Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae (CMO). Critical Editions of Middle Eastern Music Manuscripts

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ralf Martin Jäger
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 265450857

From the early 1820s, initially in Istanbul, the courtly and urban Ottoman music repertoire was recorded in a growing number of manuscripts. Mainly, the notation developed by Armenian Hamparsum Limonciyan (1768-1839) before 1813, a very suitable system for the transcription of the art music repertoire, was used for this purpose. The Western notation was also used increasingly after mid-1830s. The surviving manuscripts in both notation forms are significant for the transmission of an art music culture that has been maintained until the early 20th century in the urban centres of todays Turkey, Syria and Egypt. These resources are of primary importance not only for musicological research, which can reveal certain historical phenomena and processes in the music cultures for the first time, but also for the Oriental studies. This long-term project aims to prepare the critical editions of the main 19th century manuscripts in Hamparsum-notation in the initial phase of 7 years. The second phase of 5 years will focus on the critical edition of selected Western-notation manuscripts from the same period. Parallel to this process, texts of the vocal compositions will be edited by an interdisciplinary group of scholars. The edition of Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae (CMO). Critical Editions of Middle Eastern Music Manuscripts will be based on open-access principle and published online on perspectivia.net by Max Weber Foundation. Editions of single manuscripts will also be available as print-on-demand books. The project as a whole will be carried out at Westfälische-Wilhelms University Münster - Institute for Musicology, in cooperation with Orient-Institute Istanbul and perspectivia.net (both part of Max Weber Foundation. German Humanities Institutes Abroad) and Westfälische-Wilhelms University Münster, Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies. An international board of advisors will support the project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Thomas Bauer; Dr. Richard Wittmann