On the occasion of the UNESCO declaration of 2012 as the “International Itrî Year”, Istanbul Culture and Arts Foundation (Ä°KSV) organizes an international symposium on this great Turkish composer. The content of the event is advised by Gönül Paçacı, the Conductor of Turkish Music Ensemble of Istanbul University’s State Conservatory and the Director of the Research and Performance Center for Ottoman Music (OMAR).

Organized by Ä°KSV to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the death of great Turkish composer Buhûrîzâde Mustafa Efendi (Itrî), the international symposium entitled "Interdisciplinary  Perspectives on  Itrî and His Period" was held at the Congress Cultural Center at Ä°stanbul University’s Beyazıt Campus on Monday, December 3. The symposium evaluated 17th century in terms of various disciplines, with presentations on music, philosophy, history and literature of the era, thus implementing an interdisciplinary study of the period in which Itrî lived.

In the first part of the symposium where presentations related to music, philosophy and literature were shared, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Genç, one of Turkey’s most prominent experts on Ottoman history, evaluated the social and political structure of the Ottoman Empire in 17th Century while Prof. Dr. Walter Feldman who is known with his more than 30 years of research on classical Turkish music focused on the characteristics as well as change of musical forms of the era in which important personalities like Ali Ufkî, Evliya Çelebi and Kantemir also lived. After Turkey’s UNESCO National Commission Board Member Dr. Mehmet Kalpaklı’s evaluation on the literature of the era, musicologist Ersu Pekin explained Itrî and his period in the light of a collection of biographies. The General Secretary of the Inter Parliamentary Union of the Organization of Islamic Conference Member States Prof. Dr. Mahmut Erol Kılıç addressed the Oriental-Islamic culture of the era while famous musician and ney flute player Kudsi Ergüner who has been living in France for more than 40 years and known with musicological studies to promote Turkish music in the West, explored the differences in interpretations of Ottoman classical music from Itrî and his period to day.

The symposium also featured a special section in which recordings of Neva Kâr, the most competent composition of Itrî’s Classical Turkish Music repertoire,  shared with the audience.  In this section, various recordings of different renderings of Neva Kâr were examined in terms openness-privacy issues by Prof. Dr. Süleyman Seyfi Öğün, starting from the oldest. Within the same context, Dr. Önder Özkoç from Hacettepe University evaluated Necil Kazım Akses’ “Scherzo for Large Orchestra on Itrî’s Neva Kâr”.