Development of Arabic Musical Notation
From the outset, Arab scholars and philosophers took
a profound interest in musical studies and wrote profusely
on the subjects of instruments, genres, scales, rhythm
However, despite their
knowledge and capability, the musical works were not
passed on in full notation to the succeeding generations.
Al-Kindi, the renowned Arab philosopher, who died
in 874 AD, used a type of notation based on the alphabet
to support his musical explanations, as did al Farabi
(d. 950 AD). Their alphabet-based notation used, for
example, the letters a, b, g, d, h, w, z, h, t and
I to express the musical letters for striking the
ud strings named (from low to high-pitched) bamm,
mathlath, mathna, zir and hadd. Moreover,
scholars of music named the finger positions after
the fingers of the human hand: index, middle, ring
and small fingers. Therefore, they were able to identify
each tone either by means of the finger positions
on the string or by the alphabetical letters.
Of all the scholarly musical examples handed down
through the centuries, two examples by Safi ad Din
al-Urmawi (d. 1294 AD) are most interesting. He managed
to use numbers underlying the alphabetical letters
to signify the intended rhythmic time of each letter:
i.e. the tone.
The purpose of such
examples and use of alphabetical letters to denote
the intended tones was predominantly didactic rather
than practical - i.e. they were not written as a basis
for musical performance. Even the musical encyclopaedic
work from the 10th century, Kitab al-Aghani
al-Kabir (The Major Book of Songs) by Abu
al Farag al Isfahani limited itself to giving the
text, the name of the intended rhythm, and the name
of the melodic mode of the sot. Arabic composers,
being unwilling to place any restrictions on performers
of their musical pieces, chose not to write their
music in notation, but instructed their pupils of
performers orally. Thus, it would appear that they
preferred to see the same melody given different expressions
by different players or performers rather than having
musically homogeneous results in every performance.
Consequently, every musician enjoyed the freedom to
form and embellish the basic melody according to his
own individual taste and technical abilities without
being forced to repeat a rigid set of instructions.
This entirely opposes the intentions of a composer
of, say, a Western symphony. Since Arab composers
had no desire to create unchanging pieces of music,
and their main concern was to provide works which
lent themselves to a wide range of individual musical
performances, a rigid notation in a generally valid
form was not an important fact for them. As for transmitting
music to posterity, the Arabs of those days depended
on the oral method of transmission, a method with
neither absolutely positive nor absolutely negative
Methods of transmitting Arabic traditional music
have not changed much even today, as oral transmission
through performance is still in use, although there
are also sometimes certain structures which are very
complex and incomprehensible to a musical outsider.
Some Omani genres, for instance, reveal at a closer
look, a high degree of complexity and a multilayered
rhythmical structure, which becomes evident to a western
observer only after a written analysis. These rhythms
were handed down from generation to generation solely
by live performance.
The first Arab country to be involved in the systematic
introduction of Western musical patterns was Egypt,
under Muhammad Ali al-Kabir. Between 1824 and 1834
this ruler decreed the establishment of many military-music
schools for which several European teachers and instructors
were brought in from France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Primarily concerned with military brass music and
the best instructional methodology for their Egyptian
students, these teachers' choice was for, of course,
Western musical notation.
After its first encounter with an Arab culture, western
musical notation spread widely and gradually became
a standard element in the curriculum of each emerging
musical institute, not only in Egypt, but in the whole
Arab world, even if such an institute offered predominantly
eastern music studies.
For example, at the planning stage for the establishment
of the 'Eastern Music Institute in Cairo', the Egyptian
government hired, as an advisor, Curt Sachs, the noted
German scholar, in 1930. Thus, European notation was
included in the standard curriculum at this institute.
Thanks to an Egyptian scholar named Mahmoud Ahmed
El-Hefni, who had studied musicology in Germany, music
became established as a set subject in state schools
for the first time in 1931/32. Graduates of the Higher
Institute for Women Music Teachers which had been
opened in 1935, soon spread their acquired knowledge
of western notation throughout the schools to which
they were appointed. Consequently, European musical
notation spread very quickly from this pioneer institute
to other schools nationwide.
More and more musical instruments emerged in Egypt
and many other Arab countries with European musical
notation as a standard feature of their curricula,
whether they specialized mainly in eastern or western
music. This European feature took root in the musical
system so deeply that even many specialists tend to
forget its origins and misunderstand it as 'international
notation', meaning that everyone, of whatever culture,
is entitled to employ it.
This view is oblivious
to the important fact that in both art and science,
borrowing or taking over has its pros and cons, both
of which are not always balanced.
European musical notation is currently used by Arab
scholars for the following purposes:
*To teach musical instruments (in schools, higher institutes
and private tutoring)
*To teach chants and group songs (in schools)
*To conserve musical works of the Arabic national heritage
(in both schools and state musical heritage groups)
*To address the outside world and present to foreign
audiences the Arabic folk songs in books.
*To produce an advance copy for performance. This recent
development occurred primarily in connection with recording
studios, which produce so-called 'commercial music'
and have to be regarded as alien to Arabic norms of
*To assume an air of 'modernity' in imitation of the