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Musa
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Ouds and Frets
Daniel and other Oud History Experts,
The historical record, including contemporary illustrations, shows that at certain periods there where ouds with frets. Were these similar to those of
the oud's European descendant, the lute? Are there any that have survived? It would also be interesting to know what changes in music could have
occurred so that ouds became exclusively unfretted. This is also interesting in light of the fact that many other middle and near eastern intuments
are fretted, e.g. the saz, lavta, tar and dutar, tambur, etc. The advantages of not having frets are obvious, so why is the modern oud the only
non-bowed instrument (that I can think of off-hand) from the region that isn't fretted?
If anybody any insights regarding this, please let us know. Furthermore, it would be nice to bring some more active discussions back to this site.
Salamat,
Musa
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SamirCanada
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The arabic violin known as the kamanja is not a freted instrument and is now used instead of the rebaba. So the oud is not so unique in that sence. I
dont think Its the oud that became unfreted but rather the rest of these instruments that became freted. You also have to take in concideration that
the buzuq or Saz have such a long neck that frets were indead added to them to allow playing further down the neck. One thing for shure tho is that
the frets on them are in much higher number to allow to play the quarter tones of Middle eastern music. Iam no expert on the subject but I think what
I have said could be generaly approved.
It would be interesting to see what one of the members here called (al halabi) has to say about that he has a great knowlege of those topics.
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DJCrabtree
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Good morning folks,
I have always thought that the oud was a fretted instrument as late as the 15th/16th centuries. I've certainly seen a photograph of a Turkish oud from
that period with frets, although that doesn't mean that this was the case with all ouds. Maybe both types coexisted for a time, or that there were
regional differences. I'm sure it's purely coincidental that the oud was losing its frets at about the time that the fretted lute was becoming
Europe's premier instrument. Interesting topic, and I'm sure there are one or two people on this forum who are far more qualified than me who might
like to contribute their thoughts.
David
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mavrothis
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Hi David,
Could you post the picture you mentioned? I'm pretty sure that the Turkish oud has only been in existence for a little over 100 years, evolving from
the Arabic oud. The instrument you are referring to might have been a related lute instrument (like the lavta which has been around longer than the
Turkish oud), since really all of these instruments including the kopuz, etc are related but not necessarily the same.
I have seen icons from the Post-Byzantine period (just after the fall of Constantinople - 1453) with unfretted oud-like instruments, which also had
the single bass string under the trebles.
mav
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David Parfitt
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Hi Mav/David
I just checked in Walter Feldman's book "Music of the Ottoman Court", and here is what he has to say about the oud in Turkey:
"Sixteenth-century illuminations in Turkey, Iran and Transoxiania display very similar, sometimes identical forms of the 'ud."
"Safavid [Persian] miniatures occasionally portray fretted 'uds, but the Ottoman instruments always seem to have been unfretted."
"In the 16th century the 'ud still maintained a central position in the courtly instrumentation."
"The 'ud continued to be represented with great frequency in miniatures into the early 17th century."
Hope this is of interest.
Best wishes
David
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mavrothis
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Thanks David. This is very cool, I hear different things all the time about the subject of when the oud as we know it was used in the Ottoman Empire.
mav
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al-Halabi
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David pre-empted a couple of the comments I was going to make. Basically, in the premodern period ouds of both fretted and un-fretted types were in
use. The great theorist al-Farabi (10th century) used the fretting of the oud to analyse the tone system. He gives exact string-length ratios to
indicate the location of the frets on the fingerboard, which allow us to figure out the size of the intervals involved (there were, for example, three
sizes of half-tones of 90 cents, 98 cents, and 114 cents respectively, two sizes of "half-flats" of 145 and 168 cents, etc.). Interestingly, he refers
also to additional notes played between the frets (by touching the string lightly to prevent the interference of an adjacent fret). The frets clearly
did not accommodate all possible pitches used in performance, and musicians had to work around them. This was a technical limitation that accompanied
the oud, which could not easily accommodate all the pitches of the more elaborate tonal systems on its short neck without creating awkwardly crowded
fretting.
In the time of the Iraqi theorist al-Urmawi (13th century) ouds had frets on them. Fretted ouds remained in use in Iran into the seventeenth century,
but contemporary Ottoman manuscript illuminations show unfretted ouds. The oud actually disappeared from the Ottoman classical ensemble in the
mid-17th century, to be replaced by the tanbur; before that it was a prominent classical instrument. This shift is associated with a change in the
musical aesthetic, with a new preference for the crisp, bright timbres of metal strings over the mellow and darker sonorities of the oud. The same
shift happened in Iran, where the oud began to disappear in the 18th century, and metal-stringed instruments like the setar and santur took center
stage as core instruments. The oud was reintroduced to Turkey only in the late 19th century (from Syria and Egypt where it had remained a popular
instrument). It steadily reestablished itself in Turkey as a core classical instrument, especially in the second half of the twentieth century
(Cinucen Tanrikorur was important in this process, which was similar to the growth of respectability for the guitar as a classical instrument, with
Andres Segovia leading the way). In Iran the oud has not re-emerged to occupy its previous prominence, even though its use has increased noticeably in
recent years.
A lot about the long history of the oud remains unknown, but what we do know indicates that it had a varied past, with forms that differed between
regions and periods in fretting and other features, and with ups and downs in popularity. The universal disappearance of frets on the oud in the
Middle East is a relatively recent phenomenon (some ouds in North Africa, most notably in Tunisia, are still fretted). And just as ouds were not
always unfretted, long-necked lutes in the region were not always fretted: al-Farabi describes a long-necked lute in his time (called tanbur baghdadi)
which was unfretted.
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David Parfitt
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Al-Halabi,
This is absolutely fascinating - thanks for sharing that information. It certainly fills in some huge gaps in my knowledge. To repeat what someone
asked on another thread, do you know if al-Farabi's "Kitab al-musiqa al-kabir" has ever been translated into English? (I understand there is a French
translation.)
Can I ask a bit about your background? Are you an academic with a particular interest in the oud?
Best wishes
David
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mavrothis
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Very interesting and inspiring discussion! Thanks guys!
mav
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al-Halabi
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David,
You are welcome. Al-Farabi's 'Kitab al-musiqi al-kabir' has not been translated into English. Rodolphe d'Erlanger translated it into French in the
first two volumes of his 'La musique arabe' (which appeared in 1930 and 1935). His was the first translation of the full text into a European
language. Remarkably, the first Arabic edition appeared in print only in 1967, so that even readers of Arabic had no access to this major work until
then except through excerpts quoted in other works (unless they went to the trouble of consulting one of the seven surviving Arabic manuscripts of the
treatise scattered in libraries around the world).
For those who may not be familiar with it, Farabi's book is regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, work on the theory of Middle Eastern
music. It is particularly interesting because Farabi was also an accomplished performer and his descriptions and analyses are informed explicitly by
contemporary practice and his own playing. In that sense he was different from many other medieval writers on music, whose works were sometimes rather
abstract and divorced from actual practice (they explored things like the relationship of music to the cosmic order, to the four humors, and to
arithmetical ratios). The tetrachord structure that we use today to understand the building blocks of the maqams is something that Farabi laid out and
analysed a thousand years ago. His genius is pretty humbling.
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Musa
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| Quote: | Originally posted by al-Halabi
David pre-empted a couple of the comments I was going to make. Basically, in the premodern period ouds of both fretted and un-fretted types were in
use. The great theorist al-Farabi (10th century) used the fretting of the oud to analyse the tone system. He gives exact string-length ratios to
indicate the location of the frets on the fingerboard, which allow us to figure out the size of the intervals involved (there were, for example, three
sizes of half-tones of 90 cents, 98 cents, and 114 cents respectively, two sizes of "half-flats" of 145 and 168 cents, etc.). Interestingly, he refers
also to additional notes played between the frets (by touching the string lightly to prevent the interference of an adjacent fret). The frets clearly
did not accommodate all possible pitches used in performance, and musicians had to work around them. This was a technical limitation that accompanied
the oud, which could not easily accommodate all the pitches of the more elaborate tonal systems on its short neck without creating awkwardly crowded
fretting.
In the time of the Iraqi theorist al-Urmawi (13th century) ouds had frets on them. Fretted ouds remained in use in Iran into the seventeenth century,
but contemporary Ottoman manuscript illuminations show unfretted ouds. The oud actually disappeared from the Ottoman classical ensemble in the
mid-17th century, to be replaced by the tanbur; before that it was a prominent classical instrument. This shift is associated with a change in the
musical aesthetic, with a new preference for the crisp, bright timbres of metal strings over the mellow and darker sonorities of the oud. The same
shift happened in Iran, where the oud began to disappear in the 18th century, and metal-stringed instruments like the setar and santur took center
stage as core instruments. The oud was reintroduced to Turkey only in the late 19th century (from Syria and Egypt where it had remained a popular
instrument). It steadily reestablished itself in Turkey as a core classical instrument, especially in the second half of the twentieth century
(Cinucen Tanrikorur was important in this process, which was similar to the growth of respectability for the guitar as a classical instrument, with
Andres Segovia leading the way). In Iran the oud has not re-emerged to occupy its previous prominence, even though its use has increased noticeably in
recent years.
A lot about the long history of the oud remains unknown, but what we do know indicates that it had a varied past, with forms that differed between
regions and periods in fretting and other features, and with ups and downs in popularity. The universal disappearance of frets on the oud in the
Middle East is a relatively recent phenomenon (some ouds in North Africa, most notably in Tunisia, are still fretted). And just as ouds were not
always unfretted, long-necked lutes in the region were not always fretted: al-Farabi describes a long-necked lute in his time (called tanbur baghdadi)
which was unfretted. |
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Musa
Oud Addict
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Ouds and Frets
Hi Halabi,
Thanks for the great and useful info!! Do you have any ideas regarding the posiible changes in music that have occured that could have caused the
almost universal abandonment of frets on ouds?
Also, it would be really interesting if you could provide descriptions, pictures, etc. of modern fretted ouds from Tunisia and other places. Is there
a particular type of music that they are used for as opposed to unfretted ouds? Are these frets movable? Where the ones on the historical instruments
movable?
David Parfitt's site shows illustrations of a reconstructed oud qadim from the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Frankfurt, Germany. It
appears to have 4 frets. Was this oud based on ones from Baghdad? It would be great to also get some input from Daniel Franke regarding this.
Salamat,
Musa
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al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
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Hi Musa,
The abandonment of frets took place unevenly in various parts of the region and over an extended period of time. It appears that Ottoman influence may
have had a lot to do with it. An unfretted oud became common in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul and in the sultan’s court by the sixteenth century,
perhaps because it was better suited to playing an Ottoman art music that was growing more elaborate in its modal structures and intonational
variations. In the course of the 16th century the Ottoman Empire came to rule the entire Middle East and North Africa with the exception of Iran and
Morocco. The unfretted instrument spread with Ottoman cultural influence in the region, which extended to the local musical traditions in the
provinces. In the area of Tunisia a local fretted oud was commonly in use before the coming of the Ottomans. It was well suited to the Andalusian nuba
music, which did not have the microtonal intervals current in the Middle East. But after it was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire (in 1574),
Tunisia saw major changes in its musical scene. One was the arrival and spread of the unfretted Middle Eastern oud, which Tunisians call oud sharqi,
or Eastern oud, to distinguish it from their indigenous oud (called oud tunsi or oud arbi), which was different in construction, tuning, and playing
technique. In addition, the Tunisian modes began to incorporate microtonal intervals reflecting the influence of Middle Eastern maqams (something that
did not happen in Morocco, which was a kingdom independent of the Ottomans), and pieces in the Middle Eastern/Ottoman style became widely played. The
oud arbi used today in Tunisia (as well as in Algeria and Morocco) is generally unfretted, and the dropping of its frets may have been yet another
adaptation to the general spread of the Middle Eastern unfretted oud in the area.
The fretted variety of the Tunisian oud arbi is among the last and disappearing examples of fretted ouds. I have not seen one in person, but I have a
photograph of one that I will try to find. I have some older recordings (from over 40 years ago) of this fretted oud, by the master of the instrument
Khemais Tarnan, and by Salih al-Mahdi, who was also an accomplished performer on the Middle Eastern oud. Their solo pieces are in Tunisian modes with
microtones. The oud arbi’s sound box is smaller and longer than that of the Middle Eastern oud, and it has three large sound holes close together in
the center of the soundboard. The instrument is a challenge to play because its peculiar tuning requires playing routinely up the neck in difficult
positions, including on the extension of the fingerboard (the Algerian oud arbi is tuned G e A d). Also, unlike the Middle Eastern oud it is suited to
playing mostly in the upper octaves. These limitations help to explain why it has lost ground to the more versatile Middle Eastern oud, which most oud
players in North Africa now play. The North African oud is still in use in a limited way, mostly in Andalusian ensembles, in which it sometimes plays
alongside a Middle Eastern oud that covers the lower registers. As for the fretted version of the Tunisian oud, it is disappearing fast. Perhaps the
Tunisian case is a useful example of the kinds of dynamics that affected the fortunes of the oud historically. Changes in the musical system and
repertoire as well as the exposure to a different type of oud that catches on as a technically superior instrument may help account for why fretted
ouds steadily gave way to the unfretted oud we play today, and why the North African oud has been so widely replaced by the Middle Eastern oud.
The frets used on ouds were movable (typically gut tied around the neck), which allowed them to be adjusted when playing with other instruments,
changing modes, or transposing. Players of the European lute similarly made adjustments to their movable frets, especially as there was no agreement
on a standard intonation before equal temperament became dominant. Frets are useful for playing in tune and for learning the instrument, so removing
them in the Middle East represented a certain trade-off.
The oud qadim (ancient oud) of four courses was mentioned in Middle Eastern writings on musical instruments for a number of centuries, although a new
oud called oud kamil (complete oud) with five courses appeared as early as the ninth century. Al-Farabi (tenth century), al-Urmawi (thirteenth
century) and other medieval writers used the five-stringed instrument in their analyses. The “new and improved” oud came to be dominant, and the
earlier type used in the region before it came to be known as the “old oud.” One of the earliest writers on music, Ibn al-Munajjim (ninth
century), gives the fretting of the four-stringed oud qadim. He lists four frets in these positions: a whole tone, followed by a half-tone, followed
by another half-tone, followed by a whole tone. This sequence seems to correspond to the fretting of the historical reproduction on David Parfitt’s
web site. This fretting reflects the tone system of the early Islamic period, before the new microtonal pitches crept into Arab music (primarily from
Persian music).
My apologies for writing at such length.
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LeeVaris
Oud Junkie
Posts: 379
Registered: 12-16-2003
Location: Los Angeles
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| Quote: | Originally posted by al-Halabi
My apologies for writing at such length. |
No apologies necessary - great information, well presented! This historical info is more than fascinating.
Could you perhaps expound on pre-Ottoman modal systems? What was the relationship between arabic and greek systems? Did arabic maqams evolve steadily
over the centuries prior to the Ottoman empire or were there major shifts where change occured more suddenly?
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Musa
Oud Addict
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Ouds and Frets
| Quote: | Originally posted by al-Halabi
Hi Musa,
The abandonment of frets took place unevenly in various parts of the region and over an extended period of time. It appears that Ottoman influence may
have had a lot to do with it. An unfretted oud became common in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul and in the sultan’s court by the sixteenth
century, perhaps because it was better suited to playing an Ottoman art music that was growing more elaborate in its modal structures and intonational
variations. In the course of the 16th century the Ottoman Empire came to rule the entire Middle East and North Africa with the exception of Iran and
Morocco. The unfretted instrument spread with Ottoman cultural influence in the region, which extended to the local musical traditions in the
provinces. In the area of Tunisia a local fretted oud was commonly in use before the coming of the Ottomans. It was well suited to the Andalusian nuba
music, which did not have the microtonal intervals current in the Middle East. But after it was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire (in 1574),
Tunisia saw major changes in its musical scene. One was the arrival and spread of the unfretted Middle Eastern oud, which Tunisians call oud sharqi,
or Eastern oud, to distinguish it from their indigenous oud (called oud tunsi or oud arbi), which was different in construction, tuning, and playing
technique. In addition, the Tunisian modes began to incorporate microtonal intervals reflecting the influence of Middle Eastern maqams (something that
did not happen in Morocco, which was a kingdom independent of the Ottomans), and pieces in the Middle Eastern/Ottoman style became widely played. The
oud arbi used today in Tunisia (as well as in Algeria and Morocco) is generally unfretted, and the dropping of its frets may have been yet another
adaptation to the general spread of the Middle Eastern unfretted oud in the area.
The fretted variety of the Tunisian oud arbi is among the last and disappearing examples of fretted ouds. I have not seen one in person, but I have a
photograph of one that I will try to find. I have some older recordings (from over 40 years ago) of this fretted oud, by the master of the instrument
Khemais Tarnan, and by Salih al-Mahdi, who was also an accomplished performer on the Middle Eastern oud. Their solo pieces are in Tunisian modes with
microtones. The oud arbi’s sound box is smaller and longer than that of the Middle Eastern oud, and it has three large sound holes close
together in the center of the soundboard. The instrument is a challenge to play because its peculiar tuning requires playing routinely up the neck in
difficult positions, including on the extension of the fingerboard (the Algerian oud arbi is tuned G e A d). Also, unlike the Middle Eastern oud it is
suited to playing mostly in the upper octaves. These limitations help to explain why it has lost ground to the more versatile Middle Eastern oud,
which most oud players in North Africa now play. The North African oud is still in use in a limited way, mostly in Andalusian ensembles, in which it
sometimes plays alongside a Middle Eastern oud that covers the lower registers. As for the fretted version of the Tunisian oud, it is disappearing
fast. Perhaps the Tunisian case is a useful example of the kinds of dynamics that affected the fortunes of the oud historically. Changes in the
musical system and repertoire as well as the exposure to a different type of oud that catches on as a technically superior instrument may help account
for why fretted ouds steadily gave way to the unfretted oud we play today, and why the North African oud has been so widely replaced by the Middle
Eastern oud.
The frets used on ouds were movable (typically gut tied around the neck), which allowed them to be adjusted when playing with other instruments,
changing modes, or transposing. Players of the European lute similarly made adjustments to their movable frets, especially as there was no agreement
on a standard intonation before equal temperament became dominant. Frets are useful for playing in tune and for learning the instrument, so removing
them in the Middle East represented a certain trade-off.
The oud qadim (ancient oud) of four courses was mentioned in Middle Eastern writings on musical instruments for a number of centuries, although a new
oud called oud kamil (complete oud) with five courses appeared as early as the ninth century. Al-Farabi (tenth century), al-Urmawi (thirteenth
century) and other medieval writers used the five-stringed instrument in their analyses. The “new and improved” oud came to be dominant,
and the earlier type used in the region before it came to be known as the “old oud.” One of the earliest writers on music, Ibn
al-Munajjim (ninth century), gives the fretting of the four-stringed oud qadim. He lists four frets in these positions: a whole tone, followed by a
half-tone, followed by another half-tone, followed by a whole tone. This sequence seems to correspond to the fretting of the historical reproduction
on David Parfitt’s web site. This fretting reflects the tone system of the early Islamic period, before the new microtonal pitches crept into
Arab music (primarily from Persian music).
My apologies for writing at such length. |
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Musa
Oud Addict
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Registered: 12-1-2005
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Ouds and Frets
Hi Al Halabi,
I agree that your reply was a goldmine of information and certainly not too lengthy - alf mabruk! Thank you for reminding me about the oud gharbi as
opposed to oud sharki. It certainly makes sense that the oud gharbi could be more suitable for the traditional Tunisian and Morrocan music, which is
less microtonal than the sharki music. These North African musical forms are extremely beautiful in their own right, and it would be a tremendous loss
if they and the oud gharbi should be lost.
It is interesting the classical Turkish and Turkish art music are highly microtonal, but the saz (the most popular Turkish stringed instrument),
lavta, and tanbur are very much used for playing this music, and they are fretted. Although I've never really played any of these, wouldn't it make
sense that they should also be not fretted, for maximum performance?
Salamat,
Musa
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al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
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Registered: 6-8-2005
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Lee,
Briefly, Arab music theory was definitely indebted to ancient Greek ideas, which became increasingly available as Greek works were translated into
Arabic after the Arab conquest of the Byzantine lands in the Middle East in the seventh century. The Arabs adopted the rigorous mathematical approach
of the ancient Greeks to analyzing intervals, tetrachords, and melodic modes. But they developed and refined this science, building a more elaborate
classification of tetrachord types and a system of modes which is the foundation of the maqam system we know today. Maqam Rast, for example, was
already described by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) a thousand years ago. The Arabs also adopted the Pythagorean diatonic system of half and whole tones, but
superimposed on it microtonal intervals that created an original tone system. The system of Pythagorean commas for measuring intervals was also
borrowed from Greek theory and remains in use in Turkish music today. But Persian influence was not less important in shaping the development of Arab
music in the medieval period. The Arabs built on various indigenous traditions, which they combined into a new creation.
By the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries the theoretical understanding of tones and modes in the Middle East had become systematized, with the
classification of modes into primary and secondary categories, etc. It is interesting that at the time Persian and Arab art music shared the same
musical system. Treatises written in Persian and Arabic described music with remarkable uniformity. After that, though, we begin to see a bifurcation,
with Persian and Arab music developing along separate lines. And the Ottomans on their part also evolve their own distinct repertoire and tone/modal
system that establishes what becomes a distinct Turkish tradition. In the sixteenth century the court musicians in Istanbul were mostly imported
Iranians who played Persian-style pieces on instruments typical of Persian music. At that time the Ottomans saw Safavid Iran as representing the
height of regional culture and emulated it in music as well as in art, poetry, and other areas. By the seventeenth century, however, Ottoman music had
come into its own and developed its distinct repertoire, instruments, musicians, and elaborate system of intervals and makams. This broke with some of
the earlier patterns and created the basis of a new tradition that remained the basis of Turkish classical music until today.
What is known about the historical patterns of development remains rather fragmentary and many of the details will never be known. Scholars have had
to rely on a set of treatises on music that are sometimes centuries apart to infer what happened between one period and another. It is not always
clear whether a treatise is describing actual performance practice or abstract theory that is not an indication of how musicians actually played. A
major problem, which the study of medieval and early modern European music does not have, is the absence of collections of notations for the music
actually performed in the Middle East. We have no way to know what the music played in Baghdad in the tenth century, or Tabriz in the twelfth, or
Cairo in the fourteenth actually sounded like. The only exception for the entire pre-modern period is the two collections of notations made by the
late seventeenth-century Ottoman musicians Ali Ufki and Cantemir, which give us several hundred pieces from the repertoire of Istanbul at the time.
Based on this corpus it has been possible to study the structure and development of Ottoman music in more detail than any of the other traditions of
the region. We get a rare picture of the actual instrumental and vocal forms of the time, the makams and their melodic features, the rhythmic cycles,
etc. Against this benchmark it is possible to see some interesting changes that occurred in the following couple of centuries: some previously popular
makams went out of fashion, new makams appeared, and the tempo of pieces slowed down, with their melodies becoming more dense and ornamented. This
dynamic is one of many indications of a basic feature of Middle Eastern music over the centuries: it was never static and frozen, even though we may
not know many of the details of its development over time.
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al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
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Hi Musa,
I agree with you that it would be a shame to see traditional instruments such as the North African oud decline and disappear. But this kind of
development is not unusual. Descriptions of Middle Eastern instruments in past centuries list all kinds of string instruments that have disappeared.
The ensemble of the Ottoman sultan’s court in the sixteenth century, for example, included a large bass oud (shahrud) tuned an octave lower than the
standard oud, a harp (cheng), and a fretted lute called kopuz, all of which have become extinct. And many instruments, including the oud, were
modified over time, even though we tend to imagine sometimes that they were always the same. Until the turn of the twentieth century, for instance,
qanuns did not have the levers (urab or mandallar) that they now have to change the pitch of strings; qanun players used their left thumbnail to raise
the pitch when needed.
Unlike the oud, long-necked lutes like the saz and tanbur would be very difficult to play without frets. In both instruments the melody is played
essentially on one course by moving up and down the neck, with the rest of the courses serving mostly for harmonic effect. This kind of linear playing
requires fast runs back and forth, for the saz on a neck of around 21 inches covering about one and a half octaves, and for the tanbur on an even
longer neck of about 31 inches covering two octaves. You need frets if you want to navigate these long fingerboards and play in tune. (The tanbur has
about 60 of them - imagine memorizing their precise location if they were not there.) On the oud, on the other hand, the vertical pattern of playing
using all the strings for melody-making allows us to cover two octaves and even more without moving our left hand as much as a couple of inches along
the neck. The scale of the fingerboard is just right for the human hand, so that even by staying in the first and second positions our fingers can
fall naturally on every note in a two and a half octave range. This has made it possible to drop the frets without creating serious technical
difficulties for the player. The lavta’s fingerboard of a full octave is substantially longer than the oud’s, and because of this and the
instrument's tuning in fifths or a mix of fourths and fifths it requires more left hand movement along the neck than the oud. Playing the lavta
without frets would be tough. Comparing the oud to other lutes can remind us how remarkably logical the oud's structure and proportions are.
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Musa
Oud Addict
Posts: 31
Registered: 12-1-2005
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Ouds and Frets
Hi Al Halabi,
Thanks for the excellent explanation as to how going fretless is an advantage for producing microtones in the oud and a disadvantage in the saz,
tanbur, and lavta. Nevertheless, it seems that due to the frets, the progression between microtones should be more inhibited in the long necked lutes
as compared to the oud.
I'm also curious to know how the kwitra compares to the oud.
If you have any pictures of oud gharbi, please post them.
Speaking of fretted ouds, there is an excellent thread on this site about the Chinese pipa. Explorations of how this and other far eastern ouds and
their relationship to near and middle eastern ouds are quite fascinating.
Salamat we alf mabruk,
Musa
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al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
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Hi Musa,
You are right that the oud is not constrained by frets and can produce pitches that fretted instrument may not be able to. Tanbur players in Turkey
routinely add frets to their instruments to accommodate microtonal gradations. Turkish music theory recognizes one "half-flat" but tanburs often
include three sizes of half-flats, flattened roughly by one comma, two commas, and three commas. The number of frets on the saz has almost doubled in
the twentieth century as the instrument became more urbanized and musicians adopted the classical fretting of the tanbur to allow them to play taksims
with correct intonation.
I will look for the picture of the oud arbi.
Allah yibarek fik.
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stringmanca
Oud Junkie
Posts: 224
Registered: 8-4-2005
Location: Martinez, CA
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Moh Alileche plays an Algerian 10-stringed instrument called a mondol that looks like a fretted oud.
http://www.flagoffreedom.com/CD1.html
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Musa
Oud Addict
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Hi Stringmanca,
That manol certainly looks interesting! Does anybody have any more info about the Kwitra? David Parfitt has a picture of one that's over 200 years
old.
Salamat,
Musa
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al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
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Musa,
The kwitra is the only other short-necked lute in the Arab world in addition to the oud sharqi and the North African oud (which, by the way, is called
in the Maghrib oud arbi, Arab oud, not oud gharbi). It is close in appearance to the Middle Eastern oud, but has a longer, smaller, and flatter sound
box, with four courses. Algerian and Moroccan nuba performances still include kwitras, often alongside the oud arbi and the oud sharqi. I saw one in
a performance of Andalusian music in Fez.
The mandole, or mondol, is really a hybrid instrument, combining features of the oud and mandolin, mostly of the latter. It was invented around the
1930s in Algeria (it is said by an Italian), and has been used in both popular (sha'bi) and Andalusian music. Unlike the oud, its sound box is flat.
Some mandoles have two small soundholes with rosettes similar to the oud's in addition to the main soundhole (which is usually oval or
diamond-shaped). Mandolins have also been incorporated into Andalusian ensembles.
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Musa
Oud Addict
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Hi Al Halabi,
More great info! Thanks for the correction about the oud arbi - I thought that it referred to the "western" (gharbi) as opposed to "arabic" oud.
Is the kwitra, with its 4 courses, in any way more similar to the oud qadim than the conventional ouds? If you have any pictures of modern kwitras, I
would love to see them.
What you said about the mandol makes a lot of sense; besides the similar name, it does seem to resemble a big mandolin.
We have to be thankful to the Nuba and Andalusian ensembles for helping to keep alive the beautiful instruments of the Maghreb.
Salamat,
Musa
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al-Halabi
Oud Junkie
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Hi Musa,
The oud qadim was tuned in fourths, and that has remained the core of oud tuning until today. The kwitra's tuning is very different. The two inside
courses are used for melody while the two outside ones are used for drones and drop notes.
There are pictures of kwitras in the liner notes of a couple of albums of Andalusian music that I have. They look quite similar to the picture posted
on David Parfitt's site.
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