Maqam in the context of Islamic musical culture

A wide panorama of musical art, covering folk, professional secular, cult, household (urban) layers, is presented in the monograph by I. R. Yeolyan ^[1]. Like other researchers, this author pays special attention to the question of the complexities of the interaction of Islam with art.

G. B. Shamilli ^[2] examines the philosophy of music of the Islamic world, studies the peculiarities of makam thinking in the theory and practice of art. The problems of makama art in professional traditional music are drawn from the foreign studies of U.A. Hajibeyov ^[3], Nelson K. ^[4], Idelson A.Z. ^[5], H.H. Tuma ^[6], F.H. Ammar ^[7], as well as from the works of domestic scientists – S. P. Galitskaya ^[8], Vol. M. Janizade ^[9], F. M. Karomatova ^[10], A. A. Saiguna ^[11], V. N. Yunusova ^{[15, 16]}.

On the one hand, the makamat system is also a secular form of music-making. Reliance on maqams – the basis of the foundations of the fret organization of the music of the oral tradition of the Near and Middle East – has a natural character: so elements of maqam thinking can be seen in the worship of orthodox Islam. At the same time, however, there is a certain selectivity, and sometimes arbitrariness in the use of certain forms of makam. But this selectivity is also natural in its own way and its influence on the intonation of sacred texts is noticeable.

In the IX–X centuries, the culture of Islamic society was dominated by the secular trend of music-making. Medieval theorists of Islam distinguished the term "music" from other manifestations of musicality. By it they understood only that part of music that covered secular, instrumental forms and genres. This part was not encouraged and condemned, as it was associated with religious content. But nevertheless, the theoretical attitudes of Islam on the issue of music have come into conflict with real social and artistic practice. This is especially true of modern times: the second half – the end of the XIX century – the first decades of the XX century. A new understanding of the problems of "music and Islam" is penetrating into the culture of the Volga region, Transcaucasia, Turkmenistan and other countries of the Near and Middle East. The educational movement in the Muslim regions of the pre-revolutionary era also captured the field of musical culture: new musical values are penetrating here, unknown types and genres of music, musical instruments, forms of music making, new knowledge about music are spreading.

The emergence and spread of Islamic music was carried out mainly in cities and, above all, among the enlightened segments of the population. The creation of an extensive theocratic state (caliphate), whose cultural centers were located first in Syria, and then in Iraq and a number of major cities in Egypt, Iran, Azerbaijan, Asia Minor and Central Asia, contributed to the intensive interaction of the ancient Arab nomadic culture with the cultures of ancient civilizations: Greek, Persian, Syrian-Byzantine. Imitating the court life of the caliphs, the local Muslim aristocracy created its own amusements with music, patronized not only poets, scientists, but also musicians. This contributed to the emergence of unified musical traditions that were closely connected with literary creativity – with the development of classical Arab-Persian poetic genres. Often called "classical" today, Islamic music was characterized, on the one hand, by a high level of professionalism (both vocal and instrumental) and the use of specific musical terms, the emergence of written theoretical teachings and professional performing schools, as well as special philosophical and aesthetic views, and, on the other hand, by an oral method of transmission and existence of rather complex musical texts.

In secular life, a refined style of musical performance was cultivated. The musicians highly appreciated improvisation (both vocal and instrumental). The requirements for vocal technique were very high. One of the treatises says that a singer should combine sharpness with tenderness when singing, sonority with fullness, possess a gloomy voice without vibration and high–pitched with powerful sonority, be able to extract sounds easily and flexibly, like a nightingale ... In relation to instrumental performance, a high level of skill was also required. 

In the XX century, this process continued, in varying degrees and forms it covered all the major centers of the Islamic world (Arab countries, Turkey, Iran, etc.).

In a particular musical practice, under the maqam (Arabic, position, place), it is considered to be a sequence of tones in Arabic, Iranian and Turkish, Central Asian music, which is a complex of songs subject to patterns. Makams are diatonic, 7-step, including intervals of large and small semitones, large and small whole tones. The stages of the sound order have their own names. Located an octave higher or lower, different makams may have the same basic tone.

There are several dozens of maqams in Arabic music, as well as various hybrids, including many regional (Persian and Turkish, Middle Asian and other) hybrids, so it is difficult to give a final list of Arabic maqams.

It is customary to distinguish 12 main makams, each of which is based on a scale formed by one or another combination of narrow–volume links - tetrachords, pentachords, less often – others. On the basis of one or another scale, many melodic cliche models are formed, the interaction and development of which is regulated by certain rules fixed by the canon. The structure of the maqams is canonized. The detailed canon, combined with the freedom of improvisation, paradoxically support and condition each other.

Each makam, as a rule, is a multi-support structure with a certain initial tone (acting as a support), which does not necessarily have to be the final tone. The lower tone in the maqam performs the function of a "push", an impulse for subsequent melodic development. The first steps of different makams may coincide. The "model" cells of makams are a 3-, 4-(tetrachord – jins – jeans) or 5-step structure. The tetrachord structure is considered to be the main one, but it can be shortened or expanded in accordance with the structure of the Arabic three–stringed musical instrument - the tambour. These are a kind of simple building blocks that make up one or another makam. The sounds forming them are arranged both in ascending and descending directions. Each makam consists of two main ajnas (ajnas is the plural of jeans), which are called lower and upper jins (jeans are narrow–volume cells – tetrachords). Jeans, connecting in one way or another, form variants of sequences. So, the elements in the makam are strictly organized, subordinated to a certain system. The temporary beginning in the makam, connected with its metrorhythmic organization, on the contrary, does not obey any norms and cannot be reduced to a system. This is precisely the most striking distinguishing feature of the makam: the free organization of rhythmic-temporal structures and the strictly established organization of ladotonal structures.

The time parameters of the maqam are not precisely fixed: the maqam does not know either periodic structures or a uniform meter with its one-step division of musical aging, there is no metrorhythmic organization. The rhythm of the makam determines the style of performance, depends on the manner of playing and the technique of the musician-performer, but it is not the rhythm that characterizes the makam as such. A Sufi (musician in general) who performs maqam does not need a score, and to a listener who is not experienced in this area of musical culture, it seems that maqam has neither beginning nor end. 

Makam is based on a kind of sequential unfolding of melodic constructions, which, starting in the lowest registers, gradually rise to the highest, filling the ever-expanding sound space and, reaching the highest point (in Sufism referred to as ecstasy), complete the composition as a whole.

A special polyelement (poetry, singing, choreography, vocal-instrumental, instrumental-dance music) genre and a specific form (hypercycle) of the maqam were the brightest artistic phenomenon of the musical civilization of the countries and peoples of the Near and Middle East, covering a vast territory (from the west coast of Africa to India) with a multi-million (now exceeding a billion) population. In its scope, integrity, highest artistic merits and significance in public consciousness, philosophy and culture, the Near-Middle Eastern musical civilization is quite comparable with two other world musical civilizations: European and Far Eastern.

Makam as a composition is an expanded cycle with a continuous, internally tense musical language. In most cases, by its structure, the makam is a large vocal–instrumental form with internal contrasting parts and sections united by the fret core of the entire composition.

There was no written fixation of the musical work, the transmission was made orally, through contact communication. Each time a new work was created, each performed makam was unique and original, but while maintaining clear laws of execution. Macs should be perceived as a musical process. In the Middle East, musicians say that the maqam is a "melody without a meter", thereby assuming a continuous deployment of musical material.

The poetic basis is great in the art of makamat, which is revealed in the unity of the modal and figurative-emotional system.

Today, in the XXI century, the public cannot listen to such compositions in its traditional performance, because the culture of listener perception has changed. It is difficult for a modern listener to perceive such long-lasting musical canvases.

In the maqam with all its multinational and regional varieties (dastgah of Iran and Azerbaijan, Khorezm maqom, Bukhara shashmakom, Algerian nubia, South Slavic nibet, etc.), the iconic phenomena of the Near-Middle Eastern musical civilization were most vividly realized, reflected both in the aesthetic, philosophical and general artistic system of images, and in the typology and structuring of musical forms.

In the XXI century, the appeal to the makam becomes particularly relevant due to the fact that the realities of our time reflect not only the phenomena of the interrelation of artistic systems within a particular musical civilization, but also the interaction between various world civilizations and individual components of their artistic systems.

Maqam as a musical phenomenon of traditional professional music of the countries of the Muslim East should be considered as an integral multi-component structure that has existed as a living organism for many centuries. In the modern musical world, makam has become understood not as a special form of organization of the entire composition and scale, but as. It is important to preserve and not forget for musicians-performers to be based on the deep meanings of the understanding of the makamashta, has not lost its true meaning and purpose. Our time is a time of breakthrough and new achievements, and therefore there are musical temptations that need to be controlled, understood and perceived by makam not as the root cause, but as a means and instrument to comprehend the musical mystery.