Oud

Oud
Oud crafted by Emmanuel Venious in 1916
String instrument
Other namesArabic: عود, Persian: عود
Classification
Hornbostel–Sachs classification321.321-6
(Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum)
DevelopedIslamic Golden Age
Related instruments
Sound sample
Crafting and playing the Oud
CountryIran and Syria
Reference01867
Inscription history
Inscription2022 (17th session)
ListRepresentative

The oud (Arabic: عود, romanizedʿūd, pronounced [ʕuːd];[1][2][3]) is a Middle Eastern short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped, fretless stringed instrument[4] (a chordophone in the Hornbostel–Sachs classification of instruments), usually with 11 strings grouped in six courses, but some models have five or seven courses, with 10 or 13 strings respectively.

The oud is very similar to other types of lute, and to Western lutes which developed out of the Medieval Islamic oud.[5] Similar instruments have been used in the Middle East, predating Islam in Persia. Later, after the Muslim conquest of Persia, other regions and countries developed their own versions of oud, for example in Arabia, Türkiye, and other Middle Eastern and Balkan regions. There may even be prehistoric antecedents of the lute.[6] The oud, as a fundamental difference with the western lute, has no frets and a smaller neck. It is the direct successor of the Persian barbat lute.[7] The oldest surviving oud is thought to be in Brussels, at the Museum of Musical Instruments.[8]

An early description of the "modern" oud was given by 11th-century musician, singer and author Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–1040) in his compendium on music Ḥāwī al-Funūn wa Salwat al-Maḥzūn. The first known complete description of the ‛ūd and its construction is found in the epistle Risāla fī-l-Luḥūn wa-n-Nagham by 9th-century philosopher of the Arabs Yaʻqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī.[9] Kindī's description stands thus:

[and the] length [of the ‛ūd] will be: thirty-six joint fingers—with good thick fingers—and the total will amount to three ashbār.[Notes 1] And its width: fifteen fingers. And its depth seven and a half fingers. And the measurement of the width of the bridge with the remainder behind: six fingers. Remains the length of the strings: thirty fingers and on these strings take place the division and the partition, because it is the sounding [or "the speaking"] length. This is why the width must be [of] fifteen fingers as it is the half of this length. Similarly for the depth, seven fingers and a half and this is the half of the width and the quarter of the length [of the strings]. And the neck must be one third of the length [of the speaking strings] and it is: ten fingers. Remains the vibrating body: twenty fingers. And that the back (soundbox) be well rounded and its "thinning" (kharţ) [must be done] towards the neck, as if it had been a round body drawn with a compass which was cut in two in order to extract two ‛ūds.[10]

In Pre-Islamic Persia, Arabia and Mesopotamia, the stringed instruments had only three strings, with a small musical box and a long neck without any tuning pegs. But during the Islamic era the musical box was enlarged, a fourth string was added, and the base for the tuning pegs (Bunjuk) or pegbox was added. In the first centuries of (pre-Islamic) Arabian civilisation, the stringed instruments had four courses (one string per course—double-strings came later), tuned in successive fourths. Curt Sachs said they were called (from lowest to highest pitch) bamm, maṭlaṭ, maṭnā and zīr.[11] "As early as the ninth century" a fifth string ḥād ("sharp") was sometimes added "to make the range of two octaves complete".[11] It was highest in pitch, placed lowest in its positioning in relation to other strings. Modern tuning preserves the ancient succession of fourths, with adjunctions (lowest or highest courses), which may be tuned differently following regional or personal preferences. Sachs gives one tuning for this arrangement of five pairs of strings, d, e, a, d', g'.[11]

Historical sources indicate that Ziryab (789–857) added a fifth string to his oud.[12] He was well known for founding a school of music in Andalusia, one of the places where the oud or lute entered Europe. Another mention of the fifth string was made by Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham in Ḥāwī al-Funūn wa Salwat al-Maḥzūn.

  1. ^ "The Arab World". 1971.
  2. ^ "Arab Perspectives". 1984.
  3. ^ "oud—Definition of oud in English by Oxford Dictionaries". Oxford Dictionaries—English. Archived from the original on 3 April 2019. Retrieved 3 October 2018.
  4. ^ Mackle, Jenna (July 5, 2020). "The Oud Instrument". Ethnic Musical.
  5. ^ Mottola, R. M. (Summer–Fall 2008). "Constructing the Middle Eastern Oud with ter Kyvelos". American Lutherie (94, 95).
  6. ^ Dumbrill, Richard J. (2005). The archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford. p. 308. ISBN 9781412055383. OCLC 62430171.
  7. ^ Poché, Christian (2001). "'Ūd". Grove Music Online (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.28694. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. (oud; pl.: ʿīdān). Short-necked plucked lute of the Arab world, the direct ancestor of the European lute, whose name derives from al-ʿūd ('the lute'). Known both from documentation and through oral tradition, it is considered the king, sultan or emir of musical instruments, 'the most perfect of those invented by the philosophers'. Ikhwān al-Safāʾ: Rasāʾil [Letters] (1957), i, 202). It is the principal instrument of the Arab world, Somalia and Djibouti, and is of secondary importance in Turkey (ut, a spelling used in the past but now superseded by ud), Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan (ud). It plays a lesser role in Greece (outi), where it has given rise to a long-necked model (laouto); the latter is used in rustic and folk contexts, while the ʿūd retains pre-eminently educated and urban associations. In eastern Africa it is known as udi; in recent decades it has also appeared in Mauritania and Tajikistan. [...] The emergence of the ʿūd on the stage of history is an equally complex matter. Two authors of the end of the 14th century (Abū al-Fidā, or Abulfedae, and Abū al-Walīd ibn Shihnāh) place it in the reign of the Sassanid King Sh[ā]pūr I (241–72). Ibn Shihnāh added that the development of the ʿūd was linked to the spread of Manicheism, and its invention to Manes himself, a plausible theory because the disciples of Manes encouraged musical accompaniments to their religious offices. Reaching China, their apostolate left traces of relations between West and East, seen in a short-necked lute similar to the ʿūd (Grünwedel, 1912). But the movement's centre was in southern Iraq, whence the ʿūd was to spread towards the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century. However, the texts mentioning the introduction to Mecca of the short-necked lute as the ʿūd were all written in the 9th and 10th centuries. The ʿūd spread to the West by way of Andalusia
  8. ^ "Alexandria to Brussels, 1839". oudmigrations. 2 March 2016. Retrieved 2016-04-15.
  9. ^ Beyhom, Amine (2010). Théories de l'échelle et pratiques mélodiques chez les Arabes – Volume 1 : L'échelle générale et les genres – Tome 1 : Théories gréco-arabes de Kindī (IXe siècle) à Ṭūsī (XIIIe siècle). Paris: Geuthner. ISBN 978-2-7053-3840-4.
  10. ^ Beyhom, Amine (2011). "Two persistent misapprehensions about the ʿūd" (PDF). Iconea 2011. Paper for 'The Oud from Its Sumerian Origins to Modern Times', ICONEA Conference 2011 – 1–3 December 2011: 81–110 (85). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
  11. ^ a b c Sachs, Curt (1940). The History of Musical Instruments. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 254. ISBN 9780393020687. classic number of strings was four pairs ... bamm, maṭlaṭ, maṭnā, zīr ... A fifth pair of strings, above zīr seems to have been introduced as early as the ninth century ...
  12. ^ "Iraq". 1984.


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