Music in Ancient Arabia and Spain

This book is structured in the following manner. The first section is introductory and review previous publications in the field of Oriental music. The second section begins the historical portion, and covers the territory of western Asia, from the death of Muhammad to the decadence of the art, during the ninth and tenth centuries. The third section deals with the technical side of music during that period. The fourth section treats the subject of Arabic music in Spain and its evolution there. The fifth section describes the earliest known Spanish music that was written in easily understood notation, that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and shows that this as a rule followed the classic Arabic models. The remainder of the book outlines Senor Ribera's method of attacking the problem of still more ancient songs, Las Cantigas. The whole book reveals sources of information hitherto unavailable, and puts many facts of music history in a new light.