Music and esotericism /
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This collection of essays analyzes the relationships that exist between esotericism and music from Antiquity to the 20th century, investigating ways in which magic, astrology, alchemy, divination, and cabbala interact with music. The volume seeks to dissolve artificial barriers between the history of art, music, science, and intellectual history by establishing an interdisciplinary dialogue about music as viewed against a specific cultural background. The synthesis of scientific and historical contexts with respect to music, explored here on a large scale for the first time, opens up a wealth of new approaches to music historical research, music performance, and musical composition. Each chapter presents either a unique example of music functioning within esoteric and scientific traditions or a demonstration of the influence of those traditions upon selected musical works. L'ouvrage analyse les relations entre l'ésotérisme et la musique de l'Antiquité au 20ème siècle étudiant comment la magie, l'astrologie, l'alchimie, la divination et la cabale ont interagit avec la musique. Il vise à dépasser les frontières entre l'histoire de l'art, l'histoire de la musique et l'histoire des sciences et des idées afin de nouer un dialogue interdisciplinaire sur la musique autour de contextes historiques et scientifiques précis. L'ouvrage offre une première synthèse sur les rapports entre ésotérisme et musique ainsi que diverses pistes de recherche à poursuivre.
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"This volume developed out of the conference "Music and esotericism : art and science of sounds facing the occult knowledge", organized at the Academia Belgica in Rome (14-18 April 2008)"--Introd. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004182790 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ḥāwī l-Funūn wa-Salwat al-Maḥzūn, Encompasser of the Arts and Consoler of the Grief-Stricken by Ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān : Annotated Translation and Commentary /
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Ḥāwī l-Funūn (Encompasser of the Arts) of Ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān (d. ca. 1057) is a medieval Arabic music dictionary that complements other sources because of the practical knowledge of the author who was an accomplished singer, lutenist and composer. The first part in 80 chapters deals with compositions; voice production and characteristics, unison and duet singing, taking care of the voice; preludes, ornaments, ṭarab; the importance of tonality; approaches to teaching; musical and extra-musical behavior at the court; names of Syrian Fatimid and Ishshīdid singers. The second part in 22 chapters includes lute manufacturing, frets placement, stringing and tuning; 47 rhythmic ornaments, names and definitions of rhythmic and melodic modes; types of dances; descriptions of 12 instruments.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004465497
9789004465466
Musical and socio-cultural anecdotes from Kitab al-aghani al-kabir
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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.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004383654 :
0929-2403 ;
Gurdjieff and music : the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music and its esoteric significance /
: 1 online resource (xvi, 279 pages) : illustrations, music. : Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-274) and index. : 9789004284449 : 1871-1405 ; : Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Henry George Farmer and the First International Congress of Arab Music (Cairo 1932) /
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Henry George Farmer (1882-1965) was a pioneering musicologist who specialized in Arab music. In 1932, he participated in the First International Congress of Arab Music in Cairo, during which he maintained a journal recording his daily activities, interactions with fellow delegates and dignitaries, and varied perambulations throughout the city. This journal, and the detailed minutes he kept for his chaired Commission on History and Manuscripts, were never published. They reveal aspects and inner-workings of the Congress that have hitherto remained unknown. The illustrations and photos contained therein, as well as additional photos that were never seen, provide visual documentation of the Congress's participants and musical ensembles.
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1 online resource (xxvi, 430 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004284142 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Robert Lachmann's Letters to Henry George Farmer (from 1923 to 1938) /
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Robert Lachmann's letters to Henry George Farmer, from the years 1923-38, provide insightful glimpses into his life and his progressive research projects. From an historical perspective, they offer critical data concerning the development of comparative musicology as it evolved in Germany during the early decades of the twentieth century. The fact that Lachmann sought contact with Farmer can be explained from their mutual, yet diverse interests in Arab music, particularly as they were then considered to be the foremost European scholars in the field. During the 1932 Cairo International Congress on Arab Music, they were selected as presidents of their respective committees.
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1 online resource. :
9789004432475
9789004431959
Kitāb al-adwār fi ʼl-mūsīqī : Tarjuma-yi Fārsī bih inḍimām-i matn-i ʿArabi-yi ān /
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In his younger years, the famous musician and theorist of music Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī (d. 683/1294) seemed destined for an administrative career. Having moved to Baghdad as an adolescent, he had received a first-class education, excelling in Arabic, calligraphy, and Shāfīʿī and comparative law especially. For a time he was a copyist in the library of the caliph al-Mustaʿṣim (reg. 640-56/1242-58) and a teacher of calligraphy. His talents as a lute-player and musician then led to a brilliant career at al-Mustaʿṣim's court. Under al-Mustaʿṣim he also held juridical office, while under the Mongols he was head of the chancery of Baghdad and supervisor of the religious endowments of Iraq. Administrative talents notwithstanding, it was in musical theory that Urmawī secured himself eternal fame. Innovative and concise, yet complete, his Kitāb al-adwār fi ʼl-mūsīqī became the most popular textbook in music for centuries. An undated, anonymous Persian translation is published here, together with the Arabic original.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402782
9789646781627
An Arabic musical and socio-cultural glossary of Kitab al-aghani /
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George Dimitri Sawa's Arabic Musical and Socio-Cultural Glossary of Kitāb al-Aghānī is the first comprehensive lexicographical study of Umayyad and early Abbāsid-era music theory and practices. It defines melodic and rhythmic modes, musical forms, instruments, technical terms and metaphors used in evaluating compositions and performances, and the emotional effects of ṭarab. It explains the processes of composition and learning, performance practice, musical change and aesthetics, and addresses the behavior of court musicians to help understand societal views of music. Medieval dictionaries, reference works on Arabic literature, theoretical treatises as well as full quotations from the Aghānī are used. This glossary will be of interest to scholars and students of the music and socio-cultural history of the early Islamic era.
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1 online resource (9, 556, 6 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 3-6 ). :
9789004279094 :
0929-2403 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Höfische Musikkultur im klassischen Islam : Ibn Faḍlallāh al-'Umarī (gest. 749/1349) über die dichterische und musikalische Kunst der Sängersklavinne /
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"In Der Ṭarab der Sängersklavinnen gibt Yasemin Gökpinar einen Einblick in Ibn Faḍl-Allāh al-'Umarī's Masālik al-abṣār fīmamālik al-amṣār (vol. 10) über Hofmusik von den Abbasiden bis zu den Mamluken mit Schwerpunkt auf den Sängersklavinnen (qiyān). Die interdisziplinäre Studie stellt Autor und Werk vor und etabliert das Liederbuch als historische Quelle. Zudem werden unterschiedliche strukturelle und inhaltliche Aspekte kombiniert: eine Untersuchung der Liedtextüberlieferer und des soziokulturellen Kontextes des Hoflebens im Lichte von Thomas Bauer's Ambiguitätstheorie, eine musikwissenschaftliche Analyse des Verhältnisses zwischen poetischem Metrum der Lieder und ihren musikalischen Rhythmen, schliesslich eine Betrachtung des Handlungsspielraumes der Sängerinnen und ihrer (relativen) Macht über ihre Besitzer durch ihre hervorragende Ausbildung und natürlichen Anlagen. In this volume Yasemin Gökpinar provides insight into Ibn Faḍl-Allāh al-'Umarī's Masālik al-abṣār fīmamālik al-amṣār (vol. 10) about court music from the Abbasids to the Mamluks, with special emphasis on the subject of high ranking singing slave-girls (qiyān). Her interdisciplinary study focuses on the author and his work, and presents the songbook as a historical source. Different aspects concerning structure and contents are combined: an investigation of the song transmitters, a study into the socio-cultural context of courtly life with an application of Thomas Bauer's theory of ambiguity, a musicological analysis of the relation between metre of song texts and rhythmic modes in music, and finally an exploration of the singing-girls' leeway and even power over their owners, through education".
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004417649
Why We Sing: Music, Word, and Liturgy in Early Christianity : Essays in Honour of Anders Ekenberg's 75th Birthday /
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This volume sheds new light on an array of late ancient Christian liturgical sources, practices, and traditions emerges from these multidisciplinary studies on the interplay of New Testament writings, ancient music, liturgical spaces, biblical interpretation, and reception history.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004522053
9789004522039
Plato's Timaeus and the missing fourth guest : finding the harmony of the spheres /
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In Plato's Timaeus and the Missing Fourth Guest , Donna M. Altimari Adler proposes a new Timaeus scale structure. She finds the harmonic cosmos in Plato's text, mathematically, regarding it as a number generator. Plato's primary number sequence, she argues, yields a matrix defining a sophisticated harmony of the spheres. She stresses the Decad as the pattern governing both human perception and the generation of all things, in the text, including the World Soul and musical scale symbolizing it. She precisely identifies Plato's \'fabric\' and its locus of severance and solves other thorny problems of interpretation, e.g., properly naming the sets of three and four bands, born of splitting the band of difference, and explaining their differing motions and speeds.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004389922
Arab music ; a survey of its history and its modern practice /
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Offering a comprehensive survey of the history and the development of Arab music and musical theory from its pre-Islamic roots until 1970, this book also offers a discussion of the major genres and forms practiced today, such as the Egyptian gil, the Algerian raï and Palestinian hip hop; it also touches upon musical instruments and folk music.
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Also issued in print: 2021. :
1 online resource (viii, 200 pages) : illustrations :
Specialized. :
Includes bibliographical references, discography and index. :
9781789699333 (PDF ebook) :
Harmonics /
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Ptolemy's comprehensive treatises on astronomy and geography were influential for nearly two millennia. Equally influential was his treatise on harmonics, the ancient science which combined and brought to completion the study of philosophy and science. This volume offers a comprehensive English translation and commentary of Ptolemy's Harmonics . The treatise begins with Ptolemy's study of pitches and intervals, for which he extracts both an idealized musical scale and a new acoustical tool. After discussing modulation, he expands his horizons by applying musical intervals to the human soul and celestial bodies, ultimately describing a cosmic harmony. The English translation faithfully reproduces Ptolemy's style and includes all the charts surviving in the manuscript tradition. The commentary offers a full exegesis of the text, loci paralleli, and citations of modern scholarly sources.
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1 online resource (xxxvii, 192 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-179) and indexes. :
9789004351165 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Ottoman tanbūr : the long-necked lute of Ottoman art music /
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Tanbūrs are long-necked lute-like instruments played in the art, Sufi, and folk musical traditions along the Silk Road and beyond. This book provides a detailed study of the history of the tanbūr, its role in Ottoman music, construction and playing technique.
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Also issued in print: 2022. :
1 online resource (168 pages) : illustrations :
Specialized. :
Includes bibliographical references, discography and index. :
9781803271071 (PDF ebook) :
The Turkish long-necked lute saz or bağlama /
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The saz or bağlama, a generic name for long-necked lutes in Turkey, plays an important role in Turkish musical culture. This volume focuses on the instrument's cultural-historical background while briefly discussing various saz or bağlama types and their construction, tuning, and playing techniques.
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Also issued in print: 2020.
Translated from the Dutch. :
1 online resource (138 pages) : illustrations (colour) :
Specialized. :
Includes bibliographical references, discography and index. :
9781789694338 (ebook) :
Teaching through Images : Imagery in Greco-Roman Didactic Poetry /
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In ancient didactic poetry, poets frequently make use of imagery - similes, metaphors, acoustic images, models, exempla, fables, allegory, personifications, and other tropes - as a means to elucidate and convey their didactic message. In this volume, which arose from an international conference held at the University of Heidelberg in 2016, we investigate such phenomena and explore how they make the unseen visible, the unheard audible, and the unknown comprehensible. By exploring didactic poets from Hesiod to pseudo-Oppian and from Vergil and Lucretius to Grattius and Ovid, the authors in this collective volume show how imagery can clarify and illuminate, but also complicate and even undermine or obfuscate the overt didactic message. The presence of a real or implied addressee invites our engagement and ultimately our scrutiny of language and meaning.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004501584
9789004373488
Tanbûr long-necked lutes along the Silk Road and beyond /
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This text is divided into two main parts: 'The Tanbûr Tradition' which discusses the origin, history, construction and playing techniques of tanbûrs; and 'The Tanbûr Family' which focuses on long-necked as a family of musical instruments. After a short introduction, the construction, playing technique, and musical traditions are briefly discussed.
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Previously issued in print: 2019. :
1 online resource (x, 186 pages) : illustrations (black and white, and colour). :
Specialized. :
Includes bibliographical references and discography. :
9781789691702 (ebook) :
Cassius Dio the Historian : Methods and Approaches /
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This volume focuses on Cassius Dio as a historian - the only historian who allows us to follow the developments of Rome's political institutions during a more than thousand year period, from the foundation of the city to Cassius Dio's retirement from public life in 229 CE. The volume explores the Roman historian's methodology and agendas, all of which influenced his approaches to Rome's history. It offers a reassessment that rests on a deeper study of his relationship with historiographical traditions as well as his narrative and structural approach to Roman history. It examines Cassius Dio as both a writer in the historiographic tradition with his own agenda for writing The Roman History and a historian with his own ambition to tell the history of Rome.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004461604
9789004461482
Singing Alexandria : music between practice and textual transmission /
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This volume investigates the transmission and ancient reception of ancient Greek texts with musical notation. It provides a reconstruction of the dynamics of reception orienting the re-use and re-shaping of musical and poetic tradition in the entertainment culture of the post-classical Greek world. The study makes full use of literary, papyrological and epigraphic evidence, and in particular includes a detailed philological analysis of surviving musical papyri and of their relationship to the editorial activity of Alexandrian scholarship. The study helps to relocate musical documents in the world of their production and reception.
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Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Scuola normale superiore, Pisa, 2003. :
1 online resource (xiv, 241 pages) : facsimiles. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-230) and indexes. :
9789047408970 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.