Primary sources
Manuscripts are not treated as fixed instructions, but as historical witnesses. Ensemble Rûm reads notation, theory, language, repertory, and material evidence together, then tests those readings through instruments, rehearsal, and performance.
View selected bibliography 8 representative sources ↓ Research platform · Preview →c. 1610–1675
Ali Ufkî, also known as Wojciech Bobowski, recorded a major body of seventeenth-century Ottoman music in staff notation. His collections offer an unusually direct meeting point between Ottoman repertory, courtly life, language, and European systems of musical writing.
1673–1723
Cantemir’s music treatise and notational collection preserve repertory and theoretical thought from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They are read together as evidence for melodic practice, modal organisation, transmission, and musical memory.
18th century
Kevserî’s manuscript gathers musical notation, theory, and repertory within an eighteenth-century Ottoman context. It helps trace how earlier materials were copied, reorganised, interpreted, and carried into new performing environments. The original is held in a private collection; current scholarship relies on a surviving microfilm.
c. 1652–1730
Nâyî Osman Dede was a ney player, composer, poet, and theorist. His writing and notation connect compositional practice with the intellectual and spiritual musical culture of turn-of-the-eighteenth-century Istanbul. His surviving notation notebook remains in private hands.
Further reading
A starting point for readers wishing to explore the manuscripts, notation systems, repertories, and historical contexts that inform Ensemble Rûm’s work.
Behar, Cem. Ali Ufkî ve Mezmurlar. İstanbul: Pan Yayıncılık, 1990.
Elçin, Şükrü, ed. Ali Ufkî: Mecmûa-i Sâz ü Söz. İstanbul: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1976.
Wright, Owen, ed. Demetrius Cantemir: The Collection of Notations, Part I. London: SOAS, University of London, 1992.
Catalogue record ↗Kantemiroğlu. Kitâbu ‘İlmi’l-Mûsikî ‘alâ Vechi’l-Hurûfât. Prepared by Yalçın Tura. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2001.
Ekinci, Mehmet Uğur. “The Kevserî Mecmûası Unveiled: Exploring an Eighteenth-Century Collection of Ottoman Music.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 22, no. 2 (2012): 199–225.
Repository record ↗Doğrusöz Dişiaçık, Nilgün. “Nâyi Osman Dede’nin Müzik Yazısına Dair Birkaç Belge.” TUMAC.
Read article ↗Feldman, Walter. Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire. Berlin: VWB, 1996.
Popescu-Judetz, Eugenia. Türk Musiki Kültürünün Anlamları. Translated by Bülent Aksoy. İstanbul: Pan Yayıncılık, 1996.