Arabic Maqams

[Michelle Benitone]

Intraditional Arabic music, maqam (Arabic: مقام, romanized: maqām, literally "ascent"; pl. مقامات maqāmāt) is the system of melodic modes, which is mainly melodic. The word maqam in Arabic means place, location or position. The Arabic maqam is a melody type. It is "a technique of improvisation" that defines the pitches, patterns, and development of a piece of music and is "unique to Arabian art music".[1] There are 72 heptatonic tone rows or scales of maqamat.[1] These are constructed from augmented, major, neutral, and minor seconds.[1] Each maqam is built on a scale, and carries a tradition that defines its habitual phrases, important notes, melodic development and modulation. Both compositions and improvisations in traditional Arabic music are based on the maqam system. Maqamat can be realized with either vocal or instrumental music, and do not include a rhythmic component.

An essential factor in performance is that each maqam describes the "tonal-spatial factor" or set of musical notes and the relationships between them, including traditional patterns and development of melody, while the "rhythmic-temporal component" is "subjected to no definite organization".[2] A maqam 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 their performance technique and is never characteristic of the maqam as such."[2] The compositional or rather precompositional aspect of the maqam is the tonal-spatial organization, including the number of tone levels, and the improvisational aspect is the construction of the rhythmic-temporal scheme.[2]

The designation maqam appeared for the first time in the treatises written in the fourteenth century by al-Sheikh al-Safadi and Abdulqadir al-Maraghi, and has since been used as a technical term in Arabic music. The maqam is a modal structure that characterizes the art of music of countries in North Africa, the Near East and Central Asia. Three main musical cultures belong to the maqam modal family: Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

The notes of a maqam are not always tuned in equal temperament, meaning that the frequency ratios of successive pitches are not necessarily identical. A maqam also determines other things, such as the tonic (starting note), the ending note, and the dominant note. It also determines which notes should be emphasized and which should not.[3]

Arabic maqamat are based on a musical scale of 7 notes that repeats at the octave. Some maqamat have 2 or more alternative scales (e.g. Rast, Nahawand and Hijaz). Maqam scales in traditional Arabic music are microtonal, not based on a twelve-tone equal-tempered musical tuning system, as is the case in modern Western music. Most maqam scales include a perfect fifth or a perfect fourth (or both), and all octaves are perfect. The remaining notes in a maqam scale may or may not exactly land on semitones. For this reason maqam scales are mostly taught orally, and by extensive listening to the traditional Arabic music repertoire.

Since accurately notating every possible microtonal interval is impractical, a simplified musical notation system was adopted in Arabic music at the turn of the 20th century. Starting with a chromatic scale, the octave is divided into 24 equal steps (24 equal temperament), where a quarter tone equals one-half of a semitone in a 12 tone equally-tempered scale. In this notation system all notes in a maqam are rounded to the nearest quarter tone.

This system of notation is not exact since it eliminates many details, but is very practical because it allows maqamat to be notated using standard Western notation. Quarter tones can be notated using half-flats ( or ) or half-sharps (). When transcribed with this notation system some maqam scales happen to include quarter tones, while others don't.

In practice, maqamat are not performed in all chromatic keys, and are more rigid to transpose than scales in Western music, primarily because of the technical limitations of Arabic instruments. For this reason, half-sharps rarely occur in maqam scales, and the most used half-flats are E, B and less frequently A.

The 24-tone system is entirely a notational convention and does not affect the actual precise intonation of the notes performed. Practicing Arab musicians, while using the nomenclature of the 24-tone system (half-flats and half-sharps), often still perform the finer microtonal details which have been passed down through oral tradition to this day.

The exact intonation of every maqam changes with the historical period, as well as the geographical region (as is the case with linguistic accents, for example). For this reason, and because it is not common to notate precisely and accurately microtonal variations from a twelve-tone equal tempered scale, maqamat are mostly learned auditorally in practice.

Each passage consists of one or more phases that 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:[4]

The central tones of a maqam are created from two different intervals. The eleven central tones of the maqam used in the phase sequence example above may be reduced to three, which make up the "nucleus" of the maqam:[6]

References on Arabic music theory often differ on the classification of ajnas. There is no consensus on a definitive list of all ajnas, their names or their sizes. However the majority of references agree on the basic 9 ajnas, which also make up the main 9 maqam families. The following is the list of the basic 9 ajnas notated with Western standard notation (all notes are rounded to the nearest quarter tone):

It is sometimes said that each maqam evokes a specific emotion or set of emotions determined by the tone row and the nucleus, with different maqams sharing the same tone row but differing in nucleus and thus emotion. Maqam Rast is said to evoke pride, power, and soundness of mind.[7] Maqam Bayati: vitality, joy, and femininity.[7] Sikah: love.[7] Saba: sadness and pain.[8] Hijaz: distant desert.[7]

In an experiment where maqam Saba was played to an equal number of Arabs and non-Arabs who were asked to record their emotions in concentric circles with the weakest emotions in the outer circles, Arab subjects reported experiencing Saba as "sad", "tragic", and "lamenting", while only 48 percent of the non-Arabs described it thus with 28 percent of non-Arabs describing feelings such as "seriousness", "longing", and tension", and 6 percent experienced feelings such as "happy", "active", and "very lively" and 10 percent identified no feelings.[8]

Generally speaking, each maqam is said to evoke a different emotion in the listener. At a more basic level, each jins is claimed to convey a different mood or color. For this reason maqams of the same family are said to share a common mood since they start with the same jins. There is no consensus on exactly what the mood of each maqam or jins is. Some references describe maqam moods using very vague and subjective terminology (e.g. maqams evoking 'love', 'femininity', 'pride' or 'distant desert'). However, there has not been any serious research using scientific methodology on a diverse sample of listeners (whether Arab or non-Arab) proving that they feel the same emotion when hearing the same maqam.

Attempting the same exercise in more recent tonal classical music would mean relating a mood to the major and minor modes. In that case there is some consensus that the minor scale is "sadder" and the major scale is "happier".[10]

Modulation adds a lot of interest to the music, and is present in almost every maqam-based melody. Modulations that are pleasing to the ear are created by adhering to compatible combinations of ajnas and maqamat long established in traditional Arabic music. Although such combinations are often documented in musical references, most experienced musicians learn them by extensive listening.

During the Islamic golden age this system influenced musical systems in various places. Some notable examples of this are the influence it had in the Iberian peninsula while under Muslim rule of Al-Andalus. Sephardic Jewish liturgy also follows the maqam system. The weekly maqam is chosen by the cantor based on the emotional state of the congregation or the weekly Torah reading. This variation is called the Weekly Maqam. There is also a notable influence of the Arabic maqam on the music of Sicily.[11]

The maqams (Arabic for position) can be called scales or modes and are common in music from the Middle East and in Turkish Ottoman classical music ("Makam" can be translated to scales or modes in Turkish). One of the things that distinguish a maqam from a scale is that a maqam sometimes uses quarter tones (a pitch between two semi-notes, such as a tone between F# and G).

There are lots of maqams which are organized into several groups and sometimes hard to grasp at the first moment. The scale illustrations below will give you an introduction to Arabic maqams. As you can see, the scales in different keys also have specific names. Maqams often begins on C, D, Eb (quarter-flat), F, G, A or Bb (quarter-flat).C (Hijaz Kar Maqam)

Notes: C, Db, E, F, G, Ab, B, C

There are two different types of hijaz that are constructed from 2 different tetrachords that utilize the interval of an augmented 2nd (1/2 step, aug. 2nd, 1/2 step x2 = different scales). Issa also taught us how to maneuver between maqams in Arabic music via closely related maqams. For example, bayati (d minor) is closely related to a Phrygian scale on g minor.

I have also been ruminating on another observation Issa made: that Western musicians learn form and harmony because that is what is emphasized most in music theory, so the construction of melodies is difficult for us and otherwise ignored in our education. I have always felt that this is true. Composing an attractive melody is difficult when you have never studied what makes a good melody, only what makes good voice leading. To study melodic structure, Issa suggested that we study poetry because it is rhythmically defined. Add notes to those rhythms, and we will begin to understand basic melodic structure.

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