The Reconstruction of Medieval Andalusian Music in Modern Performance, Dwight Reynolds (University of California, Santa Barbara) September 18, 2012

280 Ferguson Hall, University of Minnesota

Although Western scholars have long been aware of "Andalusian Music" (the music of medieval Muslim Spain), European musicians only began to attempt performances of this repertory in the late 1960's. Deeply influenced by the Early Music movement that sought to create "authentic" performances of medieval and Renaissance European music, they triangulated between the modern Andalusian musical traditions of North Africa, medieval European performance styles, and historical documentation from medieval Iberia to create a variety of different recreations of medieval "Moorish" music. Which are fanciful and which are most authentic? What can we and what cannot we not know about the sounds and performance techniques of medieval Muslim Spain?

Dwight Reynolds is Professor of Arabic language & literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has conducted historical and ethnographic research on Andalusian musical traditions in Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. He is the author of numerous articles on various aspects of these traditions.

Cosponsored with the IAS Mediterranean Collaborative, the School of Music, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Official Website: https://events.umn.edu/022500