Andalusian classical music

All you want to know about Andalusian classical music

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 the Al-Andalus period. It is now most closely associated with Morocco (al-Âla), though similar traditions are found in Algeria (Gharnâtî, and San'a), Tunisia and Libya (al-Maalûf). The popular musics of chaabi developed themselves as alternative to this classical form of music.

Contents

Origins

Andalusian classical music was allegedly born in the Emirate of Cordoba (Al-Andalus) in the 9th century. The Iraqi musician Ziryâb (d. 857), who became court musician of Abd al-Rahman II in Cordoba, is usually 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 classical music to produce a wholly new style that spread across Iberia and North Africa.

By the 11th century, Moorish Spain and Portugal had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually throughout France, influencing French troubadours, and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. The English words lute, rebec, guitar, organ and naker are derived from Arabic oud, rabab, qitara, urghun and nagqara'.

The classical music of Andalusia reached North Africa via centuries of cultural exchange, the Almohad dynasty and then the Marinid dynasty being present both in Al-Andalus and in Morocco and most of North Africa. Mass resettlements of Muslims and Sephardi Jews from Cordoba, Sevilla, Valencia and Granada, fleing the Reconquista, further expanded the reach of Andalusian music.

Music

A suite form called the Andalusi nubah forms the basis of al-âla. Though it has roots in Andalusia, the modern nûba probably is certainly 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 Morocco only eleven nuba 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:

  1. basît (6/4)
  2. qâ'im wa nusf (8/4)
  3. btâyhî (8/4)
  4. darj (4/4)
  5. quddâm (3/4 or 6/8)

An entire nuba can last six or seven hours, though this is never done today. Rather, in Morocco usually 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 Morocco, including the cities of Fez, Tetouan, Chaouen, Tangier, Meknes, Rabat, and Casablanca.

Instruments

Andalusian classical music orchestras use instruments including oud (lute), rabab (rebec), darbouka (goblet drums), taarija (tambourine), qanún (zither) and kamenjah (violin). More recently, other instruments have been added to the ensemble, including piano, contrabass, cello, and even banjos, saxophones and clarinets, though these latter instruments are rare.

Influence of Andalusian music

The lute was adopted from the Arab world. 1568 print.
The lute was adopted from the Arab world. 1568 print.

A number of musical instruments used in Western music are believed to have been derived from Andalusian musical instruments: the lute was derived from the al'ud, the rebec (ancestor of violin) from the rebab, the guitar from qitara, naker from naqareh, 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,[1] the balaban, the castanet from kasatan, sonajas de azófar from sunuj al-sufr, the conical bore wind instruments,[2] the xelami from the sulami or fistula (flute or musical pipe),[3] the shawm and dulzaina from the reed instruments zamr and al-zurna,[4] the gaita from the ghaita, rackett from iraqya or iraqiyya,[5] the harp and zither from the qanun,[6] canon from qanun, geige (violin) from ghichak,[7] and the theorbo from the tarab.[8]

According to a common theory on the origins of the troubadour, a composer of medieval lyric poetry, it may have had Arabic origins. Ezra Pound, in his Canto VIII, famously declared that William of Aquitaine "had brought the song up out of Spain / with the singers and veils..." referring to the troubadour song. In his study, Lévi-Provençal is said to have found four Arabo-Hispanic verses nearly or completely recopied in William's manuscript. According to historic sources, William VIII, the father of William, brought to Poitiers hundreds of Muslim prisoners.[9] Trend admitted that the troubadours derived their sense of form and even the subject matter of their poetry from the Andalusian Muslims.[10] The hypothesis that the troubadour 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 trobairitz, held this hypothesis. Certainly "a body of song of comparable intensity, profanity and eroticism [existed] in Arabic from the second half of the 9th century onwards."[11]

Another theory on the origins of the Western solfège musical notation suggests that it may have also had Arabic origins. It has been argued that the solfège syllables (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti) may have been derived from the syllables of the Arabic solmization system Durr-i-Mufassal ("Separated Pearls") (dal, ra, mim, fa, sad, lam). This origin theory was first proposed by Meninski in his Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalum (1680) and then by Laborde in his Essai sur la Musique Ancienne et Moderne (1780).[12][13]

See also

External links

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