Koymen-Mastersreport-2016
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DISCLAIMER: This document does not meet current format guidelines Graduate School at the The University of Texas at Austin. of the It has been published for informational use only. Copyright by Erol Gregory Mehmet Koymen 2016 The Report Committee for Erol Gregory Mehmet Koymen Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report: Conservative Progressivism: Hasan Ferid Alnar and Symbolic Power in the Turkish Music Revolution APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Sonia Seeman, Supervisor Elliot Antokoletz Conservative Progressivism: Hasan Ferid Alnar and Symbolic Power in the Turkish Music Revolution by Erol Gregory Mehmet Koymen, B.M. Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Music The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Acknowledgements. Many people and organizations have made this master’s report possible. For their generous financial support, I would like to thank the following organizations: the Butler School of Music, which has provided both a Butler Excellence Scholarship and a teaching assistantship; The University of Texas at Austin Center for Middle Eastern Studies, for a Summer 2014 FLAS grant to study Turkish; The University of Texas at Austin Center for European Studies, for an Academic Year 2014-2015 FLAS grant to study Turkish; the Butler School of Music, the University of Texas at Austin Graduate School, and the University of Texas at Austin Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, for professional development grants; the Institute of Turkish Studies, for a Summer Language Grant; and the American Research Insitute in Turkey, for a Summer Fellowship for Intensive Advanced Turkish Language Study at Boğaziçi University. By generously sharing their knowledge and access to valuable primary sources, Harun Korkmaz at the Istanbul University Turcology Research Institute, Süleyman Şenel, and especially Tahir Aydoğdu have made invaluable contributions to this report. At the University of Texas, numerous faculty members, including Dr. Elliot Antokoletz, Dr. Andrew Dell’Antonio, Dr. Katherine Arens, Dr. Samy Ayoub, Dr. Charles Carson, Dr. Jeannette Okur, and Dr. Michael Tusa have provided helpful input and support for this project. I would especially like to thank my advisor, Dr. Sonia Seeman, for her tireless support and many valuable insights. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Dr. Ali Koymen and Dr. Vicki Sapp, for their continued love and support throughout my studies. iv Abstract Conservative Progressivism: Hasan Ferid Alnar and Symbolic Power in the Turkish Music Revolution Erol Gregory Mehmet Koymen, MMusic The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Sonia Tamar Seeman Abstract: This study examines the reciprocity of the musical relationship between the Turkish and Austrian nation-states during the first half of the twentieth century through analysis of interactions between Turkish Five composer Hasan Ferid Alnar and his Austrian teacher Joseph Marx. Through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s Practice Theory and its concepts of habitus, fields of cultural production, and symbolic capital, I argue that the force driving this relationship was the strategic acquisition of symbolic capital by both parties within the context of their respective fields of music culture and power. By analyzing letters, documents, and newspaper articles found in Turkish and Austrian archives, I contend that the conservative composer Joseph Marx sought to bolster his powerful position in inter-war Austria through his activities as musical advisor in Turkey. Alnar, under the influence of his earlier teacher Hüseyin Saadeddin Arel, sought to enhance his positionality in the revolutionary early Turkish Republic as a progressive composer of Western-style music while preserving a space for Turkish Art Music marked by Republican v modernizers as backward and anti-revolutionary. From the perspective of disability theory, I locate a discourse of musical sickness and health in the Turkish Republican field of music’s division into vigorous, national Turkish Folk and sick, non-national Turkish Art Music by re- considering nationalist ideologue Ziya Gökalp’s role in the Turkish Music Revolution. Through musical analysis of Alnar’s Kanun Concerto and examination of its reception, I argue that Alnar’s association with Turkish Art Music caused him to be “musically disabled” in the context of the Turkish Folk/Art Music divide. This study throws new light on the transnational role of music in negotiating power and identity in the Turkish and Austrian nation-states, and challenges the prevailing model of unidirectional flow of cultural capital from Europe to Turkey during the twentieth century. Examination of Alnar’s dual musical habitus complicates the conventional narrative used to describe the Turkish Five group of composers. Analysis of the Kanun Concerto and its encoded agency challenges Pierre Bourdieu’s characterization of cultural products as reactions to but not shapers of culture. Finally, re-considering the Turkish Folk/Art Music divide in the field of Turkish music-cultural production in terms of disability theory and challenging Ziya Gökalp’s supremacy as theoretician of the Turkish music revolution bring new understanding to the Turkish Music Revolution. vi Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Literature Review .....................................................................................................19 Chapter 3: The Social Organism and the Disabling Field of Music-cultural Production in the Turkish Republic .........................................................................................................................41 Chapter 4: Historical Symmetry and Transnational Strategy: Joseph Marx in Istanbul ... 83 Chapter 5: Strategy Performed on Stage and Hiding in Plain Sight: Hasan Ferid Alnar’s Concerts and Joseph Marx’s Reviews......................................................................................114 Chapter 6: The Subversive Other Behind a Virtuosic Veil: Hasan Ferid Alnar’s Kanun Concerto ......................................................................................................................................133 Chapter 7: Hopelessly Disabled, or Lonely Visionary? Hasan Ferid Alnar Reception in Turkey .........................................................................................................................................171 Chapter 8: Conclusion ...............................................................................................................188 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................192 Primary Sources .........................................................................................................................200 vii Chapter 1: Introduction On Sunday, October 14, 1951 at around midnight, citizens of Vienna still tuned into the radio were in for a surprise. Perhaps hoping to hear a classical symphony or something of the sort before going to bed, they were greeted instead with a high, plucked-string instrument of foreign provenance accompanied by a string orchestra. The music seemed to be some sort of concerto, but exactly which sort could be determined. After making it through three movements of this foreign music, they learned they had just heard the live premiere of a concerto for a traditional Ottoman Turkish kanun and string orchestra. The kanun, they were likely told, was a traditional Ottoman zither-like instrument with roughly 26 rows of strings accompanied by sets of tuning levers manipulated to produce the various Turkish scales. In this case, they learned, the kanun was performed by the Turkish composer Hasan Ferid Alnar, who was heard as soloist and accompanied by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.1 How did a piece treating the Ottoman Turkish kanun and the Ottoman Turkish system of melodic modes (makam) to a Western European polyphonic setting come into being, and why was it premiered in Vienna? There are two potential narratives that could be employed to answer these questions. The first is a dominant, stereotyped narrative that has been established by twentieth-century historiographers of Turkish music to explain the genesis of Turkish forays into European music culture and European forays into Turkish music culture. This narrative has established dominant historical explanations, such as the role of Ziya Gökalp in determining the course of music reforms in the early Turkish Republic, and stereotyped stylistic categorizations, 1 There are conflicting dates for the Kanun Concerto’s premiere: Yılmaz Aydın writes that the premiere was given on April 23, 1951 in Türk Beşleri (see Aydın 2003). However, the archivist of the Vienna Radio Symphony, Ulrike Grandke, indicated to me over the course of April, 2013 correspondence that the only concert on record featuring Hasan Ferid Alnar in 1951 took place on Sunday, October 14, 1951 between the hours of 12:05 and 2:05 am. I have also found a concert announcement in the Viennese Radio Journal (Wiener Radio Zeitschrift) indicating that Alnar was to conduct a concert with the Vienna Radio Symphony on October 14. 1 such as the Turkish Five group of first-generation Turkish Republican composers. The second narrative,