 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Turkish music" style – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 | ||||||||
| Music of Turkey | ||||||||
| General topics | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genres | ||||||||
| Specific forms | ||||||||
| ||||||||
| Media and performance | ||||||||
| ||||||||
| Nationalistic and patriotic songs | ||||||||
| ||||||||
| Regional music | ||||||||
Turkish music, in the sense described here, is not themusic of Turkey, but rather a musical style that was occasionally used by European composers, most notably during theClassical era of Western art music. This music was modelled—though often only distantly—on the music of Turkish military bands, specifically theJanissary bands.
Although the "Turkish style" (alla turca) reached its height during the Classical period, composers as far back as the middleBaroque era had already written musical pieces in homage to Turkish military bands, such asJean-Baptiste Lully'sMarche pour la Cérémonie des Turcs fromLe Bourgeois gentilhomme.
An important impetus for Turkish music occurred in 1699, when Austria and the Ottoman Empire negotiated theTreaty of Karlowitz. To celebrate the treaty, the Turkish diplomatic delegation brought a Janissary band along with other performers to Vienna for several days of performances.
Although the Janissary sound was familiar in Europe during the 18th century, the Classical composers were not the first to make use of it; rather, the first imitators weremilitary bands. The cultural influence at first involved actual importation of Turkish musicians, asHenry George Farmer relates:
The importation of actual musicians was only a temporary phenomenon, and the later custom was to assign the Turkish instruments in European military bands to other performers.
Thus, Turkish music in Europe had two connotations—Eastern and military—for 17th- and 18th-century European composers. The Turkish association did not evaporate soon. Even during the 1820s, in planning the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven made a note to himself specifically stating that it would contain "Turkish" music. The use of the slang term "Turkish section" to describe the percussion section of an orchestra apparently persisted into modern times.[citation needed]
Eventually it became possible to write music with bass drum, triangle, cymbals, and piccolo without evoking a Turkish atmosphere, and in the later 19th century symphonic composers made free use of these instruments. Thus, in the long run, the Turkish instruments are a gift to Western classical music from the Ottoman military music tradition.
Turkish music (in the sense just given) is always lively intempo and is almost always a kind ofmarch.
When Turkish music was scored fororchestra, it normally used extrapercussion instruments not otherwise found in orchestras of the time: typically, thebass drum, thetriangle, andcymbals. These instruments were used by Ottoman Turks in their military music, so at least the instrumentation of "Turkish" music was authentic except for the triangle. Often there is also apiccolo, whose piercing tone recalls the shrill sound of thezurna (shawm) of OttomanJanissary music.
It seems that at least part of the entertainment value of "Turkish" music was the perceived exoticism. The Turks were well known to the citizens ofVienna (where Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven all worked) as military opponents, and indeed thecenturies of warfare betweenAustria andOttoman Empire had only started going generally in Austria's favor around the late 17th century. The differences in culture, as well as the frisson derived from the many earlier Turkish invasions, apparently gave rise to a fascination among the Viennese for all things Turkish—or even ersatz Turkish. This was part of a general trend in European arts at the time; seeTurquerie.
All three of the great Classical era composers,Haydn,Mozart, andBeethoven, wrote Turkish music. For sound files illustrating some of these works, see theExternal links section below.
Turkish music also appears in works ofJean-Philippe Rameau,Michael Haydn (Marcia turchesca, MH 601),Gioacchino Rossini,Ludwig Spohr, in two operas ofGluck –Die Pilger von Mekka (1764) andIphigenie auf Tauris (1779) – and in Symphony No. 6 in A minor ("Sinfonie turque") byFriedrich Witt (1770–1836).Paul Wranitzky, who in his lifetime was one of Vienna's most famed composers also wrote Turkish influenced music, including a large-scale symphony.Franz Xaver Süssmayr, best known for completing Mozart's unfinishedRequiem, also composed several Turkish works, including operas and symphonies (his "Sinfonia turchesca" for example). Other composers who have written excellent examples of Turkish music includeJoseph Martin Kraus,Ferdinand Kauer,Carel Anton Fodor ("Rondo alla turque" from his concerto for keyboard Op. 12) andFerdinando Paer.
In Turkish music, the percussion instruments often play this rhythm:[5]
This is the same rhythm as the marching cadence of soldiers: "Left ... left ... left, right, left ..."
The melodic instruments in Turkish music often emphasize the rhythm by playinggrace notes, either singly or several in succession, on the beat.[citation needed]
Both characteristics just mentioned can be seen in the following extract of Turkish music in the Mozart'sViolin Concerto No. 5:
The military rhythm and grace notes are also seen in left hand part for this passage from the Turkish music in Mozart's K. 331 piano sonata, mentioned above:
The role of Turkish music in a larger work seems to be to serve as a form of musical relaxation.[citation needed] Thus, in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the Turkish march serves as a period of lowered intensity between two more massive and emotionally charged sections. Turkish music commonly is found in finales, which (asCharles Rosen point out) are typically the most relaxed and loosely organized movements of Classical works.
Around the turn of the 19th century, "Turkish" music was so popular that piano manufacturers made special pianos with a "Turkish stop," also called the "military" or "Janissary" stop. The player would press apedal that caused a bell to ring and/or a padded hammer to strike the soundboard in imitation of a bass drum. The sound file for the first musical example above attempts to mimic the latter effect manually with a modern piano.
According toEdwin M. Good, the Turkish stop was popular for playing the Mozart K. 331 rondo, and "many were the pianists who gleefully used the Janissary stop to embellish it."[6]
Links with sound files of works cited
