Notes from the book:
Kemençe is a much loved musical instrument of classical Ottoman-Turkish music with its characteristic timbre, which is quiet different from that of the Western violin. The present disks gather together a considerable number of kemençe recordings. The purpose of this anthology is to give an idea of the past performance on the kemençe.
Turkish music has two different kemençes: the present one, which has a pearlike shape, and the Black Sea kemençe, which is used in the eastern Black Sea region as a local folk musical instrument.
The pearlike kemençe is a three-stringed bowed instrument. The strings are tuned to yegâh, rast and neva tones, or in Western terms (A), (d) and (a) respectively. It is a rather difficult musical intrument to play. The main difficulty comes from its characteristic manner of playing it, a manner which is not practised in other bowed musical instruments. The musician does not touch his fingers on the strings as on the violin but his fingernails by placing the fingers between the strings. The two strings are of equal length but the middle one is longer, a peculiarity which makes it necessary to use asymmetrical positions. Another difficulty is in that the performer needs great practice and experience to be able to produce the tones in the third, that is the highest octave.
As a matter of fact, the pearlike kemençe was originally, too, a folk musical instrument until the end of the late nineteenth century. It was used in I.stanbul, Thrace, and also in the Aegean islands, especially in Crete in urban folk music.
We know that the kemençe was a very popular instrument in Istanbul in the eighteenth century. It was possible to hear kemençe music in the public taverns of Galata during this century. Prior to the twentieth century the kemençe was played together with the lavta, Turkish version of the European lute. Kemençe was used as a melody instrument, the lavta being the rhythmic element of the duo.
Kemençe and lavta were the chief musical instruments of köçek and tavs,an taksmlari, that is, urban folk dance groups of old Istanbul. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the kemençe was introduced into the fasil music, classical or urban Ottoman music. The first musician to have played the kemençe in a fasil ensemble is Vasil (1845-1907), an Ottoman Greek musician who played the kemençe with great artistic skill as it has been referred to in the sources of those days. However, Vasil did not make music for records. He played only for cylinders, but nobody has so far been able to procure any of his cylinder recordings. The first performer of the kemençe after Vasil is Tanburî Cemil, who made many records for the Orfeon Company in which he used the kemençe apart from the tanbur, lavta, violoncello and bowed tanbur.
The earliest kemençe recordings of Cemil Bey begin to appear at the very beginning of the twentieth century, which means that the kemençe as a member of fasïl ensembles has a history of one century only.
The present disks include the recordings of 17 kemençe players, Cemil Bey (1871-1916) being the oldest musician and I.hsan Özgen (b. 1942) the youngest. Some of them are taken from 78 r.p.m records and others from radio programmes. We believe that all these recordings have great archival importance with regard to the past performance of Turkish music. - Bülent Aksoy
Masters of Turkish Music: Kemençe (Kalan)