The Ottoman Tanbur: The Long-Necked Lute of Ottoman Art Music

The Ottoman Tanbur provides a detailed study of the history of this long-necked lute-like instrument, its role in Ottoman music, construction and playing technique.Tanburs are played in the art, Sufi, and folk musical traditions along the Silk Road and beyond. In Turkey, the name tanbur is mainly used as a name for the long-necked tanbur of Ottoman art music, the Ottoman tanbur. The origin and early development of the Ottoman tanbur is, notwithstanding its importance, still not fully understood due to the absence or scarcity of literary and iconographical sources, while well-preserved Ottoman tanburs are rare or non-existent. The book explores the political and cultural-historical conditions that contributed to the development of a distinct Ottoman Art music (Osmanli san'at musikisi) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the central place given to the tanbur. Thereafter, Ottoman art music and the Ottoman tanbur suffered from official neglect until the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and even rejection after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. This situation changed after the foundation of the first Turkish music conservatory in 1975 at the Istanbul Teknik Universitesi (ITU). The revival of Ottoman art music since the 1990s resulted in a rehabilitation of Ottoman art music and of the Ottoman tanbur whose days had seemed to be numbered.
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