A New Hot Tip...the Arab Connection

Back when I was studying for my qualifying exams almost exactly a year ago, Prof. Susan McClary mentioned the cultural exchange between the Christian Europeans of the late middle ages and the Muslim Arabs. This exchange can be most obvious in the European appropriation of instruments of the Middle East. Documentation, however, is less obvious if not extremely obscure. At that time, I was reviewing my study of Post-Colonialism, and my primary concern was the political and ethical nature of transnational encounters, following the transnational-feminist work of Shih and Lionnet. It seems there had to be several reasons why this particular cultural exchange was either forgotten or actively suppressed:

1. Instrumental music was largely not notated in either the East or the West, since instrumental tradition of the time did not require the coordination of multiple voices in counterpoint.

2. Composers and theorists of European sacred choral music, which is by far the most well-documented music of the time, were engaged in the extra-musical activity of glorifying God through the often mathematical and architectural creation of works of beauty. The infusion of such spiritual and symbolic material into the knowledge of music, as well as study of ancient Greek texts (without the support of actual knowledge of the ancient music through either performance practice or notation) would have trumped the influence of secular or non-Christian instrumental performance practice in the creation of new sacred choral works, which became the basis of polyphonic music in the West (at least in the apocryphal canonization of the literature).

3. There may have been an active suppression of Islamic culture and its visible influence on European culture following the fall of Al-Andalus in the 15th century. Interestingly, this coincides with the maturation of counterpoint in the West and the writing of major theoretical treatises. Subsequently, polyphonic choral music dominated European music for quite some time. Even still, use of instruments in notated music followed the traditions in vocal music. It may be interesting to examine the emergence of notated music for courtly dance music, though folk and popular styles will be much harder to study.

Prof. McClary suggested I look at the work of David Munrow in the 1960's, who she says did some important work in using performance practice of Arabic music to re-create performance practice of ancient Western music. I'll be looking at the reaction, if I can find it, in the journal Early Music. So here is my "hot tip," and I'm quite excited to follow up on it. Exploring (and possibly supporting) a case of cultural exchange between Islam and the West during the middle ages will have three significant results: first, it will help to understand the nature of the music that was performed and written at the time. Second, it may provide evidence of the "rhythmic content" of subsequent European instrumental music beyond our present understanding of the development of rhythm. Third, understanding the transnational origins of "our" music dramatically changes the landscape of present day encounters, wrought with imperialistic undertones, ethical considerations and extremely timely political significance.