13 Facts About Ottoman music

Rhythmically, Ottoman music uses the zaman and usul systems, which determine time signatures and accents respectively.

Until the 19th century, in which Westernization caused Western classical music to replace the native Ottoman tradition, Ottoman music remained the dominant form of music in the empire, and therefore evolved into a diverse form of art music, with forms such as the pesrev, kar and saz semai evolving drastically over the course of the empire's history, as the Ottomans' classical tradition found its place outside of the court.

Therefore, early Ottoman music was not significantly different from those of earlier Near and Middle Eastern societies; modal, heterophonic music with a richly developed melodic line and complex rhythmic structures.

Anthologies indicate that by the 16th century, the sophisticated rhythmic cycles of 15th century Persianate Ottoman music had been neglected by a large majority of the Persianate world.

Meanwhile, other students of Osman Effendi, such as Mustafa Itri, sought out the conventions of Byzantine Ottoman music, incorporating the concepts of the Orthodox tradition into his works as well as his treatises.

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Influence of Osman Effendi had effects beyond his immediate students and into well-known Eastern European intellectual Dimitrie Cantemir's understanding of music history, as he elucidates on multiple occasions the rapid decline and renaissance Ottoman music had experienced of the 16th and 17th century, stating that:.

Cantemir's Edvar, possibly the most influential musical treatise written in the Ottoman Empire, is often hailed as a paradigm shift in the Ottoman understanding of music theory.

An extensive debate followed on the merits of Ottoman classical music, where musicians of the tradition denigrated certain aspects of Ottoman music, while showing appreciation for others, indicating that support for Ottoman music had been waning, even among musicians of Ottoman tradition.

Reforms on Turkish Ottoman music strengthened from 1926 onward, when tekkes were closed down, as a response to the ostensibly anti-Western, and thereby counter-revolutionary aspects of Sufism.

Ottoman music is played in ensembles similar in size to a chamber orchestra, and Cinucen Tanrikorur lists 18 instruments as being common in classical circles; these include the ney, tambur, violin, oud, and qanun among others, although less well-known instruments, like the yayli tambur, rebab and miskal, exist.

Jager argues that the conception of a composer in the Ottoman music style is vastly different from that of the Western one, the former of which relates to an "opus-cluster"; the totality of the work that person has seen, taught and composed, rather than an individual work of art:.

Ottoman music is rather a person experienced in the musical tradition, who – within certain rules – through the combination of basic elements of form, rhythm and melodic models, creates a new derivation.

Almost all classical music in the Ottoman style is performed in a long-form performance called fasil.