Quarter Tone - Music of The Middle East

Music of The Middle East

See also: Persian traditional music, Arabic music, and Arab tone system

While the use of quarter tones in modern Western music is a more recent and experimental phenomenon, these and other microtonal intervals have been an important part of the music of Iran (Persia), the Arab world, Armenia, Turkey, Assyria, Kurdistan, and neighboring lands and areas for many centuries.

Many Arabic maqamat contain intervals of three-quarter tone size; a short list of these follows.

  1. Shoor (Bayati) play
    شور (بیاتی)
    D E F G A B♭ C D
  2. Hussayni
  3. Siga play
    سيكاه
    E F G A B C D E
  4. Rast play
    راست
    C D E F G A B C
    with a B♭ replacing the B in the descending scale
  5. ‘Ajam
  • Sabba play
    صبا
    D E F G♭ A B♭ C D

The persian philosopher and scientist Al-Farabi described a number of intervals in his work in music, including a number of quarter tones.

Assyrian/Syriac Church Music Scale:

  • 1 - Qadmoyo (Bayati)
  • 2 - Trayono (Hussayni)
  • 3 - Tlithoyo (Segah)
  • 4 - Rbi‘oyo (Rast)
  • 5 - Hmishoyo
  • 6 - Shtithoyo (‘Ajam)
  • 7 - Shbi‘oyo
  • 8 - Tminoyo

Read more about this topic:  Quarter Tone

Famous quotes containing the words music of the, middle east, music, middle and/or east:

    “So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
    Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
    Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
    And through the music of the languid hours,
    They hear like ocean on a western beach
    The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.”
    —Andrew Lang (1844–1912)

    “During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
    —Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)

    “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.”
    —William Gouge, Puritan writer. As quoted in The Rise and Fall of Childhood by C. John Sommerville, ch. 11 (rev. 1990)

    “I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.”
    —Mother Jones (1830–1930)