Oud


The oud is a short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped stringed instrument, usually with 11 strings grouped in 6 courses, but some models have 5 or 7 courses, with 10 or 13 strings respectively.
The oud is very similar to modern lutes, and also to Western lutes. The modern oud is most likely derived from the Assyrian Lute. Similar instruments have been used in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia for thousands of years, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, the Caucasus, the Levant, and Balkanic countries like Greece, Albania and Bulgaria; there may even be prehistoric antecedents of the lute. The oud, as a fundamental difference with the western lute, has no frets and a smaller neck. It is the direct successor of the Persian Barbat lute.. It is the principal instrument of the Arab world, Somalia and Djibouti, and is of secondary importance in Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan. It plays a lesser role in Greece, where it has given rise to a long-necked model ; the latter is used in rustic and folk contexts, while the ʿūd retains pre-eminently educated and urban associations. In eastern Africa it is known as udi; in recent decades it has also appeared in Mauritania and Tajikistan. The emergence of the ʿūd on the stage of history is an equally complex matter. Two authors of the end of the 14th century place it in the reign of the Sassanid King Shpūr I. Ibn Shihnāh added that the development of the ʿūd was linked to the spread of Manicheism, and its invention to Manes himself, a plausible theory because the disciples of Manes encouraged musical accompaniments to their religious offices. Reaching China, their apostolate left traces of relations between West and East, seen in a short-necked lute similar to the ʿūd. But the movement's centre was in southern Iraq, whence the ʿūd was to spread towards the Arabian peninsula in the 7th century. However, the texts mentioning the introduction to Mecca of the short-necked lute as the ʿūd were all written in the 9th and 10th centuries. The ʿūd spread to the West by way of Andalusia|via=Oxford Music Onlinelang\|ar|أبو علي، الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم

Names and etymology

The العود literally denotes a thin piece of wood similar to the shape of a straw. It may refer to the wooden plectrum traditionally used for playing the oud, to the thin strips of wood used for the back, or to the wooden soundboard that distinguishes it from similar instruments with skin-faced bodies. Henry George Farmer considers the similitude between al-ʿūd and al-ʿawda.
Oud means "from wood" and "stick" in Arabic. Multiple theories have been proposed for the origin of the Arabic name. A music scholar by the name of Eckhard Neubauer suggested that oud may be an Arabic borrowing from the Persian word rōd or rūd, which meant string. Another researcher, archaeomusicologist Richard J. Dumbrill, suggests that rud came from the Sanskrit rudrī and transferred to Arabic through a Semitic language. However, another theory according to Semitic language scholars, is that the Arabic ʿoud is derived from Syriac ʿoud-a, meaning "wooden stick" and "burning wood"—cognate to Biblical Hebrew ’ūḏ, referring to a stick used to stir logs in a fire.
Names for the instrument in different languages include عود ʿūd or ʿoud , ուդ, Syriac: ܥܘܕ ūd, ούτι oúti, עוּד ud, بربط barbat, ud or ut, Azeri: ud, and cuud or kaban.

History

Musical instruments from pre-history

The complete history of the development of the lute family is not fully compiled at this date, but archaeomusicologists have worked to piece together a lute family history. The highly influential organologist Curt Sachs distinguished between the "long-necked lute" and the short-necked variety. Douglas Alton Smith argues the long-necked variety should not be called lute at all because it existed for at least a millennium before the appearance of the short-necked instrument that eventually evolved into what is now known the lute.
Musicologist Richard Dumbrill today uses the word more categorically to discuss instruments that existed millennia before the term "lute" was coined. Dumbrill documented more than 3000 years of iconographic evidence for the lutes in Mesopotamia, in his book The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East. According to Dumbrill, the lute family included instruments in Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BC. He points to a cylinder seal as evidence; dating from 3100 BC or earlier ; the seal depicts on one side what is thought to be a woman playing a stick "lute". Like Sachs, Dumbrill saw length as distinguishing lutes, dividing the Mesopotamian lutes into a long-necked variety and a short. He focuses on the longer lutes of Mesopotamia, and similar types of related necked chordophones that developed throughout ancient world: Greek, Egyptian, Elamites, Hittite, Roman, Bulgar, Turkic, Indian, Chinese, Armenian/Cilician, Canaanite/Phoenician, Israelite/Judean, and various other cultures. He names among the long lutes, the pandura, the panduri, tambur and tanbur
The line of short-necked lutes was further developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Bactria and Gandhara, into a short, almond-shaped lute. Curt Sachs talked about the depictions of Ganharan lutes in art, where they are presented in a mix of "Northwest Indian art" under "a strong Greek influences." The short-necked lutes in these Gandhara artworks were "the venerable ancestor of the Islamic, the Sino-Japanese and the European lute families." He described the Ganhara lutes as having a "pear-shaped body tapering towards the short neck, a frontal stringholder, lateral pegs, and either four or five strings." The oldest images of short-necked lutes from the area that Sachs knew of were "Persian figurines of the 8th century B.C.," found in excavations at Suza, but he knew of nothing connecting these to the Oud-related Ganharan art 8 centuries later.

Gandhara to Spain, the Persian barbat and Arab oud go to Europe

Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire. Under the Sasanians, a short almond shaped lute from Bactria came to be called the barbat or barbud, which was developed into the later Islamic world's oud or ud. The oud is most likely the combination of the Barbat, with the Ancient Greek Barbiton, giving the Barbat a lower pitched tone and the playing of Maqams in Middle Eastern and Byzantine music. When the Moors conquered Andalusia in 711, they brought their ud along, into a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura.
During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia. Among them was Abu l-Hasan ‘Ali Ibn Nafi‘, a prominent musician who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili in Baghdad and was exiled to Andalusia before 833 AD. He taught and has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud and with establishing one of the first schools of music in Córdoba.
By the 11th century, Muslim Iberia had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. While Europe developed the lute, the oud remained a central part of Arab music, and broader Ottoman music as well, undergoing a range of transformations.
Although the major entry of the short lute was in western Europe, leading to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; as early as the sixth century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called Komuz to the Balkans.

Origins Theory from religious and philosophical beliefs

According to Abū Ṭālib al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Salma, who himself refers to Hishām ibn al-Kullā, the oud was invented by Lamech, the descendant of Adam and Cain. Another hypothetical attribution says that its inventor was Mani. Ibn a-ṭ-Ṭaḥḥān adds two possible mythical origins: the first involves the Devil, who would have lured the "People of David" into exchanging their instruments with the oud. He writes himself that this version is not credible. The second version attributes, as in many other cultures influenced by Greek philosophy, the invention of the oud to "Philosophers".

Central Asia

One theory is that the oud originated from the Persian instrument called a barbat or barbud, a lute indicated by Marcel-Dubois to be of Central Asian origin. The earliest pictorial image of the barbat dates back to the 1st century BC from ancient northern Bactria and is the oldest evidence of the existence of the barbat. Evidence of a form of the barbaṭ is found in a Gandhara sculpture from the 2nd-4th centuries AD which may well have been introduced by the Kushan aristocracy, whose influence is attested in Gandharan art. The name barbat itself meant short-necked lute in Pahlavi, the language of the Sasanian Empire, through which the instrument came west from Central Asia to the Middle East, adopted by the Persians.
The barbat was used by some Arabs in the sixth century. At the end of the 6th century, a wood topped version of the Persian-styled instrument was constructed by al Nadr, called "ūd", and introduced from Iraq to Mecca. This Persian-style instrument was being played there in the seventh century. Sometime in the seventh century it was modified or "perfected" by Mansour Zalzal, and the two instruments were used side by side into the 10th century, and possibly longer. The two instruments have been confused by modern scholars looking for examples, and some of the ouds identified may possibly be barbats. Examples of this cited in the Encyclopedia of Islam include a lute in the Cantigas de Santa Maria and the frontispiece from The Life and Times of Ali Ibn ISA by Harold Bowen.
The oldest pictorial record of a short-necked lute-type vīnā around the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. The site of origin of the oud seems to be Central Asia. The ancestor of the oud, the barbat was in use in pre-Islamic Persia. Since the Safavid period, and perhaps because of the name shift from barbat to oud, the instrument gradually lost favor with musicians.
The Turkic peoples had a similar instrument called the kopuz. This instrument was thought to have magical powers and was brought to wars and used in military bands. This is noted in the Göktürk monument inscriptions. The military band was later used by other Turkic state's armies and later by Europeans.

Types

Arabian oud, Turkish oud, and Persian barbat

Modern-day ouds fall into three categories: Arabian, Turkish, and Persian, the latter also being known locally as a barbat.
This distinction is not based solely on geography; the Arabic oud is found not only in the Arabian peninsula but throughout the Arab-world. Turkish ouds have been played in Greece, where they are called outi, and in other locations in the Mediterranean. The Arabian ouds, such as the Iraqi oud, Egyptian oud and Syrian oud, are normally grouped under the term 'Arabian oud' because of their similarities, although local differences may occur, notably with the Iraqi oud. However, all these categories are very recent, and do not do justice to the variety of ouds made in the 19th century, and also today.
Arabian ouds are normally larger than their Turkish and Persian counterparts, producing a fuller, deeper sound, whereas the sound of the Turkish oud is more taut and shrill, not least because the Turkish oud is usually tuned one whole step higher than the Arabian. Turkish ouds tend to be more lightly constructed than Arabian with an unfinished sound board, lower string action and with string courses placed closer together. Turkish ouds also tend to be higher pitched and have a "brighter timbre." Arabian ouds have a scale length of between 61 cm and 62 cm in comparison to the 58.5 cm scale length for Turkish. There exists also a variety of electro-acoustic and electric ouds.
The modern Persian Barbat resembles the oud, although differences include a smaller body, longer neck, a slightly raised fingerboard, and a sound that is distinct from that of the oud. See more information at the page: Barbat.
The Cümbüş is a Turkish instrument that started as a hybrid of the oud and the banjo.

Tuning

Different ways of tuning the oud exist within the different oud traditions. Among those playing the oud in the Arabic tradition, a common older pattern of tuning the strings is : D2 G2 A2 D3 G3 C4 on single string courses or D2, G2 G2, A2 A2, D3 D3, G3 G3, C4 C4 for a course of two strings. In the Turkish tradition, the "Bolahenk" tuning, is common, : C#2 F#2 B2 E3 A3 D4 on instruments with single string courses or C#2, F#2 F#2, B2 B2, E3 E3, A3 A3, D4 D4 on instruments with courses of two strings. The C2 and F2 are actually tuned 1/4 of a tone higher than a normal c or f in the Bolahenk system.
Many current Arabic players use this tuning: C2 F2 A2 D3 G3 C4 on the standard tuning instruments, and some use a higher pitch tuning, F A D G C F

Zenne oud

The Zenne oud, often translated as a women's oud or female oud is a smaller version of the oud designed for those with smaller hands and fingers. It usually has a scale length of 55–57 cm, instead of the 60–62 cm of the Arabic oud, and the 58.5 cm of the Turkish oud.

Oud arbi and oud ramal

The oud arbi is a North African variant of the oud with a longer neck and only 4 courses. It is not to be confused with the differently shaped and tuned Kwitra. The Oud Arbi is tuned in a re-entrant tuning of G3 G3, E4 E4, A3 A3, D4 D4.

Oud Kumethra

The oud kumethra', also known as pregnant oud or pear oud is an oud with the body in a pear-like shape. This type is relatively uncommon and mostly from Egypt.