Mugams reached us as professional music of oral tradition. Maybe it is a hidden secret of this genre’s immortality. Each performer expressed his individual creative features, they performed mugams according to their peculiar, distinctive style, adding new nuances, details, grace-notes, melodic tunes, etc. At the same time they based on strict rules. All this gradually applied into performance practice, making expressiveness reserves of mugam art. So mugam’s development progressed. There appeared new mugam sections, new mugam variants – destgakh, mugams of small forms – zerbi-mugams, etc. We could see it in creative works of Garabagh School’s representatives.

Garabagh performance school had original features. Knowledge of all mugams’ rules and perfect possession of singing technique were mandatory. Singers were required to have clear mellifluous voice of great compass, and skills to sing fluently in upper and low registers. We should note that Jabbar Garyagdi has the greatest compass – two and a half octaves – among singer of a period under review. He had lyrical-dramatic tenor. It is interesting that Bulbul preferred him, comparing his voice with one of Caruso’s.

Mastery of Garabagh singers contained manner of their singing, their creative ideas, unique performance technique, improvisation skills with terrific grace-notes – zengule, etc.

Repertoire of Garabagh singers was broad. They performed all classic mugam-destgakhs: Rast”, “Shur”, “Mahur”, “Seygakh”, “Khumayun”, “Bayati-Shiraz”, “Chahargakh”; zerbi-mugams: “Eyrati”, “Garabagh Shikestesi”, “Osmani”, “Mansuriye”, and others. Representatives of Baku and Shemakha schools performed the same mugams. However, we should note that mugams of Garabagh performers differed by content and ample quantity of sections. Rengs, tesniffs and changes among sections were different as well.

It should be interesting to note singers that became famous for performance of only one mugam. Public used their names next to mugam’s name, for instance: Seygakh-Islam or Zabul-Gasim. Thus, singer Islam Abdullayev with his cordial performance created the glaring variant of mugam Seygakh. He left as the best singer of this mugam in folk’s memory. It is known that Jabbar Garyagdi won everybody over singing of mugam “Mahur” and zerb-mugam “Eyrati”; Seyid Shushinsky – by “Chahargakh”; Zulfi Adigezalov – by “Rast”, etc.

Garabagh singers paid great attention to mugam’s poetic texts. They especially emphasized interrelation between words and music. They selected texts appropriate to music by spirit and mood. As a rule they used gazelles – poems of classic eastern poets, written of Persian, e.g. poems of Hafiz and Saadi. They constantly changed traditional Persian language for Azerbaijani one in those poetic texts, which by Garabagh singers selected for mugam improvisations. They widely introduced gazelles of Azerbaijani poets: Fizuli, Vagif, Natavan, Seid Azim Shirvani, and others. It also assisted to make mugam genre more democratic.

Speaking on creative works of Garabagh singers, one wants to note one feature more. It is composition of own tesniffs and songs, sometimes for own texts. Thus, Jabbar Garyagdi and Khan Shushinsky created songs beloved among the public. For instance we could mention songs “Iravanda xal galmadi” (author - Jabbar Garyagdi) and “Shushanin daglari” (author - Khan Shushinsky). There were also many singers who possessed composer talent.

Activity area of singers broadened at late 19th century. This period mugam started to sound in the theaters and concert halls. Singers, performing mugams and tesniffs, accompanied by instrumental ensembles, started to perform in intervals between theater performances firstly in Tiflis, and then in Shusha. It was of a great success.