Turkish folk songs in Greek musical collections of the late Ottoman era

Abstract

During the late Ottoman period, there was a great deal of interest in folk culture. After all, this was a period when the various ethno-religious communities of the Ottoman Empire began to form national states, such as Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Serbia. At the same time, the Ottoman state turned its attention to the Turkish people and began to shape the Turkish national identity in order to create a sense of unity among the Turkish-speaking Muslim community. In this effort to cultivate the national identity of the people, religion and folk culture were fully exploited. This study examines the musical collections published by the Greek Orthodox Christian community of the Ottoman Empire, specifically the Efterpi (1830), Pandora (1843), Mecmua-yı Makamat (1856 & 1872-1873), Kallifonos Sirin (1859 & 1888) and Music Journal (1896) editions. These collections were printed in Istanbul and addressed to Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians. They consist mainly of Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical music, Greek secular music, and some Greek folk songs. Interestingly, the collections additionally include Ottoman music and Turkish folk music. It should be noted that the main language of the collections is Greek, and some Karamanlidika, and the musical transcriptions have been written down in Byzantine notation. This paper presents data on these transcriptions. The songs are transnotated from Byzantine notation to Turkish staff notation. 3 of these transnotations are presented here. After this process, different results are obtained regarding the way the songs were transcribed by the Rum musicians in comparison to their transcriptions by Turkish musicians of a later period.