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Chapitre d'ouvrage Année : 2021

From Yemen to Central Asia (and Back): Towards an Archeology of the Monoxyle Lute

Résumé

After the monoxyle lute, qanbûs or "the Yemeni lute" was rediscovered in the years 1990 to 2000, its study begins to extend geographically beyond Yemen and more deeply in history. According to organology, this instrument can be considered as a "cousin" of the Middle Eastern 'ûd. It has a "short neck", but it presents more archaic features, mainly its monoxyle soundbox, carved in one piece of wood including the handle, which let us qualify it more precisely as “monocellar”. Besides, other distinctive features like its skin soundboard, the four double strings, the sickle shape pegbox, the protuberant tailpiece in the lower part make from this instrument a kind of “fossile instrument”, full of information about from the past. As the short necked lutes were native from Central Asia around the beginning of the Christian area, the knowledge of this contemporary monocellar instrument allows us to interpret in a new perspective the general evolution of the lutes family, and more particularly the evolution of the short necked lutes and their historical spreading from late antique Central Asia to the Mediterranea. Resorting to what we called “comparative lute making”, we tried to review the archeologic and iconographic testimonies, as well as the literary ones, in order to reconstruct the evolution of the forms, the functions and the techniques, specially focusing on the ways of assembling the soundbox and the handle. On another hand, we could enlighten the historical journeys of these lutes from antique Central Asia to Middle East Arabo-Islamic civilization, through two main tracks : the Turkic speaking area, and the Persian empires (without neglecting the possible role of the Hellenistic civilization). Without hiding the many difficulties still lying ahead, specially concerning the classical categories of organology, this article aims to open new ways for a dynamic and retroactive study of the history of musical instruments.
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Dates et versions

halshs-03662805, version 1 (09-05-2022)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-03662805 , version 1

Citer

Jean Lambert. From Yemen to Central Asia (and Back): Towards an Archeology of the Monoxyle Lute. Ricardo Eichmann; Dahlia Shehata. Music beyond Cultural Borders, Verlag Marie Leidorf GmbH, pp.11-44, 2021, Studien zur Musikarchäologie XII, Orient-Archäologie. ⟨halshs-03662805⟩
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