What is the sitar? or what are the eastern instruments?

Music from the East!

A central figure in describing and refining these influences was the philosopher and music scholar Abu Nasr al-Farabi (c. 870-950). His study of the many aspects of Eastern music is recorded in his Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir, the great book of music.

A world of civilisation can be found in Eastern music. This means that it is certainly not easy to talk about oriental music as a demarcated phenomenon. Just like Western music, Eastern music has roots that are centuries old and continents wide. That is why I am looking forward to how the 'Bach meets Sufi' concert on 25 November will present this diversity.

How will the theorbo and the tar, distant cousins of each other, sound together? How will the baroque harmony of the West carry the Sufi melodies of the East? But in the final analysis, Bach's Baroque has already met the music of the Sufis.

Family jewel;

Despite a long tradition of innovation, Eastern culture and music are sometimes presented as old and immutable phenomena; as if they were a family jewel passed on from hand to hand for generations. In a way, this is understandable. What would music from the East be without traditional instruments such as the ney, the qanûn (the cimbalom from the East) and the riq (the Arabian tambourine)?

These age-old instruments produce age-old sounds; beautiful sounds that we would like to preserve. But the music of the East is more than just an artefact from the past to be cherished. This music exists by the grace of mixing, development, adaptation and improvisation. One of the characteristics of this music is that different performances of a composition sound different every time. The true musical masters are able to give one song countless faces.

The piano and electric guitar, for example, made their

made their appearance in Arabic music.

Is that an enrichment or an impoverishment?

For inspiration, musicians did (and do) research into other performance practices. They listened with particular interest to classical music from the West. The piano and electric guitar, for instance, made their appearance in Arabic music. Is this an enrichment or an impoverishment of this music?

Preservation and development

These were the questions on the agenda of the international congress on Arabic music held in Cairo in 1932. This congress is still considered a very important impulse for the promotion of music from the East. It was attended by a varied audience of musicians, musicologists and academics from the East and West. Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Muhammed Abd-al Wahhab and Sammi Shawwa, all together at one meeting; that's 'East meets West'!

The agenda was oriental music from Morocco to the Middle East. The aim was to preserve and renew, to listen to and perform, to reflect on and experience this music. And however beautiful a debate on the preservation and renewal of music may sound, it is not easy. Too much emphasis on preservation may stand in the way of development. Furthermore, it can encourage stereotyping; the music gets a high 'fairy tales of 1001 nights' content.

Too much emphasis on renewing the music and you run the risk of losing touch with tradition. During the congress, for example, there was a commission that was concerned with assessing the suitability of Western instruments, such as the piano, for Arabic music. Another committee was concerned with the question of the place of the Western tempered (equal tempered) scale in Eastern music with its own maqāms.

No agreement was reached. This is not surprising, for how do you reconcile tradition with renewal? How do you bring the musical East and West together without losing the Eastern or Western musical essence? During the 'Thinking East'-lecture, in the week before Turning East breaks out, we will pay ample attention to these questions.