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European Knowledge of Arabic Texts Referring to Music: Some New Material*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Charles Burnett
Charles Burnett*
Affiliation:
Warburg Institute, University of London
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Extract

The literature on the problem of Arabic influence on the music and poetry of western Europe in the Middle Ages is vast. The aim of this article is modest. It seeks to draw together some passages on music and musical instruments in Arabic texts that were translated into Latin in the Middle Ages. These texts were not specifically on music, and may have escaped the notice of musicologists for that reason. However, they are interesting in their own right, for they show the role of music in other contexts, such as medicinie, astrology and philolsophy, and exemplify the modifications that took place when texts were transferred from one culture to another.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 12 , January 1993 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 For guides to this literature see Perkuhn, E. R., Die Theorien zum arabischen Einfluss auf die europäische Musik des Mittelalters (Walldorf-Hessen, 1976)Google Scholar; Ali, Yahya Mansoor, Die arabische Theorie: Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des abendländischen Minnesangs (inaugural dissertation, Heidelberg, 1966)Google Scholar; the articles in Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, 1 (1977)Google Scholar; Schoeler, G., ‘Die hispano-arabische Strophendichtung: Entstehung und Beziehung zur Troubadour-Lyrik’, in Actes du 8me congrès de l'Union européenne des arabisants et islamisants (Aix-en-Provence, 1976), pp. 243–66Google Scholar; Eckhard, Neubauer, ‘Zur Rolle der Araber in der Musikgeschichte des europäischen Mittelalters’, Islam und Abendland, ed. Mercier, A. (Bern and Frankfurt, 1976), pp. 111–29Google Scholar; and Eckhard, and Elsbeth, Neubauer, ‘Henry George Farmer on Oriental Music: an Annotated Bibliography’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, 4 (1987–1988), pp. 219–66.Google Scholar The most important papers of Farmer have been usefully collected together in Farmer, H. G., Studies in Oriental Music, ed. Neubauer, Eckhard, Institut für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, series B (Frankfurt, 1986).Google Scholar

2 See Sezgin, F., Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, III (Leiden, 1970), pp. 304–6Google Scholar, and Ullmann, M., Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden, 1970), pp. 147–8.Google Scholar See also Kümmel, W. F., Musik und Medizin (Munich, 1977), pp. 336–7.Google Scholar

3 Daremberg, C., ‘Recherches sur un ouvrage qui a pour titre Zad el-mouçafir, en arabe, Éphodes, en grec, et Viatique, en latin, et qui est attribué, dans les textes arabes et grecs, à Abou Djafar, et, dans le texte latin, à Constantin’, Archives des Missions Scientifiques et Littéraires, Choix des Rapports et Instructions, 2 (1851), pp. 490–527.Google Scholar

4 The first excerpt is included by Daremberg, who in ‘Recherches’, pp. 522 and 526, gives the Arabic text from MS Dresden 209, the Greek text from Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, gr. 2239, and the Latin text from Opera omnia Isaac (Lyons, 1515).Google Scholar The second excerpt is given in a translation from the Arabic text in Dugat, G., ‘Études sur le traité de médecine d'Abou Djàfar ah'mad, intitulé ZAD AL-MOÇAFIR, “La provision du voyageur”’, Journal Asiatigue, sér. v, 1 (1853), pp. 289–353 Google Scholar, see section IV, pp. 307–11. For the Latin text I have used MSS London, British Library, Egerton 2900 (12th century; = E, fols. 12v−13r, 15v−16r); ibid., Royal 12.D.IX (late 13th century; = R, fols. 6r-v, 7v−8r); London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 207 (mid-14th century = V, fols. 9v, 12r-v), and ibid., 208 (mid-14th century = W, fols. 5v, 7r), and the printed edition in Opera omnia Isaac (Lyons, 1515)Google ScholarPubMed (= Isaac, fols. 146v, 147r). I include all variants from the MSS except changes in word order and insignificant variations in orthography.

5 Ed. Opera otmnia Isaac (Lyons, 1515), fol. 98r.Google Scholar

6 For this chapter see Wack, M. F., ‘The Liber de heros morbo of Johannes Afflacius and its Implications for Medieval Love Conventions’, Speculum, 62 (1987), pp. 324–44CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed and idem, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: the ‘Viaticum’ and its Commentaries (Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 186–93. Both these works include editions of Constantine's translation, but use manuscripts different from those used here. The revised version of the chapter, which Wack attributes to Johannes Afflacius, adds nothing in respect to the musical references.

7 Sezgin, , Geschichte, III pp. 266–7Google Scholar; Ullmann, , Die Medizin, pp. 125–6.Google Scholar The Arabic and Latin texts are placed side by side in Isḥāq ibn 'Imrān, Maqālah fi l-mālīḫūliyā (Abhandlung über die Melancholie) und Constantini Africani Libri duo de Melancholia, ed. and trans. Garbers, K. (Hamburg, 1977).Google Scholar

8 Ed. Garbers, , pp. 124–5.Google Scholar

9 Ed. Garbers, , pp. 136–7.Google Scholar

10 For these two references see Burnett, C., ed., Adelard of Bath: an English Scientist and Arabist of the Early Twelfth Century, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts, 14 (London, 1987), p. 85 (reading wa al-mutanazzahāt).Google Scholar

11 Sahl ibn Bishr, kitāb al-iḳhtiyārāt, ch. 19a, edited and translated by Crofts, C. M., in ‘Kitāb al-iḳtiyārāt 'alā l'buyūt at-iṯnai 'ašar by Sahl ibn Bišr al-Isrā'īlī with its Latin translation De electionibus’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Glasgow, 1985).Google Scholar The Latin translation runs: ‘et signa quibus sunt voces conveniunt ei qui canit fistulam cum crudo et voci alhool et cantilenae’. This makes little sense: the crudum must be the Latin form of the Celtic instrument known as cruit (Irish) or crwth (Welsh); see Page, C., Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages (London, 1987), p. 141.Google Scholar What the translator intended by alhool is unclear to me. For the division of the signs of the zodiac into ‘voiced’, ‘semi-voiced’, and ‘mute’, see Hübner, W., Die Eigenschaften der Tierkreiszeichen in der Antike, Sudhoffs Archiv, Beiheft 22 (Wiesbaden, 1982), pp. 165–9Google Scholar, and idem, Varros instrumentum vocale in Kontexte der antiken Fachwissenschaften, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse (Mainz, 1984).

12 This was first noted by Lemay, R. in ‘A propos de l'origine arabe de l'art des troubadours’, Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 21 (1966), pp. 990–1011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The table is edited by Kunitzsch, P., ‘Eine bilingue arabisch-lateinische Lostafel’, Revue d'Histoire des Textes, 6 (1976), pp. 267–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the appendix to Burnett, C. S. F., ‘A Note on Two Astrological Fortune-Telling Tables’, Revue d'Histoire des Textes, 18 (1988), pp. 257–62. I give the Arabic and Latin phrases as they are found in the MSS, and suggest possible interpretations (note that the scribes often write h in place of z, which resembles h in their script). The numbers prefixed by K are those of Kunitzsch, and fuller interpretations of the phrases can be found in the aforementioned articles of Kunitzsch and Burnett. Two Latin phrases (and possibly three, see (5) below) have lost their Arabic equivalents: K58 apprehendere musicam, and K85 componere metrum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 This presumably represents a Romance word deriving from vulgar Latin calamellus ( = ‘small reed’), the origin of the English word ‘shawm’; see Sachs, C., Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1913), pp. 72 and 77.Google Scholar

14 ‘Arkal is listed in the sense of “duff and tabl” by al-Hasan ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣaghānī (d. 1252) in his Al-takmila wa'l-dhail wa'l-ṣila li-kitāb Tāj al-lugha wa-ṣiḥāḥ al-'arabiyya, v, ed. A. A. al-Ṭaḥāwī and I. al-Abyārī and revised by Ḥasan, A. Ḥ. and Aḥmad, M. Kh. (Cairo, 1977), p. 441, and in other Arabic lexica (I owe these references to Eckhard Neubauer).Google Scholar

15 The Arabic original of this text has not been found (see Sezgin, F., Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, VII (Leiden, 1979), p. 166).Google Scholar I quote the text after Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 16204 (P), p. 532, ibid., lat. 16208 (Pa), fol. 75r, and Cambridge, Clare College 15 (C).

16 Presumably this is because it is possible to sing while playing the lyra or striking the drum, but not while playing the trumpet. Compare Marchetto da Padova, Lucidarium, ed. Herlinger, J. W. (Chicago, 1985), ch. 13 (De sono qui non est vox): ‘In [tuba et cimella] dicitur esse sonus qui non est vox.’Google Scholar

17 ‘Umar was one of the astrologers who participated in making the horoscope for the founding of Baghdad in A.D. 762; see Sezgin, F., Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, VIII (Leiden, 1979), pp. 111–13. For the Liber introductorius I have consulted H. Meier's unpublished and incomplete typescript edition deposited in the Warburg Institute, and MSS Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10268 (A.D. c. 1320), Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 266 (15th century), St Petersburg, Public Library, lat. F.V.IX, no. 1 (A.D. c. 1275), London, British Library, Add. 41600 (15th century), and London, Wellcome Institute, 509 (c. 1510). The last three MSS contain only the portion of the Liber introductorius on the constellations, called Liber de signis et imaginibus coeli.Google Scholar

18 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10268, fol. 135va.

19 In Medieval Latin bacile is a ‘basin’ or any basin-shaped receptacle. Hence it is an appropriate term to describe a drum of that shape.

20 Lyra is not a sign of the zodiac but a constellation in the northern hemisphere. The Moon cannot therefore be said to be ‘in’ Lyra. It has probably replaced Virgo simply because it sounds good.

21 See Bauer, U., Der Liber Introductorius des Michael Scot in der Abschrift Clm 10268 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München (Munich, 1983), pp. 63–4.Google Scholar

22 Aegidius, Zamorensis, Ars musica, ch. 17, ed. Robert-Tissot, M. (Rome 1974), p. 103: ‘canon et medius canon et guitarra et rabe fuerunt postremo inventa’.Google Scholar See also Page, Voices and Instruments p. 123.Google Scholar Of course the term is originally Greek. For its passage from Greek to Arabic and back into Greek and the changes of its sense in the process see Beaton, R., ‘Modes and Roads: Factors of Change and Continuity in Greek Musical Tradition’, Annual of the British School of Athens, 75 (1980), pp. 1–11 (see p. 5).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 In the Wellcome MS, fol 20v, only a few oversized pegs are shown, but this time the strings are shown grouped in sets, two of five and one of four.

24 Munich MS, fol. 82vb, St Petersburg MS, fol. 11r.

25 British Library MS, fol. 49r, Wellcome MS, fol. 20v.

26 Picatrix, II. v. 2 (Arabic text, ed. Ritter, H., Pseudo-Māārīṭī, Das Ziel des Weisen (Leipzig, 1933), p. 80 Google Scholar; German trans., Ritter, H. and Plessner, M., ‘Picatrix’: Das Ziel ies Weisen von Pseudo-Māgrīṭī (London, 1962), p. 84 Google Scholar; Latin text, ed. Pingree, D., Picatrix (London, 1986), p. 46:Google Scholar ‘Et similiter [Indi] habent instrumentum musice artis compositum, quod nominant astro alquelquella, et cordam armoniarum habens solam (v.l. monocordon), quo faciunt sonos et omnes eius subtilitates quemadmodum cupiunt et optant.’ The kankala is described by Ibn Khurradādhbih in the following way: ‘The Indians have the kankala. It has one string strung up over a gourd. [This instrument] holds [in India] the position of [our] lute and harp' (apud Maçoudi, , Les prairies d'or, ed. and trans. Barbier de Maynard, C., VIII (Paris, 1874), p. 92).Google Scholar Other references to this instrument can be found in Abū'l-Farāj, al-Iṣfahānī, Kilāb al-Aghānī al-kabīr, XVIII, ed. 'Alī, Muḥammad al-Bajâwī (Cairo, 1972), p. 220 Google Scholar; Ullmann, M., Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache, I (Wiesbaden, 1970), p. 397 Google Scholar; al-Faruqi, L. I., An Annotated Glossary of Arabic Musical Terms (Westport, CT, 1981), s. v. kinkulah (v.1. gongolah, kirkalah, kankarah)Google Scholar, and Kunitzsch, , ‘Eine bilingue … Lostafel’, p. 303 (karkala qarqal).Google Scholar

27 The Latin text is slightly different from the Arabic, and may be translated: ‘Then you will skin it and you should treat the skin as you would that of other animals. Then stretch the skin over the drum or bronze nackers (nacara), and put it aside ready for use. Then when you want to put such beasts to flight, beat the drum or nackers by night.’

28 Picatrix, IV.9.23, Arabic, p. 413 Google Scholar, German, p. 420 Google Scholar, Latin, p. 227. I quote the Latin, which gives the fullest text: ‘Ad fugandum lupos et omnia animalia mala. Hoc autem opus facias cumuno tamburo (v.ll. cambuco, tympano) ad hoc specialiter facto, cuius composicio talis est. Recipe [e]ricium marinum; ipsumque decollabis, et ex suis spinis spoliabis. Ipsum autem excoriabis, cuius corium aptetur et liniatur secundum confectiones aliorum coriorum. Postea accipe ipsum corium, quod optime extendas super tamburum (v.ll. tamburam, cambucum) vel nacaram eream; et usui reservabis. Cum vero predictas bestias fugare volueris, pulsabis dictum tamburum (v.l. cambucum) vel nacaram de nocte, quoniam omnes bestie male ad eius sonitum fugient et omnia reptilia predictum audiencia morientur.’.Google Scholar

29 This text has been edited by Dickey, B. G., in ‘Adelard of Bath: an Examination Based on Heretofore Unexamined Manuscripts’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1982), pp. 251–328 Google Scholar; see Burnett, , Adelard of Bath, pp. 38 and 173–4.Google Scholar

30 Music and geometry together make up the fourth book of the work: ‘Incipit quartus liber de musicis ac geometricis rationibus’. De institutione musica, ed. Friendlein, G. (Leipzig, 1867), I, 4, II. 7–8 and II. 12 are summarised.Google Scholar

31 For the portions of Avicennaa's Shifā' translated into Latin see d'Alverny, M. T., ‘Avicenna Latinus I’, Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age, 28 (1962), pp. 281–316. It may be significant that only the portions of the Shifā' which corresponded to, and therefore elucidated, works of Aristotle were translated into Latin. Since Aristotle did not write a book on music, scholars looking for a guide to Aristotelian philosophy would have had no interest in the section on music in the Skifā'.Google Scholar

32 Sirr al-asrār, ed. Badawī, A. R., in Al-Uṣūl al-yūnānīyāh li'l-naṣarīyāt al-siyāsīyah fi'l-islām (Cairo, 1954), pp. 115–16Google Scholar; English translation of the Arabic by Fulton, A. S. in Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, ed. Steele, R., V (Oxford, 1920), pp. 217–18.Google Scholar

33 Sudhoff, K., ‘Ein diätetischer Brief an Kaiser Friedrich II von seinem Hofphilosophen Magister Theodorus’, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin, 9 (1915), pp. 1–9.Google Scholar

34 Introductorium maius, VI.3 (Arabic MSS Leiden 47, p. 193, and Carullah 1508, published by the Institut für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaften, Facsimile C 21 (Frankfurt, 1985), pp. 335–6).

35 Cambridge, University Library, KK.i. 1, fol. 37v, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 16204, p. 116, and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 374, fol. 50r: ‘Quidam autem philosophi diviserunt medietatem et terciam – partes scilicet magnas – et dixerunt quia ex eis et ex duplicitate quarundam earum et ex affinitate unius earum in alteram et secundum quantitatem dimidii et tercii erit affinitas graduum circuli qui sunt aspectus.]

36 I use the printed text, ed. Venice, , 1506, fol. flr.Google Scholar

37 De institutione musica, ed. Friedlein, , p. 250; English translation adapted from that of C. M. Bower in Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Fundamentals of Music (New Haven and London, 1989), p. 73.Google Scholar For further examples see Burnett, , ‘Hermann of Carinthia's Attitude towards his Arabic Sources, in Particular in Respect to Theories on the Human Soul’, L'homme et son univers au moyen âge, ed. Wenin, C., Philosophes Médiévaux, 26 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1986), pp. 306–22, see pp. 316–17.Google Scholar

38 See Burnett, , ‘Adelard, Music and the Quadrivium’, Adelard of Bath, pp. 69–86.Google Scholar

39 See Gallo, F. A., ‘Astronomy and Music in the Middle Ages: the Liber introductorius by Michael Scot’, Musica Disciplina, 27 (1973), pp. 5–9.Google Scholar

40 The Classification of the Sciences was translated by Gerard of Cremona and revised by Dominicus Gundissalinus – both scholars working in Toledo in the second half of the twelfth century. The relevant passage has been edited and translated by Randel, D. M. in ‘Al-Fārābī and the Role of Arabic Music Theory in the Latin Middle Ages’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 29 (1976), pp. 173–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Max Haas presents a revised Latin edition of the relevant passage and further comments in ‘Studien zur mittelalterlichen Musiklehre I’, Forum Musicologicum, 3 (Basel, 1982), pp. 323–56, see pp. 420–3.Google Scholar

41 Ed. Baeumker, C., Alfarabi, über den Ursprung der Wissenschaften (de ortu scientiarum), Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 19 (Münster, 1918), p. 19.Google Scholar

42 The relevant text is edited by Farmer, H. G., who cites the Arabic original and gives an English translation in Al-Farabi's Arabic-Latin Writings on Music (New York, 2/1960), pp. 63–4. Farmer pointed out that this passage was an abbreviation of a longer passage from the Ikhwāan's Epistle on Music. The latter appears never to have been translated into Latin.Google Scholar

43 De ortu scientiarum, ed. Baeumker, p. 19: ‘Cuius [viz. music's] utilitas est ad temperandos mores animalium qui excedunt aequalitatem, et perficiendos decores eorum qui nondum sunt perfecti, et ad conservandum eos qui videntur aequales et nondum pervenerunt ad aliquod extremorum. Et est etiam utilis ad salutem corporis, eo quod quandoque corpus infirmatur languente anima et impeditur ipsa existente impedita; unde curatio corporis fit propter curationem animae et adaptationem suarum virium et temperationem suae substantiae ex sonis agentibus hoc et convenientibus ad hoc’. (The usefulness [of music] is in tempering the characters of animals when they go beyond equal temperament, and in perfecting the suitability of those which are not yet perfect, and in preserving those which are seen to be of equal temperament and have not yet diverged to either of the extremes. And it is also useful for the health of the body, since at times the body is unwell because the soul is sick, or [the soul] is hindered because of a [bodily] hindrance; hence the cure of the body comes about through the cure of the soul and the mending of its faculties and the tempering of its substance, as a result of sounds effecting this and appropriate to this.)

44 For the Arabic text see the edition of Affifi, A. E. and Madkour, I. B. in Ibn Sina, al-Shifā', al-mantiq, V, al-burhān, II. 7 (Cairo, 1956), pp. 164–5.Google Scholar For the Latin text see Gundissalinus, , De divisione philosophiae, ed. Baur, L., Beitraäe zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 4.2 (Münster, 1903), p. 128.Google Scholar For an intelligent précis of this passage see Hugonnard-Roche, H., ‘La classification des sciences de Gundissalinus’, in Jolivet, J. and Rashed, R., Études sur Avicenna (Paris, 1984), pp. 41–75 (see pp. 55–7).Google Scholar

45 I owe this translation to Dr Fritz Zimmermann.

46 I reproduce the text of Baur with one emendation. The words which Gundissalinus adds to clarify the Arabic text are in italics.

47 See Beichert, E. A., ‘Neuma, philologisch-historischer Exkurs’, appendix to idem, ‘Die Wissenschaft der Musik bei al-Fārābī (inaugural dissertation, University of Regensburg, 1931), pp. 47–52.Google Scholar

48 For the use of ittifāq and ikhtilāf for ‘consonance’ and ‘dissonance’ see Ibn al-Akfānī (d. 1348), Ad-durr an-naẓīm, section 57 (ed. Shiloah, A., ‘Deux textes arabes inédits sur la musique’, Yuval, ed. Adler, I. (Jerusalem, 1968), p. 236): ‘music … is the science which teaches the conditions of notes (nigham) in their consonances (ittifāqihāa) and dissonances (ikhtilāfihā).Google Scholar Ittifāq is given as the first translation of concordia in the twelfth-century ‘Leiden Glossary’; Glossarium latino-arabicum, ed. Seybold, C. F. (Berlin, 1900), s.v. ‘concordia’.Google Scholar

49 See Kümmel, , Musik und Medizin, passim.Google Scholar