Lives in Musicology: My Life in Arabic Music—Scholarship, Translation, Teaching, Performance

Abstract

This overview of my five decades researching Arabic music, studying and translating treatises on Arabic music dating back to the ninth century CE, and teaching and performing this tradition is the latest installment of the “Lives in Musicology” series of Acta Musicologica. I cover my early training in Western music, seen at the time in my native country of Egypt as advanced compared to “backward” Arabic music, followed by my turn to a deep, lifelong involvement with the latter, which began with my reading of “Kitāb al-Mūsīqī l-Kabīr” (Grand book of music) by al-Fārābī (d. 950), the beauty of whose scholarship and language stunned me. So instead of trying to bring Arabic music into the twentieth century, Arabic music brought me back to the medieval era! My overview of my many writings tries to offer a sense of the richness, humanity, and humor of the music to which I have devoted my career.