Westernization and European Art Music in the Ottoman Empire

Early Western Influences in the Ottoman Empire

In Owen Wright's book Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music: An Analytical Perspective, the author notes that the leaders of the Ottoman Empire (and Egypt) had previously worked to build a "bulwark against western expansionism" and Western influence. Honoring their own culture — through their arts, music, and writing — had become vitally important to Islamic institutions in the mid-nineteenth century (Wright, 2009, p. 2). However, a shift toward Western influences had gradually taken place. Iran had attempted to reform its army "along European lines," Wright explains, and in order to do so there needed to be "technological borrowing and the importation of foreign expertise" (p. 2).

In order to acquire the necessary military expertise from the West, resources for training and education in Western military strategy had to be imported. Through these influences, many Muslims showed "a degree of receptivity to western ideas, and not merely of administration and politics… [hence] there emerged a new intellectual elite" in the Ottoman Empire "with a western-style educational background, a knowledge of western languages," along with an increased interest in "western art forms" (Wright, p. 2).

Those art forms included Western literature, encouraged through journalism using Western-style approaches to writing, which introduced forms of narrative prose that Muslims were unaccustomed to but became fascinated with. Still in the nineteenth century, "the grand tradition of miniature painting in Iran was virtually abandoned" in favor of "western-style oil painting" (Wright, p. 2). The Qajar ruler Nasir al-Din Shah (1848–96) helped popularize Western oil paintings when he commissioned portraits and military scenes, typically depicting large-scale events. Al-Din Shah also supported the training of Muslim artists at Western art schools. The work they produced would in time result in a "radically estranged" departure from previous art genres in the Ottoman Empire, Wright continues.

However, when it came to Western music, Wright (p. 3) notes that local "elites" in the Ottoman Empire did appreciate Western music, but there is "little evidence" that outside of "court circles" and the "cosmopolitan milieu of Istanbul" many ordinary citizens were drawn to it. But it "clearly did have an impact" in the military context, Wright goes on. In fact, in 1868 al-Din Shah invited a French bandmaster named Alfred Lemaire to "institute a western-style military band to replace the traditional trumpet and drum ensembles" (p. 3). Trumpet and drum ensembles had served the Ottoman Empire's military ceremonies for many years — on the battlefield and at home at the conclusion of battle.

"Lemaire seems to have been both energetic and efficient" in his consulting work for al-Din Shah, Wright explains (p. 3). He procured instruments and introduced basic music education techniques, and "the Persian bandsmen were gradually exposed not just to notation but also to elements of western theory," Wright concludes (p. 4).