6

I've retranscribed a piece of music whose original transcription was made around 1800 during Napoleon's Egypt expedition. The original transcriber describes the following tuning for the Arabic Rast mode in D:

D E F+1/3 G A B C+1/3

This tuning system differs from the currently practiced 24-tet quarter-tone Arabic system (standardized in 1932 at a famous music conference in Cairo), in that it uses third-tones instead. However, the 4th and 5th tones still respect the 4:3 and 3:2 intervals.

What would be the name of this tuning in our current music theory?

Fwiw, here's my transcription: https://musescore.com/infojunkie/ya-labesyn

Improve this question
4
  • I don't suppose there's another name for this. Much like 12-edo is only an approximation for western scales (which are in principle just-intonated), 24-edo is only a system that can be used to render an approximation of maqams in their original intent. Quite possibly, these ¹⁄₃-raised minor third's are pretty much the “true” Rast scale, and what's called modern Rast is a worse approximation. But, I know very little about Arabic music.
    – leftaroundabout
    Feb 6, 2017 at 1:02
  • 1
    To be sure, what is this now – F+33ct (¹⁄₆ tone up from F) or F+67ct (¹⁄₃ tone up)? The latter would seem to make more sense thinking of 7-limit just intonation, but it would not resemble the 24-edo Rast scale.
    – leftaroundabout
    Feb 6, 2017 at 1:10
  • You could try fitting it to a documented scale via huygens-fokker.org/scala but 4:3, 3:2 isn't much to go on... what are the exact intervals used as the base, for comparison?
    – thrig
    Feb 6, 2017 at 17:06
  • Thanks for the comments and sorry for the late reply. According to Wikipedia, 12-TET was already used by the 19th century, so the regular base tones apply, except for F and C which are raised 1/3 of a TONE, not 1/3 of a semitone.
    – infojunkie
    Mar 10, 2017 at 5:41

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

The nearest scales AFAIK are 4th (plagal) Byzantine Liturgical modes. It would be only off by ~15-20 cents on the F and C. Also the Arabic Segah (Dudon) is pretty near (off by 17 cents).

You will find them in "The Mathematical Theory of Tone Systems" by Ján Haluška.

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.