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Bernard Moussali

Bernard Moussali (1953, Beirut -1996, Paris) was an Associate Professor of Arab Literature, and Lecturer at the Sorbonne, he had dedicated his research to Arab Music, with an open-mindedness he passionately defended. Born to a Syrian-Lebanese father and a Belgian mother, he carried within a multiculturality that was at the core of his too short scientific career. Gifted with an uncommon spirit of enquiry and with rare erudition, attentive reader of Ṭabarī, of ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī as well as of Umberto Eco or simply of crime novels, Bernard Moussali was known for his often categorical judgements and his quick wit that made of him and intellectual who was admired as much as he was feared. He published very little, always reworking the texts he patiently prepared. In the field of Arab Literature, we only know of a single course by him, that remained a manuscript, on Maḥmūd Darwīsh’s work; but he had also started writing a History of Contemporary Arabic Literature that remained unfinished. Bernard Moussali had established himself as a well-informed amateur and a passionate listener of early 20th century Arab Music that he thought was more important to immerse oneself in than to analyse. Like Christian Poché or Frédéric Lagrange, he gave priority to archiving, particularly through 78rpm discs that reflected a period he considered to be unjustly forgotten. In this capacity, he contributed, with Christian Poché, to the first CD re-release of Arab Music records (Ocora, Arab World Institute, 1987). His research work mainly concerned the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab Music. He had dedicated to this subject his master’s dissertation (1980) and was preparing on the same theme a doctorate thesis that was unfortunately interrupted because of his illness. Nevertheless, he participated to the re-release of a selection of 78rpm discs recorded in Cairo in 1932, once again with Christian Poché (IMA, Bnf, 1989). His uncompromising analysis of the debates of the Cairo Congress[1] had raised his awareness about he importance of the influence of Ottoman Music on its Arab counterpart during the last centuries, and he learned Turkish in order to better exploit these sources. He also often pointed out the essential role, ignored later on, of numerous minorities –Christians, Jews and others– as to the origins of “Arab Music”. Regarding the Egyptian hegemonism at the 1932 Congress, he brought out the historical contribution of Syria in the 18th and the 19th centuries. Bernard Moussali mainly published CD booklets, around twenty, including mostly audio archives, but also some live concerts, elevating the disc’s value to that of an anthology, thanks to his always precise erudition as well as to his passionate loquacity: a lyrical listener who knew how to steer himself in an era of statistics and technicity.

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