About

The CMO edition aims to provide, firstly, historically and textually accurate transcriptions of the available repertoire of Ottoman music as it was documented during the nineteenth century. These transcriptions, which reflect the original sources as closely as possible, will be made freely available to scholars as well as to musicians interested in historical performance practice. Secondly, the CMO project will publish critically edited texts from the corpus of Ottoman vocal music, following as faithfully as possible the original arrangement and orthography of the music manuscript sources, thus provide unique documentation of Ottoman poetry in its performative aspect.

Musical transcriptions will be fully digitized, taking into account the special notational requirements of the musics of the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. Both music and text editions will be stored in a variety of formats in order to provide access to the edition in both graphic (human readable) and semantic (machine readable) forms. Printed editions of single manuscripts will also be available as book-on-demand publications. Additionally, metadata for the manuscripts and the editions will be entered into the CMO source catalogue.

The online database CMO Source Catalogue is based on the sources used for the critical edition of the music pieces and song texts to find concordances, which serve as a reference and basis to compare different versions of a work. It provides access to the metadata of numerous printed, manuscript and online sources, works included in these sources, as well as basic biographical information on their composers and lyricists. Additionally, it contains metadata of bibliographical sources used as references for the edition and the catalogue itself. The metadata of CMO editions incorporated into the catalogue enables the user to access critical editions through the original sources they are based on.

On this platform, users can explore the edition according to the publication plan through the browsing function, or use the search field above to search for specific editions and their contents. The guidelines explain the methods of transcription and provide the necessary information to comprehend editorial decisions. See also the list of abbreviations for a better understanding of the transcriptions and critical commentaries.

You can also browse the contents of the catalogue through various indexes on the left side pane, or use the search field above to search for specific contents.

User guide gives detailed information on how to use the different functions on this web platform.