Music and Song

"Music is the purest form of art and the truest expression of beauty in its form and its spirit... it is the eloquent silence that nature inspires in our hearts." — Tagore

"In the heart there is a virtue that the power of speech could not bring forth in words, so the soul brought it forth in melodies." — From the sayings of the Arabs

Early man, in the ages before history, felt only the material needs — food, clothing, and shelter; but the turning of man's demands and his thoughts kept pace with the turning of time and its conditions, and the history of the ancient civilizations tells us that man was not content with meeting the material needs, but began to feel a loftier and more complete need: to express what passed through his mind and what stirred within his soul. So he discovered speech, then the rhymed kind of it, then the metered and rhymed, and he began to set it to melody — and thus he came to know song. The oldest poetry was sung in the temples and the gatherings, and the oldest meanings contained in sung poetry were for sanctifying the gods and glorifying them and chanting in their worship, and for voicing the impulses of longing and passion; and perhaps for this reason the ghazal is among the oldest known purposes of Arabic poetry, its traces still preserved in the opening of the pre-Islamic ode in all its various purposes. For this reason, too, one says "he chanted poetry," not "he spoke poetry," because poetry was originally for chanting and song. Thus the Greek poet Homer would roam the streets of Athens chanting his sweet melodies, carrying his delicate lyre, complaining of his lot, weeping over his sorrows, exulting in his joys... Song is ancient among the old civilized peoples; and before the Arabs took it over from the Persians and the Byzantines they had only the camel-driver's chant and the recitation, which they called "al-rukbaniyya." The first of the people of Mecca to carry foreign song over into Arabic was "Sa'id ibn Misjah": he passed by the Persians as they were building the Sacred Mosque in the days of Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr and heard them singing in Persian, so he recast their airs in Arabic verse and took the best of them, and he was the first to perform Arabic song in Mecca; he was the teacher of Ibn Surayj, the famous singer. It is also said that the first to sing to the oud was a young man of the people of Medina called "Sa'ib Kha'ir," who likewise carried melodies over into Arabic from the Persians; and from him took Ma'bad, and Ibn Surayj as well, and Jamila, and 'Azza, and others. The first among the Arabs to compose the hazaj was a man called "Tuways," who was nicknamed the Melting One... because he sang: "Love has so wasted me that from my passion I almost flew." And when the Muslims entered al-Andalus at the beginning of the eighteenth century and spread their arts and their culture there, the Westerners imitated their manners and their letters, for these were the highest model of taste and perfection. But al-Andalus itself was not affected by culture and the sciences as it was affected by music and song — that in the age of the blended literature, the age of the muwashshahat and the zajal and sung poetry; for the muwashshah, for all its artistic value, is a child of the soil of al-Andalus in its music, and borrowed from the Arabs in its mold. God inspired His creatures and wakened their talents, and ordained for some of them a share of His gifts that rest upon grasping the essence of beauty, giving free rein to the imagination, fineness of the sense of hearing, and abundance of feeling and of tears — those gifts or endowments which we touch in the canvases of painters, the melodies of poets, the pieces of musicians, and the writings of men of letters. The fine arts draw the man who is bound to them by a spiritual tie — the man who weeps at the weeping of the musician and the poet, who applauds with delight whenever he discovers one of the manifestations of art and beauty, who thrills and sways at the hearing of plaintive airs, and who knows the imitation of nature; and so his spirit rises to what has no end, from touching the enchanting divine power and discovering its secrets. That is the end which every artist and every appreciator of art aims to reach, for every perfect art is a splendid picture of God's making, written by His hands during the artist's trance. And music is perhaps the most widespread of the arts among people of all their classes and degrees of learning, for the unlettered and the educated, the old man and the child, are all fully prepared to savor melodies and to understand them; whereas poetry, painting, sculpture, and the other fine arts require wide knowledge and sound taste in order to distinguish the beautiful in them from the ugly, and to be able to understand, criticize, and analyze them. Music, in Tagore's phrase, "is the purest form of art and the first expression, the truest statement of beauty in its form and its spirit; indeed it is the nearest tongue for subduing the heart, and it is nothing but a bounded description of the infinite — it is the eloquent silence that nature inspires in our hearts with the delights of its scenes." And I recall what one of the sages of the Arabs said: "In the heart there is a noble virtue that the power of speech could not bring forth in words, so the soul brought it forth in melodies." Add to this that man is created with a love of music and stamped with an affinity for it, for nothing quiets him in his cradle but the measured lullaby and the soft, mellow tones that turn the sharp-tempered infant into a calm and gentle child who listens intently to what he hears; and no sooner have his ears grown familiar with the tender voice than he sinks into deep slumber. And if such is the effect of music upon man as a child, what must its effect be upon him as a youth, when his feelings have begun to grow with the growth of his body and his mind?!

The effect of silent music in soothing the nerves is what has led the men of medicine to agree on letting those afflicted with certain nervous diseases hear some of it, for they have verified that it is among the most efficacious treatments helping their patients toward recovery; and that is a method followed in the greatest hospitals of the world.

Song works like magic upon the soul, above all when the meaning of the verse set to melody is eloquent and the airs are suited to it. For song stirs what lies hidden in the soul; it wakens in it longing, sorrow, unease, and contentment, and makes them grow. Yet there are people who suppress their passion and hold their limbs in check, so that a deep silence comes over them; perhaps a man will close his eyes to keep his soul company, without those emotions blazing in his breast showing on his face. Of this al-Isbahani said: "Listening does not put into the heart what is not in it, but stirs what is there..." Yes indeed, song moves man — and how many a listener cannot govern his feeling when he hears! Just as the power of reason may check this movement; and the one may overcome the other. Melodies are of kinds: some of them rouse, drawing out measured motions of the hand or the foot through that strong influence which joins itself unconsciously to the will and dictates those motions to the limbs; some gladden; some sadden; and some call to stillness and absorption. Here I should like to tell, for its charm, the story of the famous singer Ma'bad with the black man, for it shows how far song can work upon a man. Ma'bad said:

"One of the emirs of the Hijaz sent word to me that I should set out for Mecca, so I set out; and the heat bore down on me on the way, so I went on ahead of my servant-boy and came to a tent in which was a black man, and there stood a water jar that had grown cool. I said to the black man:

"You there! Give me a drink of this water."

He said:

"No!"

I said:

"Then permit me shelter and an hour's rest."

He answered:

"No!"

So I made my she-camel kneel and took refuge in her shade to recover myself, and I said to myself: If I let this man hear a little singing, perhaps he would show generosity and wet my throat with a little water, and so ease something of the thirst I feel. Then I sang out with my voice the song that begins "The palace, then the palms, then al-Jidad between them" — and when the black man heard me he came up to me and brought me into his tent, and then said:

"Ah, by my father and my mother, will you have sawiq of sult with this cold drink?"
(Sult is barley.)

I said:

"You denied me less than that?"

He did not delay by so much as a word, but gave me to drink until I was quenched; my boy came, and we stayed with the black man until evening. And when I wished to depart he said:

"Ah, by my father and my mother, the heat is fierce, and I fear for you the like of what befell you. Permit me, then, to carry a waterskin on my neck and go along with it beside you; every time you thirst I shall pour you a bowl, and you shall sing me a song."

I answered him:

"You shall have that."

"And by God he did not leave me — he giving me to drink and I singing to him — until I reached my destination."

Nor is the penetrating magic of melodies confined to man alone; it works upon the animals as well. Camels, for all the dullness of their nature, are so affected by the driver's chant that heavy loads grow light to them; you see them stretch out their necks and listen to the driver's airs and quicken their pace out of fresh vigor, after weariness and exhaustion had overtaken them. And you see the goats racing one another to draw near their shepherd when he stretches out in the shade of the trees toying with his reed pipe, listening to his sad chanting and his silent, speaking music, as though they sought to endear themselves to him — nay, as though they wished he would never leave off playing and singing.

Among the most delightful things I have read in the agricultural magazine that used to appear in Haifa is that the technical experts recommend placing a radio set in the cow barns at milking time, for the cow takes comfort in music and yields her milk abundantly under the influence of the melodies!

And Greek legend says that Orpheus charmed the lion with the music of his lyre until the lion forgot its ferocity and knelt at his feet beside the lamb?!.. And birds are often affected by music. It is told that a company gathered for an evening of music, joining the playing of the oud, the violin, and the nay, on a cold night, when suddenly they heard a light tapping on the glass of the window; and when one of them opened it, a bird rushed in, drawn by the sound of the music, and fell to the floor struck down, without motion...

Nor is man alone skilled in song; among the animals too are those that excel in melody and in warbling. In the warbling of the bulbul and the nightingale, in the croaking of the frogs and the chirring of the cricket of the woods, there is a companionable, measured harmony that expresses most truly the signs of enchantment and beauty. And what shall one say of nature, which fills space with its sweet, mellow music, which man tries to imitate upon the strings: from the rustling of the trees when the soft east breezes play with them, and the murmur of the rippling waters, and the humming of the waves when the wind begins to toy with them, to all those other sounds, with their natural elements, which call to peace and stillness, and which set before us splendid pictures of the beauty of nature and the power of the Creator!

And with all this, you find among people those whom song does not move and upon whom music has no effect at all. Whoever is of such a nature is sunken of soul, not having attained in fineness of temper the rank of the camels and the birds. Of this an eloquent man said:

"He whom spring and its blossoms, the oud and its strings, do not move — his temperament is spoiled, and for him there is no cure!"

"Damascus"