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short extract from the 3rd chapter of the lectures-concerts from Marseilles to Tunis, from Tangier to Limassol

THREE - Muslim civilization development in Mediterranean basin. Spain, Provence and Sicily

...In the South of the Iberian Peninsula, three cultures flourished side by side for at least seven hundred years: Jewish, Christian and Muslim. This situation has no parallel in European history and shows that there was little fundamentalism in the Muslims (dominant class) who were in power during that period. It would be, of course, incredibly idealistic to think of a totally trouble free coexistence: there were indeed clashes, often bloody ones. Still such milieu produced an incredibly prolific expansion of the arts, culture, science and technology.

As a consequence, music reached new heights...

...Around 822 AD, more or less at the beginning of Abd ar-Rahaman II's period in power, Ziryab arrived in the Emirate of Cordoba. He was to leave an indelible trace of his stay. Today he is remembered above all as a musician, but he is also mentioned by reliable sources as a valiant physician and astronomer. He was born as Abu-l-Hasàn Alì ibn Nafi in 789 AD, in Mesopotamia and, owing to his dark skin colour, was nicknamed Ziryab, which, at the time, meant a black feathered parrot...

...He did not just introduce new musical instruments and a new system of notation, but also new culinary recipes, new tableware, like crystal for glasses, abolishing gold and silver, new hair stiles, new sartorial fashions and even the games of chess (...) and polo...

...But, being above all a musician, he revolutionised the music of his time. He founded a conservatory in the modern sense of the word, which included the teaching of harmony and composition and was to develop even further in the following centuries. He added a fifth string to the lute and it would appear that it was Ziryab who invented the system of musical notation which Guido D'Arezzo, much later, introduced to the West as his own creation...

...Many, like Julian Ribera, even maintain that counterpoint and polyphony were first developed in the Cordoba conservatory around 1000 AD.

...The birth of polyphony is documented only 250 years later in England. Christian Europe, at the heyday of the Cordoba conservatory, only knew Gregorian chant monody and secular monody...

...Counterpoint gave rise to a fundamentally new way of writing music, that was to develop in the following centuries providing the foundations for the grandiose edifice of European music in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was born in Provence, very close to Spain, in a territory where Arabs exerted a significant influence.

...In the context of a homogeneous culture in Moorish Spain, we can appreciate the similarities between Provencal poetry and Arabic courtly poetry (...) both were based on attested popular poems (...) and these popular rhymes represent the connecting link between Spain and Provence...

...In the same century, after the death of Caliph Abd ar-Rahman III, the throne went to his son al-Hakam II, a scholar who gave Andalusia its period of maximum cultural splendour. The University of Cordoba, founded by his father, became the most prestigious in the world, and not just of the Islamic area. Students attended it from three continents. It is likely that illiteracy was almost unknown in Muslim Spain, while in Christian Europe it affected at least 90% of the population, reading and writing being a prerogative of the clergy and very few others. In such conditions, how could any form of art suddenly emerge in Medieval Europe? Could it be thanks to the clergy, or to the fact that monasteries and religious organisations were the only places to protect scholars? Or is it more plausible that it was because of the continuous influx of knowledge and art that swept Christian Europe like an unprecedented tide for the whole of the Middle Ages, while the Church and the Frankish emperors were vainly trying to stem the flow?

SICILIY AND PROVENCE

...In order to understand the strength of the cultural influence radiating from the Muslim world, we should turn our attention to literature. The connections between Arab poetry and the Troubadours from Provence had a profound effect on the birth of Italian literature (and possibly other European literatures)...

...Dante Alighieri, in his "De vulgari eloquentia", talks of the "Sicilian School". This strong literary tradition influenced much of the subsequent literature, generating schools, like the "Sicilian-Tuscan" which, in turn, would inspire (together with the Troubadours) Dante himself and later Petrarca to lay the foundations of Italian literature.

...In the early Renaissance, the Flemish school developed from Guillaume de Machault and the "Ars Nova". By now musical notation had been mastered and handing down music was no longer a problem. So the great season of European music was born, first in Italy and Germany and then throughout Europe. It would include opera and undoubtedly reach an all time peak of musical achievement...

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