Re: Turkish music?

At 15:21 8/11/99 -0500, you wrote:
>From: "William S. Annis" <wsannis@execpc.com>
>
>
> >From: Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
> >
> >William!
> > Could you be so kind as to explain "seyir" to us. I think others
> >mouths are watering also!
>
> I will venture an explanation based on my feeble understanding
>attained so far.
>
> First, a maqam (pl maqamat; turkish makam, pl makamlar) is
>basically a mode. Now, as we all know from reading 16th century
>counterpoint textbooks, those church modes were not just *scales*, but
>patterns of use within those scales, with certain characterist melodic
>phrases and prefered cadences. (Yes, I know there are arguments
>against the phrases bit, but I don't care to deal with that now.)
>
> A maqam, like a mode, has a prefered cadence sequence, and a
>range of notes, a scale. Note that some maqamat do *not* repeat the
>scale at the octave. Anyway, I've never heard anything about defining
>phrases for maqamat, but one major way to distinguish two maqamat with
>the same pitch material is to pay attention to what tones are
>emphasized in a piece. [Given that the Persian dasgah system does use
>melodic phrases as part of the identity of a mode, I'd be very
>surprised if there were no element of this in Arabic and Turkish
>music, too.]
>
> During an improvisation (taqsim, pl taqaasim) -- most of this
>music is improvised -- the performer will over the course of the piece
>focus on certain regions of the scale of the maqam, with certain notes
>anchoring the whole thing. So, simply using A minor for an example,
>we might have a maqam that emphasizes, over the course of a taqsim, A
>c e a e c A. This is pretty western, since it's just the outline of
>the A-minor triad, then the octave, then back down. The performer
>will hit each region surrounding those notes, coming back to those
>notes several times, then moving on to the next region. A different
>maqam might emphasize A d e a e d A. My current understanding is that
>5ths are a popular part of these region sequences.

********************************************************************

This brief description does not contradict what I have been able to
squeeze out of master musicians of traditional Turkish music. I am
pleased to see you are making the distinction between 'mode' and
'makam'. I do not believe they are the same thing, or even close.
I have been trying desperately to capture and comprehend the basic
elements that make up a makam for some time now, without much success.
I have not yet seen in writing, in Turkish or in English, any such
attempt either. The closest thing I have read is a 60 page monograph
'Mode' by Harold Powers in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, 1980.
Some of the ideas in this monograph resonate with my 'fuzzy' perception
of makam.

********************************************************************
> Anyway, seyir (derived from Arabic sayr), means something like
>"path," so, the path a melody follows. Thus, just as in common
>practice music where for any piece in a major mode you were expected
>to dally about in the key of the dominant for a while, when playing a
>piece in maqam rast, you have to play about in certain note regions.
>
> This all gets hopelessly muddled because over the course of a
>taqsim a good player is also going run (modulate?) through various
>maqamat, each with their own seyir, of course.
>
> My biggest frustration is that no one has bothered to publish
>seyir collections on the web. I've heard of Turkish books of these,
>but I've never seen one.
********************************************************************

The reason, I believe, for the absence of such seyir collections
anywhere is tha fact that it is not a finite set that can be listed
within a finite amount of space. It appears there are infinitely many
admissible seyirs in every makam structure, as well as a complementary
infinite set of inadmissible paths.

********************************************************************

> So, I think the seyir represents a very interesting way to
>organize not only improvised music, but any music where you have long,
>non-metrical melodies. [Note: a taqsim is very free rhythmically.]
>
> So, back to the Sethares question for me: 1) how are the tones
>of a seyir related to the cadence note of a maqam? and 2) are certain
>maqam -- and their particular seyir more popular on certain
>instruments?
>
>--
>William S. Annis wsannis@execpc.com
>Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacia Lingvo www.esperanto.org
>
********************************************************************

I would appreciate if you could elaborate a bit more on these two
questions of yours. They sound interesting. Thank you.

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Dr. Can Akkoc
Alabama School of Mathematics and Science
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