Book Review: Martin Greve (ed.), Writing the History of “Ottoman Music.”

Book Reviews • 149 1990 [1927] “The Form of the Phonograph Record .” Translated from German by T .Y . Levin . October 55 (Winter):56–61 . Adorno, Theodor, & Max Horkheimer 2005 [1944] “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception .” In Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, 2nd edition, edited by M .G . Durham and D . Kellner . London: Sage, 41–72 . Auner, J . 2003 “Sing It for Me: Posthuman Ventriloquism in Recent Popular Music .” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 128:98–122 . Baudrillard, Jacques 1994 [1981] Simulacra and Simulation, translated from French by Sheila Glaser . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan . Barthes, Roland 1977 Image-Music-Text, translated from French by Stephen Heath . London: Harper Collins . Girard, R . & J . Williams 1996 The Girard Reader . New York: Crossroad . Sloterdijk, Peter 2011 Bubbles: Spheres I, translated from German by Wieland Hoban . Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) . Martin Greve (ed.), Writing the History of “Ottoman Music.” Würzburg: ErgonVerlag GmbH, 2015. 270 pp., bibliography, contributors. ISBN 9783956500947 (Hardcover) € 60.00. Writing the History of “Ottoman Music” is a welcome addition to the growing literature base on the history of Turkish or Ottoman music . This book addresses a notable gap in its subject’s historical research by examining theoretical and methodological issues in the field, thereby synthesising two otherwise distinct areas of music history scholarship . The text is a collection of articles originally presented at the conference “Writing the History of ‘Ottoman Music’,” held at the State Conservatory of Turkish Music of the Technical University Istanbul (ITÜ) in Istanbul in 2011 . The editor, Martin Greve, opens with two critical concerns regarding the book’s title and the notion of (writing) music history, an introduction likely to influence readers’ reception of the text . First, Greve warns the reader that the use of “Ottoman music” in the title is analogous to the term Turkish music appearing in many other publications on the subject, a fact which is in itself problematic . For him, because the oral history tradition in Turkish musicology is severely limited, and folk music is inherently multi-ethnic, neither the label Turkish music nor Ottoman music fully covers the field of folk music overall. Greve maintains that the situation only becomes more complicated in the context of art music: the term Ottoman music fails to reflect the transcendent nature of a musical tradition that crosses historical and political boundaries in line with the rise and fall of the Ottoman empire . Because the term Ottoman music also has geographical connotations wherein the Ottoman territory is often taken to presuppose an integral, allegedly specifically Ottoman, musical practice, the label is especially restrictive . Thus, Ottoman music is used with reservation in the title, 150 • the world of music (new series) 5 (2016) 2 appearing in quotation marks so as to offer a “diplomatic solution” (p . 9) to these terminological confounds . Greve also highlights the challenges inherent to the writing of music history by questioning the purpose of a musical historiography in constructing a historical narrative . A related issue involves the adaptation of periods associated with European music history (e . g ., classic, neo-classic, romantic); these classifications are essentially meaningless in the context of Ottoman music, as are other forms of periodisation that have no relevance in its transformation . Furthermore, as Greve contends, “[S]everal authors of the present volume even doubt that an individual personal style or historical periods of Ottoman music exists at all” (p . 9) . The general absence of notations dating from the period prior to the mid-seventeenth century only muddles further the historiography of Ottoman music . The volume contains fifteen essays arranged in four parts in order to analyze specific but related aspects of Ottoman music . Part One, “Writing the History of Ottoman Music,” consists of four articles, each of which problematises the titular subject . First, Bülent Aksoy opens his paper by attempting to locate Turkish (Ottoman) music within the musical traditions of the world that are generally regarded to differ from each other on the basis of oral or written transmission . He claims, additional to oral and written transmission, alternative categories are necessary in order to distinguish these traditions clearly . To that point, Aksoy offers an alternative means of situating Ottoman music as a cultivated genre that reflects the “taste distinctions of a high society but [is] still dependent on oral tradition” (p . 16) . Then, he criticises the “official history” (p. 19) of Ottoman music by tracing its ancient roots, which, for him, lack a truly historical dimension and cater instead to the dominant belief system of the time . Next, Ralf Martin Jäger compares the institutions of contemporary music research in Turkey and Germany with an eye toward central concepts in Ottoman art music: composer, opus, source, and notation methods . In doing so, he provides a comprehensive yet succinct overview of the differences between the countries’ two traditions and the complexities of Ottoman art music as a whole. Another distinguished scholar in the field, Ruhi Ayangil, offers a brief article proposing systematic guidelines for writing a “qualified Turkish music history” (p. 52) that focuses specifically on periodisation, identification methodology, and source interpretation . Ayangil also outlines a historical periodisation in which the “westernisation movements” within Turkish music, particularly those related to the founding of the Imperial Military Band (muzika-i hümayun), the adoption of Islam, and the conquest of Istanbul, are considered historical turning points . Although Ayangil’s proposal appears useful, it also seems to echo the theoretical and methodological position that Greve staunchly criticises; that is, Ayangil aims to delineate the periodisation of music according to aforementioned political milestones, but their relationships to changes in musical structure are barely explained . Finally, in the last article of Part One, Ersu Pekin poses the question, “Is it possible to conduct a historical study in the field of Ottoman music based on works of art, hence on compositions?” (p. 57). He points specifically to the troublesome issue of creativity in Ottoman music because the notion of art relies naturally on the subjectivity of the creator . However, it seems that artists’ role in Ottoman art is to follow aesthetic rules established in their respective fields rather than to exercise creativity in a traditional sense. Pekin’s article contributes to the book’s overall discussion in an interesting, insightful manner given that the murky definition of creativity shapes the way Ottoman music is presented . Part Two, “Periodization of Ottoman Music,” presents four articles that, as the title suggests, deal specifically with qualities of Ottoman and Turkish music throughout different historical periods. Nilgün Doğrusöz traces the history of Turkish and Ottoman musical theory Book Reviews • 151 texts from the fifteenth century (the Anatolian edvâr tradition) to the eighteenth century . Interestingly, the fifteenth century was a prolific period in music theory research. However, its study nearly came to a complete halt in the sixteenth century before reviving early traditions as reflected in matured theoretical work and approaches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Doğrusöz surveys general characteristics of each century’s musical theory tradition by reviewing and comparing the works of prominent figures. This article helpfully illuminates the transformation of musical concepts and terms vis-a-vis evolving musical theoretical approaches across centuries . Another distinguished scholar in the field, Walter Feldman, offers a comprehensive article detailing the substantial stylistic changes in Ottoman music during the musical “renaissance” (p. 87) of the late seventeenth century. Specifically, he examines the issue through a historical lens from the fifteenth century to the “westernisation” movements of the nineteenth century. He also delves into the complicated question of how to integrate these musical shifts into “known patterns of Ottoman music and society” (p . 113) to establish a historical continuum . He then identifies several features of the new musical renaissance and aims to tie the period’s stylistic changes to broader social, cultural, and musical trends . Feldman’s work is exceptionally detailed and serves as a synoptic analysis for other scholars in the field. In this section’s third article, Kyriakos Kalaitzidis focuses on an often-overlooked topic in the field: the significance of the Byzantine system of notation in the writing of Ottoman secular music . Kalaitzidis looks in particular at the works of a leading eighteenth-century figure, Petros Peloponnesios. The subject of notation is particularly intriguing because it remains a controversial issue within Ottoman music historiography. To close this section, Gönül Paçacı analyzes changes in the field of Turkish music during the late Ottoman and early Republican eras exploring conceptual and terminological shifts in printed musical publications: certain ideas were revised, replaced, or done away with entirely . She pays special attention to attempted “westernization” in music and its effects on the conceptual and terminological structure of the eras’ publications . Changes in musical training and the ubiquity of notation proved especially influential. Most notably, Paçacı’s piece helps readers understand the extent to which social, political, and cultural trends are embedded in musical theory language and discourse . Part Three, “History of Anatolian Folk Music,” presents a trio of articles that attempt to locate the folk music tradition within the Ottoman craft . Arzu Öztürkmen focuses primarily on nationalism and the process of nation building when analysing folk music’s arrival and reception in Turkey and its eventual recognition as a genre . She also investigates how the public’s perception of folk music has changed in time with the historical evolution of folk music discourse . In a similar vein, Okan Murat Öztürk analyses how Turkish folk music is discursively constructed through processes of nationalisation related to ideologies of nationalism and romanticism, which in turn serve to uphold folk music as a cultural icon . Much like the epigraph Öztürk selects for this piece, the article asserts that “folk music is what it is” and should be considered a cultural form given “its place within culture, life and together with men” (p . 192) . However, I would argue that Öztürk fails to communicate his understanding of folk music apart from the nationalistic discourses surrounding the genre; thus, in a similar vain to nationalist approaches, he falls into the common trap of reproducing an essentialist approach to and understanding of folk music . In the next chapter, Süleyman Şenel presents a valuable investigation of the etymological and cultural origins of the türkü genre which, as Şenel clearly states, is sometimes confused with Turkish folk music (p . 208) . He pinpoints türkü’s origins in the fifteenth century and 152 • the world of music (new series) 5 (2016) 2 thereafter despite its subsequently different names and meanings . He also demonstrates that the genre’s musical geography is farther reaching than other forms (e . g ., Turkish or Anatolian folk music), with the very existence of the Empire playing a significant role in its expansion. Şenel’s article fills a significant gap in Part Three: without this piece, the section would focus exclusively on folk music in the late Ottoman and Republican periods . In the first article of Part Four, “The Reconstruction of Historical Ottoman Music,” Fikret Karakaya poses an interesting yet provocative inquiry: whether or not the early notation collections dating back to the seventeenth century represent the music of their time . Generally, written transmission is considered more credible than oral transmission . It is generally regarded as an undisputable fact that musical traditions which rely on oral transmission are constantly transforming . Written musical transmission, on the other hand, is more often framed as a means of embalming musical pieces in order to protect them for years to come . Karakaya compares the notation collections of Ali Ufkî and Demetrius Cantemir . He argues that “the notations that both collections provide for the same composition are pretty much identical to each other .” (p . 214) However, Karakaya also implies that the personal preferences of those making notations might affect the transcription of the music heard . Following that chapter, Şehvar Beşiroğlu engages in an analysis of Demetrius Canemir’s manuscripts on Ottoman-Turkish music with respect to the issues of authenticity, tradition, and performance. Beşiroğlu shows how these factors assume different meanings in the context of Ottoman music compared to what the author signifies as “Western” music by emphasising the specificities of the meşk system in Ottoman music, a musical system that depends largely on imitation and repetition. Although this essay is brief, it raises significant questions that indicate the need for further research in this area of study . In a thematically different yet equally important piece, Andreas Haug analyses the historical circumstances of “Western monophonic music” from the pre-modern era by isolating what distinguishes it from what Haug calls “modern Western” (p . 231) music . Although this article does not focus on Ottoman music per se, its close examination of monophony in the region Haug delineates as “the West” offers new insight into the Ottoman view on the topic . Finally, in the closing article, Recep Uslu looks into the music of the pre-Ottoman period, specifically that of the Seljuk Empire and of Anatolian beyliks, each of which is generally considered a lost music in relevant literature . Although the reader would be well served to peruse Uslu’s book, Selçuklu Topraklarında Müzik (Music in the Seljuk Empire Territory) (2011) in order to acquire a more holistic understanding of the issue, this article is an excellent primer . Uslu’s project in its entirety constitutes a worthwhile and encouraging step towards a prospective work of Ottoman Music History as a whole, which in fact has yet to be written (p . 241) . It would be remiss not to point out that Greve’s edited book does not suffer from the issues that so often plague edited compilations of papers presented at conferences . Such volumes are usually composed of unrelated and disjointed essays, a problem that is further exacerbated by a varying quality of the individual contributions . In this volume, however, most of the articles are implicitly connected to other essays in their respective sections . Even better, all parts of the book are organised in a way that ensures thematic and conceptual unity as promised in the introduction . Also impressive is the fact that many pieces are written by distinguished scholars in the field, therefore allowing readers to consult the authors’ other works to explore a particular issue in greater depth . Compared to often-cited texts in its genre, Greve’s edited collection stands alone as a uniquely cohesive survey of the development of Ottoman music . The volume presents current research through an empirically and chronologically thorough Book Reviews • 153 lens . All things considered, Writing the History of “Ottoman Music” is a long-wished-for resource in Turkish and Ottoman music studies . Koray Değirmenci Ruth F. Davis (ed.), Musical Exodus. Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas. Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham, 2015. ix + 220 pp., appendix, index. ISBN 9780810881754 (Hardback) US$ 80.00, 9780810881761 (eBook) US$ 79.99. This beautifully executed volume is the proceedings of the ICTM colloquium “Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diaspora,” which took place at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, in July 2008 . The colloquium was supported by the Rothschild Foundation Europe Program, by Cambridge University Faculty of Music, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Studies, and Humanities, and by Corpus Christi College . It is the nineteenth volume in the rich series Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities, edited by Philip V . Bohlman and Martin Stokes . The volume contains ten essays, with an afterword by Stephen Blum . The cover picture is a facsimile of a manuscript depicting a congregation of al-Andalus Jews listening to a cantor who recites the Hagada, the traditional book of Passover . The volume opens with a comprehensive introduction, which describes the troubled history of the Jews of Seville as a paradigmatic model of Spanish Jewry . Key point made in the introduction is that “wherever [the Spanish Jews] settled, they retained vestiges of their distinctive ArabAndalusian, Judeo-Arab, or Judeo-Spanish identities, and perpetuated their cultural traditions, whether in languages, dress, cuisine, architecture, poetry, or music” (p . xi) . The second subchapter of the introduction tells the story of Dunash Ben Labrat, who was active in Cordoba, “transforming the face of Hebrew poetry” (p . xiii) . The author (unnamed but obviously Ruth Davis) then points out the way in which Franz Delitzsch coined the term “Das Goldene Zeitalter” in 1836, describing the “whole Jewish experience in Spain” (p . xv) which became a historical myth, contrasted with European anti-Semitism . The chapter further describes the historiography of Spanish Jews from Americo Castro to the influence of Zionism up to the Arab-Israeli wars and Jonathan Ray’s new views of convivencia (p . xvii) . In the realm of music performance, the author points out that Spanish influence was prominent in the performance of early music by Thomas Binkley and David Munrow (p . xx) . The volume is well balanced between historical essays and ethnomusicological studies of present musical practice . In “Jews, Muslims, and Christians and the Formation of Medieval Andalusian Music,” Dwight F . Reynolds objects to the “European nationalists” and “the Arab hypothesis,” both of which “saw cultural history primarily in terms of influence and transmission and ignored the prodigious complexity of human culture” (p . 1) . Reynolds bases his study mostly on the accumulation of sources pertinent to musical life in Iberia, offering a “broad-based portrayal of the formation of medieval Arabo-Andalusian music” (p . 2) . The complex roadmap he structures emanates especially from the patterns of expulsion and migrations of musical forms and instruments and from the lack of musical notation in medieval Muslim Spain . The next essay based on a broad historical perspective, is Philip V . Bohlman’s “Enlightenment Andalus: Herder’s Search for Mediterranean Modernity in the Jewish Past .” This is a penetrating study of the relationship between Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) and Johann