Children need Qudmany ouds too…
Tag: oud
Alexandria to Brussels, 1879
By Rachel Beckles Willson There’s a bit of a mystery surrounding this oud. Victor Mahillon, curator of the Museum of Musical Instruments at the Brussels Conservatoire, acquired it from Alexandria in 1879. Saskia Willaert, curator of African Collections at the museum, has gathered sources relating to the purchase, and from these we learn that Mahillon…
Oud of a luthiery student
By Karim Othman Hassan We know nothing of Mustafa, the maker of this oud, apart from the fact that he was studying carpentry or instrument making. So Stockholm’s Swedish Museum of Performing Arts (Scenkonstmuseet) is home to the instrument of an intermediate-level student. Why might the instrument be significant? Part of the answer lies in…
Our oldest Nahat
… by Yousif Nahat, of Damascus …
But is it an oud?
… a Tunisian instrument in London …
Welcome to Oudmigrations
As long as there have been ouds, there have been stories about them.
The oldest surviving oud?
… even the oldest surviving Arab string instrument?
Egypt to France c.1800
By Rachel Beckles Willson An oud travelled to Europe as a consequence of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. Musician and writer Guillaume André Villoteau (1759-1839) had joined the 159 men Napoleon took along with him as a “Commission of the Sciences and Arts”, and while in Egypt he collected instruments to bring back home…
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…