Epistemic Transmission and Originality in Greek-Karamanlidika Publications Related to Makam Music in the 19th Century Istanbul

Abstract

Ottoman Istanbul had retained its position as the cultural center of the Greek community for centuries. During this period, Greeks interacted with multicultural societies of the city. Their music culture and interests were also influenced by social relations. As a result, they recorded some Ottoman musical pieces in various manuscripts from the 16th to the 20th century. In the 19th century, Greek musicians, mainly cantors started to publish a series of works on Ottoman repertoire and theory. First, ‘Euterpi’ (1830) was published in Istanbul. Then, a number of publications emerged until 1909 when ‘O Rithmographos’, the last theoretical work of the time, was published. At that time, both the reform of the Orthodox Church (1814) under the influence of modernism and the spread of the printing press facilitated the distribution of such books. In order to write makam music with an efficient technique, they brought some theoretical principles of European, Ottoman and church music to their writing culture. Since these theoretical adaptations were the result of both technical needs and cultural tendencies, the Greeks cultivated an epistemic originality in terms of makam theory and narration of the tradition. Moreover, this was the reason that the symbiotic knowledge came out in the aforementioned sources. On the grounds of this case, this study aims to demonstrate the symbiosis and originality by exemplifying the musical knowledge in the Greek-Karamanlidika publications. In this respect, sources will be evaluated in terms of the use of notation, terminology, theory (makam and usûl), repertoire and narration of the makam tradition. The essential target of the study is to carry out a musicological research in those publications considering the multicultural character of the 19th century Istanbul.