A subtle interaction between the human mind, muscle and matter produces music. Over the centuries, these interactions change, as instruments come and go out of favor and the role of music and musicians evolve. A well-documented tradition like Turkish art music (or Ottoman classic music) exhibits a bewildering variety of innovations over its 500 year history. Walter Feldman’s augmented and revised version of his 1996 work tracks these innovations and shows how this art form has both preserved its heritage and renewed it.
In the beginning were the Timurids. The great 14th-century conqueror Tamerlane carried off musicians from far and wide. They turned his capital Samarkand, and later Herat, into the epicenter of the Turco-Persian musical theory and practice. Subsequent wars and exiles spread this tradition to new capitals, including Esfahan, Tabriz, and Istanbul. By the 16th century, a common musical language prevailed from Anatolia to Central Asia: audiences would have been familiar with the social setting for music, the genres, the instruments and even the performers.
Pythagorean concepts underlay the theory of this music. Certain melodic cycles evoked the time of day or the ascendance of the planets. The monarch, eager to rule in harmony with the cosmos, had music played constantly at court. This music must have sounded rather ethereal, produced on harps and lutes. It would not have been very loud—it was ambient music, not concert performances. Besides this contemplative genre, the 16th century also inherited from Tamerlane very loud music with kettle drums and buisines (straight trumpets)—this music accompanied the Ottoman’s elite Janissary troops on the march and into battle.
Over time, musicians liberated themselves from theory. They became more interested in the sonority of the instruments, and developed or adopted instruments that could more easily play a wider variety of notes. In a move that recalls Europe’s development of the piano from harpsichord and the even older dulcimer, Ottoman musicians dropped the oud for the more versatile, long-necked tambur. In composition, musicians gave themselves more and more freedom from the traditional modal structures, introducing longer forms, more melisma, micro-tones and overtones.
Why did this happen? The court had dozens of musicians in its employ, and some were deemed boon companions to the sultan himself. Several sultans achieved mastery of instruments and composition. This put an emphasis on virtuosity, rather than theory. Moreover, the Ottoman court was quite a cosmopolitan affair, open to new influences, recruiting foreign, often enslaved musicians, who had little stake in the old genres. Many of the famous musicians were Armenians, Jews, and Greeks. Examples of Turkish art songs are still sung by synagogue cantors, and psalmists during the Orthodox mass. Sufis, for whom music had become an important support to devotion, brought a much more emotional and, again, louder sound into the court, using the flute and drums. Feldman also suspects that Ottoman music recuperated folk forms into its art music, or retrieved ancient Central Asian practices from its musical memory, and these made Ottoman music richer, more original, and more distinctive compared to its Turco-Persian 16th century origins.
By the 18th century one could no longer speak of a common musical language across the Middle East. Cairo and Damascus developed their own styles, as these capitals became more and more independent of the weakened Ottoman center. Iran had slipped into a century of civil war and emerged with new genres of art music (see Pourjavady). In the east, the influence of Indian music changed the music of Herat and Kabul that had once been ruled by Tamerlane.
In Feldman’s discussion of who made music, one is struck by the prevalence of female performers, either in the imperial harem or in those of wealthy, private persons. Their music differed from that played by men. Dance almost always accompanied song, and the preferred instrument here was the harp, an instrument familiar to female performers since ancient times. While we have some testimonies from foreigners about these performances (or rather, about public singing girls, since those of the harem would never have played for them), there is not much theoretical or musicological information about them, since their music may have been considered unworthy of attention by male scholars. We do know, though, that trained musicians were brought to the palace (blindfolded) to train inhabitants of the harem, so that they could in turn entertain the sultanas or occasionally, the sultan himself. By the end of the 19th century, Ottoman women were contributing scientific treatises on music.
Readers may be surprised by just how well the Turkish art music tradition is documented, going back to the 17th century. Many compositions from the 17th and 18th century are played today—something that cannot be said of early Persian or Arabic music. This is partly because the chain of transmission, especially among the Sufis, remained unbroken. While Ataturk banned the Sufis and in 1925, they went underground, and reemerged with their music in the more tolerant 1950s.
The writings of foreigners at the Ottoman court greatly enhance our understanding of the musical tradition. Renegade Bobrowski and princely hostage Cantemir provide extensive information about court music. These texts provide Feldman with ample material to reconstruct what 17th-century Ottoman music must have sounded like, how it began to differ from Iranian music, and how it developed its own independent path.
Feldman’s book is exhausting in detail. He cites voluminous manuscript material from Ottoman archives, provides a deep reading of the all-important Cantemir treatise, and tests his historical hypotheses with modern day masters of Turkish music. He brings to bear his knowledge of Balkan music, as well as Uzbek, Turkmen and Uygur strains. Though the book is demanding and oriented towards specialists, it is worth an effort on the part of the non-specialist to understand how Turkish art music both echoes the court of Tamerlane, and honors the creativity and sensibilities of virtuoso artists who performed it for 400 years.
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