Cemil Bey was born in
Istanbul,
Ottoman Empire, in 1871 or 1873; his birth date is uncertain. He took his first lessons in music from Kanuni Ahmet Bey and the violin player Kemani Aleksan, his first instruments thus being the
violin and the
kanun. After completing middle school, he continued in a school for civil servants (
Mülkiye), but then devoted himself to music and abandoned his education. He began to play the
tanbur quite early in his youth and by the age of 20, his renown had already spread among the tamburis of
Istanbul. Reforming the traditional playing technique of the tambur, he developed an energetic technique based on a rich and agile picking style, lightening to a great extent the sonority of this instrument. Later on, he set about playing the
Turkish classical kemençe and attained an astonishingly high level of technique, so much so that the virtuosity level of the Ottoman
kemençevi of Greek origin Vasilaki (1845–1907), considered as then as "the reference", came to be thought of by certain amateurs to be outmatched. He was also the inventor of the
Yaylı tambur. Cemil Bey was able to play any instrument he picked up: he played
lavta,
cello,
yaylı tambur,
zurna and several other instruments with equal virtuosity. His
taksims and instrumental works he recorded on
78rpms with tanbur,
kemençe,
lavta,
cello and
yaylı tambur had considerable impact on generations of musicians following him. The
peşrevs and
sazsemais he composed are pieces of great taste, requiring a developed performance technique. According to close friend Mahmut Demirhan: He was a very sensitive and nervous person, who eventually suffered from alcoholism. Most of his compositions have been preserved in his recordings, but some of his works were incomplete when he died. ==Compositions==