Turkish Music

Resource Sheet

Prepared by Paul Tkachenko 5^th October 2003

N.B. Set browswer to Unicode to see Turkish letters!

Introduction

In this worksheet I will cover the following topics:

• Halk, Turkish folk music
• Sanat, Turkish art music
• Arabesk and Turkish pop music

The following theory:

• Makam
• Usul
• Taksim

& the following instruments:

• Bağlama Saz
• Oud
• Darbuka

And will listen to:

• 
  Dersim Dört Dağ İçinde (My Lesson in 4 Mountains) by Anon
• Oud Taksim by Münir Nurettin Beken based on Makam Hüseyni:
• 

• Pop song by Tarkan

Halk Music

This music is typically a solo voice accompanied by bağlama saz. There is a use of modes, but the microtones are often not as regular and strict as in Sanat music.

This example is taken from the east of the country and is very Arabic in flavour. Turkey has a huge diversity of folk music but it is this Arabic style that has proved most popular, especially in the pop style of Arabesk. This style of music once was banned from TV and Radio because it was blamed for the increased suicide rate.

Sanat Music and MAKAM

Otherwise known as Turkish classical music. During Ottoman times (16^th to mid-18th centuries in particular) old, mostly Arabic melodies where written down and standardised using a system which we now know as MAKAM theory. Most of this happened before the death of J.S. Bach.

The instrumentation varies depending on availability, but the Oud (arabic lute) is nearly always present.

Turkish music, music like western music is based upon dividing the octave into tones and semitones, giving us modes or scales.

Whilst Western music commonly uses the 12 tone octave, basic Makam use 53.

The distance between whole tones is divided into 9 commas in Makam theory. This gives rise to many more accidentals:

Each makam is made up of a tetrachord (dörtlü or with four notes) and pentachord (beşli or with five notes).

• All tetrachords must contain 22 commas and there are 8 of them.
• All pentachords must contain 31 commas and there are 12 of them.
• In basic makamlar (makams) there must be 53 commas within the octave.
• Because most Turkish music is melody based, the dominant can be the fourth or fifth note in the makam.

This is Çargah makam, which is the same as our C major scale.

This is Buselik which is the same as our Aeolean mode (note that only the lower G is sharpened as this is the only leading note).

A taksim is an improvisation with in one makam where the player normally starts on the tonic, working to the dominant and then returns to the tonic.

Usul

Usul are the rythmic patterns that underlie most Turkish music.

Famous for its complicated time signatures, Turkish music can be rhythmically very interesting. The most interesting are Aksak (lit. limping) Usul rhythms which use 5, 7 and 9 patterns:

The most common Turkish drum, the darbuka, realises the various usul patterns using a dum tek system. Here are a few examples: