Making the Great Book of Songs

Making the Great Book of Songs PDF Author: Hilary Kilpatrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113578793X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
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.

Making the Great Book of Songs

Making the Great Book of Songs PDF Author: Hilary Kilpatrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113578793X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Making the Great Book of Songs

Making the Great Book of Songs PDF Author: Hilary Kilpatrick
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0700717013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
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.

Easy to Remember

Easy to Remember PDF Author: William Zinsser
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
ISBN: 9781567923254
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In this warm and affectionate book, William Zinsser describes his lifelong love affair with American popular song and the American musical theater.

Music and Musicians in the Medieval Islamicate World

Music and Musicians in the Medieval Islamicate World PDF Author: Lisa Nielson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0755617894
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
During the early medieval Islamicate period (800–1400 CE), discourses concerned with music and musicians were wide-ranging and contentious, and expressed in works on music theory and philosophy as well as literature and poetry. But in spite of attempts by influential scholars and political leaders to limit or control musical expression, music and sound permeated all layers of the social structure. Lisa Nielson here presents a rich social history of music, musicianship and the role of musicians in the early Islamicate era. Focusing primarily on Damascus, Baghdad and Jerusalem, Lisa Nielson draws on a wide variety of textual sources written for and about musicians and their professional/private environments – including chronicles, literary sources, memoirs and musical treatises – as well as the disciplinary approaches of musicology to offer insights into musical performances and the lives of musicians. In the process, the book sheds light onto the dynamics of medieval Islamicate courts, as well as how slavery, gender, status and religion intersected with music in courtly life. It will appeal to scholars of the Islamicate world and historical musicologists.

Bedouin and ‘Abbāsid Cultural Identities

Bedouin and ‘Abbāsid Cultural Identities PDF Author: Ruqayya Yasmine Khan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000701204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of "the ideological work" that the Arabic Majnūn Laylā story performed for ‘Abbāsid urbanite, imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the "Bedouin cosmos." The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majnūn in the romance of Majnūn Laylā as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the ‘Abbāsid empire after the Greco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover, this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majnūn. As markers of "strangeness" and "foreignness" in the ‘Abbāsid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity, culture, identity, religion and language present in their cosmopolitan milieus. Such "cultural work" is performed through the ideological uses of alterity given its mechanisms of distancing (e.g., temporal and spatial) and nearness (e.g., affective). Lastly, the Majnūn Laylā love story demonstrates, in its text and reception, that a Greco-Arabian and Greco-Persian subculture thrived in the centers of ‘Abbāsid Baghdad that molded and shaped the ways in which this love story was compiled, received and performed. Offering a corrective to the prevailing views expressed in Western scholarly writings on the Greco-Arabian encounter, this book is a major contribution to scholars and students interested in Islamic studies, Arabic and comparative literature, Middle East and gender studies.

The Book of Monasteries

The Book of Monasteries PDF Author: al-Shābushtī
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479825727
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
A literary tour of Christian monasteries of the medieval Middle East The Book of Monasteries takes readers on an engaging tour of the monastic centers of the medieval Middle East, illustrated with a rich variety of poetry and prose. Starting with monasteries in Baghdad, readers are taken up the Tigris into the mountains of south-eastern Anatolia before moving to Palestine and Syria, along the Euphrates down to the old Christian center of Ḥīrah and onward to Egypt. For the literary anthologist al-Shābushtī, who was Muslim, monasteries were important sites of interactions between Abbasid elites and the Christian communities that made up about half the population of the Abbasid Empire at the time. Each section in this anthology covers a specific monastery, beginning with a discussion of its location and the reason for its name. Al-Shābushtī presents poems, anecdotes, and historical reports related to each site. He selects heroic and spectacular incidents, illustrations of caliphal extravagance, and occasions that gave rise to memorable verse. Important political personalities and events that were indirectly linked with monasteries also appear here, as do scenes of festive court life and gruesome murders. Through these accounts, al-Shābushtī offers readers a meditation on the splendor of Abbasid culture as well as moral and philosophical lessons: the ephemerality of power; the virtues of generosity and tolerance; the effectiveness of eloquence in prose and poetry; and the fleeting nature of pleasure and beauty. Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Monasteries offers an entertaining panorama of religious, political, and literary life during the Abbasid era. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Umayyad Legacies

Umayyad Legacies PDF Author: Antoine Borrut
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004190988
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
The Umayyads, the first dynasty of Islam, ruled over a vast empire from their central province of Syria, providing a line of caliphs from 661 to 750. Another branch later ruled in al-Andalus – Islamic Spain – from 756 to 1031, ruling first as emirs and then as caliphs themselves. This book is the first to bring together studies of this far-flung family and treat it not as two unrelated caliphates but as a single enterprise. Yet for all that historians have made note of Umayyad accomplishments in the Near East and al-Andalus, Umayyad legacies – what later generations made of these caliphs and their achievements – are poorly understood. Building on new interest in the study of memory and Islamic historiography and including interdisciplinary perspectives from Arabic literature, art, and archaeology, this book highlights Umayyad achievements and the shaping of our knowledge of the Umayyad past.

Medieval Arab Music and Musicians

Medieval Arab Music and Musicians PDF Author: Dwight Reynolds
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004501541
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Medieval Arab Music and Musicians offers complete, annotated English translations of three of the most important medieval Arabic texts on music and musicians: the biography of the musician Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī from al-Iṣbahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī (10th c), the biography of the musician Ziryāb from Ibn Ḥayyān’s Kitāb al-Muqtabis (11th c), and the earliest treatise on the muwashshaḥ Andalusi song genre, Dār al-Ṭirāz, by the Egyptian scholar Ibn Sanā’ al-Mulk (13th c). Al-Mawṣilī, the most famous musician of his era, was also the teacher of the legendary Ziryāb, who traveled from Baghdad to al-Andalus and is often said to have laid the foundations of Andalusi music. The third text is crucial to any understanding of the medieval muwashshaḥ and its possible relations to the Troubadours, the Cantigas de Santa María, and the Andalusi musical traditions of the modern Middle East.

Female-Voice Song and Women’s Musical Agency in the Middle Ages

Female-Voice Song and Women’s Musical Agency in the Middle Ages PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004517030
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517

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Book Description
This collection presents fresh evidence and new perspectives on the diverse ways in which women created and interacted with cultures of song between c. 600 and c. 1500.

The Illustrated Book of Songs

The Illustrated Book of Songs PDF Author: Colm Boyd
Publisher: Uitgeverij Luster
ISBN: 9789460582486
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
They say that whatever you're going through in life, Aretha has probably recorded a song about it. Well, it's not just Aretha. Just been dumped? Roy Orbison has the song to get you through. Furious about the state of the world? Patti Smith knows how you feel. 'The Illustrated Book of Songs' is a collection of lists about the music that makes up the soundtrack to our lives, featuring hundreds of songs, old and new, famous and not-so-famous. With intriguing trivia, idle musings and cool illustrations of your favourite performers and songs. Illustrations: Patricia Ghijsens-Ezcurdia.