Writing the History of &quot;Ottoman Music.&quot; ed. by Martin Greve (review)

Emin Soydaş

Writing the History of "Ottoman Music." ed. by Martin Greve (review)

Emin Soydaş

2020, Asian Music

https://doi.org/10.1353/amu.2020.0010

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This interesting volume comprises fifteen articles that were originally presented at a conference in 2011 that was held jointly by the Turkish Music Conservatory of Istanbul Technical University and the Orient-Institut Istanbul. The book brings forward the matter of writing the history of "Ottoman music," although only one part is specifically devoted to the subject. An introduction by the editor is followed by four parts dealing respectively with historiography, periodization, folk music, and reconstruction, and these sections primarily feature renowned authors considering various aspects of Ottoman/Turkish music. The volume ends with a common bibliography and information on the contributors. That the term "Ottoman music" is put in quotation marks in the title of the book represents a basic dissidence in defining the given tradition. Greve discusses this controversial issue and claims that the preference in the title is a "diplomatic" solution (9). But while "Turkish" might not always be the proper term when the subject in question is the music of the peoples under Ottoman rule, it is quite unreasonable to hesitate using it for the mainstream musical traditions that have been developed overwhelmingly by the Turkish-speaking people in Anatolia and Rumelia. Given that the terms "Ottoman" and "Turkish" are often used interchangeably in most of the articles even in this volume, it seems pointless to compel oneself to make a choice between them, which would not make much sense considering the historical facts. Another problem with the phrase "Ottoman music" is that most of the authors who use it refer only to art music, without giving any reason why, say, folk music is not included. The first part of the book bears the same title as the book itself, because the papers dealing directly with the subject only appear here. Bülent Aksoy criticizes the fictional and official histories that predominate much of the existing musicological literature in Turkey and makes some sound suggestions

118 Writing the History of “Ottoman Music.” Edited by Martin Greve. Translated by Efhan Oğuz, Martin Greve, and Onur Nobrega. Istanbuler Texte und Studien 33. Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag, 2015. 270 pp., illustrations, bibliography. ISBN: 978-3-95650-094-7 (hardcover), €68,00; ISBN: 978-3-95650-205-7 (e-book), €68,00. This interesting volume comprises fifteen articles that were originally presented at a conference in 2011 that was held jointly by the Turkish Music Conservatory of Istanbul Technical University and the Orient-Institut Istanbul. The book brings forward the matter of writing the history of “Ottoman music,” although only one part is specifically devoted to the subject. An introduction by the editor is followed by four parts dealing respectively with historiography, periodization, folk music, and reconstruction, and these sections primarily feature renowned authors considering various aspects of Ottoman/Turkish music. The volume ends with a common bibliography and information on the contributors. That the term “Ottoman music” is put in quotation marks in the title of the book represents a basic dissidence in defining the given tradition. Greve discusses this controversial issue and claims that the preference in the title is a “diplomatic” solution (9). But while “Turkish” might not always be the proper term when the subject in question is the music of the peoples under Ottoman rule, it is quite unreasonable to hesitate using it for the mainstream musical traditions that have been developed overwhelmingly by the Turkish-speaking people in Anatolia and Rumelia. Given that the terms “Ottoman” and “Turkish” are often used interchangeably in most of the articles even in this volume, it seems pointless to compel oneself to make a choice between them, which would not make much sense considering the historical facts. Another problem with the phrase “Ottoman music” is that most of the authors who use it refer only to art music, without giving any reason why, say, folk music is not included. The first part of the book bears the same title as the book itself, because the papers dealing directly with the subject only appear here. Bülent Aksoy criticizes the fictional and official histories that predominate much of the existing musicological literature in Turkey and makes some sound suggestions 119 for prospective studies on the subject, among which focusing on microtopics and eliminating inconsistency come to the forefront. In his well-grounded comparison between European and modern Turkish musicology, Ralf Martin Jäger points out the lack of systematic and methodologically adequate documentation of Ottoman sources and their satisfactory critical editions in Turkey, and he argues that Turkish musicology should develop its own original concept of methodology. In agreement with the previous authors on emphasizing a source-based history, Ruhi Ayangil classifies musicological sources and lists the requirements for a comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of them and also proposes a draft contents for a book titled “Turkish Music History.” Ersu Pekin, on the basis of iconographic evidence, draws an analogy of change between the practices of Ottoman music and painting. His conclusion, however, is no more than a statement of the known facts: problematic dating or absence of musical compositions is a roadblock to analyzing change. Similar detailed concerns are found in all these articles about the significance of historical notations and also about the indexing and critical editions of them, but none of the authors completely names all—of the few—major sources. The second part is not entirely about periodization, as suggested by its title, but the chapter by Nilgün Doğrusöz partly addresses the issue from the perspective of the alterations in the history of theories of Turkish art music from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, but she does so without any descriptive comparison. Kyriakos Kalaitzidis presents remarkable new findings concerning the notation collections of Petros Peloponnesios (1740–1778), which are among post-Byzantine manuscripts of secular music and which offer original information on eighteenth-century Ottoman music. Gönül Paçacı’s contribution illustrates the transformation that stemmed from the growing number of musical publications and the increasing influence of Western music on Turkish musical life during the second half of the nineteenth century. Walter Feldman’s long, elaborated article in part 2 deserves a closer look. The author attempts to thoroughly interpret the stylistic change in seventeenthcentury Turkish art music by introducing material from the Ottoman vocal repertoire and from contemporaneous Iranian sources, and he also discusses the pseudographia related to the “Marâghi repertoire.” According to him, a distinct Ottoman musical culture became evident by the end of the seventeenth century that was a result of erosion in the previous Persianate classical repertoire and of an increasing acceptance of a semifolkloric/popular Turkish repertoire, ultimately giving birth to a musical “renaissance.” But the core arguments of the article regarding the dynamics of this change often lack evidential basis (for example, the so-called Iranian factor) and remain mostly hypothetical, as the author himself admits (134). 120 The title of the third part, “History of Anatolian Folk Music,” suggests a similar “diplomatic” solution to an invented problem, considering the reference to a territory. From different perspectives, both Arzu Öztürkmen and Okan Murat Öztürk demonstrate the various symptoms of nationalism and nation-state politics in republican Turkey, such as collecting and archiving folkloric materials, reconstructing an imagined Anatolian culture and music, and fabricating myths about Turkish folk music while ignoring other traditional genres. The authors emphasize the roles of certain institutions devoted to the “education of the folk” in these developments as well. Süleyman Şenel sums up the characteristics of notated Turkish folk songs of the seventeenth century and points out the urban aspect in the history of folk music. What exactly is meant by “Ottoman türkü” is left unclear, however. The final part of the book includes chapters on the reconstruction of historical music. Fikret Karakaya does not definitively answer the title question of his chapter about whether early Ottoman notation collections represent the music of their times; instead he explains why those compositions could not be performed without interpretation. Similarly, although the problem of authenticity raised by Şehvar Beşiroğlu is not directly addressed, the author discusses the historical repertoire and concludes that the Cantemir corpus should be performed according to the information provided in the manuscript. By comparison, after introducing the historical tools utilized for his attempt to revitalize Seljuk music, which he paradoxically based both on new compositions and on some anonymous pieces, Recep Uslu inevitably acknowledges the impossibility of the task. Andreas Haug’s article nicely articulates the dissimilarities between the premodern monophonic and modern cultures of Western music and moreover reflects on how to achieve a sensible reconstruction of monophonic music. The chapter promises insight into the process of creating similar renditions of Ottoman/Turkish music. Unfortunately, there is an overall deficiency of qualitative coherence among the papers, which is due in part to not pursuing peer review or even editorial consistency. The problem is not primarily with the varied styles but with a lack of sufficient argument or original content in some of them. One would expect, however, to see papers touching on religious and mehter genres, two other major components of historical Turkish music. A number of papers share the shortcoming of insufficient references; there are a few instances of problematic translation; and although basic concepts and sources of Ottoman music are assumed to be readily familiar to the reader, it would have been helpful to provide a glossary as an appendix. Notwithstanding these deficiencies, this volume is a significant contribution to the study of the history of Ottoman music. By calling attention to the crucial need for a historiographical discussion and regeneration and by also presenting new research on various topics, 121 Writing the History of “Ottoman Music” clearly represents an increasing—but still developing—scholarly interest in the field. M. Emin Soydaş . Çankırı Karatekin University, Türkiye

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