Ethnomusicologist Etem Ruhi Üngör, whose research in this field is known worldwide, has travelled thousands of miles over the years, from city to city and village to village in search of traditional Turkish musical instruments. Every inch of his tiny flat is filled with books and his collection of 700 musical instruments, including many whose appearance and even names are unfamiliar. As well as obscure folk instruments, his remarkable collection includes a tanbur (classical long necked lute) made in 1887 by Uzunyan belonging to Tanburi Cemil Bey, a lavta (lute) made by Kosti Ventura in 1840 which belonged to Sultan Abdülaziz, girifts (reed instruments with eight holes) which belonged to the girift player Asim Bey and the famous ney players Tevfik and Sevki Sevgin, two 18th century dulcimers, rebabs (spike fiddles made of coconut shells), and kemençes (Black Sea fiddles). An unusual metal ney (classical Turkish reed flute) is one of the most interesting pieces in the collection. It was made by Neyzen Tevfik when he was staying at a psychiatric hospital undergoing treatment for alcoholism. The other patients kept breaking his wooden neys, and in desperation he removed a length of metal piping from his bed and fashioned a sturdier instrument for himself. (more…)

It is thought that cymbals have been in existence in the Middle East and Asia since the first millennium BC as tiny finger cymbals. Cymbals as we know them now developed later, and were made from various metals; usually copper and tin mixed with silver, and gradually became larger and thinner using various secret processes for a more diverse range of uses and sounds. Cymbals have been used in rhythmic music when Turkish armies marched to the beating of drums and the clashing of cymbals and gongs. (more…)

Western influence had already begun to be felt in Ottoman music towards the middle of the 19th century. These increased towards the end of the century, and led to efforts to change Ottoman music from monodic to polyphonic.

With the declaration of the republic in 1923, Cemal Reşid (REY), who was then studying music in Europe, returned to Turkey and began to teach at a music school established in Istanbul. At the same time, a number of talented young people were sent by the republic to various cities in Europe to study music. After they returned to Turkey, the group that would later be called ‘Türk Beşleri’ (The Turkish Five) and which prepared the groundwork for Modern Polyphonic Turkish Music, emerged. The common aim of the group was to use the traditional themes of traditional Turkish music together with the values of Western classical music that they had studied to produce a new polyphonic structure. In later stages, every composer who amed at a more contemporary sound interpreted the colours and mystery of popular melody in his own way, and instead of merely treating well-known popular melodies they began to achieve syntheses by means of abstraction. (more…)

In the period prior to the proclamation of the Republic in Turkey, opera, ballet and the theatre were mostly centred around Istanbul and Izmir. The first showing of opera at the imperial court was by artists trained by Guiseppe Donizetti (1788-1856) from the Italian opera. During the Republic, Ahmet Adnan Saygun, Necil Kazim Akses and Cemal Resit Rey were the first composers of opera, operettas and musicals.

A. Adnan Saygun’s first two operas, Özsoy and Tasbebek, Necil Kazim Akses’s Bay Önder staged in Ankara, a Mozart musical Bastien and Bastienne staged at the Ankara State Conservatory with pupils playing libretto in Turkish (1936),and the staging of western operas such as Madame Butterfly and Tosca (1940-1941) and the orchestrations, chorus and solo recitals of 1950-1952 all contributed to form a foundation for the establishment of today’s State Opera and Ballet. (more…)

Ottoman mehter music, which for centuries accompanied the marching Ottoman army into battle, still echoes in that of drum and zurna - an oboe-like woodwind instrument with seven holes above and one below - which are a part of folk culture all over Turkey. Mehter music was a symbol of sovereignty and independence, and its ardent sounds instilled the soldiers with strength and courage. The rousing songs and crashing sound of the great kös drums were at the same time capable of unnerving the enemy on the brink of battle, and the mehter music composers took pains to create works that produced this effect. (more…)

Music occupied a very important place in Ottoman society. Topkapi Palace was a virtual conservatory, where both women and men received intensive training in music. Every concubine mastered an instrument while also being instructed in singing and dancing. Indeed, there were concubines who learned to play the trumpet, usually considered a man’s instrument. The men, on the other hand, received their musical training in the Enderun, which was the palace school. Albertus Bobovius, for example, a Pole who entered this school while still young and spent twenty years there, contributed a great deal to Turkish music. Bobovius, who in Turkey took the name Ali Ufkî Bey and was an interpreter and translator at court, transcribed 544 works of Turkish music into European notation. It is thanks to this effort that these pieces can be played today. (more…)

The form of music today generally known as Türk Sanat Müziği, or Ottoman Classical Music, matured, developed in form and aesthetics and came to assume the identity of a form of classical music in parallel to the establishment, growth and increasing strength of the Ottoman state itself. This variety of music furnished products dealing with many subjects, such as religion, love and war. Each of these then came to develop its own varieties, styles and communities. Ottoman music was influenced by other musical cultures as new nations became absorbed into the empire, giving and receiving various elements. From the beginning of the 19th century, however, as the empire began to recede and collapse, increasing shallowness and laxness can be seen in Ottoman music. While rich modes and styles had been employed in the past, this concept gradually faded and turned into metropolitan entertainment music. That process has continued to the present day, and the ‘popular song’ has become increasingly popular and popularised, effectively taking the place of the other forms. (more…)

Bird houses are man’s humble offering to his winged, feathered friends, and one of the oldest and most important expressions of the love of and compassion for animals. The history of houses built for birds like sparrows, finches and swallows goes back a long way. Some of these tiny dwellings, whose numbers proliferated in parallel with the development of classical Ottoman architecture in the 15th century, indicate that they were being built, albeit on a smaller scale, already in the pre-Ottoman period. The purpose of these charming bird houses, which the Turks continued to build up to the 19th century, is to provide refuge to birds, who range freely through the skies but are consequently lonely to the same degree, and to protect them from storms, rain, mud and the burning sun. (more…)

Clock Tower in İzmir
The Clock Tower, which enhances Konak Square like a pearl with its extreme graceful appearance, is a monument of art as it faces the sea. The tower was built in 1901 by the Grand Vizier Küçük Sait Pasha by order of Sultan Abdülhamit. The clock was a present of the German Emperor, Wilhelm Il. The water of the fountains and ponds around the Clock Tower, which is the symbol of the city, flows down marble troughs.   (more…)

Cut stone, marble and brick are the building blocks for monumental religious architecture, city walls and fortifications, palaces and great civic buildings, and provide a powerful visual link to the past. There is, however, also a strong tradition of architecture which makes use of one of a far more practical and curiously durable material, and one which endows those same urban centres with access to a different, more intimate history. That material is wood. (more…)