Ottoman Greeks who Studied and Transcribed Ottoman Turkish Music: The Case of Nilevs Kamarados

Abstract

Nilevs Kamarados (1847-1922) was an Ottoman Greek musician and music teacher who was highly respected both during his lifetime and after his death. He was a performer and theorist of Byzantine music (Greek Christian Orthodox Ecclesiastical music), but he also studied Western, Ottoman Turkish, Greek folk, and Armenian music. The archive he left behind is of particular interest, since it contains testimonies of his involvement with all these musical genres: publications, musical transcriptions in Byzantine, staff and Hamparsum notation, drafts, and notes on theoretical subjects. Kamarados’s archive is now part of the Greek Music Archive of the Music Library of Greece “Lilian Boudouri”. The aim of this study is to present Kamarados’s association with Ottoman Turkish music, as it is highlighted by his archive, while providing catalogs with the corresponding transcriptions in Byzantine and staff notation found there, as well as a catalog with the transcriptions of song lyrics in Karamanlidika (Turkish language written with the Greek alphabet).

Keywords

• Nilevs Kamarados
• Ottoman Greeks
• Musical Transcriptions of Ottoman Turkish Music
• Ottoman Turkish Music in Greece
• Musical Archive

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