March 18th, 2026 - June 24th, 2026, 5PM - 6:30PM, Hybride Event, Campus of the University of Vienna, Institute's Auditorium

 March 18th, 2026 - June 24th, 2026, 5PM - 6:30PM, Hybride Event, Campus of the University of Vienna, Institute's Auditorium

This lecture series explores musical cultures across the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey, Iran, and Central Asia, examining these regions as interconnected soundscapes shaped by mobility, devotional practices, and political transformations. Drawing on current work in ethnomusicology, sound studies, and historical musicology, the series highlights diverse traditions, ranging from Islamic recitation and liturgy to Armenian liturgical and choral music, shared Turkish–Armenia folk repertoires, and the courtly, urban, and Sufi musical cultures of the Turko-Iranian world. Further contributions address the historical and contemporary study of Ottoman music (including recent advances in the Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae), the musical traditions of Badakhshan and northern Afghanistan, Central Asian art music such as Shashmaqam, and modern genres from popular music to heavy metal in Turkey. The program also includes perspectives on musical life in Qajar and Pahlavi Iran.

Complementing the lectures, the series will feature a concert offering direct engagement with selected repertoires.

Zoom-Link: SOON!

Programme 

18.03.2026
Razia Sultanova (Cambridge Muslim College)
How Islam Survived in Sound: Musical Continuities in Central Asia

25.03.2026
Pierre Hecker (University of Marburg)

15.04.2026
Mustafa Avcı (Koç University, Istanbul)
Music, Dance, and Ecstasy: The Cultural Meanings of Ecstasy from the Ottoman Era to Contemporary Turkey

22.04.2026
Choushang Chehabi (Boston University)

29.04.2026
Peter McMurray (University of Cambridge)
On Dreamsound: Istanbul 1600, Vienna 1900 CE

06.05.2026
Angelika Jung (Weimar)
On the Origin and Significance of Central Asian Classical Music: Shashmaqam

13.05.2025
Nejla Melike Atalay (University of Münster)
Tracing Women Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul through Archival, Printed, and Musical Sources

20.05.2026
Jeanette Kilicci (University of Vienna)

27.05.2026
Philipp Ther (University of Vienna)
Compositional Encounters between the post-Habsburg Musical Modernism, Turkey and Egypt

03.06.2026
Cüneyt Ersin Mıhcı (University of Münster / OIIST)

10.06.2026
Ingeborg Baldauf (Humboldt University)
No more words to sing of joy and grief... A folklorist's look back on half a century of song and music in Afghanistan

17.06.2026
Rıdvan Aydınlı (Boğaziçi University, Istanbul)
Inscribing the Ottoman Soundscape: Byzantine Notation in 19th-century Greek-script Music Publishing

24.06.2026 
Will Sumits (Orient-Institute Istanbul)

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