Maqam Şehnaz is a mode in Ottoman classical music, which is also known as maqam music, after the term used for mode in this tradition (maqam).
While homophonic performance has remained an essential part of its aesthetic to this day, maqam music started incorporating tertian harmony at some point in the 18th century, and the process was complete by the 1850s. This transformed the harmonic structure of the traditional modes to a significant degree, so that even the still bare, unaccompanied melody, now effectively implies tonality, chord progressions, cadences, and resolves melodic ideas (sentences) logically within the timeframe provided by rhythm and form.
The resulting harmonic structure is unmistakably tertian, yet it is heterodox with respect to traditional tonality, often breaking the strict rules of functional harmony. It is shared with maqam-influenced musical styles of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, such as klezmer music, the only difference being that in these modern idioms it is explicated by virtue of chords and bass lines. By inferring rules for harmonic development from the various polyphonic practices in these styles, it is possible to detect the trail left by the modern maqam melody to reveal a very intricate and dynamic harmonic canopy.
Şehnaz Saz Semaisi by Kemençeci Nikolaki
This late 19th or early 20th-century composition is an instrumental concert piece in the saz semai form, written in the aksak semai rhythm (10/8, notated in the score below as 5/8). The Şehnaz mode uses A double harmonic major as its primary scale:
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A Bb C# D E F G# A
However, the mode exhibits a complex melodic development outline, starting above the octave with A harmonic minor.
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E F G# A B C D E
Bars 1-4 (1. hane)
The first four bars (of 10/8) of the piece make up the first hane (one of the four non-repeating parts). They effectively conclude a typical A harmonic minor progression using the V-i cadence, albeit with the melody landing on the fifth degree (E).
Bars 5-6 (teslim)
The teslim (refrain, repeating part) then immediately modulates to the key of D, at first implying D major. Then, a surprising development in the second bar (of 10/8) of the refrain: the fifth degree in the key of D major, the Mixolydian finalis (A) is tonicized using a secondary dominant (E7) for the complete Gm-E7-A cadence.
To understand where this solution is coming from in this modal context, one important aspect of maqam music must be considered, and that is its unique tone system, which accommodates neutral intervals. These are neither major nor minor, and the thirds formed with them, being exactly in between major and minor thirds, are unusable within a tonal framework.
One popular melodic structure provided for by this tone system is a type of tetrachord (4-note sequence) with a neutral second degree (e.g., between F and F# in the score below, which doesn’t use a unique symbol for it like F+). Since the D-F+ neutral third makes for an unusable chord on D, Serbian and Bosnian musicians have found an ingenious solution to harmonizing this tetrachord which doesn’t even need to undermine its traditional intonation:
To understand where this solution is coming from in this modal context, one important aspect of maqam music must be considered, and that is its unique tone system, which accommodates neutral intervals. These are neither major nor minor, and the thirds formed with them, being exactly in between major and minor thirds, are unusable within a tonal framework.
One popular melodic structure provided for by this tone system is a type of tetrachord (4-note sequence) with a neutral second degree (e.g., between F and F# in the score below, which doesn’t use a unique symbol for it like F+). Since the D-F+ neutral third makes for an unusable chord on D, Serbian and Bosnian musicians have found an ingenious solution to harmonizing this tetrachord which doesn’t even need to undermine its traditional intonation:
They treat it as a sequence of four notes (5-6-7-8) on the fifth of the Mixolydian scale.
Since the neutral second interval here (F+) is a neutral sixth of the implied Mixolydian tonic (A), it snuggly fits into the tonic’s harmonic embrace as its natural 13th, which is about a quartertone flat of the F# in equal temperament. Moreover, due to the principle of enharmonic equivalence between acoustically similar intervals, it even fits into an extended chord on the dominant (E7), being roughly equivalent to a pure major third of the dominant chord’s natural minor 7th.
Whether the neutral second is tempered or not, it is a key part of the history that led to the development of this unique harmonic solution.
Bars 7-8 (teslim)
After this momentary tonicization of A Mixolydian with a finalis on its V, the refrain now returns to the A double harmonic scale with the harmonic tetrachord on A, though the upper part changes to A Phrygian dominant. The harmonic backdrop for such a melodic movement is D harmonic minor V, where the half-cadence Gm-A with respect to the D minor tonic resolves the melodic movement, which has its finalis on A.
Note that the unusual key signature, which implies D harmonic minor, features both the flat Bb and the sharp C# as the leading tone. This is due to minor tonality as such not being a recognized entity in the theoretical system of this modal music tradition, wherefore subordinating the scalar structure A Bb C# D E F G(#) A… to the scale of F major would not make sense.
While some Western audiences might perceive this cadence as unresolved, this is the standard way that melodies implying harmonic minor V are harmonized—the internationally famous example being Hava nagila—and they feel perfectly resolved to the Balkanic, Middle Eastern and Eastern European audiences.
Resolved half-cadences are an important innovation of Eastern tertian harmony.
Bars 9-10 (2. hane)
Now the same principle of Mixolydian V tonicization described above is used in the beginning of the second hane to modulate to the key of G major (b7), which allows for a harmonization of the A B C D tetrachord, with a neutral second heard between A and B in practice. Now the finalis of Mixolydian in G (D) becomes the implied tonic as the melody rests on A, being tonicized with the same II-V suspended cadence in the key of G: (Cm)-A7-D.
Bars 11-12 (2. hane) & Final Remarks
In the conclusion of the second hane starting from bar 11, the melody reverts to the A double harmonic major scale, heard in full in a single melodic phrase for the first time in the piece. It straddles the line between two tonalities: D Gypsy minor V (D harmonic minor with a #4 and a finalis on V = A) and A harmonic minor IV (b2 #3), since these are the two tonalities that accommodate the two harmonic tetrachords and lend the chords for cadences.
Bar 11 ends with a suspension on the implied tonic of D Gypsy minor (or A harmonic minor IV). Then, bar 12 goes back to the tonicized Mixolydian finalis A in the key of D major, ending in the E7-A cadence.
In only 12 bars, this piece of music from an originally purely homophonic tradition without tertian harmony outlines a very complex harmonic progression with its melody, which moves quickly yet gracefully through three implied keys, using tonal devices like cadences to logically conclude melodic sentences. It makes use of harmonic devices unique to Eastern music, such as the resolved half cadence in harmonic minor V and the tonicized Mixolydian finalis ending in an authentic cadence using the secondary dominant of the key. Such harmony is also able to accommodate neutral melodic intervals alien to Western music in a simple yet ingenious manner, by distancing the implied tonic from the modal finalis.
