Maqam Melodies

Pitches, Patterns, and Developments of Music in the Middle East and other Microtonal Writings

By: Peter Thoegersen

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Hardcover | 7 August 2024

At a Glance

Hardcover
148 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 0.97

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This book discusses microtonal tunings in the Arabic maqam, prevalent in the Middle East and Central Asia, which employs microtonal intervals from Pythagorean tuning by perfect fifths. The ratio 3/2, as the third overtone in the overtone series, is used as a multiplier leading to numeric ratios for all pitches in the tetrachords and pentachords of the maqam. Musicians today are highly curious about expanding the pitch palette and are already employing microtones in their music, from folk rock to classical music. The maqam is among the few extant analyzed systems of music from antiquity that reflect the methods of the Greek Genera, in terms of tuning and function. The book also discusses Charles Ives's use of microtones, Bach and his use of microtones, and a score of Hypercube, the seminal composition discussed in the author's first book, Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music, which was not published in its entirety in the former book. The text covers microtones philosophically, questioning the efficacy of such tunings. This book is accessible to the beginners in the field and will be beneficial to musical analyses in colleges and universities also by showing detailed analysis of Bach chorales in their original modes, and how their tuning presented complete character shifts by the microtones they contained by mean-tone temperament, an offshoot of Pythagorean tuning during the Baroque.

Industry Reviews

"Polymath Peter Thoegersen's doctoral dissertation, published in 2022 as Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music: The Road Less Traveled, went around the world and through the whole of musical history to explore man's attempts to use differently tuned scales and competing simultaneous tempos. Here he focuses his extraordinary erudition on the scales of Arab music throughout history, as defined in treatises by medieval scholars like Safi al-Din and Qutb al-Din; he then moves giddily through an exploration of pre-Bach theories of modes as prelude to an exploration of quarter-tones in Western music after 1900, including his own multidimensional music. Once again, the historical sweep and wealth of detail are astonishing."

Prof. Kyle Gann

Bard College, USA

Author of The Arithmetic of Listening: Tuning Theory and History for the Impractical Musician

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