By Hande Culpan / Turkish Daily News ANKARA- The Turks' first encounter with classical music goes back to Ottoman times -- the 16th century, to be exact -- through the palace as it was with other Western forms of art. European musicians were invited to perform in the festivities in honor of the circumcision or wedding of a sultan's son, thus introducing the Ottomans to polyphonic music through the concerts in the Topkapi Palace and Sultanahmet Square.
Early records have shown that organist Othman Luscinius came to Istanbul and performed in the palace in 1520, followed by flutist Pierre Gabriel Buffardin in 1713. The first classical orchestra was the one sent by French King Francois I in 1543 to Istanbul for three days to show his gratitude to Suleyman the Lawmaker, who supported Francois in the war he waged against Karl V. It is also recorded that church organists in Galata sometimes played examples of classical music to the court and Ottoman intellectuals.
Although the first initiative taken with respect to opera is recorded to be the opera group invited by Koprulu Fazil Mehmet Pasa, the grand vizier, to perform in the festivities held in honor of the circumcision of Mustafa, the sultan's son, Ottoman ambassadors to Europe writing in detail about what they did or encountered in the lands they visited were the real agents in introducing the Empire to the art of opera. The most remarkable of the accounts is presented by Yirmisekiz Mehmet Celebi Efendi, who was sent to France in 1719 to make observations for three months. Impressed by an opera performance, Yirmisekiz Mehmet Celebi Efendi elaborately described the structure of the opera house, the glamor of the hall and the scene in his notes.
Amazed by how realistically natural events were staged, he also gave a summary of the opera. However struck by the magnificence of the event, he could not but help emphasizing the cost of it. Later on, Mustafa Hatti Efendi, ambassador to Vienna, Resmolu Ahmed Resi Efendi and Vahid Pasa, gave more sound observations on the structure and staging of an opera.
This great interest then led to the first opera performance in Topkapi Palace, during the reign of Selim III. It is believed that the performance was given by a French group who were in Istanbul at the time as the guests of the French Embassy. Starting from 1820, the Western type of entertainment had begun to spread in Beyoglu, becoming quite popular in the Tanzimat Reform Period.
Records show that in 1830 an Italian named M. Giustiniani renovated the building across from Galatasaray High School -- known as the French Theater -- and staged various shows. Meanwhile, another Italian, Bosco, started staging opera performances in a separate theater building, where in 1841, an Italian group is known to have performed the Belisario by Gaetano Donizeti, the lyrics of which was printed in Turkish and distributed.
This theater, after staging many successful operas such as The Barber of Seville by Rossini and Attilla by Verdi, unfortunately suffered a great fire in 1846. Following renovation at the hands of the architect James Smith with help from Sultan Abdulmecid and various embassies, it continued entertaining its guests, including French Empress Eugienie and Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, with many famous operas until it was completely burned down in 1870. However, polyphonic music made its first real entry into the Ottoman empire during the reign of Mahmud II through the establishment of military bands in the 19th century following the breakup of the janissary bands.
An Italian, Guiseppe Donizetti, was put in charge of the palace military band called Muzikayi Humayun by Mahmud II, where he set about teaching talented young ottomans classical music, who were soon considered good enough to give concerts within the palace. The first young musician to excel in classical music was Yesarizade Necib Pasha, who had started out on his musical career as a flautist and won Abdulmecid I's admiration so much that he was appointed commander of the Mabeyn Muzika. Another important development in this period was that in 1856 Abdulmecid ordered an opera house to be built at the spot where the Inonu stadium stands now.
All the artists of the house, finished in 1859, were Turkish and belonged to the court. In fact, one of the artists, a tenor named Mehmed Zeki, became quite well-known in Italy. However, classical music activities in the palace suffered a serious halt with Necib Pasha losing his office when Abdulaziz came to the throne (1861) as he deemed classical music to be merely clamor.
It was not until 1876 when Abdulhamit II became sultan that Necib Pasha was re-appointed to his office, and he showed his gratitude to Abdulhamit by composing the Hamidiye March for him. Another composer who made his debut in this period was Dikran Cuhaciyan. Cuhaciyan, who received a musical training in Milan, composed his first opera, Arsas in Italian and his second, Olimpiya in Armenian.
He also composed three-act operettas which attracted great public attention. These melody-focussed first examples, however simple and imperfect in terms of polyphony, orchestration and technique, played an important role in getting the public used to operettas and polyphonic music. One setback, which prevents one from calling the efforts of the period 'serious,' is that all classical music pieces were composed in accordance with Turkish classical music norms.
Even Murad V, who played the piano and violin, composed a polka within these norms. Besides, this type of music was under the monopoly of the palace, and never widely known by common people.The birth of Turkish polyphonic music One of the reforms envisaged by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the creation of Turkish polyphonic music within the new cultural environment.
Many revolutionary intellectuals gave support to Ataturk on the grounds that Turkish classical music symbolized the sultanate and the palace. Actually, this idea went back to Ziya Gokalp, Turkish sociologist, writer and poet. Describing Ottoman music as a mixture of Arabian, Persian and Byzantine music besides being of foreign origin, crude and unadvanced, Gokalp claimed that this type of music should be set aside at once and a new Turkish music be created.
The only thing to do in this case was to harmonize folk music -- accepted to be genuine Turkish music -- with Western classical music norms and play it on Western musical instruments. Under Ataturk's directives, the palace band Muzikayi Humayun was moved to Ankara and renamed as Presidential Musical Band. In 1933, the band was divided into two as the Presidential Military Band and the Presidential Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1924, Ankara saw the establishment of the School of Music Teachers put under the charge of Zeki Ungor, the composer of the Turkish national anthem, with the aim to form the needed educational staff to teach Turkish youth polyphonic music. It was also in the same year that the state sent students abroad to be trained in Europe. At this point, certain measures had to be taken to ensure that classical music was adopted across the country.
In 1926, classes on Turkish classical music were taken off the curriculum to be replaced by Western classical music. Broadcasts of Turkish classical music and folk music on radio were restricted. And, in 1926, the Turkish classical music department of Darulelhan, the sole official musical school since 1917, was closed down, and the institution's name changed to the Municipality Public School of Music, focussing mainly on Western classical music.
While in Ankara and Istanbul, many debates were held on these repressive implementations, various folk songs were being scored to be played by newly-established bands in several cities and towns, most important of which is the Istanbul City Band. Meanwhile, the students sent abroad had returned to the country and were being employed in the School of Music Teachers. This first generation of Turkish composers were the first products of polyphonic Turkish music training brought about by the official music policy of the Republic.
Educated in various music schools in Europe, these composers were orientated with the awareness of creating a national music. Even though they had been influenced by many movements -- most notably by French impressionism and neoclassicism, they focussed on Turkish folk music and tunes in their works. The most famous representatives of this generation of composers are the Turkish Five, a name inspired by the Russian five.
These composers, namely, Cemal Resit Rey, Necil Kazim Akses, Ahmet Adnan Saygun, Hasan Ferit Alnar and Ulvi Cemal Erkin, are considered to be the creators of contemporary Turkish polyphonic music by drawing on Anatolian folk music and the Turkish classical music of the Ottoman period. The common characteristic of the Turkish Five is that they supported the idea of using traditional sources for their music despite differences in personality and musical background. These first generation composers, upon returning to Turkey, were employed in the newly-established music schools, carrying the responsibility of educating the next generation of musicians.
While they taught their students many Western techniques, they also advised them to use Turkish musical sources in their works, emphasizing that this was the only way for Turkish composers to be able to take a place in the hundreds-of-years-old Western musical tradition. As a result, the second generation -- most importantly, Bulent Arel, Ilhan Usmanbas, Nevit Kodalli and Ferit Tuzun -- went after the footsteps of their forerunners. During this period, German composer Paul Hindesmith was called to Turkey to help set up a school of music receiving state aid and resembling European music schools.
Hindesmith identified the principles for the establishment of the school as well as preparing a project for the opera. His efforts resulted in the establishment of the Ankara State Music School in 1936. Until the 1950s there were no changes in the Republic's policy of teaching Western classical music, and the state only supported the teaching of Western classical music.
However, after the 1950s, importance was given to Turkish classical music and folk music with a decrease in the number of programs of polyphonic music on the radio. It was not until the 1970s that a more consistent music policy was put into force in Turkey. Nowadays, however, in addition to the insufficiency of facilities, a steady decrease in the allocations to the arts in recent years -- especially due to the attitude of changing administrations -- has adversely affected the quality of the performances given.
Concerts and opera performances still play to a full house although public attention is limited to only a group, the so-called elites. One cannot but say it is a pity that Western classical music, introduced to the Turkish people after intense efforts, and giving way to the birth of many a talented Turkish composers, is being neglected by the hand which should be the one giving most support.
The recent news that Zeki Muren, a famous Turkish singer, had passed away forced me to think about the state of the arts in Turkey.
It has come a long way from the years when Zeki Muren first started to sing on the radio as a government employee, to today's relatively robust artenvironment in Turkey. However, I couldn't help but wonder how many lawmakers really see the arts as a potential tax revenue source, as well as a field in which to generate new jobs for the masses. What I am advocating is systematically and actively encouraging the business of art through the use of tax laws, block grants, and soft loans in order to encourage growth and more investments in this industry, thereby helping it to become a large tax revenue base for the nation, as well as to employ a sizable group of people.
This is probably the most delightful way of generating tax revenues, as well as jobs, that any government can come up with. According to a recent study commissioned by Washington, D.C.
's city government, -- mind you, the city is not the art capital of the U.S. or the world by any stretch of the imagination -- the arts generate $1.
4 billion each year in the city. Studies show that the arts also generate hotel,restaurant, and parking activity, which in turn feeds tax revenues into the city. Nationally, non-profit arts organizations in the United States annually expended $36.
8 billion and supported 1.3 million full-time equivalent jobs, according to a study by the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies. The total arts industry, both non-profit and for-profit, accounts for 6 percent of the GNP.
If you include the U.S. entertainment industry's revenues, the annual figures become truly gigantic.
The U.S. entertainment industry's exports alone make it the third largest export business of the United States after soybean exports and aerospace industries, in second place.
Most of the time, it takes sheer will and vision in encouraging arts and artists' development as a revenue base. A case in point is the city of Alexandria, Virginia, adjacent to Washington, D.C.
It wasn't too many years ago that a few people had the vision to turn an old, ugly World War I torpedo factory into a local Mecca for art lovers and area tourists alike, housing a number of talented artists, including Turkish-American artist Zeki Findikoglu, and generating income for the artists, as well as generating tax revenues for the city, state, and federal governments. Maybe all of the large cities in Turkey, including the megalopolises of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, need many, many such torpedo factories to help the Turkish government's budget deficits, while the citizens benefit greatly from these delightful activities.Once people are offered the opportunity, they do respond to art in any form and it is no longer a rich man's business or hobby.
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