The Survival of Some Aspects of Medieval Arabic Performance Practice

E thnomusicologists have generally been preoccupied with the fascinating subject of the process of change. Although no one can deny the importance of this area of research, it has tended to overshadow the study of its opposite-continuity. While acknowledging the existence of change in many areas in the music of the Arab Middle East, this paper focuses on some aspects of Arabic performance practice that have survived change from medieval times to the present.l It is possible to compare modern practices with medieval ones because we have at our disposal two unsurpassed Arabic music documents from the 10th century that treat the music up to that period exhaustively. They enable us to understand the reason behind many modern Arabic practices and, conversely, the latter facilitate the comprehension of the two medieval sources: alFirabi's Kitab al-Mifsiqa al-Kabir (Great Book of Music) and al-Isbahini's Kitab al-Agghaini (Book of Songs).2

Arabic · Biology · Evolutionary biology · Linguistics · Survival of the fittest · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · History · Islamic Studies and History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Philosophy

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  Ali Jihad Racy•Ethnomusicology•2000

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