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Oransay described makam (Turkish makam,
plural makamlar; Arabic maqam,
plural maqamat) as 'composition rules'.
They are definite scales which are governed
by certain rules which we will talk about
later. A makam has no intrinsic (allegorical)
value and is not bound to certain times of
the day or year, as is the related Indian
raga. The makam names designate an
important note in the scale (i.e. Turkish
Cargah, Arabic Chahargah: fourth
position), or a city (i.e. Esfahan,
it is sometimes spelled as Isfahan),
a landscape (i.e. Turkish Hicaz, Arabic
Hijazi), a person (i.e. Kurdi)
or a poetic abstraction (i.e. Suzidil:
heart glimmer).
Makam principally
distinguishes the eastern classical tradition
from western musical practice. Based on the
use of untempered intervals (with as many
as 53 microtones amplifying the western octave),
a given makam follows a particular
scale and a set of associated musical practices.
Each makam joins a tetrachord (Turkish
dortlu), and a pentachord (Turkish besli).
Certain rules/characteristics of a makam
may include the entry tone (Turkish giris,
Arabic mabda), the final tone (Turkish
karar, Arabic qarar) which may
or may not be the same tone as the entry tone,
the leading tone (Turkish yeden), dominant
(Turkish guclu) and tonic (Turkish
durak), as well as stressed secondary
tonal centers. The seyir (path, way)
(Arabic zahir) of a makam is
determined by the direction of the melody,
which may be either ascending (Turkish cikici)
or descending (Turkish inici) or a
combination of the two (Turkish inici-cikici).
Range (makam may be extended above
and below the octave without repeating), modulation,
temperament, melody types, and cadential endings
(i.e. suspended cadences) may also determine
a makam's make-up. Compound makamlar
exist which combine elements from two
makamlar. Thousands of makamlar
have been theoretically conceived though only
a few hundred have been used. Of these, about
one hundred have been fully developed into
musical settings.
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The computation of the exact sizes of
the microtones and the notation of makam
are rather complicated, and several alternatives
were presented at the Cairo Congress on
Arab Music in 1932. Some of the scale
systems discussed at this meeting were
obtained through mathematical computation
and some were established experimentally.
The most important systems were those
presented by representatives of the Royal
Institute of Arabian Music in Cairo, by
Idris Ragib Bey and I. Shalfun of Egypt,
by Xavier Maurice Collangettes of the
University of St. Joseph in Beirut, the
Turkish system of Rauf Yekta Bey from
the Conservatory of Turkish Music, and
the system of Shaykh Ali al-Darwish (student
of Rauf Yekta Bey). The differences between
theorists and musicians, as well as modern
research on the tonal structure of vocal
and instrumental music indicate that none
of these systems provides an accurate
description of actual musical practice.
They are merely convenient tools for prescriptive
and didactic purposes. Conservatories,
musicians and theorists in different countries
use different scale systems which leads
to the differences in the notations of
accidentals and makam names.
It is impossible for us to explain all
the different systems or makamlar.
In the "Music" section of this
web-site, there are a few pieces by famous
Turkish composers. Because of our Turkish
musical background and to understand the
accidentals and the pieces better we would
like to say a few words about the Arel-Ezgi
system. In Turkey, Rauf Yekta Bey's work
was continued by Subhi Ezgi and Sadettin
Arel. The system they came up with, later
know as the Arel-Ezgi system, is the most
widely practised system currently. The
Arel-Ezgi system consists of a theory
of intervals, involving such discrete
intervals as the koma (comma).
Every whole step is divided into 9 commas
and accidental markings indicate raising
or lowering the pitch by 1, 4, 5, 8, and
9 (which is the double sharp/flat) commas:
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