A passion which began 50 years ago has lost none of its exuberance, but instead has gained momentum with the passage of time. Ethnomusicologist Etem Ruhi Üngör, whose research in this field is known worldwide, has travelled thousands of miles over the years, from city to city and village to village in search of traditional Turkish musical instruments. Every inch of his tiny flat is filled with books and his collection of 700 musical instruments, including many whose appearance and even names are unfamiliar. As well as obscure folk instruments, his remarkable collection includes a tanbur (classical long necked lute) made in 1887 by Uzunyan belonging to Tanburi Cemil Bey, a lavta (lute) made by Kosti Ventura in 1840 which belonged to Sultan Abdülaziz, girifts (reed instruments with eight holes) which belonged to the girift player Asım Bey and the famous ney players Tevfik and Şevki Sevgin, two 18th century dulcimers, rebabs (spike fiddles made of coconut shells), and kemençes (Black Sea fiddles).

An unusual metal ney (classical Turkish reed flute) is one of the most interesting pieces in the collection. It was made by Neyzen Tevfik when he was staying at a psychiatric hospital undergoing treatment for alcoholism. The other patients kept breaking his wooden neys, and in desperation he removed a length of metal piping from his bed and fashioned a sturdier instrument for himself.
Etem Ruhi Üngör has also spent 41 years publishing the Journal of Music, which was founded in 1948 by the composer Sadettin Arel, and is one of the two oldest periodicals on musicology in the world. But although he has not given up writing for the sake of his collection, he has given up the kanun (a type of zither) after playing this instrument for 20 years. On one occasion, in search of a kemane (five-stringed violin) made of tin, the farmer who owned it kept him waiting in the fields for hours under the mistaken impression that Üngör was a tax inspector !

But he did not always have to travel long distances in search of instruments. Often he was approached by owners who knew of his research and collection, as in the case of Gevherin Sultan, the granddaughter of Sultan Abdülaziz, who presented her late grandfath'ste lavta as a gift.
One of the most fascinating objects in his sitting room is not an instrument, however, but a framed inscription in Ottoman Turkish by the calligrapher Hamid Aytu (1891-1982). The inscription relates a Turkish myth about how the angel Gabriel became the patron saint of musicians: 'When God Almighty had created the mould of Adam, the first man, he commanded the soul to enter the body. However, the soul was fearful and hesitated. Then God commanded Gabriel to fetch his koşney from heaven and play. When Gabriel began to play, the soul, enraptured by the music, entered the body of Adam.' (from Usta Mehter Koçi Risalesi, 1911).

The koşney, of which there are several examples in Üngör's collection, is a wind instrument made of an eaglsm wing bone. Another unusual instrument to be seen is a long-necked stringed instrument called a cura.There are bells from almost every part of Turkey, and a nefir dating from 1859 made from the horn of a wild goat and used to call worshippers to the ceremonies of the Bektaşi dervishes. A rectangular drum of a kind no longer made today comes from the Mediterranean town of Silifke, and there is even a conch shell of the type known as a triton, which sailors used to communicate at sea. These shells were also blown by circumcisers to announce that the operation was over.The many wind instruments in Üngör's collection include the zurna (Turkish oboe), the longest type of which is made in western Turkey, and which becomes shorter as it crosses the country eastwards. Üngör explains that this reflects variations in musical tastes from region to region, the people of western Turkey finding the sound of the small zurna too piercing, and those of the east the sound of the long zurna too deep.

Üngör explains that no country in the world has such a great range of musical instruments, including 25 types of zurna alone. He regrets the passing of local tradition in our modern world. 'A century ago,' he says, 'people could not afford to buy a violin, for example, so they would improvise from the materials available. A man would take a large tin, attach a neck to it, and play it like a violin. Shepherds today no longer play pipes, but take a battery-operated transistor along with them and listen to that. As technology advances tradition dies. In my childhood someone in every family played a musical instrument, usually an ud or a tanbur.'

After devoting a lifetime to collecting and researching Turkish musical instruments, Üngör now has two unfulfilled wishes, one being to open a museum for his collection. But his other wish took us by surprise: He wants to visit Argentina to listen to tango music and watch tango dancers!