Saygun, the most internationally
regarded of the Turkish Five, grew up in Izmir, his mathematician
father having founded the city’s National Library. Largely
self-trained, he won a Turkish Ministry of Education scholarship
to go to Paris in 1928, studying under d’Indy at the Schola
Cantorum. Eight years later he collaborated with Bartók during
his visit to Turkey, collecting and notating nomadic folk
melodies from the Osmaniye neighbourhood of Adana, north of
old Antioch. Voice of Atatürk’s Republican reforms, holding
key administrative and advisory positions in the government
and broadcasting sectors - he was also on the Executive of
the International Folk Music Council - he taught pre-war at
the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory, and post-war at the Ankara
State Conservatory. Later, Bosphorus-based at Mimar Sinan
University, he led a generation in composition and ethnomusicology.
His legacy includes five operas, five symphonies, five concertos,
four string quartets, and a quantity of piano music – as well
as the 1942 oratorio Yunus Emre (focusing on the medieval
folk poet, sufi, troubadour and humanist), admired by Tippett
and conducted by Stokowski at a UN concert in New York in
1958 (performance tapes: Library of Congress, Call No LWO
7483, r35B3-36A2, preservation master).
CPO’s championship
of his symphonies (999 819-2; 999 968-2; 777 043-2) and quartets
is a courageous enterprise (see links below to reviews of
previous discs).
Saygun’s output
has for so many years been the exclusive domain of Turkish
musicians that to find it now in the hands of young Europeans,
placed in a universalising context, freed of propagandist,
parochial labelling, can only be a good thing. Even the documentation
of these CDs is independent. Not a Turkish name in sight -
ipso facto no reference to Turkey’s leading Saygun
authority, Emre Aracı, a diehard Anglophile whose
book on the composer was published by Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, Istanbul,
in 2001 (Ahmed
Adnan Saygun: Doğu-Bati Arası Müzik Köprüsü ISBN 975-08-0228-4: link).
Regrettable, surprising, though his absence is, Patricia Gläfcke’s
detailed notes make excellent reading. She sees Saygun as
‘Preserver and Renewer’, a ‘universal talent’ between ‘tradition
and innovation’. ‘His consideration of the folk transmission
and traditional elements, as well as their innovative treatment
and new further development,’ she says, ‘place him together
with other European artists such as Béla Bartók and Manuel
de Falla’. Endorsing
Aracı’s view that he was the ‘musical
bridge between East and West’, she maintains ‘he struck a
balance between Eastern tradition and the Western stylistic
stamp, between the inclusion of Turkish melodies and their
treatment in Western idioms’– without, critically, ever stooping
to ‘superficial collage’ populist style.
‘In his quartets’,
Gläfcke believes, Saygun ‘is first and foremost a European
and to be numbered among those who, very much conscious of
their cultural heritage, regarded themselves as universal
musicians and composers.’ Gravity-centred post-war statements
steeped in German rigour leavened with Gallic elegance, their
language moulded by Eastern Europe and the Orient, their world
open to fantasy and narrative digression, to nostalgic/ironic
flashback - Ottoman monody for instance - they comprise an
astonishing body of works. Instinctive chamber music.
Imaginatively
responsive to the chemistry and sonority of the medium, the
First cuts a mature profile. Its final G major chord may leave
events hanging in the air inconclusively, but for the rest
there’s much to savour. The folkloristic variation Adagio,
consummately scored, is especially affecting; likewise the
Komitas-flavoured third movement with its atmospherically
droned pentatonic trio, cello and viola in harmonics – a winning
invention (1:33). The Turkish-rhythm finale with its splendid
fugal offset (4:46) exhilarates. It must have saddened Saygun
that, following the premiere in Paris by the Parrenins (23
October 1954), the first Turkish account had to wait thirty-six
years, a few weeks before his death at the age of 83. The
closest of the canon to Bartók, the Second Quartet ranges
across intellectually denser, texturally more complex territory.
Commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation,
first played in Washington by the Juilliard Quartet, programmed
subsequently at the 1959 Edinburgh Festival, it offers muscle
and argument. The second movement, with its hypnotic col
legno cello ostinato, climaxes and pizzicati, the
fugal exchanges of the finale (from 1:22), add up to quite
a tour-de-force. ‘Thrilling’ felt George Day Thorpe, the Washington
Evening Star’s critic at the premiere, Library of Congress,
28 November 1958. (NB: CPO’s booklet claim of 22 November
squares with neither Aracı’s cataloguing nor newspaper reviews
filed for the 29th). Saygun dedicated the Third
Quartet to his Hungarian wife, Nilüfer. The string writing
and nuances, the ‘conversational’ and imitative commentary,
the rhythmic assuredness, the contrasting of slow and fast
episodes, the mix of occident and orient - all carry his most
emphatic signature. Could the passage at 9:20 of the first
track be by anyone else? A meeting of 20th century
vigours and string attacks, Shostakovich desolation, angry
outbursts, late Beethoven introspection, old European harmonic
oases, haunting solos (the Lento’s viola). Gläfcke
thinks the piece ‘not entirely unproblematical’, ‘initially
a little unwieldy’. That’s not my impression. (NB: CPO misleadingly
idents one long first movement – Grave, contrary
to the score – I Grave-Vivo, II Agitato). Like
Haydn’s Op. 103, Saygun’s final effort was left unfinished,
a two-movement slow/quick torso on which, Aracı confirms, he was still working at the
time of his death, 6 January 1991. I warm to Gläfcke’s description
of the swan-song second movement: ‘a bequest in the form of
an invitation’, gifted with an ‘amused’ smile.
All credit to the Franco-Belgian Quatuor
Danel, currently Quartet-in-Residence at the University of
Manchester, for their belief in this music. Backed by classy
production and engineering from Westdeutsche Rundfunk, they
deliver readings of fabulous clarity, discipline and tonal
character. Every slur and dot, each dynamic, all means of
attack, phrasing and coloration, is here for the relishing.
The unanimity of teamwork, the individuality of the solos,
suggest a quartet that knows and likes itself, and isn’t shy
about personality or projection. When it comes to the tricky
unharmonised unison/octave writing Saygun indulges every so
often, they could not be more confident - every intonation
and awkward corner precision matched, each attack confident
and dramatic.
In Nos. 1 and
3, following Bartókian precedent, Saygun indicated timings
for each movement: ‘he was quite meticulous in that way,’
Aracı notes. Overall, the Danels favour slower
speeds:
| No 1 |
Saygun |
25:05 |
Quatuor Danel |
29:23 |
| No 3 |
Saygun |
25:25 |
Quatuor Danel |
29:16 |
| No 2 |
[Aracı
|
19:30] |
Quatuor Danel |
30:39 |
| No 4 |
[Aracı
|
11:30] |
Quatuor Danel |
12:41 |
As did, comparatively, the Anatolian String Quartet in their
version of No 1 at 29:32 [Hungaroton HCD 31521, (p) 1992]
– a performance so musically void, woefully played and poorly
recorded, however, it should have come with a health warning.
On balance, given the articulate speech and structured delivery
that results, I have no problem accommodating the Danel’s
decision.
Scores and parts
of all four quartets are available from Peermusic (Germany)
GmbH (link).
The Bilkent University Saygun Archives in Ankara hold the
manuscripts (link).
Ateş
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Links to previous
reviews in this series:
Symphonies
Nos. 1 & 2
Symphony
No. 4/Violin Concerto
Symphonies
Nos. 3 & 5
Quatuor Danel
