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Hello, everyone. I am a maqam music aficionado and a Turkish oud player. I was wondering if anyone could help elucidate a certain issue I've been wondering about or point me to relevant sources on the matter.
I've recently finished reading Walter Feldman's book Music of the Ottoman Court. It's a very interesting account of Ottoman court music history starting from the earliest extant records up until the 19th century, but save for a brief chapter, it doesn't address the evolution of the old system to the modern one during the 19th century. What I'm referring to as the old system is what was described by Dimitrie Cantemir or Abdülbaki Nasır Dede. The peculiarity of this system compared to the modern one is the use of the Segâh note as the second degree of makam Hicaz (Uzzâl), as well as the Segâh note apparently being a singular, fixed pitch. Cantemir described Uzzâl as a makam that uses only one secondary (altered) scale degree, as compared to the "fundamental scale". His fundamental scale was the scale of makam Rast, and the "independent makams" were all diatonic modes of this scale which did not alter any of its notes. Examples are Irak, Dügâh/Hüseyni, Segâh, etc. For Cantemir, thus, Uzzâl and Rast use the same Segâh note.
This is not particularly strange if one considers modern Iranian music, where the second degree of dastgah Shur (Uşşak) is both conceptually and in practice the same as the second degree of dastgah Homayun (Hicaz), but it does pose a challenge for interpreting old Ottoman pieces and differentiating between styles. While according to Feldman none of the theorists in the span of several centuries between Abd Al-Qadir al-Maraghi and Rauf Yekta made attempts to mathematically describe the intonation system and the size of the intervals in terms of ratios, there seems to be no evidence in any of their treatises that different flavors of the neutral (mücennep) intervals were tied to different maqams, or that there was a practice of retuning the Segâh note depending on its role in the maqam. This leads many to conclude that it was the same singular pitch with a neutral inflection, like in modern Iran. Bezmârâ Ensemble applied this system most consistently in their Enderun'da bir Polonyalı album, to an interesting result. Conversely, modern Turkish classical music uses up to 5 different flavors of the mücennep, which aren't accounted for in the AEU system. Different instruments provide different possibilities: the lavta is usually fretted for 3 or 4 mücenneps, the tanbur for 4, and the kanun can produce 5 distinct pitches.
If we step outside the Ottoman court and into the Fanar, an important clue to this development may be hiding in the Great Theory of Music by Archbishop Chrysanthos of Madytos. Completed by 1816, this book was an important part of the Byzantine chant method reform. Chrysanthos resurrected the old genera classification of Ancient Greek music, whereby scales and tetrachords could be diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic. What's curious is that Chrysanthos used the Turkish tanbur to measure the intervals of the Byzantine diatonic scale, starting from the lowest note Di (Yegâh), and his ratio for the Vou (Segâh) note perfectly matches the one used almost a millennium earlier by Farabi for Wusta Zalzal. This can not only be potentially illuminating with regards to how the Turkish tanbur was fretted in 1816, but also serves as a reminder to how closely related the two idioms are, whereby the Byzantine diatonic scale conformed to the fundamental scale of Ottoman music to such a degree that the tanbur could be used to describe it.
But what's really curious is that Chrysanthos sees what would be analogous to Hicaz completely differently. Instead of a mere alteration of one note of the diatonic scale, he describes the "chromatic scale" with completely different intervals and microsteps. Here, the second degree is actually closer to bakiye or the small mücennep, which is in greater conformity with the modern Hicaz. Feldman states that the first time a change in this regard was registered by an Ottoman theorist was a treatise by Haşim Bey from 1864, where the Kürdi note was listed as the second degree of makam Hicaz instead of Segâh. But it probably started earlier, and this makes me wonder how the music of Dede Efendi, Selim III or Dilhayat Kalfa actually sounded in their days. Was there already a difference between küçük mücennep and büyük mücennep at that time? Makam Evcârâ, for example, and many pieces from that era would probably sound quite awkward to modern ears with the old system. Can this incredible elaboration, with a flexible Segâh and many different inflections of the mücennep, be traced back to a specific period and development, and do we know which composer's music belongs to which "style"?
I've recently finished reading Walter Feldman's book Music of the Ottoman Court. It's a very interesting account of Ottoman court music history starting from the earliest extant records up until the 19th century, but save for a brief chapter, it doesn't address the evolution of the old system to the modern one during the 19th century. What I'm referring to as the old system is what was described by Dimitrie Cantemir or Abdülbaki Nasır Dede. The peculiarity of this system compared to the modern one is the use of the Segâh note as the second degree of makam Hicaz (Uzzâl), as well as the Segâh note apparently being a singular, fixed pitch. Cantemir described Uzzâl as a makam that uses only one secondary (altered) scale degree, as compared to the "fundamental scale". His fundamental scale was the scale of makam Rast, and the "independent makams" were all diatonic modes of this scale which did not alter any of its notes. Examples are Irak, Dügâh/Hüseyni, Segâh, etc. For Cantemir, thus, Uzzâl and Rast use the same Segâh note.
This is not particularly strange if one considers modern Iranian music, where the second degree of dastgah Shur (Uşşak) is both conceptually and in practice the same as the second degree of dastgah Homayun (Hicaz), but it does pose a challenge for interpreting old Ottoman pieces and differentiating between styles. While according to Feldman none of the theorists in the span of several centuries between Abd Al-Qadir al-Maraghi and Rauf Yekta made attempts to mathematically describe the intonation system and the size of the intervals in terms of ratios, there seems to be no evidence in any of their treatises that different flavors of the neutral (mücennep) intervals were tied to different maqams, or that there was a practice of retuning the Segâh note depending on its role in the maqam. This leads many to conclude that it was the same singular pitch with a neutral inflection, like in modern Iran. Bezmârâ Ensemble applied this system most consistently in their Enderun'da bir Polonyalı album, to an interesting result. Conversely, modern Turkish classical music uses up to 5 different flavors of the mücennep, which aren't accounted for in the AEU system. Different instruments provide different possibilities: the lavta is usually fretted for 3 or 4 mücenneps, the tanbur for 4, and the kanun can produce 5 distinct pitches.
If we step outside the Ottoman court and into the Fanar, an important clue to this development may be hiding in the Great Theory of Music by Archbishop Chrysanthos of Madytos. Completed by 1816, this book was an important part of the Byzantine chant method reform. Chrysanthos resurrected the old genera classification of Ancient Greek music, whereby scales and tetrachords could be diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic. What's curious is that Chrysanthos used the Turkish tanbur to measure the intervals of the Byzantine diatonic scale, starting from the lowest note Di (Yegâh), and his ratio for the Vou (Segâh) note perfectly matches the one used almost a millennium earlier by Farabi for Wusta Zalzal. This can not only be potentially illuminating with regards to how the Turkish tanbur was fretted in 1816, but also serves as a reminder to how closely related the two idioms are, whereby the Byzantine diatonic scale conformed to the fundamental scale of Ottoman music to such a degree that the tanbur could be used to describe it.
But what's really curious is that Chrysanthos sees what would be analogous to Hicaz completely differently. Instead of a mere alteration of one note of the diatonic scale, he describes the "chromatic scale" with completely different intervals and microsteps. Here, the second degree is actually closer to bakiye or the small mücennep, which is in greater conformity with the modern Hicaz. Feldman states that the first time a change in this regard was registered by an Ottoman theorist was a treatise by Haşim Bey from 1864, where the Kürdi note was listed as the second degree of makam Hicaz instead of Segâh. But it probably started earlier, and this makes me wonder how the music of Dede Efendi, Selim III or Dilhayat Kalfa actually sounded in their days. Was there already a difference between küçük mücennep and büyük mücennep at that time? Makam Evcârâ, for example, and many pieces from that era would probably sound quite awkward to modern ears with the old system. Can this incredible elaboration, with a flexible Segâh and many different inflections of the mücennep, be traced back to a specific period and development, and do we know which composer's music belongs to which "style"?