"Concerto turco - Hicaz Son Yürük Semâ‘î"

The concert 'Casanova a Levante' formed part of the celebrations marking the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Giacomo Casanova (2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798). These commemorations involved all the institutes and research centres of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (https://www.cini.it/en/casanova2025/). Our concert aimed to highlight the cosmopolitan profile of Casanova by presenting music that was fashionable at the time of his travels to the East, in particular along the routes leading toward Constantinople. The selected compositions are broadly contemporary with Casanova’s journey and are presented so as to follow the route of his adventure. Musical pieces documented in the accounts of Western travellers have been alternated with works transmitted through sources more closely aligned with Ottoman musical culture. For example, the programme includes compositions collected by the Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723), who studied the Ottoman musical tradition, transcribing and in part composing works in its stylistic idiom. Among the sources represented are also prominent figures of Western music, such as Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-1784), from whom a short manuscript containing variations on a 'Ballo turco' (Turkish dance) has survived. These variations may have been composed by Martini himself, possibly elaborating on a pre-existing model. The programme also features melodies that combine sonorities from Eastern Europe with those of Anatolia, such as those found in the collection 'Melodiarium' compiled by Anny Szirmay Keczer (1615-1695). The musical instruments employed likewise reflect a meeting point between the importation of Eastern cultural elements into the West and a certain “orientalization” of the Western instrumental tradition. This is the case of the viola d'amore, which was adopted in the Ottoman world under the name 'sine keman', and, conversely, of the 'colascione', an instrument that most likely developed in the West from long-necked lutes of Eastern origin. The piece included in this clip epitomises the interactions between Venice and Constantinople in Casanova’s day. In fact, the 'Concerto Turco Nominato Izia Semaisi' concludes the chapter ‘Music’ of a huge three-volume essay composed by a contemporary of Casanova, the Venetian Jesuit abbot Giambattista Toderini (Venice, 1728-1799) entitled 'Letteratura Turchesca' (Turkish Literature), published in Venice in 1787, after a long stay of Toderini in Constantinople. The 'Concerto Turco Nominato Izia Semaisi' is nothing other than the transcription in Western notation, but in 2/4 time, of the well-known 'Hicaz Saz Semâ‘îsi' in 6/8 time ('Yürük Semâ‘î') that concludes at least three ceremonies ('âyin') of the whirling dervishes ('mevlevî'). In this performance, the musicians rendered the 'Concerto Turco' according to the intervallic structure of the Hicaz mode as practiced in Ottoman music, which is not reflected in the Western source. The piece then merges with a performance of 'Hicaz Son Yürük Semâ‘î', thus situating it in relation to the work from which it was likely derived. The concert was organized by the Intercultural Institute for Comparative Music Studies of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini Stefano Albarello (qānūn, musical direction), Giovanni De Zorzi (ney), Gianfranco Russo (viola d’amore-sine keman), Peppe Frana (tanbūr). Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 19 November 2025