(l-Fārābī, Kitāb al-Mūsīqī al-kabīr, Ms. C 40 inf. (Ambrosiana), f. 130v (courtesy of Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan)

Yasemin Gökpınar

This project is part of the ERC-funded project "Ancient Music Beyond Hellenisation" (PD Dr. Stefan Hagel, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna), which explores the relationship between Hellenic/Hellenistic music, as it permeated the theatres and concert halls of the Roman Empire and beyond, and the Near Eastern traditions - from the diatonic system emerging from cuneiform sources to the flourishing musical world of the Caliphates.

The latter also provided an early supportive environment for the emergence of music theory writings in Arabic. Music as a science belonged to the mathematical sciences and drew much of its theory from ancient works such as those of Ptolemy, Aristoxenus, Nicchomachus and others. At the same time, late antique Arabic, Persian and Byzantine musical practice found its way into theoretical works.

In her project, Yasemin Gökpınar focuses on the study of al Fārābī's Kitāb al-Mūsīqī al-kabīr (the 'Great Book of Music'), the largest and most influential of its kind in Arabic, which quotes extensively from ancient works and provides all kinds of comparative material on Greek theory and Arab/Persian/Byzantine(?) practice through a long chapter on the instruments used at the time. At the same time, other early sources on music are considered, such as the works of al-Kindī or the volume on the music of Iḫwān aṣ-Ṣafāʾ and others. Research questions include those relating to the transmission and transfer/circulation of knowledge, terminology, and musicological and historical issues. In addition, a partial edition with annotated translation and a Greek-Arabic glossary of musical terminology will be produced.

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/oeai/research/classical-studies/ancient-music/ancient-music-beyond-hellenisation