Azerbaijani Tasnif: audio recording, notation and study of national rhythmical melody

Abstract

Recordings and sheet music are considered the main source in studying our art of mugham. The collection, notation, and publication of mughams by eminent mugham connoisseurs have led to the spread and recognition of mugham around the world and the increase of its fans. In modern times, recording, notation, and study of the tasnif (national rhythmical melody) creativity in the art of singing and the study of its role in the development of professional musical culture with oral tradition of Azerbaijan are among the current issues in modern musicology. Recordings and sheet music are considered to be the main sources for studying our mugham art as well as tasnif (national rhythmical melody). The novelty of the work is that for the first time we have obtained the catalogs of numerous tasnif (national rhythmical melody) from the State Audio Recording Archive of the Republic of Azerbaijan and have included several examples of them in the article and conducted research. Most of the master singers, who are professional musicians of the oral tradition of Azerbaijan, have the creativity of songs and tasnif (national rhythmical melody), and they presented the tasnif (national rhythmical melody) they created to the audience by singing them at a concert or party, after which those tasnif (national rhythmical melody) remained in memory, entered the repertoire of other singers, were sung and spread among the people. In our article, we set ourselves the main goal of researching the tasnif (national rhythmical melody) genre of master craftsmen’s mugham traditions in the context of the general development of Azerbaijani culture, sound recordings and notation, and tried to reflect it with examples. Azerbaijani composers and musicologists have conducted a number of studies related to the study of the tasnif (national rhythmical melody) genre. Based on those studies, we have characterized the features of the tasnif (national rhythmical melody) genre and looked at their main features in the scientific works dedicated to tasnif (national rhythmical melody). In our research, we have investigated the side-by-side study of classical and lyrical folk songs and the common and different features between them. In the article, we got acquainted with the catalogs related to the tasnif (national rhythmical melody) genre stored in the State Audio Recording Archive of the Republic of Azerbaijan, among them, we talked about the tasnif (national rhythmical melody) genre of 4 performers – “Sattarkhan” performed by Abdullyev Islam, “Mahur” performed by Abdullayev Alasgar, “Chahargah” performed by Mutallimov Mutallim, and “Hisar” performed by Mammadov Alibaba, and looked at the history of their tasnif (national rhythmical melody) genre, we noted in which year they were archived, by whom they were accompanied, on which mugham they were written, in terms of volume and scale, they were sometimes performed like folk songs, and we analyzed them in terms of form, genre, and character. Our conclusion is that on the basis of listening to their recordings, an idea is formed about how the same mugham or classification was sung by different singers in different periods. In our research, we listened to the recordings of master singers and tried to find out their performance style and how much it was used in practice. For many of our master singers, listening and mastering recordings has been a real school of craftsmanship. Listening to and benefiting from the recordings of master singers during the years of study and after entering independent creativity we can give good results to further improve the performance.