Ottoman music

Ottoman music () or Turkish classical music (, or more recently ) is the tradition of classical music originating in the Ottoman Empire. Developed in the palace, major Ottoman cities, and Sufi

Naming conventions#

The naming conventions of the Ottoman’s Empire’s classical tradition are the cause of significant controversy, as naming schemes proposed by governments often place significant importance on the “nationalization” of music, resulting in contradiction. It is known that the Ottomans did not often distinguish between different musical traditions, calling them all by the name musikî, ultimately from Ancient Greek mousiké. This naming convention broke down during the Westernization of the Ottoman Empire, as Western cultural norms and practices were slowly integrated into the empire. The resulting dichotomy between Western and Ottoman classical music was referred to as alafranga and alaturka (European and Turkish) by the Ottoman elites. However, as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, new terms were employed for the Ottoman tradition, forming the current naming convention of Ottoman music. The controversies fueled by these changes are often further aggravated by an uncertainty of periodization; according to researcher on Middle Eastern music Owen Wright, starting from late 17th century, Ottoman music differed from its predecessors to such an extent that “if the two were juxtaposed, we would need to speak of musical diglossia.” Walter Zev Feldman, another researcher on Middle Eastern music, has therefore claimed that a uniquely Ottoman style emerged no earlier than the 1600s.

Early Ottoman music#

While it is well established that Ottoman music is closely related to its geographical neighbors, namely Byzantine, Persian and Arabic music, early histories of Ottoman classical music, called “mythologies” by Feldman, emphasize a sense of continuity, as opposed to a synthesis of different musical styles. The Ottomans, as a Persianate empire, had assumed “an unbroken continuity from medieval Greater Iran (i.e. Herat to Istanbul),” while in republican Turkey, the history of Ottoman classical music was deeply tied to “musical figures of the medieval Islamic civilization, such as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and al-Maraghi with the Ottomans.” as until the Edvar of Hızır bin Abdullah, there had not been any notable music theory treatises written in Turkish; Turkic empires relied on works written in Persian to compose their own music. The Ottomans, until the 15th century, tried to imitate the Timurid Renaissance; the “musical creativity taking place in the Timurid courts of Eastern Iran and Central Asia” was viewed to be of legendary status. This resulted in a variety of new musical works that were composed in the 15th century, with a loosening of the traditional nawba cycle and the gradual adoption of various styles along with a court-patronized, vivid musical scene, which was referred to as the “first Ottoman romanticism” by Wittek and later, musician and musicologist Çinuçen Tanrıkorur.

Classical Age#

While the classical age of the Ottoman Empire is often viewed as an age when Ottoman hegemony over Europe had reached a peak, Tanrıkorur argues that “the evolution of the Ottoman music did not always follow a parallel to the stages of the evolution of the Empire, in terms of her political and economic dimensions.” Synagogal chants were also adapted to the makam system during this era, fueling what would later become the “new synthesis” of Ottoman music. Israel ben Moses Najara, who is sometimes called “the father of Ottoman-Jewish music”, and Shlomo Mazal Tov, compiler of the Sefer shirim u-zemirot ve tishbahot (The book of songs, 17 hymns and songs of praise), were very influential in this process, as they, along with many other non-Muslim musicians, started to attend Mevlevi ceremonies in which religious music was played; this fusion would be the driving force behind 17th century Ottoman music.

17th and 18th centuries#

A new style of Ottoman music, called the “new synthesis” by Feldman, emerged in the second half of the 17th century, is often described as a form of “local modernity” and a “musical renaissance”, where the complexity of 15th-century Near and Middle Eastern court music was regained and expanded upon. This musical revival was largely the work of “aristocratic Muslims and Mevlevi dervish musicians”, and resulted in a renewed sense of musical progress, which had broken down during the Ottomans’ classical age. The influence of Osman Effendi had effects beyond his immediate students and into well-known Eastern European intellectual Dimitrie Cantemir’s understanding of music history, as he elucidates on multiple occasions the rapid decline and renaissance Ottoman music had experienced of the 16th and 17th century, stating that: Cantemir’s Edvâr, possibly the most influential musical treatise written in the Ottoman Empire, is also often hailed as a paradigm shift in the Ottoman understanding of music theory. The lack of a poetic style, as well as an empirical and practical focus, is said to set Cantemir’s Edvar apart from earlier works, and would influence the treatises of later theorists. Secular art music and religious music were rarely intertwined in the early Ottoman Empire, however, their traditions were often closely related to each other; this resulted in the gradual introduction of Mevlevi elements to Ottoman classical music. This new synthesis had a wide range of implications for Ottoman music. While earlier Persianate music had a tendency to leave old forms and create new ones in times of societal instability, by the early 1700s, a new synthesis of Ottoman classical music had resulted in a relatively stable musical canon and a broad understanding of advanced music theory. According to Feldman, this new period in Ottoman music had led to many distinguishable features of Ottoman classical tradition, including the “sophistication of the system of rhythmic cycles”, “fine distinctions in intonation” and fasıl structure. This phenomenon has been compared to the sense of musical progress that had been taking place in the West during the 17th and 18th century, a process that has been called “locally generated modernity.”

Decline#

Starting from the turn of the 19th century, Western classical music found much greater patronage in court, chiefly after the death of Mahmud II. While Mahmud II continued the patronage of a native musical tradition, the following sultans, namely the Western-oriented Abdulmejid I and the conservative Abdul Hamid II were enthusiastic in their support for Western classical music. According to O’Connell, this newer music was also significantly influenced by Western motifs, particularly “in the realms of musical techniques, performance styles, and ensemble practice.” While many in Sufi Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Jewish Maftirim traditions opposed this, and continued transferring the old style in their respective communities, official neglect made it very difficult for the system to function. Therefore, many musicians, such as Şevki Bey and Tanburi Cemil Bey, avoided the court altogether, constituting the end of Ottoman classical music as the “official” art music of the empire.

Persecution and revival#

As the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and was succeeded by the Republic of Turkey, the Westernized elite regarded Ottoman classical tradition with a growing amount of disdain. Ziya Gökalp, a prominent nationalist thinker, thought of “Eastern music” as inferior to both Western classical and Turkish folk music, advocating the replacement of Ottoman tradition with a synthesis of these two traditions. This meant, with the absence of state support, that neither secular nor religious Ottoman music would survive. Further action was also taken to prevent Ottoman musicians from transmitting their knowledge to newer generations, as a “complete ban” was placed on Ottoman-style music education in 1927. The next year, Mustafa Kemal made his comments on the matter, stating that: According to Tekelioğlu, Mustafa Kemal managed to blame Ottoman intellectuals for the supposed inferiority of “Eastern” music with this rhetoric, and therefore separated “Turkishness” from the “soporific, Eastern” traditions of the Ottomans. However, while the republican elite, including Mustafa Kemal, were steadfast in their support for Western music, the general public were hesitant, even preferring Arabic stations which played a related tradition of music over that of native ones, which played Western music. What followed was further radicalization of policy in the 1930s, as music magazines that claimed to resist the revolution of Turkish music were coerced to self-censor, flooded with negative coverage, and later forced to close down. This was followed by a ban of Ottoman music on radio, instituted in 1935. This was defended by poet and cultural figure Ercüment Behzat Lav, who argued that: While the ban could last no more than a few years, systematic censorship of the types of Turkish music that could be played continued for at least half a century. Tekelioğlu has argued that a major reason of this censorship is the republican elites’ unwavering belief in absolute truths and a unified notion of “civilization”, in which the technologically advanced West were superior in all of their traditions, including that of music, which in turn justified the policy “for the people’s sake”. Ottoman music traditions would emerge from around a half-century of persecution around the 1970s and 80s, with the condition that this music was to be nationalized and to no longer feature themes of unattainable love and sorrow, making a “more cheerful” art music than before. In the pursuit of this goal, Ottoman music, which was “the common inheritance of all the peoples who made up the Ottoman societies”, was Turkified in a cultural “cleanse”. Many Ottoman composers’ names were Turkified to give the impression that they had converted and assimilated into Turko-Islamic culture, or otherwise demoted to a position of an outside influence helping the development of a Turkish music. Well-known neyzen Kudsi Erguner therefore argues that “in this way the origin of the art was reconnected to a given nation: the Turks are its owners and the artists of other origins are its servants.” The final result of this effort was a genre of music known in Turkey as Türk sanat musikisi, or Turkish art music. While many were supportive of this new style, as it achieved widespread popularity, some musicians, including Erguner, have criticized it, arguing that the songs’ lyrics lacked their traditional meaning and that its melodies were ‘insipid’. A popular offshoot, influenced by 19th-century Ottoman practice, formed in the 1970s, and was promptly named arabesk by commentators. O’Connell argues that the name arabesk was a reiteration of an older orientalist dualism “to envisage a Turkish-Arab polarity”, instead of an east–west one, and to define “aberrant musical and cultural practices with taxonomic efficiency”. O’Connell further argues that arabesk served as a link to older, Ottoman-era norms, which, according to him, partly explains the preference against arabesk in elite circles, who had previously categorized these as ‘degenerate’ and ‘promiscuous’. While older Ottoman-style musicians, such as Zeki Müren and Bülent Ersoy did deviate from republican gender norms, the ones exclusively associated with the more rural strand of arabesk, such as Kurdish vocalist İbrahim Tatlıses, presented a masculinity that, according to O’Connell, stressed both “swarthy machismo” and “profligate mannerisms”, adopting the melismatic melodic contours of Ottoman singers, judged as effeminate and uncivilized by the earlier republican elite.

Characteristics#

While Ottoman music does have characteristics in common with Western classical music, to which it is often compared, Ottoman music theory is largely dependent on two systems separate from that of common practice Western tradition, a system of modal melodic material called makam, and a system of rhythmic cycles called usûl. If said melodic material is used in its “purest” form, the resulting composition is called a taksim, or a locally-rhythmic improvisational piece. Composed pieces, however, also utilize usûl, a complex system of meters and accents, which structure the piece.

Makam#

Makam (or maqam) is broadly defined as the “melodic material of the Near East, Middle East and Anatolian traditional musics.” While it is one of the fundamental parts of Near and Middle Eastern music theory, its definition and classifications have been long debated by music theorists, who belonged to numerous schools of music within Near and Middle Eastern tradition. Makams are often further classified into basit (lit. basic), şed (transposed) and mürekkep (compound). Basit and şed makams can mostly be defined as a scale in the Western sense, while mürekkep ones can not. Makams also constitute a hierarchy of pitches, where the “nucleus” of the makam creates its essentials, while other pitches are “secondary” and therefore “mutable”. While there is a popular classification of seyirs, made by the Arel-Ezgi-Üzdilek system, which claims that makams can develop and resolve in ascending and descending fashions, this designation has faced criticism from Yöre among others, who has proposed a definition related to melodic contour. A related term called terkib exists, and refers to fragmentary phenomena inside a makam that have its own modal qualities. However, this term has been largely out of use since the early 18th century, and its purpose has largely been replaced by the concept of seyir and çeşni, the former of which ‘implied’ the use of terkibs by associating conventionalized melodic progressions with makams, and the latter of which described fragmentary modal entities that implied a different makam.

Modulation#

According to Powers and Feldman, modulation is usually defined within Ottoman music in three different ways: as transposition, change of melodic structure or progression, and change of a modal “nucleus” (the non-mutable part of a scale); all of these constitute a change in makam. These inter-related definitions have provided ample space for the development of complex modal structures called mürekkep makams, in which simpler makams combine to create more complicated ones that evolve and change through time. However, Feldman further argues that outside of taksims, modulations and mürekkep makams were uncommon until the late 18th century, and that until that point, makams were only based on basic and secondary scale degrees found in earlier Ottoman music. The shift away from this old system has been attributed to the emergence of the standard 4-hâne instrumental structure, and the zemin-miyan system, which allowed more modulations during pieces by providing a theoretical basis for relationships between makams. By the 19th century, this had led to the “wandering makam” phenomenon, where modulations are in periods shorter than what is necessary to “show” the makam.

Usûl#

Usûls refer to a cyclical system of rhythmic structure, and, similarly to time signatures in Western music, these act as a vehicle to the composition of music. This system of internal division allows for the creation of complex usûls that can only be learned by rote, as Cantemir had pointed out: “because these usûls are so intricate, those who do not know the meter cannot play the songs at all, even though they were to hear that song a thousand times.” Usûls are often further broken down into two categories; short and long usûls. Short usûls, generally dance oriented rhythmic cycles including sofyan and semaî, feature heavy correspondence with melodic lines and aruz meters. A notable exception to this is the aksak semaî usûl, which does not show correspondence with neither melodic lines, nor meters. Long usûls, on the other hand, completely eschew correspondence with aruz, and “function along very different principles from the short ones”, according to Feldman, and while this system could describe usûl structures until the 18th century, Feldman argues that in later pieces, “the melodic gestures of the pieces frequently overwhelmed the ostensible usûl structures that theoretically supported them.”

Notation#

Like most Islamicate musical traditions, the Ottomans used no standardized notation system until the 19th century. While a variety of notation systems were utilized, including Byzantine, staff and abjad notation, these were used largely for archiving and theoretical purposes and read from sparsely. In fact, the Ottomans preferred a system of institutional oral transmission, called meşk. This meant that while the central melody and usûl would be laid down by the composer, the performer would add their personal style and accompaniment to the composition. Despite this, attempts were made to standardize certain types of notation, starting from the 15th century, when Byzantine musicians introduced their own notation to the Ottoman tradition. During the 17th century, Dimitrie Cantemir modified an old Islamic method called abjad serialization, where every pitch and note length were assigned Arabic letters and numerals respectively, to create his own influential system. However, no notation system was as widespread and close to being standardized as Hampartsoum notation; developed by Hampartsoum Limondjian during the 19th century decline of Ottoman music. While Hampartsoum notation has been eclipsed by modified staff notation in the Republic of Turkey, it enjoys widespread usage in the Armenian Apostolic Church to this day.

Forms#

Almost all classical music in the Ottoman style is performed in a long-form performance called fasıl. Fasıls include various movements, which have to be ordered in a specific way: taksim, peşrev, kâr(ı-natık), kârçe, beste, ağır semâi, şarkı, yürük semâi and saz semâi. A fasıl is led by a serhânende, who is responsible for indicating usûls, and the remaining musicians are called sazende (instrumentalist) or hânende (vocalist).

Taksim#

is an instrumental, improvised movement of a fasıl, played in locally-metrical rhythmic patterns. Performed by a single performer or a small part of the ensemble, taksims can be played in the beginning of a fasıl, or act as an interlude between two movements of a fasıl with different usuls or makams. As one of the most recognizable forms of Ottoman music, it has significantly influenced musical practice in all parts of the post-Ottoman world. However, the forms associated with taksim change drastically from one region to the next. All taksims rely on codified melodic progressions called seyir, which systematize possibilities in melodic development in these pieces. Taksims also heavily rely on modal modulation, as a taksim made in a single makam would have been “of little aesthetic value” to the Ottomans. However, Feldman argues that the tradition of modulating in taksims started no earlier than the 17th century. Furthermore, taksims are often used to demonstrate abstract modal relationships, differences and similarities between makams. This tradition began with Dimitrie Cantemir, his , features 36 modal modulations in total.

Gazel#

Gazels are vocal versions of taksim. These are accompanied with the poetry form of the same name. Originally simply called taksim, the word gazel seems to have replaced the former word when referring to vocal improvisation, sometime around the 18th century.

Peşrev#

Peşrevs are performed after the introductory taksim in a classical fasıl, and are rhythmically complex. They are typically made up of four hânes and one mülazime, which repeats after every hâne, and its melodic structure relies on alternating between neighboring makams in these hânes. Peşrevs, in addition to serving as preludes for long-form performances, also have a very comprehensive history in their usage as military marches, and therefore, has had a considerable influence on Western classical music. Melodically complex peşrevs with numerous modal modulations are called Fihrist peşrevs, or Küll-i Külliyat.

Kâr, Kârçe and Beste#

Kârs, Kârçes and Bestes are vocal pieces performed after the peşrev in the classical fasıl, these pieces are slow, rhythmically complex, and include terennüm, syllables that represent certain aspects of meter in Ottoman poetry. Similar to fihrist peşrevs, melodically complex pieces of these types are called kar-ı natıks. In some versions of these pieces, every modal modulation is signaled by a pun with the makam’s name, this is regarded as a poetic and pedagogical exercise.

Semaî#

Semai, an umbrella term for both instrumental and vocal styles, is often the most frequently returned-to genre of a fasıl. It consists of 4 to 6 hânes and one mülazime, which typically repeats after every hâne. Ağır semais are slow vocal pieces which are composed in the “usuls of Aksak Semâî ( ), Ağır Aksak Semâî ( ) or Ağır Sengin Semâî ( )”, and are often played after a kar or beste in a classical fasıl. Yürük semais are faster vocal pieces, composed in the usul of the same name ( or ), and are also played after the ağır semai in a classical fasıl. Saz semai are common instrumental pieces, played after the yürük semai in a classical fasıl, with very little variation in form, as “their first 3 hânes must be composed using the usul of Aksaksemâî ( ), and the fourth hâne is in various small usuls (mostly Yürüksemâî, or ).” Despite this, they are played with numerous embellishments, or “enjambents”, that offset the usul in various ways, creating more complex time signatures.

Genre family: Middle Eastern music, Persian music
Region: Greece, Turkey