MUSIC TRACK Ortaçağ Şarkıları/Medieval Music from 13th - 15th Centuries Ensemble Galatia Kalan 2013 Tr. We’ll hear the muwashshah “Adir lana akwab” (“Pass to us the cups”), a poem by Ibn Baqi, who lived in Al-Andalus three centuries after Ziryab. The muwashshah is composed in classical Arabic while the zajal is vernacular, more improvisatory, and involves dialogue between two poets or a choral refrain. The muwashshah* and zajal** are commonly used Arab poetic forms with origins in medieval Iberia. 6 Ziryab (2:10) Ziryab by Raul Mallavibarenna, directing Musica Ficta and Ensemble Fontegara. MUSIC TRACK Músicas Viajeras: Tres culturas Musica Ficta and Ensemble Fontegara directed by Raul Mallavibarenna Enchiriadis 2013| EN-2037 Raul Mallavibarenna Tr. Certain maqamat or modes used in Arab music are said to have been introduced to Iberia by Ziryab in the ninth century. Though Ziryab’s performances survive in description only, he shaped the Andalusian traditions that we hear in medieval Spanish music as well contemporary North Africa. He is credited with adding a fifth course, or pair of strings, to the oud, the instrument that became the lute as it spread into Europe. A true “influencer” at the Ummayad court in Córdoba, Ziryab is remembered as much for his contributions to fashion and cuisine as music and poetry. Ziryab, perhaps the most famous musician of the medieval Islamic Mediterranean, worked in Abbasid, Iraq as well as Al-Andalus. In fact, medieval Arab scholars had better access to Ancient Greek texts than their Western European counterparts. Middle Eastern literary traditions also feature plenty of sung poetry. 1 Illiad 1,1 (stop at 1:11) That was scholar Stefan Hagel singing the opening of the Illiad to the phorminx, a four-string lyre, an example of a modern reconstruction of Homeric singing. Here’s a short sample from classicist Stefan Hagel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who’s using poetic meter along with the intonation and accent structure of Ancient Greek to inform his reconstructions of Homeric singing. Modern scholars have interpreted this ancient material in a number of ways. The Illiad, the Ancient Greek epic among the earliest examples of European literature, is more likely a “snapshot” of material in the repertoire of Ionian rhapsodes, or poets, than the creation of a single author. What has reached us is often skewed in its translation to written language over the years. As with music, the difficulty in studying early performance traditions is that so much of it was an unwritten tradition. Lots of what we think of as “old” poetry was meant to be sung. From among the Petrarchan madrigals in the second part of Willaert’s 1559 collection Musica Nova. 1 Più volte già (4:38) Singer Pur with Adrian Willaert’s five-voice setting of Francesco Petrarca’s sonnet “Più volte già dal bel sembiante humano,” (Many times now, beauty seeming kind), Canzoniere 170. MUSIC TRACK Adrian Willaert Musica Nova: The Petrarca Madrigals Singer Pur Oehms Classics 2009 | OC814 Adrian Willaert Disk 2, Tr. Plus, on our featured recording, the medieval music ensemble Concordian Dawn sings us songs of fate, fortune, and love. This hour on Harmonia, we’ll hear musical manifestations of poetry ranging from Antiquity to the seventeenth century. In Early Modern Europe, song composition was closely tied to the literary trends of its day. The performance of verse to instrumental accompaniment is common worldwide and likely as old as musical culture itself. From epic tales of Charlemagne’s knights to sonnets drenched in lovers’ tears, the act of singing poetry is central to many early music traditions, both improvised and on the page.
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