In Arabic music a maqaam (Arabic: مقام‎, Hebrew: מקאם) is, "a technique of improvisation" that defines the pitches, patterns, and development of a piece of music and which is "unique to Arabian art music." To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require restructuring. ... The Arabic language ( ), or simply Arabic ( ), is the largest member of the family of Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew, Amharic, and Aramaic. ... Hebrew redirects here. ... Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. ... Musical development is the transformation and restatement of initial material, often contrasted with musical variation, with which it may be difficult to distinguish as a general process. ...

There are over seventy heptatonic tone rows or scales of maqaamat. These are constructed from major, neutral, and minor seconds (see Arab tone system). (Touma 1996, p.38, 203) In music a heptatonic scale is a scale (music) with seven (hepta) degrees. ... In music, a tone row or note row is a permutation, an arrangement or ordering, of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. ... In music, a scale is a set of musical notes that provides material for part or all of a musical work. ... A major second is one of three commonly occuring musical intervals that span two diatonic scale degrees; the others being the minor second, which is one semitone smaller, and the augmented second, which is one semitone larger. ... A neutral second is a musical interval half-way between a minor second and a major second. ... A minor second is the smallest of three commonly occuring musical intervals that span two diatonic scale degrees; the others being the major second and the augmented second, which are larger by one and two semitones respectively. ... The modern Arab tone system, or system of musical tuning, is based upon the theoretical division of the octave into twenty-four equal divisions or 24-tone equal temperament, the distance between each successive note being a quarter tone (50 cents). ...

Background

A maqaam is considered a melody type, and its counterparts in other musical cultures are widespread. These include the makam in Turkish music and Assyrian music , meqam in Kurdish music, echos in Byzantine music, muqam in Uyghur music, shashmakom in Uzbek music. In Indian music, a maqaam can be roughly compared to raga. All of these concepts roughly correspond to the mode in western music, although they may differ in detail depending on the specifics of the music theory to which they belong. The rhythmic counterpart of maqam in Arabic and Turkish music is usul. A melody type is a term used by musicologists and ethnomusicologists to represent a set of melodic formulas, figures, and patterns which are used in the composition of an enormous variety of music, especially non-Western and early Western music. ... The makam (pl. ... Turkish music includes the music of modern Turkey, together with related musics in neighbouring regions that once lay within the former Ottoman Empire, and closely related ethnic variants in Central Asia stretching as far as the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. ... Assyrian music is divided into three main sections or periods, The Ancient Period that is of (Ur, Babylon and Nineveh), The middle period or Tribal and Folkloric period, and the Modern Period. ... Traditionally, there are three types of Kurdish Classical performers - storytellers (çîrokbêj), minstrels (stranbêj) and bards (dengbêj). ... In the theory of byzantine music echos is the concept most akin to that of mode or maqam. ... Byzantine music is the music of the Byzantine Empire and by extension the music of its culture(s) as they continued in the Orthodox Christian parts of the population after the fall of the empire to the rule of the Ottoman Empire. ... A muqam is a musical mode or scale, an ordering of pitches or notes used to guide improvisation and composition. ... Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is dominated by Uyghurs, a Turkic people related to others from Central Asia. ... Uzbekistan is a Central Asian country inhabited primarily by Turkic Uzbeks. ... Indian music is: The music of India or Native American music This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Raga (rāg /राग (Hindi), raga (anglicised from rāgaḥ/रागः (Sanskrit)) or rāgam /ராகம் (Tamil)) are the melodic modes used in Indian classical music. ... In music, a mode is an ordered series of musical intervals, which, along with the key or tonic, define the pitches. ... Music theory is a field of study that investigates the nature or mechanics of music. ... In Ottoman / Turkish music theory, the term usul denotes a rhythmic pattern that forms the framework of a composition. ...

In Arabic, maqaam (مقام) literally means 'place'. An "essential, decisive factor in maqaam performance is that each describes the "tonal-spatial factor" or set of musical notes and the relationships between them, including traditional patterns and development of melody while leaving the "rhythmic-temporal component" is "subjected to no definite organization." A maqaam does not have an "established, regularly recurring bar scheme nor an unchanging meter. A certain rhythm does sometimes identify the style of a performer, but this is dependent upon his [sic] performance technique and is never characteristic of the maqaam as such." The compositional or rather precompositional aspect of the maqaam is the tonal-spatial organization including the number of tone levels and the improvisational aspect is the construction of the rhythmic-temporal scheme (Touma, 1996 p.38). The Arabic language ( ), or simply Arabic ( ), is the largest member of the family of Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew, Amharic, and Aramaic. ... This article is about music. ... Look up melody in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Musical composition is: an original piece of music the structure of a musical piece the process of creating a new piece of music // A musical composition A piece of music exists in the form of a written composition in musical notation or as a single acoustic event (a live performance... In music, precompositional decisions are those decisions which a composer decides upon before or while beginning to create a composition. ...

The notes of a maqaam are not of equal temperament (meaning that the difference in pitch between each note is not identical, unlike in the chromatic scale used in modern Western music). A maqaam also determines other things, such the tonic (starting note), the ending note, and the dominant note. It also determines which notes should be emphasised and which should not. (ibid, p.38-9) An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or system of tuning, in which an interval, usually the octave, is divided into a series of equal steps (equal frequency ratios). ... The chromatic scale is the scale that contains all twelve pitches of the Western tempered scale. ... The tonic is the first note of a musical scale, and in the tonal method of music composition it is extremely important. ... In music, the dominant is the fifth degree of the scale. ...

Because the names of notes are often constant across different maqaamat, it is possible to play music under a maqaam different from the one it was written for. By employing different maqaamat, one can produce different moods for the same piece of music.

The Iraqi genre of maqam al-iraqi is often considered the most perfect form of the maqaam. (Touma 1996, p.55) Maqam al-iraqi is a four hundred year old genre of Arab music found in Iraq and often considered the most perfect form of maqam. ...

Passages

Maqaam performance features a series characteristic pauses which separate and distinguish melodic passages within which, "the tonal-spatial aspect is more fully developed. In each new melodic passage, something musically new happens."

Phases and central tones

Each passage consists of one or more phases which are sections "played on one tone or within one tonal area," and may take from seven to forty seconds to articulate. For example, a tone level centered on g:

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (852x86, 2 KB)Maqam tone level example Created by Hyacinth using Sibelius and Paint. ...

(ibid, p.40)

The tonal levels, or axial pitches, begin in the lower register and gradually rise to the highest at the climax before descending again, for example (in European-influenced notation): In music a melodic mode (van der Merwe 1989, p. ...

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (848x73, 2 KB)Arab maqam phase sequence example (Touma 1996, p. ...

(ibid, p.41)

"When all possibilities of the musical structuring of such a tone level have been fully explored, the phase is complete." (ibid, p.41)

Nucleus

The central tones of a maqaam are created from two different intervals. The eleven central tones of the maqaam used in the phase sequence example above may be reduced to three which make up the "nucleus" of the maqaam:

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (847x71, 1 KB)Example maqam nucleus Created by Hyacinth using Sibelius and Paint. ...

(ibid, p.42)

The tone rows of maqaamat may be identical, such as maqaam bayati and maqaam 'ushshaq turki:

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (850x76, 2 KB)Maqam bayati and ushshaq turki tone row The backwards flat sign indicates a quarter tone flat. ...

but be distinguished by different nuclei. Bayati is shown in the example above, while 'ushshaq turki is:

Image File history File links Download high resolution version (851x76, 1 KB)Maqam ushshaq turki nucleus Created by Hyacinth using Sibelius and Paint. ...

Emotional content

Each maqaam evokes a specific emotion or set of emotions determined by the tone row and the nucleus, with different maqaamat sharing the same tone row but differing in nucleus and thus emotion. Maqaam rast evokes pride. Maqaam bayatī: vitality, joy, and femininity. Sīkah: love. Saba: sadness and pain. Hijaz: distant desert.

Emotion is evoked in part through change in the size of an interval during a maqaam presentation. Maqaam saba, for example, contains in its first four notes, D, E-quarter-flat, F, and Gb, two neutral seconds one larger (160 cents) and one smaller (140 cents) than a three quarter tone, and a minor second (95 cents). Further, E-quarter-flat and G-flat may vary slightly causing a "sad" or "sensitive" mood. (ibid, p.45)

Ajnas

Maqaamat are constructed of ajnas (singular jins), or sequences of intervals. They will either be tricords (three notes), tetracords (four notes), or pentacords (five notes). Every maqaam has an upper and lower jins. The first note of the upper jins is the dominant note in the maqaam. Maqamaat are classified by the name of their lower jins. In music, especially in musical set theory, a trichord is a collection of three pitch classes, often one of the four ordered trichords in a tone row or set form. ... The tetrachord is a concept of music theory borrowed from ancient Greece. ... A pentachord is a perfect fifth divided into four subintervals by five tones. ... The word dominant has several possible meanings: In music theory, the dominant or dominant note (second most important) of a key is that which is a perfect fifth above the tonic; in just intonation the note whose pitch is 1. ...

• Tricords: Ajam, Jiharkah, Sikah, Mustaar
• Tetrachords: Bayati, Busalik, Hijaz, Kurd, Nahawand, Rast, Saba, Zamzama
• Pentachords: Athar Kurd, Nawa Athar

Principal 9 maqamat by lower jins

• Ajam: Ajam, Jiharkah, Shawq Afza
• Sikah: Bastanikar, Huzam, Iraq, Mustaar, Rahat El Arwah, Sikah, Sikah Baladi
• Bayati: Bayatayn, Bayati, Bayati Shuri, Husseini, Nahfat
• Nihawand: Farahfaza, Nahawand, Nahawand Murassah, Ushaq Masri
• Rast: Mahur, Nairuz, Rast, Suznak, Yakah
• Hijaz: Hijaz, Hijaz Kar, Shadd Araban, Shahnaz, Suzidil, Zanjaran
• Saba: Saba, Saba Zamzam
• Kurd: Kurd, Hijaz Kar Kurd
• Nawa Athar: Athar Kurd, Nawa Athar, Nikriz

Source

• Touma, Habib Hassan (1996). The Music of the Arabs, trans. Laurie Schwartz. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. ISBN 0-931340-88-8.

Also see

Pizmonim Pizmonim (Hebrew פזמונים, singular pizmon) are traditional Jewish songs and melodies that praise God. ...

External links

• Maqamat
• [1]
• [2]
• Maqam World
• Maqam World: What is a Maqam?
• [[3]]
• Maqam Sampling (Jewish Sephardic)
• Historical audio examples from different maqams, arabic page