When Nâyî Osman Dede wrote Nota-yi Turkî?

Abstract

Nayi Osman Dede is one of the important names of the Classical Turkish Music era. His importance was reinforced by his inventing a music writing that influenced the next, besides what he brought to the theory and history of music. However, researchers have not been able to give a date on when he invented the music article called Nota-yi Türkî. This research was carried out in order to answer the question of E. Popescu-judetz’s statement “We cannot determine the exact date on which he created the note system” or is it a fact that has not been examined enough. While looking for an answer to this question, some problems to be clarified in Osman Dede’s biography were also encountered. Among these were the following questions: When was Osman Dede born? When was biography resources written about him? What are the values of the sources in terms of Osman Dede›s biography? Three biography sources written in their own age were criticized with these questions. As a result of this criticism, it was understood that Sâkıb Dede’s work was a more important resource among others. Other questions the answers of which are sought in the article are as follows: When did Osman Dede start his music education at Galata Mevlevîhâne? When did he become a neyzenbaşı and was interested in music theory? Did he deal with maqam’s re-creation? Did he invent the new maqams? When did he start writing the music he heard? When was he known as Kutb-i Nayi? Did he write his work known as Nota-yi Turkî before or after Dimitri Cantemir’s work in 1691? When did Osman Dede compose Mirâciye and Mevlevî ritual compositions? The findings in the article to all these questions are as follows: He went to Edirne in 1675 and then began to deal with the maqam theory, he became a neyzenbasi in 1680 and began to deal with his music writing, got married after Mevlevî’s ordeal in between 1685-87. After 1680, he invented the maqams «Gulizar, musikar, shiraz, huzibuselik, nevaacem, nevaushshak» whose names have not been seen before. And he re-created the maqams such as sumbule, bahrinazik, hicazbuselik, muhalifek, rahatulervah. He completed a significant part of Nota-yi Türkî in 1688-89, but made additions after 1691. He composed the rast and chargah Mevlevî ayins between 1699-1707, hicaz and ushshaq ayins between 1710-15, and Mirâciye in 1718. Osman Dede influenced Dimitri Cantemir with his musical writing and pioneered him with his writings. This musicological research by the qualitative method on Osman Dede reinforces that the date on which Kantemiroğlu›s work was written was 1691-92. This date is accepted as the date when Kantemir evaluated the data of Nayi Osman Dede best and presented his work to Ahmed II to be appointed to Boğdan. This research shows that Nayi Osman Dede deserves to be a part of the world music history as well as the history of Turkish music with his work titled Tahrîr-i Mûsiki.