This book intends to give to the reader a complete image of the musical system of the Mediterranean and Near East. Arab and Turkish secular art-song music and Eastern Orthodox Church music, the so-called Byzantine, are jointly analyzed and compared.
Great part of the discussion is dedicated to music intervals, in an attempt, first, to give a complete image of the opinions from Antiquity to our days, second, to clarify the concepts for a contemporary and defined placement of the subject.
The most important part of the book is about the tropical shapes and their functioning, meaning, the sounds of the Byzantine music and the Arab and Turkish makam. The different systems are comparatively given in a way that both common and distinctive points between them are made clear. The material is presented in such a way that makes it accessible even to those who do not possess a specialized knowledge of the subject while the theoretical part is corroborated with supplements of musical examples from reliable compositions in the different tropical systems examined.