Response 2: The music of the Quran
The readings on the calligraphy of the Quran, the importance of recitation and how people experience it as an aural text, and the history of codification, gave me an idea. The idea was to attempt to codify the Quran but in another manner – codifying a style of recitation. My idea was to use the fluidity of the Arabic alphabet to attempt to write the text in such a way that a person with basic musical knowledge looking at it could chant the text. My reasoning was that if such a method had been used, it could have preserved the style in which the Quran was revealed originally – and recited by the Prophet himself.
So I decided to use the usual 5 staff notation for the project. I then divided up the paper into equal and distinct vertical parts. Each alphabet was written in one part, if it was a quarter note – otherwise it was written in two or more parts to represent half and whole notes, or in half of the distance to represent 1/8th notes. Although I was aware that reciters can use any one of several different maqam to chant the text, I elected to use a transcription that I found in a book entitled The Art of Reciting the Quran by Kristina Nelson. A scan of the original transcriptions seen in the book can be found above (Fig 1). After several different tries, (Fig 2-4) I came up with an acceptable final calligraphic copy which I then finally transcribed onto a staff notation (Fig. 5 above) adding the dots and other marking in red, as they were done for the first copies of the Quran. I then asked one of my musically inclined friends familiar with the Arabic alphabet to try and sing the text. After some tries, he got it somewhat right, but it didn’t really have the same feel. In addition, my friend told me that a maqam has several notes that are not really in Western music .
Somewhat ironically, this project simply ended up confirming a recurring theme of the class, which is the importance of experiencing an oral-aural revelation in the same manner, and the impossibility (or more accurately, the inexactness) of codifying it or fixing it on paper. In the end, the written text can only be an aid to the reader, and not a substitute. Because religion is the intersection of humans with the divine, it will always have some sort of human and variable element to it, as much as one may try to preserve or reach the same exact divine message. In a certain sense, when the divine reveals itself through humans, because humans are thinking creatures and interact differently with the message, there will always be some measure of “human-ness” embodied in the transmission, representing a person’s indivudal engagement with the fixed text.