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Tanburi Cemil Bey
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Browse piano sheets by Tanburi Cemil Bey on Zen Virtual Piano. Between 1910 and 1914, Tanburi Cemil Bey made 181 wax cylinder recordings for Orfeon Records, the Istanbul-based label of Julius and Hermann Blumenthal and a subsidiary of Odeon and later of Columbia Records. Most of his compositions have been preserved in his recordings, though some works were incomplete when he died. 181 recordings made between 1910 and 1914, with most of his compositions preserved among them, can be read as a record that holds his playing and his writing together. He was born in Istanbul’s Molla Gürani quarter, and after his father died when he was three his uncle Refik Bey looked after his early schooling. The Turkish Music Portal calls him a hard-working, quiet child with a passion for music, which at the time was considered dangerous, and Wikipedia notes that he left the Mülkiye school for civil servants to devote himself to music. A quiet child whose passion was considered dangerous, and a student who left civil-service school for it, can be read as someone who chose music against the grain of his time. His older brother Ahmed Bey gave him his first musical knowledge, the kemani Aleksan Ağa taught him Hamparsum and Western notation, and he took up the tambur at fifteen, making himself known within about two years. He worked in the translation office of the Sublime Porte and then at the Foreign Ministry, rose to chief clerk and was given a second-class Mecidi medal by Abdülhamid II. A clerk’s rank held beside an instrument suggests two careers running side by side until music took over. After leaving his official post he gave himself wholly to music; though he never took regular lessons, he played the tambur, lavta, kemençe, ud and cello with equal skill. He changed the tambur style of his day into a livelier manner, and the taksims he recorded became examples for later players. His son Mesut Cemil Bey was an equally renowned tambur virtuoso. Set beside a son who was an equally renowned tambur virtuoso, the recorded taksims that later players took as examples point to a legacy carried on through both family and recordings.
Browse piano sheets by Tanburi Cemil Bey on Zen Virtual Piano.
Between 1910 and 1914, Tanburi Cemil Bey made 181 wax cylinder recordings for Orfeon Records, the Istanbul-based label of Julius and Hermann Blumenthal and a subsidiary of Odeon and later of Columbia Records. Most of his compositions have been preserved in his recordings, though some works were incomplete when he died. 181 recordings made between 1910 and 1914, with most of his compositions preserved among them, can be read as a record that holds his playing and his writing together.
He was born in Istanbul’s Molla Gürani quarter, and after his father died when he was three his uncle Refik Bey looked after his early schooling. The Turkish Music Portal calls him a hard-working, quiet child with a passion for music, which at the time was considered dangerous, and Wikipedia notes that he left the Mülkiye school for civil servants to devote himself to music. A quiet child whose passion was considered dangerous, and a student who left civil-service school for it, can be read as someone who chose music against the grain of his time.
His older brother Ahmed Bey gave him his first musical knowledge, the kemani Aleksan Ağa taught him Hamparsum and Western notation, and he took up the tambur at fifteen, making himself known within about two years. He worked in the translation office of the Sublime Porte and then at the Foreign Ministry, rose to chief clerk and was given a second-class Mecidi medal by Abdülhamid II. A clerk’s rank held beside an instrument suggests two careers running side by side until music took over.
After leaving his official post he gave himself wholly to music; though he never took regular lessons, he played the tambur, lavta, kemençe, ud and cello with equal skill. He changed the tambur style of his day into a livelier manner, and the taksims he recorded became examples for later players. His son Mesut Cemil Bey was an equally renowned tambur virtuoso. Set beside a son who was an equally renowned tambur virtuoso, the recorded taksims that later players took as examples point to a legacy carried on through both family and recordings.
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Tanburi Cemil Bey
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He made 181 wax cylinder recordings for Julius and Hermann Blumenthal’s Istanbul-based Orfeon Records between 1910 and 1914.
He played the tambur, lavta, kemençe, ud and cello with equal skill, according to the Islam Ansiklopedisi, although he had not taken regular lessons.
Mesut Cemil Bey was his son and an equally renowned tambur virtuoso.