In the theory of
Arabic music
Arabic music () is the music of the Arab world with all its diverse List of music styles, music styles and genres. Arabic countries have many rich and varied styles of music and also many linguistic Varieties of Arabic, dialects, with each countr ...
, ''sayr'' is the abstract concept that for a given
maqam
Maqam, makam, maqaam or maqām (plural maqāmāt) may refer to:
Musical structures
* Arabic maqam, melodic modes in traditional Arabic music
** Iraqi maqam, a genre of Arabic maqam music found in Iraq
* Persian maqam, a notion in Persian clas ...
, there is a traditional or expected sequence of different
ajnas
In traditional Arabic music theory, a jins (, pl. ) is a set of three, four, or five stepwise pitches used to build an Arabic ''maqam'', or melodic mode. They correspond to the English terms trichord, tetrachord, and pentachord. A ''maqam'' is ...
that influences melodies and entire songs in that maqam. It is not a deterministic thing like "jins A must always be followed by jins B" in some maqam, but a cultural understanding that certain motions are expected within the musical idiom, while others would be new and surprising.
The Arabic word ''sayr'' () means "course" or "progress" and refers to the usual course of melody through the different areas of the maqam, in particular its ajnas.
Traditional music theorists tended to analyze ''sayr'' in a rather shallow way, often merely describing a maqam as having an "ascending" or "descending" ''sayr'', or stating that one jins is used when ascending and an alternate jins when descending. The concept is about much more than a simple sense of direction, however, and some maqamat have an elaborate interconnected network of pathways through the different ajnas, varying from traditional or even cliché sequences all the way to rare, idiosyncratic modulations only known from a handful of pieces.
References
{{reflist, refs=
[{{cite book , last1=Farraj , first1=Johnny , last2=Abu Shumays , first2=Sami , year=2019 , title=Inside Arabic Music , publisher=Oxford University Press , isbn=978-0190658359]
Arabic music theory
Melody types