New Recordings of Turkish Classical Music
Walter Feldman, University of Pennsylvania

WHILE THE REPERTOIRE of the Mevlevî dervishes has been documented by several Turkish and foreign LP, cassette and CD recordings, the corresponding secular performance cycle, the courtly fasil, has had virtually no commercial recordings in its integrity. Only individual items have appeared, usually performed by large mixed choruses, reflecting the Turkish aesthetic of the 1950s- 80s rather than a "traditional" performance. Many Turkish recordings do present a genre known today as "fasil," but these represent the music of Istanbul nightclubs from ca. 1880-1950, not of the Ottoman court. The courtly fasil was a cyclical concert format which had the following structure at the beginning of the nineteenth century:

1. instrumental pessrev 2. instrumental taksîm (improvisation) 3. vocal taksîm 4. first beste or kâr 5. second beste 6. aggir semâ'î 7. one or more ssarki 8. yürük semâ'î 9. saz semâ'î

The pessrev is the instrumental genre introducing the fasil. It emerged out of the instrumental pîshrow of medieval Iranian music, which had become defunct by the later eighteenth century. It is therefore a distant relative of the Uzbek/Tajik forms soqil and pessraw which share a similar Iranian origin. Since the mid- eighteenth century the Turkish pessrev has developed along highly distinctive lines, employing mainly the long usûl (rhythmic cycle) patterns, which may have thirty-two, fifty-six, eighty-eight or even longer compound periods stretching to well over a hundred beats per measure. The pessrev is composed in four sections, called hâne, usually with modulating makams in each one. A ritornello, called teslîm, helps to unify the composition.

The kâr was the dominant vocal form of Iranian, Transoxanian and Turkish music during the sixteenth century. It had employed several short to medium usûls. The texts were (and are) always in Persian, but this poetic text coexists with a non-textual groups of syllables known as the terennüm, which are set precisely to the composed melody. The kâr became rare in Turkish music after the middle of the eighteenth century.

The beste was considered the most significant element In the fasil; from the early seventeenth century until the last third of the nineteenth century Turkish composers were judged mainly on their success in creating bestes. Bestes use most of the long usûl patterns employed by the pessrev, but their compostional structure is otherwise quite different. The beste is created out of two essential parts, a basic melody, called zemîn, and a modulating section, called miyân. The first, second and fourth stich of the text (which might be a gazel or a murabba') is set to the zemîn, while the third stich is set to the miyân. In addition many, but not all bestes employ a terennüm section, which sometimes functions as a long ritornello. Texts of the beste are always in Turkish. The compositional structure of the aggir semâ'î and the yürük semâ'î resemble that of the beste, with the important distinction that they may only employ the short usüls aksak semâ'ï (10/8) or semâ'î (6/8) or the "heavy" (aggir) versions of these, 10/4 and 6/4 for the former. During the late eighteenth (or early nineteenth century) the aggir and yürük semâ'î forms were borrowed by Syrian art music.

During the seventeenth century a popular urban form known as ssarki had become adopted by the Ottoman elite, who began to write elegant versions of the simple strophic türkü poetic form. For over two centuries it was the center of a less formal style of performance, along with vocal and instrumental improvisations (taksîm). During the nineteenth century it became fashionable to create small cycles (takim) out of ssarkis with contrasting rhythms, always beginning with the slow aggir aksak semâ'î (10/4) or aggir aksak (9/4), or sometimes sengîn semâ'î (6/4). Such a takim of ssarkis might be performed between the aggir and yürük semâ'î during the fasil, or else as an expanded cycle interrupted by vocal and instrumental taksîm improvisations. As the courtly music declined in the later nineteenth century the ssarki was adopted by the modern nightclub (gazino) where it became the central genre of the nightclub fasil. While the nightclub fasil usually closed with urban dance genres, such as longa and sirto, the courtly fasil always ended with a saz semâ'î, which had a structure similar to that of the pessrev, set to the short aksak semâ'î usûl (10/8). The saz semâ'î seems to have entered Syrian and Egyptian music in the later nineteenth century, where it became a major genre of the waslah cycle. These Levantine saz semâ'îs were either local compositions or, more often, stylistically altered versions of both the courtly and the nightclub Turkish saz semâ'îs.

The current series is an attempt to document the Ottoman courtly fasil performance practice and repertoire, employing two of the most highly regarded classical (klâsik) vocalists. Of course one should not exaggerate the degree to which these performances can claim to be “traditional” (geleneksel). What is currently regarded as klâsik has many elements of the traditional, but the absence of a recognized standard for the courtly vocalist since official Ottoman patronage began to decline in the last third of the 19th century, plus the sharp separation of secular and religious vocal styles beginning with the Turkish Republic (1923), have allowed several socially and individually based styles to predominate.

This series gives pride of place to the performance style of Ms. Meral Uggurlu (b. 1939), regarded as the leading female vocalist in Turkey. Ms. Uggurlu is a truly great representative of the female Ottoman vocal style as it has devel- oped in this century. Her voice is warm and caressing but avoids sentimentality. She is able to reach into the upper range, especially in the modulating section (miyân) of the beste form, with a full voice which is never shrill or intonationally vague. The rhythmic subtlety of her phrasing and ornamentation within strictly metrical compositions are breathtaking.

Viewed as a total performance it must be observed that this series is part of a radio “tradition” in which the vocalist totally dominates the instruments. The accompanists’ tracks are dubbed over the vocal track; this lessens the excitement of the relationship between singer and accompanists which characterizes a tradi- tional Turkish performance. Fortunately on the fifth cassette Ms. Uggurlu was accompanied by an ensemble led by the udist Cinuçen Tanrikorur, and the vocal and instrumental performances were recorded simultaneously. The results are far more musical than any of the other recordings. The performance of Dr. Allâeddin Yavassça (b. 1926) on cassette no. 3 allows the listener to appreciate the singing of one of the foremost classical male vocalists of the second half of the twentieth century, who is also a noted authority on the repertoire. While his interpretations are on a very high level, there is no doubt that his voice was more supple on the radio recordings which he made ten to twenty years ago.

The recordings all are drawn from the courtly fasil and ssarki repertoire of the nineteenth and sometimes the eighteenth centuries. The cassettes are accompanied by small booklets which contain biographies of the two performers, paragraph length biographies of all composers, and texts of the vocal items, all in Turkish only. The repertoire is the following:

Cassette no: (1)a. Ferahnâk Fasli (Ismail Dede Efendi d. 1046, Dellâlzâde d. 1869, Zekâ'î Dede d. 1897) b. Ferahnâk Takim (2)a. Mahur Fasli (Ebûbekîr Agga d. 1759, Eyyubî Mehmed d. 1850) b. Evçara Fasli (Küçük Mehmed Agga d. 1800, Ismail Dede) (3)a. Beste-Isfahan Fasli (Ebûbekir Agga) b. Büzürk Fasli (Sadik Agga d. 1815, Sultan Selim III d. 1808) (4)a. Suzidil Fasli (Tanbûrî Ali d. 1902) b. Segâh Fasli (Zaharya d. 1740?, Dellâlzade, Itrî d. 1712) (5)a. Dügâh Fasli (sseyhülislâm Es'at d. 1753, Tabi Mustafa d. 1750?, Haci Faik Bey d. 1891) b. Muhayyer Takim

All of these fasils and takims of ssarki represent the core of the currently performed classical Ottoman repertoire, most of which were documented and published either by Rauf Yekta Bey in the 1920s or by his successors in the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory in the 1950s. Only the fasils performed by Dr. Yavassça on cassette no. 3 show significant variation from the published versions. It is not clear whether these represent an alternative transmission or his own variations created when he performed these same pieces on his radio fasil program on Istanbul Radio in the early 1980s. For the connoiseur perhaps the greatest treat is the Dügâh Fasli on cassette no. 5 which combines superb vocal and instrumental performances with an erudite repertoire created in this series of related compound makams (terkib) which became fashionable in the eighteenth century and were little developed since then. A careful listener will observe that the nature of the model combination is significantly different in almost each of the recorded items in the Dügâh fasil.

The instrumental component of the fasil performance is not accorded sufficient recognition. Taksîms are generally few and rudimentary, except for the fine kanun taksîms of Erol Deran on tapes no. 1 and 2, and the ud taksîm of Cinuçen Tanrikorur on no. 5. The pessrevs are usually abbreviated, and their performances are generally uninspired. This reflects the radio and concert performance practice of the last thirty years whereby the total musicality of the performance is sacrificed for the professional prestige of either the vocalist or the choral conductor. Even with the above criticisms this series should be recognized as a major accomplishment which allows a wider public to enjoy and study the finest classical Ottoman repertoire performed by the finest contemporary voices. One might suggest that English, French or German translations of the biographies would increase the value of this enterprise.

Türk Mûsikisi Klâsik Eserler Serisi. No. 1, 2, 4, 5: Meral Uggurlu (vocalist) No. 3: Dr. Alâeddin Yavassça (vocalist). Five sixty minute cassettes. Artistic direction: Yusuf Omürlö. Produced by and available from: Kubbealti Akademisi Kültür ve San'at Vakfi, Peykhane Sokak no. 3, Çemberlitass/Istanbul, Türkiye (Turkey). Also available from AEG Sema Vakf, Inc., P.O. Box 1775, 217 Milford Street, Salisbury, MD 21802