The Islamic Musical Sciences and the Andalusian Connection: Juan Andrés’ «Letter on Arabic Music» (1785)

Music was an essential part of the philosophical knowledge in the classical antiquity and then in the medieval era. Music provided tools to foster a global speculative knowledge, and the classical Islamic thought developed different musical sciences. This paper tries to describe the different approaches to the musical phenomenon from an Islamic perspective, and the feasible transmission of this knowledge to Western music via al-Andalus. In doing so, the paper places attention in the Italian «Letter on Arabic Music» written by the Spanish Jesuit Juan Andrés in 1785, one of the first documents attesting this connection.

Taqsīm as a Creative Musical Process in Arabic Music

Creativity plays a major role in various musical contexts including composition, performance and education. Although numerous studies have revealed how creativity is involved in processes of listening, improvising and composing, relatively little is known about the particularities of transcultural creative processes in music. In this article, we aim to shed light on the creative musical processes underlying taqsīm performance in Arabic music. To that end, qualitative interviews have been conducted with three Berlin-based oud players from Syria. Results of a thematic content analysis show that taqsīm encompasses multiple components (e.g., a flexible form and dependency on maqam as well as tonal music) and serves various functions such as developing artistic individuality. Moreover, taqsīm is affected by interactions between tradition and novelty. We discuss the interview data within the cross-cultural experiential model of musical creativity developed by Hill (2018), offering a fresh approach to studying taqsīm which goes beyond established concepts such as the improvisation-composition continuum.

Der ṭarab der Sängersklavinnen

In "Der ṭarab der Sängersklavinnen", Yasemin Gökpınar presents a text critical edition of the three known manuscripts of the 10th chapter of Ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī’s (died 749/1349) "Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār". In this monograph, she provides an unprecedented commented German translation of this important source on female singer slaves and their song repertoire in the context of Muslim court culture from the Abbasids to the Mamluks. The scientific interests of Dr. phil. Yasemin Gökpinar, Ruhr-University Bochum, and Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, include Arabic music theory and history of sciences, their Greek sources, Arabic manuscript culture, text edition, Arabic-Islamic music culture and literature.

Decontextualizing Arabic Music in France and in the United States

This paper traces the various steps of the redefinition process implemented by Arab musicians performing in France and in the United States. The assembling of Arabic music groups outside their institutional and national borders reveals new patterns and raises several questions: (1) While most Arabic countries do not share the same institutional music traditions, or the same repertoires (Arab-Andalusian vs. maqamat), how can Arabic musicians from different countries assemble outside their institutional and national borders? (2) How can we understand the heterogeneity of repertoires (scholarly and popular) when the musicians come from different traditions and institutions? Can musicians pursue the legacy—and legitimacy—of classical repertoires or do they necessarily have to embrace Arabic pop culture? Finally, (3) while they were part of the elite in their home countries, how are Arab musicians considered outside their musical institutions, in their new countries such as France and the United States? Have they remained elite musicians in the eyes of their new audiences? Or have they simply become ‘popular’ musicians, regardless of the repertoire they play?