To Anatolia: Selections from the Turkish Five
Beyza Yazgan (piano)
Rec. February 2020, Skillman Music, Brooklyn, USA
BRIDGE 9549 [53:05]
Made up largely of miniatures, this disc makes a pleasant and engaging introduction to the piano music of the Turkish composers known as ‘The Turkish Five’.
Like many a ‘strong’ political leader who intended to ‘reform’ or modernize his country, after Ataturk came to power in 1923 his ideology was propounded through a range of ‘programmes’: programmes for legal reform, agricultural and industrial reform, financial reforms etc. A common feature of many of these programmes was the attempt (implicit or explicit) to make Turkey a more westward-oriented country. This was particularly obvious in Ataturk’s programme of language reform in which, in 1928, decreed that Turkish should now be written, not in the Turkish variant of Perso-Arabic script used for several centuries, but in an extended Latin script (of 29 characters); many loan words from Persian and Arabic were to be replaced by Turkish coinages. Where music was concerned, Ataturk’s programme included the setting up of organisations characteristic of the classical music world of Europe, such as orchestras, state opera companies and conservatoires (the first of them in Ankara) and also a system whereby promising Turkish musicians given scholarships to study in Europe. All five of the composers represented here (born within four years of one another) benefitted from this system: Saygun was enabled to study in Paris, studying composition with Vincent d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris from 1928 to 1931; Erkin also studied at the Paris Conservatoire and the Ecole Normal de Musique – his teachers included the pianist Isidor Philipp and Nadia Boulanger; Aksen studied with Joseph Marx at the Musikakademie in Vienna (1926-31) and with Josef Suk and Alois Haba at the Prague Conservatory (1931-34); Alnar, according to Beyza Yasgan, also studied in Vienna. The case of Cemal Resit Rey was slightly different; his very westernised family moved to Paris in 1913, when he was only nine years old and through the agency of Fauré (who the family knew) he was able to take piano lessons with Marguerite Long. After the first World War (during which the family moved to Geneva) he returned to Paris and studied there until 1923, when he returned to Turkey. These five composers/performers/teachers were, in essence, the leaders in the development of a Turkish school of western classical music not least because they all acquired teaching positions in the ‘new’ Turkey, once they had completed their European studies.
We should, though, remember that Ataturk did not want to destroy traditional Turkish music. Rather, as Beyza Yazgan puts it in her booklet notes, “Ataturk’s intention was to embrace and process contemporary European methods, combine it [sic] with Turkish traditional music and to create a new musical genre that would have global success […] The Turkish Five gained international success through their use of Western composition techniques, blending them with the unique modes, melodies and rhythms of Turkish folk music and dances. In the process, they created a new voice unique to the Anatolian land.” Ataturk’s programme for Turkish music was influenced by the ideas of such figures as Ziya Gögalp (a poet, sociologist, ideologue and supporter of Ataturk) who in 1922 had declared “Our national music […] is to be born from a synthesis of our folk music and Western music. Our folk music provides us with a rich treasury of melodies. By collecting and arranging them on the basis of Western musical technique, we shall have both a national and modern music”.
Western classical music was not unknown in Ottoman (i.e. pre-Ataturk) Turkey. Such music seems first to have been heard in Turkey towards the end of the Eighteenth Century, when some performances were presented (in the Topkapi Palace, for example), before aristocratic audiences. In 1828, Giuseppe Donizetti (older brother of Gaetano) was appointed ‘Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music’ at the court of Sultan Mahmud II. He was much concerned with the training and improvement of the Sultan’s western-style military band, though he also supervised an annual festival of Italian opera given by visiting companies. He also hosted visits and concerts by Western performers, including Liszt, the Austrian pianist Leopold de Meyer and the English harpist Parish Alvars. Donizetti died in Istanbul in 1856.
The Turkish Five all seem to have come from relatively westernized families but, of course, they were also familiar with traditional Turkish music. So, for example, in his schooldays Saygun studied both piano (and with it the idioms and conventions of Western music) and the Turkish oud or lute (thus also becoming steeped in the language of Turkish music). Alnar was, as a young man, a virtuoso player of the qanum (a Turkish instrument of the zither family), so that he, too, had a thorough grounding in the makumlar, the Turkish melodic types or patterns from which quite complex rules for composing (and for playing) were constructed.
There is a sense in which what Ataturk was doing was a conscious formalization (loaded in favour of influences from the west) of a process that had been going on for thousands of years. Turkey had, for as far back as archaeological and historical records go, been a crossroads between West and East, Europe and Asia. As a result, modern Turkey abounds in monuments of a many diverse cultures, Greek, Persian, Roman, Early Christianity, Islam etc. etc. At a single historical site such as Miletus – probably founded by Cretans – the Myceneans, the Achaeminids of Persia, Alexander the Great and the Byzantines and the Seljuk Turks, amongst many others, have all left their mark. The result is a complex cultural layering, or as Beyza Yazgan puts it a “cross-pollinating diversity that created the heritage in which I was raised and laid the groundwork for the pieces on this record.”
Something of this ‘cross-pollination’ can be seen simply by considering the titles of some of the works recorded here. One work here by Ahmet Adnan Saygun is his ‘Sonatina’; its three movements are marked (i) Allegro, (ii) Adagio and (iii) (Horon) Prestissimo. All save the word Horon will be familiar to Western readers, and this is the only word we would not expect to find on the score of a sonatina by a European composer. The ‘Horon’ is a Turkish dance, especially characteristic of the Black Sea coastal area of Turkey. Etymologically the word is related to the Greek choros (i.e a dance). Yazgan describes the Horon as “an energetic dance [involving] a group of people holding hands. The dancers’ bodies quake and tremble in reference to the wild waves of the Black Sea.”
Sometimes Saygun gives his pieces wholly Turkish titles, as in his ‘Meşeli (Anadolu’ Dan)’: the Meşeli is another Turkish folk dance – in which the dancers usually hold spoons in their hands, with their arms extended outwards at their sides According to Ms. Yazgan it is usually accompanied by the folk song Meşeli Dağlar Meşeli (Oak Filled Mountains). Anadolu’ Dan means, if my very limited Turkish is correct, ‘from Anatolia’. Elsewhere some of the Turkish titles are straightforward translations of familiar European-style titles, as in Aksel’s 5 Piyano Parçasi and Alnar’s 8 Piyano Parçasi – ‘Piyano Parçasi’ simply means ‘Piano Pieces’.
There is a clear element of the evocation of picture and mood (I am making a conscious effort to avoid that awkward word ‘impressionist’) in a number of these pieces, of a sort which reminds one of French writing for the piano by such as Debussy and Ravel. This is the case, for example, in selections from Ulvi Cemar Erkin’s 1937 collection Duyuşlar (the word means, I believe, ‘impressions’). Kűcűk Çoban (Little Shepherd) has an artfully achieved simplicity and charm which reminds one of pieces by Debussy (or even, beyond France, of Mompou). Yet there is also a certain Turkish ‘flavour’ which is distinctive. In the 37 seconds of Erkin’s Dere (The Brook) the water runs with a fluid energy and lightness which again make one think (no pun intended) of French ‘sources’.
It is only fair to say that these short piano pieces are not the most important or most representative works by these composers. So, for example, Saygun’s achievements as a composer can be better appreciated in works such as his symphonies, his piano concerto, or even his Violin Partita (Op.36), of which there is a fine performance on Naxos 8.579043. But there are things to enjoy here too. Pieces I have particularly enjoyed include the first of Saygun’s 10 Sketches on Ansak Rhythms (track 3) – the word Aksak means ‘stumbling’ or ‘limping’. In Turkish music it refers to a rhythmic structure in which binary and ternary cells are alternated at a fast tempo. (The jazz pianist Dave Brubeck’s ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’ is, in effect, a kind of ‘Aksak’). This first ‘Sketch’ by Saygun offers a fascinating rhythmic ride, full of momentum and with a number of implied polyrhythms. It is splendidly played by Beyza Yazgan. Very different, but equally engaging is the pastoralism of pieces such as Ulvi Cemal Erkin’s ‘Kűcűk Çoban’ (‘Little Shepherd’) or Necil Kazam Akses’s ‘Köy’ (‘Village’). I have been particularly fascinated by Erkin’s set Beş Demla (Five Drops). To call a piece of music a ‘drop’ may be, at first sight, to identify it as trivial. But we need to think of the word ‘drop’ or ‘demla’ in the context of patterns of symbolism which, with some inevitable differences, were common to both Europe and the Islamic worlds, but which are often overlooked nowadays. Thinking about the title, I found myself recalling the wonderful poem ‘On a Drop of Dew’ by the seventeenth century English poet, Andrew Marvell – the relevance of which may seem remote, until one remembers that the Turkish for ‘dewdrop’ is ‘çiy demlasi’. In Marvell’s poem the drop of dew on a rose serves as an image of the soul within the human body. The dewdrop longs for “the clear region where ’twas born” (i.e. heaven). When it dissolves, the dew, writes Marvell, “run[s] / Into the glories of th’almighty sun”, just as the human soul “that drop, that ray / of the clear fountain of the eternal day /[…] Does in its pure and circling thoughts, express / The greater heaven in a heaven less”. In the thought of both the Christian and Islamic traditions, dew has repeatedly been understood as “an expression of heavenly blessing”, as “life-giving grace” (both quotations are taken from The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, 1966 by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrandt, translated by John Buchanan-Brown). In both the secular love poetry and the religious poetry – particularly that of the Sufis – of the Islamic World the image of a drop of dew occurs frequently in similar senses to those already enumerated. The poetry of the Arab world, of Turkey and of parts of India was profoundly influenced by the great poetic tradition of Persia. The imagery of dew is discussed in Annemarie Schimmel’s magnificent book A Two-Colored Brocade: The Imagery of Persian Poetry (1992). The following two examples are taken from Schimmel’s book: she quotes lines by Mir Dard (c.1624-77) an Indian Sufi (sufism is, put simply, the mystical tradition of Islam) who wrote in Urdu:
My meeting with you is like that of the rose and dew –
All the weeping from me, all the smiling from you.
Here the subject is human ‘romantic’ love. Elsewhere the subject is moral or religious, as in these lines quoted by Schimmel from Abdul-Qādir Bedil (1642-1720), another Indian Sufi, who wrote in Persian:
The dew does not dream of the bud or think of the rose
The dew meditates on the theme of its own dissolving.
The traditions of sufistic thought and poetry (including symbols such as the rose and the drop of dew) permeated Turkish poetry for many centuries, in both learned and popular idioms; so much so that it is impossible that an educated man such as Ulvi Cemal Erkin could have been unaware of such images and their significance. Given that, it is sensible to think of the ‘drops’ of his Five Drops as drops of dew. Think of them thus and any notion of triviality disappears. The five pieces (the five ‘drops’) which make up Beş Damla carry only numbers and tempo markings by way of titles (I. Animato, II. Lento, III. Tranquilo, IV. Energetico, V. Moderato). However, it is not hard to think of the kind of titles they might be given, titles drawn from the kind of symbolic tradition outlined above, such as ‘Refreshment of the Spirit’, ‘Meditation’, ‘Yearning for transience’, ‘Preparation’, ‘Dissolving of the self’. This is ‘spiritual’ music, in the sense that it reflects, it seems to me, on the relationship between the world and its physical beauty (the rose) and the beauty of the soul (the dewdrop). This is spiritual music in the sense that it seems to reflect the relationship between the beauty of the physical world (the rose) and the soul (the drop of dew). It is also relevant to note that the markings of the first three ‘drops’, Animato – Lento – Tranquillo, parallel the three stages of the dance of the famous Dervishes of Konya (in Turkey): first the intense and rapidly whirling ecstatic dance, then the deceleration of that dance and the serene calmness at its close. These five pieces, for all their brevity, are both beautiful and profoundly suggestive. They receive superlative performances from Beyza Yazgan.
The pianist’s background fits her perfectly to interpret these works, written out of the cross-pollination of East and West. After her early piano studies in her native Turkey, Yazgan studied piano at doctoral level, first at the Chopin Academy of Music (Warsaw) and then at Istanbul’s Minar Sinan Fine Arts Academy – Minar Sinan (c.1489-1588) being the greatest of all Ottoman architects. She went on to earn a ‘Professional Studies’ diploma at the Mannes School of Music in New York. She has won a number of international prizes, as detailed in the CD booklet and on her website. She has given recitals in the USA (at Carnegie Hall, for example) and in Europe (e.g. at the Teatro Alfieri in Turin) as well as in Turkey. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Throughout this disc her sympathetic and perceptive understanding of this culturally complex music is as evident as her assured technique. Her skill and her imagination are unmistakable and admirable.
Thanks to Beyza Yazgan, the western listener can find pleasure and stimulation in music which might initially seem alien or inaccessible. For that I am very grateful. The whole enterprise is a convincing affirmation of the belief she states near the beginning of her booklet notes: “I believe the spirit of this music belongs to all humanity, without borders or nationalities, ethnicities or religions.”
Glyn Pursglove
Contents
Ahmet Adnan SAYGUN (1907-91)
Meşeli (Anadolu’dan) (1945) [2:19]
Assan Ferid ALNAR (1906-78)
On the Slope (8 Piyano Parçasi: Şu Yamaçta) (c.1936) [2:36]
Ahmet Adnan SAYGUN
Sketch No.1 (Aksak Tartular Űzerine 10 Taslak, Op.58) (1976) [1:20]
Prelude No.4 (Aksak Tartular Űzerine 12 Prelűd, Op.45) (1967) [2:06]
Ulvi Cemal ERKIN (1906-72)
Little Shepherd (Duyuşlar: Kűcűk Çoban) (1937) [1:31]
The Brook (Duyuşlar: Dere) (1937) [0:37]
Necil Kazim AKSES (1908-99)
Village (Beş Piyano Parçasi: Köy) (1930) [2:46]
Cemal Reşit REY (1904-85)
Horon (10 Halk Tűrkűsű) [2:09]
Necil Kazim AKSES
Poem (5 Pyano Parçasi: Şűr) [2:46]
Ulvi Cemal ERKIN
Halva Maker (10 Halk Tűrkűsű: Helvaci) [1:52]
Game (Duyuşlar: IX Oyun) (1937) [1:19]
Five Drops I. Animato (Beş Damla) (1931) [1:17]
Five Drops II. Lento (Beş Damla) (1931) [2:05]
Five Drops III. Tranquillo (Beş Damla) (1931) [1:11]
Five Drops IV. Enegetico (Beş Damla) (1931) [1:29]
Five Drops V. Moderato (Beş Damla) (1931) [2:10]
Assan Ferid ALNAR
Foggy Morning (Sekiz Piyano Parçasi: Sisli Sabah) (1935) [1:31]
Ulvi Cemal ERKIN
Don’t Weep My Beloved (Duyuşlar: Ağlama Yar Ağlama) (1937) [2:52]
Necil Kazim AKSES
Andante No.8 (10 Piyano Parçasi) (1964) [2:57]
Assan Ferid ALNAR
Moonlight Through The Curtain (8 Piyano Parçasi: Perdeden Suzan Ay Işiği) (c.1936) [1:24]
Ulvi Cemal ERKIN
Game (Duyuşlar: V.Oyun) (1937) [1:05]
Ahmet Adnan SAYGUN
Sonatina Op.15, I. Allegro (1938) [3:13]
Sonatina, Op.15 II. Adagio Con Moto (1938) [3:10]
Sonatina, Op.15 III. (Horon) Prestissimo (1938) [2:51]
Assan Ferid ALNAR
Languorous Dance (8 Piyano Parçasi: Uyuşuk Dans) (c.1936) [1:48]
Zeybek Dance (Piyano Için Oyun Havalari: Zeybak Havasi (1937) [3:30]
NOTE: This disc does not provide dates for the works recorded. Where I have been able to, I have inserted dates from other sources (library catalogues etc.). Most of these dates are dates of first publication.
