WeGA, Rezeptionsdokumente, Digitale Edition
author: F. W. H.
source date: 1827
language: en
availability: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

ORIENTAL MUSIC.

ON THE MUSIC OF THE ARABIANS, Proving that People to have possessed a knowledge of counterpoint in the year 1060.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,

I HAVE considered that my observations on the music of the oriental nations would be rendered perhaps more useful to future enquirers by embracing that of the Arabians; a people to whom chivalry and romance have been so highly indebted in every age, that we may naturally look with curiosity for some traits of poetical feeling in their music. [...]

"[...] As I am but an indifferent musician, and have neither time nor opportunity to get instructed in the music of the east, what I could best do to give Europeans some distinct idea of that music was, to take drawings of the instruments they make use of in that country." [...]

[...] The fifth is an instrument with a bow that the Greeks call repab, and the Arabians semendsje. – They tell me they have sometimes three strings of gut; but those I saw at Kahira had but two, or instead, two strings of horse hair, of which one is raised a major third higher than the other. The bow of this is as bad as that of the lyra. The foot of the instrument is of iron, and passes through the body into the handle. The body is generally of black cocoa wood, sometimes of other hard wood, and underneath there is a small sounding hole; the top is a skin, stretched like the skin of our drums. This instrument is common with the indifferent players, who rove with the Egyptian dancers, and the notes marked at the side of the instrument express the time of a song with which the dancers accompany the semendsje, and which they often repeat.* The musicians play on this instrument in the same position as the base viol.[...]

*I cannot help noticing, as a peculiar instance of the habits of mind in finding appropriate subjects for his operas, that the late C. M. Von. Weber, in his "Oberon," has applied this very air, in a major key, in the March of the Harem Guards, finale of act the first, where it is repeated over and over again, clothed in a varied harmony, the effect of which is not surpassed by any other piece in the whole opera:–

[Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, Bd. 9 (1827), S. 316]

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Dear Sir, Your's most truly, F. W. H. London, October 26th, 1827.