Music of the past beside music of today

Choose one thing to compare: an instrument or a singer's way of performing. Ask what you can say about each side from the record, and what you would still need to find out.

The TDV biography connects Ziryab with Baghdad, Kairouan and Cordoba. ² Maqqari recounts a meeting with Harun al-Rashid, his refusal to use his teacher's oud, his preference for an instrument made by his own hands, his departure westward and the generous patronage he found in al-Andalus. ³ In Cordoba, the biography says, he gave organized singing instruction, and schools on its model followed in other Andalusi cities. ² It describes stages that move from rhythm and words to melody and then to the subtleties of performance. ²

"Ziryab changed the oud" sounds like one change. The record separates three questions: string count, tuning and the plectrum. ⁴ Count concerns the additional string and its position, tuning concerns relationships between sounds, and the plectrum changes the means of exciting vibration. ⁴ The TDV account, reporting Henry George Farmer, gives a tuning story distinct from string count. ² Attributing all three to one person does not make them one change. ⁴

The record on Abida Parveen says that she trained with her father, Ustad Ghulam Haider, who ran a music school, and that Ustad Salamat Ali Khan also taught her. ⁵ The TDV biography describes Ziryab's teaching as moving from rhythm and words to melody. ² What would you still need to find out about each before saying how learning music then differs from learning it now, and why?

• Ziryab's reported fifth oud string: the account, the three changes and the limits of the sources.
• Ziryab: his training and travel, his teaching and his family, as the records report them.
• Abida Parveen: her teachers, the languages she sings in and the songs the record names.