Pages: 269-289

Language: Turkish

Date: 2021-09

Type: Book Chapter

Publication: Current Debates in Social Sciences 2021

Publisher: Ijopec

Abstract

Beste, a loanword from Persian, is the most commonly used term to denote composition in Turkish and has acquired the meaning of producing new musical works in Istanbul. This article analyzes the vocabulary in Ottoman classical music and Turk-ish folk music with similar meanings to the word beste. In Turkish, "koşmak" is probably the oldest known term that means to set music to a poem. According to Fuat Köprülü, even though this term was used before Islam, the earliest appearance of the term is in Dıvânü Lugâti't-Türk (11th century). By the 16th century, we see that the terms yakmak (as in türkü yakmak) and bağlamak (as in murabba bağlamak) were widely used. Arabic loanwords such as telif, tasnif, and ihtira were also employed by the Istanbul-based Ottoman Turkish music tradition. Apart from these words, we encounter a wide variety of terms in folk music tradition. If we categorize and analyze these terms, we can see that this vocabulary can be sorted into five main categories. If we look at these categories, we see that the majority of the vocabulary consists of terms that denote the creation of contrafacta. The second category consists of words that denote the creation of variants. Apart from these terms, a new practice called giydirme has emerged among the Alevi musicians in recent years. Gi-ydirme, based on creating new musical materials through improvisation, is very different from composing regarding the intentions of the performer. In contrast to the fixed and closed compositional form, giydirme can be described as an improvised, temporary, and open work.