How often do we go unnoticed by things that furnish the world around us, without stopping us to ask about their names and distinctive qualities. A person may pass a tree near his home many times a day, and this does not require him to ask for its own name, which distinguishes it from other tree species. Perhaps this behavior is due to an imbalance in the relationship between the world of things and the world of meanings; It is known that the linguistic faculty has a pivotal role in linking the world of things with the world of meanings in the human mind.
The imbalance of the relationship between objects and meanings is all the more true when we talk about the tones that furnish the world as it reaches our ears. Although melodies and sounds are common around us, whether in the form of music that precedes the presentation of news, movies and series, or in the form of soft music that furnishes the silence of some waiting rooms, or in the form of songs that are broadcast around the clock on the airwaves, despite this prevalence and prevalence, we lack the language to name the "tonal geometry" that surrounds us.
It is indisputable that the art of music has reached the pinnacle of bringing the good that is transmitted in the world of sounds, but it is also indisputable that the music industry has reached the end in polluting the world of hearing.
In the Arab world in particular, we are almost not aware of the existence of the tone except in relation to the word, so we judge the quality of music by the quality of the words that are associated with it, for example; we describe it with goodness if the word is good, and with malice if the word is malicious. It is no wonder that a large number of scholars and researchers in our traditional cultural context have worked hard to prove whether music is permissible or not. This is an affirmation that haram and halal have remained a major entry point for dealing with tone and music.
Other approaches, although they are of interest to a few elites, remain on the margins of the dominant cultural context, further marginalized by the lack of interest of the educational system in the question of art in general, and the lack of students in the language necessary to name things in the world of music in particular.
Attention to the analysis of musical discourse is almost non-existent in the context of cultural studies, despite the strong presence of music throughout the day and night, whether in entertainment media programs, in cultural festivals, or in people's individual lives and collective joys. It seems to us that nothing modifies the strong presence of music in reality except silence about it; in this sense it is a strange phenomenon, and its strangeness lies in the fact that the louder it gets, the more silence it becomes.
I still remember how Edward Said's book on music (Musical Elaborations) was met in academic circles, Arab and Islamic in particular, with a strange kind of indifference, at a time when everyone was eager to mention the name of the author and his other compositions. It is likely that the reluctance of scholars to this particular book, which is one of the most important books concerned with the analysis of Western culture, was the result of a weakness in cultural readiness and a lack of knowledge. How can an educational system that is not interested in teaching the language of musical art qualify the learner to read the tonal geometry of the West to extract what it indicates of authoritarianism or control, or a modernist tendency to change or similar meanings that students interacted with while reading the book Orientalism or Culture and Imperialism, for example!
Islam, modernity and music
In his book On the Tense Relationship between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis argues that the modernization of Arab and Muslim societies requires, among other things, the liberalization of art in them, and the art of music in particular. Lewis bases his case on the grounds that music in these societies is still disciplined by a traditional relationship with time that does not qualify the individual and the group to represent the spirit of the modern age.
Bernard Lewis believes that the key to modernizing Arab and Islamic societies lies in liberating the art of music from the traditional plankton of time and space as a necessary step to qualify the individual and group in these societies to interact with modern times. The art of music, as is not hidden, unfolds in time, and in the Arab world this art is still like folklore art tuned to the rhythms of local natural time. He says that Arab and Islamic societies will not be able to absorb the spirit of parliamentary democracy as manifested in modern societies until after absorbing the spirit of symphonic art, as the common denominator between democratic life and the work of the symphony choir is "harmony", or tight intonation based on a special relationship with time. Intonation, both in parliamentary life and in the symphonic composition, is the conduct of different courses that ultimately leads to a single point. In other words, it is the concerted efforts of multiple parties to achieve a single desired goal.
Our purpose in this context is not to discuss Bernard Lewis' claim, which is not without a clear prejudice against Arab and Islamic culture; but to point out that there are questions related to the relationship between music and modernity. It is more likely that these questions have not received enough attention. The more intellectuals and researchers in the Arab world have studied modern philosophical thought in order to identify interactions with it, the more they have studied the tonal geometry of modernity and the forms of interaction with this geometry.
On reflection, it seems that modernity is not only a philosophical intellectual discourse aimed at imposing patterns of thinking on the world, but also an artistic system that, in addition to organizing the visible world, is concerned with organizing the audible world and defining musical expressions in order to assimilate and direct the emotion of modern man.
In his interesting and profound book on "Self-Devouring Society: Capitalism, La société autophage: capitalisme, démesure et autodestruction", the scholar Anselm Jappe reminds us of something that scholars rarely find: that the intellectual project of the pioneer of modernism, Roné Descartes, began with his Compendium Musicae, published in 1618, when Descartes was 22 years old. In this book, Descartes described what it is like to hear according to rhythm or musical scale (La mesure musicale).
If the context does not allow for elaboration on the characteristics of the theory of rhythm as determined by Descartes, it is no less than a reminder that the acronym in music, by the philosopher of modernity, the author of the "thinking ego", is part of a modernist intellectual system that aims to break with the collective sense stained with religious consciousness and emotion, in anticipation of a new man-made world. No wonder the pioneers of modernity were concerned with the question of music, for musical forms and forms are the incubator of emotion.
In the European context, modernists have focused on changing musical forms and forms in order to free human emotion from the plankton of religious heritage, which was accompanied by a philosophy of composition and composition. The music was ecclesiastical par excellence, consisting of melodies that are hymns that sing the sacred text and consolidate the religious narrative in the hearts of the recipient. Modernists, however, were laying the foundations for a new philosophy of composition that was closer to mathematical abstraction than to something else.
There is no denying the amazing development of the art of music. The modernist philosophy of composition and composition has led to the music industry becoming one of the most reviving industries. However, the abundance of musical production has introduced man to a world in which the sense of hearing loses all points of guidance, so that it has become palatable for new generations to enjoy pure technological melodies, which, from the point of view of the older generations, are the embodiment of the summit of alienation in nature and the universe.
It is indisputable that the art of music has reached the pinnacle of bringing the good that is transmitted into the world of sounds; Therefore, we, in the Arab world in particular, are in dire need of a pause to reflect on the relationship of Arab and Islamic culture to the architecture of melody in the modern world. We need to highlight the particularities of this culture in the representation of beauty in general, in determining the patterns of composition and forms of composition in the world of music, that is, in determining the ways out of the world of silence to the world of sound.
And to talk the rest.