TR-Iam 1537, p. 1: Rāst Beñli Ḥasan Aġanıñ ; TR-Iüne 214-12, p. 65: Ṣabā semāʿī; TR-Iütae 110, p. 41: mahur u[suli] zarbifēt‘.

CMO Brings Together Music Editors of the Hampartsum Notation in a Virtual Event

Author: Nevin Şahin

29 January 2021

The long-term project Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae, after having initiated the online publication platform www.corpus-musicae-ottomanicae.de in 2018, is now happy to publish the pre-prints of the first music and text editions of the project on music sources in the Hampartsum notation. Both as a celebration of the first editions and as part of the workshop series “Cataloging, Editing, and Performing Ottoman Music” which was interrupted by the pandemic, the Orient-Institut Istanbul is jointly organizing a virtual event together with Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) and the CMO Project. The panel titled “Reconstructing the Ottoman Music Corpus: Interpretational Issues of Hampartsum Sources” will host music editors from the CMO team as well as graduates of İTÜ who have worked on various music manuscripts of different historical periods, which are located in archives and museums throughout İstanbul, and discussants prominent in the field. The notation system developed by Hambarjum Limōnčean (Tr. Hamparsum Limonciyan, 1768–1839), shows in late nineteenth century a clearer usage of pitch signs and duration markers while earlier sources carry more of a descriptive function creating editorial concerns in the interpretation of makâm and usûl. The presentations by research assistant Duygu Taşdelen and CMO music editors Salih Demirtaş, Marco Dimitrou, and Semih Pelen will shed light on interpretational issues besides intertextual connections between music manuscripts with a specific focus on sources from the Library of Istanbul’s Archaeological Museums (İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzeleri Kütüphanesi), the Research Institute of Turcology (Türkiyat Araştırmaları Enstitüsü) and the CL Rare Works Library (MK Nadir Eserler Kütüphanesi) of Istanbul University. The presentations will be followed by a discussion led by the discussants Prof. Dr. Nilgün Doğrusöz-Dişiaçık, professor of music theory at İstanbul Technical University and advisory board member of the CMO Project, and Prof. Dr. Ralf Martin Jäger, professor of ethnomusicology and European music history at the University of Münster and project leader of CMO.

This virtual event will take place on Thursday, 4 February 2021, at 14:00 Istanbul time (GMT +3) and is open to the public upon prior registration. Please send an email with your full name and affiliation to events@oiist.net by Monday, 1 February, at the latest to attend the online panel. Link to the program: https://www.oiist.org/veranstaltungen/.

Nevin Şahin earned her PhD in Sociology in 2016 upon her research on music and power among performers of Mevlevi music, which was awarded Thesis of the Year by the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Middle East Technical University. In 2018, she joined the Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae team at the Orient-Institut Istanbul.

Citation: Şahin, Nevin. “CMO Brings Together Music Editors of the Hampartsum Notation in a Virtual Event,” Orient-Institut Istanbul Blog, 29 January 2021, https://www.oiist.org/cmo

Keywords

Islamicate World; Turkey; 18-20st century; Ottoman music; notation system; CMO project; OII-Music