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short extract from the 2nd chapter of the lectures-concerts from Marseilles to Tunis, from Tangier to Limassol

TWO - The coming of the Muslim civilisation and its influence on the Mediterranean basin. The origin of Arab music.

...The fall of the Roman Empire and the invasion of Italy and of the other territories of the Empire by the barbarian tribes brought about a cultural degradation in the populations oppressed by the conquest. The continuation of culture fell to the Church of Rome which, in turn, contributed to the cultural decline in Italy and in the whole of the Christian West, by stopping the spread of Hellenistic tradition. Gregorious (Magnus) was not in favour of secular culture. He wrote to Desiderius, bishop of Vienne in France: "It came to our attention, which we cannot repeat without shame, that your Brotherhood is in the habit of teaching grammar. We took this in such a bad way and we have disapproved of it so strongly, that we have changed what we were previously saying to lament and sadness (...). The more abominable it is that such a thing may be said of a priest, the more we need to ascertain its truth by rigorous and veritable evidence". Such strong condemnation of originally Greek literacy by the Church of Rome survived till the end of the 11th century. It heavily conditioned, in terms of musical culture as well, generations of European laymen who were far from the Mediterranean Sea and its positive influence...

...And what might music have become for the free lay populations of those centuries? Almost certainly, only submission to the Most High, through his earthly organization, the Church of Rome, which thundered against profane chant, impeded its diffusion by fighting against it with any means...

...On one side, in the Christian West, there was church music in the shape of Gregorian Chant, which was used to enchant and convert, often to subdue whole masses of ignorant populations. These would have had very little opportunity to educate themselves in any way, as they inhabited territories deprived, by now, of public institutions, which were gradually replaced by ecclesiastical organizations. They would only guarantee the charity dictated by the Holy Scriptures, i.e. a minimum level of food provisions for the weaker classes. On the other side, in the Islamic Empire, science, music and arts in general, including architecture, were held in very high esteem...

...A wavering Christianity looked for strength by falling back on itself, finding support in the political world and in alliances with the Frankish and, later, with the German kings (who were also looking for allies); increasingly, efforts were made to exclude non-Christian cultures. In the 9th century, Charlemagne began a policy of expansion of Gregorian Chant that brought about a slow elimination of other rites and chants (such as the "Gallican" and the "Mozarabic"). These were dark years of decline that would eventually lead to what is possibly the most negative period in European history: Feudalism, a kind of generalized anarchy where population is divided into only two classes: lords and serfs. In this struggle for survival art and culture were pushed aside, practically erased, and managed to stagnate only within the walls of a monastery or a brotherhood. Trading on a large scale, which requires professional traders, disappeared. As a consequence, banking practices were also abandoned. Lay people declined into illiteracy; a very small number of them, could still read and write; towns became fortresses without a socially organized fiscal system, currency circulation was practically non-existent and a return to bartering became a necessity...

...In that dark era, Church music was the undisputed king; not a trace of "profane" music would remain (as popular songs of the time were branded, together with all the music that did not have a religious purpose) and it would only be heard of again after 1000 AD. Our first documents from that time come from Spain. These arias, originally Arabic and filtered through Provence, are crucially important to the understanding of the foundations of western music, together with church music. Culture developed its spiritual and philosophical bases, in relative comfort, inside abbeys, churches and brotherhoods, in other words in the ecclesiastical organization close to the Church of Rome. Outside, hunger and poverty would drag free lay people towards an unprecedented cultural regression...

..."The beauty of a man consists of his language". According to an Arab proverb underlining one of three fundamental prerogatives of the perfect man (al-Kamil). This admiration for literature, above all for poetry, and this high esteem for a man's culture were probably the driving force pushing the conquerors to develop the arts in the occupied territories. At first they enhanced the existing heritage enriching it with Muslim elements and then became true protectors of the established culture. In pre-Islamic civilizations, music, unlike poetry, always remained secular after being born as chant. According to tradition, Arabic chant was born in very remote times, when a certain Mudar ibn Màadd fractured his hand falling from his camel. Back in the saddle, he began to chant "ya-yadai! ya-yadai!" (Ouch my hand!) singing to the rhythm of the animal's pace and followed by the other members of the caravan in a choir...

...At the time of the Arab conquest, virtuosos, singers and musicians, who had ranked very high in ancient Persia, still preserved a far more advanced musical heritage than their conquerors', which included the use of musical instrument inherited from the previous Mesopotamian civilizations. One of the most famous composers was Bârbadh who dictated accurate systems to Persian music. His systems are formed by seven khosrowâni ("attributed to kings"), by thirty lahn (forms of modulation) and by 360 dastân (systems) obviously corresponding to the number of days in a week, month and year. Many have survived to our day, such as the Râst, which still constitutes one of the most important musical systems in Arabic, Persian and Turkish music...

...So, starting from Islam, through these restrictions, Persian music was refined and enriched by its main features. All of the ingenuity of theoreticians and all the sensitivity and anxiety of the artists, rested on melody. They developed the use of extremely small intervals and codified a number of styles: strong, weak, coloured; they worked with variations and shades; instruments had certain frets shifted by minimal amounts; additional notes, fiorituras and accents were added and a wonderful unprecedented sensitivity was achieved...

...Reborn Persian music was transformed, refined and multiplied in its tonal intervals. They were not like our present diatonic system built on tones and semitones. Each of our tones would be divided into several intervals. In other words, it became micro tonal. It is important to underline this point as the size of tonal intervals will be relevant later on, in order to clarify our speculations...

...Our tempered system adopts the octave (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C) as its tonal basis for the manufacture of instruments. Starting from the first C on the keyboard (C1) and proceeding to the right at intervals of 32 cycles per second, we could, build a keyboard. We would actually soon realize that the third and the fifth of a system build in this way (natural) would sound unpleasant to our ear. What's more, once we got to the seventh, we would realize that the following note (i.e. the C closing the octave) is not in tune with the C we started from. Therefore, if we could listen to a natural B# and a natural C (which on our keyboard are the same note) B# would sound higher than natural C. To overcome this interval discrepancy, instrument manufacturers came up with the idea of slightly altering the pitch of all the intervals except the octave, thus dividing the octave into twelve equal semitones. (...) This method simplified the manufacture of keyboard instruments: instead of two keys, like B# and C, one was sufficient (...). So, in the temperate system, intervals, with the exception of the octave alone, are, in reality, slightly out of tune and this is the reason why the piano tuner has been described as the man paid to put pianos out of tune. A compromise between science and art produced a musical advantage...

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