I know there's a wealth of online resources available, but I'm on a bit of a quixotic quest to find physical, printed anthologies of Ottoman sheet
music containing pieces from various composers and across time periods.
I recently purchased Dr. Jonathan Gemmill's book "A Selection of Early Ottoman Court Music", but this isn't exactly what I'm looking for.
So far, the only anthologies I've been able to find are dedicated to a particular composer and I haven't been successful in finding another collection
of music that cross-cuts the tradition and presents an array of pieces from multiple composers over multiple periods.
Do you know of anything like this? Any language and notation system is fine.
Thanks for your help.al-Halabi - 2-9-2018 at 10:15 AM
Most of the anthologies of notations published in Turkey are dedicated chiefly or entirely to the repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries, and they
usually mix late Ottoman pieces with post-Ottoman ones (all of them now being identified as part of 'Turkish art music'). Notations of pieces from the
Ottoman repertoire of earlier centuries, which is much less familiar and not nearly as frequently performed, tend to appear in separate collections
that are relatively few in number. The more modern musical repertoire enjoys much greater popularity than the earlier pieces, many of which have never
been recorded, and the contents of anthologies reflect market demand.
One anthology that cuts across this temporal divide, although only partially, is the Darülelhan Külliyatı (the collection of the Ottoman School
of Music). It includes notations of over 250 instrumental and (mostly) vocal pieces covering roughly the period from the 16th century to
approximately the mid-19th (although earlier pieces attributed to Abdülkadir Meragi are also included). I am not sure if it's possible to find in
print form the entire set, which was issued in unbound individual sheets. (I bought in Istanbul a folder including pieces 181-263, which was published
by Sema Vakfı in 1995, but I was not able to find similar printed packets of the rest of the pieces.) Copies of these notations are available
online at http://www.notaarsivleri.com/darulelhan.html
Although it covers a more extended period than most, this particular anthology falls short of what you are looking for. But I thought I would mention
it just in case you are not familiar with it and it's of possible interest. Perhaps the growing attention in recent years to the older Ottoman corpus,
especially to the hundreds of pieces that Ali Ufki and Dimitrie Cantemir notated in Istanbul in the 17th and early 18th centuries, will lead to the
publication of anthologies that seek to present the broad span of the Ottoman musical tradition rather than limited slices of it.
Jono Oud N.Z - 2-10-2018 at 02:08 PM
Quote:
I recently purchased Dr. Jonathan Gemmill's book "A Selection of Early Ottoman Court Music", but this isn't exactly what I'm looking for.
Hi, did the book turn out OK?
This was my first time dealing with Createspace.
Sorry that it wasn't what you were looking for.
You likely have my Maqam Anthology, there are quite a few Ottoman pieces from 1500 to the late Ottoman era.
Brian Prunka has hard copies for sale also, if that is at all helpful.
Thanks Jono Oud and al-Halabi for these really helpful explanations and resources. I would have never been able to find that on my own. That's the
amazing this about this forum.
Just out of sheer curiosity: do we know where "the real Turkish book" came from? It's an astounding collection... I've been able to find the sheet
music to virtually anything I've looked up so far.
