Of Ottoman Musicians...

The Musical Environment of The Times

By Kyriakos Kalaitzides

It would be a daunting task, living as we do in the 21st century, to attempt fully to understand the musical world of the era in which Zakharia Khanendeh gained prominence and the part he played in it, and to deliberate questions whose scientific quest is still in the making, with viewpoints sharply con-*test*-('")ed.

In the eastern Mediterranean and its neighbouring lands, there exists a common musical heritage which corresponds to Western classical music. Calling it Near Eastern classical music might be appropriate, given that no universal usage has been agreed to amongst scholars. In Ottoman scholarly sources the science of art music is designated as “Ilm-i-musikisi” (science of music) while post-Byzantine cantors, music historians and theorists give it the name Arabo-Persian or ‘‘external’’ music, as opposed to ‘‘internal’’ music, which is to say ecclesiastical.

Its roots are to be traced from antiquity in this ethically and socially rich geographical sphere of nationalities and civilisations, which over many centuries enjoyed political and cultural unity over two thousand years after Alexander the Great’s expedition, with great empires, such as the Roman, with its centre first at Rome and then at Constantinople, the Ottoman empire, the Persian Sassanid domain and the Caliphate of Baghdad. In spite of wars, rivalry and the legacy and circumstances of enmity, there existed free-flowing and perpetual movement, exchanges and cross-cultural influences in customs and musical idioms. In popular local inheritance, there was tenacious adherence to tradition, whereas great urban centres functioned like cultural crucibles, as in our own times. In this way, classical Near Eastern music, as a scholarly expression, marks itself off from ethnic popular musical tradition, while at the same time frequently borrowing elements from it in rhythm forms, in musical instruments, as well as in whole melodic themes.

This music of the learned in its own way bequeathed its theoretical underpinning and a model framework with determined musical methods in forms that constitute the foundation of Near Eastern music and answer to the name MAQAM in the Arab-speaking and Turkish-speaking world, DASTGIAH in and beyond Iran and EKHOS in Byzantine music.

The following points should be noted by way of leads to Zakharia’s role in such a musical climate:

The theoretical basis of Near Eastern music is governed by the Pythagorean and Aristotelian theory of Intervals. Comparative studies of the eight Byzantine ekhoe with the Arab-Persian maqamat have been effected by Greek music scholars such as Kyrillos Marmarinos, erstwhile Archbishop of Tenos, Panaghiotes Khalatzoglou, Demetrios Soutsos, Apostolos Konstas of Chios, Konstantinos Protopsaltes, Chrysanthos Metropolitan of Dyrrhachium, Stephanos Lambadarios and Panaghiotes Keltzanides.

Persian, Ottoman, Ismaelite and other studies have been preserved and set down in Byzantine music notation in a plethora of manuscripts from the 15th to the 19th century, in monastery and parish libraries.

Consecutively, with the first printed book of Byzantine music (Anastasimatarion, Petros Lambadarios, Bucharest 1820), in 1830, the Precentors Theodoros Phokaeus and Stavrakes Byzantios published Euterpe, a collection of extra-ecclesiastical songs in which works by both Turkish and Romii (Greek) composers were included while at a later date and with similar material, the Pandora (1843 and 1846), Harmonia (1848), Lesbia Sappho (1870), Mousicon Apanthisma (1872), Asias Lyra (1908) and other collections, were published.

In the history of music, many instances of intimate interpersonal relations between musicians which saw the exchange of views, musical science and skill, have been recorded. Petros Lambadarios’ relations with the Mevlevi dervishes of the Peran lodge (in Constantinople) and other such pertinent events, are well known. In this biography there is mention of him teaching a method of writing musical melodies to Hamparsum Limoncuyan, Precentor of the Armenian Patriarchate who in his turn, set down in writing the works of his own contemporary musicians. Moreover Petros, together with Antoine Murat, musician and interpreter at the Prussian embassy in Constantinople, assisted Toderini, an Italian monk-traveller, in the writing of an essay on Ottoman music. We should not neglect to mention Elias, a teacher of the tanbur who, together with the remarkable Jewish violin virtuoso Tanburi Isaac Fresco Romano, taught music in the court of Selim the third; Gregorios Protopsaltes (Precentor) who “been chaste, successfully chanted to the accompaniment of the pandourida, and having been taught music such as that which is from without the Church by Dedeh Ismailaki, of great repute” (Dedeh Efendi); and Rauf Yekta, the founder of the contemporary tonal musical system who, in his studies, collaborated, over time, with Romii (Greek) precentors. One characteristic account drawn from various sources, discloses Emir Gunoglu, the Persian court musician, and Sultan Murat the fourth, as being prominent players.

Kindred instruments can be observed in all Mediterranean lands and beyond, bearing similar names adapted to each linguistic particularity (eg: Pandourida - Tanbur - Tambouras - Tar - Dotar - Setar - Cithare - Kithara - Guitarra - Kanon - Kanun - Qanun - Kanonaki).

Also in the late 10th century, the oldest mention of the word lyra as a bowed string instrument can be located in a reference to Byzantine musical instruments attributable to the Persian Ibn Kurdadhbih and addressed to the Caliph Al Mutamid.

Above and beyond the academic interest which research on Zakharia’s life and work entails, and the painstaking handling of the sublime heights of artistic yield achieved in his compositions, it was an abiding love and passion which gave us nourishment over long months in preparing this release, and with all this in mind we invite you to embrace it.

By way of drawing this outline to a close, we would like to cite a distinctive phrase of Michael Psellus which constitutes both a historical confirmation and an appropriate exhortation. ‘‘Persians, Arabs, Egyptians and others had adopted everything Greek in a fuller way than ourselves’’.

Historical Background

By Athanasios Angelou

In order to understand the achievement of Zakharia Khanendeh (the “scholar singer”) we need to consider the historical background to the age in which he lived and worked. The society to which he belonged was of a very different order to any we may care to think of today, and we would do well to bear in mind that the Balkans and Near East of the Ottoman Empire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while no doubt containing some of the ethnic (and, later, nationalist) tensions that still haunt the area today, were radically and fascinatingly diverse and multicultural, and can in some ways provide an alternative viewpoint for looking on some of our own narrowly contingent attitudes towards what it means to live in close proximity to the “Other”.

Many of the historical phenomena and personalities related to the post-Byzantine world and the early days of the modern Greek era have become the focus of modern scholarly attention, and it is quite likely that specific features of Zakharia’ music could be singled out and explored in ever greater detail. However, it is perhaps less urgent to try and identify the various individual elements of his work than to attempt to trace the shared musical heritage to which he was heir. It should be remembered that he lived in a world which for centuries was homogenous – despite the changing nature of the composition of the ruling caste – and culturally fertile – despite the religious segregation that prevailed. He was just one in a long line of musicians who grew up and worked in the same environment. Within the broad bounds of this East Mediterranean civilization and great meeting point of peoples and cultures that was created initially by Alexander the Great (himself pursuing the path of earlier civilizations) a gradual transformation of the Greco-Roman and Middle-Eastern world occurred as, with the passing of the centuries, new modes of piety and religious expression were created and cultivated. During the region’s history the unifying and universal power of Byzantium – an empire, it may be recalled, that lasted from 330 to 1453 AD – may indeed have diminished and faded so that, like the Ottoman Empire that followed, it was compelled to hand over the reigns of political power to others, but it nonetheless continued to survive, no longer as the formal representative of a specific political and cultural entity, but as the collective memory and consciousness of one of the Ottoman Empire’s subject peoples, the Greeks. In the politically unified space of the Ottoman State, the last of its kind in the Near East and Balkans, one rubbed shoulders with the Other on an everyday basis. The culture of the Other was not beyond the bounds of one’s world: While one’s neighbour might have been alien (whether in language or religion) he was nonetheless familiar, not exotic and enchantingly – or disenchantingly – remote.

Zakharia lived in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Ottoman Empire was at the zenith of its territorial extent though, at the same time, at the beginning of its political and military decline. For the Ottoman State was gradually to weaken and lose its ability to impose internal control or continue the external expansion that was so essential to its well-being and survival, while various geographical, local and ethnic divisions led to centrifugal tendencies. Old rivals of the Ottomans, such as the Venetians, withdrew from the scene, while new powers loomed menacingly: The Austrians, following the defeat of the Turks at Vienna, and the Russians whose presence in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean became notable from 1770 onwards. Indeed, the latter con-*test*-('")ed the Ottomans not only on the overtly military level but also by fanning discontent and rebellion among the non-Muslim subjects of the Empire.

However, during this so-called age of decline of the Ottoman Empire the ruling caste seems to have turned increasingly to learning and the arts. A new phenomenon was observed in Ottoman Islam: book collectors, men of learning and writers began to occupy high positions in the administration. It was from the learned and peaceable ranks of scholars who combined the theological language of the Arabs with the poetical skills of the Persians that the new class of the Efendi emerged. Writers or compilers of historical and theological works abounded; men were studying logic, geography and astronomy. It was an age of polymaths strongly reminiscent of Byzantium.

Similarly this was the dawning of a new age for the Greek-speaking world, which found new potential and opportunities opening up for it. Despite a number of temporary setbacks there was definite economic improvement and Greek communities began to spring up in the major commercial centres of Southeast and Central Europe, while other movements of Greek population were also observed, such as the migration of fur traders from Kastoria to Constantinople where they were to develop a substantial economic presence – the background from which Zakharia probably emerged. Moreover, the number of schools increased and the significance of education in general was enhanced, whether in the form of the old educational tradition of Byzantium or through the application of ideas stemming from the European Enlightenment. This movement was referred to by the nineteenth-century scholar Gedeon as “the dawning of a cultural movement”, which he placed around the beginning of the eighteenth century. There was progress on the material level and in the application of artistic skills to the production of everyday objects. The practical and aesthetic aspects of the household were also enhanced, as is evidenced by the archontika, the mansions of the wealthier classes in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in places such as Kastoria, Ambelakia and elsewhere, developments that reflect the more general advances of urban society. Again, what is interesting here is not so much the ethnic origin of the architecture as the material, as much as architectural expression pertaining to the mode of life in the Levant and Balkans in this period.

The opportunities that were opening up for the Christian Greeks of the Ottoman Empire at no other time appear to have been so great. And this can be seen in the types of personalities that appeared or prevailed in the period. They were in many respects different to those we see in other ages and, within their own age, they varied remarkably from one another. In this diverse world composed of merchants who moved both within and beyond the borders of the Empire, of teachers and monks, higher and lower ranking clerics, notaries and brigands, icon painters and musicians, masons and scribes, the leading position was held by the Phanariots, the men of the Fener quarter of Constantinople, who were gathered around the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate. They constituted a powerful Greek nucleus in Constantinople that was being revitalized by Greeks from all over the Empire and no longer simply from the ranks of the descendants of the old Byzantine aristocratic caste.

Shortly before our period – though a forerunner of things to come – we encounter the figure of the great dragoman of the Sublime Porte, Panagiotes Nikousios (1613-1673). In respect of his family background (he was descended from a Trebizond family), his education (he had studied in Padua), his linguistic proficiency (besides Greek he spoke Turkish, Farsi and Arabic) and his career, we find in Nikousios – apparently a common phenomenon of his age, a characteristic example of a whole group of individuals whose story was similar – of provincial origin, polyglot, highly educated, and attaining high public office. Another case in point was Alexandros Mavrokordatos from the island of Chios who basically ran the political affairs of the Empire in the early eighteenth century. A whole host of personalities pursued ambitious careers in the Ottoman state machine while remaining Orthodox Christians. They invariably spent at least some of their lives in the Ottoman capital, and they were in constant contact with the key centres of power and the key political figures of their time. This dynamic class of Greek professionals – The Phanariots – was committed to coexistence with the Ottoman powers that be, and sought not only to further its own position while providing valuable services to the Empire, but also brought considerable benefits to its fellow Greek Orthodox Christians. While becoming the prime examples of diplomatic compromise with the Turkish status quo, the Phanariots frequently became also its tragic victims. A characteristic of the age is provided by these personalities in the period when aspects of Ottoman policy were directed in part by Greeks, at a time when the grea-*test*-('") and longest sustained successes were first and foremost the diplomatic successes rather than the short-lived and frequently ambiguous military trophies of the pashas who continued to exist principally in recognition of the old Ottoman ideology rather than in response to contemporary political reality. Apart from this practical cohabitation in the present, the intellectual reference point for the Phanariots lay firmly in the past with the idea of Byzantium and everything this implied with regard to their relationship with classical antiquity and Christian Orthodoxy. It was principally the Phanariots who cultivated the notion that the Turk posed a lesser threat to the Christian faith and the Greek people, and their culture and future, than their closest allies in the Christian West. They also began to cultivate various utopian ideas about the formation of a Greco-Ottoman state, an old idea that had been first formulated back in the fifteenth century by George of Trebizond and which subsequently emerged from time to time – another example being the case of the Athenian Damaskenos, as well as others.

A fine example of the movement for the revival in education and learning and the reaffirmation of links with the Byzantine past was provided by the figure of Makarios Kalogeras (1688-1737) of Patmos. At his school on the island of Patmos, which followed his tradition right through to the nineteenth century, the syllabus included both ancient Greek authors and the church fathers, classical Greek and Latin grammar, as well as rhetoric, the standard fare of Byzantine school education, and philosophy, a sine qua non for theoretical and analytical thought and expression.

On the other hand, Evgenios Voulgaris (1716-1806) represented a new wave in Greek education, which after a certain point in time was subject to the influence of the European Enlightenment as well as to the tensions that this new thought created within a highly traditional society. He was not merely a teacher; he was an intellectual of his age, inspired by desire for reform.

Elsewhere, and before a different audience, we see the activity of Kosmas Aitolos (1714-1779). Though working under quite different conditions to those of Voulgaris or Kalogeras, Kosmas was a key personality of this period, whose life and sermons inspired wide sections of the Greek Orthodox community – frequently found on the fringes of the Greek-speaking world and some times living in the hazy area between religious piety and popular superstition. Kosmas was no mere preacher – he injected a new spirit into the Orthodox educational and religious mission as he came into contact with the unlettered and largely neglected Christian flock of the periphery of the Ottoman Empire.

The Sultan Ahmed III was another characteristic personality of the age. He ascended to the Ottoman throne after staging a coup in 1703, and was removed from power in 1730 as the result of a rebellion. An unstable and impenetrable character, as was so often the case with the princes brought up in the constantly shifting and uncertain sands of the Ottoman seraglio, he grew later into a mild-mannered ruler. He was not the typical example of the sultan who rides out on military campaign and returns to his palace for the delights of the harem. Instead he introduced a new atmosphere into the Ottoman court, making it less like a military headquarters and more like a centre for the enjoyment of refined pastimes. Within this environment, of course, music held a central place, alongside other kinds of spectacle with lights, neatly tended gardens and polite games.

It is notable that in 1703 Rami, the key Turkish representative of the Empire’s new political direction as forged by Mavrokordatos, was appointed Grand Vizier. Rami, a man of peaceful temperament and refined manners, a scholar and a poet, whose official correspondence and writings were models of prose style, had played a major part in the negotiations that led to the Peace of Carlowitz in 1699. Although he remained Grand Vizier for only a short time, his appointment was nonetheless indicative of a current that was flowing through Ottoman administrative circles. One of Rami’s successors was a similar character, another example of a scholar Efendi: Numan, who was descended from the great Ottoman family of Koprulu, was appointed Grand Vizier in 1710, a theologian and a saintly man who was also trained in the sciences.

A highly complex personality who was close to Zakharia in the world of music was Demetrios Cantemir, the first non-Muslim historian of the Ottoman Empire. A musician himself, he later became Prince of Moldavia, though later historical circumstances compelled him to flee to Russia and the protection of Peter the Great. Cantemir was an exceptional man of learning for his times, having acquired a profound and varied education in both the Greek and Latin traditions. He was proficient in a considerable number of languages: besides his native Romanian, he knew classical and modern Greek, Turkish, Farsi, Latin, Italian, French and, later, Russian. His writings included historical, musical, philosophical, geographical and archaeological works, which were eagerly read and circulated in the Constantinople of the time. His breadth of learning and theoretical concerns are reminiscent of the great eleventh-century Byzantine scholar Michael Psellos, while the rise in the status of learning is also reminiscent of a similar current in eleventh-century Byzantium. Cantemir is perhaps the best example of the new educational ideals that were current in his day, representing diverse trends and influences.

Having looked at a number of the personalities of the time it remains to say something about the figure of Zakharia Khanendeh himself. On one level, of course, it is possible to see his development as largely dictated by interests that spurred on many of his Phanariot compatriots; on the other, his career at the Ottoman court was also the result of his musical and artistic concerns. Native Phanariot shrewdness was one thing; the creative assimilation of an individual who moved both within the ecclesiastical and the secular musical traditions – where, notably, his involvement in the Orthodox musical world presented no obstacle to his career, indeed may even have been an advantage – was quite another. It appears to be the case, however, that both these musicians and dragomans (i.e. Khanendeh and Cantemir), as well as the other personalities we have discussed, were merely exploiting the opportunities that their age was holding out for them. Within this supranational, polyglot world of Ottoman decline masters and subjects, Muslims and Christians, using the talents that they had at their disposal, rose to the occasion their age held out for them.

With regard to music, it is hard to imagine a case such as that of Zakharia Khanendeh, in all his refinement and diversity, emerging in a later period. For throughout the final 150 years of the Ottoman Empire, when the court became literally a headquarters for the military and political restoration of the state, the sultan never again gave such support to musical creation. And what is more, in the years to come, the penetration of the European Enlightenment into the Greek East was to leave its mark of sentimentalism on the musical sensibility – a sensibility that until this period had remained relatively pure – despite the varied influences that had worked on it from within the Ottoman Empire. In considering the potential of such an enterprise today, after the fundamental changes that have taken place within this once unified and homogenous geographical entity, one needs to appreciate how hard it is not to let this kind of music transform itself into something strange or exotic or ‘mysterious’, rather to allow it so as to simply be accessible if there is a willingness to listen and be interested in what it is trying to express.

The age of Zakharia is an age whose significance is little appreciated. There is a tendency to exhaust its significance by viewing it as a period of preparation for the movements that led to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the foundation of the nation states of the Balkans. However, we could also view it as a period that was never allowed to reach its full fruition, that was never consummated. It was, if nothing else, an age that was full of potential, of new vistas, which, though perhaps hardly apprehended, were boldly embraced by the men of learning who had always functioned as a unifying element in the history of the Greek people, and by the musicians who distilled within themselves the time-honoured music of the Greek people.

This small musical renaissance to which Zakharia belonged brings to mind the words of the eleventh-century Byzantine scholar Psellos, who in discussing aesthetics talks of “mikrologias apolausis”: The enjoyment of small things, of the minimal. Unlike what one might expect, in this case the minimal, the small is something positive: Here there is no tension arising from indulgence in the worldly and the great, but rather the diffusion of tension through the small scale – through, let us say, colours and sounds and their harmonious synthesis. And this is achieved not as a religious or as a secular, anti-religious, activity, but rather as a kind of fasting from desire, an abstention from involvement or from consumption, a surrendering to absolute listening. In a world of conflict and mutual distrust, as one listens, music can become an intermediary that sweeps aside, even momentarily, the divisions, and turns the world into a playful experiment from which something truly lasting may emerge.