The research of the early nineteenth century Ottoman musical style through the examination of the efterpi musical collection

In the current research, we study the musical style of the early 19th century through a primary source of that time, the Efterpi musical collection. This source provides us with vital information regarding particular socio-musical features and it gives us the opportunity to acquire new knowledge concerning the musical performance of this period. Furthermore, Efterpi musical collection has not been studied adequately by the current scholarship and this research reveals many unknown elements of the musical style as well as the mindset of the Ottoman musicians in the beginning of 19th century. In Chapter 2, we present the social and cultural context starting from the middle of 18th century till the beginning of 19th century in order to have a clear picture regarding musical notation, performing context (e.g. Ottoman Palace) as well as many different aspects of the Ottoman musical style of that period. It is really important to mention the historical context of the early 19th century in order to understand the reasons that an element of the musical style occurs in the musical repertoire. In Chapter 3, we prepare a full presentation of the Efterpi musical collection including many issues such as musical form, the Byzantine musical notation and the Karamanlidika linguistic idiom regarding poetry. Such an analysis is important in order to understand the structure of the book and to prepare the reader before the analysis of the upcoming compositions. Afterwards, we depict the five selected musical pieces (one Beste, two Şarkı and two Yürük Semai) and we analyze them in terms of melodic elaboration, makam progression, rhythmical distribution and musical form in order to acquire elements of musical style of the early 19th century. Finally, in the conclusion we demonstrate the data we acquired from the five selected compositions and through extensive evaluation we concluded to ten (10) important musical features of the early 19th century Ottoman musical style and we prove that the Ottoman music tradition did not change as rapidly as it is believed. Those significant elements shed light to a highly unexplored research field and it provides the current scholarship with a great opportunity to perform further research concerning the musical style of the early 19th century.