Ottoman Classical Music | Kudsi Erguner and Bîrûn Ensemble 2017 | Acem Peşrev

Acem Peşrev (Usûl Devr-i Kebîr, 28/4)
Music: Sultan Veled, (1226-1312)

The concert ‘Music of the Courts: from Herat to Istanbul’, directed by Kudsi Erguner was held at the conclusion of the sixth Seminar of the series Bîrûn. The seminar takes its name from the Ottoman term referring to the “outside”, the “periphery”, opposed to the inner part of the sultan’s palace (Enderûn). As Kudsi Erguner explains: «Until the 19th century Ottoman classical art had developed in the Enderûn and among the Ottoman elite. Today there is no longer an elite in the palace and the art of music has migrated to the Bîrûn, where once more has found its devotees. In this sense, Venice is an ideal place for the history of the past to become the history of the present».
Participants are young professional and semi-professional musicians who are awarded scholarships to work with Erguner for a week in San Giorgio, studying performance of manuscripts of the Classical Ottoman musical tradition. Writes Erguner: «Purpose of the Seminar is to enable the participants to explore the variety of Ottoman art music. Unfortunately, because of a misconception, today this legacy is still called “Turkish classical music”. But it is actually the classical music of many different peoples who shared a common history within the Ottoman empire».
The video presents a peşrev (“prelude”) composed in the musical mode (maqâm) Acem. Writes Giovanni De Zorzi in the booklet accompanying the publication of the recordings that the Persian term pishrow means “prelude, preamble” and we can infer from its meaning that its original function was that of “opening” a convivial meeting (majlis). In the Ottoman Turkish tradition, the peşrev maintains this “opening” function, though exercising it in two fairly different contexts: it can be the slow and solemn “prelude” of the dervish mevlevî (âyın) ceremony, or, in the secular sense, with a more sustained tempo, can act as “prelude” to the suite (fasıl) developed in the court. In antiquity a peşrev could be divided into a large number of hâne (“stanzas”). This Acem Peşrev is played on the Devr-i Kebîr rhythmic cycle in 28/4 and is divided into three hâne of irregular length.
Tradition attributes this piece to the mystical, Persian language poet Sultan Veled (Konya, 1226-1312), son of the great poet and Sufi master Mevlâna Jalâl-ud Dîn Rûmî (Balkh, 1207-Konya, 1273), he, too, a Persian language poet and eponymous saint of the mevlevîye brotherhood, better known in the West as “Whirling Dervishes”. If the attribution is correct, the piece would have been composed in Konya under Seljuk rule and would be one of the very first musical testimonies in the Turkish area.

A CD-book of the concert was published within the IISMC series ‘Intersezioni musicali’ in cooperation with the publisher Nota.
https://www.notamusic.com/prodotto/da...

Ensemble Bîrûn 2017: Kudsi Erguner (ney, musical director), Zeynep Yıldız Abbasoğlu, (kanûn), Ahmet Faruk Ayaz (ney, voice and percussion), Christos Barbas (ney and voice), Ayberk Coşkun (‘ûd), Giovanni De Zorzi (ney), Abdurrahman Düzcan (voice and percussion), Selman Erguner (viola, ney), Çağlar Fidan (voice), Victor Navarro García (percussion) Hasan Kiriş (tanbûr) Giannis Koutis (voice and ûd), Reza Mirajalali (târ), Burak Savaş (voice and violin) Ibrahim Ethem Uçar (voice).

Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 1 April 2017
More info on this event: http://www.cini.it/en/events/birun-ot...
Video: Simone Tarsitani

http://www.cini.it/en/foundation/inst...