The Arab Contribution to Musical Aesthetic Thought

The contributions of Arab philosophers and musicians to the philosophy of music before the European Renaissance are worthy of special attention by art historians. The founder of the West Arabian school of oud, Ziljab (? ～From the point of view of music therapy, he gave the 4 strings of the oud the meaning of 4 temperaments. The 4 strings, which are set at 4 degrees apart from each other in order, are yellow, red, white and black in color from high to low, which represent 4 psychological temperaments of biliousness, polycythemia, mucus and melancholia, respectively, and he added the 5th string as the string of the soul. He added the fifth string as the "string of the soul". Inheriting the cultural traditions of Greece and Persia, the combination of music, mathematics and medicine is a characteristic of Arabian music and philosophy. ～In the 8th century, the Baghdad musician Sarsar (?) put the intervals favored by the ancient Bedouin people into the 4-note sequence of the oud. He established the "Sarsar middle finger" position, which is "3 degrees" (1 or 1 tone) higher than the pitch of the empty string, and created a new type of 4-tone sequence (whole tone + 3/4 tone + 3/4 tone), which is still the prototype of all Arabic melodic compositions. Subsequently, the scholars Farabi and Avicenna (980-1037) each interpreted this middle third interval in their own way, the former interpreting it as 22:27 (with prime 11), the latter interpreting it as 32:39 (with prime 13); and through their systematic work, the insertion of two tones into the pure fourth interval of various sizes to form many four-tone sequences of different character became a unique means of tonal expression in Arabic music. Arabic music is a unique means of tonal expression.