19th Century Arab Observations on European Music

A 19th Century Arab's Observations on European MusicAuthor(s): Pierre CachiaSource: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1973), pp. 41-51Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for EthnomusicologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/850095 .

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A 19TH CENTURY ARAB'S OBSERVATIONS ON EUROPEAN MUSIC

Pierre Cachia

aris al-Shidyaq, in later life known as Ahmad Faris, is the most curious Arab literary personality of the 19th Century. He was born in the

Lebanon in 1804. His family belonged to the Maronite church, which is in communion with Rome; since the Ottoman Empire was an Islamic theocratic state, confessional loyalties were extremely important in it, and-not least among the minorities-religious authorities were entrusted with considerable powers over members of their communities. In the early 1820's, the American Presbyterian Mission became active in the Lebanon. An elder brother of Faris al-Shidyaq's, called As'ad, was attracted to its teachings, fell foul of the bishop in whose service he was, and as a result was incarcerated for some six years and died while in durance in 1830.

In the meantime, Faris had been sent to Egypt to teach American missionaries, and while there he perfected his knowledge of Arabic and found employment on the staff of Egypt's official Gazette, the forerunner of Arab journalism. Still in the service of Protestant missionaries, he went to Malta in 1834 and eventually-much affected by what he called his brother's martyrdom-he himself became a Protestant. In Malta he was Director of the American Missionary Press and taught Arabic in some schools, but he seems to have been able to absent himself from his posts fairly frequently, and in 1848 he finally left for London, where he collaborated-none too happily-with Dr. Lee in the translation of the Bible into Arabic.

He then went to France, and in 1855 he met the Bey of Tunis in Paris, and eulogised him in verse. He was invited to go to Tunis and was made editor of the official paper Al-Ra'id al-Tunisi. There he became a Muslim, adopting the name Ahmad. In 1857, he was appointed Corrector of the Government Press in Istanbul, and from Istanbul he launched, in 1861, the weekly al-Jawa'ib, which became extremely popular throughout the Arabic- speaking world. This he continued to edit, in collaboration with his son Salim, until 1884. He died in 1887.1

He wrote a number of philological works, but his importance-at a time when Arab thought and literary standards were being reshaped by contact with Europe-lies in his contributions to journalism, in a short book on Malta and a longer one on Europe, first published together in Tunis in 1855, and in a fictionalised autobiography laced with Rabelaisian humour known as the

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CACHIA: 19th CENTURY ARAB'S OBSERVATIONS

Adventures of Faryaq (a telescoping of his own name), which first appeared in Paris, also in 1855.2 In these he showed himself to be a man of undisciplined but wide-ranging interests, a somewhat erratic but independent-minded ob- server, a discursive but lively table-talker. He could be narrowly prejudiced over dress conventions or table manners, yet bold and open-minded on such spiky basic issues as the relations between the sexes. He mingled absurd hearsay reports with minute observations on the language of gestures. He indulged at times in the rhymed and trope-laden prose favoured by the literary pundits of his times, yet mostly he wrote with the directness and verve that were to create the style of the future. His reformism was flaunted in and out of season, but it was seminal.

In his book on Malta is a chapter on music that makes only casual reference to the Maltese, but is a characteristic rag-bag of scholarliness, freshness of approach, and naivete. Scarcely distinguishing between concert hall and cafe-concert, it brings to bear on both alike an ear attuned to Arab melodies and an eye dazzled by European technical achievements. A useful essay to read along with it is H. G. Farmer's "What is Arabian Music?" in his Oriental Studies, London, Hinrichsen, 1953.

It is an integral translation of Shidyaq's chapter that I offer below. In it, I attempt to be faithful to the original even when it gropes for words like "notation," out of current usage in Shidyaq's day, or when it resorts to rhyme in its more pretentious passages. A few explanatory additions of my own are inserted, but always between square brackets.

ON THE MUSIC OF THE MALTESE AND OF OTHERS

Before I venture on to this difficult ground, I must beg of those who associate with the masters of the Art permission thus to foist myself amongst them although I am not reckoned one of them; I have nevertheless learnt enough about it to be able to distinguish what is sound therein from what is unsound. This therefore I say:

A philosopher has said: "The Art of Music is a redundancy of mantiq [either "speech" or-by a derivation parallel to that of the Greek from logos-"logic"] which the mind exteriorises by sound since it cannot ex- teriorise it by analogy."3

Those who take the word mantiq here in its technical sense [of logic] interpret this [dictum] as meaning that the foundations of this art are mental. This follows from the fact that the Ancients used to transmit it by hearing and taste. The hearer registered what he heard in his imagination or memory without seeing any signs of it. Similarly, the disciple learnt it from his master by registration in his memory and imitation, and by virtue of the faculty [i.e.,

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special gift] which established these refrains in his imagination. This is why in acquiring this art reliance used to be placed on the faculty of taste.

Now, however, the Franks have brought the modulations and rhythms of sound within reach of the sense of sight, using for them conventional graphic representations and symbols in the same way that letters are used for ideas.4 The learning of the Art, therefore, no longer depends upon memory and great application as it used to in the past. Those of them [i.e., the Franks] who know how to produce notes when they see these signs can play any piece of music even without previous knowledge of it; even if twenty of them were to assemble with such graphic signs before them, you would find them all following them as one.

This interpretation [of the philosopher's definition in terms of formal logic] may be refuted on the ground that if music were a redundancy of Logic it would be practised uniformly even as logic is one in its canons. Yet people differ widely therein: the melodies favoured by the Arabs do not move others-nay, the Arabs themselves differ from one another, the Egyptians being unmoved by Syrian melodies-and European melodies leave them all unmoved.

The word mantiq may, however, be taken in its linguistic meaning [of "speech"]. This indeed is what is intended here, for we find the following [confirmatory] passage in the commentary written by the king of cultured men Ibn Nubatah on the Risalah of Ibn Zaydfn:5 "Musical notes are redundancies of speech which, because the tongue is incapable of uttering them, nature brings out as melodies, in a reiterating sound, not an intermittent one; once they are exteriorised, the spirit becomes enamoured of them, and the heart yearns for them." What is intended by "in a reiterating sound not an intermittent one" is that the sound is prolonged and modulated, but not interrupted as it is in the pronunciation of letters of the alphabet.

Now if the art of Music is a redundancy of speech as here interpreted, it ought to follow that each nation has musical attainments peculiar to it, for each language has beauties and [powers of] expression which are not to be found in any other. But this is not how things turn out in fact. Thus the languages of China and of India have adornments which are not to be found in any other, yet their music is free of such adornments. As for Frankish melodies, they move only such among us as have become accustomed to them.

These melodies of theirs [i.e., of the Franks] fall into four categories. The first, which is the best, is what is sung in places of entertainments, thus corresponding to our muwashshahat. 6 In this, the voice is prolonged and made to quaver, it is lowered and raised, it is made thin or broad or tremulous. It is in this category that rousing, inciting and threatening [motifs] are to be found. The second resembles chanting in churches, and is almost devoid of

43




tremolo. The third is that which is sung in grief and great sorrow; for this they use a delicate kind of singing, resembling heart to heart communication; whoever hears it understands what is intended even if he is ignorant of the language-it is as when you see someone on the verge of tears: you know intuitively that he is about to weep, even though you may not know why. The fourth is used in humorous songs and dialogues. In this there is seldom any quavering, but much use of the coup de glotte. Its effect derives from the fact that they combine it with many things including comical gestures: they laugh while singing, they titter, they weep, they yawn, they sneeze, they imitate the clucking of hens, the twittering of birds, and other things.

Alternate singing, which is very effective, is used in all these categories, but it is commonest in the fourth; peculiar to this last category is the coining of vocables.

Just as they have a comical kind of singing, so they have a kind of dancing that will make even a bereaved mother titter.

As for the Arabs, they say that [of the various kinds of musical compositions known to them] rasd moves deeply, sikah causes joy, saba and biyat stir up sorrow, hijazi revives and makes one tender, and so on.7

The two [i.e., Frankish and Arab music] differ on a number of counts. One is that the Franks have no "free" music unbound by those graphic

signs of theirs to which any verse may be sung, so that if you suggest to one of them that he should sing a couple of lines extempore, as is done among us with [classical monorhyme] odes and with [the post-classical, multi-rhymed fixed metrical compositions known as] mawaliyya, he cannot do so.8 This is strange considering their excellence in this art, for singing in this fashion is natural, and was in use among them before these graphic signs and symbols came into being. I wonder how they sang before Guido d'Arezzo rose to prominence in Italy.

The second difference is that if, [say,] ten of their singers assemble in order to sing a stanzaic poem, some will tackle one part of it in one mode, the others another part in a different mode;9 if, for example, the song is in [the mode called] rasd, one will sing part of it in this mode in a loud voice, another will sing a part in the mode called nawa in a delicate voice, yet another a part in the octave higher in a high voice, so that the listener hears it in different modes. This they call "harmony," meaning the blending of voices in singing. This way of singing has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages reside in the fact that the listener hears at one and the same time one poem in different modes by different voices, which is as if he heard one poem in all the different metres of prosody. The disadvantages are in fact that one's hearing cannot fully register all the points of emission of these various sounds. In my opinion, this kind of music is more felicitously rendered by instruments than by human voices.

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The third is that the singing of the Franks, like their recitations, can move one not only to tenderness, passion, or zest for dancing, but also to zeal and enthusiasm. Songs which inspire zeal and enthusiasm are those which mention fighting, revenge, or the defense of truth; when the coward hears them, especially [if accompanied] by military instruments, his life becomes

cheap to him. As for Arab singing, it is concerned entirely with tenderness and love. Truly appropriate to it are the two meanings of the word tarab [commonly used to designate the reaction to music], which is a lightness affecting man as a result of either joy or sorrow. When one of us hears either vocal or instrumental music, love penetrates his heart so that his affection becomes apparent and his soul yearns as a friend yearns for his intimate, until in the end gladness turns to sadness; it is no wonder then that sighs rush out and tears gush out, for it is when joys abound and their moon is round that by the moonlessness of grief they are penetrated, and with sorrow im- pregnated, until one is submerged in a sea of rapture and set ablaze with the fire of passion. This is why it has been said that the verbs tarraba and shaja [both used for 'to stir' either to joy or to sadness] are opposites.

The fourth10 is that the voices of the Franks remain consistent only in the rasd. True, one finds in their instruments [means of producing] the principal modes pertaining to all the notes; indeed all their semitones and quartertones are there except for two modes which have no semitones. Yet they [i.e., the performers] remain consistent only in the first mode [i.e., the rasd]. I have heard from them the rahawi, busalik, and isfahani modes, but never any of the others. Indeed I have heard some of our own songs performed on their instruments, and they were all in the rasd. Long, by God, have I strained my ears that I might hear our own notes from them, but to no avail, so that I was seized with perplexity. On the one hand, I could see that their instruments were both numerous and skilfully made, and I considered that all sciences had come into their hands and all arts were theirs alone, and that in this art they had attained wonders which-as already indicated-had passed out of our reach. On the other hand, I find that their attainments are exclusively in the rasd mode. True, this mode is the first of the principal modes, and in Egypt and Tunis more songs are sung in this mode than in any other; all the same, the excellence of the saba, the biyat and the hi-azi is not to be denied.

On second thoughts, however, it is not surprising that they should have missed some accomplishments in this art as they have missed some in others. An example [of accomplishments that they have failed to attain] in other fields is the multiplicity of our prosodic metres. Another is certain rhetorical embellishments such as rhyming in prose: [of the various forms of belles- lettres] they practise only poetry, which in literary compositions is the equivalent of free music in singing, for rhymed prose is superior to poetry.11 Yet another is their inability to pronounce the guttural letters.

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I did once enquire about this of one of their artists. I said, "The principal modes exist alike with you and with us, and so do the semitones; what remains to be discussed is the way they are in fact used. Now when we use, say, a semitone, [we use it] with its own mode; you however use it with a different mode, so that to us it appears to be dissonant. How is the true way to be known?" His reply was merely that with them this art had been based on geometric [sic] principles which cannot be flouted;12 so that it is incorrect for any mode to be used except with a different one.

For all that, and in spite of my fondness for their melodies, I have often heard from them gross dissonances. I was once induced by the descriptions of those who praised her to listen to a singer whose reputation was such that she had sung in the presence of the Tzar of Russia. When I heard her I was indeed stirred by the sweetness of her voice and the extent to which she could prolong her breath in singing; yet insofar as my perception goes, I did hear dissonances from her.

If it were established that the melodies to which the Greeks sing their hymns in their churches to-day are similar to those which were sung in the days of the Greek philosophers, this would be a further indication of the deficiency of Frankish melodies, for the notes of the Greeks are close to ours.

The fifth difference is that their instrumentalists-with the exception of the violinists-are not good at producing semitones or quartertones unless those are graphically represented to them. As for their flute, it has several holes in addition to the seven [with which the Arabs are familiar], and every pair of holes has a [metal] cover [key] so arranged that when one nostril [opening] is stopped the other provides an outlet. However, the skill involved in ensuring that they are stopped or used approximates to the skill we require in altering the movements of the fingers. These semi- and quartertones are similar to rawm or ishmam in grammar.13

On the whole, the Franks have made some departures in this art which do not agree with our taste, and others in which they cannot be emulated. From the details given above, you will know that their songs of zeal and enthusiasm are unknown among us, and that our "free" music is unknown among them. One strange fact is that for all the abundance of their instruments and implements, they have no lute-many as its virtues are-and no flute made of reed, for their flute fulfils the function of our reed-pipe. Yet most learned men assert that music derives origins from the sound of the wind in the reeds, though others say it comes from the twittering of birds, others from the murmur of water, and yet others that it is derived from the sounds made by Tubal-cain's hammers, that the first to establish the principles of this art was Jubal in 1800 B.C. [Gen. 4:21-22], and that the flute was invented in 1506 and is [to be] attributed to Higgins.

Apropos the blacksmith's [i.e., Tubal-cain's] hammers, it is related in

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the commentary on al-Hariri's Assemblies,14 in the biographical note on al-Khalil, that the first to work out the principles of prosody and to regulate Arab poetry thereby was al-Khall ibn Ahmad Abu 'Abd ar-Rahman al- Farahidi al-Azdl.15 The way it came about was that he was passing by the fullers' bazaar in Basrah and heard the fuller's instrument, that is to say the mallet, make different sounds: from one building he heard toe, from another toe-toe, from yet another to-to-toc, to-to-toc. This set him wondering, and he exclaimed: "By God, I shall build on this basis an obscure science!" And he founded prosody, which deals with the rules of verse.

The most moving of Frankish instruments is the concertina. It is a form of organ, a kind of bellows which can be opened out and compressed; it is an invention of Wheatstone's.

It is well-known that the more delicate a person's nature becomes and the more gentle his character, the readier he is to compete on the race-course of musical response and the more eager to breathe in the fragrance of its effluvia; for he who is enamoured of brilliant notions and witty speech no sooner hears a melody than he visualizes, in association with it, such beauty as makes him wander with passion like a madman, before the dullard is even aware that it is music. This is the more so when the singing is expressive and the occasion felicitous. In the learned al-Safadi's commentary on the Lamiyyat al-'Ajaml6 we find: "He who is not moved by the lute and its chords, or by spring and the flowers it affords, is of so corrupt a disposition that he tests the skill of a physician." Plato said, "Let him who grieves listen to pleasant sounds, for when the spirit grieves its light is dimmed, but when it hears what stirs it and gives it joy it brightens up again." And Ishaq ibn Ibrahim al-Mawsili17 said: "The worst music or poetry is the mediocre, for the highest stirs and the lowest excites laughter and wonder, but the mediocre neither stirs nor makes one laugh."

It would be manifestly wrong to say that it was because of my ignorance of the language that I was not stirred by these [Frankish] melodies, for the

response to music is essentially a response to the sounds, and not to the words that are sung.

In music as in other things, the Maltese waver: they are neither like the Franks nor like the Arabs. Their villagers have but a few songs, and when

they sing they strain their voices excessively, so that they shock the ear. They resemble the Franks in that they confine themselves to the rasd, and the Arabs in that when a number of them assemble to sing they use sounds which belong to one mode only, also in that one of them stands up to recite and the others respond. Their notables learn Italian melodies.

Most blind people in Malta make a livelihood by playing musical instruments. Whenever someone returns from a trip, or has a baby, or gets married, or has a child baptized, or is promoted, or makes a very profitable

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deal, they hasten to congratulate him. Nothing that happens in the country escapes them. It is related that the daughter of one of the notables committed adultery, but managed to conceal her pregnancy from her family and went away for a while until she was delivered of her child. When she returned to her home, however, a band of them came to play before the house. The father asked them why, and they gave him the news of his daughter's confinement; it was then that he understood why she had been away.

It seems to me that the music that used to be sung in the days of the

Caliphs was closer to that of the inhabitants of the Maghrib to-day than to that of the Arabs of the East.

The word with which the North Africans intersperse their singing ad libitum is dS-d, even as the Egyptians and Syrians use ya layl and the Turks aman.

The Qamiis18 says: "There was at first no huda' [caravan song, said to have been the first form of Arab music]. Then a beduin beat his young slave and bit his fingers, so that as he walked the lad kept saying, "dT-dl," intending "ya yadT" [Oh, my hand!]. Then the camels stepped out to [the rhythm of] his cries, so he [i.e., his master] said, "Keep on at it!" and bestowed a robe

upon him. That is the origin of the huda'." The names given to musical notes by the North Africans are different

from the names in use among us. They claim that they learnt this art from the Andulusians. The Tunisians have a more sedate style [than that of other North Africans].

It seems that [the short song called] mawali19 is a monopoly of

Egyptians and Syrians, as are the vertical flute and the psaltery. The common tendency [among performers] is for anyone who has sung

a piece well to think that there is no one with a perceptive ear that has not heard him. If however he does not sing well, he will make some sort of excuse for himself by clearing his throat or coughing, putting the blame for his

shortcoming on some mishap. This happens when the singer is not a

professional; the trained one is seldom exposed to such failings, because the voice is like an instrument: the more practised it is, the more polish it has.

Just as Egyptian singing is more stirring and of higher quality than the singing of all other Arabs, so is the singing of Italians better than that of other Franks. This is because their language abounds in vowel sounds, so that like ours it is well-suited to singing and to prosody; also because their voices are emitted from the chest. The English language, on the other hand, is so full of quiescent consonants that it can be adapted to the kind of singing that calls for prolongations and modulations only by the distortion of words and by flouting the rules of pronunciation; what does come out well is the comic song. Besides, their voices always come out of their throats; their singers seem to sing while choked with morsels of food.

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The Franks all say that Arab singing comes out of the nostrils. Even if this were to be admitted, it would not be incompatible with the rousing of aesthetic responses and emotions, for the French language cannot be spoken without nasalisation, yet it is the most musical of all Frankish languages, and often produces an emotional response even in those who hear it for the first time in their life.

I have met some Franks who responded emotionally to Egyptian music, but only after a long sojourn in Egypt: at first they used to recoil from it and say that it was saddening. It is no secret that habit affects all things, pronunciation and melody above all. One need observe no more than that our children and those of the Franks alike are put to sleep with song, and thus become used to [a particular style of] it from an early age; once it has commingled with their constitution, anything different sounds strange. In fact the Maltese put their children to sleep with songs which resemble nothing as much as they do the lamentations of our wailing-women.20 Indeed were it not for habit, the Franks with all their skill would not be incapable of uttering our gutturals-just as it is habit that has given their women their rights in wholesale fashion, and denied our women theirs.

FOOTNOTES

1. For a bibliography of Arabic works on Shidyaq, see Anis al-Maqdisi, Al-Funun al-Adabiyyah wa A'lamuha, Beirut, Dar al-Katib al-'Arabi, 1963, p. 181. In European languages, references to him are made in: The Encyclopedia of Islam; C. Brockelmann, Geschichte des Arabischen Litteratur; A. Cremona, L'Antica Fondazione della Lingua Araba in Malta, Malta, 1955; Ibrahim Abu Lughud, The Arab Rediscovery of Europe, Princeton, 1963; A. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, O.U.P., 1962; P. Cachia, "An Arab's View of 19th Century Malta," Maltese Folklore Review, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1962), Vol. 1, No. 2 (1963), and Vol. 1, No. 3 (1966). The martyrdom of As'ad al-Shidyaq is said to be the basis of Gibran Khalil Gibran's story "Yuhanna al-Majnun" in 'Ara'is al-Murij, translated by H. M. Nahmad as Nymphs of the Valley, London, 1948.

2. In Arabic, these books have fanciful rhyming titles: Al-Wasitah fj Ma'rifat Ahwal Ma7litah; Kashf al-Mukhabba 'an Funun Urubba; Al-Saq 'ala al-Saq fi ma huwa al-Firyaq. Selections from the Jawa'ib have appeared in seven volumes under the title Kanz al-Ragha'ib f Muntakhabat al-Jawa'ib.

3. I have not been able to trace this quotation to its source, but this is presumably Greek, since it is on a Greek foundation that Arab musical theory was elaborated; Greek musical theorists translated into Arabic by 10th Century included Aristoxenos, Euclid, Ptolemy and Nicomachos-see H. G. Farmer, History of Arabian Music, London, Luzac, 1929, esp. p. 152.

What Shidyiq understood by it is far from clear, and the tortuous translation adopted here is meant to fit in with his speculations. The word translated "redundancy" primarily means "surplus, left-over," and in grammar is used for a non-essential part of a sentence (such as an adverb, as against verb or subject). The implication here might be that speech is the basic form of communication by sound, and that music performs a related but subsidiary function. Shidyaq's further remarks on the "adornments" of the languages of India and China seem to indicate that the definition led him to expect a very close correspondence between the speech and the music of any one nation.

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The word translated "analogy" stands for an important concept in Islamic law which enables the provisions of Scriptures to be extended from specific situations to unforeseen but comparable ones; in philology too there are regular formations based on analogy, and irregular ones that are matters of conventional usage. The associations of the word are therefore with things regular and capable of rational or objective formulation, as against things arbitrary. The distinction here may be that whereas language is subject to definable objective norms, music is entirely a matter of taste. At the same time, the word primarily means "measurement," and the fact that in Shidyaq's early experience music seemed incapable of exact representation but could be transmitted only through hearing looms large in the next paragraph.

4. The Arabs did once have a notation, but it was not widely used. See H. G. Farmer, op. cit., pp. 108, 203.

5. Jamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Nubatah was a man of letters who died in Cairo in 1366. Abu al-Walfd Ahmad ibn Zaydun, 1003-1070, of Cordova and Seville, was one of the tenderest of Andulusian poets, famous also for his fine prose, notably in an Epistle addressed to his rival Ibn 'Abduis.

6. A strophic verse form which originated in Andulusia in the 11th Century. See Note 8 below.

7. On the effect of music, see H. G. Farmer's brochure "The Influence of Music: From Arabic Sources," London, 1926; also his Sa'adyah Gaon on the Influence of Music, London, 1943. For the main Arabic modes, see Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

For a fuller discussion, see Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger, "Les Commentaires de Mawlana Mubarak Sah sur le Kitab al-Adwar (de Safiyyu-d-Din 'Abdu-l Mumin ibn Fahir al-'Urmawl)" in La Musique Arabe, Paris, 1938, Vol. 3, pp. 376-387.

Note that Shidyaq adopts the North African spelling rasd (with emphatic 's') for what would be called rasd in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

8. A classical Arabic ode had a strong repetitive rhythmic pattern. There was a single rhyme throughout, and the same combination of long and short syllables recurred twice in each line. In time a number of other forms of metrical composition appeared. Of these reputedly the oldest was the mawaliyya, said to have been invented by the inhabitants of Wasit in Iraq in the middle of the 8th Century; but no examples are quoted which may confidently be said to be earlier than 12th Century. The mawaliyya is in one of the 16 classical metres, the basft. The earliest examples recorded all consist of four hemistichs of basTt with a single rhyme; more elaborate rhyme schemes were later evolved, but the metre remained unchanged.

9. Shidyaq's assertion that the one poem may be sung in different modes seems quite unsound; it would have been defensible, however, to speak of different tunes (alhan).

10. The observations that follow appear to derive from the fact that in European music the major scale consists of two tetrachords spanning two different 'modes.'

11. Rhymed prose is now entirely out of favour with the Arabs. Shidyaq himself used it in the titles and opening paragraphs of his books, or to highlight emotional or pretentious passages, as in the last paragraph but one.

12. Needless to say, consonance and dissonance have nothing to do with geometry, but are matters of usage.

13. Rawm is the half-slurring of a vowel-sound, ishmam is its reduction to a faint sound close to 'i' or 'u.'

14. Abu Muhammad Qasim ibn 'Ali ibn 'Uthman al-Hariri of Basrah, d. 1122, was a master of ornate prose. His "assemblies" are short narratives, mostly concerned with petty frauds perpetrated by a plausible and eloquent rogue; the narrative element in them is a thin framework on which to hang rhetorical tours-de-force.

15. Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi, of Basrah, d. c. 791, was an early gram- marian and lexicographer credited with having laid the foundations of Arabic prosody.

16. Salah al-Din al-Safadi, d. 1363, was a leading erudite in an age much given to the compilation of second-hand information; his main work is a 26 volume biographical

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dictionary. The Lamiyyat al-'Ajam is a celebrated ode composed in 1111 by Hasan ibn 'All al-Tughra'i of Isfahan, bewailing the corruption and decadence of his times.

17. Ishaq al-Mawsili (767-850) succeeded his father Ibrahim as chief musician at the court of the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad; he was also a scholar of no mean attainment in many sciences.

18. The Qamus is an Arabic dictionary compiled by al-Firuzabadi, d. 1414. Shidyaq published a volume of critical notes on this dictionary under the title of al-Jasus 'ail al-Qamus, Istanbul, 1882.

19. More commonly known as mawaliyya or mawwal-see Note 8. Far from being a monopoly of Egyptians and Syrians, it is traditionally held to have been initiated by the inhabitants of Wasit, and developed by those of Baghdad.

20. The reference is to hired public mourners, described by A.-B. Clot Bey in his Aperqu Gbneral sur l'Egypte, Paris, 1840, vol. 2, p. 47: "Often [at a funeral] professional wailing-women are called in; they drum on tamburins, emit cries of feigned despair, and chant a banal and exaggerated enumeration of the dead man's physical and moral qualities."

SOCIETY FOR ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

JAAP KUNST PRIZE CHARLES SEEGER PRIZE (Foreign members) (U.S. members)

The Society for Ethnomusicology announces two prizes to be awarded, in conjunction with the 1973 annual meeting of the Society (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, November 14), for the most distinguished papers composed by graduate students: foreign members of the Society are eligible for the Jaap Kunst Prize; U.S. members for the Charles Seeger Prize. Papers may be submitted under the following conditions:

1) The Kunst and Seeger awards will consist of the following: a) A cash award of $50.00. b) Automatic consideration by the Editor of the Journal for publication in

ETHNOMUSICOLOGY. c) In case of publication, the awarding of 100 free reprints to the author.

2) A graduate student shall be defined as a person pursuing an active graduate course of studies leading toward an advanced degree. This will include persons who are engaged in writing the doctoral dissertation, but not those who are teaching full time while doing so.

3) Concerning papers to be submitted: a) Applicants for the Jaap Kunst Prize should submit papers to the Program

Chairman for the 1973 meeting (Lois A. Anderson, School of Music, ~1 ~ 4521 Humanities, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706) 60 days

in advance of the meeting (i.e., September 1). Papers should be in idiomatic English and typewritten, following the directions for style as given on the inside cover of each issue of the Journal.

b) Applicants for the Charles Seeger Prize must be residents of the United States. Their papers must be read at the annual meeting; papers read in absentia will not be considered. A typewritten, double-spaced clean copy of the paper must be handed to the Chairman of the session at the time the paper is read. The Chairman will be responsible for the selection of the best of the graduate student papers in his session and will in turn forward his selection to the Program Chairman.

4) The Program Chairman will forward all papers received to the Chairman of the Prize Papers Committee who, with his committee, will make the final decision regarding the award winners.

5) Either or both the Jaap Kunst Prize and the Charles Seeger Prize may be withheld in any year, depending on the judgment of the committee.

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Documents

19th Century Arab Observations on European Music