DWIGHT REYNOLDS
Ibn Sana´
al-Mulk´s Mysterious `Organ´ and the Well-Composed Muwashshah: Two
Musical Problems in Dar al-Tiraz
by Dwight
Reynolds, Univ. California
Of the passages in
Dar al-Tiraz that refer to the performance of muwashshahat, the
most baffling to modern scholars have been the two mentions of the urghun
(usually translated `organ´) and the passage that refers to the difficulty of
composing an appropriate musical setting for a muwashshah.
Seven different
possible interpretations for the term urghun are surveyed by
Lopez-Morillas (La Crónica Fall 1985: 40-54): pipe organ, portable lap organ,
organistrum (“hurdy-gurdy”), a wind instrument, any string instrument, any
instrument, and as a general metaphor for setting words to music. The author
analyses the weaknesses of each and ultimately opts for the final metaphoric
sense. In this paper I would like to present what I believe to be a far more
convincing interpretation based on several different medieval texts and
medieval musical iconography.
The second issue
involves no philological problems, instead it is the practice to which it refers
that has remained a mystery. Ibn Sana´
al-Mulk states that in composing muwashshahat where the bayt and qufl
are of noticeably different lengths, a newcomer would compose something
impossible to perform because the instrumentalists would have to “change
tones/retune” between the sections. But which instruments would need to retune
in the middle of a performance and why, given that no modern Middle Eastern
instruments do so? Here the proposed solution lies in combining an analysis of
modern North African modulatory practices with our knowledge of medieval
instruments.