The Turkish makam
In Turkish classical and folk music the makam is the system of melody types: a set of rules for composing and performing that gives each makam its intervals and the route its melody takes. Its counterpart in time is the usul, the rhythmic cycle. This page gathers what our sources say about the makam as a system.
The Turkish makams on the map of the modes →
A place to stop
The word makam means a place where one stops. It is the ground of Turkish music and of the musics around it, and it matters more than usul: forms sung freely, without a rhythmic cycle, such as Qurʾan recitation, the mevlid, the call to prayer and the gazel, still cannot stand outside the makam system.1
Each makam has its own intervals, built of genera (cinsler), and its own melodic development (seyir). Fixed compositions (beste, şarkı, peşrev, âyin) and improvised ones (gazel, taksim) alike follow the melody type of their makam.2
From edvâr to makam
In the Middle Ages the word was edvâr, cycles: the treatises drew notes and rhythms on circles, and were called Kitâbü’l-Edvâr. Safiyyüddin el-Urmevî (d. 1294) described twelve devir, six âvâze and four şube, and was the first to write down a system of seventeen intervals, eighteen perdes, to the octave. His twelve were uşşak, nevâ, bûselik, rast, ırak, ısfahan, zîrefkend, büzürg, zengûle, râhevî, hüseynî and hicazî.1
His system, taken up by Abdülkādir-i Merâgī (d. 1435) and his followers, lasted with some changes into the mid-nineteenth century. After the Middle Ages the distinctions between devir, âvâze and şube were dropped, and every melodic scale came to be called a makam. In the early twentieth century Hüseyin Sadeddin Arel defined the makam as the character that comes from how the notes of a scale or a melody stand to its durak and its güçlü; Suphi Ezgi and Rauf Yektâ gave definitions of their own, and TDV finds all three still in need of explaining.1
Fifty-three commas to the octave
Turkish theory divides the octave into 53 equal commas; a whole tone is nine of them. In practice 24 of the 53 are used, and most have a name of their own: Rast, Dügâh, Segâh, Çârgâh, Nevâ, Hüseynî, Acem, Gerdâniye and so on, a different name in each octave.2
The steps between them are named by their commas: koma (1), bakiye (4), küçük mücenneb (5), büyük mücenneb (8), tanîni, the whole tone (9), and artık ikili, the augmented second (12 or 13). The Arel–Ezgi–Uzdilek notation adds six accidentals to the four of Western music; a sign that looks like the Arabic half-flat lowers a note by a comma, not by a quarter tone. So Rast is written alike in the two traditions, but the Turkish Rast's third is a just major third, not a neutral one.2
Dörtlü and beşli
A makam is built of tetrachords and pentachords (dörtlü, beşli): patterns of exactly four or five notes, each with its own order of steps. There are six basic tetrachords, and a pentachord of each name, the same with a whole tone added.1,2
The six, and the others that the Turkish Wikipedia lists among the patterns makams are built of:2,3
- The six basic
- Çârgâh جهاركاهBûselik بوسلكKürdî كردUşşâk عشاقHicaz حجازRast راست
- Others
- Hüseynî حسينيSegâh سيكاهSabâ صباNikriz نكريزHüzzam هزامFerahnâk فرحناك
Dizi and seyir
A tetrachord and a pentachord, one after the other, make a dizi of eight notes. EKSD gives Uşşak, for one, as an Uşşak tetrachord on its own place with a Bûselik pentachord added on Nevâ.1,4
The seyir is the route through the dizi by which a makam is made, and it is of three kinds: ascending (çıkıcı), from the durak upward; descending (inici), from the high durak downward; and descending-ascending (inici-çıkıcı), from around the güçlü both ways. Makams with the same dizi are told apart by their seyir: Uşşak, Bayâti and Isfahan; Nevâ and Tâhir; Hüseynî and Muhayyer.1,2
Durak, güçlü, yeden
Three notes hold a makam together. The durak, its tonic, is the lowest note of its dizi, and every piece in the makam ends on it. The güçlü, its dominant, is the note where the tetrachord and the pentachord meet; it serves as a passing tonic in the middle of a piece, and it is often the fifth degree, but as often the fourth and sometimes the third. The yeden, its leading tone, is usually the note before the last, and resolves into the durak.1,2
Music marks its sentences with three kinds of karar, of cadence: the tam karar, the full close of the makam; the yarım karar, a half close that says a few words are still to come; and the asma karar, a brief stop on another note that recalls another makam without passing into it. The donanım, the key signature, writes at the start of the staff the comma accidentals the makam uses.1,3
Simple, transposed, compound
The Arel–Ezgi theory, the one taught today, sorts makams in three kinds. A simple (basit) makam can be told with a scale of eight notes. A transposed (şed) makam is a simple or compound one moved to another durak: Nihavend is Bûselik moved to Rast, Hicazkâr is Zirgüleli Hicaz moved to Rast. A compound (birleşik, mürekkep) makam joins several scales and genera, and most cannot be told with eight notes.1,2,3
TDV’s article adds that the division is easier to teach than it is true: even simple makams make brief turns to others, and some transposed ones gain new genera on their new durak, so it should be read beside the view that Turkish music has no simple makam at all. Makams are kin, too: in Sûzinâk’s scale lie Karcığar’s on its second degree and Hüzzam’s on its third.1
How many makams there are depends on the source. TDV counts about 650 used through history, half of them known from surviving pieces, and 100 to 120 that are characteristic today; the Turkish Wikipedia counts 590 identified, about 150 in use and about 40 in most of the repertoire; EKSD describes 100, as 20 simple, 14 transposed and 66 compound.1,3,5
Neither key nor mode
Western tonality and mode share something with the makam, but neither says what it is: a makam has nothing to do with major or minor.1
Its kin are the Arabic maqam and the echos of Byzantine chant, and further off the Uyghur muqam and the Uzbek shashmaqam.2