MIDDLE ORIENT AND CENTRAL ASIA MUSIC TRADITIONS

Musical traditions that developed in a rather vast area, such as the Middle East and Central Asian area, present remarkable affinities between them and share forms, genres, musical instruments, rhythmic cycles, musicological theories and extra-musical conceptions in a space that goes from Andalusia up to nowadays Xinjiang, in Western China.
As with other cultural traditions, music in the Islamic world developed in various distant centers, such as Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba, Constantinople, Bukhara, Samarkand, Herat or Cairo, where lived a particularly musicophile sultan, or a given music master, so that through time developed a real network of musical centers in which men of culture, intellectuals and artists circulated.
This first course intends to introduce to the main traditions of Art music defined, with an Arabic term, maqām (pronounced mugham in Persian, Azeri and Armenian area, maqom, in Central Asia and muqam in present-day Xinjiang) that flourished between the courts, the abodes of the musicophiles and the Sufi centers of the vast Middle East and Central Asian area.
Given the probable background of the participants, we will not adopt a strictly "musicological" and specialist approach, but rather an open approach that will bring to light the network of interrelations existing between music, language, poetry, aesthetics and the costume of the many musical and cultural traditions encountered.

According to the parameters of the "Dublin Descriptors", the expected learning outcomes are:
1. Knowledge and understanding
a) Know the basic terminology of the discipline and understand the texts that use it.
b) Know the peculiarities of the art music of the area and understand the peculiarity of the approach to music typical of Transcultural Musicology

2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
a) Knowing how to carry out a simple musical analysis of different pieces listened to taking into account the properties of the individual musical languages.
b) Knowing how to understand the connections between a musical piece and its cultural context.

3. Judgment capacity
a) Know how to formulate and argue simple hypotheses.

4. Communication skills
a) Know how to communicate the specificities of ethnomusicological reflection, using appropriate terminology.

5. Learning skills
● Know how to take notes and share them collaboratively.
● Knowing how to consult critically the reference texts and the bibliography contained in them.

Attention, open-mindedness and curiosity. Notions of musical grammar are welcome.

Introduction to the main Music Art traditions of the Middle Eastern and Central Asian world and their relations with the local cultures.

1) Giovanni De Zorzi, maqām: percorsi tra le musiche d’arte in area mediorientale e centroasiatica,, Roma, Squilibri, 2019.

To this they will add one of the following texts, according to their studies:
2) Jean During, Musiche d'Iran. La tradizione in questione, Milano, Ricordi/BMG, 2005.
OR
3) Giovanni De Zorzi, Musiche di Turchia: tradizioni e transiti tra Oriente e Occidente, con un saggio di Kudsi Erguner, Milano, Ricordi/Universal Music, 2010.
OR
4) Giovanni De Zorzi, Introduzione alle musiche del mondo islamico, Roma, Istituto per l'Oriente Carlo Alfonso Nallino, 2021.

For serious reasons, it is possible to agree with the teacher an alternative to the above quoted texts in accordance with the student's course of study.

Non-attending students will add: Giovanni De Zorzi, Introduzione alle musiche del mondo islamico, Roma, Istituto per l'Oriente Carlo Alfonso Nallino, 2021.

Oral examination on the Bibliography and on the course itself. For those not attending, notes from the course and additional Bibliography.

Lessons with audio and video examples.

Italian

Before starting a course I order the necessary texts for the course in BAUM and BALI; obviously, being exam papers, these are not available for loan.
You can also find the texts for the exam in Venetian as well as national bookstores, online, or in the many Venetian libraries.

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development