art essay

10 Introduction

Izmir and Salonika to hear renowned hazanim (prayer leaders, or can- tors) like İsak Algazi (1889–1950), and Samuel Benaroya (1908–2003) visited the Mevlevi lodge in Edirne as a boy to learn Ottoman music.15 As mentioned earlier, it is significant that the city of Edirne figures in these reports since it was the Ottoman capital (1402–1453) before the taking of Constantinople and a default royal residence at least until the eighteenth century. Given the Mevlevis’ historical linkages with the Ottoman ruling class and musical education, interactions with Jewish musicians—especially in Edirne and Istanbul—would effectively spell the latter’s active participation near or at the very center of religious and musical crosscurrents in Ottoman imperial culture. Ongoing visi- tations until the end of the twentieth century, moreover, suggest a historically multifunctional dimension to Ottoman and Turkish syna- gogues for learning, making music, and socializing—a dimension that has progressively narrowed and been reduced exclusively to Jewish re- ligious practice today.16

According to the textual source of the güfte mecmuası (song-text collection), Jewish composers documented music in ways similar to their non-Jewish counterparts and participated in contemporaneous developments in court music. From an early Ottoman Jewish güfte mecmuası (Israel Najara, 1587) to later collections starting in the sev- enteenth century, Jewish composition and documentation of religious pieces correlated more and more with pervasive Ottoman practices, incorporating lyrics, makam, usul (rhythmic patterns), and genres in use in the Ottoman court suite.17 Developing into the Maftirim reper- toire, the non-notated compositions confirm performance and educa- tional practices in common with Ottoman musical culture. Until the twentieth century, oral learning through master-pupil apprenticeship relationships (meşk) predominated in the empire, taking place within such venues as the palace music school (Enderun), Mevlevi lodges, private homes, and later music schools and societies of the early twen- tieth century. The well-documented historical employment of Jewish, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox composers at court suggests another avenue for the sharing of such musical practices through active involve- ment of Jews in palace culture.

Far from being a static tradition, Ottoman court music changed and developed over the centuries, and as it did so participating Jews and