Musical Sources and Theories

From Ancient Greece to the Ottoman Period

Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany

As part of the Greek corpus of works on sciences that was translated (directly or indirectly) into Arabic from the eighth to the tenth century, music was of great significance. It belonged to the mathematical sciences and as such was a serious object of research. The Arabic theorists adopted Greek music theory and mixed it more or less with their own music tradition. Other influences came from Persia or Byzantium. The Arabic music theory itself was read, commentated and adopted by Ottoman and Persian musicians.

Yasemin Gökpınar (Bochum) and Stephanie Schewe (Berlin) want to bring together scientists who work on this manifold musical tradition to explore similarities and differences between the regional theories and possible ways of transmission of concepts, modi and instruments. They would like to encourage especially early career researchers to introduce their research and to discuss it with invited advanced researchers of the field and within a broader regional and temporal context.

Please send your proposal for one of the following panels to Yasemin.Goekpinar@rub.de and Stephanie.Schewe@fu-berlin.de: Arabian music, Persian music, Safavid music.