cdroms
Oud Addict
Posts: 34
Registered: 3-7-2023
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reconsidering 'turkish classical music'
I am still new to oud and certainly no scholar, but wanted to share this thing I just wrote in case it's useful to anyone, summarizing information
I've been interested to learn about the history of the greek/armenian/turkish side of makam music, and highlighting some of my favorite recordings.
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/cd_r0ms/reconsidering-turkish-classic...
If anybody has recommendations, corrections, or other takes on things, I would be interested!
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Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
Posts: 2916
Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Mood: Stringish
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This is a great essay, very interesting (and seemingly quite scholarly to me - certainly you have a lot of reference points).
If I may make two requests/suggestions:
1- Please use standard capitalization throughout. This would greatly increase the readability. At the moment there appears to be no capitalization at
all.
2- If you could footnote sources for some of the info/claims, that would be enormously helpful. Even if it's not page numbers, just something like
(Feldman, 1996) would help. As it is, you are presenting a synthesis of your studies, which while quite interesting and informative, is kind of a
dead end for anyone reading who would like to learn more. It's great that you listed your general sources at the end, but it's rather opaque.
Of course even as-is it's a great read. My area of interest is mostly Arabic music so this provides a lot of interesting context to various things
I've heard over the years, such as the absence of oud in Turkish performance practice until (relatively) recently - I wasn't aware that this was true
of qanun as well. Discography is much appreciated as well.
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cdroms
Oud Addict
Posts: 34
Registered: 3-7-2023
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Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka  | This is a great essay, very interesting (and seemingly quite scholarly to me - certainly you have a lot of reference points).
If I may make two requests/suggestions:
1- Please use standard capitalization throughout. This would greatly increase the readability. At the moment there appears to be no capitalization at
all.
2- If you could footnote sources for some of the info/claims, that would be enormously helpful. Even if it's not page numbers, just something like
(Feldman, 1996) would help. As it is, you are presenting a synthesis of your studies, which while quite interesting and informative, is kind of a
dead end for anyone reading who would like to learn more. It's great that you listed your general sources at the end, but it's rather opaque.
Of course even as-is it's a great read. My area of interest is mostly Arabic music so this provides a lot of interesting context to various things
I've heard over the years, such as the absence of oud in Turkish performance practice until (relatively) recently - I wasn't aware that this was true
of qanun as well. Discography is much appreciated as well. |
Thanks, it's very gratifying to see that this is useful and basically makes sense, doesn't include egregious errors, etc., to someone like you with
specific knowledge of this field, rather than just my enthusiastic but nonspecialist rateyourmusic.com audience...
Do you have recommendations for books on Arabic music history, or are you overall synthesizing knowledge from many small and/or unwritten sources? I
forget if I've maybe already asked you this.
As for capitalization and footnotes - I've gotten similar feedback before, or maybe just imagined someone wanting me to include those things, but I
appreciate your framing, around functionality and capacity to spur further investigation. In both cases I specifically wanted to do things
'non-academically' or 'incorrectly' in order to exemplify 'non-institutionally-valid' but still 'good' writing, but it may be sort of a
baby-and-bathwater situation and I may take your suggestions for a future list or future edit of this list.
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cdroms
Oud Addict
Posts: 34
Registered: 3-7-2023
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Doing a second pass and finding actually some conflicting information -
http://www.turkishmusicportal.org/en/instruments/turkish-classical-...
"The shape of the Ottoman kanun of the 17th century is not precisely known, but it is certain that towards the middle of the 18th century, the
instrument assumed a shape very near that of today's kanun. As the kanun had been abandoned in Iran during that period, we can assume that the changes
leading to its present form were carried out in Turkey and the Middle East (Egypt and Syria).
Cantemir's contemporary Levnî did not illustrate the kanun in any of his miniatures. However the picture in Hizir Aga's Tefhîmü'l Makamât,
estimated to have been written between 1765 and 1770, depicts a modern kanun for all intents and purposes.
In records from the reign of Sultan Selim III, no kanun players are mentioned by name. However, during the reign of Mahmud II (1808-1839), this
instrument came once again onto the scene. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the kanun was one of the instruments that were played by women."
https://worldmusiccentral.org/2023/04/19/an-introduction-to-the-kanu...
Despite the appearance of the term kanun or q?n?n in the thirteenth century, the current trapezoidal plucked zither (psaltery) most likely originated
in Egypt or Syria during the 18th century.
https://www.ethnicmusical.com/kanun/qanun-the-instrument-that-makes-...
The qanuns were forgotten instruments for a long time as they could not easily play all the notes needed in Turkish music. They came in use again when
the musician Omer Efendi from Damascus brought them back to Istanbul during the time of Sultan Mahmud II between 1818 and 1839. Since that time,
qanuns have been widely used in the country by amateur and professional musicians, including many Turkish women. It is thought to be the first
musician to use the lever mechanism on qanuns was also Omer Efendi.
----------------------
so perhaps the late-18th-century Hizir Aga picture is like, depicting something very rare or clearly marked as foreign/exotica.
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Brian Prunka
Oud Junkie
Posts: 2916
Registered: 1-30-2004
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Member Is Offline
Mood: Stringish
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| Quote: Originally posted by cdroms | | Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka | This is a great essay, very interesting (and seemingly quite scholarly to me - certainly you have a lot of reference points).
If I may make two requests/suggestions:
1- Please use standard capitalization throughout. This would greatly increase the readability. At the moment there appears to be no capitalization at
all.
2- If you could footnote sources for some of the info/claims, that would be enormously helpful. Even if it's not page numbers, just something like
(Feldman, 1996) would help. As it is, you are presenting a synthesis of your studies, which while quite interesting and informative, is kind of a
dead end for anyone reading who would like to learn more. It's great that you listed your general sources at the end, but it's rather opaque.
Of course even as-is it's a great read. My area of interest is mostly Arabic music so this provides a lot of interesting context to various things
I've heard over the years, such as the absence of oud in Turkish performance practice until (relatively) recently - I wasn't aware that this was true
of qanun as well. Discography is much appreciated as well. |
Thanks, it's very gratifying to see that this is useful and basically makes sense, doesn't include egregious errors, etc., to someone like you with
specific knowledge of this field, rather than just my enthusiastic but nonspecialist rateyourmusic.com audience...
Do you have recommendations for books on Arabic music history, or are you overall synthesizing knowledge from many small and/or unwritten sources? I
forget if I've maybe already asked you this.
As for capitalization and footnotes - I've gotten similar feedback before, or maybe just imagined someone wanting me to include those things, but I
appreciate your framing, around functionality and capacity to spur further investigation. In both cases I specifically wanted to do things
'non-academically' or 'incorrectly' in order to exemplify 'non-institutionally-valid' but still 'good' writing, but it may be sort of a
baby-and-bathwater situation and I may take your suggestions for a future list or future edit of this list. |
One note about capitalization (and italicization) is that it helps clarify proper names and foreign words in context, which greatly enhances
readability specifically in this kind of cross-cultural analysis.
Regarding my own studies - I am resolutely not an ethnomusicologist or historian of any kind. My interest is almost entirely in modern (i.e., 20th
century) performance practice in Arabic music. Any historical information is relevant to me as a) idle curiosity b) additional context that helps
make modern performance practice more coherent. But most knowledge about the music is learned directly by listening to recordings, which are the
objective primary sources regarding musical performance practice.
So I will readily concede major gaps in my knowledge of the history, particularly pre-20th century history of this music. What knowledge I have is
certainly just a synthesis of various sources, including conversations with teachers.
Regarding Arabic music, the main sources I have read are:
Dr. Scott Marcus - Arab Music Theory in the Modern Period (as well as various scholarly articles)
Dr. AJ Racy - Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab (as well as various scholarly articles)
Sami Shumays and Johnny Farraj - Inside Arabic Music
Habib Hasan Touma - The Music of the Arabs
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cdroms
Oud Addict
Posts: 34
Registered: 3-7-2023
Member Is Offline
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| Quote: Originally posted by Brian Prunka |
Regarding my own studies - I am resolutely not an ethnomusicologist or historian of any kind. My interest is almost entirely in modern (i.e., 20th
century) performance practice in Arabic music. Any historical information is relevant to me as a) idle curiosity b) additional context that helps
make modern performance practice more coherent. But most knowledge about the music is learned directly by listening to recordings, which are the
objective primary sources regarding musical performance practice.
So I will readily concede major gaps in my knowledge of the history, particularly pre-20th century history of this music. What knowledge I have is
certainly just a synthesis of various sources, including conversations with teachers.
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Noted... and thank you for the book recs, I haven't read any of those but I have gotten a lot out of the few Scott Marcus articles I've come across.
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