# Music



## iskndarbey

Does anybody know why the word 'music' is so constant among such a wide variety of languages? In contrast, for example, 'art' is 'arte' in Spanish, 'Kunst' in German and 'fann' in Arabic. Music is 'música', 'Musik' and 'musiiqa' in those three languages, not to mention many more besides.

Thanks for your help!


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## Outsider

> music
> 
> c.1250, from O.Fr. _musique_ (12c.), from L. _musica_, from Gk. _mousike techne_ "art of the Muses," from fem. of _mousikos_ "pertaining to the Muses," from _Mousa_ "Muse." In classical Greece, any art in which the Muses presided, but especially music.


I must presume that the word was borrowed recently from European languages by many languages.


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## iskndarbey

Obviously, but why? I can understand why every language in the world  calls a hamburger a hamburger, but it's not like music was a European invention. Surely all these cultures had words for similar concepts before they adopted the European word. Arabic culture, for example, had a whole set of musical instruments never seen in Europe, as well as a well developed theory of scales and a musical notation system, well before Napoleon invaded Egypt.


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## palomnik

iskndarbey said:


> Obviously, but why? I can understand why every language in the world calls a hamburger a hamburger, but it's not like music was a European invention. Surely all these cultures had words for similar concepts before they adopted the European word. Arabic culture, for example, had a whole set of musical instruments never seen in Europe, as well as a well developed theory of scales and a musical notation system, well before Napoleon invaded Egypt.


 
And yet the word for "music" in Arabic is _musiqi._

The word was, of course, borrowed from the Greeks.  As a specialized form of Art, I don't think it's too surprising that all these languages borrowed the word from the Greek.  

And it's not as if other words don't exist in a lot of languages; German has _Tonkunst, _medieval Russian used _khor.  _For some reason they all ended up using the Greek word, probably because they had no single word that covered singing and instrumental music combined.


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## Athaulf

palomnik said:


> And yet the word for "music" in Arabic is _musiqi._


Do you know if that's a relatively recent borrowing or an ancient one?   


> And it's not as if other words don't exist in a lot of languages; German has _Tonkunst, _medieval Russian used _khor.  _For some reason they all ended up using the Greek word, probably because they had no single word that covered singing and instrumental music combined.


But interestingly, all these words are also Greek borrowings (though perhaps indirect). In European languages, there really seems to be a severe lack of old native words for "music" in the general sense. I can't think of one in Croatian either.


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## Spectre scolaire

An interesting question!

_Outsider_ is right in focusing on the Classical Greek term μουσική τέχνη [musiké tékhnē]. Basically, music is an “art form”, or rather an “art inspired by the _Muses_”, the last word being made into an adjective which characterizes (or is an _epithet_ to) the word “art”. It is therefore the art which is primordial, an art which happens to be different according to the surrounding cultural setting. To say that the inspiration comes from the Muses is just a figure of speech – it is, of course, the cultural background which determines what sort of _mode_ will come out of your instrument or your vocal cords. 

In fact, _mode_ is a central concept in music, and since the Classical Greeks were some sort of precursors in the Mediterranean when it comes to musical theory, the word music has spread to all languages belonging to this “Mediterranean world” – including Arabic. In Arabic, music is موسيقى [mūsīqī], not because it is in any conspicuous way similar to so-called “Western” music – on the contrary! – but for reasons I just alluded to. If you go outside the Mediterranean world, you’ll find entirely different words for music – like Chinese 音乐 yīnyuè in which the first character denotes “sound; tone” whereas the second is _the_ word for “music”, but the two characters are normally used together. 

“Arabic” music is fundamentally different from “Western” music, precisely when it comes to this central concept of mode. And yet, the same word is being used: mūsīqī. In Turkish, _müzik_ means, per definition, “Western style music”. This is not what touches the heart of most people in Turkey. 

The word music has become an umbrella under which all sort of different _modes_ are being heard. Locally inspired musical genres like those in the Balkans have an indelible mark of a non-western _mode_. Hardly ever focused on when talking about music in a western setting is the basic concept of مقام [maqām]. There is a good definition of this concept in the _Redhouse_ Turkish-English dictionary s.v. makam:



> _Oriental music_ a concept of melodic creation which determines tonal relations, tessitura, starting tone, reciting tone and the finalis, as well as an overall indication of the melodic contour and patterns. Its closest counterpart in Western music in the medieval concept of mode.


 The _maq__ām_ is quite a complex thing – there are around 100 of them, and whoever grew up in a “Western” setting of the Mediterranean cultural world will never really understand this form. Those who grew up under the “Oriental” part the umbrella are more likely to get acquainted to both strands of music because of the overwhelming Western musical exposure wherever you go in the world. 
 ​*PS*: _palomnik_ got ahead of me with some similar comments; I could only post mine now.


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## OBrasilo

Athualf said:
			
		

> I can't think of one in Croatian either.


There is one. It's _glazba_, and it's a cognate of Slovenian _glasba_, which also has the exact same meaning. In Czech and Slovak, it's _hudba_ (cognate of Slovenian _godba_, which also means _music_), and its Upper Sorbian cognate is _hudźba_, which also has the exact same meaning


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## Athaulf

OBrasilo said:


> There is one. It's _glazba_, and it's a cognate of Slovenian _glasba_, which also has the exact same meaning.



If you read my above post a bit more carefully, you'll notice that I was talking about _old native words _for "music" in European languages, i.e. words that common folk would have used centuries ago to describe the folk tunes they were singing and playing, and perhaps hearing in the church. Croatian _glazba_ is not an ancient native word, but a historically recent coining.


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## elroy

A minor note:

The Arabic word for "music" is "muusiiq*a*" (موسيقى).
"Muusiiq*i*" (موسيقي) is an adjective meaning "musical."


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## Mahaodeh

I always thought the Arabic musiiqa is a recent borrowing as the older Arab musicians didn't use it, rather they used the word "laHn" (pl. alHan), which is now used in a slightly different sense.


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## Spectre scolaire

Sorry, _elroy_, bad reading...  موسيقي is of course the _nisbe_ form. It is interesting, however, that the _noun_ is strangely similar to Italian _musica_. This just makes the question of when Arabic started using the word music even more intriguing.

The suggestion by _Mahaodeh_, that لحن, ”melody; tune” was used earlier, just triggers another question: “How much earlier?” 
 ​


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## Mahaodeh

I'd just like to clarify that what I posted up there is what I _thought_, not what I _knew_.  Anyway, since yesterday I did little digging up and found out that the word is not as recent as I thought, apparently is was used as early as the tenth Centurey in Abu Al Nasr Al Faarabi's book (Kitaab al-Musiiqa al-Kabeer), and it exists in Lisan Al Arab, a thirteenth century dictionary.  The dictionary states that it is an Arabised word of Greek origin and it means the art of "Tarab" and singing, but no further information is given.

Also, I found out that prior to that many words were used to express certain parts of music such as laHn لحن, Azf عزف, maAaazif معازف (musical instruments), naGham نغم, Tarab طرب, and Ghinaa' غناء (singing).

I hope this is useful.


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## Spectre scolaire

Mahaodeh said:


> the word is not as recent as I thought, apparently i*t* was used as early as the tenth Century in Abu Al Nasr Al Faarabi's book (Kitaab al-Musiiqa al-Kabeer), and it exists in Lisan Al Arab, a thirteenth century dictionary. The dictionary states that it is an Arabised word of Greek origin and it means the art of "Tarab" and singing, but no further information is given.
> 
> I hope this is useful.


 It is indeed! 

I’ve got one question: 

If the word for music in Arabic is that old – and this is what I thought I had read somewhere  (probably in some compilation of Greek loanwords in Arabic) – I wonder if موسيقي really is a _nisbe_ form. Could it be that this word is only thought to be one? – that [mūsīqī] directly reflects Byzantine Greek μουσική [τέχνη]? It is true that μουσική (as mentioned in my previous posting) is an adjective, but since it is a _stranded_ adjective, it might very well have been adapted into Arabic as a noun. 

And yet, you mention the 10th century “Kitaab al-Musiiqa al-Kabeer”. How would it become a noun in –a? –by morphological constraint ? 
 ​


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## Mahaodeh

This is the entry in Lisan al-Arab:

*موسق* - المُوْسِيْقَى فنُّ الغناءِ والتطريب يونانيَّتها مُوْسِيْكِي وصاحب الفنّ موسيقيٌّ. والعامَّة تقول مُوزِيكا وتطلقهُ أيضًا على طائفة من آلات الطرب أُخِذَت معًا


I don't know when it actually began to be used colloquially, but subsituting the kaaf sound with a qaaf in fus7a implies proper Arabisation and not just colloquial that changed into formal due to extensive use. My guess is that the change was intentional in order not to mix it up with ياء النسبة, I made that guess based on the colloquial use (which is slightly changed now) that also changed the final -y sound with -aa. If it remained musiqii, then the nisba would probably be musiqaawi موسيقاوي.  

Another probability is that it came to Arabic through Italian not directly from Greek because the colloquial is almost identical to the Italian pronounciation (I think).  Lisan al-Arab does sometimes ignore the intermediate etymology and jump directly to the ultimate origin.  But then again, I have no hands-on knowledge (let alone experience) to have an educated guess.


The colloquial in Iraq now is mazziqeh مَزّيقة and used for a specific kind of music while in Egypt it's mazzika مَزّيكا and the nisba is mazzikati مَزّيكاتي.


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## Mrs.Mustaine

May I give my 2 cents on the reason why it's called _music_?

The word comes from Greek as stated above, Romans borrowed it from Greeks and exported it around the conquered territories with their Empire.

When Music developed and came to the note writings we use today, it was mostly thanx to Italian "Maestri" and anyone who studies music today knows that most music vocabulary is made of Italian words all over the world.
There might be translation I'm not aware of, but Classical still uses those terms and music schools (as far as I know) too.

So I bet those 2 things combined made the word "music" root so deeply into many different cultures.


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## Mahaodeh

But when did Maestri live? The word entered Arabic at least since the first half of the 10th century, that means Before the crusades; at least for Arabic I think it's not related to Maestri.


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## Kevin Beach

As we have been directed over here from a similar thread that has been closed, I'd like to insert something that Mr.Slade posted and my reply:



			
				Mr.Slade said:
			
		

> Since music, in some form, seems to be a human universal, existing in all cultures, why do so many European languages (and also farther-off languages like Arabic, Indonesian, and Filipino) use a borrowed word for it (ultimately from Greek) instead of some native word that came up through their own cultures? Even the Latin word was borrowed from Greek.





			
				Kevin Beach said:
			
		

> What an interesting question!
> 
> My _guess_ is that the idea of music as a cultural activity or an art form came from the Greeks, which is why we use their word for it


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## Corsicum

_"the idea of music as a cultural activity or an art form came from the Greeks" ?_

About Sumerian or Akkadian music...*Etruscan*, there is no relationship, nothing ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_music
*And before Sumerian….stones sculpture is music ?,…language is music no ?*


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## Kevin Beach

Corsicum said:


> _"the idea of music as a cultural activity or an art form came from the Greeks" ?_
> 
> About Sumerian or Akkadian music...*Etruscan*, there is no relationship, nothing ?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_music
> *And before Sumerian….stones sculpture is music ?,…language is music no ?*


Music has been part of mankind's activities since prehistory.

King David danced before the Ark of the Covenant to the sound of instruments.

But I was referring to the Greeks' recognition of music as an art-form. Indeed, perhaps the Greek attitude to music is part of the recognition of all art-forms in their own right, rather than just as an adjunct to the rest of life.


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