From Moldavia to Istanbul: The Musical World of Dimitrie Cantemir

Turkish musicians Neva Özgen (kemençe) and Murat Aydemir (tanbur), at far right, joined the early music ensemble Lux Musica for a concert performance and lecture-demonstrations on music from the life of Dimitrie Cantemir (1673–1723) in conjunction with the Sackler Gallery exhibition, The Tsars and the East: Gifts from Turkey and Iran in the Moscow Kremlin. A scholar, musician, and diplomat, Cantemir served four Ottoman sultans before launching a failed rebellion in his Moldavian homeland and escaping to Moscow with the help of Tsar Peter the Great. From the left, above, are musicians Mesut Özgen, lute; Linda Burman-Hall, director and percussion; Amy Brodo, viola da gamba; Lars Johannesson, baroque flute and piccolo; and David Wilson, baroque violin.

Murat Aydemir, right, performs on tanbur, the Turkish classical lute that Dimitrie Cantemir studied during his twenty-two years in Istanbul. The long neck has up to forty-eight moveable frets made of gut, allowing the instrument to be tuned to any of the scales of Turkish classical music, which divides the octave into twenty-four intervals (twice as many as in Western music). Cantemir included detailed descriptions of the tanbur and its tunings in his treatise on Turkish music, which includes more than three hundred original compositions.

Neva Özgen holds the kemençe, the three-stringed folk instrument that has become the bowed instrument of Turkish classical music. Neva Özgen is the daughter of İhsan Özgen, one of the great Turkish instrumentalists of the twentieth century.

Neva Özgen, kemençe, accompanied her father on performance tours in Europe, the United States, and Turkey. She made two recordings with the Anatolia Ensemble and is featured on the recording Women Composers and Performers of Turkish Classical Music. She has also appeared in England with Orbestra, jazz artist Butch Morris in New York, and with the Mercan Dede Ensemble. Her debut solo recording, Legacy, was released in 2001 on the Golden Horn Records label.

Members of Lux Musica perform in the Meyer Auditorium: Amy Brodo, viola da gamba; Lars Johannesson, baroque flute and piccolo; and David Wilson, baroque violin.

The European lute, played at left by Mesut Özgen, is a direct descendant of the Arab and Turkish 'ud. Here Mesut Özgen is pictured with Linda Burman-Hall, director and percussion, and Amy Brodo, viola da gamba.

Linda Burman-Hall, right, with Mesut Özgen, early guitar, introduces a lecture-demonstration. She is co-director of the Cantemir music project along with Turkish musician İhsan Özgen. Linda is a musicologist and ethnomusicologist who performs with Steve Reich and Meredith Monk, has premiered new works by Indonesian composers, and performs the medieval music of Hildegard von Bingen. Burman-Hall is on the faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz, a founder and artistic director of the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, and musical director of Lux Musica.

Linda Burman-Hall, harpsichord.

Taking a final bow are, from the left to right, Mesut Özgen, early guitar; Linda Burman-Hall, director and harpsichord; Amy Brodo, viola da gamba; Lars Johannesson, baroque flute and piccolo; David Wilson, baroque violin; Neva Özgen, kemençe; and Murat Aydemir, tanbur.