Kurdilihicazkar Makami: The Compound Mode That Defined Ottoman Song

Kurdilihicazkar carries one of the longest names in the makam system and one of the richest histories. Created by the composer Haci Arif Bey in the mid-nineteenth century, it became the preferred mode for Ottoman sarki (vocal art song) and remains among the most frequently performed makams today. Despite bearing Hicazkar's name, its construction shares no cesni with that parent mode: it is a transposition of Kurdi makam from dugah down to rast, producing a fully diatonic scale with no augmented seconds and a markedly different character.

The compound name

Attested The name breaks into three elements: Kurdi (the cesni built on a bakiye interval), the Turkish suffix -li ("having, flavored with"), and Hicazkar (the parent makam from which it takes its karar and general tonal territory). The literal meaning is "Hicazkar with Kurdi flavoring." Haci Arif Bey himself reportedly called it Hicazkar-i Kurdi.

Attested The connection to Hicazkar is not structural but cadential: the two makams share a karar on rast and a descending seyir, and performances of Kurdilihicazkar frequently incorporate Hicazkar-colored passages at cadence points. The scales themselves share no cesni -- Hicazkar's paired Hicaz intervals, with their augmented seconds, are entirely absent from Kurdilihicazkar's diatonic framework.

Cesni construction

Established Kurdilihicazkar is built from a Kurdi dortlu (tetrachord) on rast joined to a Buselik besli (pentachord) on cargah:

• Kurdi dortlu (rast to cargah): B-T-T = 4+9+9 commas (22 total) -- the same tetrachord that forms the lower component of Kurdi makam, here transposed from dugah down to rast.

• Buselik besli (cargah to gerdaniye): T-B-T-T = 9+4+9+9 commas (31 total) -- the same pentachord that serves as Kurdi's upper component, unchanged in position relative to the dortlu.

Established The construction sums to 53 commas (one octave), as Holdrian comma arithmetic requires. The interval sequence -- 4-9-9-9-4-9-9 -- uses only bakiye (B = 4 commas) and tanini (T = 9 commas) steps. No kucuk mucennep, buyuk mucennep, or artik ikili intervals appear, which means every step approximates either a semitone or a whole tone. Kurdilihicazkar is fully playable in 12-TET -- it maps to the Phrygian mode on a keyboard.

Scale in Holdrian commas

Established The ascending scale, in commas above the karar (rast):

Established The ascending intervals in commas are: 4-9-9-9-4-9-9. The first three intervals (4-9-9) form the Kurdi dortlu; the final four (9-4-9-9) form the Buselik besli. The two bakiye steps -- from rast to nim zirgule and from neva to nim hisar -- are the narrowest in the scale, producing the characteristic half-step coloring at the first and sixth degrees.

Functional pitches

Attested Kurdilihicazkar's pitch hierarchy reflects its descending character:

• Karar (resting tone): Rast (G) -- the final resting pitch, shared with Hicazkar.
• Guclu (dominant): Gerdaniye (G, the octave above rast) -- the upper-register emphasis from which the descending seyir unfolds. This placement is consistent with the inici character: the melody begins near gerdaniye and gravitates downward.
• Yeden (leading tone): Acem asiran -- the perde below rast in the lower extension, pulling upward into the karar during cadential resolution.

Seyir: the melodic path

Established Kurdilihicazkar's seyir is classified as inici (descending): the melody begins in the upper register and works its way down to the karar. This is the opposite of plain Kurdi, whose cikici (ascending) seyir starts at the karar and moves upward -- the same pitches, reversed melodic direction.

Attested A typical seyir unfolds as:

1. Begin at or above gerdaniye, establishing the Buselik besli region of the upper octave.
2. Descend through acem, nim hisar, and neva, exposing the minor-mode color of the besli.
3. Continue through cargah into the Kurdi dortlu, where the bakiye step from nim zirgule to rast announces the approaching cadence.
4. Conclude on rast with a tam karar (full cadence), often colored by Hicazkar inflections at the final descent.

Practice A characteristic melodic device involves performing Ussak-flavored passages around neva during the descent -- briefly treating neva as a local tonal center and altering the surrounding intervals to create the Ussak dortlu's neutral second. This creates a moment of modal ambiguity before the Kurdi dortlu reasserts itself in the lower register.

Kurdilihicazkar and its parent makams

The Kurdi connection

Established Structurally, Kurdilihicazkar is Kurdi makam transposed from dugah to rast. The interval content is identical:

Established The transposition preserves every interval but reverses the seyir. Where Kurdi begins at the karar and ascends, Kurdilihicazkar begins at the octave and descends. This reversal transforms the mode's character entirely -- a clear demonstration that a makam is not a scale but a scale plus a prescribed melodic path, a functional pitch hierarchy, and a set of modulation practices.

The Hicazkar connection

Attested Despite sharing a karar on rast and a descending seyir, Kurdilihicazkar and Hicazkar use completely different interval structures:

Attested The link between them is cadential: Kurdilihicazkar performances routinely modulate into Hicazkar coloring -- introducing the augmented second between zirgule and segah -- at key cadence points. This creates dramatic contrast, the flash of Hicazkar's chromatic tension against Kurdilihicazkar's diatonic clarity.

Character and the sarki repertoire

Attested Kurdilihicazkar's character is traditionally described as suh ve parlak -- witty and brilliant. Where Hicazkar builds tension through unrelenting chromatic intensity, Kurdilihicazkar achieves expressiveness through the directness of its diatonic descent and the subtle gravity of its half-step openings.

Established The makam was created by Haci Arif Bey (1831--1885), one of the most important composers of nineteenth-century Ottoman classical music. He reportedly composed nearly a thousand works, though only 337 survive in notation -- 327 sarki and 10 pieces in other forms. He also created the musemmen usul (rhythmic cycle). Kurdilihicazkar became, through his prolific output, the dominant mode for sarki in the late Ottoman period, and it retains that position in the modern Turkish classical repertoire.

Attested Landmark works in Kurdilihicazkar include:

• Haci Arif Bey -- "Gurub etti gunes dunya karardi" (The sun set, the world darkened), composed near the end of his life and among the most recognized sarki in the repertoire.
• Tanburi Cemil Bey -- Kurdilihicazkar Pesrev, a staple of the instrumental fasil tradition.

Common modulations

Attested Several characteristic modulations appear in Kurdilihicazkar performance:

• Hicazkar coloring -- introducing Hicaz cesni (augmented seconds) at cadence points, particularly during the descent to rast. This is the most characteristic modulation and the reason the makam bears Hicazkar's name.
• Ussak on neva -- treating neva as a temporary karar with Ussak-flavored intervals during the mid-range descent.
• Nihavend flavor -- since the Buselik besli appears in both Kurdilihicazkar and Nihavend, the upper register can briefly take on a Nihavend character when the melody lingers in the cargah-to-gerdaniye range.

Practice guidance

Practice Because Kurdilihicazkar is an inici (descending) makam, begin practice from gerdaniye and descend -- not by running the scale upward from rast. The characteristic motion is a gradual unfolding from the upper register toward the karar, and the musical identity emerges from this downward trajectory.

Practice Players who already know Kurdi have the interval vocabulary in hand. The challenge is reversing the seyir: Kurdi begins low and ascends, Kurdilihicazkar begins high and descends. Practice both in alternation to hear how the same interval content creates different musical narratives depending on where the melody starts and how it moves. This pairing -- the same pitches, the opposite path -- is one of the clearest demonstrations of what seyir means in practice.