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Maqam Analysis: a Primer

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Maqam Analysis: a Primer Fall Fall society for music theory 2013 volume 35, no. 2 fall 2013 music theory 35.2 Music Theory Spectrum S pectrum Peter Mercer-Taylor “Th e Calliope Crashed to the Ground”: Linear and Cyclic Time in Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s “Blinded by the Light” Mark Richards Beethoven and the Obscured Medial Caesura: A Study in the Transformation of Style Nicholas Stoia Th e Common Stock of Schemes in Early Blues and Country Music Sami Abu Shumays Maqam Analysis: A Primer Reviews by Deborah Burton, Chris Stover This content downloaded from 24.193.68.76 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 21:24:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Music Theory Spectrum Michael Cherlin (University of Minnesota), editor Mark Spicer (Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York), associate editor Christoph Neidho¨fer (McGill University), reviews editor Emily Vigne (University of Minnesota), editorial assistant Drew Nobile (City University of New York), editorial assistant David Hier (McGill University), editorial assistant Michael Duffy (University of Minnesota), technical consultant editorial board Vasili Byros (Northwestern University) Steven J. Cahn (Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music) Robert Cook (University of Iowa) Edward Gollin (Williams College) Kevin Holm-Hudson (University of Kentucky) David Kopp (Boston University) Victoria Malawey (Macalester College) Jose´ Oliveira Martins (Eastman School of Music) Ryan McClelland (University of Toronto) Danuta Mirka (University of Southampton) Jairo Moreno (University of Pennsylvania) Maryam Moshaver (University of Alberta) Robert Peck (Louisiana State University) Marianne Wheeldon (University of Texas at Austin) Anna Zayaruznaya (Yale University) The Editors and Board gratefully acknowledge the support of the University of Minnesota, the City University of New York, and McGill University in preparation of this issue. This content downloaded from 24.193.68.76 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 21:23:21 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Music Theory Spectrum the journal of the society for music theory volume xxxv, no. 2—fall 2013 table of contents peter mercer-taylor 147 ‘‘The Calliope Crashed to the Ground’’: Linear and Cyclic Time in Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s ‘‘Blinded by the Light’’ mark richards 166 Beethoven and the Obscured Medial Caesura: A Study in the Transformation of Style nicholas stoia 194 The Common Stock of Schemes in Early Blues and Country Music sami abu shumays 235 Maqam Analysis: A Primer REVIEWS 256 The Italian Traditions & Puccini: Compositional Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-Century Opera. By Nicholas Baragwanath. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011, xx þ 407 pages. Il Trittico, Turandot and Puccini’s Late Style. By Andrew Davis. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010, xiii þ 309 pages. Reviewed by Deborah Burton. 261 The Philosophy of Improvisation. By Gary Peters. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2009, viii þ 190 pages. Reviewed by Chris Stover. contributors 268 This content downloaded from 24.193.68.76 on Sat, 26 Oct 2013 21:25:25 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Maqam Analysis: A Primer sami abu shumays This paper analyzes 18 pieces of music from the Egyptian and Syrian maqam (Arabic melodic modal) tradition, with the following goals: 1) to demonstrate how to parse musical examples using the abstract information available on scale structure; 2) to challenge the conventional understandings of Arabic music theory, and offer new definitions of jins (tetrachord or scale type) and maqam (scale); and 3) to provide hypotheses as to the shape of the overall maqam system and suggestions for potentially fruitful avenues of research. Keywords: maqam, Arab, Arabic, Egypt, Egyptian, Syria, Syrian, jins, oral tradition, arbitrary, network, microtone, quarter-tone, Umm Kulthum, Mohamed Abdel-Wahhab, Farid al-Atrash, Sayyid Darwish, Riyad al-Sunbati, Zakaria Ahmed, muwashshah, improvisation, Middle-East, mode, modal, modulation, Bruno Nettl, Jihad Racy, Scott Marcus scope as a network of pathways among ajnas, rather than simply a scale or set of scales divided into tetrachords. This new perspective is he goal of this paper is to provide an accessible based in my experience as a practitioner: over the course of my introductory framework for the analysis of music study, performance, and teaching, I grew to feel that there was T within the maqam (modal melodic) traditions of Egypt a gap between the conventional understanding of maqam, and and the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine), a region that shares what I actually heard in the repertory and experienced through both repertory and an approach to melody. While much of what practice. is written here will also apply to many of the musics from related That conventional understanding is, to summarize: that maqam traditions (including Turkey, Iraq, the Arab Gulf, and maqamat are scales built from conjunct or disjunct tetrachords, parts of North Africa, and to a lesser extent traditions from Iran known as ajnas (singular: jins, meaning in Arabic ‘‘kind,’’ ‘‘type,’’ and Central Asia), I do not wish to make claims that are too or ‘‘gender,’’ derived from the Greek word genus, and translated as broad, nor that fail to respect the many subtle and not-so-subtle ‘‘genre’’ in some writings,2) and that maqamat are organized into differences among regional traditions. I have selected musical family groupings with others sharing the same lower (or root) jins. examples from Egypt and Syria to illustrate my points, all of Some sources also allow for the existence of pentachords (occa- which can be heard at http://www.maqamlessons.com/analysis. sionally are referred to as 3uquud rather than ajnas)aswellas The website contains much more than could be presented here: trichords. All of this is perfectly adequate for a description of scales complete analyses of 27 pieces of music (plus fragments from in the abstract, and on that level I have no major disagreement two more), broken down jins-by-jins into 819 audio samples with the presentations of scales on www.maqamworld.com or that illustrate more completely the same analytical points made elsewhere,3 such as shown in Examples 1a and 1b. in shorter form here. I feel strongly that the analyses and claims The major gap I feel exists between the theory and practice of made in this article cannot be understood without hearing the Arabic music is that, from what I have been able to understand, audio samples, so the reader is highly encouraged to follow the current theory in both Arabic and English amounts to little analysis track of the website and play those samples along with more than a description of scales. Not only does Arabic music the article itself. tend to violate the constraints of octave-based scales,4 but the Aside from addressing the general need for more maqam melodic content that uses those scalar skeletons is just as if not analyses in the music theoretical literature in English,1 this paper more important to treat theoretically as are the scales themselves. advances new ideas that differ significantly from the conven- By analogy, if Western tonal theory only dealt with descriptions tional view of maqam, as represented both in the theoretical of the diatonic scales, rather than accounting for common and literature and in the oral theory tradition of practitioners. The concept of jins is refined here, through the new concept of ‘‘jins 2 For example, Maalouf (2002). baggage,’’ as well as through the identification and naming of 3 For example, Al-Hilu (1958), who gives similar jins breakdowns over the ajnas not described in previous theory. The understanding of traditional double-octave scale. See also Marcus (1989, 1992, 1993, 2002, maqam (and sayir within maqam) is expanded to encompass the 2007), Allah Werdi (1948), Touma (1996), Maalouf (2002), etc. frequently occurring paths of common modulations from jins to 4 Maqam Saba is often presented as the one exception to octave equivalence, jins within a maqam. The shape of each maqam can be represented whereas a closer look at the repertory reveals that 1) numerous other maqamat in practice do not display octave equivalence, and 2) the factors leading Maqam Saba not to display octave equivalence (namely the power of 1 See Farraj (2007), Maalouf (2002), Marcus (1989, 1992, 1993, 2002, typical relationships among adjacent ajnas to outweigh octave relationships) 2007), Nettle and Riddle (1973), Racy (2004) and Touma (1996). apply generally to all of the maqamat. 235 236 music theory spectrum 35 (2013) A brief note about notation and intonation: in my tran- scriptions I will be using the fairly standard accidental symbols for the so-called ‘‘quarter-tone’’ notes: for ‘‘half-flat’’ (so that ‘‘E-half-flat’’ is a note roughly halfway between E-flat and E-natural), and for ‘‘half-sharp’’ (so that ‘‘F-half-sharp’’ is a note roughly halfway between F-natural and F-sharp). This example 1(a). Maqam Bayati (from http://maqamworld.com/ does not mean that I am claiming that Arabic music uses an maqamat/bayati.html). equal-tempered 24-tone schema out of which scales are built: to the contrary, not only was such a schema demonstrated false at the 1932 international conference of Arabic Music held in Cairo (attended by such well-known Western musicians and scholars as Bela´ Barto´k and Henry George Farmer),7 but it has been demonstrated that the intonation of the so-called ‘‘quarter- tones’’ differs from scale to scale, being higher in some scales than in others, and that
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