Lines of inquiry and types of knowledge
In the first centuries of Islam, Arabic writings on music followed three princi- pal lines of inquiry: music as a branch of mathematics, music making as a topic
1 For consistency with the rest of the book, only the Common Era dates are given in this chapter.
of belles-lettres (adab), and the forms of listening that are legitimate from various religious perspectives.2Assimilation of existing knowledge in several fields of learning – with an initial emphasis on astrology, astronomy, mathe- matics, and medicine – required the efforts of several generations of scholars and translators, working with texts in Middle Persian (Pahlavi), Greek, Syriac, and other languages. The new ‘Abbāsid capital of Baghdad was the center of this activity, from the second half of the eighth century through much of the tenth. For music as a branch of mathematics, as for philosophy, the Greek texts that were made available in Arabic (often by way of Syriac versions) provided the indispensable framework for further work, including reflection on differences as well as similarities between the Greek discipline of mūsīqī and the indigenous theory and practice of the Arabs and neighboring peoples. The technical terminology developed in translations of such works as the Sectio canonis (Division of the Monochord) attributed to Euclid differed from the vocabulary of practicing musicians; the Kitāb al-mūsīqī al-kabir (Great Book on Music) of the philosopher al-Fārābī (d. 950) owes its distinction, in large part, to Fārābī’s deep familiarity with musical practice as well as with the pertinent philosophical and scientific literature.
Each direction of inquiry was pursued in different genres of writing. Encyclopedic surveys of the sciences in which music is treated as a branch of mathematics extend from the Mafātīh al-‘ulūm (Keys to the Sciences) (c. 985) of al-Khwārizmī to the Irshād al-qās ̣id (Guidance of the Searcher) of Ibn al-Akfānī (d. 1348) in Arabic, and from the Dānesh-nāme (Book of Knowledge) of Avicenna (980–1037) to the Jāme‘ al-‘olum (Compilation of Sciences) of Fakhr al-Din Rāzi (d. 1209) and Dorrat al-tāj (Pearl of the Crown) of Qot ̣b al-Din Shirāzi (d. 1311) in Persian, the latter limited to the mathematical and philo- sophical sciences. The “theoretical” (nazarī ) and “practical” (‘amalī ) branches of the subject receive varying degrees of weight in the treatises (often called risāla, “epistle”) that are wholly devoted to music.
Writings categorized as adab string together anecdotes and bits of informa- tion deemed useful to boon companions of rulers and other courtiers, as in the ‘Iqd al-farīd (The Unique Necklace) of Ibn ‘Abd Rabbih, who was active at the court of Córdoba in the tenth century. The richest source of anecdotes about celebrated musicians is also a remarkably ambitious compilation of Arabic poems that had been set to music, with indications of the appropriate modes: the Kitāb al-aghānī (Book of Songs) of Abū’l-Faraj al-Isbahānī (897–967), a vast work that could only have been undertaken by an author whose memory was exceptionally well stocked with information amassed over
several decades of extensive interviewing and reading. Al-Is ̣bahānī’s principal successor in compiling biographies of musicians is Ibn Fad:lallāh al-‘Umarī (1301–48), whose Masālik al-absar (Routes toward Insight) reproduces infor- mation on fifty-nine musicians from the Kitāb al-aghānī and adds biographies of over twice as many later figures. The centrality of music in the cultural life of courts is made clear in attempts at universal history, such as the Murūj al-dhahab (Meadows of Gold) of al-Mas‘ūdī (d. 956) and the Kitāb al-‘ibar (Book of Examples) of Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) with its famous Muqaddima (Introduction), a searching investigation of reasons for the cohesion or dis- integration of human societies.
Tracts that defend the legitimacy of samā‘ (listening with spiritual intent) include eloquent accounts of the aims pursued through ceremonial music and movement by members of various Sufi orders. This literature emphasizes the importance of appropriate preparation, if music making is to enhance a listener’s spiritual growth. Lawful and unlawful uses of singing and listening are carefully distinguished in the Ihyā al’ulūm (Revival of the Religious Sciences) of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) and its Persian abridgement, Kimiyā-ye sa‘ādat (Alchemy of Happiness). A concern with rules and norms governing the behavior of listeners and performers is evident in the literature of adab as well as in that on samā‘. The underlying assumption is that musical meaning emerges in the course of performance from the motivations and actions of participants.
Conceptions of the nature and potential value of musical knowledge are inevitably formed in relation to ideas about the nature and relative value of other areas of learning and other spiritual or artistic disciplines. Major topics in discussions of this set of issues include the social roles of those who may appropriately acquire and exercise the various types of knowledge; the media and genres of communication deemed suitable for transmitting musical knowl- edge; and the divisions or branches of musical knowledge. Each genre of speech or writing presupposes certain kinds of knowledge shared by speaker and listener, writer, and reader. A compilation of song lyrics may name the rhyth- mic mode (t ̣arīqa) and possibly the melodic mode of each composition, on the assumption that readers who have not learned the songs by ear might know the pertinent modes and be capable of applying them to the lyrics.
Throughout the Muslim world, orally transmitted lore has continually found its way into treatises with scientific pretensions, thereby gaining an aura of authority that makes it all the more useful in oral pedagogy. Writing on music readily incorporates such familiar speech genres as aphorisms, anecdotes, concise lists, and classifications developed from polarities. In their conversations with living musicians, ethnomusicologists can recognize Foundations of musical knowledge in the Muslim world 105
metaphors, topoi, and narrative-types with a long history of circulation in writing as well as in speech.
Aphorisms and capsule narratives
Aphorisms and anecdotes that were recorded in writing are occasionally framed as utterances presented on a particular occasion, a notable example being the wedding feast at which guests supposedly delivered the sayings in two compilations that were translated, respectively, by the Nestorian Christian scholar Ḥunayn ibn Is ̣hāq (d. 873) and by his son, Is ̣hāq ibn Ḥunayn (d. 910): the Kitāb nawādir al-falāsifa (Book of the Aphorisms of the Philosophers),3 and the ‘Uns ̣ur al-mūsīqī (Element of Music) attributed to one “Būlos.”
A genre well suited to both oral and written communication is the capsule narrative that credits a single protagonist with a significant discovery or innovation. In an adaptation of the legend in which Pythagoras finds that a blacksmith’s hammers of the appropriate weights will produce harmonious intervals, al-Khalīl of Bas ̣ra (d. c. 791) was said to have begun his analysis and typology of sixteen poetic meters after hearing the multiple rhythms ham- mered out by coppersmiths in the bazaar. The adoption of selected features of Byzantine, Syrian, and Persian music in the idioms cultivated at the courts of the Umayyad caliphs (r. 661–750) was efficiently depicted in accounts of the travels of two singers who died c. 715, Ibn Misjāh ̣ and Ibn Muh ̣riz. Narratives attributing major innovations to celebrated figures of the distant or more recent past have continued to be created and transmitted up to the present.
Lists
Another format suited to both oral and written communication (with a bias toward the latter) is a concise roster of items or skills, such as a cycle of seven songs, a system of seven or eight modes, or the set of competencies expected of a certain type of performer or, indeed, of any competent musician. The song cycle on seven fortresses composed by the celebrated singer Ma‘bad (d. 743) established a pattern that was adopted by other court musicians, such as the successors of Ibn Suraij (d. c. 726) who arranged seven of the master’s songs into a cycle.4
The belief that musical resources are best organized as systems of seven or eight modes was widely held in West Asia during the eighth and ninth
3 Ḥunayn’s work is best known in the Hebrew translation of al-Ḥarīzī (1170–1235), which was first published in 1562; see Adler 1975, 147–55.
4 Neubauer 1997, 317–18 also mentions cycles of five, seven, and ten songs in the Persian-Turkish repertory of c. 1500.
centuries. The philosopher al-Kindī (d. c. 866) regarded the eight rhythmic modes of Arab music as an achievement comparable to both the pre-Islamic modal system of Persia (called by other writers the seven “royal modes,” al-t ̣urūq al-mulūkīya, of the minstrel Bārbad) and the Byzantine oktōēchos, “eight modes” (ustukhūs ̣iya and al-alh ̣ān al-thamāniya in Kindī’s Arabic), which he regarded as a comprehensive system encompassing all conceivable melodies, even the braying of donkeys and neighing of horses.5This claim resulted from Kindī’s equation of the Greek term ēchos “voice” with Arabic lah ̣n (pl. alh ̣ān), which denoted intonations or outright errors that marred the Arabic of certain speakers before it was appropriated as a general term for “melody.” According to the Qur’ān (47.30), hypocrites can be recognized by the lah ̣n of their speech, and from this usage the term was extended to the melodic aspect of any speech act.
Lists of four, seven, eight, or twelve items are easily correlated with other lists having the same number of entries. Kindī and the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (Brethren of Purity) (second half of the tenth century) associate the four strings of the lute with several other tetrads: seasons, elliptical arcs, quarters of the twenty-four-hour day, elements, humors, faculties of the soul, poetic genres, and so on. Some affinities are articulated as metaphors (e.g., sounds on the highest-pitched string of the lute are like fire), and some as metonyms (e.g., sounds on the highest string enhance the humor of yellow bile and alleviate that of phlegm). Correlations like those delineated by the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ have been continually reproduced in writing and in the speech of musicians, up to the present. The configurations that writers and music teachers have chosen to correlate with systems of seven modes include the seven “planets” and a line of seven prophets beginning with Adam; systems of twelve modes are often correlated with the zodiac. Such associations can nourish a powerful awareness of a musical system’s primordial roots and a sense of gratitude toward the donors and discoverers of musical knowledge.
Polarities
Classification through manipulation of polarities and dichotomies is funda- mental to much theorizing about music, both in speech and in writing. Individual sounds and combinations are characterized in many languages as either “light” or “heavy,” “bright” or “dark,” “penetrating” or “absorbing,” “compact” or “diffuse.” Among the contrasting attributes of sounds listed in Fārābī’s Kitāb al-mūsīqī al-kabīr are s ̣afā‘ “clarity” and kudra “muddiness”;
5 Neubauer reviews references to ten systems with varying numbers of modes, in ‘Al-Ḫalīl ibn Ah ̣mad und die Frühgeschichte der arabischen Lehre von den “Tönen” und den musikalischen Metren’ (Neubauer 1995–96, 275–8). On the early history of oktōēchos systems see Jeffery 2001, 370–3.
malāsa “smoothness” and khushūna “coarseness”; na‘ama “softness” and shidda “forcefulness” or s ̣alāba “hardness.” Fārābī also mentions qualities created by different types of vocal production: rut ̣ūba “wetness,” yubs “dryness,” ghunna “nasality,” and zamm “fastening” the lips so that air passes entirely through the nose. He argues that an adequate description of vocal music must go beyond differences in acuity (h ̣idda, cf. Greek oksytēs) and gravity (thiql, cf. Greek barytēs) of pitch, just as optics cannot be limited to the concepts of geometry. Al-Ḥasan al-Kātib (eleventh century) quotes and expands on Fārābī’s inventory of vocal timbres in his Kitāb kamāl adab al-ghīnā’ (The Perfection of Musical Knowledge), one chapter of which identifies twenty-one types of voice.
A binary opposition becomes a trichotomy when a neutral point, zero, is posited between values of “plus” or “minus.” “Higher” and “lower” pitches can be perceived in relation to a central tone, and durations can be defined as “longer” or “shorter” with reference to a central value. This is the fundamental structure of the doctrine of ēthos, which may well antedate the Greek writings that were the main sources for its subsequent development in the Muslim world and the Latin West. Kindī describes three species (anwā‘, sing. nau‘) of composition (ta’līf) with Arabic equivalents for the tripartite classification of ēthos given by Cleonides and Aristides Quintilianus and presumably repro- duced in the Byzantine and Arabic writings that were available to Kindī: al-bast ̣ī “the expansive” for diastaltikon “stimulant”; al-qabd:ī“the contracting” for systaltikon “depressant”; and al-mu‘tadil “the temperate” for hēsychastikon “calming” (Table 4.1a).6 To arouse the appropriate movement of the soul (h ̣arakat al-nafs), verses adorned with a melodic framework (lah ̣n) of one species should be set to the corresponding metric cycle or “meter” (īqā‘, pl. īqā‘āt): quick (khafīfa) to inspire delight, slow (thaqīla) for melancholy, moderate for a sense of the sublime, the munificent or the beautiful. Kindī takes note of subdivisions (aqsām or again anwā‘) within these tripartite classifications, and he describes the tones that ascend or descend from a central tone as “the acute side” (al-jānib al-ahadd) and “the grave side” (al-jānib al-athqal), respectively.
Kindī’s terms for expansive and contracting melodic frameworks connect musical experience with rhythms on which human life depends – the dilation (inbisāt ̣) and contraction (inqibād:) of heart and lungs – and with processes that are fundamental to the entire created order: “God brings about contraction and dilation” (w’Allāh yaqbid:u wa yabsut ̣, Qur’ān 2:245). The distinction is closely related to oppositions of “tense” or “hard” versus “slack” or “soft,” a relation that is as central to Arabic as to Greek writings on music. To lessen the
6 See the translation of Cleonides’s text in Treitler 1998, 46; the translation of Aristides Quintilianus in Barker 1989, 432–3, 445; and al-Kindī’s Risāla fī khubr s ̣inā‘at al-ta’līf, in Shawqī 1969, 111–12.
tension on a string is to lower the pitch it will yield, and once the pitches obtained by raising or lessening the tension on a string are themselves per- ceived as relatively “tense” or “slack” the distinction can be transferred to intervals and to different species of tetrachord. Aristoxenus (b. mid-fourth century BCE) explained that the variable tones within tetrachords are
“compressed,” brought closer together, as one moves first from the hard or Table 4.1 Comparison of five typologies
Negative Direction Center Positive Direction
a. Species of melodic and rhythmic composition (Cleonides, Kindī) Greek: systaltikon
“depressant”
hēsychastikon “calming” diastaltikon “stimulant” Arabic: al-qabd:ī“the
contracting” (al-muh ̣zin “melancholy”)
al-mu‘tadil “the temperate” (al-madh ̣ “praise” al-jalāla “the sublime” al- karāma “the munificent” al-jamīla “the beautiful”)
al-bast ̣ī “the expansive” (al-mut ̣rib “delight”) b. Fārābī’s classification of melodic frameworks (alh ̣ān)
al-mulaiyina “soft” al-mu‘addala “moderate” al-muqauwiya “strong” al-istiqrāriya “calming”
d. Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī’s classification of Shudūd
h ̣uzn “sadness” bast ̣ ladhīdh, latīf quwwa “strength”
futūr, “lassitude” “refined pleasure” shajā‘at “courage”
bast ̣ “delight”
Buzurg Rāst ‘Ushshāq
Rāhawī Nawrūz Nawā
Zīrāfkand ‘Irāq Busalik
Zankūla Is ̣fahān
Ḥusaynī
c. Avicenna’s commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics
(i) Qualities of Melody (Lah ̣n)
layina “softness” tawussut ̣a “moderateness” jazālata “eloquence”
(ii) Imaginative Representation (Takhyīl)
dhamm “satire”← ← mut ̣ābaqa “correspondence” → → madh ̣ “encomium” [to reality]
tense to the soft diatonic genus, then from the tense to the hemiolic and to the soft chromatic, and finally to the softest or most compressed of all, the enharmonic. Claudius Ptolemy (second centuryCE) retained this classification
in his Harmonics and also contrasted tone and semitone as, respectively, “hard” (sýntonos) and “soft” (malakós). He further described the character (ēthos) of melodies in a relatively “hard” genus as diastatikōteron “more inclined to expand,” and the character of those in a relatively “soft” genus as synaktikōteron “more inclined to draw together.”
Kindī adopted this set of concepts and extended the opposition of “hard” versus “soft” to the major and minor thirds: heard in relation to the first degree of a general scale, the major third is “strong” (qawwī), “rough” (khashin), and “masculine” (mudhakkar), creating an impression of courage (shajja‘a); the minor third is “weak” (nāqis) and “soft” (laiyin), disposing the listener to sadness (ah ̣zana). For Kindī and many of his successors, a classification of the units available for the composition (ta’līf) of modes, metric cycles, and pieces is also a description of their effects (af ‘āl, sing. fi‘l ) on performers and listeners. The engagement of theorists writing in Arabic with Greek theory, along the lines laid out by Aristoxenus and his followers, entailed a concern with several types of composite entity; the Greek term synthesis became ta’līf in Arabic (and compositio in Latin). Cleonides, in his summary of Aristoxenus’s theory, had listed seven-octave species, which he called eidē (sing. eidos) and which Ptolemy, offering the same list, called tónoi (a term that Aristoxenus and Cleonides had used in a different sense).7The Arabic equivalents of Greek
tónos (lit., “tightening”) were tanīn (pl. tanīnāt), shadd “tightening,” and lah ̣n “melody.” One plural form of lah ̣n, alh ̣ān, served many writers as a one-word definition of mūsīqī, often with the sense of “melodic models”; a second plural form, luh ̣ūn, commonly designates “melodic idioms.”
Composite entities such as intervals, tetrachords, octave species, poetic feet, and metric cycles can be evaluated as “regular” or “irregular,” “consonant” or “dissonant.” Both polarities may retain their musical associations in other areas of inquiry, notably in the classification of types of pulse developed by the Greek physician Herophilus (c. 330–260BCE) and further elaborated by Galen (second
century CE). Reflecting on the “musical nature” of the human pulse in his
Qānūn fī’l-t ̣ibb (Canon of Medicine), used by generations of physicians, Avicenna compares the consonance or dissonance of pitch intervals and of the ratios between different timespans in metric cycles with the “rhythmic proportion” (nisba īqā’iyya) between the timespans marked off by successive
7 For Aristoxenus and Cleonides, tónos was one of thirteen (later fifteen) “positions (topoi) of the voice,” in other words ranges, each beginning a semitone higher than the last. Arabic tanīn is an adaptation of tónos as used in Ptolemy’s Harmonics; see Mathiesen 2002, 125–7.
pulses, which may be regular or irregular. The musical nature of the pulse became a topos shared by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian authors.