Skip navigation
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01v405sd77q
Title: Lines of Thought: Notations and Histories of Music Theory from Abbasid Baghdad (762–1055)
Authors: Camprubí, Marcel
Advisors: Reuland, Jamie
Contributors: Music Department
Keywords: Al-Farabi
Arabic music
Music Theory
Notation
Subjects: Music history
Music theory
Middle Eastern studies
Issue Date: 2024
Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University
Abstract: This dissertation examines the emergence of musical notation alongside the development of Arabic music-theoretical writings in the early Abbasid period (762–1055). Music theorists active mainly in Baghdad integrated perspectives from recently translated ancient Greek treatises into an Arabic musical tradition of performance practice and theory. The project highlights the tensions that arose between a native Arabic tradition of music theory and a Greek-indebted one that had begun to circulate in writing. Ninth-century Baghdad, the center of the so-called Arabic book revolution, witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of books in circulation and a generalized turn toward written forms of knowledge transmission. This created a unique set of conditions for the development of musical notation. I place al-Farabi (870–950), the leading music theorist of the time, at the center of this story, showing how different facets and phases of his music-theoretical writings relate to this broader paradigm shift. By examining the inception of musical notation in the Arabic context and al-Farabi’s place within it, I provide a compelling counternarrative to the standard story of musical notation’s sudden birth in Carolingian Europe during this same period. Examining more than eighteen theoretical treatises alongside songbooks and compilations of musicians’ anecdotes, I demonstrate that notation was available to theorists and performers active in ninth- and tenth-century Baghdad but remained largely unpursued, a circumstance that defies technologically deterministic historical narratives.
URI: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01v405sd77q
Type of Material: Academic dissertations (Ph.D.)
Language: en
Appears in Collections:Music

Files in This Item:
This content is embargoed until 2026-10-01. For questions about theses and dissertations, please contact the Mudd Manuscript Library. For questions about research datasets, as well as other inquiries, please contact the DataSpace curators.


Items in Dataspace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.