Introduction
Throughout the course of the 20th century, as newly formed nations have sought
ways to assert and formalise their national identity, they have typically acquired a
range of identifiable national assets. Thus we find in this period new musical canons
springing up across the world. These canons, however, cannot be dismissed as
arbitrary collections of works imposed on the public by the authorities. They acquire
deep resonance and meaning, both as national symbols and as musical repertoires
imbued with aesthetic value. This book traces the formation of one such musical
canon: the Twelve Muqam (on ikki muqam), a set of musical suites which has come
to mean a great deal to one little-known Chinese Central Asian nation.
The Uyghurs
The Uyghurs might be introduced as one of China’s less well-known though more
numerous minority nationalities (compared to, say, the Tibetans or the Mongols),
or alternately as the only one of the major Central Asian nationalities (alongside
the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Turkmen) who do not possess their own
independent nation state. Culturally we might best regard the Uyghurs as a Central
Asian people, although their homeland now lies within the borders of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), in the large desert and mountain region in China’s far
northwest, currently known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
There are also sizeable populations of Uyghurs living in the neighbouring Central
Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Uyghurs follow Sunni
Islam, and popular practice is strongly influenced by Sufi traditions especially shrine
(mazar) pilgrimage. Their language belongs to the Turkic language family, as do the
other Central Asian languages with the exception of Tajik, and is very closely related
to Uzbek. Their music also displays much continuity with the folk and classical
traditions of Uzbekistan and northern Tajikistan, where musicians use the same longnecked
lutes and frame drums, and gather their music into large-scale suites, or cycles,
called maqām. The term comes from the Arabic maqām but in contemporary Central
Asia the concept of maqām, or muqam in the Uyghur pronunciation, is regarded
less as a modal basis for improvisation and more as a fixed suite consisting of sung
poetry and stories, dance tunes and instrumental sections. Probably the best known
of these Central Asian maqām traditions are the six large-scale suites commonly
known as the Tajik-Uzbek Shash Maqām. Rivalling this tradition in terms of size and
complexity are the Twelve Muqam (on ikki muqam), the prestigious set of musical
suites which have come to be emblematic of the Uyghur nation.
As in the better-known situation in Tibet, the relationship between Uyghur
minority nationality and the Chinese state during the nearly 60 years of rule by
the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been marked by tension and sometimes
violence. Throughout this period, the Twelve Muqam have been deployed as political
emblems and tools by the state and by Uyghur nationalists. The Chinese state has
invested large sums of money in a succession of projects to preserve and develop
the Twelve Muqam, and it uses these projects to showcase the positive aspects of
its minority policies on the national and international stage. These policies, and
specifically the canonisation of the Twelve Muqam, inevitably meet with a mixed
reception amongst Uyghurs, but, positive or negative, their assessments agree on the
directly political nature of the canonisation project. To illustrate with two anecdotes:
in 2006 I met one loyal old Uyghur cultural cadre based in a small town in southern
Xinjiang, who was in ecstasies over the latest release of a full set of VCD (video
compact disc) recordings of the Twelve Muqam. ‘Timur Dawamat [the then regional
chairman of Xinjiang] did a great job with those VCDs,’ he told me, ‘better than
liberating our region twice over!’ (Mulla Tokhti, interview, Qaratal, July 2006).
During this same period a joke was circulating on the internet sites maintained by
Uyghur exiles (which are blocked by China): A Uyghur meets a Chechen. ‘We have
Twelve Muqam’, says the Uyghur proudly. ‘Twelve Muqam?’ retorts the Chechen,
‘huh, you’d be better off with twelve kalashnikovs!’
Existing studies of the Uyghur Twelve Muqam
In addition to the official transcriptions and recordings of the Twelve Muqam, there
is a wealth of published studies in the Uyghur and Chinese languages, which I will
draw on throughout this book. The most useful Chinese-language sources are the
numerous books and articles by the musicologist Zhou Ji, former head of the Xinjiang
Arts Research Unit, whose writings are based on many years of fieldwork and the
experience of transcribing the whole repertoire as developed by the professional
groups in the 1980s (Zhongguo 1996; Zhou 1995, 1998, 2001, 2005, 2006a, 2006b).
There are some useful collections published in both Chinese and Uyghur (On ikki
muqam 1992). Uyghur writers working within the Xinjiang region have tended
to focus more on historical and textual aspects (see, for example, Teklimakaniy
2005), engaging in the internal polemics surrounding the repertoire (Imin 1980;
Ötkür 1992). Uyghurs based in the Central Asian states have provided analysis and
transcriptions of the shorter ‘Ili variant’ of the Twelve Muqam (Khashimov 1992)
and have been more able to reflect on the political processes of their canonisation
(Ärshidinov 2002).
Several Western-language studies are also available. Colin Mackerras provides
one of the earliest English language introductions to the Twelve Muqam and other
Uyghur performing arts (1985). The article is not written from a musicologist’s
perspective but it provides an interesting reflection of the discourse of the period: the
assumptions and attitudes which are widely shared in Uyghur and Chinese language
The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia
publications within China. Thus we read that the Twelve Muqam have ‘extremely
ancient’ roots in the 4th-century music of the Buddhist kingdom of Kösän and that
they are no less than the source of other maqām traditions across the Islamic world,
and we puzzle over the strange dichotomy of the Uyghurs’ love of song and dance in
spite of the proscriptions of their supposedly ‘anti-music’ Islamic faith.
During & Trebinjac (1991) provide the first Western-language attempt at detailed
musical analysis of the Twelve Muqam, focussing on structure, rhythms and mode.
Their analysis is based on an early set of Chinese transcriptions (Shinjang 1960),
and recordings made in Uzbekistan in the 1970s and 1980s (Ministerstvo Kulturi
SSR, no date). Their booklet provides a useful starting point for this discussion,
but it is problematic in that it produces a reductive analysis of the Twelve Muqam
based on primary sources which have since been criticised and quietly discarded.
Musicologists in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang concur that the 1960s transcriptions often
bear little discernible relation to the recordings on which they were meant to be
based, still less to contemporary professional practice. Since the time of During and
Trebinjac’s analysis they have been replaced by the plethora of new recordings and
transcriptions which have appeared since the early 1990s. Trebinjac’s more recent
and wide-ranging book (2000) provides further consideration of the formal aspects
of Uyghur Muqam traditions and more contextual detail as part of a broad survey of
Uyghur music, within her wider argument concerning the politics of appropriating
minority musical traditions for Chinese modern composition.
Nathan Light’s PhD dissertation (1998) is an in-depth study of the Twelve
Muqam texts, the ‘classical’ ghazal of the Chagatay poets and the many ‘folk’ beyit
or couplets. As far as I am aware, the first scholar to discuss the Twelve Muqam in
terms of ‘canonisation’, Light draws on interviews, historical sources and textual
analysis to provide an illuminating account of the work of revising and fixing the
Twelve Muqam over the past fifty years under the People’s Republic of China. I am
delighted that the long-awaited revised version of Light’s PhD is soon to appear in
print with Lit Verlag/Transaction Publishers. In a brief online publication, James
Millward has contributed some interesting perspectives on the political implications
of the project. Wong Chuen-Fung’s PhD thesis (2006a) takes a fresh look at issues
surrounding the revising of the Twelve Muqam; these are usefully summarised in his
article (Wong 2006b).
The present book is indebted to these earlier studies. It draws on these and
other published sources in European languages, Uyghur and Chinese, interviews
with musicians and musicologists, and field, archive and commercial recordings,
towards an understanding of the Twelve Muqam as repertoire, juxtaposed with an
understanding of the Twelve Muqam as discourse, or what might be termed the field
of Uyghur muqamology. In the next part of this introduction I consider the nature of
musical canons and the processes of their formation with reference to studies of the
Western classical canon, 20th-century China and musical canons across the Islamic world. Chapter One provides an overview of Uyghur music, genres, instruments and
contexts. Chapter Two presents a historical survey of the process of canonisation of
the Twelve Muqam, bringing together personal accounts gathered during fieldwork
and published material from Xinjiang and the Central Asian states. Chapter Three
brings the focus to the personal level, with a biographical account of one actor in
the canonisation process. This chapter is a revised version of the chapter ‘Abdulla
Mäjnun: Muqam expert’, which appears in Lives in Chinese Music (Rees 2008).
Chapter Four discusses the debates which are carried on within Uyghur professional
musical circles regarding the canonisation process, and uses comparative analysis of
published recordings of the Twelve Muqam to consider the nature of the repertoire,
questions of modal character and variation between different versions. Chapter
Five situates the Twelve Muqam repertoire within the context of maqām traditions
across Asia, and more directly within the sphere of Central Asian musical traditions,
considering musical structures and performance contexts. This chapter is a revised
version of a previously published chapter which appears in the book Situating the
Uyghurs between Central Asia and China (Bellér-Hann, Cesàro, Harris & Smith-
Finley 2007). Chapter Six considers the canonisation process within the broader
context of music-making across the region. Drawing on comparative analysis of
professional and locally maintained traditions of Twelve Muqam, it discusses the
impact of government-supported efforts at canonisation, and the impact of the
independent recording industry. This chapter also considers new developments
following the 2005 inclusion of the Uyghur Muqam within UNESCO’s third
proclamation of masterpieces of oral and intangible heritage.
The book includes an appendix which contains brief notes on the accompanying
CD, which was recorded by Abdulla Mäjnun during a brief residency in SOAS in
2003, supported by the AHRC Centre for Music and Dance Performance. As this
residency took place before the structure of this book was fully conceived, the CD is
not a straightforward illustration of the transcriptions provided in the book but rather
a musical portrait of one individual musician and player in the canonisation process.
As such it provides an audio complement to Chapter Three. Some of the tracks on
the CD also serve as material for comparative analysis in Chapters Four and Six.
Musical canons
Across the world, and across historical periods, processes of canon formation
are linked to political power, and especially to the rise of new forms of political
power. In a historical survey of the Western classical tradition, William Weber
offers a definition of musical canons as: ‘the presentation of old works organized as
repertories and defined as sources of authority with regard to musical taste’ (Weber
2001: 339). Weber argues that the musical canon may take on moral, spiritual
and civic force. He links the formation of the Western classical canon in the 18th
century to the rise of the public as a political force independent of the monarchy, a period in which cultural life in general, and music in particular, played a central
role in establishing new definitions of community (Weber 2001: 352). This focus on
identity, and in particular national identity, has been central to studies of processes
of canonisation in other parts of the world, where definitions of community involved
particular and well-theorised processes. The formation of musical canons outside
Europe, primarily during the course of the 20th century, has been widely linked to
the rise of the nation state. Just as we are accustomed to thinking about nations and
their histories in terms of Eric Hobsbawm’s model of invented tradition (Hobsbawm
& Ranger 1983), so too it is common to approach their musical canons as repertoires
whose purported completeness and deep historical roots are revealed on inspection
to be contemporary constructions, or at least the fruit of new ways of imagining the
past.
Philip Bohlman has argued that most canons are products of ‘bricolage’. He
discusses the formation of canons as processes involving multiple agents who
make multiple choices, selecting and revising according to certain (often contested)
criteria, including or excluding particular melodies and texts. Through such processes
the past is appropriated in the present and preserved for the future: ‘Models of the
past are important, and where real models are not present, surrogates and imaginary
models will do just fine’ (Bohlman 1992: 203–4). This understanding now informs
contemporary approaches even to the Western canon. Weber cautions that ‘the
ideological burden of the classical music tradition – its effort to enforce its authority
– makes one think that there was a single, identifiable list, but upon inspection we
find a great variety of practices at any one time in different contexts’ (Weber 2001:
347). More recent studies in ethnomusicology, informed by post-colonial theory,
have sought to develop new ways of thinking about such tensions between tradition
and modernity, impelling a closer focus on the actions of individual musicians,
researchers and audiences as they negotiate between different modes of identity
(local, ethnic, national, cosmopolitan or diasporic), and a focus on the social and
performative spaces in which these actors move (Turino 2000; Rice 2003).
Musicologists working on the Western classical tradition, perhaps predictably,
have been more interested in the repertoire itself, seeking to understand why and
how certain musical sounds come to embody the moral, spiritual and civic force
that Weber describes. Dismissing the fundamental claim that canons exhibit
transcendental and objective values, Mark Everist asks: how are canons determined,
why, and on what authority? Everist also probes the role of the audience and their
reception of the canon, asking how the relationship between reception, canon and
value works (Everist 2001: 389–93). Such questions have inherent cross-cultural
interest, and we might fruitfully ask if there are any specific musical traits which
are prerequisite for canons across different cultural contexts. If we can identify such
traits – for example modes of reception, performance venues, the tendency towards
large ensembles or fixed compositions – then to what extent do they draw on the
Western classical canon, or rather on perceptions of this canon, as a model?
China, modernity and national minorities
Katherine Bergeron argues that ‘discipline’ is fundamental to canons, linking the
ideology and practice of the Western classical tradition, such as playing in tune
or practising scales, directly to broader notions of modelling behaviour and social
control (Bergeron 1992: 3). The ideology of discipline is immediately apparent in
the debates surrounding music in early 20th-century China, and it is here that we
may find the seeds of the canonisation of the Uyghur Twelve Muqam being sown.
During this period, equally under pressure from Western and Japanese military
incursions, and inspired by Western and Japanese cultural models, China’s so-called
‘May 4th’ reformers and modernisers were calling for reform of virtually all aspects
of Chinese culture and society. Music did not escape their attention, and numerous
articles were published in China’s music journals introducing Western harmony
and instrumentation, making comparisons between Western and Chinese music,
and discussing China’s ‘national character’ as revealed in her traditional music. An
excerpt from an article by the 1930s reformer Ying Shangneng gives an idea of the
tone:
In days gone by China had her own great music. But judging from what we find of it
nowadays, nothing remains to remind us of its past glory. … Her musical instruments …
are quite crude and simple … no standard pitch can be found among them. No two flutes
made by the same hand can be made to play in unison harmoniously. The scale steps are
also found to vary … No wonder, therefore, in the annals of Chinese music, there is no
Beethoven or Schubert. Andrew Jones argues that what these May 4th reformers demanded was the disciplining
of Chinese musical life along Western or ‘scientific’ lines: ‘At the very moment that
Chinese music became an object of study, classification, and rationalization along
Western lines, it also came to signify Chineseness’ (Jones 2001: 40). This ideology,
tinged red, carried over into the establishment of the People’s Republic (1949–),
and culminated in the formation of China’s most famous revolutionary musical
canon, the ‘model operas’ (yangbanxi) of the Cultural Revolution, while the search
for a Chinese Beethoven produced such oddities as the ‘revolutionary composer’
or blind street musician A Bing (see Stock 1996). China’s minority nationalities
were equally subject to this ideological approach. Under the systematising pressure
of the Chinese state, in the 1950s each of China’s newly designated 55 minority
nationalities developed one representative art form, singled out for state support and
development. As Helen Rees argues:
The show-casing of these designated music and dance forms has played an important
role in China’s formulation as a multi-cultural state. Yet (as Andrew Jones argues
above) just as these forms were harnessed to perform difference on China’s national
stage, they began to achieve sameness through being subjected to similar processes
of reform. Subject to processes of ‘improving and ordering’ (jiagong, guifan), dance
styles were transformed into group choreographies, songs were transcribed and
fixed, scales and musical instruments standardised, and a nation-wide system of
professional performers was put in place, trained in arts academies, and organised
into state-sponsored performing troupes. Clearly not all of these designated minority
musical forms with their faux-naïf folkloric appeal can lay claim to the weightiness
which we tend to associate with canons, yet the processes of their creation bear
many of the hallmarks of canon formation. It is important to see the Uyghur Twelve
Muqam as one among these 55 designated minority cultural assets. However, the
Uyghurs, as I have noted, are also culturally Central Asian Muslims and musically
very much part of the Islamic world. By looking westwards beyond China’s borders
to nation states across Asia and North Africa we can find closer parallels with the
formation of their canon.ic
Processes of canonisation across the Islamic world
In her recent book, Ruth Davis describes the case of the Tunisian Ma’luf, a tradition
whose canonisation ran along a similar timeline to the Uyghur Twelve Muqam,
and in which it is possible to trace many correspondences with the Uyghur case
(Davis 2004). The Ma’luf, a set of large-scale suites formerly patronised by the
elite but widely performed in Sufi lodges, coffee houses and weddings, was first
transcribed in the 1930s, impelled in part by the enthusiasm of the Frenchman Baron
d’Erlanger to preserve and purify traditional Tunisian music. The establishment of
the Rashidiyya Institute in 1934 marked the beginning of the canonisation of the
Ma’luf. Supported by the French colonial government and modelled on the French
conservatory, the Institute sought to replace the traditional small Ma’luf ensemble
with a larger orchestra. It quickly became apparent that the musicians drafted into the
orchestra were performing differing interpretations of the repertoire, and the move
from small to large ensemble, remarks Davis, was marked musically by a move
from heterophony to cacophony (Davis 2004: 51). Perceiving the need for notation
to produce a unified performance, the Institute produced a composite version of the
Ma’luf, drawing together the versions held by several different musicians. Davis
argues that this was developed purely as a practical measure in pursuit of the creation
of a large ensemble performance; the ideology of a sole correct version only took
hold later (Davis 2004: 109).
Following independence in 1956 the tradition was promoted nationally, and
successive layers of transcriptions and recordings were produced over the subsequent
decades. Through this period Davis notes two competing ideologies at play. The first
argues that the Ma’luf represents a unified national heritage, and notation should be
deployed to define and restore the authentic tradition. In this reading, oral tradition
results in superficial deviation from the norm over the course of centuries. The
second more liberal argument holds that the multiple, regional orally transmitted
traditions are legitimate; each generation defines its own interpretation, hence the
need for regular revision of notations to keep the tradition alive (Davis 2004: 67).
We find a similar set of circumstances in 1960s Iran, under the rule of the Shah,
when the government attempted to establish the definitive Radif, the repertoire
which forms the basis for improvisation in Persian art music. Although they do not
frame their discussions specifically in terms of canonisation, several major Englishlanguage
studies deal with these issues in relation to the Radif. Bruno Nettl describes
the Radif in paired concepts: it is both repertoire and theory on which performance
is based; a contemporary version of a centuries-old way of making music throughout
the Middle East and a coherent system developed recently by a small group of
individuals. One may speak of the Radif, he argues, or hold that there are as many
Radifs as there are master musicians, and each of these may have several variants
(1987: 3).
The origins of the Radif are generally thought to lie in the 18th century, but little
is known about musical practice in that period. Its canonisation owes much to one
individual: Mirza Abdullah (d. 1917), who collected and classified the repertoire
handed down by his father. This Radif of Mirza Abdullah is considered the basis
of the contemporary mainstream tradition. It was not until the early 1960s that the
Radif became subject to state intervention. Ella Zonis describes how a panel of the
country’s leading musicians was chosen to prepare the official Radif. She opines:
Anyone who is familiar with Iran, or with any culture where values of individuality are
prized over and above collective thinking and where artistic independence is the chief
merit of artistic performance, would recognize that the chances of this group’s ever
reaching agreement were remarkably slim. (Zonis 1973: 63)
This panel was indeed soon disbanded and replaced by another panel comprised of
leading musicologists who, it was hoped, would be more scientific and objective.
In fact there was even less agreement between them, and finally the task was given
to one individual, the prominent musicologist Musa Ma‘rufi, whose completed
transcription of the Radif was lavishly published by government in 1963. Zonis
considers this version to be ‘solely the work of the transcriber’, and although it has
acquired a degree of authority in subsequent decades, as in the Tunisian case, rival
versions of the Radif are still fiercely contested by Iranian musicians today (Nooshin
1996).
The French musicologist Jean During has drawn direct parallels between the
Iranian Radif and the Bukharan Shash Maqām (During 1993). These six prestigious
‘classical’ suites of Bukhara, the best-known Central Asian maqām tradition, are
probably the closest model of canonisation to the Uyghur Twelve Muqam. In the
Central Asian context the processes of canonisation brought to bear on this tradition
are usually thought of as products of Soviet cultural and nationalities policies. A few
existing studies of these repertoires, however, give us a sense of the historical depth
10 The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia
of the processes of canonisation in this region. During reads the creation of the Shash
Maqām as a political symbol, but one which predates Sovietisation and 20th-century
nationalism, and which relates instead to the power of the city-state, in this case the
19th-century Emirate of Bukhara:
Le shash maqām boukhārien également est un monument incontournable, ‘mise en ordre’
par des musiciens qui en dirigeaient et obéissaient à l’émir, édifié à l’image d’un ordre
central autocratique puissant. (During 1993: 35)
During’s use of the term ‘monument’ to describe the Shash Maqām is interesting,
and impinges directly on questions relating to the preservation of ‘oral and intangible
heritage’ now promoted through UNESCO. I will return to these questions in Chapter
Six. It was this already monumental repertoire that the Soviet musicologist, Yunus
Rajabi transcribed and revised in the late 1920s, selecting what he considered to
be the ‘most authentic’ of numerous renditions, even synthesising his own versions
from parts of different versions. Rajabi’s Shash Maqām transcriptions formed the
basis of teaching in the Uzbek conservatory in subsequent decades. They have been
preserved into the post-Soviet era and enshrined as an Uzbek national tradition, in a
style which the American ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin has critiqued as ‘frozen
music’ (Levin 1996: 47–51).
Continuing this theme of pre-20th-century canon formation, I turn now to
Walter Feldman’s discussion of 17th-century Ottoman court music (Feldman 1996).
Feldman argues that the development of cyclical concert forms in the Ottoman court
during the 17th century distinguished this repertoire from the Iranian tradition which
the Ottoman regarded as its forebear. By the mid 18th century all Ottoman classical
genres were arranged cyclically, with separate courtly and Sufi cycles (fasil and ayin).
Each cycle contained composed and non-composed sections. Rhythmic formulae
(usul) played an important role in the composed elements of the cycles, and these
became increasingly long and complex (Feldman 1996: 177–92). The development
of this repertoire seems to bear many of the hallmarks of 20th-century canonisation.
Feldman does not devote much space to a consideration of the social and political
context which nurtured these musical changes, but he does comment briefly that
the wealth of the state was a factor (Feldman 1996: 503). Reminiscent of Levin’s
critique of the ‘frozen’ Shash Maqām, Feldman comments that by the early modern
era this ongoing process of tempo retardation and melodic elaboration meant that
many measured genres had acquired slow and ponderous rhythmic structures such
that this became the hallmark of the Ottoman repertoire (termed vukur ‘dignity’ or
aghir bashlik ‘seriousness’; Feldman 1996: 499).
Feldman’s work also allows us to see how canons which are closely tied to
the old order may suffer under the new. The rise of Turkish nationalism and the
establishment of the Turkish state in the early 20th century led to the sidelining and
direct criticism of the musical canon of the fallen and discredited Ottoman Empire.
The influential Turkish nationalist writer Ziya Gökalp argued in his 1923 book that
the ‘Eastern’ (in other words, foreign) music of the Ottoman had remained confined
to the elite while the Turkish lower classes got on with creating an authentically
national popular music free from outside polluting influence. Between 1935 and
1945 the Ottoman classical repertoire almost disappeared from radio and public
performance, and teaching opportunities were severely limited (Feldman 1990:
98–100).
These ideological attacks in Turkey have direct echoes in Soviet Uzbekistan
where, during more extreme periods of Sovietisation, the Shash Maqām were
attacked as ossified examples of foreign music, imbued with bourgeois-feudal
ideology (Levin 1984). Yet the tradition survived these attacks, and gained new state
support as a symbol of the Uzbek nation following the fall of the Soviet Union. In
Tajikistan, however, the Shash Maqām were too closely associated with one region
(the northern power-holders) to survive the ensuing power struggle between regional
factions. When the other (southern) regional faction took power in the late 1990s, the
Shash Maqām were duly sidelined.
More recent developments around the Ottoman repertoire demonstrate that canons
may have staying power beyond the direct patronage of the state. In recent years
the Ottoman classical repertoire has enjoyed a revival, quite independent of state
support, which suggests the strength of the aesthetic and other values which canons
imbue. It is interesting that the style of this revival, tending to small ensembles and
a greater use of heterophony, is in direct contrast to the weightiness and dignity
described by Feldman. Similar developments in the 1990s have been described by
Davis in Tunisia (2004: 105), and noted (and indeed actively promoted) by Levin
and During in post-independence Uzbekistan.
The historical studies of Feldman and During remind us that processes of
canonisation are not solely the product of 20th-century nationalism, nor necessarily
a reaction to the West. Instead, we might read the impulse to canonisation, including
that which took place in Europe in the 18th century, more broadly as part of the
political process of centralisation and consolidation. We have seen that some canons
survive the rise and fall of regimes, while others are too strongly linked to the old
regime and are dropped or attacked by the new. Several musical themes, briefly
mentioned, are recurring – size and complexity of form and ensemble, a tendency
towards fixity and ponderousness – yet these are by no means present in all the
traditions surveyed here; indeed, these canons run from open-ended collections
of compositions to a repertoire (the Radif) a significant proportion of which is
not performed as such but serves as the model for improvisation.
Although the phenomenon of canonisation stretches back beyond the 20th century, we can identify
tendencies that are shared by canons produced during the 20th century which are less
clear-cut in earlier models. The Radif, the Ma’luf and the Shash Maqām in the 20th
century all share the common features that they are understood as national heritage,
they exist in multiple variations, they are the product of oral tradition, and that the
thrust of the canonisers’ work has been to unify and fix tradition. Another recurring
theme in these accounts is the degree to which the canonising projects are contested
from within. Most importantly, the 20th-century canons, unlike their court-based
predecessors, are much more widely promoted through state institutions: they are
performed by state-supported orchestras or troupes whose members are trained in
state colleges and conservatories, and disseminated through live performance, TV
and radio, publications and recordings. They thus have more direct impact on the
practice of music beyond the state-supported sphere. All these themes will be further
explored in my account of the canonisation of the Uyghur Twelve Muqam.
