Limondjian was referred to as Baba Hamparsum (Father Hampartsoum) in Ottoman imperial court music circles.

His father Sarkis and his mother Gaderina, who had recently moved to Istanbul from Harput, were poor, and could only send their son to primary school.

[3] He soon came under the patronage of another Armenian - Hovhannes Çelebi Düzyan, director of the Ottoman Imperial Mint.

[5] Around this time, Hampartsoum Limondjian started attending mevlevihanes, places of gathering for dervishes of the Mevlevi order, to learn Ottoman music.

As a result, two music systems were developed and presented to Selim III, by Hampartsoum Limondjian and Abdulbaki Nasir Dede.

Using his own system, Hampartsoum Limondjian transcribed most of 18th century Turkish music compositions in a collection of six books, which he presented to Selim III.

All twelve notes of the Western chromatic scale are represented, but in the case of F-sharp (fa diyez in Turkish) and B-natural (si), two enharmonic symbols are used for each, because Middle Eastern music uses microtonal intervals called commas.