Oud

The oud is a plucked instrument with a pear-shaped sound-box built around a mould, and a short angled back neck. The gut strings are plucked with a piece of tortoise shell or an eagle feather.

The oud plays a prominent role in Arab music; it is called the ‘sultan’ of Arab instruments. The name ‘oud’ is derived from Arabic العود‎‎ ‘al-ʿūd , e’oud’ (‘twig’, ‘piece of wood’). In the course of its long history the instrument travelled from East to West, from Bagdad (7th century) via Asia Minor and the Arab peninsula to Northeast Africa and Andalusia (9th century). It is the immediate precursor of the Western lute.  Both instruments are very similar, but the oud has no frets and its neck is narrower.

The oud forms part of the classical Arab orchestra, but it also plays solo and in small ensembles. It is to be heard in traditional and contemporary repertoires, in ethno jazz and Mediterranean folk, world fusion, sufi, qawwali and new-age music.

Many outstanding oud virtuosos played a key role in the promotion and dispersion of the oud. Scharif Muhyi ad-Din Haydar Targan (1892-1967) was a Turkish musicologist, who founded the first school for oud concert soloists at the Bagdad Conservatory in 1934. One of his students was the Iraqi Munir Bashir (1930-1997), who became one of the most acclaimed oud players in the world; he was called the ‘Ravi Shankar of the oud’, promoting his instrument during concert tours in Europe and the U.S. Riad Al Sunbati (1906-1981) from Egypt was an excellent oud virtuoso who composed numerous songs for Oum Kalthoum. Saïd Chraïbi (1951-2016), Moroccon composer and internationally acclaimed out player, applied technical innovations to the instrument and built sopranino, soprano  and bass ouds. Nasser Shamma (Iraq, °1963) studied at the Bagdad Conservatory and founded his own schools in Cairo and Tunis. He trained the first female oud concert performer, Youssra Dhahbi °1966), the ‘princess of the oud’. Other contemporary internationally acclaimed oud players include Rabih Abou-Khalil (Lebanon), Simon Shaneen (Palestine-Israel-US), Anouar Brahem (Tunesia), Dhafer Youssef (Tunesia), and the Joubran brothers (Palestine). In Belgium the Luthomania band promotes ensemble playing of oud, lute and Chinese pipa.

The MIM’s oud with inventory number 0164 is the oldest known oud preserved in a public collection. It has seven double strings, which is typical of the 19th century Egyptian oud.  The instrument came to Brussels from Alexandria in 1839, thanks to the Belgian musicographer and director of the Brussels Conservatoire Royal de Musique, François-Joseph Fétis (1784-1871). With the help of  Étienne Zizinia, the Belgian consul in Alexandria, Fétis acquired sixteen Arab instruments for his personal collection, a purchase for which he said he had to make big financial sacrifices. Incidentally, he only settled the bill in 1846.  

Apart from the oud, Fétis’s collection from Alexandria contained a qanun citer, a kissar lyre, tanbur lutes, a nay flute, a zamr oboe, an arghul and kemanche fiddles. Fétis claimed he had put together ‘the most comprehensive collection of this kind in the whole of Europe’. This is not entirely correct: nearly forty years earlier Guillaume-André Villoteau (1759-1839), a scientific member of Napoleon’s expedition in Egypt in 1798-1803, had brought a similar collection to Paris, with representative instruments of the different communities that were living together in the big Egyptian cities (Arabs, Nubians, Copts, Ethiopians, Persians). This collection counted at least 22 instruments. Unfortunately, Villoteau’s oud has not been preserved. Fétis knew Villoteau personally. Some of the correspondence between both gentlemen has been preserved. Fétis was well informed about Villoteau’s work and he was undoubtedly inspired by Villoteau’s collection when he put together his own Egyptian collection.

Further information on the circumstances in which Fétis acquired a collection of 16 Egyptian instruments, see the article on the Kemangeh roumy:

In the 1830s Fétis developed the ambition to write a comprehensive Histoire de la musique, which would not only offer a survey of Western music, but would cover the whole world, including Arab music. For him, the history of music is ‘inseparable of the appreciation of the special abilities of  the races that have cultivated it.’ Just like language, every race had its own music. Evidently, his discourse is heavily imbued with a will to categorize, and with the stereotyping eurocentrism typical of the 19th century. Western music, he says, ‘is the only one to be real art;  but it remains no less interesting to know the primitive forms of that same art.’  He gives an elaborate theoretical description of Arab music and musical instruments. He claims that the tonal systems of the Arab peoples are ‘incompatible’ with our musical sensibility, mainly because every tone is divided into three third-tones and not in two semitones, like in our scales. His study of the Arab tonal systems is based on translated Arab treatises, on Villoteau’s work and on his own observation of the tuning and the compass of the instruments in his collection, but not on the music as it was then to be heard. It is strongly doubtful if Fétis got to hear a lot of Arab music. The very first concert of Arab music in Europe probably took place during the Exposition universelle (World’s Fair) of Paris in 1867, when five musicians played in the ‘Café Tunisien’. The oud played the melody in unison with the rebab, with the accompaniment of a tambourine and a darabouka. After attending the concert, Fétis wrote: ‘I have also heard the musicians from Tunis, and I have found that their intonations were false and their songs monotonous.’

After Fétis’s death in 1871 his sons Édouard and Adolphe sold all his musical instruments to the Belgian State. In 1873 they were accommodated in the library of the Conservatoire Royal de Musique. At the opening of the Musée instrumental in 1877 the Fétis fund of almost one hundred pieces made up nearly half the museum collection.

Text: Saskia Willaert