Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to show awareness of the use of music and musical instruments in various traditions, from early times to today. The museum offers one instrument, the oud, with an account of a string added to it in al-Andalus. Other instruments and other traditions your class must bring from elsewhere. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- C3.2 demonstrate an awareness of the use of music and musical instruments in various traditions, from early times to today […]
2 The lesson
Who tells the story of an instrument, and when?
In the example notice who attributes what to whom, what the source says and what a later scholar says about it. Then write one sentence about the account: this is what it says, and this is what it does not say.
What was the instrument before the story?
Look for what already existed before the attributed addition.
Go deeper
Al-Maqqari's account starts with an oud that already has four strings. 2 The strings have colours: a yellow zir, a red mathna, a white mathlath and a black bamm. 2 Then he adds one more, a red string between the middle ones. 2 The record says this is an extra string within the oud's arrangement, not a separate new instrument. 2 Maqqari wrote much later, so this is his account of Ziryab. 3
Think about it
The record's photograph shows an oud made long after Ziryab. Can that photograph show what Ziryab's oud was like, and why or why not?
Into the museum
- Ziryab's reported fifth oud string: the strings in their order, and who tells the story.
- Ziryab: the musician the story is about, and what the records say of his teaching.
- An oud in Cleveland: a wooden oud with a pear-shaped body, made much later.
Try this
Read about Ziryab's reported fifth oud string. Draw an oud with four strings, add the fifth, and write beside it who attributes the addition.
3 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Ziryab's reported fifth oud string have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
An extra string, an old instrument. Maqqari attributes an additional oud string to Ziryab in al-Andalus, following an inherited four-string arrangement: a refinement, not invention of the oud itself. Dwight Reynolds shows how Maqqari assembled older voices into an idealized portrait of one artist, so this is a qualified historical attribution. The photograph shows a much later Cleveland instrument, not one surviving from his court. What did the oud already have before the story begins?
I can now