With Tawfiq Succar: The Musician Working in Silence for the Advancement of Arabic Music

A member of the League of Five (1), which brings together five Lebanese musicians who have vowed to work together for the advancement of Arabic music, on the model of the Russian Five who revived Russian music.

And if Tawfiq Succar is the least famous of them on the radio stations — teaching at the Conservatory takes up most of his day — he is the most persevering of them in fathoming the secrets of Arabic music, drawing on his genuine musical culture to bring it under Western technique. In the valuable lecture he delivered a year ago at the Lebanese Cénacle, accompanied by pieces of his own composition, there is what testifies to the depth of his grasp of the subject and assures him esteem and attention among music's connoisseurs and experts.

He was born in Bsharri — Gibran's town. Like him, he set out for Paris to study art: the art of music, which inspired the first of Gibran's treatises. There his gifts shone, for at its famous national conservatory he carried off the prize of the annual competition.

He returned to Lebanon to work at the National Conservatory, and there his eye was caught by the currency of Western music and the intensity of the demand for it, and by the stagnation of Arabic music and the educated public's turning away from it. So he threw himself into studying it in his hours of leisure, and the idea captivated him of calling upon his gifts and his wide knowledge to solve its problem.

— What is the problem of Arabic music? we asked him with interest.

— Arabic music is rich in melodies and consonances. But its deficiency lies in the singleness of its voices, unlike Western music, which draws its strength and richness from accompaniment (harmony) or the multiplicity of voices (polyphonie).

— And can the methods of Western accompaniment be applied to Arabic music?

— Arabic music differs from Western music in the scale of its melodies. Some of these contain tonal intervals missing from the music of the West, called quarter-tones. Melodies of this kind cannot be played on the piano. As for the other melodies, treating them is possible.

— So harmony is being applied to one part and not the rest?

— That is not enough; rather, we are attempting to use it for all the melodies.

— And how did you solve the problem of the melodies that cannot be played on the piano?

— For the piano I own I devised a special tuning, so that I was able to play on it the melodies with quarter-tone intervals, to which I added the accompaniment.

This conversation was taking place at Beirut College for Women, where Mr. Succar played us a number of Arabic pieces whose melodies he had arranged and furnished with Western accompaniment. The audience was a mixture of Westerners, and Westernized listeners who savor only Western music, and Easterners in whom the cultures have mingled. But the effect of those strains was one and the same in both camps: they felt in them the romanticism of the East and the classicism of the West, in a harmonious whole and a novel color.

Some of us leaned toward their maker, putting questions to him and listening to his comment, when he said by way of caution:

— There is no doubt that the multiplicity of voices in music is an element of strength and richness. But its introduction into Arabic music must be carried out with great caution, for fear it should make our music lose its particular character. That is why I began by drawing inspiration from the country songs (folklore), with their authentic local stamp, applying the accompaniment

(1) The members of the League of Five, besides Tawfiq Succar, are the Rahbani brothers (Assi and Mansour), Zaki Nassif, and Toufic el-Bacha.

to these songs in particular. And what helps to preserve their Eastern color is the use of Arab instruments such as the oud and the buzuq, and of Arabic compositions in verse and zajal.

And while some of us were trying to discover the folklore foundation — the strains of “Layya,” “'Al-Yadi,” and “Abu al-Zuluf” — through the measured pieces that rose from the magic box, others were asking him why copies of these records, whose production he had brought off so well, were not offered for sale in the music shops.

But Mr. Succar was busy answering some of those talking with him, and we heard him say:
We must now apply Western harmony in all its forms to Arabic music, and time may be trusted to guide us to the best way of raising this music to the world standing it deserves.

We took our leave of him with, in each of us, a hope tickling the breast, and a confidence that Arabic music has at last found in Tawfiq Succar and his colleagues those who will give it serious care and treat it with the treatment of the knowing expert.