellow bile and blood. To the physician al-Kindī, the latter relation undeniably proves the therapeutic effects and healing power of music. Al-Kindī’s cosmological ideas lived a long life in the Arab music theory. They were adopted practically unchanged by the Iḳwān as-Ṣafā’ (The Pure Brethren), a group of four philosophers who wrote down in the second half of the tenth century their philosophical ideas in a series of fifty-two letters, one of which about music. The idea that music reflects the harmonious beauty of the universe has been developed here. Knowledge of this beauty and the basic laws of musical harmony eventually lead to the understanding of the secrets of creation. For that matter, al-Kindī used the four-stringed lute only for his philosophical and cosmological speculations. But he used the five-stringed lute to illustrate the Arab tone system of his time. The added string made it possible for the lutist to make use of a tone range of at least two octaves. Al-Kindī displays the tones as finger positions on a string, a method that since then has become standard in Arab music. Al-Kindī’s tone system is diatonic and based on the Pythagorean tuning; in short it means that a diatonic octave range is made up of two basic tone steps: the major second with a size of 204 cents25 (chord ratio 9:8) and the minor second with a size of 90 cents (chord ratio of 256:243). A chromatic octave range is obtained by dividing the major seconds of the diatonic octave range into two minor seconds of unequal size, respectively 90 and 114 cents.

25 In Arabic treatises tone distances are expressed in terms of string ratios often written as fractions containing a lot of digits. Nowadays tone distances may be conveniently measured in ‘cents’, a logarithmic interval unit. Measured by this unit the distance of a tone to its octave amounts to 1200 cents. In modern equal temperament the semitone amounts to 100 cents and the whole tone to 200 cents.

25

Arab Music cent

frequency ratio

88mutlaq8(open8string)8........08...........818:818

G

c

f

b♭

e♭

90

mujannab8(neighbour)8....908......82568:8243 888888888888888888

A♭

d♭

g♭

b

e

A

d

g

c

f

B♭

e♭

a♭

d♭

g♭

B

e

a

d

g

c

f

b♭

e♭

a♭

114

sabbāba8(forefinger)....82048...........898:88 90

wusṭā8(middle8finger)...82948.......83288:827 114

binṣir8(ring8finger)8.......8408888......8818:864 90

kinṣir8(little8finger)8.......8498888........838:84

The location of the tones on the lute according to al-Kindī’s tone system. bamm maṯnā maṯla zīr

ḥadd

Al-Kindī made [ al-Kindi ] mainly an inventory of the pitch material, whereas Ibn al-Munajjim (855/6 -912) gave in a short treatise some insight into the modal system of Arab music in the ninth century. His explanation is a representation of pitches and modes as fingerings on the lute. Thereby he differentiates two groups of four modes. The first group is characterized by a tetrachord with a minor third that is situated between the open string and the position of the middle finger on the same string. The second group has a major third for which the fourth finger is used. The names of the modes are rather cumbersome. A mode is defined by two components: 1. 2.

the iṣbaʿ (finger), viz. the position of the mode’s characteristic tone (basic or final tone?), and the majrā (course, ‘fingering’) viz. the quality of the third (minor or major) taken the open string as the lower tone.

26

Historical background This means that a phrase like sabbāba fī majrā al-wusṭā (index finger with the fingering of the middle finger) denotes a mode typified by a minor third relative to the open string and where the index finger tone (finalis) is placed on the position of the major second. Unfortunately, Ibn al-Munajjim does not mention, how the eight modes are in fact composed. That was apparently a matter of course. Now, so many centuries later, that is no longer obvious and despite many attempts no satisfactory hypothesis could have been formulated about the precise structure of the eight individual modes. Al-Munajjim’s treatise is interesting too because, as he himself states, it is based on information from his teacher Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī, who got it directly from the aforementioned Meccan Ibn Misjāḥ. This suggests that the traditional Arab modal system originally was diatonic and it was only later supplanted by or adapted to a different tone system that had the Zalzalian third as an important feature. In the tenth century, this system, which is likely to be of Persian or

mutlaq (open string)

c

c

wusṭā (middle finger)

e♭

binṣir (ring finger)

e

kinṣir (fourth finger)

f

d

e♭

204 cents

d

204 cents

sabbāba (forefinger)

d♭

90 cents

d♭

204 cents

mujannab (neighbour)

204 cents

e 90 cents

majrā al-wusṭā

fingering of the fourth with minor third

f

majrā al-binṣir

fingering of the fourth with major third

27

Fingering of the eight tones of the eight modes, according to alMunajjim.

Arab Music Central Asian origin, had been described for the first time by al-Fārābī. So it may be assumed that it was already known in the ninth century or even earlier in the Arab world, although it is unclear how widespread it was. Al-Iṣfahānī, al-Fārābī’s slightly younger contemporary, occasionally wrote down the name of the melodic mode of the songs that he collected in his ‘Book of Songs’. Yet all these modes still belong to the traditional Arab diatonic tuning system. Al-Iṣfahānī made no reference to the modes of the new tuning system, not even where modern songs were involved.26 The tenth to the thirteenth century As far as we know now, two important developments took place in Arab music culture at the beginning of this period. In the Mashriq we see the probably gradual replacement of the traditional Arab tone system by the Persian system and the attempt to define mathematically its pitches within the Pythagorean tuning system. In the Maghreb we may observe the emergence and spread of the muwaššaḥ, a vocal music genre that is practised to this day in many parts of the Arab world. In the second half of the tenth century the secular power of the caliph comes to an end in the Mashriq and the Arab Empire collapses. Meanwhile Aleppo and Cairo have developed into major administrative centers, where new rulers live in great wealth and luxury and compete in splendor with the court of Baghdad. Music played a major role in these cities. It provided not only entertainment, but also served to exhibit wealth, good taste and the erudition of the ruler. Music may also have had a political purpose, i.e. to emphasize the independence of the monarch from the religious leaders, who time and again kept going on at the secular rulers about taking the Islam as a guide for their political and moral actions. For as soon as religious leaders made their influence felt at a court, all kinds of ascetic measures were immediately taken, including often a general ban on musical performances. In contrast, at courts where the religious leaders had less influence, musicians were always welcomed with open arms. The aforementioned Sayf ad-Dawla (d. 929 in Aleppo) enjoyed the greatest fame as a promoter of arts and music. He granted hospitality to numerous scholars and artists, including two of the most important persons in Arab music history: alIṣfahānī and al-Fārābī. Music theory in the Mashriq Abu-l-Faraj Al-Fārābī Our knowledge of the musical practice of this period is based mainly on the surviving contemporary music theoretical writings. The most important texts are those written by the philosopher al-Fārābī (ca. 870-950). He was probably born in Turkestan, but received his training mostly in Baghdad. In this city he led a very austere and solitary life, about which hardly anything is known. He spent his last years in Aleppo. His major work on music is The following passage is one of thousands of examples where Al-Iṣfahānī mentions the rhythmic and melodic modes: ‘The poem is by Ḏū al-Rumma, and the melody is by al-Wāṯiq bi-Allāh in the ramal rhythmic mode and the melodic mode of the open maṯnā string as tonic in the course of the middle finger fret according to al-Hišāmī. And Isḥāq [alMawṣilī] set these two lines to a melody in the ramal rhythmic mode and the melodic mode of the index finger of the maṯnā string as tonic in the course of the ring finger fret.’ See: Kitāb al-Aġānī (1927: IX, 278)

26

28

Historical background the ‘Grand Book of Music’ (Kitāb al-mūsīqī al-kabīr), which gives an impressive picture of his knowledge in this field and of his critical thinking and ideas. The treatise consists of three sections and is preceded by an extensive introduction in which topics such as musicality, music education, the effect of music on human beings, and acoustics are discussed. The first section deals with the physics of music, the ‘new’ tone system, which is adopted from the Persians, and the temporal aspects of music. Musical instruments are the main topic of the second section. First, the lute is discussed in detail, then several other string instruments, including the Persian long-necked ṭunbūr baġdādī and the ṭunbūr ḳurāsānī, and finally instruments like the mizmār, the surnāy and the mi’zafa. For the first time in musical history a section is devoted to a bowed instrument, the rabāb. Unfortunately, al-Fārābī gives no information about the technique of bowing, which, at the time, had existed for about one hundred years. At the end of this second section Al-Fārābī shows how the tone system, explained in the first section, might be applied to various instruments. In the third section Al-Fārābī elaborates on the topics of melody and rhythm, and defines the traditional Arab rhythmic cycles. Finally, topics like composition, setting texts to melodies, and the effects of melodies on human beings are discussed. Al-Fārābī, is averse to cosmological speculation, unlike al-Kindi. In his opinion music is a purely human property, which originates from the natural desire of people to express themselves by means of sounds, and which has to do with qualities like talent, intellect, creativity and emotion. Music emerges in two phases: first as a mental image and then physically as sound, produced by the human voice or a musical instrument. Consequently, music can’t have anything to do with the influence of the cosmos. There are different types of music and each of them has a special effect on the human spirit. A lot of music is pure entertainment, but there is also music that stimulates our imagination, so that we form mental ideas. Finally, there is music that touches our emotions and arouses our passions. Perfect music is music that influences the mind in all three ways. Al-Fārābī regularly invites the reader to test his theories by practical experience. Unfortunately, this is not possible for the modern reader, not only because we don’t know anymore what music was played in al-Fārābī’s time but also because due to his style of writing some parts of his theories remain puzzling. A substantial part of al-Fārābī’s work is devoted to the computation of pitches and the structure of the tone system. A new element in his theory is the wusṭa al-Zalzal or Zalzal’s third, which is the interval halfway between minor and major third, and one of the most characteristic features of Arab music. Although named after the musician Zalzal, it was probably practised long before in the music of the Middle East. However, earlier Arabic music theorists like alKindī ignored its existence, probably because this third, being of Persian origin, did not figure in the Hellenistic music theory and/or the traditional Arab music tradition. Anyway, al-Fārābī was the first theorist who recorded the use of this third in musical practice. He proposed the ratio of 27:22 (354 cents) between the lengths of two strings for this third.27 27

Al-Fārābī twice discusses the Zalzalian third of 354 cents (see Erlanger, 1930:48, 172), but later on in his treatise

29

Arab Music Presumably a great variety of thirds existed at the time in musical practice, or was subject to theoretical discussion. Al-Fārābī defines at least another three thirds. Using the contemporary ‘finger’ terminology on the lute, he mentioned: • the wusṭā al-qadīm (the old [fret of the] middle finger), i.e. the Pythagorean minor third which has a string ratio 32:27 (294 cents); • the wusṭā al-furs (the Persian [fret of the] middle finger), i.e. the Persian minor third which has a string ratio 81:68 (302 cents); • the binṣir (the [fret of the] ring finger), i.e. the Pythagorean major third, which has a string ratio 81:64 (408 cents). Al-Fārābī also lists several seconds, including the Pythagorean major second (9:8; 204 cents) and the Pythagorean minor second (243:256; 90 cents). His method to determine tone distances is not very elegant theoretically and lacks the consistency of the Pythagorean system, according to which all pitches are calculated by one and the same computational procedure. For al-Fārābī uses a trick to determine some pitches, e.g. the wusṭā al-furs, by not calculating them arithmetically like most of the other pitches, but geometrically, by dividing in two the distance on the lute neck between the sabbāba (major second: 204 cents) and the ḳinsir (perfect fourth: 498 cents). He used a similar trick to determine the seconds of 98, 145 and 168 cents. Several attempts have been made after alFārābī to eliminate this methodological imperfection and to establish a methodologically more coherent system. Finally Ṣāfī ad-Dīn al-Urmawī succeeded in achieving this in the thirteenth century. Al-Fārābī’s contribution in the field of musical rhythm was fundamental. He broke with the habit of representing musical rhythmic patterns in terms of poetic meter. Instead, he laid the foundation for a modern ‘metric’ system, in which, as was done later in Western European music, the ‘beat’ is taken as the basic time unit, and the number of time units indicates the length of a rhythmic pattern (īqāʿ).28 He marked each single time unit as a beat or a rest. Al-Fārābī developed his rhythmic-metric system in three treatises. An important study he quoted and commented on for defining the basic īqāʿāt is Ishāq al-Mawsili’s ‘Book on the Composition of Notes and Melodic Modes’, which unfortunately is lost. For his description of the īqāʿāt, Al-Fārābī relies in his first study, ‘The Grand Book on Music’, heavily on prosody, which makes it difficult to understand the rhythmic patterns, explained in it. Probably he was not very satisfied with this study, as he decided to devote a separate treatise to the subject. This resulted in ‘The Book of Rhythms’ (Kitāb al-īqāʿāt) and later in ‘The Book for the Basic Comprehension of Rhythms’ (Kitāb iḥṣā’ al-īqāʿāt).29 The rhythmic patterns (īqāʿāt), described in these treatises, are explained clearly and notated in a way, which makes it easy to translate them into modern musical notation. The concept of īqāʿ , however, should not be equated to

(Erlanger, 1930:188-ss) he presents also an alternative Zalzalian third of 318 cents. 28 In Western music the time is indicated at the beginning of a composition as a fraction. The denominator indicates the chosen unit of measurement (½ = h; ¼ = q, ⅛ = e, enz.), the numerator the number of such units comprised in a measure (2, 3, 4, etc.). 29 For an English translation, see Sawa, 2009. German translation in Neubauer, 1998.

30

Historical background cent

string ratio

muṭlaq .................................... 0 .............. 1 : 1

G

c

f

b♭

e♭

.......................... 90 .......... 256 : 243 .......................... 98 .............18 : 17

A♭

d♭

g♭

b

e

.........................145 ...........162 : 149

A♭

d♭

g♭

c♭

f♭

sabbāba ............................. 204 .............. 9 : 8

A

d

g

c

f

wusṭā al-qadīm ................... 294 .......... 32 : 27 wusṭā al-furs ...................... 302 ........... 81 : 68

B♭

e♭

a♭

d♭

g♭

wusṭā al-Zalzal .................. 354 .......... 27 : 22

B♭

e♭

a♭

d♭

g♭

binṣir .................................. 408 .......... 81 : 64

B

e

a

d

g

kinṣir .................................. 498 ............ 3 : 4

c

f

b♭

e♭

a♭

mujannab

.........................168 ............ 54 : 49

bamm maṯnā maṯla zīr

ḥadd

The positions of the tones on the ʿūd according to al-Fārābī’s tuning system.

[ al-Farabi ]

the modern Western notion of meter. It is a more complex concept that also includes rhythm, dynamics, tempo, and to a certain extent phrasing and mood. Al-Fārābī makes a distinction between īqāʿāt that are ḳafīf (fast; lit.: light), ḳafīf ṯaqīl (medim tempo, ‘andante’?; lit.: fast-slow), and ṯaqīl (slow; lit.: heavy). They are defined as a series of equally spaced attacks, followed by a rest, which is called the separator (faṣl). Fast īqāʿāt may be rendered in modern notation as series of consecutive eight notes ( e ) ending on eight rest ( E ), īqāʿāt of medium tempo as a series of quarter notes ( q )ending on a quarter rest ( Q) and slow īqāʿāt as consecutive series of half notes ( h) ending on a half rest (Q Q). Al-Fārābī defines the seven basic patterns, mentioned by Ishāq al-Mawsili, by presenting each of them as two cycles:

31

62 Pagina 62 ArabPagina Music al –hazaj: al –hazaj:

ee e e e E| ^8|e e ^8 e|e ee E |e ee eEe| e e e E| ḳafīf ar-ramal (light ḳafīf ar-ramal (light ramal ) ramal )

#4|q q #4Q|q|qq qQ Q|q| q Q | ar-ramal:ar-ramal:

#2|h h#2|hQ Qh |hQ Q h |hQ Qh | Q Q

|

aṯ-ṯaqīl al-awwal (first heavy): aṯ-ṯaqīl al-awwal (first heavy):

h Qh |hQ Q h |hh hQ Qh | Q Q | $2|h h$2|h h Q ḳafīfal-awwal aṯ-ṯaqīl al-awwal (first light heavy): ḳafīf aṯ-ṯaqīl (first light heavy):

$4|q q $4q|qQ q|qq qQ q|qQ q| q Q | aṯ-ṯaqīl(second aṯ-ṯanī (second aṯ-ṯaqīl aṯ-ṯanī heavy): heavy):

%2|h

%2h|h h h h hQ Qh |hQ Q h |hh hh hQ Qh | Q Q

ḳafīfaṯ-ṯanī aṯ-ṯaqīl(second aṯ-ṯanī (second light heavy): ḳafīf aṯ-ṯaqīl light heavy):

|

The seven rhythmical patterns (īqāʿāt) described by al-Fārābī.30

%4|q q %4q|qq qQ q|qq qQ q|qq qQ q| q Q |

Al-Fārābī does not make a distinction between light and heavy beats, like the dumm and tak in today’s practice, but he explains a number of ways in which the basic patterns may be varied. One way is to change the faṣl of the uneven cycle into an attack. It is called ‘passage’ (majāz) and leads up for instance for aṯ-ṯaqīl aṯ-ṯanī to the following pattern: %2|h h h h h |h h h h Q Q |. Another variation technique is ‘doubling’ (taḏʿīf) one or more specific attacks. For instance, by doubling the first and seconds attacks, ar-ramal becomes: #2|q q q q QQ|q q q q Q Q |. The opposite of doubling is called ‘dropping out’ (ṭayy). By this variation technique, aṯ-ṯaqīl aṯ-ṯanī may be changed to %2|h h Q Q h Q Q |h h Q Q h Q Q | or %2|h Q Q h h Q Q |h Q Q h h Q Q |. Still other variation techniques are change of tempo, multiplying and ‘heterogeneity’ (muḳālafa), Multiplication consist of changing an attack into two attacks within the same duration (q  e e ) ; heterogeneity occurs when within the unit of two patterns, the first and second are varied on a different way. A final treatise of al-Fārābī that should be mentioned here is ‘The Classification of the Sciences’ (Iḥṣā’ al-ʿulūm). It became known in Europe in a Latin translation titled ‘De scientiis’ (‘On sciences’) and includes a chapter on music, ‘De divisione musicae secundum Alpharabium’ (The classification of music [science] according to Alpharabius), which gives an overview of the extent and branches of music theory. We may call it a musicological paradigm. While dealing with Arab music theory, a few centuries later it appeared to be relevant to the theory of music that developed in Europe, as it was fully included in the treatise De musica written by Jerome of Moravia in the thirteenth century.

30

See Sawa, 1989: 41-45.

32

Historical background Other music-theoretical treatises, written in the period from the tenth to the thirteenth century, have also been preserved. None, however, displayed al-Fārābī’s innovative originality. In many cases they consisted of extensive quotations or summaries of his work. A treatise written by the West-Arabian philosopher and musician Ibn Bājja – known in the West as Avempace (? -1139) – is unfortunately lost. In the eyes of his contemporaries it was as important as al-Fārābī’s ‘The Grand Book on Music’. Among the more original writings that have been preserved are those of al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad and Ibn Sīnā; these will be briefly discussed below. Al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad Little is known about al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad. He probably lived in northern Syria in the first half of the eleventh century and was a very gifted amateur singer. In his ‘Book of Perfection of Musical Knowledge’ (Kitāb kamāl adab al-ġinā’) 31 he discusses the human voice, its possibilities, qualities and use. He values vocal music as much nobler and more useful than instrumental music and he shows himself an ardent defender of the ‘old’ art of Isḥāq al-Mawṣīlī. The purpose of his book is to develop the good taste of both the musician and the listener and he examines how perfection, as the ideal of music, could be reached. A necessary condition is to find a balance between practice and theory. Only in this way can both the listener and the musician reach ṭarab, the perfect ecstasy, and experience the harmony between feeling and intellect. As to the structure of the tone system, al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad falls back on al-Fārābī: he arranges the pitch material in three basic tetrachords with respectively a major, a neutral or Zalzalian, and a minor third (1-1 - ½, 1 - ¾ - ¾, 1 - ½ - 1). He also uses the classical Arabic modal terminology that goes back to al-Munajjim and al-Iṣfahānī. What is new is his arrangement of the melodic modes (ṭarā’iq, sing.: ṭarīq, way) in four main groups: muṭlaq, mazmūm, maḥmul and maḥṣūr, which remained in use in the Western tradition for many centuries. The four groups also occur in several West Arabian treatises which explain the relation between modes and cosmos. The name mazmūm is still in use as the name of a specific melodic mode in the Maghrebian classical music traditions. Ibn Sīnā Ibn Sīnā’s music treatise is not a separate volume but a chapter in his ‘Book of Healing’ (Kitāb aš-Šifā’), an encyclopedia of several volumes that can be considered the most comprehensive summary of Arab knowledge of the Middle Ages. The author, Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) is regarded as one of the greatest minds of the Arab world. He led a busy life as minister and advisor of several rulers and wrote a number of important books on philosophy and medicine. His writings on music, which deal with matters such as the structure of the tonal system, the calculation of intervals and the metric-rhythmic structure of music, reach back to al-Fārābī’s work, just as did al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad’s work. Only at the end of the chapter on music does he come up with something new by describing a number of melodic modes used in contemporary musical practice. These modes do not fit in with the system of al-Munajjim, nor in the related system of Ibn al-Ḥasan Aḥmad,32 but belong See Shiloah, 1972 for the translation of this treatise. Curiously al-Fārābī does not pay any attention in his ‘Grand Book on Music’ to the structure of the melodic modes and their relation to the contemporary musical practice.

31 32

33

Arab Music to the new originally Persian system. In the Mashriq this was certainly practised in the tenth century, but possibly introduced in the course of the eighth century. Ibn Sīnā is the first author who mentions the Persian names of some modes, like nawā, iṣfahān and salmakī; the names of other modes are given in Arabic translation, such as the mode mustaqīm, a translation of the Persian word rāst (right). The names of the modes rāst, iṣfahān and nawā are still in use in Arab music, although the corresponding modes did not remain the same. However, it will not be until the thirteenth century that we get a clear understanding of this new tone system, which was adopted by the East Arab musicians. Just like al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā rejects the idea of the cosmological origin of music. According to him, music has a biological basis. It evolved from the sounds that human beings and animals purposefully used as communication tools, ranging from mating calls to cries of alarm. Man in particular is capable of expressing his thoughts and feelings with his voice, and the function of music derives from this faculty in a natural way. The pleasure that we experience in music is also caused by the arrangement of the sound material, i.e. the tones, intervals and temporal cycles. It is the task of musicology to explain how this arrangement is ordered, and the greater part of his treatise is devoted to this project. Developments since the tenth century in the Maghreb In the centuries after Ziryab’s appearance in Andalusia a rich music culture flourished, mainly in the cities of Córdoba and Seville. Seville was known as a center of lute making and as a frivolous city, oriented towards entertainment; Córdoba had a somewhat more intellectual image. Many centuries later al-Maqqarī phrased this difference as follows: ‘If a scholar dies in Seville and people want to sell his books, then they send them to Córdoba to be sold. If a musician dies in Córdoba and they want to sell his instrument, then they carry it to Seville. Córdoba is the city with the most books.’ 33 The eleventh century was the main period in which the arts flourished; it was the epoch of the Taifas (small emirates), when the Umayyads had lost their power in the West, and Andalusia had fallen apart into many small states and kingdoms whose rulers rivaled with each other in splendor. When in 1236 Seville and in 1248 Córdoba finally surrendered to the Romance rulers, the cultural apogee was over once and for all. At that time Ibn Bājja, who was widely known not only as a poet and philosopher, but also as a composer and music theorist, had been dead for more than a century. And most of Ibn al-Ḥāsib’s melodies (he was active around 1200 and renowned as the most famous song composer of his time in Andalusia and the Maghreb) had already been forgotten by that time. On Andalusian music and Ibn Bājja’s important place in it we are informed by the Tunisian historian Aḥmad at-Tīfāšī (1184-1253) among others. In his encyclopedia ‘The Unerring Method for the Intelligent to Perceive with their Five Senses’ (Fasl al-hitāb fī madārik al-hawāss al-ḳams liūlī-l-bāb) he briefly records the following musical history. Initially, people in Andalusia sang in the manner of Arab camel drivers or of Christians. This changed with the arrival of the Arabs, and especially Ziryāb; his style found general acceptance. The great reformer after Ziryāb was Ibn Bājja, who brought about a synthesis between Christian and Arab music, and thus founded 33

See al-Maqqarī, 1968 I, 155.

34

Historical background a typical Andalusian music style. On the basis of at-Tīfāšī’s account we may deduce that in Andalusia Arabs, Moors and Christians participated more or less equally in a common musical life. This is also suggested by some miniatures in a thirteenth-century manuscript, composed by order of the Christian monarch Alfonso X (el Sabio, reg. 1252-1282), in which circa four hundred Cantigas de Santa Maria (songs in honor of Mary) are recorded. One of these miniatures shows two noblemen singing and playing together. One is undeniably a Christian, the other an Arab. Similar images may be found elsewhere, for instance in the ‘Libro de Juegos’ (The book of games), another manuscript commissioned by Alfonso X. Here we see how noblemen are playing chess while listening to female Christian and Moorish musicians who sing and play together. Finally, we know from court accounts that both Christian and Moorish musicians were employed by Alfonso’s son. Unfortunately, it is not known what kind of music they played; so the question to what extent the music of the Cantigas de Santa Maria may be understood as Romance, as Moorish or as a mixture of the two will probably remain unanswered, despite the frantic efforts which have been undertaken to define its character as Arab or, on the contrary, as Romance. The extent to which the various populations influenced each other and in this way contributed to an Andalusian musical symbiosis is obscure. There is no information about the music itself, but we know reasonably well what musical instruments were brought to Spain by the Arabs, and became known in Europe in the next centuries. In the first place we may mention the lute, whose Arabic name (al-ʿūd) was also adopted into the European languages in different hybrid ways. Other instruments, introduced in Europe, but fallen into disuse during the Middle Ages, are the micanon (from qānūn, a zither-like instrument whose name is also adopted from the Arabic), the rebec (a predecessor of the violin, from rabāb), the ajabeba (recorder, from aš-

12 Miniature from the Libro de los juegos. This Spanish book deals with chess and other games. It was written by order of Alfonso X (1221-1284) and displays numerous images of chess positions. Both Arabs and Christians, men and women are portrayed as players. On the right side of the miniature an Arab musician is depicted playing a 13-string harp. The form of the instrument and the way of playing that is depicted show hardly any difference from the Babylonian harp and the way it is handled in King Sennacherib’s time (ca. 705-681 BCE).

35

Arab Music šabāb) and nacaires (small kettledrums, from naqqārāt). Instruments of Arab origin still in use in Spanish folkmusic, are the gaita (oboe, from ġāyṭa), the pandera (frame drum, from bandīr) and string instruments called rebeu, rabalejo, or rabil, all descendants of the rabāb. An important Arab contribution to the music culture of Andalusia and then of Europe is the technique of using a bow on stringed instruments. This technique probably originated in the ninth century in Central Asia. The first European pictures of bowed instruments are of Spanish origin and date from the twelfth century. The new technique quickly spread throughout Europe. The main string instrument that developed in the following centuries is the violin, which in its turn slowly but surely gained a firm foothold in the Arab world in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and superseded traditional string instruments like the rabāb and the kamānja. A final Arab contribution to the music culture of Andalusia to be mentioned here is the muwaššaḥ. It is a strophic song that originated in the tenth century in Spain, became popular troughout the Arab world in a very short time and is still regarded as a highly valued musical genre. Whether the Christians contributed to its genesis and if so to what extent, is an intriguing question that still has not been answered satisfactorily. Form, language, theme, time and place of origin are the main topics in the debate. The musical form of the muwaššaḥ bears a striking resemblance to the thirteenth-century Cantigas de Santa Maria. We must realize, however, that the musical form of the muwaššaḥ was documented for the first time only in the late nineteenth century. There are good reasons, however, to believe that it did not undergo substantial changes in the preceding centuries. Anyway, there is no agreement on how the resemblance between these two genres has to be interpreted.34 The poems of the oldest muwaššaḥāt are written in the Andalusian dialect of Arabic. The final lines of some of them, called ḳarja, however, are composed in the Romance dialect. Stern suggests they are quotations from other Romance poetical texts and placed as a kind of pun at the end of some muwaššaḥāt.35 Hence it may be assumed that in these cases not only the ḳarja but also the original melody to which it was sung, became part of the new muwaššaḥ. The main subjects of the muwaššaḥāt are wine, love and nature. The love poems contain themes taken from older Arab love poetry, such as that of the lover weeping at the remnants of a camp site, left by his beloved and her tribe. But muwaššaḥ poems also show elements occurring in the Occitan poetry of the troubadours such as the preventing or impeding of an amorous encounter by the guard (Arabic: raqīb; Occitan: guardador) or slanderer (Arabic: wāšī; Occitan: lauzengier), and the motif of dawn that ends the rendezvous of the lovers. The simultaneous emergence of muwaššaḥ poetry and Occitan poetry (both around the end of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century), the geographical proximity of the areas (Spain and Southern France) in which these two genres originated, the similarity of their poetical themes and that of musical forms are the main arguments in the debate on the relationship between the muwaššaḥāt and the songs of the troubadours. 34 35

For an overview of the different views see Plenckers, 1993. See Stern, 1974:58.

36

Historical background This relationship possibly implies that the muwaššaḥ partly originated as a contrafactum (a song in which a new text is placed on the original melody) or an adaptation of originally Romance songs. Perhaps at-Tīfāšī referred to this when he wrote that Ibn Bājja established a synthesis between Christian and Arab music and as a result developed a typical Andalusian music style.36 The muwaššaḥ became popular in Andalusia in a very short period of time. The thirteenthcentury historian Ibn Sa’īd al-Magribi (d. 1286) explains this as follows: ‘The great mass took to it because of its smoothness, artistic language, and the (many) internal rhymes found in it (which made them popular). As a result, the common people in the cities imitated them.’37 Before long poets and composers of muwaššaḥāt were also found outside Andalusia: in the Maghreb, Egypt and Syria. A famous poet was the Egyptian Ibn Sana Al-Mulk (1155-1211), who stated in an extensive theoretical treatise the requirements a good muwaššaḥ should meet. The popularity of the new genre, however, was not much to the liking of some moral censors. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204) preached to his Egyptian fellow believers that it was inappropriate to sing a muwaššaḥ, no matter whether it was sung to a Jewish or an Arabic text. Even singing a muwaššaḥ with a devotional or religious text was not acceptable to him.38 Hardly anything has been handed down about the music theory of Andalusia and the Maghreb. The most noted theorist was the aforementioned Ibn Bājja, whose ‘Book of Music’ (Kitāb almūsīqī) has been regarded in the Maghreb as just as important as the treatises of al-Fārābī in the Mashriq. Unfortunately, this book has been lost and our knowledge of Western Arab music theory is limited to a few remarks by at-Tīfāšī. These relate to the modal system, which seems to be a continuation of al-Munajjim’s diatonic system rather than of the Persian system characterized by the Zalzalian third as described by Al-Fārābī. Just like the Maghrebian theorists of the tenth century, the historian at-Tīfāšī distinguishes four modes: al-ḥusrawānī, al-mujannab, al-muṭlaq and al-mazmūm, some of them with the same names (al-muṭlaq and almazmūm). Unfortunately, at-Tīfāšī keeps silent about the melodic structure of these modes and their mutual relationship. Meanwhile he mentions four vocal forms: • • • •

našīd, called istihlāl by the Andalusians; probably a free rhythmic introduction; ʿamal or ṣawt, a metrical song; muwaššaḥ; zajal.

At-Tīfāšī does not record whether these different songs were performed in a fixed order like the nawbāt (sing. nawba), the vocal suites that are nowadays performed in several North African countries. Present-day musicians in the Maghreb consider these four song types as important evidence that the North African nawba traditions are rooted in Andalusia. From circa 1250 to 1600 The main information about the music of this period is to be found in a number of theoretical treatises, written by musicians who worked at the royal courts of Baghdad, Herat, Samarkand and Tabriz. Most of these treatises are written in Arabic - one in Persian - but rather than See Liu, B.M. and J.T.Monroe, 1989: 42. See Ibn Khaldûn, 1958: III, 454. 38 See Goldziher, 1873:174-180. 36 37

37

Arab Music focusing on Arab music, they deal with the international court and elite music that was practised at the Mongolian and Turkish courts and appreciated by the aristocracy in the big cities of the Near and Middle East. By then Arab supremacy both in the Mashriq and in the West was over. In 1258 Baghdad was occupied and looted by the Mongol ruler Hūlagū and the dynasty of the Abbasids disappeared. Turkish and Mongol rulers made the decisions in Iraq, while Egypt, Palestine and Syria were ruled from Cairo by the Turkish dynasty of the Mamelukes (1250-1517). In the West, in Spain, Arab rule came to an end in the first half of the thirteenth century. Only a small principality, Granada, would remain in Arab hands until 1492. Persian or at least Central Asian music had probably a strong hold on the character of the international elite music that was practised at the courts in the Near East and the Middle East. An important indication for this is the frequent use of Persian modal names in music treatises. How far this Persian influence reached to the West of the Arab world is unclear. There are accounts that musicians from Baghdad travelled westwards to Syria and Egypt. One of them, Kutayla (alive in 1330) performed in Cairo compositions by al-Urmawī (d. 1294), the most famous Middel East court musician and theorist of the 13th century. However, there are also indications of an specific Cairo music style. One of these is the treatise Ġāyat al-maṭlūb fī ʿilm al-adwār wa-l-ḍurūb (The enticing Roads to Rhythms and Modes) van Ibn Kurr (12821357).39 In this treatise the rhythmic cycles and melodic modes that were practised in Cairo, are discussed. The described rhythmic cycles in particular considerably depart in their structure, nomenclature and number form the basic pattern, given by al-Urmawī. The correspondance between the Cairo melodic modes and those mentioned in the Central Asian treatises is more complicated, but, several of the Cairo ones may be defined as ‘clearly regionally specific’.40 Unfortunately, next to al-Kurr’s treatise there are not enough sources in order to determine whether the characteristics of this Cairo style ‘were to suffer erosion trough the diffusion of prestigious eastern norms, or whether they indicate a fault line that might grow wider, before shrinking again towards the end of the Ottoman period’.41 The line that marks the end of the Persian and Central-Asia influence to the West may be drawn somewhere in today’s Tunisia. A testimony that the old Arabic music idiom preserved its position in the Maghreb and evolved independently can be found in the writings of the aforementioned at-Tīfāšī at the beginning of the thirteenth century; he writes that there was a clear distinction between the music of the Maghreb and Andalusia and the music of the Mashriq. As for the styles people adopt in singing during this age of ours, they differ: as far as the people of Andalus are concerned, their style of singing is the ancient style, and the poems which they sing are the selfsame ancient poems of the Arabs mentioned in the Kitāb al-Aġānī l-kabīr by Al-Iṣfahānī, [...] As for the people of Īfrīqiya, [= modern Tunisia], their method in singing combines the method of the people of the Maghrib and the people of the East, for it is faster than the style of the people of Andalus and has more notes than the style of the people of the East. Furthermore, the poems which they sing are those of the poets from Islamic times.42 See Wright, 2014. Wright, 2014: 238. 41 Wright, 2014: 239 42 See Liu & Monroe, 1984: 36. 39 40

38

Historical background One hundred and fifty years later the Tunisian historian Ibn Ḳaldūn states that this Western music tradition has largely been lost. The musical heritage Ziryab left in Spain was transmitted down to the time of the reyes de taifas. In Sevilla, (the craft of singing) was highly developed. After (Sevilla) had lost its affluence, (the craft of singing) was transplanted from there to the coast of Ifriqiyah and the Maghrib. It spread over the cities there. A sprinkling of it is still left there, despite retrogression in the civilization of the region and the decreasing power of its dynasties.43 Nevertheless, since then the music idioms in the Maghreb keep showing a clear difference with the idioms of the Near East, a difference regarding not only the tuning system, but also the melodic and rhythmic modal structure, the genres and forms, and the instruments. Musical life Casual remarks by the traveler Ibn Baṭṭūṭā (1304-1377), and more extensive reports by the historian Ibn Ḳaldūn (1332-1406) and the chronicler Ibn Taġrī Birdi (1409-1470) constitute to a great extent the meager harvest of non-theoretical data on music in the period of the second half of the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century. Therefore our picture of Arab music life at the time is exceedingly incomplete and deficient. Nevertheless, the sparse observations that have been handed down give us some idea of the the important role that music played in both private and public life in Arab society. So we know that some princes, dignitaries and scholars were known for their musicality and/ or their musical interest. The Egyptian Sultan Baybars, for one, is characterized by Ibn Taġrī Bīrdī as a ruler who was ‘of an easygoing temperament, devoted to sport and music’,44 and the theologian as-Sīrāmī as someone who ‘was fond of vocal and instrumental music and dancing and was suspected of rubbing his feet [i.e., not washing them, in ritual ablutions], without his boots on’45. The most famous ‘amateur musician’ from this period was the calligrapher, poet and lawyer Ṣāfī ad-Dīn (1216? -1293?), who ultimately became the head of the court chancellery in Baghdad. He wrote two important treatises on music (to be discussed later), which after his death made him the most regarded music theorist since al-Fārābī. Professional musicians are hardly mentioned in musical historiography. They were considered as artisans and remained anonymous just as furniture makers, gold and silversmiths, carpet designers and all other practitioners of industrial arts. Women also were professional musicians. This can be concluded from Ibn Taġrī Bīrdī’s observation that in 1399 taxes for female musicians were abolished in a number of Egyptian towns. Some women worked as selfemployed musicians and performed in public. But there were also qiyān, who belonged to the household of a prince, a high-ranking official or a rich businessman. In 1390 Ibn Taġrī Bīrdī described how sometimes they had to endure the whims and fancies of their owner.

See Ibn Khaldûn, 1958: 405. See Taghrī Birdī, Part II, 1399-1411: 24. 45 Idem, 99. 43 44

39

Arab Music ‘It was his habit, in subjecting any of his slave girls to physical punishment, to beat them with more than five hundred strokes. Al-Malik aẓ-Ẓâhir as often as he heard their cries would send to intercede * for them, and al-Manṣûr, unable to oppose him, would release the girl who was being whipped; but he would still retain a feeling of secret animosity toward her because he had not fully vented his anger upon her. As was the custom of rulers and emirs in those days, he had a whole troupe of singing girls, numbering about fifteen (they were known later as Manṣûr’s singers and after his death were in my father’s home); and when Al-Malik aẓ-Ẓâhir began to intercede on hearing the cries of the slave girls who were being punished, al-Manṣûr ordered that his singers should beat on their tambourines and that flutes should be played so that neither aẓ-Ẓâhir nor anyone else could hear the cries. The women of aẓ-Ẓâhir’s household, however, learned of this practice, and said to aẓ-Ẓâhir: ‘When the Sultan hears the singing girls beating their tambourines at a time when they are not singing, he may know that al-Manṣûr is flogging his girls and servants.’ As a result, when aẓ-Ẓâhir heard the singers playing the tambourines he would send immediately to al-Manṣûr in order to intercede.46 Questions about the musical goings-on at the court of al-Manṣūr must unfortunately remain unanswered. Such as whether al-Manṣūr’s qiyān formed a regular music group. Did they perform as a choir or as soloists or both? Which musical instruments did they play besides the mentioned drum and flute? What sort of repertoire had they mastered and how varied was it? Where and when did they perform? Where did they receive their musical education? Another question in addition to these and similar ones, is whether al-Manṣūr kept his qiyān only as entertainment or also for reasons of prestige, and to demonstrate his erudition and good taste. Such motives always have been important, at least as long as there were sufficient financial resources. 13 This presumably Egyptian miniature, from a fourteenthcentury manuscript of the Maqāmāt of Hariri shows a drinking-bout, in which one of the participants plays the lute. The round spots on the cheeks of the attendants sugggest that they are somewhat flushed with drink. The 10-string (?) lute has a beautifully carved pegbox and a soundboard with three delicately carved roses; just inside the edge of the soundboard runs a purfling. The shown decorations are typical of the high standard of lute making at the time.

In the Arab world display of power was another reason for a ruler to keep a music ensemble. So not only rulers, but also high-ranking officials often maintained a military band, a ṭabl ḳāna. 46

Idem, Part I,1382-1399: 104.

40

Historical background According to the fourteenth century historian Ibn Ḳaldūn the number of musicians depended mainly on the power and wealth of the local rulers. They used a larger or smaller number (of instruments), according to the different customs of the various dynasties. Some of them restricted themselves to seven, as a lucky number. This was the case in the dynasties of the Almohads and the Banu alAhmar (Nasrids) in Spain. Others went up to ten or twenty, as was the case with the Zanatah. In the days of Sultan Abul-Hasan, as we learned personally, it went up to one hundred drums and one hundred banners of colored silk interwoven with gold, both large and small. They permit their governors, officials, and generals to use one small flag of white linen and a small drum in wartime. They do not permit them anything more.47 The occasion on which the military band had to perform also determined the size of the ensemble, which consisted chiefly of drums, kettledrums and reed instruments, but was regularly complemented with trumpets, horns and metal idiophones. It is not known how the military band sounded, but probably the drums and kettledrums played specific rhythmic cycles and patterns. Whether these show some resemblance to today’s military march rhythm is highly uncertain. The horns and trumpets were instruments without valves or finger holes, therefore unsuited to producing a full diatonic scale. Possibly only simple themes of two, three or four tones were played, or perhaps the instruments were only used to produce long sustained sounds and to make a lot of noise, without any musical relevance. In battles, the band’s duty was to scare and intimidate the enemy and encourage the own troops. For as long as the ṭabl ḳāna was playing the battle was on and the troops could assume they were winning. In times of peace the military band performed on a lot of occasions. Every day the ṭabl ḳāna had to announce the break of dawn, noontide and nightfall. Furthermore, the ensemble had to perform at all major religious holidays and during the holy months of rajab and ramaḍān, at secular ceremonies such as the coronation of the Sultan, nuptials, funerals and on occasions when major official announcements were proclaimed, such as a conquest or a victory over an enemy. It was also the duty of the ṭabl ḳāna to announce and escort the sultan when he left his palace or returned to the city after a journey. The musical requirements which the members of the military band had to meet were rather high, as evidenced by Ibn Taġrī Bīrdī’s Annals. There we read how Sultan an-Nāṣir Faraj on Tuesday, March 22 1412 left the citadel on a campaign to Syria. The Sultan rode down from the Citadel with the rest of the emirs and army, all armed and accoutered more magnificently than had ever been seen before. […] Finally came all the drummers and flutists; these were Sultan’s bought mamlûks, wearing large caps and yellow Tartar cloaks, most of whom were approaching puberty and all remarkably

47

See Ibn Khaldûn, 1958: II,51-52.

41

Arab Music handsome; they had studied the art of playing the drum and flute until they had become highly proficient. This was something not practised by any ruler before him.48 Ibn Taġrī Bīrdī’s observation that the musicians were wearing Tartar cloaks suggests that at the time the Turkish government of Egypt still maintained musical contacts with their Central Asian tribesmen. This is also evidenced by the introduction of a new ceremony, which Ibn Taġrī Birdi records: Saturday, Rajab 1. [June 26, 1389] In the early morning a piper stood at the Gate of the Chain below the Royal Stables, an-Nâṣirî’s residence, and played the flute; as soon as the music was heard the emirs and the mamlûks assembled and ascended to an-Nâṣirî’s court ceremony. Flute playing in this manner had never before been a practice in Egypt, but it is said that it was a custom of the Tatar monarchs to have a flutist to play before them when they mounted their horses; and it was a custom also in the Aleppo region, The people of Egypt wondered at the innovation, and it was continued on every day of the cortege.49 Besides information on music as entertainment and as a means of display of power, some records have been handed down about the use of music at religious events. They show that there is a difference of opinion about the question whether a beautiful recitation of the Quran should be regarded as music or not. Ibn Ḳaldūn states that ‘Malik disapproved of the use of melodies in reciting the Quran, and ash-Shafi’i permitted it.’50 The crux of the problem in this dispute, according to Ibn Ḳaldūn, is that a competent Quran reader ‘arranges his sounds in certain harmonious cadences, which those who know about singing, as well as others, perceive (as music). This is the point about which the difference of opinion (revolves).’51 It suggests that in Ibn Ḳaldūn’s time (late fourteenth century), Quran recitations sometimes were performed with ornamentations and embellishments and even in a bel canto-like style, which some believers approved of and others loathed. Comments by a prominent Islamic scholar, Ibn alJazarī (1350-1429), point in the same direction. In his ‘Book on simplifying the science of Quran Recitation’ (Kitāb at-tamhīd fī ʿlm at-tajwīd) he dedicates a chapter to the characteristics of the chanting by contemporary Quran readers. In this chapter he takes a stand against the use of melodies and embellishments such as the undue lengthening of vocals, the use of vibrato and trills (tarʿīd), and chanting in a melodramatic manner (taḥzīn). Surely Ibn al-Jazarī would have disapproved of the way the Quran was chanted at a funeral procession in Damascus, witnessed by Ibn Baṭṭūṭā: [The residents of this city] walk in front of the bier while the Qur’ān-readers intone the Qur’ān in beautiful voices and with affecting modulations, at which men’s souls all but take wings for pity.52 The use of musical means was not limited to the chanting of the Quran, it also affected other religious exercises. To Ibn Baṭṭūṭā we owe a report of a ḍikr, a meeting of a mystical See Ibn Taghrī Birdī, Part II, 1399-1411: 185-186. Idem, Part I, 1382-1399: 68. 50 See Ibn Khaldûn, 1968: II, 866. 51 Ibn Khaldun/muqaddima Hfdstk V, 31 The craft of singing. 52 See Ibn Baṭṭūṭā, I: 202. 48 49

42

Historical background brotherhood. Dikr means ‘remembering’. In a religious context it refers to the action of reminding the believers of the name of God by reciting it aloud as part of a formula repeated in an increasingly faster rhythm. Mystical brotherhoods developed in thirteenth century Islam. In Islamic rituals and exercises music plays an important role, because listening (samā⊂) to music is an ideal way of communicating with God. Music regulates body movements, the dance, which brings the members of the brotherhood in a state of ecstasy and consequently nearer to the Almighty. The important instruments used in a ḍikr are drums and flutes. Ibn Baṭṭūṭā described such a gathering as follows: When the afternoon prayers had been said, drums and kettle-drums were beaten and the poor brethren began to dance. After this they prayed the sunset prayer and brought in the repast, consisting of rice-bread, fish, milk and dates. When all had eaten and prayed the first night prayer, they began to recite their dhikr, with the sheikh Aḥmad sitting on the prayer-carpet of his ancestor […]; then they began the musical recital. They had prepared loads of firewood which they kindled into a flame, and went into the midst of it dancing; some of them rolled in the fire, and others ate it in their mouths, until finally they extinguished it entirely. This is their regular custom and it is the peculiar characteristic of this corporation of Aḥmadī brethren. Some of them will take a snake and bite its head with their teeth until they bite it clean through.53 Within orthodox Islam the religious activities of the Sufi brotherhoods were not appreciated and their practices promoting music and dance were denounced. The only legitimate form of listening to music was the samāʿ, which is the listening to the correct Quran recitation. However, the Sufis sometimes were protected by important patrons, as evidenced by Ibn Taġrī Birdi, who wrote that in 1416 Sultan al-Malik al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh on his way from Damascus to Cairo attended a Sufi meeting with Quran reading and dance.54 Music Theory The main theorist after al-Fārābī is Ṣāfī ad-Dīn al-Urmawī (1216/26-1294). He is the author of a tonal system that proved to be useful for the following centuries and has been commented on by many theorists after him and has been adapted to their ideas about music. Only in the course of the nineteenth century was this tone system abandoned, first in Egypt, and replaced by a tone system based on the European equal tuning. The most important writings in which Ṣāfī ad-Dīn explains his theory are ‘The Book of cycles’ (Kitāb al-adwār) and ‘The Šarafian treatise on musical proportions’ (Risāla aš-Šarafiya fi-l-nisab al-ta’līfiya). The title of the first book, which was written around 1252, refers to the cyclic rendering of the tonal scales and the rhythmic modes. Ṣāfī ad-Dīn wrote the second book around 1267 and dedicated it to Šaraf ad-Dīn Hārūm, the son of a vizier of Hūlagū Khan. The main theorists who carried on Ṣāfī ad-Dīn’s work are Quṭb ad-Dīn aš-Širāzi (1236-1311), ašŠirwānī (fifteenth century), Ibn Ġaybī al-Marāġī (d.1435) and al-Lāḍiqī (d.1495). Ṣāfī ad-Dīn and these later theorists, whose writings will be discussed later, are often collectively called the Systematist school.55 Idem II: 5-6. See Ibn Taghrī Birdī, Part III, 1412-1422: 37. 55 See Wright, 1978: 1. 53 54

43

Arab Music

I,3a Stemming van ÑafÐ al-dÐn / Pythagoras

The basic tone range

The basis of Ṣāfī ad-Dīn’s tone system consists of a range of seventeen tones tuned as a  succession of Pythagorean                  =  pure  fifths. 

( )               Stemming  I,3a ÑafÐpitches, al-dÐnthe/ Pythagoras When arranged accordingvan to their seventeen basic tones make an octave range with pitch distances of 90 or 24 cents between two successive ones.



                     

 



 

 

  

(

=



)

The Toonladder seventeen basic tonesvolgens of Ṣāfī ad-Dīn’s tonal system, tuned as a succession of Pythagorean fifths. I,3b ÑafÐ al-dÐn



I,3b Toonladder 1 2 3 4 volgens 5 6 7 ÑafÐ 8 al-dÐn 9 10 11 90



90

24

90

90

24

     

        

         

90

90

90

24

90

12 13 14 15 16 17 [1] 90

24

90

90

90

24

The seventeen basic tones arranged in an order of rising pitches within an octave.

         

        

     

Twelve of these tone14 symbols. 1 seventeen 2 3 4 tones 5 can 6 be 7 notated 8 9 with 10 the 11 usual 12 13 15 16They 17 correspond [1] 90 the 90 Western 24 90 diatonic 90 24 90 90 24 tones. 90 90The 24remaining 90 90 90 reasonably with and 90 chromatic five24tones – the numbers 3, 6, 10, 13 and 17 – however are situated between a chromatic and the following diatonic tone. They are indicated in music notation with the alteration sign < called half flat, or its enharmonic sign ] , called half sharp. With the distances of 90 and 24 cents, the following primary tone steps or seconds are composed: • The ṭanīnī (tone; the major second in Western music): 204 cents (90+90+24), corresponding to the interval between two tones, whose string lengths are in the ratio 9:8 (e.g.: g - a); • The mujannab al-kabīr (the large neighbor tone; the small whole tone in Western music): 180 cents (90+90), corresponding to the interval between two tones, whose string lengths are in the ratio 10:9 (e.g.: g – a