ARAMUS · Blurring the Lines: Arabic Musical Diagrams across Disciplinary and Cultural Boundaries

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Project objective

This project examines how diagrams served as vehicles of intellectual exchange across premodern disciplinary and linguistic boundaries. Music theorists have long relied on diagrams to make abstract sonic concepts visible and graspable. The project takes as its point of departure al-Farabi’s Great Book of Music (Baghdad, 10th century), the most influential treatise of the medieval Arabic tradition. Drawing on media and manuscript studies, it pursues two comparative strategies to trace both the distinctive features and shared visual logics of Arabic musical diagrams: first, situating al-Farabi’s musical diagrams within broader diagrammatic practices in Arabic sciences, such as astronomy, medicine, and arithmetic; and second, setting them alongside visualizations in related Latin and Greek music-theoretical works: Boethius’ Fundamentals of Music (Rome, c. 480–Pavia, 524) and Ptolemy’s Harmonics (Alexandria, 2nd century CE). By interrogating how visual strategies enabled recognition and exchange across traditions usually studied in isolation, ARAMUS redefines the place of music within Arabic scientific culture and reframes music theory as an inherently cross-cultural enterprise.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG · HamburgCoordinatorGermany

Links

• View on CORDIS
• DOI: 10.3030/101281106