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Mesopotamian tonal systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Richard L. Crocker
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Extract

In his article “Babylonian Music Again”, O. R. Gumey provides a welcome update on research on the tablets concerning music of the ancient Near East. Gurney's article also has a corrective effect on a rambunctious article by Martin West that appeared shortly before. Gurney seems to me to have the musical system almost right. West, while he seems to understand the system, presents it in ways that I find illogical, and that I fear will be confusing or misleading. Furthermore, while some of West's conclusions exceed the span of even my own irresponsible imagination, some of his other conclusions seem unnecessarily restrictive, conservative, or simply old-fashioned. Here I want to assert limits of the kind and extent of musical conclusions that we can expect to draw from the available data, but also to explore the kinds of ideas that we can entertain without fear of restriction by those same data.

Gurney as well as West report with approval a new reading proposed by Th. J. H. Krispijn. There is more to be said about this reading and about its effect on our understanding of ancient Near Eastern music. Krispijn's new reading is for the text UET VII 74, for which Gurney now gives an updated transliteration (p. 102). I reproduce here Gurney's paradigms for the instructions in Chapters I (ll. 1–12) and II (ll. 13–20) of UET VII 74.

(1–12) If the sammu is (tuned as) X and the (interval) Y is not clear, you tighten the string N and then Y will be clear. Tightening.

(13–20) If the sammu is (tuned as) X and you have played an (unclear) interval Y, you loosen the string N and the sammu will be (in the tuning) Z. [Loosening].

When first interpreting this text twenty-five years ago, it was assumed that Chapter I involved loosening the strings one by one, thus shifting the whole tuning gradually downwards; and in Chapter II, tightening the strings one by one, with the reverse effect. As we then read the text, it did not specify tightening or loosening, and so the choice was arbitrary. Gurney (p. 102) blames the choice on the assumption that the text referred to the harp, whose longest and lowest string was identified as “front”, therefore (according to Nabnītu XXXII) the “first”.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 59 , 1997 , pp. 189 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1997 

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References

1 Iraq 56 (1994), pp. 101–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the most recent account of the whole subject, see Anne D. Kilmer, art. “Musik” in RLA 8 (1995), pp. 463–82Google Scholar.

2 “The Babylonian musical notation and Human melodic texts”, Music and Letters 75 (1994), pp. 161–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 Krispijn 1990, pp. 5–6 (to 1. 160); it is hard to see exactly what is intended here.

6 In “Remarks on the tuning text UET VII 74 (U.7/80)”, Orientalia 47 (1978), pp. 99–104 Google Scholar.

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10 See Janet C. Smith, “Laying the rough, testing the fine” (forthcoming).

11 In his Musikgeschichte im Überblick (Luzern, 1948), p. 61 Google Scholar.

12 Texts cited by West pp. 171–2; Gurney is not concerned with this document or with anyone's transcription of it; West reviews all the transcriptions, including Kilmer's.

13 In his Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar.