By Tarek Abdallah In the period 1800-1895, written and iconographic sources relating to Egyptian musical instruments describe one predominant model of oud, namely the seven-course instrument known appropriately as al-‘ūd as-Sab‘āwī. However, as discussed elsewhere on Oudmigrations, of the two 19th-century ouds that travelled from Alexandria to Brussels, one has only six courses, and a…
Tag: Fetis
The oldest surviving oud?
… even the oldest surviving Arab string instrument?
Alexandria to Brussels, 1839
By Rachel Beckles Willson The second oud in Europe whose journey we know about arrived thanks to the Belgian musician and scholar François-Joseph Fétis (1784-1871). Thanks to the note he made in his Histoire Generale de la Musique we can trace how it happened. Led by his ambition to understand music from all over the…