MAKAM IN THE WORKS OF TURKISH POLYPHONIC MUSIC COMPOSERS A STUDY OF FOUR EXAMPLE

Abstract

Turkish Poliphonic Music has a history of at least 150 years from now. Jannisery Mehter was nearly 100 percent replaced by the Western Band by mid 19'th Century a tendency called westernization process which was higlighted by the decleration of Tanzimat(regulations) in 1839 accomponied by some radical changes in social/political life in Ottoman Empire. Through the period of social/political changes that continued for last decades of Ottoman Empire which eventually lead to the establishment of Turkish Republic in 1923, the Poliphonic Music and its genres were quickly beacame the signs of artistic expression marking the change from Feodal Community to Burgoise Society replacing the old values with the new ones. Till than the artistic task of Polyphonic music composing here in Turkey mainly have been to create new forms of Modern music displaying cultural idioms. In this document, I will try to examine technically the scores of some Modern and Contemporary Turkish Composers which ı’ll chose from various periods of Turkısh Polyphonic Music. By doing this I will try to generalize some common methods frequently used by the Turkısh composers to display Makam features in their music and question their relevance to makam tradition as means of compositional representation.