The
lute was adopted from the Arab world. 1568 print.
Andalusian classical music (or Arabo-Andalusian music, moussiqua al-âla) is a style of Arabic music found across North Africa, though it evolved out of the music of Andalusia between the 9th and 15th centuries, during a period known as Al-Andalus. It is now most closely associated with Morocco (al-Âla), though similar traditions are found in Algeria (Gharnati, San'a and al-Maalûf), Tunisia and Libya (al-Maalûf). The popular musics of chaabi developed in parallel to the classical expression.
[edit] Origins
Andalusian classical music was allegedly born in the Emirate of Cordoba (Al-Andalus) in the 9th century. The Persian musician, resident in Iraq Iraqi Ziryâb (d. 857), who later became court musician of Abd al-Rahman II in Cordoba, is sometimes credited with its invention. Later, the poet, composer and philosopher Ibn Bajjah (d. 1139) of Saragossa is said to have combined the style of Ziryâb with Western approaches to produce a wholly new style that spread across Iberia and North Africa.
By the 11th century CE Moorish Spain and Portugal had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouveres and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, guitar, and naker derive from the Arabic oud, rabab, qitara and naqareh, although some Arabic terms had been revived from the Greek and other cultures.
The classical music of Andalusia, al-ala reached North Africa via centuries of cultural exchange, the Almohad dynasty and then the Marinid dynasty and the Abdalwadid being in power both in Al-Andalus and North Africa (the Maghreb). Mass resettlements of Muslims and Sephardi Jews from Cordoba, Sevilla, Valencia and Granada, fleeing the Reconquista, further expanded the reach of Andalusian music.
[edit] The music today
A suite form called the Andalusi nubah forms the basis of al-âla. Though it has roots in Andalusia, the modern nûba probably is a North African creation. Each nûba is dominated by one musical mode. It is said there used to be twenty-four nuba linked to each hour of the day, but in Algeria only sixteen nuba and in Morocco eleven have survived, which together include 25 "Andalusian" modes. Each nûba is divided into five parts called mîzân, each with a corresponding rhythm. The rhythms occur in the following order in a complete nuba:
- basît (6/4)
- qâ'im wa nusf (8/4)
- btâyhî (8/4)
- darj (4/4)
- quddâm (3/4 or 6/8)
An entire nuba can last six or seven hours, though this is rarely done today. Rather, in Morocco often only one mîzân from any given nûba is performed at a time. Each mizan begins with instrumental preludes called either tûshiya, m'shaliya or bughya, followed by as many as twenty songs (sana'i) in the entire mizan.
Andalusian classical music orchestras are spread across Maghreb, including the cities of Algeirs, Bejaia, Blida, Constantine, Fez, Tetuan, Kairouan, Mostaganem, Nedroma, Oran, Oujda, Rabat, Tetouan, Tlemcen, Tunis, etc). They use instruments including oud (lute), rabab (rebec), darbouka (goblet drums), taarija (tambourine), qanún (zither) and kamancheh. More recently, other instruments have been added to the ensemble, including piano, contrabass, cello, and even banjos, saxophones and clarinets, though these are rare.
[edit] Influence of Andalusian music
Andalusia was probably the main route of transmission of a number of near-Eastern musical instruments used in Western music; the rebec (ancestor of violin) from the rebab, the guitar from qitara, naker from naqareh and psaltery from the santoor or qanun.[1] Further terms fell into disuse in Europe; adufe from al-duff, alboka from al-buq, anafil from al-nafir, exabeba from al-shabbaba (flute), atabal (bass drum) from al-tabl, atambal from al-tinbal,[2] the balaban, sonajas de azófar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore wind instruments,[3] the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical pipe),[4] the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna,[5] the gaita from the Rhaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya,[6], geige (German for a violin) from ghichak[7] and the theorbo from the tarab.[8]
The troubadors, courtly composers of mediaeval love-songs, may have had Arabic influences. Ezra Pound, in his Canto VIII, famously declared that William of Aquitaine (an early troubador) "had brought the song up out of Spain / with the singers and veils...". According to historic sources, William VIII, the father of William, brought to Poitiers hundreds of Muslim prisoners.[9] Trend [10] acknowledges that the troubadors derived their sense of form and the subject matter of their poetry from Andalusia. The hypothesis that the troubador tradition was created, more or less, by William after his experience of Moorish arts while fighting with the Reconquista in Spain was also championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal in the early twentieth-century, but its origins go back to the Cinquecento and Giammaria Barbieri (died 1575) and Juan Andrés (died 1822). Meg Bogin, English translator of the female troubadors, also held this hypothesis.[11] Certainly "a body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half of the 9th century onwards."[12]
[edit] See also
Al-Andalus Ensemble
[edit] References
- ^ Rabab Saoud (March 2004). "The Arab Contribution to the Music of the Western World". FSTC Limited. http://www.muslimheritage.com/uploads/Music2.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-06-20.
- ^ (Farmer 1988, p. 137)
- ^ (Farmer 1988, p. 140)
- ^ (Farmer 1988, pp. 140-1)
- ^ (Farmer 1988, p. 141)
- ^ (Farmer 1988, p. 142)
- ^ (Farmer 1988, p. 143)
- ^ (Farmer 1988, p. 144)
- ^ M. Guettat (1980), La Musique classique du Maghreb (Paris: Sindbad).
- ^ J. B. Trend (1965), Music of Spanish History to 1600 (New York: Krause Reprint Corp.)
- ^ Bogin, Meg. The Women Troubadours. Scarborough: Paddington, 1976. ISBN 0 8467 0113 8.
- ^ "Troubadour", Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, Macmillan Press Ltd., London
[edit] External links
