TUMAC BSE No. 34: “The Relationship Between Arûz and Usûl in Ottoman Music” – Ersin Mıhçı

The vocal repertoire of Ottoman makâm music is composed of three major elements: the makâm for the melodic expression, the usûl, which structures the composition in terms of time, and the arûz, which is the prosodic meter of the güfte or song lyrics. All these three elements seem to have been, in the past, essential for singers to perform by heart a repertoire that they had learned from their masters. Although primary sources do not give any comprehensive analysis of the relationship between usûl and arûz, more recent research has started examining this topic with a more scholarly approach. Whereas the arûz and usûl have mostly been studied by scholars of the respective disciplines – arûz in the field of literature studies, and usûl in the field of musicology – the presenter of this talk takes an interdisciplinary approach to searching for, finding and making visible the “hidden rhythmic pattern” that is produced by the interrelation of arûz and usûl. This talk will present a methodology, which is based on first-hand research that resulted from the scholarly edition of Ottoman vocal music, and will also suggest ways how other related fields of research might benefit from this approach, too.