UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Musicological Writings from the Modern Arab “Renaissance” in Nineteenth and Early- Twentieth-Century Syria and Egypt Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80x2c647 Author Popper, Tess Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Musicological Writings from the Modern Arab “Renaissance” in Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century Syria and Egypt A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Music by Tess Judith Popper Committee in Charge: Professor Scott Marcus, Chair Professor Dwight Reynolds Professor Timothy Cooley December 2019 The dissertation of Tess Judith Popper is approved _______________________________________________ Dwight Reynolds _______________________________________________ Timothy J. Cooley _______________________________________________ Scott Marcus, Committee Chair September 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In my work with this dissertation I have had considerable guidance, instruction, and mentoring from Professor Scott Marcus of the Department of Music, Ethnomusicology Program at UC Santa Barbara. Of especial help to me has been his dissertation Arab Music Theory in the Modern Period (UCLA 1989) along with his 2007 publication Music in Egypt: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. Numerous articles of his are among my secondary sources as well, assisting me in my analyses of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Arab music theory. Moreover, receiving his instruction on performing the Egyptian nāy allowed me to directly experience Arab music as performed, in his greatly esteemed Middle East Ensemble at UCSB, with the additional opportunity to perform with the Ensemble on tour in Egypt in 2010, a major lifetime experience! I also owe considerable thanks to Professor Dwight Reynolds, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature in the Department of Religious Studies and a member of the affiliated faculty in the Music Department. My return to the study of Arabic benefitted considerably from his courses focusing on Arabic literature of different eras, and his several articles on the muwashshaḥ, the medieval poetic-song genre of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), and its development as a significant genre in music of the eastern Arab world, especially Egypt, have been essential sources for me. I must also acknowledge considerable help in writing in this field from ethnomusicologist Sonia Seeman, now Associate Professor at University of Texas, Austin, who was teaching at UCSB during my first two years there, 2004-2006. As a new student in ethnomusicology I wrote numerous papers and essays for her in her very informative seminars; her many comments and reminders covering every returned paper were very iii instructive to me as I developed my academic writing in our field. Likewise, I owe thanks to musicologist Leta Miller at UC Santa Cruz, now Professor Emeritus, who supervised my Master’s thesis there in 2002. Her weekly sessions reviewing my writing with me were of considerable benefit to me as a graduate student returning to the academic world after several decades. Although I had not intended to continue my studies past the MA at UCSC, she encouraged me to continue to a doctorate, advice that I felt capable of attempting after working with her. Two teachers in the Department of Music at UCSB were also very helpful in my expanding my knowledge and interest in my new field of study in ethnomusicology: Professor Joshua Pilzer, now at University of Toronto; and the late Dr. Dolores Hsu, with whom I had frequent memorable conversations. There are many former fellow ethnomusicology graduate students whose friendships facilitated my return to graduate studies in a new field: Lillie Gordon, Denise Gill, Katherine Meizel, Eric Ederer, Kara Attrep, Barbara Taylor, Sonia Downing, Jim Grippo, Philip Murphy, Charlie Lockwood, and Ann E Lucas, at UC Los Angeles when I first met her, now teaching at Boston College. I enjoy learning of their interests and activities - via social media and at Society for Ethnomusicology annual meetings - as they now pursue careers in teaching and/or performing, in a wide range of specialties within our field. I also acknowledge Dr. Andrea Fishman, a long-time friend from my first days at UCSB, for her generous hosting me in the final days of my dissertation preparation; and I cite my offspring, the Popper- Keizer siblings, for their loving assistance in numerous matters during the years of my dissertation writing: Rafael for his staff notations of my translations of the Arabic descriptions of early-nineteenth-century melodic modes; Gavriel for his periodic assistance with my temperamental computer, especially for his success at ridding it of infecting viruses; iv and Tessie Ina for helpful suggestions regarding Word document issues and for general assistance during the last couple of years of my writing, taking time in her busy life to be there for me for company and encouragement. v Vita of Tess Judith Popper September 2019 Education BA 1966: Near Eastern Languages, University of California, Berkeley MA 1970: Near Eastern Languages, University of California, Berkeley MA 2003: Music (Performance Practice), University of California, Santa Cruz Professional Experience Teaching Associate: World Music, University of California, Santa Barbara, Summer 2010, 2011 Research Assistant: for Professor Paul Amar, UCSB Global Studies Department, 2009, 2010 Teaching Assistant: UCSB Music Department, World Music, 2005-2009 Teaching Assistant: UCSB Religious Studies Department, first-year Arabic 2008-2009; summer course 2005-2009 Lecturer: UCSC Music Department: Music of Modern Israel, spring 2004 Teaching Assistant: UCSC Music Department, Music Theory and Literature, University Orchestra assistant English Teacher: UCSC Extension English Language International, summer program 1999-2004 Associate Director, Classroom Teacher: Popper-Keizer School, Santa Cruz, CA (private school, K-12) 1977-1998 Honors and Grants National Defense Foreign Language Fellowships: Arabic, Hebrew, 1969-1970 UCB “Teacher of the Year” Award, Santa Cruz Board of Education 1987 Humanities and Social Science Research Grant, UCSB summer 2005 Foreign Language Area Studies Award (Arabic), UCSB 2005-2006 Center for Middle Eastern Studies Graduate Fellowship, UCSB 2007-2008 Graduate Research Mentorship Program, UCSB 2009-2010 Publications Book Review: Dalia Cohen & Ruth Katz, “Palestinian Arab Music: a Maqam Tradition,” World Music, Vol. 48(2) 2006 Unpublished Master’s Thesis: Art Music of Modern Israel, UCSC, Music Department, 2003 Papers Presented at Academic Conferences “Cross-Cultural Translation: Interpreting a 19th-Century Arabic Treatise on Music” “‘Facing this Tempest That Began to Blow in Our Direction’: Preservation and Renovation through Music” “A Reformer in the Garb of a Singer: Music in the Discourse of National Identity in Colonial Egypt” “The Cairo Opera House as Past and Present Symbol” “‘Restoring the Legacy of the East’: Musicological Writings from the Early Modern Arab Renaissance” vi ABSTRACT Musicological Writings from the Modern Arab “Renaissance” in Syria and Egypt by Tess Judith Popper Historians designate the early decades of the nineteenth century as the beginning of the modern era in the Middle East, initiated by Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt and the subsequent European colonial presence that extended into the twentieth century. This was a period of intense self-reflection, especially in Egypt, as Egyptians responded to their experience with colonialism, Westernized modernization, and new forms of national identity. In this environment, discourse concerning preserving tradition and pursuing innovation brought these contested issues into musical as well as social and political contexts. By the late-nineteenth century, Arab authors and journalists were referring to a new Arab “renaissance (al-nahḍa, “rising, awaking, revival, renaissance”). In this dissertation, I examine four Arabic texts on music of this period, written between 1840 and 1936, by one Syrian and three Egyptian authors who contributed to the emergence of modern Arabic literature on music: Mīkhā’īl Mashāqa, al-Risāla al-shihābiyya fī al-sinā‘a al-mūsīqiyya (The Shihābī Treatise on the Musical Art), 1840 (the only one of these texts translated into Western languages); Muḥammad ibn Ismā‘īl ibn ‘Umar Shihāb al- Dīn, Safīnat al-mulk wa-nafīsat al-fulk (The Ship of Royalty and the Boat’s Precious Gem), 1843; Muḥammad Kāmil al-Khula‘ī, Kitāb al-mūsīqī al-sharqī (The Book of Eastern vii Music), 1904/05; and Qusṭandī Rizq, al-Mūsīqā al-sharqiyya w’al-ghinā’ al-‘arabī (Eastern Music and Arab Song), 1936. From these texts, we learn of the environment in the Ottoman provinces of Syria and Egypt in which these authors developed their interest in the music of their regions and their contributions to Arabic literature on music in the new Arab “renaissance.” The 1840 treatise by Mashāqa is highly significant for his presentation of his conceptualization of the modern Arab tonal system and its application to his documentation of melodic modes current in Syria in the first half of the nineteenth century. His contemporary in Egypt, Shihāb al-Dīn, is known for his extensive song-text collection and commentary on the poetic origins of many of the songs, with historical and anecdotal commentary on numerous poetic