Mike's Oud Forums

History and current situation of Hijaz scale intervals in Egypt/Levant

yozhik - 3-25-2019 at 03:01 AM

I have now learned the scale for Maqam Hijaz from 3 different teachers. Of course, the maqam is more then these scale intervals and even these can be fluid in a performance, but what I am referring to here is what the teacher shows me when they say "OK, in today's lesson we will learn Hijaz. Here are the notes of the scale."

What I have noticed is that all 3 of my Arabic oud teachers (2 Egyptian teachers from Naseer Shamma's oud house and one Syrian teacher who is a music professor) have taught me Hijaz in the same way... and this way does not correspond with the traditional descriptions I've seen online and in this forum.

They teach it like this:

1. "Piano Hijaz" intervals (no attempt to shorten the distance between the Eb and F# when playing Hijaz on D)

D Eb F# G A Bb C D

2. No difference between ascending and descending intervals (i.e. upper jins is always Jins Nahawand never Jins Rast with a B half-flat quarter tone)

So descending is the same intervals as ascending, but reverse: D C Bb A G F# Eb D

As I understand Hijaz originated from the Gulf and originally had the shortened interval between the second and third notes, but at some point this was simplified to piano hijaz in Egypt? Is seems to me that this is now the more common version of Hijaz in Egypt, or do both versions exist side by side in Egypt depending on who you talk to?

Has this simplification also taken place in the Levant (since my Syrian teacher also taught me this version)?

And does anybody know when this simplification took place? Was it only because of the need to play together with Western instruments such as piano or was this an existing regional variation of the scale in Egypt unrelated to western instruments?

My second question is about using Jins Rast for the ascendning scale. Any guesses to why none of my teachers teach me this. At first I thought they were just avoiding quarter tones since I was a beginner, but it seems none of my teachers even acknowledge that the ascending variant with Jins Rast exists. They insist that it's a straight Jins Nahawand with no quarter tones (G A Bb C D).

So are the descending/ascending variatons sometime that is only used in a more strict classical music setting? And this distinction is not really used in Egypt in folk music or modern compositions?

yozhik - 3-25-2019 at 03:25 AM

And a follow-up question:

Who originally "decided" that Hijaz should use Jins Rast with a half-flat note when ascending, but normal Jins Nahawand with a normal flat when descending?

Did some local musician in some royal court in the Gulf decide that this just sounded better? And so he made some compositions using this a few centuries ago and thus it became codified in the Arabic classical music reportoire and passed down until now?

I don't know much about the pre-20th century historical developments, but as far as I understand, the thing which we call "Arabic music theory" for classical Arabic music is just the sum of various practices passed down and agreed upon by royal court musicians until the 20th century when there was more of an attempt to standardize things such as notation. And surely there has always existed variations of scales, both between different regions but also among players from the same regino. And surely there have always been simplifications used in folk music by non-classically trained people, etc.

So when jins/maqams are illustrated in this forum or in the Maqam World site, are what people really saying is "here is one of the most widely accepted ways of playing this particular maqam scale based on the sum of what people have actually performed the last few hundred years"? Or are there actually official treatises/tomes that have been written by "authorities" saying Maqam Hijaz "shall always be performed in this prescribed way"?

Brian Prunka - 3-26-2019 at 08:12 PM

Quote: Originally posted by yozhik  
And a follow-up question:

Who originally "decided" that Hijaz should use Jins Rast with a half-flat note when ascending, but normal Jins Nahawand with a normal flat when descending?

Did some local musician in some royal court in the Gulf decide that this just sounded better? And so he made some compositions using this a few centuries ago and thus it became codified in the Arabic classical music reportoire and passed down until now?

I don't know much about the pre-20th century historical developments, but as far as I understand, the thing which we call "Arabic music theory" for classical Arabic music is just the sum of various practices passed down and agreed upon by royal court musicians until the 20th century when there was more of an attempt to standardize things such as notation. And surely there has always existed variations of scales, both between different regions but also among players from the same regino. And surely there have always been simplifications used in folk music by non-classically trained people, etc.

So when jins/maqams are illustrated in this forum or in the Maqam World site, are what people really saying is "here is one of the most widely accepted ways of playing this particular maqam scale based on the sum of what people have actually performed the last few hundred years"? Or are there actually official treatises/tomes that have been written by "authorities" saying Maqam Hijaz "shall always be performed in this prescribed way"?


Most of these questions can be resolved by studying the recordings from the 1920s to the 1970s from Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria. They are mostly not anything any person 'decided' (with the exception of some very particular and rare makams from Ottoman Istanbul when it was the fashion to invent new makams).

There has been some pressure since the 1930s to "modernize (i.e., Westernize) Arabic music, and the effects are widespread. Someone like Naseer Shamma is a modernist, and wants the oud to emulate guitar, borrow Western technical concepts etc. Someone like Simon Shaheen is a traditionalist and is interested in carrying on the tradition of repertoire and subtle intonation. Both of these beliefs and approaches exist in the modern world.

Regarding Hijaz, the degree to which the intervals are compressed varies (and yes, guitar/keyboard/accordion will use the equal tempered intervals), but oud and violin, and more importantly singers do not play the 'piano intervals' if the players are traditional.
One could describe the "scale" without the B half-flat, but if you listen to the repertoire, 90% of it has the B half-flat.

The Ottoman court musicians had a large impact on the music, but there is much more to it than that—peasant flutes from the Levant have been found with microtones going back before Ottoman influence. There is a ton of maqam-based folk music that has nothing to do with court music, and the call to prayer is based on Arab traditions, not Turkish ones. The whole picture is complex, and I doubt anyone really knows where all the developments came from.

Close listening has 95% of the answers, theory and teachers maybe have the other 5% (though a good teacher can be a good guide to listening).

al-Halabi - 3-27-2019 at 12:46 PM

There are documented clues to shifts that occurred in the intonation of Hijaz during the modern period. Without going into too much technical detail, until around the middle of the 19th century Arabic and Turkish musical treatises always identified the second scale degree of the maqam as sikah/segah, just like the second degree of Bayati. During the second half of the century this second degree migrated downward, after hundreds of years in which it occupied the higher intonational position associated with sikah. In Turkish music theory it came to be identified as dik kürdi, a note that is slightly (one comma) higher than the note kurdi (equivalent to e-flat in the Arab rendition of the scale). Arab music theory identified the same note in the scale as kurdi, although musicians attuned to the traditional intonation of Hijaz and its emotive effects have performed it a bit higher. In the process of change the third degree of Hijaz was slightly flattened as well.

This historical shift in the intonation of Hijaz altered the size of the maqam’s first three intervals. The second and third intervals became wider while the first narrowed. Pre-modern pieces in Hijaz and Uzzal, such as those in Cantemir's collection of notations, need to be performed with their contemporary intonation if one is to reproduce their authentic sound and feel.

Brian Prunka - 3-27-2019 at 01:01 PM

Quote: Originally posted by al-Halabi  
There are documented clues to shifts that occurred in the intonation of Hijaz during the modern period. Without going into too much technical detail, until around the middle of the 19th century Arabic and Turkish musical treatises always identified the second scale degree of the maqam as sikah/segah, just like the second degree of Bayati. During the second half of the century this second degree migrated downward, after hundreds of years in which it occupied the higher intonational position associated with sikah. In Turkish music theory it came to be identified as dik kürdi, a note that is slightly (one comma) higher than the note kurdi (equivalent to e-flat in the Arab rendition of the scale). Arab music theory identified the same note in the scale as kurdi, although musicians attuned to the traditional intonation of Hijaz and its emotive effects have performed it a bit higher. In the process of change the third degree of Hijaz was slightly flattened as well.

This historical shift in the intonation of Hijaz altered the size of the maqam’s first three intervals. The second and third intervals became wider while the second narrowed. Pre-modern pieces in Hijaz and Uzzal, such as those in Cantemir's collection of notations, need to be performed with their contemporary intonation if one is to reproduce accurately their authentic sound and feel.


This is a good point about pre-modern conceptions of the maqam and how it's natural to shift over time.

However, given the documented differences in modern times of discrepancies between theoretical concepts and performance practice, and the general lack of scientific rigor in the pre-modern treatises with regards to an observational/descriptive approach vs. a mathematical/prescriptive approach (not to mention the lack of methods by which to precisely measure pitch), I'm not convinced it's possible to definitively know the exact intonation with which pieces were performed in the era that predates sound recording.
Fretted instruments and flutes can provide clues, but lack the precision to make definitive claims.
Undoubtedly the second interval of hijaz used to be higher than it is now, or even 100 years ago, but whether it was ever actually equal to sikah (and the exact position of sikah) are not things I think we can truly know.

Regardless, most of the repertoire of Arabic music is well-documented in recordings and one can certainly learn the standards of the modern period that way. While hijaz has widened over the course of the 20th century (easily observed even in just Oum Kulthoum's recording career), it is still noticeably narrower than equal temperament, and the second degree in particular is higher than the enharmonic 'kurd' note.

I'd also suspect that Yozhik's teachers may not conceptualize the notes as being different, but may in fact play them differently without conscious effort to do so if they are playing by ear at all.

al-Halabi - 3-27-2019 at 06:04 PM

Brian,

You are right, there are many things we don’t know with exact precision about intonation and musical practice in past centuries, when recordings and modern scientific measuring techniques were not available. But I am not sure how this leads to questioning or minimizing the usefulness of the rich historical data to be found in premodern Arabic and Turkish writings on music (about which I happen to know a thing or two). They often contain amazingly detailed information and display scholarly rigor and intimate knowledge of practice as well as of theory. Many of the treatises were in fact written by practitioners who brought to their analyses a personal knowledge of instruments, fretting, intervals, and actual usages, not just abstract theoretical information divorced from musical practice. The authors include many Syrians and Egyptians, who provide a picture of the musical systems and practices current in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman empire (which display some specific local elements not found in the imperial capital of Istanbul). Numerous examples can be cited, but I’ll mention just a few with reference to what they reveal about the configuration of maqam Hijaz in the more distant past.

Demetrius Cantemir, author of a masterful treatise on Ottoman music and its practice around 1700, was himself an accomplished tanbur player and composer. He provides an accurate diagram of the fretting of the instrument, indicating the name of each note that formed part of the Ottoman tonal system current in Istanbul. He devised a precise notation system accurate to the comma for the anthology of over 350 instrumental pieces he assembled. His diagram of the tanbur shows frets for dügah (the note a natural in current Turkish notation usage) followed by nihavend (b-flat), segah (b-half flat), and buselik (b natural). The frets for nihavend and segah are separated by some distance. He identified the third degree of the maqam as the note hicaz, not the currently used nim hicaz (which is one comma lower). Charles Fonton in his treatise on Ottoman music written in 1751 provided a similarly accurate diagram of the tanbur he played during his many years in Istanbul, indicating the same intervals.

Mikha’il Mushaqa, the Damascene author of an important music treatise written in the mid-19th century, was an oud player whose descriptions of the tonal system, intervals, and modes are replete with details drawn from contemporary practice, including his own. He gives the first tetrachord of maqam Hijaz as dugah, sikah, hijaz, and nawa. The tonal system of his day included nim kurdi and kurdi between dugah and sikah, but neither appears in the seyir he gives for maqam Hijaz. He does note that some players were more recently performing the third degree of the maqam with the note nim hijaz instead of the traditional hijaz (that is, lowering the third degree by about a comma). A shift in intonation was apparently underway.

In responding to the initial questions raised about Hijaz I thought that some members of the forum might find it of interest that it was for long periods in the past played using the note sikah, which we don’t today associate with the maqam; that even if we don’t know what the exact intonation of sikah was in different contexts, we do know from the texts on music that it was definitely higher than the second degree of the maqam as played today; and that the intervals of the first tetrachord used to be rather different from the way we hear and play them today. More could be said but I’ll leave it at that.

Brian Prunka - 3-28-2019 at 08:25 AM

Thanks, that's very interesting information. The tanbur is an interesting example because of the unusually precise fretting.

It is really fascinating the ways in which this music has changed over time, and the arbitrariness of many of the intervals used.