Music of the Ottoman Court

Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire

Series: 

Author:
Walter Feldman
Between 1600 and 1750 Ottoman Turkish music differentiated itself from an older Persianate art music and developed the genres antecedent to modern Turkish art music. Based on a translation of Demetrius Cantemir’s seminal “Book of the Science of Music” from the early eighteenth century, this work is the first to bring together contemporaneous notations, musical treatises, literary sources, travellers’ accounts and iconography. These present a synthetic picture of the emergence of Ottoman composed and improvised instrumental music. A detailed comparison of items in the notated Collections of Cantemir and of Bobowski—from fifty years earlier—together with relevant treatises, reveal key aspects of modality, melodic progression and rhythmic structures.
Copyright Year:
2024
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-53126-0
Publication:
18 Dec 2023
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-53125-3
Publication:
20 Dec 2023
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Walter Feldman, PhD (1980, Columbia University), is a leading scholar of both Ottoman Turkish and Jewish music. His most recent publications are From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes (Edinburgh U Press, 2022) and Klezmer: Music, History and Memory (Oxford U Press, 2016).
Preface to the New Edition
 1 Chronologies and “Local Modernity”
 2 Instrumental Music: Mehterhane and Fasıl-i Sazende
Acknowledgements
List of Figures, Tables and Music Examples xxvi
The Structuring of the Book

Introduction
 1 Turkish Classical Music and Ottoman Music
 2 Ethnomusicology and History in Ottoman Turkey

The Major Sources for Ottoman Music 1650–1750

Part 1: Musicians and Performance


1 Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court
 1 The Ottomans and the Turco-Mongol Courtly Heritage
 2 The Emergence of Ottoman Court Music
 3 Vocalists and Instrumentalists
 4 The Geographical Origin of the Musicians and Location of Musical Centers
 5 Changes in the Ruling Class and in the Organization of Music in the Palace
 6 Unfree Musicians
 7 Free Musicians in the Palace Service and the Bureaucracy

2 Professionalism and the Music of the Ottoman Court: Dervishes and Turkish Art Music
 1 The Mevleviye
 2 Music in the Other Sunni tarikats
 3 Conclusion

3 Instruments and Instrumentalists
 1 Sources for the Instrumentation of Ottoman Music
 2 Organ and Genre
 3 The Ottoman Court Ensemble of the Sixteenth Century
 4 The Ottoman Ensemble from the Seventeenth to the Mid-Eighteenth Century
 5 Social Contexts of the Turkish Lutes
 6 Conclusion

4 The Ottoman Cyclical Concert-Formats Fasil and Ayin
 1 The Structure of the Ottoman Fasıl
 2 The Fasl-i Sazende
 3 Structure of the Fasl-i Sazende
 4 The Mevlevi Ayin

Part 2: Makam


5 The General Scale of Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Music
 1 Nomenclature of Scale Degree and Mode
 2 Cantemir’s General Scale
 3 The Problem of the Note Segah
 4 Saba, Uzzal, Beyati, Hisar
 5 Conclusion
 6 A Note on Symbols

6 Makam and Terkib
 1 Other Modal Entities
 2 Terkib and Şube Structures
 3 The Terkib in the Eighteenth Century

7 Melodic Progression
 1 Seyir in Compositions
 2 Cantemir’s Terminology for Melodic Progression
 3 Hızır Ağa and Harutin

8 The Taksim and Modulation
 1 The Generic Nature and Origin of the Taksim
 2 Turkish and Persian “Taksim” in Cantemir’s Treatise
 3 Modulation and the Taksim
 4 Modulation and the Küll-i Külliyat Genre
 5 Conclusion

Part 3: Peşrev and Semai


9 The Peşrev/Pishrow
 1 The Peşrev as Genre
 2 Origin and Structure of the Peşrev/Pishrow
 3 Generic Variation within the Ottoman Peşrev

10 The Ottoman Peşrev
 1 Periodization of the Turkish Peşrev
 2 Factors Leading to Change in the Formal Structure of the Peşrev
 3 Conclusion

11 Peşrevs and Analyses
 1 Period I (1500–1550)
 2 Period 2 (1550–1600)
 3 Period 3 (1600–1650)
 4 Period 4 (1650–1690)
 5 Neyzen Ali Hoca
 6 The Peşrevs of Cantemir
 7 Muhayyer Muhammes
 8 Buselik-Aşirani Berefşan
 9 Conclusion

12 The Seventeenth-Century Persian Peşrev
 1 Peşrevs and Analyses

13 Transmission of the Ottoman Peşrev Repertoire
 1 Transmission of the Peşrev during the Seventeenth Century: Peşrevs and Analyses
 2 The Nazire (“Imitatio”)
 3 Conclusion
 4 Transmission of the Peşrev in the Eighteenth Century

14 The Instrumental Semai
 1 Semai-i Sazende in the Later Seventeenth Century
 2 Periodization of the Semai-i Sazende/Saz Semaisi
 3 Analysis of the Seventeenth-Century Semai Documents
 4 Semai-i Lenk/Aksak Semai
 5 Transformation of the Old Semai
 6 Conclusion

15 Conclusion
 1 The Departure of Turkey from the “Persianate” Musical Sphere
 2 The New Ottoman Style of the Eighteenth Century
Glossary
Figure Credits
Bibliography
Index
All who are interested in Ottoman history and music history, especially those intrigued by early modern phase of Turkish art music.
This book is an essential introduction to the early history and structure of Ottoman music. It has been taught as a basic text in universities from Teheran to Los Angeles, within both music and historical studies.
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