Typically dismissed as the remnants of Ottoman nostalgia, the melancholies intentionally cultivated by contemporary Turkish classical musicians are a fundamental aspect of their subjectivity. Melancholic Modalities is the first in-depth historical and ethnographic study of the affective practices socialized by these musicians who champion, teach, and perform a present-day genre substantially rooted in the musics of the Ottoman court and elite Mevlevi Sufi lodges. Denise Gill analyzes how melancholic music making emerges as reparative, pleasurable, spiritually redeeming, and healing. Focusing on the affective, embodied, and sonic practices of musicians who deploy and circulate melancholy in sound, Gill interrogates the constitutive elements of musicians’ melancholic modalities in the context of emergent neoliberalism, secularism, political Islamism, Sufi devotionals, and the politics of psychological health in Turkey today. In a far-reaching contribution to the study of music, affect, and emotion, Gill develops rhizomatic analyses to allow musicians’ multiple interpretations to be heard. Melancholic Modalities uncovers the processes of subjectivity that render a spectrum of feelings (sensations of pain and ecstasy) and emotions (sadness, grief, joy, pleasure) as correct ways of being in the world for Turkish classical musicians. With her innovative concept of “bi-aurality,” Gill’s book forges new possibilities for the historical and ethnographic analyses of musics and ideologies of listening for music scholars.