Beschreibung:
In Ottoman music culture, song text collections (güfte mecmūʿaları) play a crucial role in transmitting vocal repertoire. They employ paratext which supplies information about modal and rhythmic organisation as well as genre, composer and author attribution. In combination with oral tradition continuing until the present day, this method was understood as sufficient in the prevalent absence of notation until roughly the mid-19th century. Using the example of “Kimi mestāne seḥer yār ile gülşende yatur” by Rūḥī-yi Baġdādī, a poem set to music at least three times since around the mid-17th century which is still part of the repertoire today, we explore possibilities of evaluating güfte mecmūʿaları as source material for the historiography of Ottoman art music.