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.
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.
E-mail:
dreynold @ religion.ucsb.edu