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CMO Summer Academy – Opening Day
WORKING WITH OTTOMAN MUSIC SOURCES
Critical Music & Text Editions, Cataloguing, Research Data Management, Digital Humanities, Performance
7 SEPTEMBER 2026, MONDAY
10:00–17:30
ORIENT-INSTITUT ISTANBUL – AUDITORIUM
CMO Summer Academy 2026 – Invitation to the Opening Programme
The opening day of the CMO Summer Academy 2026, which will continue throughout the week with a closed workshop programme for selected participants, is open to all researchers, students, music professionals, and anyone interested in the field. Registration is required. You can access the registration form below.
10:00–11:00 REGISTRATION
11:00–11:30 WELCOME SPEECH
Prof. Dr. Christoph K. Neumann (Orient-Institut Istanbul)
Prof. Dr. Ralf M. Jäger (CMO, University of Münster)
Dr. Nihan Tahtaişleyen & Dr. Will Sumits (CMO, Orient-Institut Istanbul)
11:30–12:30 KEYNOTE SPEECH
Prof. Münir Nurettin Beken (UCLA, Herb Alpert School of Music, Ethnomusicology Department): “Between Memory and Performance: Rethinking Ottoman Musical Practice”
The study of Ottoman music involves a complex relationship between written sources, theoretical concepts, musical memory, and performance. The expanding corpus of sources made available through Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae provides an important opportunity to reconsider these relationships and to ask how musical practices may be understood across the boundaries of notation, theory, and performance. This presentation explores the ways in which musical identity and continuity are shaped through makam, composition, performance, and transmission. Particular attention will be given to the relationship between remembered and notated musical structures and their realization by individual performers, as well as to the interaction of melodic, modal, and textural dimensions in performance. Musical examples will draw from Ottoman repertory and consider both composed and improvisatory practices. The presentation will also examine some of the methodological questions that arise when historical sources are investigated alongside performance practices. By bringing these different forms of evidence into dialogue, it will explore how concepts of musical composition, variation, memory, and texture might contribute to a broader understanding of Ottoman musical practice.
12:30–13:45 LUNCH BREAK
14:00–15:30 PANEL I
Moderator: Dr. Cüneyt Ersin Mıhcı (Orient-Institut Istanbul)
Prof. Dr. Nilgün Doğrusöz (Istanbul Technical University): “From Scholarly to Research Infrastructure: The CMO–OTMAG Experience and Future Perspectives”
As the Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae (CMO) project enters the final stage of its twelve-year programme, this paper reflects on how long-term scholarly collaboration can evolve into a sustainable research infrastructure for Ottoman-Turkish music studies. Founded in 2014, almost simultaneously with CMO, the Ottoman-Turkish Music Research Group (OTMAG) at Istanbul Technical University has developed complementary expertise through the documentation, cataloguing, and interpretation of private music archives, contributing new perspectives to the study of Ottoman-Turkish musical heritage. Over the past decade, collaboration between CMO, OTMAG, and the Orient-Institut Istanbul has expanded beyond institutional cooperation into a shared scholarly environment. Joint publications, editorial col-laboration, researcher training, academic workshops, and the integration of OTMAG archival catalogues into the CMO Source Catalogue illustrate how complementary expertise has evolved into common scholarly practices, shared standards, and lasting academic partnerships. Drawing on more than a decade of shared experience, this paper argues that the next challenge is to transform an already established collaborative network into music studies. Building on complementary strengths in critical editions, archival research, digital humanities, and research data management, it explores how shared methodologies, interoperable digital infrastructures, authority data, source catalogues, and interconnected archival collections can create new opportunities for collaborative scholarship. Looking beyond individual projects and critical editions, the presentation envisions a future in which archives, research data, and scholarly communities become part of an integrated research ecosystem that supports innovative research and fosters the next generation of scholarship on Ottoman-Turkish music.
Dr. Nazlı Vatansever & Dr. N. Melike Atalay (CMO, University of Münster): “Music and Literature in Dialogue: Multi-Script Sources of Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae”
As an interdisciplinary project, Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae (CMO) is situated at the intersection of music and literature. CMO is a rare example of a project that brings these two disciplines together, and its outcomes contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of Ottoman culture. This presentation aims to explain the ways in which these two disciplines come together in critical text and music editions within CMO’s interdisciplinary framework. It mainly draws on collections of Turkish lyrics in Arabic and Armenian script that serve as the primary sources for CMO editions. The talk first addresses the characteristics of manuscript and printed collections, briefly touching upon the textual and performative features found within them. Second, it explains their contribution to the editorial process of CMO editions. The research also addresses the distinct challenges this raises for transcription and interpretation of sources. Finally, it discusses the ways in which working with multiple scripts enriches critical editions, in connection with the other workshops within CMO Summer Academy 2026.
Dr. Laurent Xavier Pugin (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, RISM): “RISM and CMO – Linked Data and Beyond”
The RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) is a long-term international initiative dedicated to cataloguing music sources worldwide. The RISM Digital Center in Bern is one of the partner institutions contributing to the RISM community and serves as the central hub for its digital developments. It maintains several key components, including Muscat for cataloguing, RISM Online for publishing data, and Verovio for rendering music notation. A few years ago, the RISM Digital Center began collaborating with CMO to achieve better integration of their respective data. This required aligning both the underlying data models and the data itself, which will be discussed in this presentation. Because of the linked data-driven approach of RISM Online and RISM’s important role not only in the domain of music sources but also in authority data, the initial focus was on person and institution authorities. This work laid the foundation for further integration. Finally this presentation engages with future perspectives beyond metadata by giving a brief overview of the RISM Digital Center’s activities in music encoding and digital editions, including support for music notation beyond Common Western Music Notation.
15:30–16:00 COFFEE BREAK
16:00–17:30 PANEL II
Moderator: Zeynep Helvacı (CMO, University of Münster)
Dr. Nanette Rißler-Pipka (Max Weber Foundation): “Building the Invisible Layer: Research Data Management in the CMO Music Edition“
In a complex scholarly edition like the Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae the handling and the management of research data goes across all chapters, work packages and parts of the edition. It builds the invisible layer in the background connecting the enormous work done by the researchers, field experts from musicology, literature, history and digital humanities. While everybody needs to concentrate on their specific task in delivering a product like the part of the music edition, the transcription or the transformation or even translation into MEI or TEI for the text edition – or of course the source catalogue; the research data management takes care of making these results reusable. Defining, planning and documenting research data along the everyday work and challenges in the CMO project needs a robust environment in which everyone in the project can contribute to. For this complex task the MWS provides the RDMO (Research Data Management Organiser) platform with a customized questionnaire. In contrast to common belief data management plans are not done once before the project starts. Continuously developing them may help managing a project throughout its life cycle.
Dr. Sven Gronemeyer (CMO, Max Weber Foundation): “From Beats to Bytes: Digital Scholarly Music and Text Editions”
Critical editions in literature and music studies have a long tradition. But what exactly is the impact of the digital transformation on everyday life in scholarly work? How have digital methods and frameworks influenced the way we work with historical music sources? While encoding music in machine-readable formats dates began decades ago, early efforts were restricted to library cataloguing or preparing scores for print. Today, music encoding is vital for scholarly editions because large-scale, machine-readable corpora of music allow novel ways of examining music cultures and practices, especially historical ones. The schemata used for digital music editions are deeply rooted in Western scholarship. A significant challenge lies in adapting these models to the peculiarities of non-Western music cultures, such as that of Ottoman poetry and music. Sven Gronemeyer will give insights into the encoding of Ottoman vocal music, including its specific elements of scansion and the prosodic meters arûz and usûl. This talk aims to exemplify approaches for data modeling Ottoman music with research materials of the project Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae (CMO) and will address questions such as: What are the theoretical premises of digitally editing Ottoman music? What are the specific digital solutions and workflows between the disciplines of musicology and digital humanities, especially when bridging systemic gaps and preserving the integrity of non-Western musical cultures? To engage with these questions means to show the contribution of CMO in terms of cultural visibility of Ottoman music, but also how it may enhance existing frameworks for Western music.
Prof. Dr. Ozan Baysal (Istanbul Technical University): “From Yüz to Çeşni, from Seyir to Perde/Çeşni Networks: Tracing the Genesis of MakamNetz”
This talk traces the conceptual and analytical path leading from historical descriptions of makam to the relational model developed in MakamNetz. Beginning with terms such as yüz, reviş, edâ, and çeşni in Ottoman music-theoretical sources, it considers how makam was understood not as a fixed scale, but as a directed musical space articulated through characteristic perde regions, temporary and final points of repose, and melodic movement. The talk then turns to twentieth- and twenty-first-century analytical approaches—including melodic nuclei, structural reduction, axis-based models, and computational studies—designed to identify the intermediate structures between individual perdes and complete makam trajectories. Finally, it situates MakamNetz within a longer history of spatial and network-based representations of musical relations, extending from historical edvâr diagrams to contemporary transformational models. Bringing these perspectives together, the presentation introduces perde/çeşni as a practical analytical unit and shows how MakamNetz represents makam as a dynamic network of trajectories, affinities, and transformations. This framework will prepare the ground for the accompanying performance workshop, where graph-based explorations of makam trajectories will be brought back to selected CMO editions through listening and performance.
The language of the event is English. Participation is free of charge. To join this invitation in person please register through the link below. Photos or videos will be taken during the event. By participating, you agree that these may be used on the OII website, newsletter and social media. The event will not be recorded.
VENUE
Orient-Institut Istanbul
Galip Dede Cad. 65, Şahkulu Mah., TR – 34421 Istanbul
Tel: +90 212 293 60 67 oiist@oiist.org www.oiist.org
REGISTRATION
To join this invitation at the venue please register here: