Mike's Oud Forums

More seyir/sayir discussion

Masel - 7-24-2007 at 12:17 PM

Hi all, I know it's been discussed before but I think we can all learn from talking about it further, I mean of course the concept of seyir.

I think I have the right idea of it, as taught to me by my teacher (who knows everything there is to know about arabic music) but I know arab musicians are "accused" of not following the maqam's seyir as often as the turks do, so maybe my knowledge is less than I think it is?...

Could you give examples of maqams that don't start on the tonic (the only one I know of is hijazkar)? Also if you could be as detailed as possible... I've been learning for just under a year and the differences in feel, intonation, modulation and style of playing of the three maqams (bayat, rast, nahawand) we've really focused on is very clear to me, but in terms of structure they are pretty similar - start on the tonic, up the fifth degree (or fourth in bayat), the octave, then descend, very generall speaking.

I also try to analyze different samais to get a better understanding of the concept, but your input is always welcome as well. I guess what I'm asking first and foremost is how more or less would a turkish player build a taqsim on one of these three maqams.

adamgood - 7-24-2007 at 01:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Masel
Could you give examples of maqams that don't start on the tonic (the only one I know of is hijazkar)?


Makam Hüseyni is just one example, check out Lavtacı Andon's Peşrev:

http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=735&size=394

the "tonic" or karar is "A". Do you see how the piece starts on or around the pitch "E?"

then at the end of the teslim, it makes the karar very clearly on "A"

This is the very common peşrev that gets played for fasıl suites.

Adam

eliot - 7-24-2007 at 10:33 PM

Bestenigar. the tonic ONLY is found at the end of the hane or the piece, even. You can't even tell Bestenigar until quite a bit of time has passed in the piece... It's like Saba. Then it drops to Irak... I'm grossly oversimplifying things, but it's a classic example. Also, makam Muhayyer is defined as starting at the octave or even above the octave and descending to the karar.

adamgood - 7-25-2007 at 12:42 AM

Hi Eliot,

I would disagree about Bestenigar.

Numan Ağa's peşrev, perhaps:
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=127&size=394

Tatyos Efendi's no:
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=130&size=394

and this says it's Dede Efendi, I can't confirm but I would give it a no:
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=129&size=394

Numan Ağa Saz Semaisi, no:
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=135&size=394

The last three pieces show enough Irak so clearly you'd never confuse these pieces with makam Saba.

Still, the entry note is clearly çargah like you say, like the entry note of makam Saba.

Same with taksims, there are plenty where they'll show the pitch Irak.

You can also hear the difference of the "saba" part of Bestenigar...the Db is played a bit higher than the Db of makam Saba.

adam

eliot - 7-25-2007 at 02:16 AM

Adam,

Thanks for the examples of Bestenigar and your analysis.

I think I was oversimplifying my conception of things a bit, in the interest of focusing the answer on the "non-tonic-starting-makams." To clarify:

I'm thinking mainly of the 20 or so ilahis in Bestenigar, some which behave like Saba for a while, some which behave like Çargah for a while, some which could even be Dugah. Not to the extent that the whole seyir of the deceptive makam I'm mentioning is demonstrated, mind you. But they don't immediately indicate what the karar pitch might be, and often have "fake" karar pitches.

Regarding intonation, Necati Ç. and a few others claim that particular intonational difference you mentioned (the higher Db, which makam Çargah might also share, depending on who you ask) - I think it sounds cool, too, but not everyone plays it that way, and I've been scolded for playing it that way by "24 note hardliners" who refuse to acknowledge the wonderful world of 2 1/2 comma flat intervals. Maybe you've had the same experience, too? Anyway, I don't think intonation is a guaranteed difference.

But looking at that Numan Ağa peşrev example, I'd say the first 3.5 lines look like "textbook" makam Çargah, for example. Not until the 2nd measure of the teslim, when the sequence is clearly going to overshoot the C-karar on descent, does it feel certain that there's another true karar to come. This is one of the most known and cited Bestenigar works, too, not a freak work...

I think of Bestenigar as unique for the way it really drags out its avoidance of the karar. Other makams avoid their karar, but Bestenigar can be so slow in resolving there, and often barely spends any time there at all.

Other random makams the original poster might enjoy exploring:
Neva, Tahir, Gerdaniye, Evcara

eliot - 7-25-2007 at 02:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Masel
I think I have the right idea of it, as taught to me by my teacher (who knows everything there is to know about arabic music) but I know arab musicians are "accused" of not following the maqam's seyir as often as the turks do, so maybe my knowledge is less than I think it is?...


Note: I'll use the maqam/maqamat spelling to refer to Arab-world maqam entities, and makam to refer to Turkish entities, though they may in some instances be identical. The term "Turkish musicians" refers to musicians in late Ottoman and Republican Era Turkey who perform sanat music in urban settings. I'll use the term Arab classical musicians to refer mainly to well-known 20th century composers/performers in Cairo, Aleppo, Damascus, and Beirut, for lack of a more precise term

One thing that appears to have happened is that a bunch of previously separately named and conceived makams got lumped together into a small number of dense "super-maqamat." What Arab musicians do with and call maqam Hicaz, for example, may include bits of what Turkish musicians might split out into separately named entities (Hicaz, Uzzal, Hicaz Zirgule, for example), just perhaps in a different order and with a different emphasis than a Turkish musician might use. However, to take the example of maqam Rast/ makam Rast, in Turkey I'd argue that there were likely several makams (descending and ascending makams separated out) that got lumped together into what is now called makam Rast. There are pieces in Turkish Rast that, when you look at them, bear no seyir characteristics in common at all.

Compare
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=1667&size=394
with
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=1673&size=394

There's little in common other than the key signature... but in other makams one might find much more uniformity regarding seyir.

What I'm saying, is that similar things have happened in both Arab classical and Turkish classical music circles, though not consistently. Another thing is that Egyptian/Levent taqasim (Fareed al-Atrache is a good example) developed a more formal structure that was separate from the makam in ways - the jawab in Fareed's taqasim, for example, is a formal element separate from maqam considerations, but part of the compositional form. Whereas one could argue that some Turkish oud players perform taksims which are inseparable from the formal structure of makams, rather than taksims which have an external form in which maqam-derived melodies are placed.

It's a bit hard to express this with any accuracy (for me), and it's likely I'm not all that accurate anyway, but hopefully this will feed the conversation in a useful way.

PS: Thanks, Adam, for making publicly available the sanat music scores on your website! It's a great resource for everyone...

adamgood - 7-26-2007 at 03:32 AM

Eliot thanks for the great posts!

a couple of points:
1. Nice that you mention hane 1 of the Bestenigar Peşrev is like makam çargah. I never thought of it that way, i can now see that it shows more çargah than saba.

I'm on the lookout for çargah repertoire, any instrumental pieces. Like a peşrev or something. any ideas? There seems to be not too much repertoire, why would that be?

2. The comparison of the Rast pieces is tricky. I wouldn't say that the seyirs are any different.

The way I see it, the Haydar Tatliyay piece follows typical Rast seyir but at the most basic level. it starts on the tonic, although at the end of the 4th bar. Those notes before it are just fluff, ornamentation, not implying any seyir of any kind. after that it shows some segah.

by the 4th and 5th lines it's hanging around neva, the 5th as rast should.

The Benli Hasan piece is all that and then some, showing more of what Rast can do.

I'm sure there's lots more to compare.

For me a comparison that really makes me scratch my head:

Çargah Illahi
http://www.neyzen.com/images/notalar/ilahiler/cargah/ben_dervisim_d...

Çargah Peşrev
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=279&size=394

Çargah Sirto
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=281&size=394

I know very little about the "old Çargah" (like saba but makes karar on çargah) versus the "new Çargah" (like the white keys on the piano) but then the sirto is another thing. Did anyone shed any light on that for you Eliot?

adam

eliot - 7-27-2007 at 12:18 AM

Çargah is tricky, since everything got all messed up with the Ezgi/Arel redefinition of Çargah as "C major" which happened starting, I think, in the 1930s. The article that goes into that (maybe you know it, but for those who haven't read it) is by Owen Wright:
"Çargah" in Turkish Classical Music: History versus Theory." 1990.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 53 (2), pp. 224-244.

There's a couple of makam teachers (including one of mine, Şehvar Besiroğlu) who now teach makam Nigar as C major, and Çargah as Hicaz transposed to the pitch of Çargah (which conflicts with what I know from learning Çargah ilahis from other musicians). But where that Nigar makam came from noone knows.

Cantemir wrote a transcription of a Çargah Peşrev which began an ayin. I don't know if we have that entire ayin or not. There are quite a few Mevlevi and Sinani ilahis in Çargah (including the one you linked to, but many more as well), and one tesvih. I don't know of any beste, fasıl, şarkı, etc. in "real" Çargah, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. There could be pieces that are now listed as Saba or another makam that are really in Çargah.

If I get time, there's a nice Çargah ilahi I could transcribe - when I learned it it was presented as epitomizing the basic Çargah seyir. It begins and ends on Çargah, never goes below Rast, and doesn't make it up all the way to the octave.

The Çargah sirto you mentioned before is only labeled as Çargah because it's karar is that pitch (I've seen it labeled as Nikriz before, too). For my own sanity, when I find pieces like that, I don't try to analyze them "inside" the makam system, since they're kinda more like "melodic experiments" and don't really follow any traditional seyirs. But there are scholars in Turkey who will go out of their way to prove that, somehow, it can truly be thought of as Çargah, or Nikriz, or whatever. When the analysis becomes so much more convoluted than the melody sounds, it makes me wonder if the analysis is useful at all. I suppose one could even do a makam analysis of Schoenberg if one was patient enough... :rolleyes:

Good conversation, I'm curious to know what you've heard about Çargah!

-eliot
Quote:
Originally posted by adamgood
Eliot thanks for the great posts!

a couple of points:
1. Nice that you mention hane 1 of the Bestenigar Peşrev is like makam çargah. I never thought of it that way, i can now see that it shows more çargah than saba.

I'm on the lookout for çargah repertoire, any instrumental pieces. Like a peşrev or something. any ideas? There seems to be not too much repertoire, why would that be?

2. The comparison of the Rast pieces is tricky. I wouldn't say that the seyirs are any different.

The way I see it, the Haydar Tatliyay piece follows typical Rast seyir but at the most basic level. it starts on the tonic, although at the end of the 4th bar. Those notes before it are just fluff, ornamentation, not implying any seyir of any kind. after that it shows some segah.

by the 4th and 5th lines it's hanging around neva, the 5th as rast should.

The Benli Hasan piece is all that and then some, showing more of what Rast can do.

I'm sure there's lots more to compare.

For me a comparison that really makes me scratch my head:

Çargah Illahi
http://www.neyzen.com/images/notalar/ilahiler/cargah/ben_dervisim_d...

Çargah Peşrev
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=279&size=394

Çargah Sirto
http://www.adamgood.com/turkish_nota/piece.php?id=281&size=394

I know very little about the "old Çargah" (like saba but makes karar on çargah) versus the "new Çargah" (like the white keys on the piano) but then the sirto is another thing. Did anyone shed any light on that for you Eliot?

adam

adamgood - 7-27-2007 at 12:59 AM

Eliot,

Anything I've heard about Çargah I've now heard from you :)

Thanks for the info!

2 years ago I sat in on a class with Ömer Erdogular one day in Vienna and one of the pieces he handed out was Çargah. For the life of me I don't know what it was, could have been a peşrev or Illahi. I sent and email to a couple of my neyzen friends in Vienna to ask. Ömer is Mr. Repertoire so if he presented it, it must a good one. I'll let you know.

Then there's a track listed as Çargah Peşrev on the Bezmara CD "In Search of the Lost Sound" (hey...where'd my sound go?) which sounds like çargah happy major scale. But wait, I thought they only played really old music. If you have the CD, listen to it then imagine the D being played like Çargah Db and that could kinda work. Maybe it's like what you said about the Sirto, it does at least end on the pitch çargah.

eliot - 7-27-2007 at 10:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by adamgood
Then there's a track listed as Çargah Peşrev on the Bezmara CD "In Search of the Lost Sound" (hey...where'd my sound go?) which sounds like çargah happy major scale. But wait, I thought they only played really old music. If you have the CD, listen to it then imagine the D being played like Çargah Db and that could kinda work. Maybe it's like what you said about the Sirto, it does at least end on the pitch çargah.


It also could be that Bezmara actually believed what Ezgi and Arel wrote about Çargah and mauled the intonation of a piece. They certainly wouldn't be the first to do so! Owen Wright's research caused a stir, and not everyone agrees with his findings (though typically he's an impeccable historian).

TheCuddlyDevil - 7-29-2007 at 11:35 AM

I really think seyr (melodic developement) is a musical phonemenon worthy of extensive study, though I'm just not sure it should be followed strictly.

Constantly following Qaflat (melodic cadences as Brian Prunka aptly calls them) can make for phrases that are used through a number of pieces, this is why I think it's important to explore the lack of Sayr, or rather, an alternate form of melodic development.

I regular a poetry forum, and we tell most beginners (who insist on not following meter and structure) the same thing most of the time; "Learn the rules. Then break them." This also plays true for wester progressive music. I'm a big fan of Dream Theater, which uses lots of dissonance, changing time signatures, odd rhythms etc. And I love it! And I know for certain that none of that would sound half as good if they didn't know the general rules so that they know when to bend or break them.

I'm not trying to start something (since last time I said something like this some members got annoyed), I'm just sharing any thought. If there is any disagreement with me on any certain point don't hesistate to share your opinion.

Those are my two cents.

eliot - 7-29-2007 at 11:35 PM

I hear you... I'm often a major "seyir-breaker," myself... but more recently I've found that (for me) there is so much in obscure seyirs that can be used for creating new experimental music, too. So I learn them, and if they help me make recordings that I will listen back to later and say - "hey, that was pretty cool!" - I keep workin' on 'em!

I sincerely believe that good music needs to have structures and major limitations in which it's created. The makam system is one such structure/set of limitations, but is just one of many. Potentially, any structure or limitation set could work, whether it be traditional (Baroque voice leading, 3-chord rock, 12-bar blues) or never tried before (John Cage's compositions, after all, are explorations of new sets of limitations). Just find which structures/limits work best for you... makam's pretty good for me, I'm finding... :D