Cultural Authority and Authenticity in the Turkish Repertoire

Author(s): Walter Feldman

Source: Asian Music, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Autumn, 1990 - Winter, 1991), pp. 73-111
Published by: University of Texas Press
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VolumeXXII,number1 ASIANMUSIC Fall/Winter
1990/1991

CULTURALAUTHORITY AND AUTHENTICITY IN THE

TURKISH REPERTOIRE
by
Walter Feldman
The emic perceptionof classicalTurkish(or Ottoman)music as
part of a Great Tradition is grounded not only on treatises and
theoreticalprinciples,but also on a composedrepertoire,embodying
the theoretical principles of the music. While constellations of
theoreticalprinciples, older treatises and repertoireare found within
several Near Easternand other Asian art musics (e.g. Northand South
India, China),the close connection between theory, treatises and a
performedrepertoireconsistingof composeditems ascribedto known
figures impartsa seeminghistoricityto classicalTurkishmusic which
is uniquein WesternAsia.
Within the broad tradition of Middle Eastern
art-music the belief that many elements of an
earlier (and high prestige)repertoirehave been
faithfully preserved is by no means confined to
Turkey. But it is perhapsthere that it is most
precisely tied to the notion of the survival of
specific early compositions...(Wright:1).
It will be contended that the concept of cultural authority
which had prevailed in Ottoman Turkey is exemplified by the
conceptionof the "art"or "classical"repertoirein Turkishmusic. I
will also suggest a broad continuation of these attitudes into
Republican Turkey, altered however by the perceived need to
establish a more purely national origin for Turkish music. 1 These
indigenous views of the historical repertoire and the lineage of music
must be seen as part of the background for the polemics for and
against classical Turkish music which took place in the twentieth
century.
The Turkish Fasll

Among Westernethnomusicologists,the composedrepertoires

of the traditional art musics of Western Asia have not attracted as
much attention as have the modal structures and performance
practices of these musics. On the whole, where the composed
repertoire has been treated in some detail (as in d'Erlanger's La

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74 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

Musique Arabe), it is mainly to exemplify the makam (maqam)

structure. In Turkey,most books on musical theory (e.g. Yekta,Arel,
Karadeniz,Ozkan)deal primarilywith the makamand usiil structures.
There have also been importantcollections of repertoire(e.g. Yekta,
Ezgi), but these never have a significant analytical component,one
that is always reservedfor the discussionof makam. It is only the
studies of Iranian-Azerbaijanianmusic which must deal with
repertoire when discussing modal structure, due to the fact that,
since the later eighteenthcentury at the latest, the dastgah(mugham)
does not exist apart from the specific gushe (or shu'be) which form
the basis for the repertoire (radff). The Iranian gushe (or
Azerbaijanian shu'be)is always taughtby the repetitionof the specific
nuclear composition,rather than by means of an analytical modal
structure.
Both the Ottomansecular fasil and the Mevlevi dervishSyfn
are cyclical (or "compound") forms, in which rhythmicalcompositions
predominate, although improvisation has an important role.2
Instrumental and vocal compositions are performed in specific
sections of the cycle. Secular vocal fasil are rather small-scale,
comprising between five and seven composed items, and a specific
number of vocal and instrumental improvisations (takstm). The
Ottoman sources from the mid-seventeenthcentury until the mid-
twentieth century describe both the vocal and instrumentalfasil as
performancepractice, and not only as a theoreticalclassification of
repertoire. While variation in performance practice may have
existed, the continuity of the Ottoman court as the standard for
practice (until the last third of the nineteenth century) tended to
preservethe integrityof the fasil as cycle. The Ottomanpreference
for strictly cyclical performanceof composeditems, i.e. with a fixed
order of items and of their rhythmic cycles, combined with non-
metrical improvisation(taksfm) was one of the most characteristic
featuresof the Ottomanmusical culturefrom the seventeenthcentury
until the middleof the twentiethcentury.
At the Ottoman court the fasil was performed as a concert
(fasl-i meclis),with specific seating arrangementsfor the singer and
the variousinstruments(Cantemir:10). There is no doubt that during
this periodof over two centuriesthe music of the Ottomanfasil must
be considered "classical"in the sense employed by Powers (1979).
The locus classicus for the structure of the fasil as it had existed in
the Ottoman court is Cantemir'stenth chapter "The Concert-Suite and

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 75

the Performanceof the Genresof Music"(Fasl a Icrd-i MOsikf'ala

Vech-i Under the heading"The Concert-Suiteof the Vocalist
and theNevr,
InstrumentalistTogether" (Fasl-iHanendeva SazendeMa'an)
Cantemirsays :
First the instrumentalistsbegin with a takstm.
After the taksim they play one or two pesrevs;
then they are silent. Then a vocalist begins
with a takstm. After the taksim he sings a
beste, a naks, a kar and a sem ?; then he is
silent. The instrumentalists begin a semat.
After finishing the sem~t they are silent, but
they hold the drone notes (aheng perdeler)and
the vocalist sings another taksim. Then the
fasil is over. (10, 103).

The k'r and naqsh (T. genreshad been inheritedby the

Ottomans from medieval Persian nake)
music, along with a repertoireof
these items composedby Persianmusicians. This specificallyPersian
repertoire became increasingly smaller after the end of the
seventeenth century. Thereafter it remained as a tiny fossilized
element within the larger vocal repertoire, and was gradually
marginalizedas the fasil developed an increasingly fixed order of
genres. A number of kar and nak? items were composedby Turks,
but the involvementof Turks as composersof these genres decreased
radicallyduringthe course of the eighteenthcentury. In addition,the
few kar by late 17th-18thcentury Turkish composers(e.g. the Neva
kar by Mustafa Itri, d.1712),display significantstructuraldifferences
from the kar by earlier Turkish or Iranian composers. The other
fasil vocal genres (beste, agir sem'it, yuruk sema'f) were developed
in seventeenth and eighteenth century Turkey, and these genres of
the fasll are fewer in numberthan the non-cyclicalgenres of Iranian
music had been. The earlier forms of the instrumentalpeerev and
sema't had been shared with Iran but, by the later seventeenth
century, distinctivelyOttomanforms were developing. In the course
of the eighteenthcentury the Turkishinstrumentalrepertoirebecame
increasinglydifferentiatedfrom its Iraniancounterpart.
By the nineteenth century the fasil consisted of an
instrumental taksim, one pesrev, one vocal takstm, two beste,
(optionally, one kdr), one agir semd? , one yuruk sem'f , and one saz
semb'f .

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76 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

Until the middle of the twentieth century, all compositions

began and ended in the same makam (mode),although modulation
existed within both improvisedand composedforms. Judgingby the
instrumentalradio fasil of Mes'utCemil(1902-1963),duringthe 1950s
it had becomemore commonto modulateto relatedmakams,sharinga
common finalis (karar). Duringthe 1970s, even this restrictionwas
frequentlybroken,and modulationcould occur into totally unrelated
makams. As noted by Signell (114),the recent tendency is to group
the item in the concert-suiteaccordingto a modulatoryprinciple,so
that an actual concert will begin in one makam and end in another.
The more contemporarystyle of improvisational playingis modeledon
the ara taksimi ("mediatingimprovisation)which is used to effect the
modulationfrom one makamto anotherin the course of the concert.
In addition,withinthe past thirty yearsthe compositionalforms which
had made up the fasil are not always performed, their place
sometimestaken by the ?arki , a shorterand less complexform whose
poetic texts are more comprehensibleto contemporaryaudiences.
$arki are also usually newer than the items of the classical fasil,
most of them datingbetween the last third of the nineteenthcentury
and the middleof the twentiethcentury.

Contemporaneous sources indicatethat complete classical fasil

were still regularly performedat amateur gatheringsas late as the
1940s. Since the period,the dominanceof the parki,coupledwith the
decline of the classical fasil repertoire, has weakened the fasil
structure in classical performances. By the later 1970s the State
ClassicalTurkishMusic Chorusno longer performedfasil, preferring
idiosyncraticarrangementsof some fasil items and a largenumberof
parki. Fasll performanceswere continued (mainly on the radio)by
such conservativemasters as Dr. AlaettinYavaSqa.
The parki genre did generatea cyclical format, but not in the
classical music milieu. Since the last third of the nineteenthcentury,
the non-Muslim areas of Istanbul, especially Greek Pera, began to
develop a public entertainmentlife centered on night-clubs where
alcoholic beverages were served. The music performed at these
clubs was not based on urban folklore or on the older music of the
Turkish coffee-houses, which were now becoming extinct, but on
elements of the classical fasll which had lost its support in the palace.
Greek and Armenian musicians such as Astik, Andon, Tatyos, Vasil~ki
and others composed both instrumental pearevs and saz sema'i as well

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 77

as many parki. The classical fasil vocal genres beste and sema'i
were rarely composed by these nightclub musicians. Much of the
music of these clubs appearsto have been arrangedcyclically. After
the peerev,a compoundvocal form was sung, createdby groupingthe
?arki according to their rhythmic cycle. The opening pieces were
generallyin the ag'lr (heavy)versionsof the usuilaksak sem1'i (10/4)
and the usuil aksak (9/4), and succeeding items were in turk aksagi
(5/8), aksak (9/8), curcuna (10/16), or duyek (4/4). An increasing
number used the old sema't usuil (6/8), phrased in 3/4, under the
influence of the Europeanwaltz. Vocal finales were often in quick
aksak,which had been the usuilused by the extinct ko;qekce dancing
boys, and now part of the current Gypsy dance karsllama). The
instrumentalfinale used either the saz sema'i, based on the classical
fasil, or the newly created longa , which were Turkish compositions
inspiredby the RomanianGypsyhoraand strba.
This popular nightclub music maintained the principle of
cyclicity more strictly than the nearlymoribundclassicalconcert. By
the middle of the twentieth century, the name fasil had shifted its
meaning. It no longer referred to a classical concert, but to the
music of the nightclub,which had retaineda cyclical format. Today
in Turkey,fasil as a name for classical musical genres is known only
to musicologicalexperts.

During the Ottoman period, musician/composers often

performed their own fasll cycles; otherwise cycles were created by
combining different compositionsby various composers. Very few
compositions were anonymous; and although compositions were
"modernized" in the course of oral transmission,a degree of stylistic
periodization persisted. The fasil are not compendia of all the
repertoire items existing in a given makam, but rather are specific
suites, sometimescomposedby one, two or three musicians,performed
as a concert.In more widely used makams,severaldifferentfasll may
exist. The rhythmic compositionsalone can be performedwithin a
half hour to forty minutes;with the improvisationsthe fasillmight last
an hour or more.
The instrumentalfasll (fasl-f sazende)was the only exclusively
instrumentalcycle to appearin any Near EasternMuslim art music.
It was mentionedfirst in Prince Cantemir'streatise (ca. 1700). The
instrumental fasll contained only three items -- in the 17th-18th
century a taksim, a peerev and a saz sema'i; by the later 19th

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78 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

century the order had switched to a pegrev, a takstm and a saz

sema'i. The vocal fasil were moderate in length, with a relatively
small number of items, that showed clear-cut contrasts in rhythmic
organization-- i.e. measuredand unmeasured;long and shortrhythmic
cycles; slow and quick tempos, with a clear tendency toward
accelerationin the measureditems.
The Mevlevi yin contains items that are, for the most part,
differentfrom the items in the fasll. The ayin is mainlyvocal, except
for the openingpearev,closing pegrevand sema'i. The vocal items in
the ayin are only four, but they are longerthan the items in the fasil.
The rhythmic structure of each section of the ayin is distinct, and
acceleration is only one possibility for rhythmic/tempo contrast.
Improvisationsare confined to positions before the pearev,and after
the last instrumental sema't, and they use principally the dervish
reed-flute (ney). Sections of the ayin frequently employ different
makams,and modulationoccurs within sections as well. The vocal
sections of each ayin were always composed by a single composer,
and in certainmakamsthere exist more than a single ayin.
Since the Ottomans claimed to perpetuate earlier Muslim
cultural patterns in music, it is necessary to briefly review the
relevant aspects of these patterns,specifically as they relate to the
composedrepertoire.3
Other Muslim Cyclical Repertoires
A cyclical format first makes its appearancein Persiansources
in the anonymous Sharh Mawldnl Mubarak Shah bar Adwar , a
commentaryon the Adwar of Saf^ al-Din Urmawt, written around
1375 for the MuzfarridShah Shuja' (d. 1383),whose capital was in
Shiraz. The genres basft and sawt are mentioned, along with one
compoundform, the naubat al-murattaba,which consisted of three
sections -- gawl, ghazal, and tardna(Jung, 1989: 141). Forty years
later, a fourth section, the forcdddsht,appearsas the finale of the
nauba in the JAmf' al-Alhan by Abd al-QadirMaraght,written in
1415, dedicatedto the TimuridShahruikh, who ruled from Herat(Abd
al-Qadir,1987:243-245). Maraghi also added a fifth section, which
he called the mustazad. In addition to the naubat al-murattaba,
Maright describes the 'amal as a miniature compound-form,
containing an instrumental prelude (tarfqa) and three vocal sections
(the first of which was repeated four times). Maraght mentions

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 79

several other genres which had not been mentionedearlier,e.g. kull

al-durdb,darbayn,kull al-naghm. There is also a free-rhythmgenre,
called nashird-i'Arab. The combination of the term nashfd, and
"Arab"suggests that this genre was connected with an eastern Arab
genre which had been inheritedby both the North Africans and the
Iranians.
The small compound form naubat al-murattabais the only
cyclical genre to appear in the Middle East proper,or Central Asia
until the Ottomanfasil late in the sixteenthcentury. There is nothing
in the Sharh Mawlina MubdrakShah, in the writingsof Maraghi,or
in those of the fifteenth century Ottomantheorists(Seyydi,Hizir bin
Abdullah,Ladiki, etc.) to indicate that the other compositionalgenres
were arrangedin any fixed orderin a performance. The fact that the
naubat al-murattabais specifically described as a compound form
suggests that the other genres were not part of any compound
structure. The brief notices on musiciansand performancesfurnished
by Navat and Babur, in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuriesdo not mentionany fixed arrangementof musicalitems. The
sixteenth and seventeenth century Transoxanian treatises by
Kaukabi,Darvls Ali and Nayini continuedto mention the naubatal-
murattaba,along with the old genres and several newer ones (e.g kdr,
naqsh, rikhta. Jung: 140-160). In Transoxanla,it appearsthat the
cyclical arrangement of concert-items only appeared after the
medieval Iraniangenres had either disappeared,or were transformed
into the genres of the maqom,a process which probablyoccurredno
earlierthan the middleof the eighteenthcentury. In Iran proper,the
medieval compositionalgenres disappearedentirely at approximately
the same period.

Cantemir,writing around 1700, still mentions these genres as

being part of contemporaneousIranianmusic, and describescertain
differences between the Turkish and Iranianpearev (chap.10). The
Turkish-ArmenianTanbiir^Arutin, who lived in Iran for several
years after 1736, fails to note any formal differencebetween Turkish
and Iranian music, although he does indicate relatively minor
differencesin makamterminology(Arutin).

By the later eighteenthcentury,the composedgenres,e.g. kar,

naqsh,pishrow, were replacedin Iran by the gushehaof the dastgan.
In modern Iran/Azerbaijan the composed repertoire (consisting
largely of vocal tasnif and instrumental pishdaramads, Azerbaijani

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80 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

pishrow and reng ) is of secondaryimportanceto the mastery of the

fundamentalmusic -- i.e. the radif, which is the gusheha/shu'beler.
These gushe were learned from master musicians of the late
nineteenth century, and differing repertoires(radffha) were created
for different instruments(During:123-30). Iranianand Azerbaijanian
musiciansbase their conceptionof the asil (i.e. "authentic"or "well-
pedigreed")radif upon this small group of recent musicians, rather
than on remote or legendaryfigures, or on the authors of medieval
treatises. Thus in Iran (and in Soviet Azerbaijan),
howevermuch the
fundamentalprinciplesof music are ascribedto the Islamic Middle
Ages or even to pre-Islamic antiquity (e.g. the Sassanianmusician
Barbad),a repertoire(radif)which claimedto contain items composed
by the medieval or ancient Iranian masters would not be taken
seriously. The composedgenres of medievalPersianmusic are never
associated with specific musicians, and even the identity of these
genres (which appear frequently in medieval Persian poetry and
musical treatises)are almost totally obscure to modern Iranians(see
for exampleMallah,1351 and 1363).
The Persian theoretical works immediately preceding the
Ottomanperiod do not present much evidence for cyclical formats.
On the contrary,they make it clear that when the cyclical format
appeared,in the fourteenth century Persian naubat al-murattaba,it
was consideredan unusual,and very demandingstructure. According
to Maraghi(d. 1435),the nauba was the most difficult compositional
form, and he demonstratedhis own virtuosityby composingone each
day for the month of Ramazan, 1377 (Abd al-Qadir, 1977: 104).
Despiteits Arabicname, the naubatal-muratabbais not mentionedin
any text from an Arabic-speakingcountry. Nor did any of the genres
within the naubat al-murattabacontinue to be used by any of the
post-medievalcycles of Westernor CentralAsia. It is thereforenot
correct to view the naubat al-muratabbaas the source for later
compound forms, or cycles, such as the Levantine Arab waslah,
Ottomanfasll, Tajik/Uzbekmaqom,etc.
The region where cyclicity is weakest, both today and in the
nineteenth century, is the Arab Levant -- Syria, Lebanon,Palestine
and Egypt. The best-establishedarea of cyclicity in the Levantwould
seem to have been Syria, especially the city of Aleppo. The
muwashshah genre was already in existence in Syria in the
seventeenth century, and spread from here to Egypt (Racy, 1983).
The use of the muwashshah as the central genre of the Syro-Egyptian

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 Feldman: Turkish Repertoire 81

concert-suite points to an influence of the Maghreb. On the other

hand, compositional, usu'l and modal structure in the muwashshah
items reveal strong Ottomaninfluenceas well. It would probablynot
be unfair to say that the Syrian muwashshah developed in the
interface of the Turkish and North African compositional genres.
Accordingto Racy, the Egyptianwaslah,in its present form does not
antedate the later nineteenth century (1983). Nevertheless,there is
documentary evidence to show that some of the presently-known
muwashshahrepertoirehad existed in the first half of the nineteenth
century in Egypt (George Sawa, oral communication). In the
nineteenth century, the suite, then called the waslah, was far more
acclimatizedin Syriathan it was in Egypt. Whilethe name waslahhas
an Arabic etymology, its late appearance, and the implausible
meaningsascribedto it by Arabic speakers(a "stretch"( wasala,"to
reach"),suggest a contamination from the correspondingTurkish
word, fasil. Fasil ("section")is itself of Arabic etymology, but the
word never acquired the meaning of "concert-suite"or "cycle" in
Arabic.

Today, the Arabianand Turkishzones of the former Ottoman

cultural sphere display different attitudes toward the composed
repertoires. The Turkish origins of the Arab instrumentalrepertoire
have certainly abetted the cultural devaluationof this repertoirein
the twentiethcentury. However,the vocal (muwashshah)repertoireis
almost entirely the creation of Syrian and Egyptiancomposers,using
the mixture of local and Turkish compositionalforms. This vocal
repertoire is somewhat older than the instrumental one, probably
reaching back to the late eighteenthand early nineteenth centuries.
But this repertoire too seems to have become devalued in recent
years. The early implantationof Westernmusic into Egypt and the
relative weakness of the indigenoussecular urban musical tradition
(whichwas frequentlyundercutby the Turkish/Caucasian aristocracy)
resulted in the creation of a hybrid instrumental repertoire and
practice which quickly supplantedmuch of the earlier instrumental
repertoire performed by the takht ensembles (Racy: 9-11). In
addition,the chantingof the Qur'an,which,in Egypt,has much of the
characterand prestigeof an art music. allows for no compositionsat
all. Thus, the Egyptian composed repertoire possesses only a
secondary prestige, far behind the various improvised or semi-
improvised vocal and instrumental genres. For Egyptian, Syro-
Lebanese and most western scholars and musicians, it is the maqam

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82 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

structureand performancepractice,and not the composedrepertoire,

which representthe quintessenceof Arabmusic.

Nevertheless, at least since the time of Farmer, the weak

developmentand precariouscurrent situation of the LevantineArab
waslah is often seen as a decline or decadencefrom a much higher
state of musical art which had been attainedin the MiddleAges. It
has been virtually axiomatic that some type of compound-formor
"suite"had been a fundamentalfeature of Arabianart music. The
vague informationwhich Farmerpossessedaboutthe currentsituation
of the Arab suites, certainly strengthenedhis romanticizedview of
the past of this genre. In his 1936 article, Farmerdemonstratedhis
lack of familiarity with contemporaneousArab musical realities by
adducing a garbled version of the Turkish fasil (in an Arabicized
pronunciation)as the "Levantinenawba,"while failing to mention the
Arab waslah (886). Farmer(and many after him) viewed the various
North African nauba as survivals,not only of the art music of the
later medieval Maghreb,but also of early medievalAndalusia,and to
some extent,even of the classicalMuslimmusic of the East.
The variousNorth Africannaubaare the most ancient cyclical
forms in the entire MiddleEast, and they appearto have emergedat
a period when the cyclical format was not widespreadelsewhere in
the Muslim world. An early form of the Tunisian repertoire is
documentedin the thirteenthcenturytreatiseof Ahmadal-Tifashi (d.
1253), who mentions a cyclical arrangementof the forms nashfd,
istihll, 'amal,muharrik,muwashshahaand zajal. A fourteenthcentury
Sufi, Muhammad al Zarif (d. 1385) states that niba"t existed in
fourteen tubu'(modes;Guettet:203). Documentationfor the Moroccan
nauba is much later, beginningin the seventeenthcentury with Abd
al-RahmanFast (d. 1650). The Algerianand Libyannbabt cannot be
documented before the nineteenth century. Although there is no
documentaryevidence to support the claim that the North African
nauba had originated in Muslim Andalusia,it seems clear that the
beginnings of the nauba format already existed in parts of North
Africa while there were still Muslim states in Spain. It is certainly
possible that the nauba had been created in Andalusia and was
diffused from there to North Africa. On the other hand,the primary
sources for the nauba (as they have been presentedin the secondary
literature) do not make clear to what extent the pre-seventeenth
century conception of nauba demandeda fixed succession of genres
in practice. Thus, while the constituent genres of the nauba can claim

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 83

considerableantiquity,the degree to which they had been performed

in a fixed succession (comparableto the Ottoman fasil or Mevlevi
ayin, or the more recent maqomcycles of MuslimCentralAsia)is less
clear.

At present there is no evidence to demonstratethat the North

African suite had been accepted in Egypt or the Levant during the
centuries of Mamluk rule. In the seventeenth century a form of
concert-suite did develop in Syria, apparentlyusing a mixture of
Turkish and North African elements. This suite flourishedfor over
two centuries, before disintegratingin the later nineteenth century.
It had also diffused to Egypt,where it was never widely accepted or
developed. It is clear that the MiddleEasternArabmusical tradition
can not have been the impetusunderlyingthe widespreadadoptionof
cyclical formats in the early modern Middle East. There also is no
clear evidence linking specific compositional genres or rhythmic
cycles of any of the NorthAfricannaubawith the developmentof the
Ottoman fasil or the Mevlevi ayin. On the contrary, despite the
apparentantiquityof the naubagenres in Tunisia,a "prominentfigure
among the Turkishruling class,"Muhammader-Rashid(d. 1759),"is
credited with reworkingand reorganizingmuch of the Malouf [i.e.
naubalmaterial"there (Jones:18). Thus, while the documentationfor
the constituent genres of the Tunisiannauba is medieval,we cannot
avoid the suspicion that the Ottoman fasil may have played a
significantrole in fixing the orderof the genres in performance.
The North African nauba repertoirescontain both vocal and
instrumentalsections groupedaccordingto mode and rhythmiccycle,
but with very few referencesto a composer'sname. The emphasisin
Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia is upon the authenticity of the
transmissionof a repertoirewhich was alreadycanonicaland largely
anonymousin the later MiddleAges. After the seventeenthcentury,
there was little possibility of addingto, but only of the loss of this
canonical repertoire. The aura of the Andalusiannauba repertoire
was not dependentupon the prestigeof the individualmusicianswho
composed it but rather upon the generalizedprestige of a historical
era of overall cultural grandeur,which the Arabs of North Africa
could never hope to achieve again.
In conclusionit can be stated that the Ottomanswere the first
in
group the Middle East proper to arrangetheir entire secular and
one major Sufi repertoire as a cycle, the first group to create an

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84 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

independentinstrumentalcycle, and the only group to maintain for

centuriesthe connectionbetween individualcycles and/or cycle items
and individual named musicians. During the seventeenth century,
indigenousand Iranian-derivedgenres co-existedwithin the fasll, but
the major vocal compositionalgenre,the beste, was not derivedfrom
Iranianmusic. After this period,the fasil consistedalmostentirelyof
indigenous musical genres. The composed cyclical dyfn of the
Mevlevi dervisheshad no close model in other areas of the Muslim
world. The pegrev,which formed the core of the instrumentalcycle,
became increasinglydifferentiatedfrom related Iranianand Central
Asian forms in the course of the eighteenth century. These facts
stand in opposition to the mythological lineage of the Science of
Music which had been current in Ottomantimes. Despite the self-
perception of the Ottomans as perpetuators of an older Muslim
civilization,their developmentof cyclical composedgenres displayed
highly originalfeatures.

Composers of the Turkish Repertoire

Unlike the composed repertoires of all other Near Eastern
cultures,such as the maqom/muqamof CentralAsia,the naubaof the
Maghreb,or the waslah of the Levant,both the secular and the Sufi
composedrepertoiresknown today in Turkey are largely ascribedto
historicallyattestedmusicians. The vast majorityof these musicians
whose names are attached to the current repertoire items, lived in
Ottoman Turkey between the later seventeenth and the early
twentieth centuries. Most of them were Turkish Muslims, but a
significant number were of Greek, Jewish or Armenian origin.
However,alongsideof this historicalelement, there is also a smaller
numberof items ascribedto early,non-Ottomanfigures. In Ottoman
times, there had existed an ideologicalsuperstructurewhich united
the historical Ottoman element and the mythologicalnon-Ottoman
element with the internationalMuslim conceptionof the Science of
Music and its "lineage",reaching back to medieval Islam and to
Hellenic antiquity. The creation of pseudographiafor the medieval
and antique personages in the lineage also affected historical,
Ottomanfigures,who therebyacquireda mythologicalsignificancein
addition to their historical significance4. Close scrutiny of the
repertoire reveals definite patterns by which history was both
preservedand manipulatedin order to reflect the Ottoman cultural
self-image.

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 85

Ironically,despite the fact that the OttomanTurks possessed

the historicallybest-documentedrepertoireof any musical culture in
the modern Near East (a repertoire which was essentially locally-
created, with relatively little input from neighboringareas), as the
Empireapproachedcollapse,this repertoirecame under attack as the
product of an "alien"musical aesthetic. A further paradox,was that
at the same period, the urban secular musics of several neighboring
countries, such as Greece and Egypt, were being attacked by native
intellectualsas being the productsof the "Turkish"
musical aesthetic.
Within Ottomanculture, the tendency toward historicity, and
the tendency toward mythologizingwere mutually opposed. Along
with a large historical literature,the Ottomanscreated several works
documenting the lives of religious, clergy, calligraphers,poets and
even one work exclusively devoted to musicians. Musical notation
was occasionally used since the middle of the seventeenth century,
and the musical lyric collections (mecmtia)without notation, always
mention the composersof individualitems, in additionto the makam,
usfil, compositionalform and (occasionally)the author of the lyric.
These factors tendedtowardthe preservationof the historicityof the
repertoireand against the creation of a frozen monolithicrepertoire.
At the same time the process of oral transmission,universalamong
the art musics of Asia, tended to erase the particularities of the
individualcompositionsand the styles of different historical periods.
Wright(1989)has examinedthe process by which several items of a
particularinstrumentalgenre where progressivelyaltered to suite the
changingmusical taste. In additionthe custom of composingmusical
"reflections" or "parallels"(nazire) based on earlier compositions
rendered tenuous the connection between a given item in the
instrumental repertoire and the actual earlier composition whose
name it bore (Feldman).5

Although the process of oral transmission tended to

standardizeand modernizeall the individualitems in the repertoire,
there is a more noticeable preservation of older, and probably
individualfeatures, in the vocal repertoire,than in the instrumental.
For example, many of the vocal compositionsin the y(rlk semd't
genre, ascribed to late seventeenth-early eighteenth century
composers are constructed in a modular fashion, with modulation
occurring within discrete sections, which had been called terkfb in
the seventeenth century. This structure seems to have gone out of
fashion by the later eighteenth century, but it is maintained in certain

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86 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

sema'i melodies ascribedto such composersas itri (d. 1712)and EbG

Bekir Aga (d. 1759). Similar archaismsare evident in the Mevlevi
ayins of this period,such as those ascribedto MustafaDede (Ba-att),
Itri (Segah),and Osman Dede (Rast, U$sak, CQrgah,Hicaz). This
stylistic periodizationprobablystrengthenedthe tendencyto maintain
a degree of historicity,in relationto the repertoire.

Along with the difficulties of oral transmission,there existed a

strong tendency toward mythologization, toward the erasing of
historical particularities, in favor of archetypical patterns. This
tendency operatednot only with figures of the distant past, but even
with figures who were relativelywell known in history (see below on
Abd al-QadirMaraghi). Even an ostensiblybiographicalwork such as
the "Atrabel-Asar"by Seyhtilislam(Sheikhal-Islam)Es'adEfendi (d.
1753)6 is essentiallyconcernedwith the writingof elegantprose (in?a)
of appropriate grandiosity to function as a verbal memorial, an
elaborate obituary notice for the deceased musician. Very little
biographicaldata, and no personal anecdotes are allowed to intrude
into the pagesof this memorial-book.
In earlierperiodsof Muslimhistory,when music was actively
under attack from the point of view of religiousdogma,"the Science
of Music"(Ilm al-Musiqa,T.' Ilm-i Muisiki)was developedin part to
legitimize musical practice. By the Ottomanperiod music was very
much accepted, and had become an established part of dervish
devotional practice, which was at times patronized by the State.
After significant developmentin fifteenth century Turkey, musical
theory entered a period of decline until the end of the seventeenth
century. During the ensuing two centuries music had become
establishedamong the ruling class, which had produceda numberof
renownedamateurs. The interestin documentingmusical biographies
was probablystimulatedby the examplesif these royal musicians(e.g.
Sultan Korkut, 1467-1513,the CrimeanGazi Giray Han, 1554-1607),
and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was
considerable creation of musical documents in the form of lyric
collections.
The historicityof the Ottomanswith respectto music was of a
very limited kind, and was more connectedwith biographythan with
any sense of historicalor musical periodization. A similar ethos can
be observed in the Chaghatay biographical notices of fifteenth
century Central Asia and in the Babur-nameh, products of the Timurid

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 87

civilizationwhich was an importantculturalmodel for the Ottomans.

The documents of this Central Asian culture, well into the Uzbek
periodcontainimportanttracesof the lives of famous musicians. The
last of these documents is apparentlythe musical treatise of Cangi
Darvis All, an early seventeenth century Persian work, written in
Bukhara,which contains a substantialbiographicalsection (Jung:99).
While neither the CentralAsian nor the Ottomandocuments of the
lives of musicianscan comparein scope or specificity with the Arabic
Kitab aI-Aghaniof al-Isbahani(d. 967) they do represent the most
continuous treatmentsof musical biographiesin the Muslim Middle
East after the tenth century.

Startingin the later sixteenthcentury,the Ottomancollections

of the lyrics for the classical concert-suite,called mecmdas,note the
names of the composersof all items, in additionto the makam, usal
and compositionalgenre. In this respect they differ from the bayaz
collections of post-fifteenth-centuryCentralAsia and Kashmirwhich
recordonly the texts, makamand usOl,withoutthe composer'sname.7
These eastern bayaz's are arrangedin very much the same way as
the Ottoman mecmiia's,and certainly belong to the same genre, so
that the difference is striking.

Transmission of the Ottoman Composed Repertoire

The Ottoman repertoirecontains a number of genres, all of
which contain many compositions which antedate the nineteenth
century. The core of the repertoirewere the vocal compositionsfor
the courtly concert-suite, the fasil. In some cases composers of
instrumentalmusic also composedthe vocal fasil, but this seems to
have been exceptional(e.g. vocal fasll of Tanburi Isak, 1745-1814).
The vocal repertoirewas very rarely notated prior to the middle of
the nineteenth century, and it was transmittedprimarilyby a few
prestigious musicians who had access to the complete courtly
repertoire. Duringthe first half of the nineteenthcentury the most
important single source for the vocal repertoire was Ismail Dede
Efendi (d. 1846). Virtuallythe entire vocal repertoireof the period
precedinghim reached the present time through Ismail Dede, with
whatever modificationshe chose to introduce. The vocal repertoire
known in Turkey today is mainly that which was taught by him to
ZekaiDede (d. 1897)and from Zekaito Rauf Yekta.

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88 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

Another important vocal genre is the music of the various

dervish ceremonies, of which the most elaborate are those of the
Mevlevi dervishes. It is widely claimed in Turkey that most of the
Mevlevi ceremonies known today were transmitted by the
Mevlevis Ismail and (,yin)
Zekai Dede, including the ayin composed by
these musicians. The earliest known composer of a Mevlevi yin
whose work has survived is KoCekMustafa Dede (d. 1683),composer
of a Beysti yin. Four Mevlevi ayins predatinghim are considered
to be anonymousand are known as the "beste-ikadimler"("ancient
compositions"). Obviously it would have been simple enough to
manufacturecomposersfor these "ancientcompositions," but that is a
step that the Ottoman tradition would not take. The earliest
document of a Mevlevi yin dates from 1794 and records a
contemporaneouscompositionby Sultan Selim III (d. 1808), in the
makam Sfizidilara(Abduilbaki1794). This notated documentwas not
widely known, and it appearsthat the form of the ayin which was
documentedfrom Zekai Dede a century later shows certain stylistic
differences due to the oral transmissioninto a later period, but is
clearly the same composition. Othermajor dervishcompositionsare
the Mir'aciye,durak and na'atof the Mevlevi and Halvett dervishes.
These complexcompositionsin "free"rhythmwere transmittedorally
beginningwith the early seventeenthcentury.
The instrumentalrepertoire consisted entirely of the forms
peerev and semai. The means of transmissionfor the instrumental
repertoirewas more complexthan for the vocal, due to the existence
of notation since the middle of the seventeenthcentury. However,
the notated versions of instrumental items only acquired great
significance in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the
Hamparsumnotation became diffused. It does appear that a few
musicians had access to earlier notated sources (especially the
Cantemir Collection),and that these were used to create pseudo-
archaic compositions-- e.g. the pseudographiaascribedto al-Farabi,
composedby IsmailHakkiBey, (1866-1927).
Despite the existence of notation, it seems that the primary
means for transmitting the instrumental repertoire were those
instrumentalistswho accepted students. Duringthe early nineteenth
century the most importantinstrumentalistwas Tanburt Isak, who
was a composer,the leadingperformeron the central instrumentof
courtly music, and a teacher both inside and outside of the Ottoman
court. We must assume that the bulk of the instrumental repertoire

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 89

known today had been taught by Isak, and descends through his
ArmenianstudentOskiyam(d. 1870?),to severalmusiciansof the later
nineteenthand early twentiethcenturies,and finally to Dr. SubhiEzgi
(1869-1962),who notatedmuch of it.
At presentonly a small minorityof both vocal and instrumental
compositionspredatingthe nineteenth century are consideredto be
anonymous ("lIedri");almost every beste, sem.11and peqrev in the
early Ottomanrepertoireis ascribedto someone. These may be well-
known musicians,like Hafiz Post (d. 1694),Mustafa Itri (d. 1712),or
Zaharya (d. 17607), or simply otherwise undocumented names
(probablynicknames),such as "Papaz," or "Delikli."Thus, on the most
superficial level what distinguishesthe Turkish composedrepertoire
from the repertoires of every other Islamic music today is the
profusionof both verifiableand unverifiablecomposer'snames. Most
of the names in the mecmuiascan be located in Atrab el-Asar by
Seyhtilislam Es'ad Efendi. Although the facts known about the
musicians who composedthe historical repertoireare very few, and
the manuscriptswhich containthe primarydocumentationabouttheir
lives and their compositions were not widely copied or generally
known long after their deaths, nevertheless the names of these
musiciansare firmly attachedto their compositionstoday.

There is a fundamental cleavage in the repertoire between

items which had originally been composed as parts of a classical
concert-suite and items which had originated in the night-clubs
(gazino) of the later nineteenth century in Istanbul. Today the
classical singers and choral directorsusually distinguishbetween the
compositionsof the courtly vocal composersand the compositionsof
the night-clubs,generallyrejecting the latter. The night-club fasil
may be heard in some night-clubs and on numerous commercial
recordings. Of greatermusical significancefor modernTurkey is the
fact that it is the direct antecedantof the newer ?arki-suitessung by
the most popularsingersof urbanmusic (e.g.Zeki Mtiren). In modern
performances, the instrumentalrepertoire which came out of the
night-clubsof the last century is often able to merge with that of the
court, so that a tanbuiror kemenCeplayer whose style and repertoire
are regarded as classical (e.g. Mes'ut Cemil, Izzettin Okte, Necdet
Yaqar,Ihsan Ozgen),may performpeerevor sema"iby composerslike
Vasilaki, Andon, Astik or Tatyos, all of whom were Greek and
Armeniancomposers for the night-clubs. Due to the fact that the
fasil of the night-clubs is rather well-documented it is not difficult to

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90 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

distinguishit from the courtly fasill on the basis of attributionalone,

apartfrom compositionand performancestyle. The composersof the
night-club fasil are kept apart from the line of musicians which
reachesback from such modernas ZekaiDede (d. 1897)and TanbOiri
CemilBey (d. 1916)to the distantand even the mythicalpast.
The composerswhose compositionscan claim high prestige in
this chain of transmission worked in both vocal and instrumental
genres. Most of them were TurkishMuslims,but a significantnumber
were membersof religious and ethnic minorities. The musicians of
this historical, purely Ottoman group were known primarily as
composers,ratherthan as performersor theorists. There were highly
influentialperformers,known from varioussources(e.g.the Moldavian
Kemant Miron, late 18th c.), but apparently their emphasis on
performance rather than composition disqualified them from
membershipin the chain of musical transmission.Otherperformers,
such as Miron's colleague at court, Tanbiiri Isak, are part of this
chain, thanks to their compositions. A theorist like AbdfilbakiNasir
Dede (1765-1824)is not part of the chain,while Kemn^iHizir Aga (d.
1760?)is part of it, in his capacityof composer,althoughhe was also
a performer,and the authorof a treatise.

Although there is abundant evidence that other Muslim

cultureshad been interestedin preservingthe names of the musicians
along with their compositions,in modern times it is only the Turks
who maintainedthis practice. The continuity of this mentality into
RepublicanTurkey is seen both in the persistence of attaching the
composer'sname to almost every item in the repertoire,and in the
continuouscreation of biographicaldictionariesinto this century. A
transitional Ottoman literatus such as Mahmud Inal wrote
Kemrl
biographicaldictionariesof the last Ottomancalligraphers,poets and
musicians. His biographical dictionary of the musicians of the
nineteenth century (HopSadA,Istanbul,1958)is the prototypeof the
three-volume Tork Musiki Ansiklopedisi ("Encyclopediaof Turkish
Music"),publishedfrom 1969 to 1976. The TMA, a badly flawed but
nevertheless major secondary source, features some theory but is
primarily biographicalin nature, and must be viewed in part as a
continuationof the Ottomantraditionof biographicaldictionariesof
the men of the arts and the religioussciences.

The relatively few non-Ottoman composers who hold a place in

the repertoire stand out precisely because of their mythological,

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 91

quasi-ideological nature, so different from the bulk of Ottoman

composers. While there is no reasonto doubt the authenticityof the
repertoire going back to the last third of the eighteenth century,
before that time the problems of mis-attribution, distorted or
modernized transmission, and pseudographia grow enormously.
Althoughin this earlierperiodthe historicalelement in the repertoire
was strong, the tendency to mythologizealso had greater scope, and
the ascription of pseudographiato attested early historical figures
(e.g.GaziGirayHan)becamemore commonamonglate eighteenthand
nineteenthcenturymusicians. We can only acquirean understanding
of the nature of the Ottomanrepertoire,and of the relationshipof
this repertoireto the Ottomanview of the transmissionof the Science
of Music, by analyzingall of these processesseparately.
The Lineage of the Science of Music

Although its actual historical elements were numerous, the

nature of the repertoireof Turkishmusic is also connectedwith the
mythologicallineageof the Science of Music, Ilm el-Mfisiki,both in
its pan-Islamicform and in its Ottomanvariant. It is well-knownthat
the Science of the Music, or musical theory,had been derivedby the
medieval Islamic theoreticians (al-Farabi,Safi el-Din, etc.) from
earlier Greekmusical theory. Therefore to the Ottomans,as to the
medieval Muslims,the Science of Music was not national in nature,
but was part of an internationaltransmissionof wisdom. The Mevlevi
sheikh Abdfilbiki Nasir Dede, writing at the end of the eighteenth
century opens his musical treatise "Tetkik iJ Tahkik" with a brief
description of this transmission. After noting the invention of
practical music by the Prophet Adam, he describes a period where
"everyoneplayedaccordingto his own ability,"i.e. without the benefit
of musicaltheory. He continues:

When the Father of Sages, Fisigoris received

his wisdom, he inventedthis Science of Music
with his mathematicalpowersand he expounded
its rules. After him same of the Sages(hikemc))
such as Aristo and Farabi and others such as
Safi el-DinIbnel-Mi'minaugmentedit by means
of the practice and succession of ideas (Tetkik:
7).

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92 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

Accordingto AbdoilbakiDede,the major figures in the Science

of Music are divided equally between the ancient Greeks and the
medievalMuslims. It is somewhatsurprisingthat he fails to mention
anotherMuslimfigure,who was highly influentialamongthe Ottoman
-- MaragaliAbdiilkader(Abd al-QadirMaraghl Ibnu Ghaibi), who
died in 1435, usually referredto in Turkish as "Maragi"(=Maraghi).
The Persian theoreticalwritings of the AzerbaijanianTurk Maragh^
were widely known in the Persianateculturalarea, and he is regarded
as the most importantof the later Systematistmusicologists(Shiloah,
1979: 168-176). However,Maraghiwas known to the Ottomansalso
as a composer,and moreover as a semi-mythicalsage who stood at
the beginningof the musical practice and repertoireof the Ottomans.
Both Prince Cantemir(1714) and Charles Fonton (1751) considered
Maragh^to be founderof Ottomanmusic. Accordingto Fonton:
Thus I would not fear to leap boldly across the
vast span of centuries and years which has
elapsedsince the birth of music to recent time
when Persia was illumined by one of the
greatest personages which she has produced
and who was the father and restorer of
Orientalmusic. His name was Hodgie (Hocal),
and he lived in the fifteenth century in the
reign of Hiiseyin Baykara, King of Persia...
(Fonton/Martin1971:4).

Hoca,"theteacher"is the name by which Maraghiis mentioned

by Cantemir and by the author of all the lyric mecmaa. No doubt
following his Turkishinformants,Fontonhas associatedMaraghinot
with the hatedTimur,but with his admiredgrandsonHilseyinBaykara,
patronof Ali Shir Navaii. In fact Maraghihad been a court musician
for Timur and for Shahrukh,but never for HoiseyinBaykara. This
change is typical of the de-historicizationto which Marighi was
subjectedin Turkey. Centemirtells us (in his history)that the vocal
composition of Maraghi (Hoca) are still the foundation of the
repertoireof Turkishmusic. In the mecmuiaof the seventeenthand
eighteenth centuries each makam section begin with a series of
compositions(in the Persianlanguage)ascribedto either "Hoca"or to
"HocaAbdiilkadir."No Turkishor Iraniancompositionmay precede
those of the "Teacher." In a recently noticed fifteenth century
mecmua, probably of Iranian provenance, there is abundant reference
to the compositions of "Hoja Abd al-Qadir" (see previous note).

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 93

Turning to the modern Turkish repertoire,we see that there

are today thirty compositions,mainly in the kdr form, which are
ascribedto Maraght(TMA:7-9). This is a substantialpercentageof
the items mentionedin the mecmilas. These items were never notated
until the 1890s when RautfYekta Bey transcribedthem from Zekai
Dede (d. 1896). As early as the 1950s Subhi Ezgi complainedthat
these compositionsin all probabilitydid not belong to Maraghi(Ezgi,
1953:240). I might add here that the kar form did not exist in the
lifetime of Maraghf. Nevertheless in Turkey, in the 1980s the
compositions are usually accepted as authentic. While a certain
skepticism has recently become evident, the State Turkish Music
Chorusstill performsthem as the compositionsof Maraghi,and has
recorded a number of them on a series of recordingsdocumenting
classicalTurkishmusic (1988).
The "Maraghi"repertoire agrees in several stylistic respects
with the earliest stratum in the CantemirCollection. As Ezgi has
suggested,they may well representthe output of a certain sixteenth
century Turkish composernamed Adduilall. The latter is sometimes
called "Hoca-i Sani" ("second teacher") in the mecmuias, so the
confusion is understandable(Ezgi, loc. cit.). However,what matters
here is that Abduilalf,who was the most importantnative Turkish
composerof the sixteenth century,has sunk into oblivion. Some of
Abdtilll^'scompositionshave been attributedto AbduilkadirMaragi,
who has a firm place in the mythologicallineage of Turkish music,
which must be concretizedby the existenceof actual repertoireitems.

More blatant cases of the concretization of a mythical

repertoiremay be seen in earlier historical figures. In speaking of
the origin of the tanbar,which is historically the most indigenously
Turkic instrumentof the Ottomanorchestra,Fontonsays:
The tanburis, after the ney, the most esteemed
instrumentin Turkey. It is more ancient than
the ney as well, for if we are to believe the
Turks, who are the only sources we can cite,
they receivedit from the philosopherPlato who
accordingto them had a perfect understanding
of music and was the inventorof this instrument
on which he played several melodies that he
composed himself, and that have supposedly

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94 Asian Music,FaIl/Winter1990/1991

been preservedto the present. Several Turkish

musicians boast that they know these tunes,
which they guard jealously and will teach no
one (Fonton/Martin:15).

While the modernTurkishrepertoiredoes not containanything

by either of the two Greek philosophers,Cantemir'sCollection does
have a peerev in the makam Nikriz, ascribedto "Eflatiin." (Coll.89)
Cantemirmakesno commentaboutthis, and it is possiblethat this was
a nicknameof some more recent Greekmusician,or even of a Turk,
but it is more probablethat this item is indeed one of the pieces of
which Fonton speaks. The connectionof Plato with the tanbuirwas
apparentlyvery widespread,as it is still current among musicians in
Uzbekistan. In the summerof 1990 I was able to observea television
interview in Tashkent with an elderly dutar player who mentioned
that the tanbuirhad been invented by EflatOn,and related a legend
abouthow he constructedthe instrument.
Next in the chain of worthies is the illustriousAbu Nasr al-
Farab1(d. 950), the most brilliant of the Islamic musicologists,and,
like Maraghi,an ethnic Turk. There is no recordof any compositions
by this great "Turkish"musician until the end of the nineteenth
century, when a few peerevs and semais (Acem and Rast pegrevs,
Isfahan semai) mysteriously appearedin the notated collection of
Ismail Hakki Bey (1866-1927). These pieces have been publishedand
are performedtoday in Turkeyas the compositionsof al-Farabi. Safi
al-Din (Urmavi) has not been neglected, as there is apparently a
beste (a 17th centuryvocal form) in the makamNikriz ascribedto the
great thirteenthcenturySystematist. Apartfrom a short reference in
the TMA,I have no informationaboutthis item.

Plato,al-Farabiand Safi al-Din are part of the generalIslamic

musical lineage. Maright, while not an Ottoman, had particular
importancefor the Ottomans,and his role in the repertoireis much
more substantialthan the first three. A link with earlier Anatoliais
providedby a sema'I in makam Irak, and a pewrevin Acem ascribed
to Sultan Veled (d. 1312),the son of Cellal al-Din Riimt (d. 1273),the
greatest saint of Turkey, and founder of the Mevlevi dervish order.
While the peerev seems to be a nineteenth century attribution
(originating with Ismail Hakkl Bey), the sema't was associated with
Sultan Veled even in the seventeenth century. Although the notation
for this item in the Cantemir Collection appears under the heading

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 95

"der makam-i Irak, sema't", without a composer, in the margin

Cantemirhad lightlywrittenin the name "SultanVeled"(131).
The first links in the chain of the secularmythologicallineage
of Ottomanmusic proper(apartfrom "Orientalmusic")are providedby
items by Prince Korkut(1467-1513),and Gazi GirayHan (1554-1607).
Several Ottomansources mention the high musical culture of Prince
Korkut,and a single peerev ascribedto him is includedat the end of
Cantemir'sCollection(by anotherhand). As OwenWrighthas recently
shown (Wright, 1989: 75-77), this piece seems to be a developed
version of an ancient composition, very likely dating from the
fifteenth century.
The repertoireof Gazi Giray Han representsa more complex
issue. There seems no doubt that the Crimeanruler really was an
importantcomposerof instrumentalmusic. Three of his peerev,and
one of his sema't are found in the CantemirCollection,and one pegrev
is found in the Collectionof Bobowsky,which was written less than
fifty years after Giray's death. There is no reason to doubt the
authenticityof these early transcriptions. Howeverthere is a much
larger repertoireof instrumentalpieces ascribed to Gazi Giray Han
qhich do not appear in early sources and which are structurally
rathermore recent.

What is importantin this argumentis not the authenticityof

individual items, but rather the fact that a major early composer
became the object of pseudographiccomposition,the aim of which
was to establishthe legitimacyof later Ottomanmusic by maintaining
a repertoireof "classics"which could be ascribedto importantfigures
in the musical lineage. The same can be said about the compositions
of Prince Cantemirhimself. This Moldavianprince was the most
important Ottoman instrumentalcomposer of the early eighteenth
century; this role is confirmedby Fonton writing in 1751, and later
on by Toderini (1787). Thus it was essential that the functioning
Turkish repertoirecontain a numberof items attributedto Cantemir
(Kantemiroglu).In fact, not one of the compositionswritten by the
Prince himself in his Collection... are known today, but the oral
traditionascribedyet other pieces to him, which may or may not rest
on authenticmaterial. While it happensthat both Gazi GirayHan and
Prince Cantemir were historical figures who were important
composers of Turkish music, their place in the repertoire must be
viewed as part of the "native" Ottoman element in the mythological

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96 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

lineage of music (i.e. native as Ottomansdespite their foreign ethnic

origins). As in literary pseudographic,the cultural position of the
supposed author necessitates the appearanceof a concrete legacy.
The repertoires ascribed to Gazi Giray Han and to Kantemiroglu
certainly rest upon the real musical creations of these musicians.
Nevertheless, it appears that the emically perceived need to
commemoratethese historicalaccomplishments,and to legitimizethe
succeeding repertoire was more important than any desire to
accuratelypreservethe individualitems.
The "Origin" of Classical Turkish Music

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw two

opposite movements with regard to Ottoman music which are
associatedwith the figures of Radf YektaBey and Ziya GOkalp.

Raiif Yekta Bey (1871-1935)is a seminal figure in the history

of Turkish music. His importance as a theorist and collector of
repertoire can only be compared to Dimitrie Cantemir(1673-1723),
who attempted a similar task at the beginning of the eighteenth
century. However,by the end of the nineteenthcentury methods of
musicologicalenquiryand the culturalpositionof Turkishmusic had
changed considerably. In terms of the repertoire Radif Yekta
understood that his primary task was to notate the core classical
repertoire (essentially vocal) from the most authoritative living
traditionalsources. He realized that the traditionaloral method of
instruction(meyk)as the primarymethodof transmissionof repertoire
would not survive long into the next century, so that establishing
authoritative versions of the classical repertoire was absolutely
essential for the survival of Turkish music. While much of the
instrumental repertoire had already been notated in the Cantemir,
Hamparsumand Western notations, the vocal repertoire was still
largely transmittedorally. While he was engagedin the arduoustask
of transcription and publication, he also attempted to present a
historical view of the Turkish repertoire. His methodologyshows a
mixture of modern historical analysis and traditionalmythological
thinking. Despite these limitations it would seem obvious that any
historicalunderstandingof Turkishmusic must proceedfrom the use
of living and writtensourceswhich Yektaestablished.

In the writingsof Ratf Yektathere is no attempt to view the

makamsystem as a whole as an Ottomanor Turkishcreation. Yekta

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 97

was the foremoststudentof the Ottomancomposedrepertoire,and its

essentially indigenousprovenanceand structure were well-known to
him. Althoughhe rarely introducedcomparisonswith other Middle
Eastern musics, his relating of the remarks of his teacher, Zekat
Dede (whohad lived in Egypt)on the rhythmicalstructureof Egyptian
music (Yekta, 1318:21) shows that he was aware of such structural
differences. Nevertheless, neither Yekta nor any other Turkish
writer attempted to assess the relationshipof Turkish music to its
nearestneighborswithin the makam/maqamsphere. Rafif Yekta,who
was a dervish of the prestigiousMevlevi Order(which had branches
in Damascus,Allepo and Cairo),and a memberof the generationwho
had lived throughAbdoilhamidII's officially sponsoredArabism,did
not emphasize the differences separating Turkish, Syrian and
Egyptianmusic. In the early years of this century,the Ilm-i Miisiki
spoken of by musiciansand dervisheswas still "OrientalMusic,"as it
had been in the days of Cantemirand Fonton(bothof whom used this
term). The most nationaliststatementthat they might make was that
certain musical forms were typical of the musicians of "Rum,"i.e.
Turkey, althoughthese might be Turks,Greeksor membersof other
minorities. At this time, it must have seemedthat what the Ottoman
Turks possessedexclusivelywas not a music, but a repertoire.

Although the Ottoman composed repertoire was quite

"nationally"distinctive, the musical mythology was designedto give
the impression that it was not, i.e. that the repertoire grew from
common Islamicsources,reachingback to Hellenictimes. Apparently
it was this "cosmopolitanism" that was so infuriatingto the Turkish
nationalists. While Cantemir,and no doubt other musicians of his
time, possessedratherexact informationabout what distinguishedthe
music of "Rum"(Turkey) from that of "Pars"(Persia),even the
musically informedpublic in the earliertwentiethcentury was unable
to speak in any detail about the music of the Persians, Arabs or
Greeks,let alone the music of the "FarEasterncivilization"to which
the Turks "originally"had belonged (see below). In the absence of
real musical data, the "evidence"of the lineage of the Science of
Music, plus the partly mythologicalhistory of the Ottomanrepertoire
assumedgreat importancein the argumentsconcerningthe "national"
characterof Turkishmusic.

Rafif Yektalived in tumultuoustimes which did not permitthe

kind of scientific Investigationsthat could have proceededfrom his
labors. Very shortly after Yekta'sfirst publications,Turkish music

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98 Asian Music,Fall/Winter1990/1991

became the object of a polemic which put into question the

representativeness of this music as a creation of the "Turkish
culture." The earliest writings which criticized Ottomanmusic from
this "national"perspectiveappearedaroundthe same time as Yekta's
first musicological publications, These criticisms took the form of
newspaperarticles (in the paper Ikdam ) written after 1893 by the
Turkish writer Necib Asim Bey (Aksoy, 1989:2). Apparentlyat this
time Ratif Yekta was able to answer these criticisms. It was only
some twenty years later, that a more organized and apparently
scientific criticism was levelled against Ottoman music, and this
criticismprovedto be much more damagingthan the early writingsof
NecibAsim.
This new criticism of Ottomanmusic was part of the program
for the purification of the national Turkish culture created by the
sociologist Ziya Gotkalp(d. 1924). Gctkalp'sviews have been analyzed
elsewhere (Behar;Aksoy;GOkalp/Devereux), and so they will only be
briefly noted here. As explainedby Aksoy:

GOkalpinterpreted August Comte's phases of

theological,metaphysicaland positive science in terms
of Turkishthought. Accordingto this interpretationthe
Ottomanperiodwhich GOkalpregardedas the 'Periodof
Community'represented the religious phase and the
process of nationalizationrepresentedthe metaphysical
phase. The same conclusion can be seen in his
'civilization'and 'culture' concepts; in that distinction
Ottomanmusic belongedto the religiousphase,our ex-
'civilization,'but folk music was part of our national
'culture'(Aksoy:3).
In his major work, The principles of Turkism(Tu'rkaQ'la~ag'n
Esaslari),publishedin 1923, GCtkalp attemptedto divided all the arts
and crafts practicedin Turkeyinto the two camps of "civilization" and
"culture." He devotes only a paragraphor less to each art form, and
in every case the absence of scientific method or criteria is evident
to a modernreader. The nature of his thoughtcan be sampledfrom
his paragraphon music:

The rhythmic music of the East is a musical

technique which al-Farabiborrowed from Byzantium
and transposed into Arabic. This music penetrated the

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 99

havas [elite] class of Arabs, Persians and Turks but

remainedrestricted to that class, for it was never able
to penetratethe lower strataof the people. This is why
Muslim nationshave never been able to demonstratein
music the originality that they have in architecture.
The Turkish lower classes have created a national
popular music by continuing the techniques they had
developedunder Far Eastern civilization,and the Arab
and Persian lower classes also continued to use old
techniques. As a result, Easternmusic has not become
the national music of any Eastern nation. Another
reasonfor not calling this Islamicmusic is the fact that
it is used not only by Muslim nations but also in the
religious ceremonies of the Orthodox nations, the
Armeniansand the Jews (Gokalp/Devereux: 42 ).

GOkalpevidently knew very little about music, and so his

argumentdid not revolve around actual musical structures. In the
midst of his remarksabout music, certain themes stand out. At the
beginningis the claim that al-Farabl"borrowed" this music from the
Byzantines. This seems to be the root of the trouble;it is not that
"Eastern"music is Islamic,but on the contrarythat it is Hellenic,and
hence unsuitable for any Muslim people. In the history of
architectureit is clear that the architectSinan "borrowed" quite a bit
from the HagiaSophiachurchin buildingthe SUileymaniye Mosque,yet
to Gokalpthis type of borrowingwas part of a transformation,and so
was not harmful. In the case of music, howeverthe Turks,and other
Muslim peoples were unable to transformwhat they had borrowed.
What is significant for GOkalpis the Hellenic nature of "Eastern"
music, not the ethnicity of its practitioners. For this reason the
question of the repertoireof Turkish music, and its composers was
not an issue for Gokalp. Gokalpnever based his ideas of Turkish
nationalism upon race, noting that "nationalityis based solely on
upbringing."(Bozdogan: 54).
The ultimateresultsfor Turkeyof the kind of thinkingwhich is
in evidence in the writings of G6kalphave been aptly characterized
by Aksoy:
The whole of this nationalizationprocess which
should have been a transition from a culture which
could not define its identity to a search for a critical

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100 AsianMusic,Fall/Winter1990/1991

definitionof it, has been a processof breakingoff from

culture and moving toward non-culture or 'ideology'
(Aksoy:5).
In the decade following the death of Gokalpin 1924, Turkish
political thinkingbegan to developracist overtones,as exemplifiedin
the "sunlanguage"theorywhich saw Turkishas the originof virtually
all languages. AlthoughGokalphad not framedhis argumentin these
racial terms, the question of the "origin"of Turkish music came to
involvenot only Byzantium,but all the non-Turkishand non-Ottoman
composers who held significant places in the lineage of music. All
traditionalconnoisseursof Ottomanmusic "knew"that this music was
based on the principlescreatedby Pythagoras,Plato, and Aristotle,as
reinterpretedby al-Farabi and Safi el-Din, and that the repertoire
was "founded"by Abdfilkadir Meragi, and the other "Persians"
(Acemler). After the era of the "Persians"ended,somewherearound
the time of Ahmed III (1703-1730),there began to be an important
groupof infidelsin the music of the court:e.g. HarfinYahfidi,
Angeli, Kantemiroglu,Zaharya,Haham Musi, Kemani Yorgi, Tanbrir
Ilyas,
TanbuiriIsak, Kemani Miron,Baba Hamparsum,etc. Of course the
majority of composers and performers were Muslim Turks, who
became proportionallymore dominantin the nineteenthcentury,but
the importance of these Greeks, Moldavians,Jews and Armenians
could not be denied.

RauifYektaBey does not seem to have fully comprehendedthe

nature of the attack on Turkish music, and in any case he was too
involved with his musicological collecting and research to become
very engagedin polemics. The same was essentially true of Yekta's
follower Dr. Subhi Ezgi who continuedYekta'swork of collection and
publication. It is only with Sadettin Arel (1880-1955)that classical
Turkishmusic found a polemicist equal to the task of taking on the
ideas of Gbkalp.
The early years, and especially the second decade of the
Turkish Republic (1935-45) had been very damaging for classical
Turkishmusic. For a periodclassicalTurkishmusic had been banned
from the radio, and public teaching and performing opportunities
became very restricted. The perceivedassociationof this music with
the fallen and discreditedOttomanEmpiremade it seem likely that
classical Turkish music would soon go the way of the fez and the
dervish orders. However, in the 1930s and 40s there was still

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 101

considerable support for this music among the upper and middle
classes. What was needed was an intellectual defense against the
charges of "Ottomanism," "Byzantinism," "Hellenism" or
"cosmopolitanism."In 1940 SadettinArel was able to providethis in
his book Whosein TurkishMusic?(Tark MusikisiKimindiri. In this
popularly written, although rather well-documented work Arel
"proves" that classical Turkish music owes nothing to Arabian,
Byzantine or ancient Greek music. On the contrary, Arabian and
modern Greek liturgical music are derived from Turkish music.
Turkishmusic in turn was broughtby the OghuzTurks from Central
Asia when they migratedto Anatolia. This argumentwas made easier
to proposebecause Arel had absolutelyno sources for CentralAsian
music, but the virtuallyno one in Turkeyat that time had any either.
Despite this small drawback,Arel's argumentshave become widely
accepted in Turkey, and have become something of a dogma for
supportersof Turkish classical music. AlthoughArel does not cite
him, his argumentswere strengthenedindirectly by the research of
Bela Bartok who managed to discover a high degree of continuity
between AnatolianTurkishfolk music and the folk musics of Central
Asia, as exemplifiedby modern Hungarianfolk music. Althoughat
first sight this discovery would appear to support the folkloristic
argumentsof Gokalpand his followers,in fact it has been used after
Arel to support Ottomanmusic by showing that the essential tonal
structuresof Turkishfolk music and classical music are unified, and
hence that the latter grew out of the former.
Arel did not need to appealto the classical repertoirebecause
he based his argumenton structuraldifferencesbetween Turkishand
other musics and on the diffusion of Ottoman musical terms into
modern Arabic and Greek. However in the past forty years the
repertoirehas been used as a symbol of Turkishnessbecause all of
the early figures in it (GaziGiray,Marf^g,Safi el-Din, Sultan Veled,
al-Farabi)althoughnon-Ottomans,are consideredto be ethnic Turks.
Today this view appears to be held by most people involved in
classical Turkishmusic. Of course for this view it is inconvenientto
rememberthe numerousand influentialnon-Turkishand non-Muslim
composersand performersof Turkishmusic. For examplethe leading
instrumental composer of the early eighteenth century was a
Moldavian(Cantemir),the violin had been acculturatedinto Turkish
music by a Greek (Yorgi,mid 18th c.) and a Moldavian(Miron,late
18th c.), and even the techniqueof the nationalinstrument,the tanbair
was developed by Jewish musicians of the eighteenth century

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102 AsianMusic,Fall/Winter1990/1991

andIsak).Oneresponse
(Moshe/Musi is seemin the
to thisproblem
multi-volume LP and cassette collection of classical Turkish music
issued this year by the State Turkish Music Chorus,which presents
only the works of Turkish Muslim composers,leaving out the great
classical compositionsby Zaharya,Ilya (d. 1799) and Isak (d. 1814),
which constitute much of the core of the vocal repertoire. This
exclusion of the minority composers is only a reflex of the racism
which had enteredthe polemicon Turkishmusic duringthe 1930'and
'40s, and is partlya corollaryof Arel'sarguments. If the Turkishness
of Turkishmusic is defined largelyby the ethnicityof the individuals
who created it (such as Farabi, Safi el-Din, and Maragh-), even
though they had not lived in a Turkish cultural environment,then
truly Turkish music could not be created by Greeks, Jews or
Armenianseven thoughthey had lived within a Turkishenvironment.
Whilethis type of argumentis perhapsunderstandablein the writings
of Arel, which, after all were written duringthe heyday of European
racism,their continuedstrengthin Turkey duringthe 1980s can only
be interpretedas indicating a real cultural isolation, perhaps more
extremethan the Turkeyof fifty years ago.
The pan-Turkistview of the classical repertoire,which has
taken root since Arel'stime has not been able to alter fundamentally
the nature of the repertoire,or to discover any concrete links with
CentralAsia. The Ottomansmighthave had compositionsby Plato and
al-Fabaribut they did not claim to have any pearev'sby such Turkic
heroes as Dede Korkutor Oghuz Khan;unlike the modern Kazakhs
who do have a repertoireof instrumentalkaj (for the bowed qobuz)
ascribed to Qorqit Ata (the same figure as the Turkish "Dede
Korkut").Ratherit has provedmore efficient to claim all the existing
early figures of the repertoirefor Turkdom.
Since Arel's time another view has developed which stresses
not so much the Central Asian Turks but rather the Hittites and
Sumerians. As such it is a reflex of the linguistictheoriessponsored
somewhat earlier by the Turkish Language Foundation (TUirkDil
Kurumu),and it may be seen in more or less official publications. Its
methods are extremelyvague and have dealt mainly with organology.
It has made no consistentattempt to deal with musical structuresor
repertoire. Nevertheless,vague ideas about the continuity of musical
structuresof the Sumerians,Babyloniansand Hittites in the classical
music of Turkey circulate quite freely in the contemporaryTurkish

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 103

music world. At times proponentsof this view are at odds with

supportersof musicalPan-Turkism.
Alongsidethese ratherextremepolemicalpositions,throughout
much of this century there has also been an educatedpublic opinion
which pursuedthe generalpath of RauifYekta. This positionmay be
seen in the essays and interviewsof the poet YahyaKemalBeyatli (d.
1958),8the novelist AhmedHamdiTanpinar,and today amongseveral
prominent musicians (e.g. Altaettin YavaSCa,Necdet Yasar, Ihsan
Ozgen). Accordingto this view, classical Turkishmusic was created
primarilly by Turks, but at a specific historical juncture and in
specific geographicaland political environment,in which membersof
the minoritiesplayed an importantrole. This historicaljuncturehad
several major periods, of which the most important were the late
seventeenth-earlyeighteenthcenturies(HafizPost, Itri, Cantemir),the
middle of the eighteenthcentury (Zaharya)and the late eighteenth-
early nineteenthcenturies(Isak,Selim III, Ismail Dade Efendi). The
break with earlier Iranianmusic which occurred in the seventeenth
century led to a concentrationon local musical traditions,which had
both Turkic and non-Turkic (e.g. Greek, Arabian)elements. For
example,YahyaKemalwas well aware of the importanceof the local
non-Muslimminoritiesin the creationof the repertoire,but for him a
Greek or Jew from Istanbulor from a provincialOttomancity was
more "Turkish"than a Tatar or an Azerbaijani, who possessed
different national cultures. He was quoted as saying "Greekslike
Zaharya,Jews like Isak, and Armenians like Nikogos reached the
highest nationallevel. It could be said that, if the populationof this
country had had the same strikingunity in everythingas they had in
music, we would have been a very differentnation."(Uysal:103).
Conclusion

Although composed cycles appearedto have arisen first in

North Africa, as early as the thirteenthcentury, the OttomanTurks
developed the earliest composed cycles in the Middle East proper.
This process began in the later sixteenthcentury,and resulted in the
creation of the secular vocal and instrumentalfasil, and the ayin of
the Mevlevi dervishes. Whereas the North African nauba, the
Levantine waslah, and the later Central Asian maqom and muqam
became collections of repertoire items, the Ottoman Turkish
compositions, whether secular or Sufi, instrumental or vocal, usually
were associated with individual musicians.

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104 Asian Music, Fall/Winter 1990/1991

Althoughdocumentaryand notated sources have long existed

in Turkey, the native conceptualizationof the classical repertoirehas
always contained both historical and mythico-ideologicalelements.
This conceptualizationhas relied to some extent on documents and
history,but also upon a structurewhich was producedby a culturally
authoritativeself-description.The demise of the OttomanEmpireled
to a crisis in self-definitionin all spheresof Turkishlife and also in
music in which the symbolicrole of the historicalrepertoirewas very
great. This symbolic role at first was seen as a weakness in the
nationalidentify of classical Turkishmusic. Later,a reinterpretation
of the same repertoireenabledit to function as a positive symbol of
Turkishidentity. Runningparallelto these polemics,since the end of
the 19th century there has arisen a rather scientific interest in the
nature of the historical repertoireand an acceptance of the actual
historical conditions which produced it. However the highly
politicized nature of the discussion surroundingclassical Turkish
music has seriously hindered any research into the nature of the
historical repertoire, so that today the status of this research in
Turkey is much where it was in 1922 when RauifYektapublishedhis
classic article "Lamusiqueturque"(Yekta1922). Thus any analysisof
the place of classical Turkishmusic in contemporaryTurkishsociety
must be aware of the varying interpretationsof the lineageof music
for which the historicalrepertoireis a primarysymbol.

The position of the historical repertoire both today and in

Ottoman times represents a conflict of mythico-ideological and
historical thinking. Like other medieval Muslim civilizations, the
OttomanTurks also attemptedto legitimizethe practiseof music by
elevating it through the "Science of Music" conceived in both
mathematicaland mysticalterms. However,the Ottomansalso had an
awarenessof history, and saw themselves as the heirs of the older
Muslimcivilizations,and of Byzantium("Rum") on the one hand,and as
the creators of a new Muslim and Turkish civilizationon the other.
Although they wished to establish their claims to the older
civilizations,they also wanted to documenttheir own contributionto
the growth of a new civilization. Therefore, while they shared an
ideological and mythological view of music with other Muslim
civilizations, their view of the history of their own music, and
particularlyof its repertoire,was unique.

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 105

Prior to the twentiethcentury,the OttomanTurks never fully

accepted the historical uniquenessof their musical repertoireor of
their musical structure, preferring to balance the particularismof
history with the generalismof myth. They persisted in viewing an
early fifteenth century Azerbaijanias the "founder"of their own
music, despite the evident gap which separated the modes,
compositionalgenres,and performancepractice of his time and place
and of theirs. When the absurdity of describing current musical
practice on the basis of fifteenth century theory was pointed out by
Cantemirin 1700,Turkishmusiciansacceptedthe new musicaltheory,
while simultaneouslyretainingthe mythologicallineageof music. The
Turkishlineageof music saw the Muslimsas the heirs of Pythagoras
and the other Greekphilosophers,an attitudewhich they sharedwith
many Europeantravellers in the eighteenthcentury (Fonton/Martin
1751;Bohlman:150). In order for the Turks to considerthemselves
part of the GreatTradition,it was essentialfor them to minimizethe
degree of musical originalitywhich they had demonstratedbetween
the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and which had led them in
certain directions which were somewhat different than the other
membersof this tradition.
This delicate cultural balance could not be maintainedin the
twentieth century, as Turkey strove to define itself in modern
national terms. The very fact that Ottoman Turkish or classical
Turkishmusic is still in many respectsa living traditionhas helpedto
perpetuate the mythology surrounding the Turkish historical
repertoire. However,both the mythologyand much of the history of
this repertoireruns counter to several trends in Turkish nationalist
ideology. This has resulted in a conflict between two mythologies,
that of Ottomanismand that of Turkism. While throughoutthis
century,many individualshave voiced displeasurewith the ideological
polemic about Turkish music, it is only very recently that scholars
have publiclyattackedits mythico-ideologicalnature.

University of Pennsylvania

NOTES

1I would like to thank HaroldPowers of PrincetonUniversity,Cem

Behar of Bogazi(i Universitesi, Istanbul, and Philip Schuyler of

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106 AsianMusic,Fall/Winter1990/1991

Universityof Maryland,BaltimoreCounty,for their critical readingof

earlierdrafts of this article.

2The term cyclicity is a translationof the Russiantsikl'nost'. I prefer

the term "cycle"(tsikl) because it is more neutral,i.e. less Eurocentric
than "suite" or "concert-suite." The inaccuracy of such terms,
especially as appliedto vocal genres,was pointed out by Racy (1983),
who proposed"compoundform." While not objecting to the latter
term, I consider that, due to the fact that Soviet musicology has
developedthe issue of cyclicity in Muslim art musics far more than
western musicology, the Soviet term should be accepted as the
internationalnorm. I am using cyclicity to refer to performance
practice, rather than to an abstract grouping or classification of
items.

3The following section is developedin greater detail in the chapter

on cyclicity and the fasil in my book in progress,Early Ottoman
InstrumentalMusic: (1550-1750).

4I am using the literary term "pseudographia" to refer both to the

conscious creation of pseudo-classics, such as the "al-Farabi"
repertoirecomposedby Ismail HakkiBey (1866-1927),and the more-
or-less deliberatemisattributionof older,anonymousitems to certain
illustriousfigures in the lineage of music, such as the semat. in Irak
attributedto Sultan Veled. The Rast pe?rev ascribedto al-Farabl is
suspiciously similar to the Rast MurassaPeerev on page 153 of the
Cantemir Collection. This, and other pegrev and saz semai
mysteriouslyappearedin the notebooksof Ismail HakkiBey underthe
name "Farabi."
I regard this phenomenonas being distinct from the gradual
modernizationof older items in the repertoire.

5The literary term nazire referred to several different forms of

poetry which were written as "parallels,""imitations,"or "responses"
to older poems. Both the literary and musical usages of the naiire
tended to emphasize difference rather than similarity, in that the
actual "imitation"was confined to a few formal elements. While
literary traditionwas able to preserveseveral imitative "versions"of
one "original"poem,the weak developmentof musicalnotationdid not
allow all musical versionsto survive. It would appearthat, with the
passage of time the identity of original and imitative versions of a

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 Feldman: TurkishRepertoire 107

repertoire item became confounded. My 1988 paper discussed the

use of specific nazTreitems in the Cantemircollection

T.Y. 1739. Printedin Mekteb,nos.

61stanbulUniversitesiKutuphanesi,
1-7, 10, 1311.

71t appears that the earlier lyric collections did mention the
composer's name. For example, an apparently fifteenth century
Iranian bayaz found in the Gotha Libraryby Angelika Jung does
mentionthe composers,amongwhom figure "KhojaAbd al-Qadir"and
"SultanAhmad."ForschunsbibliothekGothaSignaturMS.OrientP87.

8See several of the interviews in Sermet Sami Uysal, Iste GerCek

YahyaKem~l(Istanbul,1972);numerousreferencesin A.H. Tanpinar,
Bes Sehir,(Istanbul1946).

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108 AsianMusic,Fall/Winter1990/1991

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