Turkey's Classical Music, a Class Symbol

Author(s): Karl Signell

Source: Asian Music , 1980, Vol. 12, No. 1, Symposium on Art Musics in Muslim Nations
(1980), pp. 164-169
Published by: University of Texas Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/833803

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Asian Music

This content downloaded from

160.75.86.201 on Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:13:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 TURKEY'S CLASSICAL MUSIC, A
CLASS SYMBOL
By
Karl Signell

A forum to compare Islamic musics, organized by

Harold Powers, was a timely undertaking. I have always
been interested in the many apparently close relation-
ships between these musics, yet I felt too ignorant
outside my own specialty to draw parallels quickly or
easily. A workshop on Near Eastern musics was held at
the 1974 Society for Ethnomusicology meeting in San
Francisco, but our conclusions then were hesitant and
premature. Five years later, at the Princeton symposium
on the status of Islamic art musics in the spring of
1979, the discussion--though often rambling and incon-
clusive--seemed to me more thoughtful and authoritative.

I propose in this paper to isolate and discuss

mainly one question which concerns us, that of defining
"classical" music. By examining its attributes,
especially its social and political identities, I hope
to establish some basis for comparison between Turkish
and the other Islamic musics.

Definition

First, I think various definitions of the word

"classical" should be reviewed so that we can consider
which, if any, apply as we cross cultures. As it
applies to European music, I can think of at least nine
different tests of "classical":

1. enduring
2. balanced, restrained
3. notated
4. theorized about
5. serious
6. professional
7. passively received
8. non-folk
9. elite

Without much difficulty we can apply these epithets equally

to Bach, Beethoven, or Bartok.

Neither I nor the Turks have any problem identifying

a genre of music to be called "classical" today in the
Republic of Turkey. Its Turkish name is klasik miizii.

164

This content downloaded from

160.75.86.201 on Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:13:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Also called sanat [art] musikisi or occasionally ilmi
[learned] musiki, it is performed on the radio and in
concert halls and in homes today. Its most famous
composers are Dede Efendi (1778-1846) and Itri (1640-
1712). Mevlevi sufi music and music for the mosque can
easily be included as special sub-genres of classical.
All nine definitions cited earlier fit Turkish
classical music. It certainly endures; the repertoire
of thousands of composed pieces stretches back at least
to the sixteenth century. Balance and restraint dis-
tinguish Turkish classical music from nightclub, popular,
folk, and other genres; it is as sober and stately as
Korean A-ak or Javanese gamelan. Notation has been
evident for centuries and is in common use today.
Theory, traceable back to classical Greek times, has
been actively discussed from Farabi (tenth century, A.D.)
to this year. And only a serious-minded person would
find an affinity with the complex language, the heavy
texts, and the sophisticated melodic and rhythmic modal
systems of this music.

If "professional" means "specialized"--the few

performing for the many--then the highly trained singers,
composers, and instrumentalists for the Ottoman courts,
mosques, and Mevlevi lodges confirm this definition
(although skilled "amateurs" as well have always been
participants in the genre). The music is typically
received by a passive audience. The Mevlevi dervishes
were active participants in the music, but a passive
audience comprising some wealthy patrons often observed.
We approach the heart of the definition of Turkish
classical music when we compare it to folk music.
Historically, classical music belonged to the Ottoman
ruling classes, folk music to the Anatolian peasants.
Aside from the social symbolism of the two genres, on
purely musical grounds they are about as similar as the
Liszt piano sonata compared with a Hungarian village
singer's folk song.
I believe that this elite label on Turkish
classical music is the basis for explaining its status,
historically and currently.
Music of the Elite

In Roman times, the word "classical" referred to

a citizen of the highest class. rlassical music, as we
use the term worldwide, is almost always music of the
ruling classes, snob music, if you will. Other socially

165

This content downloaded from

160.75.86.201 on Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:13:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
defined musical genres would include Rock music of the
world's youth and the sacred Mi-kagura of the Japanese
emperor and his ancestors. The musical genre as a token
of social identity is often most reliably defined in
those terms rather than in purely musical ones. Turkish
classical music was and is elitist. That association
was the cause of great vitality and richness at the apex
of its development. In the twentieth century, the same
association was the cause for its downfall.

Its patronage was elite. Almost all composers

and performers of Turkish classical music through the
end of the nineteenth century served sacred or secular
centers of power. The religious and secular masters
themselves often composed and performed, counterparts
of Martin Luther and Frederick the Great. Sultan and
mullah, sheikh and hakim, classical music was their
sign of power. Like their elaborate costumes, their
convoluted Ottoman language, classical music was a
badge of their status.

I say these things with trepidation. Such state-

ments in modern Republican times cause unpleasant
reactions. (How did the Paris Commune feel about music
of the Bourbons?)

The rule of sultans, ulema, and dervishes brought

the Ottoman Empire to the brink of complete dismember-
ment by the beginning decades of the twentieth century.
Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk wrenched power from them and
established a republic under which it was forbidden to
look back. Dervish lodges were razed, sheikhs hanged.
One year, Atatiirk even forbad the broadcast of Turkish
music on the government monopoly radio.

For the first fifty years of the Turkish Republic,

1924-1974, classical Turkish music suffered under its
Ottoman shame. State concerts halls and conservatories
were closed to Turkish musicians. As recently as 1971,
a controversy erupted in the newspapers over the proposal
by the Minister of Culture, Talat Halman, to present a
concert of Turkish music for the first time in the
state concert hall in Ankara. "Progressives," led by
the European-trained violinist Suna Kan, were violently
opposed to allowing this "primitive, monophonic" music
into the official showcase of the Atatiirk republic. The
concert was cancelled.

Paradoxically, the radio stations eventually

became the main new patrons of Turkish classical music,
providing major sustenance for performers and substantial

166

This content downloaded from

160.75.86.201 on Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:13:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
air-time for the music. Ottoman music was ideologically
suspect, but its great prestige was now tied to the new
powers, the military and the technocrats. It also
managed to survive through local support by amateur
performers, university clubs, and municipal schools--
again, elite groups. The amateur performers were upper
middle class, as were the university clubs such as the
Istanbul University Chorus (the latter, a training
ground for many now-famous musicians). And the Istanbul
Municipal Conservatory (Istanbul Belediye Konservatuari),
supported by that ancient city's elitist traditions, was
the only governmental organization to nurture the genre
throughout that long half-century, albeit in a strictly
limited way.

This steady, inexorable decline of Turkish

classical music was poignantly noted to me by a leading
singer, Recep Birgit, who predicted in 1972 that the
genre would not last another ten years. What caused
the decline? In spite of the collapse of the Empire,
the momentum of centuries continued, described in the
previous paragraph. But this was impeded by a conscious
governmental policy to erase memories and customs of the
old regime, the latter considered backward, ineffective,
and too oriental for the modern world. The proper music
for a progressive, new Turkey, said Ataturk, would be
either European (modern), Anatolian (pure Turkish), or,
ideally, a fusion of the two. A concerto for violin
and orchestra in which Anatolian folk tunes were quoted
seemed such an ideal synthesis of the best of East and
West.

But it turns out now that Birgit's gloomy

prediction was unduly pessimistic. Since 1972, the
prognosis has reversed and the musical Sick Man on the
Bosporus has begun to revive. The national government
has now set up a state conservatory for Turkish music.
Private concerts and new performing groups multiply like
mushrooms. The conditions are suddenly so remarkably
favorable that Niyazi Sayin, the leading ney flute
player, told me in 1979 that he definitely feels
optimistic now about the future of Turkish classical
music.

To sum up the elitist argument then, Turkish

classical music in Ottoman times set the ruling classes
apart from the masses. During most of the Republican
period so far, the new rulers saw continued Ottoman
culture in any form as an obstacle to building a modern
Turkey. But in the last few years, a modest renaissance

167

This content downloaded from

160.75.86.201 on Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:13:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
of Turkish classical music was born of the capitulation
to the nation's cultural roots by denying its elitist
origins and its Ottoman genesis.

Other Comparative Bases

A short summary of three other aspects of musical

status, as suggested by Powers, may also be useful in
comparing Islamic musics: religious prohibition, music-
ians' status, and Westernization.

Historically, Turkey never seriously obeyed

Islamic restraints on music as did, say, Persia under
the Safavids. A strong dervish affinity among the
Turks since the eleventh century may account for this;
dervishes commune with the Unity via music and dance.

On the other hand, musicians, while admired in

the abstract, are not very acceptable in some social
circles. A Turkish banker friend of mine met the
premier tanbur lute player of Turkey, Necdet Yasar, in
my home one day. Later, the banker politely asked
whether Yasar wasn't a gypsy, evidently assuming that
only outcastes could be so proficient. Yasar is not
ethnically a gypsy, but his profession is just as
suspect in some quarters. Few musicians earn a living
solely from their music. Even the finest performing
artists usually have a "front"; one sells medical
supplies, another runs a printshop. Although highly
specialized, performers avoid the onus of being
mistaken for a gypsy.
Western music is still new and exotic to Turkish
audiences in spite of the best efforts of the govern-
ment. So it is not too strange that lumps of undigested
borrowings from Western music should appear from time
to time. I recall my shock at hearing an equal-tempered
piano introduced into the ensemble of oriental instru-
ments by Munir Nurettin Selquk; he apparently thought
that the novel tone color and modern symbolic value
more than offset the intonation clashes with the
traditional microtonal scale. Another group considered
the European harp to be an acceptable substitute for the
long-defunct ancient Turkish classical genk harp. And
Niyazi Sayin, ever the experimenter, once caused an
unfavorable reaction by subtly inserting the chorale
tune from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the "Ode to Joy,"
into a traditional taksim improvisation in makam Rast
(that's what Atatiirk wanted, wasn't it?, he later said).

168

This content downloaded from

160.75.86.201 on Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:13:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Large choruses sing the classical music in unison,
guided by a conductor. The European violin has
replaced the rebab spike fiddle, and performing from
a notated score rather than from memory is now the norm.

In conclusion, I return to my original point.

One of the most reliable definitions of classical
music is its class symbolism. Perhaps there are some
intrinsic musical qualities inherent in an elitist
music; this remains to be explored. An elitist music
will not necessarily include all nine of the tests I
outlined at the beginning. Indian classical music has
little use for notation and I am not at all certain how
to relate these characteristics to the atumpan ensemble
music of the paramount chief of the Ashanti in West
Africa. But by careful definition of terms and
separation of social from musical terminology, I am
hopeful that some interesting answers can be found.

169

This content downloaded from

160.75.86.201 on Fri, 28 Jul 2023 16:13:57 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms