The Re-creation of Medieval Arabo-Andalusian Music in Modern Performance
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09503110902875442
ISSN1473-348X
Autores Tópico(s)Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis
ResumoAbstract In recent decades more and more musical ensembles have begun performing "historicised" versions of medieval Arabo-Andalusian music. The impulse to produce such re-creations of medieval musical practices has come almost entirely from Western musicians and scholars influenced by the aesthetics of the European Early Music movement, rather than from Arab musicians. The historical resources available as the basis of such performances, however, are very different from those used in the re-creation of European Early Music. This article surveys the extant historical resources, offers a brief history of this new "medieval" style of performance of Arabo-Andalusian music, and provides descriptions and critiques of selected recordings. Keywords: Andalusian MusicEarly MusicMuslim Spainal-Andalus Notes 1In this article, the term "Andalusian music" is used to refer to all traditions related to musical traditions performed in Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) during the period from the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 92/711 until the fall of Granada in 897/1492. The qualifiers "medieval" and "modern" are used here in their broadest possible senses to refer roughly to the periods from the second/eighth to ninth/fifteenth centuries and the tenth/sixteenth century to the present respectively. 2For an account of the history and principles of the Early Music movement, see Harry Haskell, The Early Music Revival: A History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988); Joel Cohen and Herb Snitzer, Reprise: The Extraordinary Revival of Early Music (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1985); and Bernard D. Sherman, Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 3The introduction of the Western violin (itself a descendent [amongst other instruments–see The New Grove–ed.] of the medieval Arab rabāb) occurred in most regions of the Arab world by the mid-thirteenth/nineteenth century. In North Africa, the mandolin was already common at the time of the earliest known recordings of Andalusian music and was probably introduced there in the latter half of the nineteenth century, although it is not found in the Andalusian traditions of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. The piano, cello and bass, among other instruments, are more recent introductions, dating to the twentieth century. On the other hand, the qānūn (trapezoid plucked zither–i.e. psaltery–ed.) and reed flute have almost entirely disappeared from Andalusian musical traditions of many regions of North Africa over the same time period and the North African rabāb, once virtually an icon of Andalusian music, has in recent decades become increasingly rare. 4Professional musicians are well documented in both the court and noble households in al-Andalus from the late second/eighth century to the turn of the sixth/twelfth century, with the documented female singers (the "singing slave-girls") vastly outnumbering male singers. After that, however, the "singing slave-girls" disappear rapidly from the written record through the Arab Middle East. In earlier periods they appear frequently in works of history, poetry, humour, law and so forth, but these references cease almost entirely after the fifth/eleventh or sixth/twelfth century. The structures of patronage and/or institutions for training these artists seemed to have collapsed outright, but this phenomenon has not been thoroughly studied. 5Ibn [Hdot]ayyān, Al-Sifr al-thānī min kitāb al-muqtabas l-Ibn [Hdot]ayyān al-qur ⃛ ubī, ed. Ma[hdot]mūd 'Alī Makkī (Riyad: Markaz al-Malik Fay⋅al li-l-Bu[hdot]ūth wa-l-Dirāsāt al-Islāmiyya, 2003), p. 324. 6For the Arabic text of al-Tifāshī, see Mu[hdot]ammad Ibn Tāwīt al-[Tdot]anjī, "Al- ⃛arā'iq wa l-al[hdot]ān al-mūsīqiyya fī Ifrīqiya wa l-Andalus", Ab[hdot] āth, 21 (1968): 93–116; an English translation is found in Benjamin M. Liu and James T. Monroe, Ten Hispano-Arabic Songs in the Modern Oral Tradition (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 35–44. The reference to song genres is found in [Tdot]al-[Tdot]anjī, "Al-[Tdot]arā'iq", p. 114; Liu and Monroe, Ten Hispano-Arabic Songs, p. 43. 7Al-[Tdot]anjī, "Al- ⃛arā'iq", pp. 103-104, 106; Liu and Monroe, Ten Hispano-Arabic Songs, pp. 38, 39. 8Al-[Tdot]anjī, "Al- ⃛arā'iq", p. 103; Liu and Monroe, Ten Hispano-Arabic Songs, p. 37. 9The initial melody might be repeated twelve times if the AA rhyme both opens and closes the poem (i.e., if there is both a ma ⃛la' and a kharja), and, although there is still debate about whether these songs were ever sung with a refrain in the medieval period, the use of either melody as a refrain would of course entail even more repetitions. 10Ibn Khaldūn, Al-Muqaddima (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li l-Nashr, 1989), II: 767. 11Ginés Péres de Hita, Guerras Civiles de Granada, ed. Shasta M. Bryant (Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 1982), pp. 252–255. 12Luys de Narbaez, Los Seys Libros del Delphin de Música de cifra para Tañer de Vihuela [Valladolid, 1538], trans. and study by Emilio Pujol (Barcelona: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas [CSIC] and Instituto Español de Musicología, 1945), pp. 48, 60-61. 13Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Cancionero musical de los siglos XV y XVI (Real Academia de las Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1890); Higinio Anglés, La música en la corte de los Reyes Católicos, II, III, Polifonía profana: Cancionero Musical de Palacio (siglos XV-XVI), volumes I–II, Monumentos de la Música Española, 5 and 10 (Barcelona: CSIC and Instituto Español de Musicología, 1947 and 1951). 14Francisco de Salinas, De Musica Libri Septem: Spanish translation by Ismael Fernández de la Cuesta, Siete Libros sobra la Música (Madrid: Alpuerto, 1983); J.B. Trend, "Salinas: A sixteenth century collector of folk songs," Music & Letters, 8 (1) (Jan. 1927): 13–24; Emilio García Gómez, "La canción famosa 'Calvi vi calvi calvi arabi' ", Al-Andalus, 21 (1) (1956): 1–18. See Wulstan, p. 193 below, for facsimile. 15See for example, Rosario Álvarez Martinez, "Los instrumentos musicales de Al-Andalus en la iconograf ía medieval cristiana" in Música y Poesía del Sur de Al-Andalus, (Granada-Sevilla: El Legado Andalusí, 1995), pp. 93–124; and Reynaldo Fernandez Manzano, "Iconografía y otros aspectos de los instrumentos musicales en Al-Andalus", in Música y Poesía del Sur de Al-Andalus (Granada-Sevilla: El Legado Andalusí, 1995), pp. 79–92. 16Al-[Tdot]anjī, "Al- ⃛arā'iq", pp. 115–116. This translation presents only slight emendations to that published by Liu and Monroe, Ten Hispano-Arabic Strophic Songs, pp. 43–44. 17María del Carmen Gómez Muntané, La música en la casa real catalano-aragonesa durante los años 1336-1432 (Barcelona: Bosch, 1979). 18For the official eradication of Arab musical instruments in the tenth/sixteenth century, see Luis del Mármol Carvajal, Historia del rebelion y castigo de los moriscos del reyno de Granada (1797), facs. (Granada: Delegación Provincial de la Consejería de Cultura, 1996-1998). 19Mu[hdot]ammad al-[Hdot]umaydī, Jadhwat al-muqtabis (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1983), p. 223. 20'Alī ibn Mūsā Ibn Sa'īd al-Andalusī, Al-mughrib fi hulā l-Maghrib, ed. Shawqī [Ddot]ayf, volumes I–II (Cairo: Dār al-Ma'ārif, 1964), I: 177. 21A comparison of the songbook of Bu'i⋅āmī with that of al-[Hdot]ā'ik, written slightly more than a century later, shows that, in those sections covered by both sources, a full 50% of the songs in the earlier text do not appear in the later collection. 22One of the very few attempts to do something of this sort is found in Liu and Monroe, Ten Hispano-Arabic Strophic Songs; although their conclusions are open to question, their work represents a first step in what may eventually be a very fruitful line of research. 23Cohen and Snitzer, Reprise, pp. 41–42, 44; Haskell, Early Music Revival, pp. 156–57, 165. 24The one well-known exception, instrumental versions of songs sung by the twentieth-century Egyptian superstar Umm Kulthūm, are more a testimony to her unique status than to a broader acceptance of this practice.
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