О художественном содержании макама

Abstract

The article is devoted to researching Islamic professional oral music. Maqam is the most high form of this, its conception is spiritual catharsis. Maqam is a chain of ascending parts, each of them elaborating on the main theme of the music. It progresses to a culmination and then descends to the cuitial stage. Maqam’s spiritual contents are the sorrow of love in the form of improvisation first of all, but also songs and dances. Maqam unites dramatic and lyrical characters. Every maqam has its own semantic canon, which is actualized by means of the deepest research of human feelings. Semantic and structure canons connect with the performer’s liberty in emotional detail. Maqam represents a peculiar type of authority (not in absolute form of composer’s art) and is based on classical orient poetry. The highest form of maqam is instrumental (without singing), which expresses the character of its singing-instrumental “parent”. The maqam’s performers must have a special complement of musical abilities and study in music empirient schools. It is necessary to mark particular antithesises, which illustrate a “emotion–ratio” relation in macam’s dramaturgy: passionate contents and strict verified form; originality and canon; euphoria and self-control of a performer; melody and polyphony (instruments imitate singing). Maqam represents a penetrating, “endless” melody with its ability to develop. The elite character of maqam’s genesis and contemporary democracy of the genre are explored, as well as the relations between two forms of maqam: maqam-tune and maqam-genre.