Risto Pekka Pennanen

LOST IN SCALES...

Risto Pekka Pennanen

LOST IN SCALES: BALKAN FOLK MUSIC
RESEARCH AND THE OTTOMAN LEGACY
Abstract: Balkan folk music researchers have articulated various views on
what they have considered Oriental or Turkish musical legacy. The discourses
the article analyses are nationalism, Orientalism, Occidentalism and
Balkanism. Scholars have handled the awkward Ottoman issue in several
manners: They have represented Oriental musical characteristics as
domestic, claimed that Ottoman Turks merely imitated Arab and Persian
culture, and viewed Indian classical raga scales as sources for Oriental scales
in the Balkans. In addition, some scholars have viewed the Oriental
characteristics as stemming from ancient Greece.
The treatment of the Segh family of Ottoman makams in theories and
analyses reveals several features of folk music research in the Balkans, the
most important of which are the use of Western concepts and the exclusive
dependence on printed sources. The strategies for handling the Orient within
have meandered between Occidentalism and Orientalism, creating an
ambiguity which is called Balkanism.
Key words: The Balkans, the Orient, folk music research, scales.

The centuries of Ottoman domination in the Balkans had a marked

effect on the populations and cultures of the peninsula. After the introduction of nationalism in the area during the first half of the nineteenth
century, the Turkish yoke, or the Ottoman political and cultural influence, became a serious problem for the Western-oriented members of the
educated classes. In their train of thought, national culture, including folk
music, had to be free from foreign influencesincluding those of the
Ottoman Turks.1 Consequently, in the early 1900s, the intelligentsia
found itself in an awkward position between the Ottoman past and the
semi-European present.
By and large, this transitional ambiguity has endured to the present
in folk music research in all Balkan countries. This paper addresses the
views Balkan folk music researchers have articulated on what they re1

See e.g., Karel A. Mahan, Nashata narodna muzika samostozatelna li e?, Kaval, 2
(1901), 15; Franjo . Kuha, Turski ivalj u pukoj glazbi Hrvata, Srba i Bugara,
Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja u Bosni i Hercegovini, 10 (Sarajevo: Zemaljska tamparija, 1898), 216; also published as Das trkische Element in der Volksmusik der
Croaten, Serben und Bulgaren. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Musikwissenschaft,
Wissenschaftliche Mitteilungen aus Bosnien und der Hercegovina, 6 (Vienna: Carl
Gerolds Sohn, 1899), 545584.

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garded as Oriental or Turkish musical legacy in their respective countries.2 The analysis concentrates on the construction of Oriental scales
and, more importantly, the manner in which Balkan scholars, in their
discourses on nationalism, Orientalism, Occidentalism and Balkanism,
have imagined Oriental music and perceived the cultural position of the
Balkans between the Orient and Europe. Maria Todorova defines the
differences between Orientalism and Balkanism as follows: [W]hile
Orientalism is dealing with a difference between (imputed) types, Balkanism treats the differences within one type.3 Thus, the two discourses
relate to an imputed opposition between the West and the Orient on one
hand and an imputed ambiguity in the Balkans on the other.
Nation-states create their own culture and history. Most narratives
on national culture and the past are subject to national memory which,
according to James Fentress and Chris Wickham, refers to the mode the
upper middle classes and the intelligentsia in each country perceive the
past. The official history that is taught at school and supported in the
media constitutes national memory. National memory reconstructs, legitimises and maintains the nation-state and national culture.4
With few exceptions, Balkan narratives of the national memory interpret the multi-ethnic Ottoman past anachronistically as a struggle between the repressive Turkish culture and the suppressed national cultures
of the non-Turks or non-Muslims. In addition, national memory represents most Ottoman musical traditions as uniformly Turkish and static,
which strengthens self-identity as well as contributes to the construction
of the Other.5
That said, let us have a closer look at the numerous multi-ethnic
forms of music in the Ottoman Empire. Take, for instance, the flourishing Ottoman urban music culture in the cities and towns of the Balkans,
Anatolia and the Levant. In the Balkans, that culture had many branches;
a large part of the music caf repertoire in Greece before the Second
World War consisted of Ottoman popular pieces and new compositions
in that style. Other Ottoman-influenced traditions are Greek rebetika,
2

3
4
5

The pioneers of Balkan folk song studies originated from Central Europe rather than
from the peninsula. Karel Mahan (Mach; 18671923) was a Czech who settled in
Bulgaria, whilst his fellow countryman Ludvk Kuba (18631956) travelled
extensively in the Balkans. The scholar, pedagogue and music journalist Franjo
Ksaver (averijski) Kuha (18341911) was a Croat from Osijek/Eszk.
Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 19.
James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 127.
Maria Todorova, The Balkans: from discovery to invention, Slavic Review, 53
(1994), 455.

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Macedonian algiska muzika, Bosnian sevdalinke, the older strata of

gradski pesni or starogradske pesme ([old] town songs) of Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia, and the corresponding styles of Albania, Kosovo and
Walachia.
Because of religious and cultural restrictions, public performers of
musicespecially womenin the Ottoman Empire were often nonMuslims, that is Ottoman Sephardic Jews, Ottoman Armenians and Ottoman Greeks. Even more commonly, Muslim and Christian Roma embarked upon careers in music. In addition, Ottoman Turks could work as
singers and musicians, and in the Balkans, bands could include South
Slavs and Albanians as well. Similar plurality expressed itself in the audiences of such ensembles during the late Ottoman period and the decades after it. During the reign of Abdlhamid II (18761909), music cafs gained considerable popularity as scenes for Ottoman urban music.
The band type frequently associated with the cafs was ince saz whose
basic repertoire consisted of Ottoman light classical music. Furthermore,
more modest cafs offered other sorts of music.6
The well-preserved and detailed archives of the Austrian-Hungarian
administration in Sarajevo document the presence of Ottoman musicians
in Bosnia-Herzegovina in detail. Before the Great War, multi-ethnic ensembles of Ottoman semi-classical and popular music visited BosniaHerzegovina relatively frequently, and some groups stayed there for
years. The band of Ferhad Ahmed (b. 1882 in Bandrma on the Sea of
Marmara, Anatolia), which visited Sarajevo in autumn 1913, is an example of a multi-ethnic Ottoman group with Slavic musicians. The line-up
consisted of the male musicians Ismail Regep (b. 1880 in Adrianople/Edirne) and Jovan Konstantinov alias Ivan Konstantinovi (b. 1885
in Radovi, Macedonia), and the female musicians Verleina Vortanos (b.
1892 in Contantinople) and Ratka Atanasova (b. 1878 in umen/umnu,
Principality of Bulgaria).7
In addition to live performances, gramophone records also disseminated music in the Balkans. Ottoman and Turkish recordings from Constantinople/Istanbul, Ottoman Salonika and Smyrna/Izmir were available
at least in Bosnia, Bulgaria and Greece till the Second World War. Furthermore, in Habsburg Bosnia, Roma musicians played and even re6

Mohamed Askari, Rudolf Brandl and Hans-Jrg Maucksch, Das volkstmliche

Klarinettenensemble zwischen Orient und Balkan in: Erich Stockmann (ed.) Studia
Instrumentorum Musicae Popularis, 8 (Stockholm: Musikmuseet, 1985), 6785;
Martin Greve, Die Europisierung orientalischer Kunstmusik in der Trkei (Frankfurt a/M: Peter Lang, 1995), 7983; Risto Pekka Pennanen, The Nationalization of
Ottoman Popular Music in Greece, Ethnomusicology, 48 (2004), 6.
Arhiv Bosne i Hercegovine, Zemaljska Vlada Sarajevo, 21/21/4761913.

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corded Ottoman marches and popular music, and Ottoman-Greek caf

music was a major recorded genre in Greece from the mid-1920s to the
mid-1930s.8
In spite of the multifaceted Ottoman past, Balkan national histories
of music usually concentrate exclusively on local forms of Western art
music, and national church and folk music. Historians marginalise Ottoman music in national discourse and tend to exclude it from the canon of
national music. This marginalisation, or rather the negation of the Ottoman past, has had a long-lasting, powerful effect on Balkan folk music
research: instead of historical facts, music studies are often based on an
imagined Orient and speculative Oriental influence.
Representing Foreign as Domestic
Ever since the nineteenth century, folk music researchers in the Balkans have concentrated on intervals, tetrachords, pentachords and scales
rather than melodic characteristics which are crucial for, among others,
Ottoman modal systems called makams (Turk. sing. makam, pl.
makamlar) and their rural equivalents ayaks (Turk. sing. ayak, pl. ayaklar).9 Scholars have used scales for melodic classification and stratification, the central research methods in the Balkans and East Europe.10
Thus, Balkan scholars have tended to apply a Western scale concept to
musics which function more or less in terms of other principles.
In the West, one of the main Orientalist musical devices since the midnineteenth century has been the interval of the augmented second which
composers have used for representing the Other, for instance Hungarian
Gypsy, Turkish and Arabic music.11 Figure 1 shows the interval in a
8

10

11

See Risto Pekka Pennanen, Greek Music Policy under the Dictatorship of General
Ioannis Metaxas (19361941), in: Leena Pietil-Castrn and M. Vesterinen (eds.),
Grapta Poikila, 1 (Helsinki: Foundation of the Finnish Institute at Athens, 2003),
11011; Ibid., Immortalised on Wax: Professional Folk Musicians and Their
Gramophone Recordings Made in Sarajevo, 1907 and 1908 in: Boidar Jezernik,
Rajko Muri and Alenka Bartulovi (eds.) Europe and Its OtherNotes on the Balkans (Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta, 2007), 120121, 128129.
For ayaklar, see Dan Lundberg, Persikotrdgrdarnas musik. En studie av modal
improvisation i turkisk folk- och populrmusik baserad p improvisationer av Ziya
Aytekin (Univ. of Stockholm: Stockholm, 1994), 9099.
See Oskr Elschek, Ideas, Principles, Motivations, and Results in East European
Folk-Music Research in: Bruno Nettl and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.), Comparative
Musicology and Anthropology of Music. Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology
(Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991), 9798.
Scott, Derek B., Orientalism and Musical Style, The Musical Quarterly, 82 (1998),
312314.

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descending tetrachord; the succession of notes is akin to the Hicaz tetrachord

of Ottoman and Arabic music theory. Musical Orientalism was familiar to
Balkan folk music researchers through their education in Western classical
music. The augmented second as a musical emblem of the Orient is still a
common notion in the West as well as in the Balkans.
12

Fig. 1: The Oriental tetrachord containing the augmented second.

Although the augmented second represents the Orient in the Orientalist discourse, it is not omnipresent in Ottoman classical music or other
forms of Turkish music. As we shall see below, the absence of this emblematic interval usually leads Balkan scholars to switch to Occidentalist
discourse and analyse makam melodies through ancient Greek modes,
or more properly church modes.
Surprisingly enough, the standard Orientalist device has been represented as of non-Oriental origin in some Balkan nationalist discourses. In
the 1890s, Franjo Kuha offered an alternative view to the history of the
augmented second.13 According to him, Arabs and Turks did not initially
use that interval in their scales and melodies. Instead, the augmented
second originated from the Slavic minor scale (C-D-E -F-G-A -B-C)
and South Slavic melodies; Turks and Muslim Slavs adopted the interval
since it lends itself to courting and expressing melancholy.14
Furthermore, in the late 1920s, the Bulgarian composer and folk
music theoretician Dobri Hristov (18751941) explained that the TurcoArabic intervals of Bulgarian folk music, such as the half-flat fourth degree of makam Sebaa (i.e., Sab) or the half-flat second degree of
makam Ushak (i.e., Uak), were not necessarily of Arabic origin; people hear such intervals in nature and imitate them. Hristov added that he
has heard many times how a slowly boiling kettle or the dying embers of
green wood in a stove produce melodic lines similar to the sad melodies
of the gaida bagpipe.15
12

13
14

15

Vinko ganec, Orijentalizmi u jugoslavenskom muzikom folkloru, Tkaliev

zbornik, 1 (1955), 83.
Kuha, Turski ivalj, 193.
Kuha used the terms aikovanje and melanholija. The German translation (Kuha,
Das trkische Element, 562), however, used the terms Liebesschwermuth and
orientalische Melancholie (i.e., loves yearnings and Oriental melancholy).
Dobri Hristov, Tehnicheskiyat stroezh na blgarskata narodna muzika (Sofia: self
published, 1928), 45.

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Both Kuha and Hristov clearly have an agenda. As comparative

musicology took interest in tuning systems, interval measurement and
scales in the spirit of positivism,16 Hristov concentrates on a particular
interval of Sebaa. An interval, however, cannot define a whole makam.
Furthermore, the actual makam Sab is identifiable even in equal temperament as in Greek bouzouki music.17 In point of fact, Hristov fails to
mention that Bulgarian folk musicians used to play melodic formulae
characteristic of makam Sab.
The myths of domestic intervallic genesis, which Kuha and Hristov
offer, try to purify national folk music from foreign influence: Dubious
Oriental characteristics are not alien at all. Instead, in the latter case, intervals originate from the Bulgarian fireside and therefore they are national and pure. Correspondingly, it did not occur to Hristov that most
dishes cooked on the Bulgarian stove, such as shkembe chorba, yahniya
and kavarma kebap, derive from Anatolia and the Middle East.
Eluding the Ottomans
The cultural inactiveness of Ottoman Turks was an axiom of Orientalism during the early phases of Balkan musicology: Ottoman Turks
merely imitated Arab and Persian culture. Take, for example, Kuhas
assertion that Turks were originally savages who did not have a culture.
Poetry, singing or music made no difference for Turks until they came
under the civilising influence of Arabs and Persians.18 The unbridgeable
incompatibility between Islam and Christianity, and the nomadic civilization of the Turks and the older civilizations of the Balkans and the
Middle East was a common belief in Kuhas time and even later.19
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Herbert Spencers
(18201903) theory of cultural evolution became an important model for
structuring music history. Western savants saw all Oriental societies and
cultures as being stuck on lower stages in the evolutionary process than
the dynamic and innovative Western societies and high culture.20 For
16

17

18
19
20

See Albrecht Schneider Psychological Theory and Comparative Musicology in

Bruno Nettl and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.), Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music. Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology (Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991), 293317.
Risto Pekka Pennanen, Westernisation and Modernisation in Greek Popular Music
(Tampere: Univ. of Tampere, 1999), 7779.
Kuha, Turski ivalj, 176.
See Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 162.
Martin Clayton, Musical Renaissance and its Margins in England and India, 1874
1914 in: Martin Clayton and Bennett Zon (eds.), Music and Orientalism in the

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example, Kuha was convinced that Middle Eastern culture and music
had remained the same for five hundred years.21 Given this, it was natural for Balkan musicologists to make references to Ottoman music
through mediaeval Arabic treatises; mediaeval Arabo-Persian theory
facilitated ignorance of the subsequent Ottoman music, which, in any
case, was no more than imitation of the Arabo-Persian tradition. In the
Balkans, the evasive term Arabo-Persian has a long tradition from the
mid-nineteenth century onwards in music publications by cantors of the
Greek Orthodox Church.
Sometimes the term Arabic music has been used as a euphemism
for Ottoman music. In his 1976 article Arabic Elements in Bulgarian
Musical Folklore, the Bulgarian folk music researcher Stoyan Dzhudzhev (190298) seemed to abandon Rauf Yektas22 classic text on Ottoman music as the basis for his theories.23 According to him, [n]owadays
the term Arabic music does not only mean Bedouin and nomad music
of the Arabian Peninsula; it refers to the music of a vast area comprising
such peoples as Arabs, Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Azerbaijanis,
Turks, Afghans, Maghrebians, etc. The sudden shift of emphasis to
Rouanets24 writings on Arabic music must have been a reaction to the
heightened anti-Turkish atmosphere in Bulgaria and a means to defend
the theoretical frame of reference.25 Dzhudzhevs terminology, however,
still remained basically Ottoman.26

21
22

23

24

25

26

British Empire, 1780s to 1940s: Portrayal of the East (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007),
7576.
Kuha, Turski ivalj, 190191, 216.
Rauf Yekta Bey, La musique Turque in: Albert Lavignac (ed.), Encyclopdie de la
musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1922), vol. V,
29453064.
Stoyan Dzhudzhev, Arabski elementi v blgarski muzikalen folklor, in: Stoyan
Dzhudzhev, Muzikografski eseta i studii (Sofia: Muzika, 1977), 146161; originally
published in Blgarski folklore, 2 (1976).
Jules Rouanet, La musique arabe in: Albert Lavignac (ed.) Encyclopdie de la
musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1922), vol. V,
26762944.
For further references to Arabic influences in: Bulgarian folk music, see Karel A.
Mahan, Perso-arabski motivi v blgarskite napevi, Blgarski pregled spisanie za
nauka, literatura i obshtestven zhivot, 2 (1895), 9096; Samokovlieva, Mariya,
Arabskata muzika i blgarskata narodna muzika, Godishnik na Akademiyata za muzikalno i tantsovo izkustvo, (Plovdiv: Akademiya za muzikalno i tantsovo izkustvo,
1995), 4450.
Dzhudzhev (Arabski elementi, 154155) found exact similarities between the
rhythms of Bulgarian folk songs and the usul rhythmic modes of classical AraboOttoman classical music, usul semai in 10/4 being a good example. For the most part,
this presumed similarity is wishful thinking due to differences in tempo and the

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One can also elude the Ottomans by going geographically further

away from Anatolia. In the 1950s, Yugoslav folk music and dance researchers in particular began taking an interest in southern Asia.27 They
found suitable equivalents for Balkan scales in introductory books of
Indian classical raga scales.28 The newly independent post-colonial India
was a culturally neutral and politically acceptable area, thus forming a
suitable reference for scholars in socialist countries. Moreover, the
presence of musically extremely active Roma of Indian origin in the
Balkans strengthened the hypothetical links between the age-old Indian
classical and Balkan folk music.29 In the midst of their fervent speculations, the scholars ignored performance practice and its change during
past centuries or even millennia.30 Once again we meet the old Orientalist notion: Eastern cultures do not change.
Another approach to the awkward Ottoman issue has been the return
to the alleged roots of civilization; in the nineteenth century, European
travellers and scholars commonly supposed that the Old Bridge in Mostar was of Roman origin since they considered such a demanding construction impossible for the Turks.31 In musicology, scholars used the
surviving theoretical writings from ancient Greece for analysing folk
music. The Occidentalist myth of classical Greece as the cradle of Western civilization was so powerful that from the 1860s onwards even
Czech and Slovak musicologists tried to analyse their own folk music
through the tone groups of Greek theories.32 A similar situation prevailed
in the theories of neo-Byzantine church music and Ottoman classical

27

28

29

30

31

32

relationship of note values to the basic time unit. The comparison is solely based on
written representations of Arabic and Ottoman music theory without any reference to
live music and performance practice.
See e.g., ganec, Orijentalizmi, 8789; Ljubica and Danica Jankovi, Tragom
naeg najstarijeg orskog kulturnog naslea, Glasnik etnografskog muzeja u
Beogradu, 20 (1957), 7477.
Alain Danilou, A Catalogue of Recorded Classical and Traditional Indian Music. With
an Introduction on Indian Musical Theory and Instruments (Paris: Unesco, 1952).
For a considerably earlier view in a similar vein, see Branimir Mariji, Volksmusik
Bosniens und der Herzegowina (unpubl. PhD diss. Univ. of Vienna, 1936), 58.
Jankovi, Tragom, 7477; Borivoje Dimrevski, algiskata tradicija vo Makedonija (Skopje: Makedonska kniga, 1985), 1012; Gheorghe Ciobanu, Les modes
chromatiques dans la musique populaire roumaine, Izvestiya na Instituta za muzika,
13 (1969), 386389.
Boidar Jezernik, Wild Europe. The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers (London: Saqi, 2004), 196203.
Ladislav Burlas, Die Stilentwicklung der slowakischen Musik im Lichte der
musikwissenschaftlichen Forschung in: Oskr Elschek (ed.), Entwicklungswege der
Musikwissenschaft (Bratislava: Veda, 1986), 18.

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music: Archbishop Chrysanthos of Madytos (ca 17701846) had a strong

ideological motive for reintroducing ancient Greek theoretical concepts
into church music. In Ottoman theory, Rauf Yekta referred to octave
scales consisting of tetrachords and pentachords with illogical results in
the context Ottoman classical music.33 His immediate followers continued
exploiting modified ancient Greek and modern Western concepts.34
Ludvk Kuba, a Czech specialist of Slavic folk music, used a system
of ancient Greek modes in many of his analyses of South Slavic music
and found the Oriental scale as an echo of Turkish influence unessential in his corpus of Bulgarian folk songs.35 However, in his studies on
Bosnian music Kuba accepted the Oriental scale as a part of Bosnian
Ottoman-influenced urban music culture.36
Some Greek musicologists and musicians still take pains to explain
that their national music is purely Greek, stemming from ancient Greece
via Byzantium. Cultural continuity of several thousand years is one of
the basic features of the Greek myth of national culture.37 This tendency
is obvious, although unstated, in Lambros Liavas study on folk music
instrumentalists in the Evros Prefecture, Greek Thrace.38 Despite the fact
that the instrumentation and repertoire of several Thracian orchestras
Liavas interviewed are related to the Ottoman caf music tradition, no
traces of makams appear in the music analyses. Instead, Liavas uses a
neo-Byzantine scale system of Greek church music without stating his
reasons at all.
Outside Greece, Miodrag Vasiljevi (190363) was one of the
leading figures who drew upon ancient Greek terminology, for instance
that of Aristoxenos, in the theory of folk music. Vasiljevi constructed
33
34

35

36

37

38

Rauf Yekta Bey, La musique Turque.

Iannis Zannos Intonation in Theory and Practice of Greek and Turkish Music, Yearbook for Traditional Music, 22 (1990), 4649 passim; Blent Aksoy, Towards the
Definition of the Makam in: Jrgen Elsner and Risto Pekka Pennanen (eds.), The
Structure and Idea of Maqm: Historical Approaches (Tampere: Univ. of Tampere,
Dept. of Folk Tradition, 1997), 812.
Ludvk Kuba, Tonalnostite v blgarskite napevi, Sbornik za narodni umotvoreniya,
nauka i knizhnina, 14 (1897), 663.
Ljudevit Kuba, Pjesme i napjevi iz Bosne i Hercegovine, Glasnik Zemaljskog
muzeja u Bosni i Hercegovini, 18 (1906), 194195; see also Franjo Kuha, Starogrki motivi u naoj narodnoj glazbi, Nada, 1 (1895), 5155; also published in
Bulgarian in Kaval, 1 (1895), 7782.
See e.g., Lakis Halkias, 2500 hronia Elliniki mousiki (Athens: Kendro Ellinikis
Mousikis Halkias, 1999).
Lambros Liavas, The Musical Instruments of Evros: Tradition and Modernity in:
Loukia Drulia and Lambros Liavas (eds.), Music of Thrace. An Interdisciplinary Approach: Evros (Athens: The Friends of Music Society, 1999), 249318.

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scales such as the antique major (antiki dur), the basic scale of Serbian
folk music.39 The scale is based on the symmetry of tetrachords, which is
an intellectually beautiful theoretical device. In Western terms, however,
the scale has a minor rather than major character. In the light of modern
research, the use of ancient Greek treatises is not without severe
problems. Representing octave scales as consisting of diatonic, chromatic or enharmonic tetrachords and pentachords, writing them in descending form, and naming them after the classical Greek practice is
hardly sufficient for establishing anything.40 One can also justly question
the relevance of the theories in modern contexts: Claiming a cultural
continuity from antiquity to the present is skating on very thin ice. It
goes without saying that Vasiljevi's theory met severe criticism.41
After discussing the strategies of denying or disguising Ottoman
Turkish musical influence, we should keep in mind that especially in
Titoist Yugoslavia, scholars often recognised the strong Ottoman impact
on, for example, Bosnian music.42 Such scholars, however, did not
apparently know much about Ottoman music; Vlado Miloevi tried to
analyse Bosnian Quranic recitations through church modes.43
Scholars and their Scales
Several branches of Balkan folk music research tend to discuss the
influence of Ottoman makams on national folk music by constructing
and comparing scales. Although one can form makam scales theoretically by combining trichords, tetrachords and pentachords, scales as such
are insufficient for defining makams. Karl Signell observes that makams
have several characteristics through which they can be identified.44 These
features are: (a) scale intervals, (b) stereotyped motives and phrases, (c)
seyir or the sequence of tonal centres, (d) typical modulations, and (e)

39

40

41
42
43

44

Miodrag A. Vasiljevi, Jugoslovenski muziki folklor, 1. Narodne melodije koje se

pevaju na Kosmetu (Belgrade: Prosveta, 1950), 350355.
See e.g., Ibid., Kvalitativne funkcije tonova u tonalnim osnovama naeg muzikog
folklora in M.S. Lalevi (ed.), Trei kongres folklorista Jugoslavije dran od 19.
IX. 1956. godine u Crnoj Gori (Cetinje, 1958), 199209; Ghizela Sulieanu, Muzica
dansurilor populare din Muscel-Arge (Bucarest: Editura Muzical, 1976), 5659.
See Milenko ivkovi, Tonalni problem narodnih melodija, Zvuk 45 (1955), 145157.
Vlado Miloevi, Sevdalinka (Banja Luka: Muzej Bosanske krajine, 1964), 32.
Ibid., Melografija arapskih testova Suretun-nahl i Salla in Desanka KovaeviKoji (ed.) Radovi, 73 (Sarajevo: Akademija nauka i umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine, 1983), 5770.
Karl Signell, Makam: Modal Practice in Turkish Art Music (Seattle: Asian Music
Publications, 1977), 149.

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tessitura.45 It is important to realise that the Ottoman-Turkish makam

system is not unchanging or monolithic: The system has undergone
tremendous modifications in both theory and practice during the last
hundred years. The twentieth century has seen significant differences in
intonation habits, performance practice and theoretical representation.46
In addition, non-classical traditions tend to have their own musical
practices and aesthetics; popular and folk tunes rarely follow the rules of
classical seyir and may contain modified tonal structures. Furthermore,
makam-specific melodic formulae and modulations may be different in
classical and popular styles.47
Balkan folk music researchers have typically obtained their information on makams exclusively from printed sources with no references
to actual performance practice. Such a mode of inquiry brings about difficulties in understanding makams with the theoretical final on the note
segh (b 1) and the melodic dominant or gl on nev (d2). This group
of makams consists of Segh and its close relatives Mstear and Hzzam. Makam Segh and its rural counterpart Misket aya are common
in Balkan music but since the narrow-range, restricted form of this
makam lacks the Orientalist augmented second, scholars exclude such
melodies and their scales from the Orientalist folk music discourse.48
Makam Segh of Ottoman classical music contains various components which can be analysed as genera (see Figure 2). Segh melodies in
popular and folk music, however, often lack some of the elements listed
here. Restricted Segh melodies do not descend below the final. They
exclusively utilise the notes of the Segh trichord and the Rast tetrachord
on nev (d2) or the corresponding Buselik tetrachord (see Figure 3a).

45
46

47
48

See also Aksoy, Towards the Definition, passim.

I am indebted to Martin Stokes for drawing my attention to these developments. See
Aksoy, Towards the Definition; Karl Signell, Esthetics of Improvisation in Turkish
Art Music, Asian Music, 5 (1974), 4549; Ibid., The Modernization Process in Two
Oriental Music Cultures: Turkish and Japanese, Asian Music, 7 (1976), 7582. For
the relationship between theory and intonation habits in contemporary Egypt, see
Scott Marcus, The Interface between Theory and Practice: Intonation in Arab Music, Asian Music, 24 (1993), 3958.
See Pennanen, Westernisation, 4458.
For Misket aya, see Lundberg, Persikotrdgrdarnas musik, 9495, 202216.

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Fig. 2. Makam Segh as genera.

The confusion in the Balkan analyses of Segh, Mstear and

Hzzam scales and melodies stems from the understanding of the terms
final and tonic. Final is the concluding scale degree of any melody
said to be in a mode. Tonic has a three-fold meaning: firstly, in the
major-minor tonal system, it is the main note of a key after which the
key is named, secondly it is the name of the degree of that note and
thirdly, it is the triad built on that note. Western melodies usually finish
on the tonic note. As Harold Powers observes, the near synonymity of
final and tonic has remained a pervasive notion of Western music
culture.49 This assumption has had a considerable effect on the analysis
of various non-Western musics.
In analysis, Balkan musicologists have used two basic approaches
for interpreting the restricted Segh scale: the tonic-orientation and the
final-orientation. Tonic-orientation follows the Western concept of finaltonic by filling up the gap between the root of I and the final with the
note a1 that usually does not appear at all in the melodies (see Figure
3b).50 The position of the final on the third degree of the artificially
49

50

Harold S. Powers, Final in: S. Sadie (ed.), New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, 20 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1980), vol. VI, 558.
Non-classical traditions have developed a modified form of makam Segh that utilises the low extension of the Segh trichord with the note a#1 and finishes on g1. For

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constructed scale does not affect the scale classification which is dictated
by the root of I. This Western concept leads to the total absorption of
restricted Segh melodies into the Western major scale. The restricted
makam Segh as major scale finishing on the third degree implies
Western influence on the melodies, or even their Western origin, which
is often debatable in Balkan folk music.51
Fig. 3. a) The restricted makam Segh as a scale, and its b) tonic-orientated
and c) final-orientated interpretations.

Because the final of this scale seems to be on the third degree, it is

known as the E major tonality or the major of the third (tercni dur)* in
Yugoslav scholarly discourse. For some time, Yugoslav scholars were
puzzled upon finding this scale in Bosnia, Dalmatia and as far in the
south as in Macedonia. In the early 1950s, Vinko ganec speculated that
such melodies were originally in the Phrygian mode but singing in
parallel thirds subsequently transformed them into E major, whereas
Miodrag Vasiljevi based his hypothesis on the playing techniques of
folk instruments.52 The Yugoslav discourse claimed that the E major
tonality originated from Dalmatia, a coastal region that had been under
Venetian influence for a long time. This explanation seemed to solve the
quandary, and restricted makam Segh melodies of Macedonia became a

51

52

such Segh tunes in rebetika, see Pennanen, Westernisation, 3438; for Macedonian
examples, see Dimrevski, algiskata tradicija, 179220, 214.
See e.g., Bla Bartk and Albert B. Lord, Yugoslav Folk Music. Serbo-Croatian Folk
Songs and Instrumental Pieces from the Milman Parry Collection, 4 vols. (Albany,
N.Y.: State Univ. of New York Press, (1978 [1951]), vol. I., 61; Vinko ganec The
Tonal and Modal Structure of Yugoslav Folk Music, Journal of the International
Folk Music Council, 10 (1958), 19.
The note of the Editorial board: In Serbian ethnomusicology it is considered that the
term tercni dur was introduced by Miodrag Vasiljevi.
Vinko ganec, Osnovni stilovi hrvatskih narodnih pjesama in: Vinko ganec and
Nada Sremec (eds.), Hrvatske narodne pjesme i plesovi, 1 (Zagreb: Seljaka sloga,
1951), 9; Miodrag A. Vasiljevi, Struktura tonskih nizova u naoj muzici in: Zorislava
M. Vasiljevi (ed.), Narodne melodije s Kosova i Metohije (Knjaevac: Nota, 2003), 354.

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part of Western influence from the Mediterranean.53 Here we can see

how a narrowly national perspective tends to block scholarship. How
could Venetian and Dalmatian influence explain the E major tonality in
Greek rebetika or Bulgarian folk music?
We will now move on to consider final-orientation, which is a way
of viewing the concept of the final-tonic which totally ignores chordal
and implied harmony. This pattern rests on the assumption that melodies
always finish on the tonic. When scholars interpret the final as tonic,
they classify the unmistakably major-key-sounding restricted Segh
melodies erroneously as Phrygian (see Figure 3c). It actually looks as
though final-oriented analyses are based solely on written notation and
do not take into account what is actually heard in performance.
The distorting effect of the final-orientation on makam Segh
melodies becomes evident when comparing the two representations of a
Macedonian tune in Figures 4a and 4b. Borivoje Dimrevski analyses the
melody as the ancient Greek Dorian (i.e., the modern Phrygian) scale
which for him equates to makam Mahajer urdi.54 In a similar vein,
practically all melodies Stoyan Dzhudzhev presents to exemplify the
ancient Greek Dorian and Mixolydian or Hyperdorian (i.e. the modern
Locrian) modes can be readily analysed as makam Segh tunes.55
Fig. 4. The last section of Askersko oro which The Tikve algija Band recorded
in 1939 as a) Dimrevskis transcription and b) written in the theoretical pitch
of makam Segh by RPP.

As we have seen, the peculiarity of the b 1-based makams from the

conventional Western viewpoint is the fact that on paper these scales
53

54

55

Dragoslav Devi, Stylistic-Genetic Characteristics of Tonal Relationships in Serbian

Folk Songs in: Miko uvanovi (ed.), Exclusivity and Coexistence (Belgrade: Faculty of Music, 1997), 221. For Miodrag Vasiljevis interpretation of the tercni dur,
see Jelena Jovanovi, Marginalije Miodraga Vasiljevia o studiji Bele Bartoka Morfologija srpsko-hrvatskih narodnih melodija, Muzikologija, 6 (2006), 382383.
Dimrevski, algiskata tradicija, 173, 440. Strangely enough, some other scales in
the ancient Greek Dorian category do not have their final on g1; Dimrevski actually
shifts the final in order to find matching interval structures for his scale formations.
Stoyan Dzhudzhev, Blgarska narodna muzika. Uchebnik, 2 vols. (Sofia: Nauka i
izkustvo, 1970), vol. I, 276, 278, 298; cf. Lidiya Litova-Nikolova, Blgarska narodna
muzika. Uchebnik zasrednite muzukalni uchilishta (Sofia: Muzika, 1995), 163.

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seem to have a minor character, but in performance they are

unquestionably in major. Consider makam Mstear in Figure 5a, which
shares most genera with makam Segh. Mstear, however, stresses the
Mstear trichord, descends only to the leading note a#1 (krdi) and does
not utilise the Rast pentachord. Greek and some Serbian and Romanian
scholars have recognised the true nature of makam Mstear through its
affinity with Ottoman makam Segh or Legetos ichos of Orthodox
church music.56 In Figure 5b, we see a rare case of tonic-oriented
interpretation of Mstear.57
Fig. 5. a) Basic makam Mstear as a scale, b) its tonic-orientated interpretation,
c) maqam Hisar as makam Myustaar and d) Dzhudzhevs Bulgarian Myustaar.

The main reason for discussing Mstear is not the tonic-orientation

but something rather unexpected: Figure 5c may look like a final-oriented version of Mstear, but actually it is a case in point of a far-reaching human error. This strangely distorted interpretation of Mstear originates from the influential study The Technical Structure of Bulgarian
Folk Music by Dobri Hristov, who described makam Mstear as an
equivalent of the minor scale with raised fourth and seventh degrees.58
Even though he failed to mention it, Hristov used Abraham Zevi
Idelsohns (18821938) famous study on Arabic maqamat (sing. maqam)
as his source. He cited Idelsohns list of Egyptian maqamat carelessly,
describing Hisar as Mustaar.59 The blunder passed on to later genera56
57
58
59

Vasiljevi, Jugoslovenski muziki, 367; Ciobanu, Les modes chromatiques, 389.

Sulieanu, Muzica dansurilor, 5859.
Hristov, Tehnicheskiyat stroezh, 74.
See A. Z. Idelsohn, Die Maqam der arabischen Musik, Sammelbnde der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 15 (191314), 166.

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tions and in his theory of Bulgarian folk music, Stoyan Dzhudzhev presented Hristovs interpretation as the Turkish Myustaar and noted its
similarity with the Hungarian Gypsy minor.60 For his own purposes,
Dzhudzhev created the Bulgarian makam Myustaar by raising the sixth
and lowering the seventh degree of Hristovs scale (see Figure 5d).61
ganec62 and his followers63 found an equivalent for the Turkish
Myustaar in Alain Danilous64 article on Indian classical music,
namely the Carnatic raga rimhandra.
We should now consider one further point. A careful observer would
notice that Mstear is a rather uncommon makam even in Ottoman classical
repertoire. Notwithstanding the appearance of the Mstear trichord in brief
passages in other makams,65 it would be extraordinary to perceive a
considerable number of Mstear tunes in Balkan rural or urban folk music.
Instead of Mstear or Hisr, many Balkan folk tunes are in makam Nikrz
(see Figure 6) or in its rural equivalent Yank Kerem aya.66
Fig. 6. Makam Nikrz as a scale.

Let us turn to makam Hzzam, the third member of the Segh family (see Figure 7a). Following Rauf Yekta,67 Dzhudzhev points out accurately that the third step is the dominant tone (see Figure 7b).68 He finds
the Hzzam (or Huzam) scale in Bulgarian folk music, notes the narrow
range of rural Huzam melodies and adds that the lowered second degree
lends the scale a Dorian (i.e., Phrygian) character. Confusingly, Dzhudzhev seems to realise the quality of the Hzzam scale correctly in his music examples but simultaneously he undermines it theoretically.69 Judging
60

61
62
63

64
65
66
67
68
69

Stoyan Dzhudzhev, Teoriya na blgarskata narodna muzika: Melodika, 4 vols.

(Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo, 1955), vol. II; Ibid., Blgarska narodna, 316324.
Litova-Nikolova, Blgarska narodna, 176179.
ganec, Orijentalizmi, 8788.
See e.g., Metodi Simonovski, Orijentalizmi u tonalnoj grai naih narodnih
melodija, Zvuk 2627 (1959), 225.
Danilou, A Catalogue.
See e.g., Dimrevski, algiskata tradicija, 195, 214.
See Lundberg, Persikotrdgrdarnas musik, 94.
Rauf Yekta Bey, La musique Turque, 3007.
Dzhudzhev, Blgarska narodna, 325326.
Cf. Litova-Nikolova, Blgarska narodna, 182183.

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from his analyses of Segh melodies as the ancient Greek Dorian (modern Phrygian), Dzhudzhev apparently views his Huzam as a minor-based
scale, thus employing the final-oriented approach.70
Fig. 7. a) The basic makam Hzzam as a scale and b) Dzhudzhevs Turkish Hzzam.71

The treatment of the Segh family makams in various Balkan countries reveals several features of folk music research in the area. Firstly,
the confusingly Western-like makam Segh melodies can lead into two
sorts of misinterpretations, both of which employ Western scale concepts, failing to capture the essence of Segh melodies. Secondly, a human error led to the transformation of the makam Mstear scale, or the
misnaming of the maqam Hisar scale, in Bulgaria. The results are confusing for a scholar familiar with Ottoman makams, and they also exemplify the low number of sources and the quality of source criticism at the
very least in the Bulgarian academic tradition of folk music. Thirdly, the
trouble with the Hzzam scale is closely related to the Segh problem:
The interpretation of the scales basic nature differs totally from the nature of the actual Hzzam melodies.
All the three examples above are typical of theories drawn solely
from printed sources with no references to the repertoire and performance practice. Now it is time to move on to a Macedonian study on Ottoman and Ottoman-influenced pieces. Ottoman classical compositions
form the focal point of the following section.
Studying Ottoman Classical Music: An Example
Borivoje Dimrevskis study The algija Tradition in Macedonia
(1985) on instrumental algiska muzika shows typical scholarly attitudes
towards Oriental music in the Balkans. Several Ottoman classical
pieces exist in the corpus, and Dimrevski treats them essentially similarly as folk music: He compares the qualities of Oriental music with

70
71

Dzhudzhev, Blgarska narodna, 276, 278279, 298.

Ibid., 324.

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the musical folklore of the West.72 This approach is purely etic, and the
research method is inductive with no adequate references to the formal
and tonal structures of Ottoman classical music, although the informants
used Ottoman terminology in the field recordings. Instead, Dimrevski
tries to pigeonhole the scale structures of the melodies mainly according
to Dzhudzhevs system.
All transcriptions in the book have g1 as the final notea practice
Ilmari Krohn standardised as a means of comparing folk melodies.73
Such uniformity misses the theoretical finals of makams on various scale
steps and blurs their mutual relations. Furthermore, Dimrevski does not
attempt to identify the pieces and their composers but regrets not having
sheet music or other sources at hand which would enable comparison.74
Actually, such material would be difficult to trace as long as the pieces
and their composers remain unknown.
Leaning on the writings of ganec and Dzhudhzev,75 Dimrevski
finds in his Macedonian material eleven makam scales whose origins are
in ancient Greece, the Middle East and India, respectively. More specifically, scales with the interval of the augmented second presumably
originate from Indian folk music.76
An illustrating example of Dimrevskis etic induction is Taksim
naaven which the violinist Alo Tonov (b. 1910) recorded in Titov Veles
in 1977.77 This piece is actually an Ottoman fasl suite of several parts
in makam Nihvend. Whilst Dimrevski makes no effort to recognise
either the pieces or the usul rhythmic modes, the sections are: (A) Nihvend taksim, i.e., improvisation in flowing rhythm, (B) Nihvend perev (usul devr-i kebir 28/4) by Tanburi Byk Osman Bey (181685),
(C) the ark song Bakmyor em-i siyh feryde (usul aksak 9/8) by
Hac rif Bey (183185), (D) name, that is the improvised section mane
and (E) Nihvend saz semai (usul aksak semai 10/4 and yrksem 6/4)
by Yusuf Paa (182184).
Alo Tonov does not perform Nihvend perev in its entirety; the
recording consists of the first hne section, the ritornello teslim, second
72
73

74
75

76
77

Dimrevski, algiskata tradicija, 48.

Ilmari Krohn, Welche ist die beste Methode, um Volks- und volksmssige Lieder
nach ihrer melodischen (nicht textlichen) Beschaffenheit lexikalisch zu ordnen?,
Sammelbnde der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 4 (19021903), 649.
Dimrevski, algiskata tradicija, 59.
ganec, Orijentalizmi; Dzhudhzev, Blgarska narodna, 307337; Ibid., Arabski
elementi, 155160.
Dimrevski, algiskata tradicija, 4950.
Ibid., 352358.

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hne and teslim, after which follows a short transition to the ark. The
musician has omitted the third and fourth hne and the teslim after each
of them. He frequently departs from the customary version of the composition, constituting a good example of the popularised performance
aesthetics of Ottoman classical music. Interestingly, in the second hne,
the melody begins an octave higher than normally, only to descend relatively soon to the standard octave. This temporary transposition refers to
the late nineteenth-century Ottoman nightclub style.
According to Dimrevskis analysis, section (A) is in the Oriental
scale of makam Mustar (i.e., Myustaar or the lower part of maqam Hisar
scale) with a low Hidaskar tetrachord extension, section (B) is in
makam Mustar I (i.e., maqam Hisar, the Hungarian Gypsy scale and raga
rimhandra), whist section (D) is partly in the ancient Greek Aeolian
scale which is akin to makam Isfahan Bejat, and partly in the ancient
Greek Ionian scale, i.e. Dimrevskis makam Uak. Section (E) is in
makam Sultani Jegjah which is identical with to raga Suryknta.78 Section (C) goes without analysis.
The ambiguity of Dimrevskis analysis method becomes obvious
when comparing the results above with those of another version of the
same piece. In his 1954 recording, Alo Tonov played a short introductory taksim and the first hne, teslim and the second hne of Nihvend
perev under the name Peref naaven.79 This time Dimrevski extracts
the ancient Greek Aeolian scale (makam Isfahan Bejat), makam Mustar
I, makam Hidaskar (raga Myamlavagaula), a pentachord and two
kinds of hexachords from the melody.80 To sum up, the analyses rarely
match with the reality, and they lack any deeper understanding of the
music they purport to explain.
Conclusion
As emerged from this study, narratives of the national memory in
the Balkans have strengthened self-identity and contributed to the construction of the Other by sometimes redefining and appropriating Ottoman music or, more frequently, by marginalising and excluding it from
the canons of national music histories. Balkan folk music research has
utilised several discourses in processing music and its history: nationalism, Occidentalism and Orientalism. The strategies developed in order to
handle the Orient within have meandered between Occidentalism and
78
79
80

Ibid., 468, 470, 446, 449, 472.

Ibid., 334336.
Ibid., 446, 470, 473, 426, 422, 432.

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Orientalism, creating an ambiguity which belongs to the realm of Balkanism.

The emphasis on various discourses has varied geographically and
over time: Through their knowledge of Greek church music, most Greek
folk music scholars have had potential theoretical tools for analysing
makam-related music. Scholars, however, have excluded such forms of
music from the canon of national music due to their alleged Turkish,
morally dubious, inauthentic or commercial nature. As examples, Ottoman-Greek caf music, rebetika and laika spring to mind first.
This Balkan in-betweenness expresses itself especially clearly in
analyses of major-sounding restricted makam Segh tunes which are presented as being in the minor modes of ancient Greece. On the other hand,
the very same melodies have been analysed as being in the Western major scale. Here, Segh melodies have literally been seen through the distorting lens of Western concepts and theories.
One can adequately challenge the relevance of most Balkan scale
theories for music they strive to analyse. Instead, just as myths are related to other myths, the scale theories are related to previous theories
rather than to the music they try to elucidate; Oriental music manifests
itself to scholars as the inaccessible, mysterious Other. A huge gap separates the imagined Oriental music from what Ottoman makams and their
folk equivalents or derivatives actually are and how they function. A
proper understanding of the makams has been beyond the grasp of the
Balkan scholar for over a century. The Orientreal or imaginedis ostensibly far away.
Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge my debts of gratitude, for their help and advice in completing the article, to Blent Aksoy, Michael Aylward, Jelena
Jovanovi, Milan Milovanovi, Panagiotis Poulos, Martin Stokes and
Frank Thompson.

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Risto Pekka Pennanen

LOST IN SCALES...

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147