Maqam Harmony: Compositional Techniques and Tuning Methods for Achieving Polyphony and Homophony for All Maqamat

نوع المستند : المقالة الأصلية

المؤلف

Independent Researcher

المستخلص

The problem of harmonizing maqamat is based on the difficulty of handling the neutral intervals in some of them. Arab musicians and audiences have never accepted neutral intervals as chords due to their perceived low concordance. By avoiding vertical neutral intervals, composers and arrangers are left with little harmonic options. In this work, I will identify nine maqam pitch properties and nine properties of harmony, analyze how they can be preserved or compromised during harmonization approaches, and offer several solutions with musical examples for maqam harmonization and vertical based composition. First, I offer a compositional technique that allows for polyphonic writing for all maqamat. After careful examining of the literature on perception of mistuning and categorical perception, I then lay out an evidence-based tuning method that preserves maqam’s pitch properties, gives access to concordant thirds, and thus allows for both polyphony and homophony for all maqamat. This tuning method, which I call perceptual tempering, is used to generate tunings for maqam rast and 11 other maqamat with neutral intervals, giving them new harmonic intonational profiles. Lastly, I also offer a timbre adjustment method for additive synthesizers that allows them to play more concordant neutral chords, thereby facilitating for the synthesizers to join the Arab ensemble. Applying the perceptual tempering method with the qanun can usher in a new age of maqam harmony for Arabic ensembles.

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