Re: Request for the addition of Ottoman music symbols to SMuFL

Dear Sven,

We have an issue for this on GitHub:

https://github.com/w3c/smufl/issues/304

so this is already under consideration for the next SMuFL milestone.

Daniel

From: Sven Gronemeyer <Gronemeyer@MaxWeberStiftung.de>
Date: Thursday, 22 May 2025 at 09:49
To: public-music-notation-contrib@w3.org <public-music-notation-contrib@w3.org>
Subject: Request for the addition of Ottoman music symbols to SMuFL
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Dear Group Members,

I’m working in a project (CMO for short) dealing with the critical music and text edition of late Ottoman art music. In the 1830s, an Armenian musician invented a notational system for this music culture which is called Hampartsum notation, after his name. It started to be replaced by common Western staff notation by around the turn of the century. Attached is an example. The large signs are the pitch signs, the smaller ones attached represent durational marks.

For the digital scholarly edition to be realized in MEI, we already use a transcription in Western staff notation, and luckily the AEU accidentals are already part of SMuFL. However, the edition requires a “pitch set” that correlates the original notation with the pitches in the transcription, as there is no 1:1 correlation. It has to be done for each piece individually and also has variations over time. This is because of changing systematization of the scale and when the influence of oral transmission of the repertoire ceased. Of course, the critical report also makes use of the original characters, but is currently of lesser concern for our MEI development.

I also attach a legend for the True Type font already developed for Hampartsum signs. It can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.20375/0000-000E-5CAE-8, the file also contains an overview table of the signs. The majority of the signs we would like to use are shown in the three bottom rows. There is a base sign for the pitch and it can be combined with a tilde above and/or below to indicate a secondary pitch. Lines or tails below indicate the octave. In total, we would be talking about 100 individual characters that theoretically could be used.

For the pitches implemented in our MEI files, we currently refer to only 36 signs, described in the mei:symbolTable element. Each sign has an individual Armenian name and may refer to one or more Ottoman pitch names, e.g.:

                     <symbolDef xml:id="pus">
                        <symName type="armenian">p‘uš</symName>
                        <symProp>
                           <propName xml:id="yegah1" type="local">yegâh</propName>
                           <propValue n="SPS" type="d">Pitch D</propValue>
                        </symProp>
                        <symbol startid="#p1" glyph.auth="smufl" glyph.num="#xE***"/>
                     </symbolDef>
In the edition of the individual pieces, each mei:note element in the pitch set then is linked to the graphic representation of the original by its @xml:id (referenced in @startid). In both places, we would like to refer to SMuFL. An example of how a pitch set looks like can be found on the starting page of the project’s website: https://corpus-musicae-ottomanicae.de/.

It would be fantastic to hear back from you if and how we could integrate Hampartsum notation into SMuFL and advise on the next steps. We are currently finalizing our MEI modelling and would like to roll out our editions in the next months.

Thanks and best regards,
Sven

Dr. Sven Gronemeyer
Referent für das Projekt „Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae“

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