dubsahara

VIOLIN

There has been a string playing tradition in Turkish Music, long before the violin was brought in to the Ottoman Empire. The most used string instruments were; the Iklig, Gicek, Ki-yak, Kopuz and Kemence. In the late centuries only the Kemence became the main instrument. Like the kemence; Iklig, Gicek, Kiyak and bowed Kopuz was also played on the knee.

The kemençe consists of two words in Persian. Keman and Ce: Keman means violin and ce is small, then we can con-sider the Kemence as a small violin and it held the place of the violin in classical Turkish Music. The Kemençe has three strings and tuned in fourths and fifths. However there is an-other type of Kemence, which has four strings. This had been used by Kemenceci Vasilaki for the first time. Huseyin Saad-eddin Arel re-used the four stringed kemence as an alternative to the western violin and tuned it as same as violin which in-creases the possibilities of the instrument. But when the west-ern violin entered in to the classical Turkish Music, it was ri-valled by the kemence. Therefore there are stylistic differ-ences between the two instruments and must not be compared with each other because the kemence has a different playing technique and style. Some of the violin players of the late century has imitated the style of kemence in violin playing and established a kind of different violin sound.

Keman is a very old Persian word. It was used for the violin in Istanbul for the first time. The stem of word Keman in Per-sian is: Hemiden which means bowing or bending. In all western languages the meaning of the word Bow is the same as in Turkish: Yay. Bow means ok in Turkish. There is an instrument called Iklig in Anatolia.. The bow of Iklig was also called keman and the performer ke-manci in Anatolian Turkish. Today, keman refers to the European violin. But two centuries ago keman was not the same instrument which we know as an European violin. The old keman is called the Rebab today.

Before the violin was brought in to Turkey, the Sinekeman occupied the place of the violin. Rauf Yekta Bey suggests that Sinekeman together with the Ney and the Tambur estab-lished an excellent trio in the peak time of the Turkish Music at the time of the Sultan Selim III. Rauf Yekta suggests some claims such as Sinekeman being brought in to Turkey by Miron, a Moldavian violinist during the time of Sultan Selim III (1789-1807). But Sinekeman was played long be-fore 1789. Toderini who lived in Istanbul between 1781 till 1786 suggests that Sinekeman was already common among the Turks. Although Sinekeman is not a Turkish instrument, Rauf Yekta suggests that we do not know the exact date of the first time it was used. There was already a tradition of violin playing among the non-muslim musicians such as Ke-mani Yorgi Aga, Kemani Anastasios and Kemani Stefano.

Probably the oldest examples of the violins were found in cities such as, Istanbul and Trabzon as a result of being in commercial contact with Latin countries. Rauf Yekta Bey suggested that the violin was brought in to the Ottoman Em-pire from Austria- Hungary via Serbia and the Balkans. But It is not known exactly when the violin appeared in the Otto-man Empire. Although it did not appear in Turkish Music immediately, it was common among the people and in the Kahvehane-s (Cafe or Tea rooms). But it was Yorgi, a fa-mous violinist who introduced the modern violin to the bour-geoisie. Sixteen years after Fonton, another westerner Blain-ville mentioned Yorgi as the violinist of the Sultan. Aksoy claims that an older document than Fonton and Blainville ex-ists, which is the picture of ??Turkish Musicians playing the violin? by a Swiss painter called Liotard. But the oldest document is Paralleles des Ancients et des Modernes a book by Perrault. Perrault mentioned an Iranian violinist who played the violin in the French ambassador?s residence in Is-tanbul. But we do not know if the violin was a western type or eastern.

The violin took its place in Turkish Music even in the Der-vishes convent. It was also used to perform in groups at the palace. The number of violins in these groups increased gradually. One of the writers of the 19th Century says (Ozalp Derleme)
?…There were cafe?s in different places of Istanbul that were like concert halls. In those places occasionally performers such as the kemençe players Vasilaki, the violinists Tatyos, Memduh and Tanburi Ovakim…. who were well known, would give concerts on Fridays and Sundays. in day time and at night. Towards the end of the 19th Century these cafes were called Semai Cafes. The mu-sic which was performed in those places had different motives from Turkish Folk Music and classical Turkish Music. At the same time, performing in casinos became a profes-sion. The most magnificent month for these places was the Ramadan. People who wanted to listen to Poem and Music recitals used to visit these places..?

TUNING:
Players did not use the western tuning system although they changed the chanterelle to one tone lower. When we look at the past, before the violin and Sinekeman were used, the first strings of the Kemence and the Rebab were tuned to D. When the keman first appeared in Istanbul the tuning did not suit the players and they changed the first string to one tone lower which nowadays is still the case, although some Turk-ish Music players use the international tuning system today. Another opinion is that, before they were met with the mod-ern violin, they were using the Sinekeman and the first string of it, was tuned to D. When the violin was introduced, they had some difficulty to play it with the chanterelle E and they changed it into D.
I have heard personally the following opinion from a famous Kemence player Cuneyd Orhon. He said that some of the makams in Turkish Music are very difficult to perform on the violin. These makams in the high pitches have got critical in-tervals especially on Gerdaniye (D) Therefore it was easier to play with them on the open string and they usually played with the same tuning.

The violin entered and being used in Turkey as a result of the entrance of western tradition and music. We find out that, earliest relationship between Turkish and Western Music has started in the 16th Century. François I, then the king of France, had sent an ensemble to the Suleyman II as early as 1543. Elizabeth I had also sent an organ as a present to the Sultan Murat III in 1599. But the real occupation of the western music started in 1826. When the Sultan Mahmut II abandoned the old Jannisary army, he founded a modern army called Nizam-_ Cedid. Therefore the old mehter band as a part of the old military tradition was also disbanded, a new western style brass team was established. In two years time (1828) Giuseppe Donizetti was invited and he founded the first western style military band. The band became the Sultan?s Music Ensemble so called Muzika-i Humayun. Support for western Music increased. Opera and Theatre companies appeared and there were performances at the Pal-ace in Istanbul that was then the capital of the Ottoman Em-pire. Great virtuosos came from Europe to give concerts, in-cluding Franz Liszt and Henry Vieuxtemps. Mesut Cemil Tel who is the son of Tamburi Cemil Bey, writes in his book called ?Tanburi Cemil Bey? in Hayati?,
?…When Vieuxtemps visited Istanbul, Tan-buri Cemil Bey played for him. Vieuxtemps was impressed with his playing and marvel-lous bow technique. REFERENCE