Classical arabic music

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Aleppo musicians (18th century)

Classical Arabic music is an umbrella term for non-religious, formerly courtly music styles in the countries of the Arab world : This mainly applies to the urban centers of the Mashreq , Maghreb , Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula , and historically also Al Andalus , the Islamic Spain. It is part of Arabic music .

A look at the Arabic-speaking region from North Africa to Iraq also reveals a specific musical culture in the millennia-old common culture of the Arab countries, which can be distinguished from European and other North African or Near Eastern forms of music. For centuries it was only passed on orally or acoustically from the master to the student.

The classical music of the Turks and the Persians , who created their own musical cultures and are therefore excluded in the following, must be separated from this. The mutual influences of these great musical cultures of the Orient in texts or compositions are also clear with regard to the modal scales (maqamat) and the predominant instruments, in which there are great parallels.

character

The classical music of the Arabs has the following characteristics:

history

Pre-Islamic period

In the period up to the middle of the 7th century, the musical culture of the Arab world was determined by the so-called qaina ( Arabic قينة), a singer and servant at the same time who entertained her listeners with wine, song and eroticism. The qiyan (Arabic. Pl. Of qaina ) mainly read poems by famous poets of their time and were highly respected personalities. The qiyan were characterized by beauty and elegance . Unfortunately, nothing has come down to us about the tone system or more precise forms. It is known, however, that the qiyan also made instrumental music, for example on one of today's short-necked lute oud (عود) similar instrument.

Old Arabic musical tradition

In the period from 632 to 850 AD, the qiyan singing tradition continued and music from the pre-Islamic period was continued everywhere, as the Qurʾān neither expressly forbids nor allows music (although this point is still among scholars of the Arab world today is controversial). At the same time, the great boom in the Arab world began in this epoch. After the establishment of Islam by the Prophet Mohammed, the Arabs conquered large parts of the countries and territories bordering them such as Libya , Egypt, Palestine , Phenicia , Syria , Iraq and Persia until the middle of the 7th century and created with the then capital Medina a metropolis where the captured treasures and slaves were brought. In this way the Arabs appropriated the cultural heritage of the conquered.

The Arabs considered song and music to be a professional art during this period. Besides the qiyan , men who adopted the behavior and clothing of the qiyan now also delighted the general public with music . For the first time, men and women who were not qiyan began to make music and gain fame.

It was during this time that the first written treatises on music theory emerged. Concrete works from this time have not survived, as the music was mostly passed on orally and not notated.

Renewal of the old Arabic musical tradition (820–1250)

While Medina was the musical capital of the Arab world in the ancient Arab era, this rank has now been taken away by another metropolis: Baghdad . Here new forms of music were created and people increasingly tried to break away from the old traditions in order to create something new. The Persian influence also contributed a large part, as the Persians also had a flourishing musical culture.

Later supporters and opponents of the musical reform fell out and Ziryāb , one of the most important innovators, left Baghdad after a dispute with his master Ishaq al-Mawsili , who refused to tolerate his aspiration. Ziryāb went to Córdoba in Spain and brought the Arabic art of music there. Here he founded his own music school, in which traditional old Arabic music was further developed and thus laid a cornerstone of Arabic-Andalusian music .

During this time, the great treatises on tonal systems and music were written mainly in Baghdad (very little has survived from the Andalusian part). The earliest traditions of a musical nature can be found here, no concrete compositions or melodies, but scales, rhythmic formulas and fingerings for the Ud. In the later works, such as B. the Kitab al-adwar , the " Book of Cycles " by Safi ad-Din al-Urmawi, there are sketches of individual melodies similar to skeleton notation.

Age of decline (13th-19th centuries)

With the great wars, the triumphs and conquests of the Turks and Persians, the Arab musical life changed, due to new cultural influences.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Egypt, Syria and Iraq came under the control of the Ottomans . Constantinople became the center of the Islamic world. The importance of Baghdad and Medina declined. The result was a spiritual and social decline that almost brought the classical Arab musical tradition to a standstill. Habib Hassan Touma formulates it more drastically in his work The Music of the Arabs : “The result was a complete failure of Arab literature, science and art in this period of Arab history. You will search in vain for original, authentic work by the Arabs there (up to the 19th century). "

Modern times

The end of Ottoman rule in the 20th century resulted in a cultural awakening. The entire Arab world became more self-confident and independent again.

The music here was still centered on singing accompanied by instrumental ensembles . Renowned singers and musicians showed their art, for example, in pubs, at weddings or other celebrations. Music was also an important and permanent part of religious festivals.

During this time, the first major innovation since the decline in the 13th century continued to emerge: The Arabic music theorists divided the octave into 24 parts and thus created today's quarter-tone system . In this point, Arabic music differs slightly from Turkish music , but not from Persian music , whose octave is also divided into 24 “quarter-tone steps”.

The sound system of the Arabs

The Arabic music world knows different tonal systems that were established in numerous musical treatises in the course of Arabic music history (especially between the 9th and 13th centuries) . In part, these are further developments of the Greek Pythagorean system , such as a system introduced by Safi ad-Din al-Urmawi († 1294), on whose calculations today's Persian and Turkish interval structures are based. On the other hand, there was the purely Arabic tone system of the musician al-Farabi († 950).

On the basis of this system, the octave was divided into 24 equal intervals in modern times. Each of these 24 tones was given its own name, which in no way stands for the absolute pitch, but rather for the function of the respective tone within the scale (similar to the solmization Do, Re, Mi ... in the Solfeggio system of the Italian Guido von Arezzo ). The absolute pitch is determined solely by the range of the singer. Since this quarter-tone system is represented using the Arabic Ud, there are two 24-note octaves, an upper and a lower octave. The lowest note is called yakah , the octave is called nawa and the second octave, i.e. the highest note in the system, ramal tuti .

The different tone systems range from those in which the quarter tone is always the same size to those in which the quarter tone varies between 40 and 50 cents and the semitone between 90 and 100 cents. So calculated z. B. the Lebanese Miha'il Misaqa (1800–1889) the value of the quarter tone as the 24th root of 2 (= 50 cents).

In tone systems that actually have intervals of different sizes, music theorists repeatedly faced the same problem: How big should the individual intervals be if a transposition on a musical instrument like the lute should be possible? The Syrians in particular took a further approach: similar to the Pythagoreans, they calculated 53 possible tones within the octave using octave-transposed added fifths .

As different as the various attempts to explain the Arabic tonal system were, they all had one thing in common: a multitude of heptatonic modes was formed from the calculated tone stock - the so-called maqām series (مقام). What they have in common, among other things, is that the theoretically formed quarter tone never appears. Rather, the rows consist of whole and semitones (similar to that in the tempered European system) and three-quarter tones, which practically represent a halved minor third . This three-quarter tone, which is the most essential difference to the European "12-note tempering", can be considered a characteristic of Arabic music - not the quarter tone, as is often assumed. It is also characteristic of traditional Arabic music that the quarter tone (and thus also the three-quarter tone used in practice) is not exactly determined, but varies within the various maqām series. However, when Arabic music was written in Western music , this phenomenon is lost.

As an example, here is the maqām series RAST : Maqam rest

The third and seventh notes (e and b) are each lowered by a quarter tone. This results in a three-quarter tone (150 cents) between d - e, e - f, a - h and h - c. All maqām series consist of such a series of small, medium, large and excessive seconds. The quarter tone does not appear.

A seven-note maqām is characterized by:

  • Two consecutive characteristic tetrachords (usually pure quart in size)
  • a keynote and often a second "recitation tone "
  • Tetrachords below and above the stem scale of seven tones
  • certain characteristic melodic turns and a mood content
  • possibly further implications for the form, expression and design of the music
  • a characteristic final formula that a particular genus of Maqām features

Maqam

To the listener who is not familiar with Arabic music, the performance of a maqam will initially seem disordered and freely improvised. Indeed, the interpretation and improvisation of the performer plays a crucial role. In contrast to western compositions, the interpreter does not have to follow a fixed, notated rhythm , but rather to develop his personal style . Only the tonal component of the music is fixed. Clearly composed themes or recurring rhythms are missing.

During the performance of the maqām , the individual tones of the maqām series are gradually introduced in different melodies . The singer relies on tone levels from a central base note and its neighboring notes, with which the base note is played around improvisationally. These sound levels are constantly expanded in the course of the performance.

Overall, the representation of the maqām is thus divided into melodic lines, the number and length of which are not fixed beforehand, let alone intended by the composer. In each of them, one or more tonal levels are clarified and combined, contrasted and exchanged. Ingenuity and ability of the singer are measured by the trained listener by how well the singer works out the tonal levels and phases.

The emotional content of the individual modes plays a major role in the maqam performance. Amazingly, there is great agreement among Arab musicians and music lovers about the feeling with which the individual modes or even just their core cells are connected. For example, the Maqām Rast evokes feelings of pride, power, sanity and masculinity. The Maqām Bayati expresses vitality, joy and femininity. The Maqām Sikah is associated with the feeling of love, the Maqām Higaz with the distance from the desert, etc. The Maqām Saba, on the other hand, causes pain and sadness. Theoretically you could explain this sadness with the fact that in Maqām Saba nuclear cells primarily on small Sekundschritten are furnished (similar to many European musicologists describe small seconds as a lament or Trauermotiv ).

However, the stimulus lies precisely in the “unstable” size of the intervals. In Maqām Saba, the characteristic tones es and gs should fluctuate slightly downwards. This emotional content is lost when trying to represent the tone system in Western musical notation.

rhythm

The rhythmic formula of Arabic music is called wazn  /وزن / 'The measure' or mīzan , Turkish usul .

The Arab musician learns the Wazn repertoire with the help of onomatopoeic (sound-imitating) syllables. Individual sequences of beating impulses are called naqra (نقرة) (Plural naqarāt ). These mainly consist of the beats dum (in the middle of the eardrum) and tak (on the edge of the drum), as well as their variations mah (less stressed dum ) and kah (less stressed tak ).

Symbols are used for notation: O = dum, I = tak,. = pause.

Darabukka

As an example here is the Wazn masmudi kabir 4/4:

DUM DUM TAK DUM TAK TAK 

 O    O   .   I     O     .    I     I

... and the Wazn dor hindi 7/8:

DUM TAK KAH DUM TAK 

  O      I     I      O    .    I     .

Instruments and ensembles

The traditional Arab ensemble in Egypt and Syria, the Takht (تخت / taḫt  / 'Podium'), includes (or included at different times) melodic instruments such as the lute oud (عود / ʿŪd ), the zither Qānūn (قانون), the spike violin Kamanǧa , the simple "poet's fiddle" Rabāba (also called Arabic الشاعر, DMG aš-Šā'ir  'the poet') and the flute Nāy (ناي). The drums, in Arabic generally Tabl , include the tambourines Riqq (رق), Bendir and Tar (طار / ṭār ), as well as the tumbler drum Darabukka (دربكة). Since the middle of the 19th century, through contact with the colonial powers and their musical culture, more and more European musical instruments such as the European violin , cello , double bass , but also accordion , saxophone and finally piano and keyboard have found their way into the Takht , which resulted that certain Maqamat were no longer playable because they are difficult or impossible to perform on keyboard instruments.

There is an anecdote on the Egyptian radio about the ensemble of Mohammed Abdel Wahab . Around 1960 he was looking for a new violinist and turned to the Cairo University of Music. One of the applicants who introduced himself declined the position with thanks. As a reason, he said that he did not want to “ruin” his ear, which had been trained in European tonality.

literature

  • Jürgen Elsner : The concept of maqām in Egypt in recent times (= contributions to musicological research in the GDR. Vol. 5, ISSN  0323-8318 ). German publishing house for music, Leipzig 1973.
  • Henry George Farmer : A History of Arabian Music to the XIIIth Century. Luzac & Co., London 1929, digitized .
  • Hans Hickmann: The music of the Arabic-Islamic area. In: Bertold Spuler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Orientalistik . 1. Department: The Near and Middle East. Supplementary Volume 4: Oriental Music. EJ Brill, Leiden et al. 1970, pp. 1-134.
  • Liberty Manik: The Arabic Sound System in the Middle Ages. Brill, Leiden 1969, (at the same time: Berlin, Free University, dissertation, 1968).
  • Habib Hassan Touma: The Music of the Arabs (= pocket books on musicology. 37). Extended new edition, 3rd edition. Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 1998, ISBN 3-7959-0182-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Reinhard, Kurt and Ursula: Music of Turkey - Volume 1: Die Kunstmusik , Wilhelmshaven 1984.
  2. ↑ Cf. Barkechli, Mehdi: Les Systèmes de la Musique traditional de l'Iran (Radif) (French, Pers.), Teheran 1973, as well as Ḫāleqī, Rūḥollāh: Naẓarī be-mūsīqī (“A view on music”, pers. ), Tehran 1974.
  3. ^ Franz Jahnel: The guitar and its construction. Erwin Bochinsky, Frankfurt am Main 1963; 8th edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-923639-09-0 , p. 15.

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