Dr. Cüneyt Ersin Mıhcı

Research Fellow

Tel.: +90 – 212 293 60 67 / 127
Email: mihci@oiist.org

Cüneyt Ersin Mıhcı studied musicology and Romance studies at the Heidelberg University graduating with a Magister Artium. In his doctoral dissertation “Forging National Music on Both Sides of the Aegean”, which he wrote at the cluster of excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”, he studied the role of music in the construction of national identities in the late Ottoman Empire and Greece from 1870–1920. Interested in the intellectual discourse on music and nation, his study shows how both nations modernized their music cultures as a reaction to Orientalism. In addition to textual sources, he examined Greek and Ottoman school songs to demonstrate how both nations disseminated nationalist thought through music.

Furthermore, Cüneyt Ersin Mıhcı worked as a research associate at the DFG-project “Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae” (CMO) in Münster. At the CMO, he conducted comprehensive studies on a corpus of Ottoman music manuscripts and prepared two scholarly editions of codices in Hampartsum notation. In his work, he specialized in the editions of Ottoman vocal music. In addition to research questions related to the transmission of the Persianate repertoire in Ottoman music, he examined possible links between prosody and musical meters, such as the usûl. He is currently expanding the scope of his research on this topic at the Orient-Institut Istanbul, with his post-doctoral research project “The Architecture of the hâne in Ottoman Vocal Music” that he has started in 2024 at the Orient-Institute Istanbul.

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Academic Activities

Research Interests

Historical musicology

Historical ethnomusicology

Ottoman music manuscript studies

Music of the early Turkish Republic

Ottoman music

Music of Greece

Music and nationalism

Music and collective memory

National identity

Global musicology

Current Research Projects

2024–2027: Supervision of the project Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae

Projekt director: Prof. Dr. Ralf Martin Jäger (WWU Münster)

2024–2027: The Architecture of the hâne in Ottoman Vocal Music

Responsible: Cüneyt Ersin Mıhcı

Project duration: February 2024 – February 2027

Lectures

29.04.2023: “The Relationship Between Arûz and Usûl in Ottoman Music”. Türk Müziği Akademik Çevresi (TUMAC).

29.03.2023: “Forging National Music on Both Sides of the Aegean between 1870–1920”. Musicology Lecture Series. Orient-Institut Istanbul, Istanbul.

06.01.2023: “National Identity in a Multi-Ethnic State: Music Debate and Early Twentieth-Century School Songs in the Ottoman Empire”. Fachschaftstagung des Faches Geschichte mit dem Thema “Musik. Macht. Gemeinschaft”, Dresden.

13.09.2022: “National Identity and Nationalism in Late Ottoman School Song Anthologies”. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Berlin.

16.04.2019: “‘Besser eine Stunde freies Leben als vierzig Jahre Sklaverei und Gefangenschaft‘: Nationallied und Identitätskonstruktion in Griechenland im 19. Jahrhundert”. Forum Musikforschung Münster, Münster.

27.02.2018: “Historical Musicology and Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Music Manuscript Sources in the Digital Age”. Orient-Institut Istanbul, Istanbul.

23.03.2017: “Western European Music Aesthetics Versus Greek Music Practices: Modernism and Traditionalism in Greece and the Greek-speaking World during the 19th Century”. International Musicological Society Conference, Tokyo.

03.12.2014: “The Izmir March as a Musical Monument in Turkey’s Collective Memory”. Lecture Series Music and Musicians in the Ottoman Empire and in the Turkish Republic. Orient-Institut Istanbul, Istanbul.

23.03.2014: “The Gallipoli Campaign in Turkish Popular Culture”. Conference Memory, Memorials, and Media: Re-Imagining World History. North-East University, Boston.

Publications

Dissertation:

“Forging National Music on Both Sides of the Aegean in the 19th and 20th Centuries”. (forthcoming)

Scientific Editions:

Codex TR-Iüne 204-2: Music Edition, Critical Reports, Text Edition. 3 vols. Manuscript Sources from İstanbul Üniversitesi Nadir Eserler Kütüphanesi 2. Münster, 2021.

Codex TR-Iüne 208-6: Transcriptions, Critical Reports, and Supplement. (forthcoming)

Articles:

“The Gallipoli Song: Folk Song and Turkish Memorial Culture.” In Beyond the East-West Divide: Balkan Music and Its Poles of Attraction, edited by Ivana Medić and Katarina Tomašević. Belgrad: Institute of Musicology, Department of Fine Arts and Music, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2015. 234–43.

“Challenges and New Insights in the Critical Edition of the Persianate Repertoire in Ottoman Music”. MSFAU Journal of Social Sciences, Current Archival Studies in Musicology, 27, Spring (2023): 14–29.

“Music and National Ideology in Greek School Song Anthologies of the Late 19th Century.” In Musical Topographies of the Mediterranean, edited by Thomas Betzwieser, Sabine Ehrmann-Herfort, and Judith I. Haug. Analecta Musicologica. Kassel. (forthcoming)

“La réception des idées de Bourgault-Ducoudray dans l’espace turc-ottoman : le cas de Yekta, Algazi et Guatelli”. In Penser l’histoire au service de la création : autour de Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, edited by Peter Asimov. Éditions du Conservatoire de Paris. Paris. (forthcoming)

Enzyclopedia Article:

“Saygun, Ahmet Adnan” in MGG-Online (forthcoming).