Musical traditions from the Ottoman Empire: resonances and interculturality

The aim of this study day is to consider the cultural prism of the Ottoman Empire from the point of view of its musical languages, seen as the expression of the heterogeneous nature of its ruling class and peoples for over five centuries. Like other art forms which developed within the empire, musical cultures emerged in different spheres of Ottoman social life at various historical stages and thus have a strongly intercultural nature. The various traditions did not coexist separately but underwent reciprocal interactions, and this phenomenon is widely demonstrated by the many musical genres. Courtly music developed from a blend of Persian and Byzantine legacies and was composed by sultans and high functionaries – Sultan Korkut (1467-1513), Murad IV (r. 1623–40), Sultan Selim III (1761-1808), Gazi Giray Khân (1554–1607). This music coexisted with compositions by diplomats and foreign intellectuals who gravitated round the imperial court, like the Polish Count Wojciech ‘Ali Ufkî Bey Bobowski’ (1610–c1675), the Moldavian Prince Dimitri Cantemir (1673-1723), who both wrote fundamental treatises, and the Armenian monk Hamparsum Limoncyan (1768–1839), who invented a system of musical notation. The elite musical culture was also enlivened by many musicians and composers from the most disparate traditions (Armenian, Greek, Jewish and Christian) who were active in the capital and caught the attention of ambassadors, historians and travellers like Giambattista Toderini, Charles Fonton or Jean Antoine du Loir. We must bear in mind that in addition to the melodic and lexical koiné of popular songs from Asia Minor and eastern Anatolia, there was a vast repertoire of lyric-epic songs by the Ashık troubadours, who on their wanderings brought together, Armenia, Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Other traditions included the Byzantine system of the oktoechoi, the sacred music in Christian and Muslim monasteries, scattered throughout the Balkans, the circulation of the synagogal cantors in Sufi centres (tekke and dargâh), the Sephardic Spanish-Jewish melodies in ladino, and the massive constant presence of gypsy performers. Educated literary genres were crossed over with urban light genres, as in the cases of the gazel, ŠŸarkı and the special Ottoman Greek genre of the rebetiko played on the Bosphorus and in the quarters of the great 18th-century trade capitals. In short, the musical history of the Ottoman Empire reveals a host of responses to the varied stimuli from its peoples. Far from being an isolated aspect, separate from political, social and literary events affecting the rulers and ruled in the empire, the musical cultures were to all effects and purposes a historical phenomenon among the many illustrating our knowledge of the period, its geography and peoples. This is the main reason for adopting a genuinely interdisciplinary approach, encouraging the involvement of ethnomusicologists but also specialists of the social and diplomatic history of the Ottoman Empire, and the literature and philology of languages spoken in the empire at the time. Using their respective research tools, each speaker will interpret a musical phenomenon they have come across in their own work. As well as commenting it, they may also offer the chance to listen to examples. The focus is not only on musical offerings but also the various forms of the historical contextualisation that the speakers can illustrate. Far from attempting an exhaustive treatment of all musical genres found in the Ottoman Empire, we wish to mark the beginning of a comparative and interdisciplinary analytical path which, to our minds, is the only way possible to interpret the Ottoman and Mediterranean Ecumene in all its heterogeneous complexity.

Information
Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies
tel. +39 041 2710357
e-mail: musica.comparata@cini.it