Sultanîyegâh Makamı: Büselik in the Deepest Register

Sultanîyegâh is Büselik moved to the bottom of the instrument's range. It takes the same interval pattern — tone, semitone, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone — and places its karar on yegâh, the lowest standard perde in the AEU system. The result is a makam whose melodic identity is inseparable from the deep, resonant register it inhabits: a grave, unhurried mode that descends from the upper octave to rest at the very floor of the tonal space.

The name

Attested "Sultanîyegâh" is a compound of sultanî (sultanic, regal) and yegâh, the name of the lowest standard perde in the AEU pitch system. The name identifies both the makam's karar perde and its character — a mode of weight and gravity, befitting the word "sultan." As with several şed makam names, the target perde is embedded directly: the transposition catalog lists it as "Sultan-i Yegah," making the connection explicit.

Şed relationship: the Büselik transposition family

Established Sultanîyegâh belongs to a family of three makams that share identical interval content but differ in karar, seyir, and melodic character. All three deploy a Büselik beşli (pentachord) below and a Kürdî dörtlü (tetrachord) above, with the same interval sequence: 9-4-9-9-4-9-9 commas. Only the starting perde changes:

Established Each member of this family demonstrates a core principle of the şed system: moving a scale pattern to a new perde does not merely shift pitch — it rewrites the seyir, the functional pitch hierarchy, and the expressive identity. Büselik ascends; Nihâvend explores outward from the middle; Sultanîyegâh descends. Same skeleton, three distinct makams.

Çeşni construction

Established Sultanîyegâh joins two çeşni at the dügâh perde — the structural junction between the lower pentachord and upper tetrachord:

• Büselik beşli (yegâh to dügâh): T-B-T-T = 9+4+9+9 commas (31 total) — the same pentachord that defines Büselik makamı and the lower half of Nihâvend. Its characteristic sound is the semitone (bakiye, 4 commas) between the second and third degrees, producing the natural minor flavor.

• Kürdî dörtlü (dügâh to nevâ): B-T-T = 4+9+9 commas (22 total) — the tetrachord that also appears as the upper component of Büselik and Nihâvend. Its opening semitone mirrors the Büselik beşli's internal semitone, creating a symmetry of half-step placements across the full scale.

Established The complete construction — Büselik beşli plus Kürdî dörtlü — sums to 53 commas (one octave), as Holdrian comma arithmetic requires of any complete AEU scale.

Scale in Holdrian commas

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

Established The ascending intervals in commas are: 9-4-9-9-4-9-9. The first four intervals (9-4-9-9) form the Büselik beşli; the remaining three (4-9-9) form the Kürdî dörtlü. Like its parent Büselik, the scale uses only tanînî (T = 9 commas, approximately 204 cents) and bakiye (B = 4 commas, approximately 91 cents) steps — no küçük mücennep or büyük mücennep intervals appear.

Functional pitches

Established Sultanîyegâh designates specific pitches with functional roles that govern its melodic behavior:

• Karar (resting tone): Yegâh (D) — the lowest standard perde in the AEU system. Phrases and compositions conclude here, at the very floor of the tonal space.
• Güçlü (strong tone): Nevâ (D, upper octave) — the eighth degree of the one-octave scale. In the descending seyir, nevâ functions as the point of departure rather than a mid-range center.

Attested The güçlü's placement at the octave is unusual — most makams position the güçlü at the fourth or fifth degree. In Sultanîyegâh, nevâ's role as güçlü reflects the descending seyir: the melody begins at or near nevâ and works downward, making the upper octave the point of highest energy rather than a mid-scale center of gravity. Dügâh (A), the fifth degree and the structural junction between the two çeşni, serves as an important intermediate resting point where temporary cadences (yarım karar) occur during the descent.

Seyir: the melodic path

Established Sultanîyegâh's seyir is classified as inici (descending): the melody begins in the upper register and moves downward toward the karar. This is the inverse of Büselik's purely ascending (çıkıcı) seyir, and the most direct audible marker that Sultanîyegâh is its own makam rather than merely Büselik played lower.

Practice The characteristic melodic development:

1. Begin at or near the güçlü (nevâ), establishing the upper Kürdî dörtlü region.
2. Descend through çârgâh and kürdî, pausing at dügâh for a temporary cadence that asserts the junction between the two çeşni.
3. Continue the descent through the Büselik beşli — rast, acem aşîrân, hüseynî aşîrân — with the modal character shifting to the natural minor quality of the pentachord.
4. Arrive at the karar (yegâh) for the final cadence, with the full weight of the descent settling on the deepest available pitch.

Practice The brief ascending turns within the descent are essential to the seyir's shape — the melody does not simply walk downward stepwise. Small upward gestures (returning from dügâh toward kürdî before continuing down, or from hüseynî aşîrân back toward rast before the final cadence) create the breathing of the melodic line between descending phrases.

The deep register

Attested Yegâh sits at approximately D3 — a perfect fourth below the rast perde that many makams treat as their gravitational center. This means Sultanîyegâh occupies the lowest octave of the standard Turkish tonal space. On instruments like the tanbur, the ney in its lowest register, or the oud's open bass strings, this range produces a timbre that is darker, richer in lower partials, and slower to speak than the middle register where most makams reside.

Practice This register has practical consequences for performance. The lower the pitch on a plucked or bowed string, the longer the decay and the more prominent the fundamental relative to the upper harmonics. Sultanîyegâh melodies tend toward more deliberate pacing than their Büselik or Nihâvend counterparts — not from any theoretical rule, but because the instrument's acoustics reward slower, more spacious phrasing in the deep range.

Sultanîyegâh and Western D minor

Established Because Sultanîyegâh uses only tanînî and bakiye intervals, it maps directly to 12-TET: D-E-F-G-A-Bb-C-D — the D natural minor (Aeolian) scale. This makes it fully playable on piano, guitar, and other fixed-pitch Western instruments.

Practice But as with the Büselik-Aeolian comparison, identical pitches do not produce identical music. The AEU tanînî (approximately 204 cents) is wider than the 12-TET whole tone (200 cents), and the bakiye (approximately 91 cents) is narrower than the 12-TET semitone (100 cents). These differences are subtle individually but cumulative across a scale — and the prescribed descending seyir, the functional pitch hierarchy, and the phrasing conventions make Sultanîyegâh a fundamentally different musical experience from a D minor scale played top to bottom.

Repertoire

Attested Sultanîyegâh's dedicated repertoire is modest. Like its parent Büselik — which Feldman's survey of Ottoman court music lists as having far fewer compositions than Nihâvend — the makam occupies a smaller space in the classical canon than its more prominent transposition siblings. Nihâvend absorbed the majority of compositional activity for this interval pattern, and most performers encounter the Büselik-family sound through Nihâvend first.

Practice The limited repertoire is not a measure of the makam's musical value. Sultanîyegâh's deep register and descending seyir create a distinctive atmosphere — solemn, weighted, anchored to the bottom of the tonal range — that no other makam in the family provides. A taksim in Sultanîyegâh explores a sonic territory that Büselik and Nihâvend cannot reach, precisely because their karars sit higher.

Practice guidance

Practice Begin with the Büselik beşli on yegâh. If you already know Büselik or Nihâvend, the interval content is familiar — the exercise is in relocating it. Play the pentachord slowly in the low register, listening to how the same intervals acquire a different character when sounded a fourth or fifth lower than usual.

Practice Next, practice the descending seyir. Start at nevâ and descend through the full scale to yegâh, but avoid a mechanical stepwise walkdown. Insert the small ascending turns — a lift from dügâh back up toward kürdî before continuing down, a return from hüseynî aşîrân to rast before the final approach. These turns are what distinguish a living seyir from a descending scale exercise.

Practice For learners who know Büselik, the most productive comparative exercise is to play the Büselik ascending seyir on dügâh and then immediately follow it with the Sultanîyegâh descending seyir on yegâh. The intervals are identical; the direction and the register are not. This exercise crystallizes the principle that a makam is not its scale — it is its scale plus its melodic path plus the acoustic reality of where that path lives on the instrument.