Tetrachords of Turkish Makams: How to Make Sense of Makam Theory

Tetrachords of Turkish makams: how to make sense of makam theory

Jim Garrett

April 19, 2019

Contents

1 Introduction 2

2 Tetrachords: What are they, how do they t in? 3

3 Specic tetrachords 4 3.1 3 tetrachords with which we're already familiar . . . . 4 3.2 Three microtonal tetrachords ...... 6 3.3 Hicaz and Nikriz ...... 7 3.4 Additional tetrachords based on U³³ak ...... 8 3.4.1 Hüseyni ...... 8 3.4.2 Saba ...... 9 3.5 Additional tetrachords based on Segâh ...... 9 3.5.1 Müstear ...... 9 3.5.2 Hüzzam ...... 10 3.5.3 Eksik Segâh ...... 10 3.6 Pençgâh ...... 10 3.7 Summary of tetrachords ...... 10 3.7.1 Modulations ...... 11

4 What is a makam? 12

5 Additional resources 12

1 6 Additional context 13 6.1 Cultural context ...... 13 6.2 A plea for attention to tonality ...... 14 6.3 Makam theory is not really theory ...... 16

7 Acknowledgements 16

1 Introduction

You're probably reading this because you're wondering what makam theory is all about. Probably you've visited several web sites, but it hasn't quite clicked. You've gotten information but you're not sure what it means, or how it ts together. You've seen musical snippets that look like scales, but then you've read that makams are not scales. Maybe you're wondering if this body of knowledge is accessible at all. If this describes your experience, then this essay is written just for you! I believe most introductory resources try to make analogies to scales, because scales are what Western musicians are familiar with. I think this is pedagogical a mistake. Makams are not scales, and using scales as a crutch actually takes us farther from the goal of understanding the thinking and expression of a makam musician. Paradoxically, the makam is not really the fundamental entity in the makam system; the tetrachord is. Once you know tetrachords, you'll be prepared to listen and understand what's happening in a makam. While there are roughly 200 makams that have been actively used, there are 14 distinct tetrachords (depending on what you consider distinct). 14 is not a small number but it's smaller than 200! Also, there are relationships among them, so there aren't 14 completely distinct ideas. I'm basing this essay on the Ottoman system, but I'm also very interested in the Arabic maqam system. In fact they are closely related and have informed each other. So if you're interested in Arabic music, I think this essay will still be useful to you if you're starting out. I've added a section to discuss cultural context more deeply in Section 6.1. Some comments about terminology: I've used Turkish in the title of this essay so that people can nd it, but this confounds Turkish folk

2 traditions with the Ottoman art music tradition, and I will use distinct terms for these. Also, it's common to refer to makam theory but I argue in Sec- tion 6.3 that theory is a misleading term, and suggest grammar. I will say at the outset, and again and again later: let your ears be your guide! Your ears don't lie, and trump any written reference. It's always valuable to understand the cultural context of music, so please do read Section 6 even though it's deferred towards the end.

2 Tetrachords: What are they, how do they t in?

Let me illustrate the nature and function of tetrachords with a thought experiment. What is major? What is its essential sound quality? Consider playing the C major scale starting from the tonic. C, D, E, F, . . . Wait there (on F) a moment. Do you need to play any more? The remaining notes are G, A, B, and the octave C. Do they add anything to the expression of major? Well, G is the fth, which can be useful. But note: the Western C major scale, from G, actually recapitulates the intervals we've already seen: whole step, whole step, whole step, half, just like C, D, E, and F. There's nothing new here. The atom of major here is the rst 4, or perhaps 5, notes. If you want to ll your space with majorness in melody (not chords), these are your notes. Additional notes add feet to a snake as a Chinese saying goes. These four sequential notes are called a tetrachord. Five sequential notes will also show up frequently, and this would be a pentachord. Tetrachord also refers to tetrachords and pentachords generally. The makam musician seeks melodic snippets and associated styles or patterns that express the nature or feeling of the tetrachord, without playing any chords. (Simple chords do show up occasionally; nothing is absolute.) If I asked a Western musician to express major, she would play a major chord and say, Okay, done, what's next? But if I said, No; express major, but without chords; melody only, we have begun a dierent project entirely. A makam musician always knows what tetrachord she is in at any given moment, and is working to express it most eectively.

3 Let's continue the experiment to think about minor. To utilize the white keys of the keyboard, let's root it on D, so minor would be D, E, F, and G. This expresses the essence of minor. Interestingly, we in the West acknowledge three avors of minor scale, which share the rst ve notes. The three minor scales can be seen as a minor tetrachord (or pentachord, to be precise) with dierent tetrachords stacked on the fth: A minor tetrachord on the fth gives us melodic minor. A Phrygian tetrachord (half step followed by whole steps) on the fth gives us natural minor. A Hicaz tetrachord (half step, 1.5 step, half step) on the fth gives us harmonic minor. The harmonic minor is the last refuge of Hicaz in Western music, at least where it resides without being considered a foreign reference. Having three avors of minor spun out as dierent tetrachords stacked on a common base tetrachord is very much in the spirit of the makam system, as we'll see.

3 Specic tetrachords

We've seen the major and minor tetrachords, and we're beginning to see what tetrachords mean to makam musicians. Let's dive in to see the rest of them.

3.1 3 tetrachords with which we're already familiar My daughters learned music using the Kodály method, and this cur- riculum stressed that the Greek modes can be constructed from the white notes on the piano keyboard, simply by adopting a dierent note as tonic for the mode (while staying on white notes). Start on C and you get the C major or diatonic scale. Start on G instead and you get Mixolydian, which is just like the diatonic but the 7th is a whole step below octave, rather than a half-step. Let's apply this same-notes- dierent-tonic principle to tetrachords. By the way, C is an uncommon root for most tetrachords in practice. I'm just using C to use the keyboard as an illustrative device.

4 Figure 1: The keyboard, with 3 tetrachords that have no non-Western microtones indicated; they can be played on the white notes with dierent starting notes, and they overlap substantially.

Figure 1 below shows a piano keyboard. Starting on C, we get the major tetrachord, as described above; this is called Çargâh. Starting instead on D, we get the minor tetrachord, called Buselik. Starting on E, we get the Phrygian tetrachord, which has fallen out of fashion in Western music for the last millenium or so, but does show up in Klezmer and other Eastern European folk music. In the Middle East this is called Kurdi. To me Kurdi evokes a sense of broad but austere space, such as sunset in the desert. The same-note-dierent-tonic principle is not just an interesting happenstance; makam musicians often leverage this, stepping from one to another by changing the tonal center. How to change tonal center is part of the makam craft, and part psychology of human music perception.

5 Figure 2: The keyboard, but now the E is atted slightly, indicated by shading. We nd 3 new tetrachords analogous to the previous three, now found on this retuned keyboard. The B is also slightly attened in case a Rast tetrachord is placed on G, but that wouldn't apply to U³³ak, and for Segâh the A would also be microtonally attened.

3.2 Three microtonal tetrachords Consider the same system, only atten the E a bit, as indicated in Figure 2. Flatten it less than a half step. Exactly how much is a mat- ter of tradition, taste, geography, and artistic expression. Let listening and experimenting be your guide. (And your teacher!) Some Ottoman classical music attens just enough to be perceived, but perhaps not noticed. Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox liturgical music does simi- larly. Anatolian folk music tends to have it atter, as does most Arabic. The Arabic music notation system gives this note as halfway between at and natural, but this is a construct; players vary it, and I think they rarely play true quarter tones. To my own ears, a slightly at third harmonizes with the tonic more sweetly than the Western third. But if I want it to stand out a bit, I atten more, when exibility is possible. In some situations musicians

6 vary the at depending on context, within the same piece. (In the diagram the B is also attened; this would in fact depend on what tetrachord is used in the upper register. Also, with Segâh, the A would be microtonally attened, but this is a very unsual place to play Segâh.) By attening the E, Çargâh (major) becomes the Rast tetrachord. In Ottoman music, this conveys happiness or joy. In Arabic, with the atter third becoming a bit ambiguous between major or minor, it sounds to me as joyous but with urgency. This is probably the most prevalent tetrachord, in Ottoman and perhaps in Arabic. Buselik (minor) becomes U³³ak (U-shahk). In Ottoman this is introspective, like minor but with more warmth. This is extremely prevalent in folk music, both Ottoman in Arabic. In most folk traditions it is atter than in Ottoman classical. Kurdi, on our microtonal keyboard, becomes Segâh, or in Arabic, Sikah. To me, when it resolves by returning to the E microtonal at, it is extremely peaceful, in both Ottoman and Arabic. Segâh's distinctive quality is conveyed mostly in its rst three notes. It could almost be called a trichord. How it extends is dierent in Ot- toman and Arabic; in the Ottoman tradition the fourth is also microtonally at. In Arabic the fourth is natural, and the fth is microtonally at. In Ottoman, Segâh has evolved a distinctive leading tone or phrase: in our example, {C, D#, E-m} where E-m is microtonally at. It's as though we're playing blues on C, playing D# and sliding up to E but not quite reaching it. I've also heard this motif in Iraqi music, suggesting geographic borrowing in one direction or another, which of course happens all the time with music. There are additional tetrachords that may be thought of as variations on U³³ak and Segâh, discussed below.

3.3 Hicaz and Nikriz I mentioned Hicaz as appearing in the upper register of the harmonic minor scale, so it exists in the West, at least vestigially. It is that stereotypic Arabic sound. If rooted on C, it would be C, C-sharp, E, and F. This is often extended to include the G, though the Hicaz quality is already conveyed. In other words, it has intervals of 0.5, 1.5, 0.5, and 1 steps. For this oddity it cannot be represented anywhere

7 on the white keys of the keyboard, and doesn't t the Kodály Greek mode system. Ottoman musicians generally narrow the 1.5-step interval by sharpening the second and attening the third. They refer to the Western- pitched intervals as hard and the narrowed intervals as soft. In Arabic, practice seems mixed. Many recordings have hard intervals. But recently I heard the singer for Boston's Arabic ensemble, the Noor Ensemble, give the call to prayer in Hicaz, and it was extremely soft. Listen and experiment! Contrary to Western expectation, tunes (in Ottoman and Arabic) that use Hicaz usually start on the fourth or fth and eventually resolve downwards to the tonic, rather than starting on the tonic and rising. A tetrachord related to Hicaz is Nikriz. This is an illustration of how changing the tonal center changes character. Take the Hicaz tetrachord on C, and add the B-at below C (1 whole step below); the B-at will be tonic. This tetrachord (or rather pentachord) would not extend to G. This is the Nikriz tetrachord. I nd this a very merry tetrachord. Apologies if I sound like Charles Dickens, but the word merry is inescapable. Noodle around with Nikriz and you'll want to dance.

3.4 Additional tetrachords based on U³³ak 3.4.1 Hüseyni The Hüseyni tetrachord is U³³ak, only extended to the fth rather than stopping at the fourth. (So technically it is a pentachord.) This sounds pedanticwhy does this minor dierence merit its own name? There is more at work here than notes: Hüseyni also refers to a compositional pattern in which a melody moves immediately from the rst to the fth, explores an U³³ak tetrachord rooted on the fth, and then works its way down through U³³ak rooted on the tonic. Çargâh (major) on the fourth is frequently expressed during the descent. During the resolution to tonic the player typically attens the microtonal second even more, leaning into it as a form of artistic expression, much as a blues musician would lean passionately into the space between the minor and major third. Often a player would explore Çar- gah rooted on the fourth during the course of the extended expression. This pattern is so distinctive it receives its own name. I nd this compositional pattern particularly compelling and evoca-

8 tive; in other words, it's relatively easy to improvise through the Hüseyni pattern in a rewarding way. A large fraction of Armenian and Turkish folk music can be identied as falling within the Hüseyni pattern.

3.4.2 Saba Another variation on U³³ak is Saba, the tetrachord that is probably most foreign to Western ears. Where U³³ak has a whole step from the minor third to the fourth, Saba places Hicaz on the minor third. The second note of this Hicaz is a half step, or slightly sharper, and it is at this point that divergence from U³³ak is denitive. Saba rooted on D (per our diagram) has D, E (microtonal at), F, and G at (or F#), except that the G at is microtonally slightly higher than Western pitch, per the Hicaz tetrachord. A signicant feature of this is that Saba has three microtonal intervals in a row, all less than a whole tone. This is extremely odd from a Western perspective (where having even one microtonal interval is odd), and it's unusual from an Eastern perspective too. So it has a very distinctive tone, conveying passion, pain, sorrow, and urgency. Saba means morning in Arabic, and the rst call to prayer in a Muslim community is Saba. The rst call to prayer occurs one hour before sunrise and is intended to wake the community. There is a tradition of using particular makams for each of the ve daily Muslim prayers, but in my experience in Istanbul, only Saba in the morning is consistently applied. A Turkish friend explained that Saba sounds sad because one has to wake up and it's dark outside.

3.5 Additional tetrachords based on Segâh Recall Segâh, the microtonal variant of Kurdi. There are several no- table tetrachords that are variations on Segâh.

3.5.1 Müstear Move the F to an F-sharp and you get Müstear. This is often thrown in in a transitory way. It usually resolves back to Segâh.

9 3.5.2 Hüzzam Attach Hicaz rooted at Segâh's third (in our examples, G). This is Hüz- zam. For Hüzzam, it is typical to make Hicaz extra-soft by sharpening Hicaz's even more. It remains microtonal but approaches a whole step. This is not notated; it is just known by practitioners.

3.5.3 Eksik Segâh Another often-transitory related tetrachord is obtained by placing a buselik (minor) tetrachord on Segâh's third, here G. This is called eksik Segâh or little (diminished) Segâh.

3.6 Pençgâh One more tetrachord shows up occasionally: Pençgâh. It is like a Çargâh (major) pentachord, but where the half-step between the third and fourth is distinctive to major, Pençgâh raises the fourth to almost a whole step above the third. It's not obvious, but this note is just shy of an augmented fourth, so that the third, fourth, and fth could form an U³³ak trichord. In other words, if our tonic is C, we have C, D, E, F#, G, but in the Ottoman system a full sharp raises a note 4/9 of a step, so the distance between E and F# is 8 komas (8/9 of a step) rather than the Western full step. As an aside for completeness, in the Ottoman system a full at lowers a note 5/9 of a step, so that F# and G-at do coincide as they do in the Western theory, but they coincide on a note that is a little atter than Western pitch.

3.7 Summary of tetrachords Unless I've missed something obscure, the sections above describe the complete set of Ottoman tetrachords, modulo transpositions for a few more. (E.g., Iraq is Segâh transposed to a dierent root.) With these, you are prepared to study any makam. In summary, they are as follows: Those found in the Greek modes: Çargâh (major) Buselik (minor)

10 Kurdi (Phrygian) Those that are just like the previous three, only with one note microtonally attened: Rast U³³ak * Hüseyni, U³³ak extended to a fth * Saba, U³³ak extended with Hicaz on its third. Segâh Hicaz and cousin Nikriz Relatives to Segâh: Transitory: * Müstear * Eksik Segâh Hüzzam Pençgâh A recurring idea has been that microtones are not static or entirely determined from music notation; one must listen!

3.7.1 Modulations Music in the makam system explores melodies comprised of tetrachords and evoke their avor. The art also involves moving from one tetrachord to another. This can happen in several ways. 1. Tetrachord stacking We've already seen how scales can be obtained by stacking one tetrachord on another. A player will modulate from one tetrachord to another by moving among registers. There are typically two registers per octave. After exploring a tetrachord in a register, the musician will move up or down to another tetrachord. When behaving in this way, it appears that the musician is working with some sort of scale. This is fundamental to makam playing and such modulations are usually not transitory.

11 2. Shifting tonal center We've seen that tetrachords can overlap; they can dier by having dierent tonal center. It's not uncommon to transition between U³³ak and Rast by moving the tonal center one whole step. This modulation sometimes lasts for a number of seconds but usually resolves back to the home tetrachord. 3. Changing one note Sometimes the dierence between two tetrachords is one acci- dental. For instance, it's not unusual in Rast, when the melody turns on the third (where Segâh is rooted) to throw in Segâh's leading tone, evoking that tetrachord for a moment.

4 What is a makam?

Now we are in a position to address the magical question intelligently. A makam is a structure that guides a composition or improvisation; it has a home-register tetrachord and one or several possible upper- register tetrachords. It has a general path (seyir). I heard someone say a makam is like a song half-written. A general idea is there but you have to ll it out. There is a vast literature describing the various makams. I won't try to add to it; rather, you are now in a position to appreciate it yourself.

5 Additional resources

Here are resources for further exploration: Fans of Ottoman music have uploaded enormous numbers of recordings to https:/YouTube.com. Thanks to Google's search algorithm favoring popular items, if you type in the name of a tetrachord or makam you will quickly get the warhorses for that makam. http://neyzen.com maintains a large archive of sheet music for Ottoman pieces. I recommending nding accompanying audio recordings, because reading the sheet music alone doesn't convey they sense of the piece.

12 http://oudipedia.info/ has information, especially on Ot- toman music, and including rhythms (an entire topic not ad- dressed here). (It seems now to be inactive, but perhaps it will return in the future.) http://maqamworld.com includes information on makams and rhythms for Arabic music only.

6 Additional context

6.1 Cultural context I focus here on Ottoman art music, even though my own interests are very broad, as yours probably are as well. I think it's productive to focus on a single concrete, deep tradition and move on from there, rather than trying to convey a confusing mish-mash. It happens that I know Turkish better than Arabic. Also, some historical context is in order. We must start with the historical reality that the Ottoman empire, based in Turkey, ruled over a vast region of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Eastern Europe for ve centuries. The Ottomans were not uniquely imperialseveral exceptionally large empires preceded it in the same regionsbut they particularly inform aairs today because they were last.1 Consider for a moment that some of our music enjoys state support, in academic departments and conservatories funded by tax dol- lars (including grants to students), and in grants to arts institutions. Non-prot organizations also funnel donor support, much of it from the wealthy of society. The beneciaries of this support are the canon of Western music, the stu musicians need to learn even if they don't perform it professionally; that is, Western Classical and, increasingly, jazz. Gospel, blues, rock-n-roll, Cajun, and others do not enjoy this degree of support. Still, they exist. And even if you don't like Classical or jazz, the study of them maintains a common language and a level of technical prociency.

1The Ottomans were succeeded by a period of British and American dominance that continues today. That is, we have become the imperial power. However, British and American authorities currently exercise authority in less formal ways, and resist the term empire.

13 The situation was similar for Ottoman art music. Composers working within the Ottoman system developed, discussed, and wrote down theoretical ideas. They wrote down scores using a custom notation scheme (invented by an Armenian at the Sultan's request, incidentally). Arabic musicians, and others continuing in their own indigenous, non-Ottoman traditions, were not accorded these resources. Yet their work lived on in folk traditions.2 So on the one hand Ottoman music is an excellent repository of knowledge, curated by the nest minds of its day; on the other hand, it does not represent everyone. (Honestly, the previous paragraph constitutes quasi-informed con- jecture on my part. I don't really know exactly how Arabic musicians related to the Ottoman system, and I'm curious. If you know, send me a note!) To be precise, the Turkish/Arabic distinction is itself overly sim- plistic. The appropriate distinction would be Ottoman art music, and everything else. Among everything else, there is variety, relationships, and borrowing, largely following geography and cultural history, as is the case with all folk traditions. In light of all this, I chose to be precise and refer to Ottoman music, or Ottoman art music, rather than merely Turkish. This might overly compensate, and suggest that Ottoman music is wholly distinct and does not inform other traditions. In fact Ottoman music is extremely valuable to understand many folk traditions located near Istanbul (Greek, Anatolian, Armenian. . . ). Art music usually grows out of its surroundings; if you listen to Austrian folk music, for example, you'll recognize the sound palette that Mozart drew on.

6.2 A plea for attention to tonality Here is a brief history of music, as it pertains to the precise pitches of notes: For millenia, musicians and mathematicians pondered the intervals between notes and their impact on our emotions. 500 years B.C., Pythagoras and his followers studied and discussed ratios of frequen- cies. When Roman Emporor Constantine moved the imperial capitol to Constantinople and built the Hagia Soa cathedral, Christian liturgical

2Incidentally, this applies to all traditions other than the imperial music centered in Istanbul; this includes various Turkish folk traditions.

14 music drew on Byzantine traditions that involved multiple note interval sets, which were in fact the inspiration for using the keyboard diagrams in this essay. Arab theoriest al-Farabi (870-950) wrote Kitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir, The Great Bookk of Music, which describes whole-tones, half-tones, and quarter-tones, and is also the rst use of the word music in writing. These are only the written references of which we know, regarding tonal intervals. No doubt the ideas were extant in their societies, and musicians in their societies must have been exploring tonality empiri- cally in order to motivate this thinking. Also, it's likely that there was a degree of communication among these societies over time. All in all, in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, we see a long history of attention to tonal intervals and their aects. People tried things, adopted certain practices, advocated for this or that, largely on the basis of what sounded best. Some centuries later in Europe, classical musicians adopted our modern 12-tone equal-temperament system. This simply spaces out all notes equally, without regard to the emotional impact of particular intervals. Why? So that tonal intervals would remain the same when musicians transposed keys.3 It may also facilitate the use of chords or other harmonic development. (I'm not sure; possibly harmonic development with Turkish temperament would sound great, I've never tried.) This led to a owering of Western music as we know it today, and certainly there is a lot of compelling music that makes use of this system. But let's be clear: it shuts the door on millenia of attention to tonality. In fact, it is a type of cultural colonialism; it holds that anything musical that happened prior to 1400, outside of Europe, is little more than a primitive curiosity, irrelevant to modern times. In fact, when I hear a classical concert now, and I listen to an hour's worth of music that is devoid of any microtones at all, it seems to me the music is impoverished. It has failed to explore certain areas that my mind, and heart, long to go. To play (or appreciate) makam music well, players and listeners must develop an ear for tonality. In the makam tradition, tonality is modulated for artistic expression.

3Discarding ancient traditions in favor of technical sophistication for sophistication's sake strikes me now as a distinct cultural statement, and one that we will eventually take back.

15 6.3 Makam theory is not really theory This essays says again and again to let your ears be your guide. I'm going to take this a step farther: I'm coming to believe that the makam system itself is, fundamentally, collating the cumulative experience (over generations) of experimenting, listening carefully, and naming patterns that work. The term theory suggests a system based on a small set of core concepts that are elaborated with increasing sophistication, as in math- ematics. If a grammar is a set of rules that describe how a living language works, then perhaps makam grammar would be more apt. The point is, a grammar for a living language is an attempt to nd patterns and principles in a body of examples that are already known to work. The Hüzzam tetrachord is an example. I mentioned in Section 3.5.2 that it includes an extra-soft Hicaz rooted on its third; in fact, its fourth (the second of the embedded Hicaz tetrachord) is so high it could be played as slightly shy of a whole step. (And I once saw it notated as such.) Why is Hüzzam's fourth special in this way? There is no principle to explain it. Simply, it has been found to sound compelling, so it was given a name. Even though Hüzzam is written down, its standard written form doesn't indicate this special quality. Therefore Hüzzam is an oral tradition passed by listening, and from teacher to student. This happens again and again in the makam system.

7 Acknowledgements

I've been very fortunate to have excellent teachers and to live in an area that has aorded me access to wonderful and informative experiences. One of my motivations in writing this essay is to make it easier for others who don't have these resources to gain some traction in this ancient and fullling tradition. Special thanks to Beth Bahia Cohen, who introduced me to Turkish music and has been my foremost teacher in this area. Any mistakes in this essay are mine. Thanks to Layth Sidiq, who has welcomed me into the Tufts Uni- versity Arabic Ensemble (Takht), and has given me wonderful exposure

16 and perspective. Thanks to Chris Pantazelos whose comments on Greek liturgical music theory and notation inspired the keyboard analogy so central to this essay. And thanks to all the musicians who have made the makam/maqam system the powerful living tradition that it is today!