Like the Brethren of Purity, who emphasize the intimate relationship
between the proportions of music and calligraphic script, Rumi uses the
trope of the reed–raw material for bothflute (ney) and pen–to indicate
the conceptual indivisibility between sound and writing. This similitude
reflects the Quran, which describes itself as both as heard by the Prophet
and as written by the reed pen (Q68:1–3).
Musical signification does not rely on semiotic indivisibility between the
signal and signification as described in modern linguistics.^45 Rather than
indicating an absent signified, the musical signifier functions as an expres-
sive agent. The Brethren refer to this relationship as an image, saying:
When the meanings conveyed by melody and rhythm reach the mind via hearing,
so that an image is formed there of the ideas that were contained within those
rhythms and melodies, their existence [as vibrations] in the air can be dispensed
with, just as writing on tablets can be dispensed with once the ideas written on
them are understood and memorized.^46
Thus representation, whether musical or textual, emerges not in the oppo-
sition between absence and presence, but in apprehension emerging in the
recipient. This understanding of meaning reverberates with a definition
established already in the ninth century by scholar ibn Qutayba (828–889),
for whom the ideal utterance“achieves a perfect correspondence between
the word (lafz) and targeted meaning (ma’na): a successful poet achieves a
mimetic operation; his utterance becomes a perfect and abstract combina-
tion of sense and form, and this combination replaces the extra linguistic
object.”^47 Thus form does not give presence to meaning so much as
meaning transcends its conveyance.
2.2 Music between Transcendence and Transgression
Music enabled such transcendence through the ritualized practice of col-
lective audition, which seems to have emerged around the eleventh cen-
tury, transforming the hazard of intoxication into a vehicle for divine
knowledge. In hisBook of Audition (Kitab al-Sama), al-Qushairi of
Nishapur (d. 1074) describessamaas exposing every hidden ecstasy and
disturbing every calm heart. Similarly, Ahmad al-Ghazali suggests that
audition causes one to“throw offall restraint, to be drawn to the presence
of the One, the Subduer, and to examine delicate things and secrets.”^48 In
(^45) de Saussure, 2011 : 67. (^46) Wright, 2010 : 126. (^47) Lelli, 2014 : 203. (^48) Gribetz, 1991 : 50.
Music between Transcendence and Transgression 69