Musical and Socio-Cultural Anecdotes from Kitāb al-Aghānī al-Kabīr

Musical and Socio-Cultural Anecdotes from Kitāb al-Aghānī al-Kabīr
Author: George Dimitri Sawa
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2019-01-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004383654

The present volume consists of translated anecdotes, on musicological and socio-cultural topics, from al-Iṣbahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī al-Kabīr (The Grand Book of Songs) with annotations and commentaries. It deals with musical rhythmic and melodic modes, technical terms and treatises; music instruments; composition techniques and processes; education and oral/written transmissions; vocal and instrumental performances and their aesthetics; solo and ensemble music; change and its inevitability; musical and textual improvisations; ṭarab and the acute emotions of joy or grief; medieval dances; social status. Though extracts from The Grand Book of Songs have been translated in European languages since 1816, this work presents a much larger and more comprehensive scope that will benefit musicologists, medievalist and Middle Eastern scholars as well as the general reader.

The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers

The Cambridge Companion to Women Composers
Author: Matthew Head
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2024-05-30
Genre: Music
ISBN: 110848915X

Exploring a diverse, distinguished repertoire, and transcending the rhetoric of neglect, this book transforms understanding of women composers.

Making the Great Book of Songs

Making the Great Book of Songs
Author: Hilary Kilpatrick
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Music
ISBN: 113578793X

This is the first systematic literary study of one of the masterpieces of classical Arabic literature, the fourth/tenth century Kitâb al-aghânî (The Book of Songs) by Abû I-Faraj al-Isbahânî. Until now the twenty-four volume Book of Songs has been regarded as a rather chaotic but priceless mine of information about classical Arabic music, literature and culture. This book approaches it as a work of literature in its own right, with its own internal logic and coherence. The study also consistently integrates the musical component into the analysis and proposes a reading of the work in which individual anecdotes and poems are related to the wider context, enhancing their meaning.

Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction

Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Timothy Rice
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2014
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199794375

Explaining that musicality is an essential touchstone of the human experience, a concise introduction to the study of the nature of music, its community and its cultural values explains the diverse work of today's ethnomusicologists and how researchers apply anthropological and other social disciplines to studies of human and cultural behaviors. Original.