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This is actually a semai, not a peşrev, and while it is in his treatise, sources conflict on whether or not it belongs to Cantemir. The piece is here, but as the picture there is not very clear, I did try and get a slightly better one for you; it's a phone scan, but at least it's readable. (we're lucky that this is not a piece I annotated
)Also, this piece should likely be played a little bit faster than what Anton Pann Ensemble is playing; what looks like a tempo indication in the Owen Wright edition is simply 'vezin' (a technical indicator in Cantemir notation) and the piece number. This is of course not crucial for someone who is simply practicing, but for your information, I'll mention it anyway.
If you need help with another issue related to this piece (or any piece), please do ask; it's always nice seeing people who are interested in makam music.
Son düzenleme:
Thank you for the score! Some friends and I want to make a makam music ensamble but we are at the beggining. Now we have the problem of how to make the instrumental arrangement. There are some rules of making the instrumental arrangement? Unfortunetly we don't have in our group oriental instruments. We have only a percussionist(that's me), a violonist and a cimbalom player.This is actually a semai, not a peşrev, and while it is in his treatise, sources conflict on whether or not it belongs to Cantemir. The piece is here, but as the picture there is not very clear, I did try and get a slightly better one for you; it's a phone scan, but at least it's readable. (we're lucky that this is not a piece I annotated
Also, this piece should likely be played a little bit faster than what Anton Pann Ensemble is playing; what looks like a tempo indication in the Owen Wright edition is simply 'vezin' (a technical indicator in Cantemir notation) and the piece number. This is of course not crucial for someone who is simply practicing, but for your information, I'll mention it anyway.
If you need help with another issue related to this piece (or any piece), please do ask; it's always nice seeing people who are interested in makam music.
- Mesajlar
- 202
- Tepki Puanı
- 327
First of all, something that came to my mind. If you are a beginner, I would advise you to use an assortment of pieces to build up to the more complicated ones, instead of just one piece, as Cantemir's Geveşt Semai is not in a very typical makam nor an easy to understand usûl (rhythmic cycle). So, I'll delete the single piece, and upload a collection of pieces, but if that specific piece is all you want, that's also okay, I've included that in the assortment (as you can see below, piece number 10).
The assortment is as follows, I tried to order them based on difficulty:
(0 - Composer: Name and classification of piece)
1 - Anonymous: Semai in makam Buselik
2 - Anonymous (from Persia): Peşrev (Prelude) in makam Beyâti, usûl Düyek
3 - Tanburî Angeli: Peşrev (Prelude) in makam Kürdî, usûl Berefşân
4 - Dimitrie Cantemir: Peşrev (Prelude) in makam Muhayyer, usûl Muhammes
5 - Tanburî Angeli: Peşrev (Prelude) in makam Acem Aşîran, usûl Düyek
6 - Anonymous: "Elçi Peşrevi" ("The Ambassador's Prelude") in makam Irak, usûl Düyek
7 - Anonymous (from Persia): "Küme" ("The Mound") in makam Muhayyer, usûl Düyek
8 - Sultan Korkut: Peşrev (Prelude) in makam Kürdî/Hüseynî, usûl Devr-i Kebîr/Devr-i Hindî
9 - Dimitrie Cantemir: Peşrev (Prelude) in makam Bestenigâr, usûl Berefşân
10 - Dimitrie Cantemir or Anonymous: Semai in makam Geveşt (the original piece you requested)
These might help you build up to the semai in Geveşt. Alternatively, you can go to the end straight away, but Geveşt Semai is a relatively hard piece for a beginner. I also added English translations and suggested tempos by hand; my hand writing isn't exactly beautiful, but it does the job.
Also, I think a cimbalom, a violin and percussion is quite a good start! The violin has been in common use in makam music since the 18th century, along with other Western string instruments, such as viola da gamba and viola d'amore; and the cimbalom is basically the Eastern European cousin of the santur. The santur is now more common in the makam music of Iran, but used to also be common in the Ottoman Empire, so the cimbalom also fits. I think the only thing you may want to consider adding, is an instrument in a bass register; if you have a cello player around that might be useful.
About performance practice, I have a few suggestions:
1) You can transpose makam music to different 'keys' (the word we would use is âhenk), by shifting the entire tuning system around. For Western instruments, I would recommend one octave below what is written; of course, if you do end up playing with a cello or a bass instrument, that instrument specifically could play from two octaves below what is written.
2) Do not harmonize, ornament instead. In makam music (at least before the 20th century), music was never polyphonic in the Western sense. Musicians therefore played the same melodic contour, with different interpretations; in your case, the violin or a bass instrument might hold the long notes of the melody, while the cimbalom or another treble instrument plays all the details. Furthermore, you can be quite free in the way you use ornamentation, and you should never play an exact match of the notation. You should not, however, use chords in the way that Western classical music does.
3) Add dynamics on your own. These pieces do not contain any indication relating to dynamics, but we do know that musicians did get quieter and louder during certain sections. In this case, trust your ear, and get quieter and louder in the sections you want.
4) If a tempo suggestion is too fast/slow for you, change it. These are suggestions after all.
Best of luck!
Son düzenleme:
Wow! What an answer. I don't know how to thank you! For me as a begginer these tips are pure gold. Does exists any theory of makam music book? In my language (romanian) doesn't exists. I found many books on the internet but I don't know which is the best. Does exists any book that contains all the things I should know about makam music?
- Mesajlar
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- Tepki Puanı
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No need to thank me at all, makam music has more of a learning curve than most music traditions, and I think helping people who are just starting off is the least we can do.
Book suggestions are a little bit more difficult for me, I'm afraid. I am not a fan of most non-specialist scholarship on makam music; they tend to be surface-level, orientalist and create a myth of national-civilizational divide in music-making (Western-Eastern, Balkan-Turkish etc.), which did not exist to the extent claimed by most of 20th century and nationalist scholarship. I therefore suggest looking at older works (and commentaries of such works) instead, which are not interested in such myth-making and classify (probably a lot more accurately than current sources) most of the music of Southeastern Europe and the Middle East into a broad, transnational tradition. This is an understanding that is sorely missing in our current texts, which create exaggerated (and often imaginary) divides between the music of the Balkans, Anatolia and beyond. You might have recognized the rhytmic and melodic structure in the semai in Geveşt from the folk traditions of the Balkans (and you will likely have a similar reactions to many pieces in the repertoire) because it uses rhythmic and melodic concepts very common in most music of the Balkans and Anatolia; of which the art music in the Ottoman Empire is a synthesis of.
Furthermore, as with every tradition, makam music changes over time, and from source to source. You expressed interest in the 16-17th century repertoire, which is best covered by two notation sources: Cantemir, who only notated the instrumental art music in Istanbul and to a lesser extent in Iaşi; and Ufkî, who recorded all types of music (art and folk) in Anatolia and the Balkans. So, in Ufkî's book there could be a Turkish folk song, followed by a Bulgarian dance air, followed by a peşrev/prelude written by an Armenian composer, while the Cantemir collection only includes art music, mostly of Turkish, but also a few Greek, Armenian and Sephardic Jewish composers (and of course, himself). The best English source that analyzes this repertoire is Volume 2 of Owen Wright's "Demetrius Cantemir: The Collection of Notations", the preview of which you can access in this thread. Two things to keep in mind here, however. Firstly, the book is quite complex (and expensive), and there is definitely no rush for you to get it; my advice would be to take it slow, learn the pieces, and only then try to analyze them. Secondly, Owen Wright's book covers Ottoman music in the 16th and 17th centuries. If you want to learn about more recent theoretical concepts, which (as you might expect) are different, you need to ask for other sources. If you do have other sources in mind, you can ask for thoughts as well.
Much easier than both of these, however, is to simply ask the community here! I'll be around for the foreseeable future, and if not me someone else will try their best to help; we are all at least somewhat knowledgeable in the tradition, so if you have questions about anything, you can ask the community here.
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