Rauf Yekta's 12-tone temperament

Folks, the attached file contains the 12 tone (chromatic Turkish Maqam) temperament of Rauf Yekta given in his very long article published in the Lavignac Music Encyclopedia of1922 in Paris. He claims it to surpass the equal temperament in matters of purity of harmonic oscillation when polyphony is concerned. I would like your opinions on this temperament if possible.

Cordially,
Ozan Yarman

Hi Ozan,

This sound very nice on my keyboard. I don't know if you're familiar with Karl Signell's book, but his maqam spellings seem to work nicely with this scale when it a mapped to C (as Scala does by the default), although I don't know enough about Turkish music to judge how accurate the tuning is. I just played the "extra" accidentals, which he says come from the Ezgi-Arel system, as their closest sharp/flat, but I'm not sure if that's the best way to do it.

- Dave

> Folks, the attached file contains the 12 tone (chromatic Turkish > Maqam) temperament of Rauf Yekta given in his very long article > published in the Lavignac Music Encyclopedia of1922 in Paris. He claims > it to surpass the equal temperament in matters of purity of harmonic > oscillation when polyphony is concerned. I would like your opinions on > this temperament if possible.
> > Cordially,
> Ozan Yarman

Dear Dave, I have Signell's book and I hope to make use of it in my current
research.

As for Yekta's 24-tone Pythagorean scale that has been inherited by
Arel-Ezgi... it is in no way a complete (let alone a perfect) encapsulation
of maqam music I'm afraid. I have observed that the 11th, or as high as the
17th harmonics affect the nature of maqams immensely. By the way, do you
think it acceptable that Yekta and his predecessors expressed the limma by
the sharp instead of the apotome?

Best regards,
Ozan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Seidel" <dave@superluminal.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 08 Ocak 2005 Cumartesi 22:37
Subject: Re: [tuning] Rauf Yekta's 12-tone temperament

>
> Hi Ozan,
>
> This sound very nice on my keyboard. I don't know if you're familiar
> with Karl Signell's book, but his maqam spellings seem to work nicely
> with this scale when it a mapped to C (as Scala does by the default),
> although I don't know enough about Turkish music to judge how accurate
> the tuning is. I just played the "extra" accidentals, which he says
> come from the Ezgi-Arel system, as their closest sharp/flat, but I'm not
> sure if that's the best way to do it.
>
> - Dave
>
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@s...> wrote:

> Folks, the attached file contains the 12 tone (chromatic Turkish
Maqam) temperament of Rauf Yekta given in his very long article
published in the Lavignac Music Encyclopedia of1922 in Paris. He
claims it to surpass the equal temperament in matters of purity of
harmonic oscillation when polyphony is concerned. I would like your
opinions on this temperament if possible.

It's a form of Romieu's monochord, and really should be classed as a
scale rather than a temperament.

Thank you for the clarification dear Gene, it was my mistake of calling it a temperament in a rush, he actually classified it as a `chromatic scale`. Paul brought to my attention that every diatonic subset contains a wolf and thus the scale is wholly unsuitable for Western polyphony. I told him that the purpose was to polyphonize maqams, but I could not make heads or tails out of it. It sounds so terribly out of tune that I gave up trying to justify it.

Cordially,
Ozan
----- Original Message -----
From: Gene Ward Smith
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 14 Ocak 2005 Cuma 12:01
Subject: [tuning] Re: Rauf Yekta's 12-tone temperament

It's a form of Romieu's monochord, and really should be classed as a
scale rather than a temperament.