Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907-1991) was one of Turkey's most prominent composers, described in The Times obituary as "the grand old man of Turkish music, who was to his country what Sibelius is to Finland, what de Falla is to Spain and what Bartók is to Hungary" (15 January 1991). Yet so far Saygun's life and works have never been the subject of a critical study in or outside Turkey. This thesis aims to create a comprehensible picture of his life and music for the first time. Divided into three parts, Part I of the thesis presents an annotated biography, preceded by a short introductory survey on the state of European music within the Ottoman Empire, which was significant in Saygun's upbringing. Taking as source material scattered newspaper articles, interviews and hitherto unpublished letters and a diary belonging to the composer, Part I focuses on Saygun's musical upbringing in Izmir and his subsequent education in Paris under Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum between 1928 and 1931. Also amongst the issues that are addressed here is the important role Saygun played in the musical life of the country on his return to Turkey from Paris, which was being rapidly transformed under Kemal Atatürk's reform movement; his enthusiasm for Turkish folk-music which led to a collaboration with Bela Bartók that finally culminated in the latter's celebrated field-trip to Anatolia in 1936 and his friendship with Michael Tippett, drawn from Tippett's original unpublished letters. The thesis shows that Saygun was not only responsible for training future musicians of Turkey in Western compositional techniques, but also himself wrote works in line with the country's modem music policy which took the principles of European polyphonic music as a model. As a prolific composer Saygun's output comprised five operas, five symphonies, three string quartets, five concertos and a wide range of chamber and choral music. Taking selective works, Part II looks at his developing style, beginning with the influence of the Schola Cantorum education and the effects of the music policy of the early republican years on his output and establishes him as the national composer of Turkey. Works discussed include the oratorio Yunus Emre (1942), his most celebrated work, which immediately became a symbol of the music reforms and was subsequently conducted by Leopold Stokowski in New York in 1958, the first two string quartets, the first two symphonies and the two piano concertos. Part III is a catalogue raisonné which has been compiled through evaluating existing lists of works and going through all the autograph manuscript scores of the composer that are housed at the Bilkent University Adnan Saygun Archives in Ankara. Since Saygun's works have never been systematically catalogued before, the information given here includes dates of composition, instrumentation, duration, dedication, location of manuscripts, publication and recording details, as well as translations of hitherto unpublished analytical notes on certain works written by the composer.

Makams are well-defined modes of classical Turkish music. They can be taken as the Turkish music counterparts of Western music tonal structures at a certain level. Nevertheless, makams have additional features such as the usage of specific notes resulting from their different architecture and the special use of scales (i.e. progression). The main goal of this study is to construct a platform for identifying makams through a computer program by proposing a machine learning mechanism. There are restrictionson the mechanism related to the characteristics of the task. Such a mechanism should represent real-time sequential input with continuous values, should handle possible errors in this input and show immediate learning with limited data. These restrictions are valid and necessary for an analogy with the act of listening to music. A Boltzmann machine, modified for this purpose is designed, implemented and used in this study as this learning mechanism. Two characteristics of this study define its significance. First, this study is on the structural features of makams of classical Turkish music. Second, the identifying mechanism is a Boltzmann machine having a different schema than statistical identification tasks in tonality induction.

Swan is a multimedia work for conducted ensemble with amplified instruments, electronics and video projections. Swan is about going out: going out to the street, to the club, to a ritual, to a party or a funeral. It’s about real places with real people, but less about the realities of these places and more about their vibe. It’s about getting out of home, the studio, the institution, going to places where people connect and do things, sing, dance, laugh, cry, perform or celebrate. The music of Swan come from ‘outside.’ Swan’s aesthetic is a blend of Turkish/Islamic and pop-cultural elements. The opening section, Korridor, is a drone/ambient movement with a big trance synth part. It is ritual music. It is big, dense, heavy, and it moves slowly, like lava. Karaoke Mahshar is a Turkish Trance-Pop hybrid. It is a very melancholic, dark piece of music. The instrumental choir sing an emotional pop/“fantasy music” (a Turkish genre) melody in unison over a flamboyant electronic track. It’s the soundtrack to a club for the wasted, for emotional after-hours karaoke. The final section, Rod Modell, is a dub-techno influenced ambient movement. It is the sound of a giant, post-apocalyptic mosque - a mosque sunken in chalky waters. This section evolves to a big, stretched monophonic melody, a song from the old times, which finally cadences to an electronically processed “tilâvet”. I started composing Swan in July 2016 in Turkey, before the military coup attempt took place. The work is not programmatic, however, the sound materials I worked with, the musical references and the sonic and visual iconography it incorporates are rather influenced by and derive from the sounds, sights and emotions I experienced during my stay. By the end of my visit, a person who had been very dear to my heart, Ferhunde Köke, had passed away. I recorded the sounds of her burial accompanied by a hafız’s recitation of the Surah Al-Baqarah 2:156 from the Holy Qur’an which I edited, processed and ended this work with.

My project is first and foremost about developing a pedagogical method for teaching Middle Eastern folk and classical music on the violin. As a secondary goal, I want to know if my own playing could benefit from applying such a method and become more skilled in expressing myself artistically on my instrument.  In order to achieve this, first, I have transcribed and notated music from different music styles of the Middle East, including Kurdish, Persian, Arabic and Turkish music and described the specific traits of these different styles. Then, I have created a method of how to represent different stylistically important elements in the music, e.g. the most popular ornaments used in this music, as well as finding new ways of representing them by new symbols. Finally, I have devised exercises for learning and perfecting these style elements, such as ornaments.           There is no well-established method for teaching the Middle Eastern styles of violin playing (Eilenberg, 1993). This fact makes it challenging for students to learn and pass on the tradition. Unlike Western Classical music, Middle Eastern music involves using different modal systems, including scales with quarter tones. The modes and corresponding scales are called Maqam and there are a great many of them. (Todorov, 2018)A violinist playing this style of music, usually uses intricate ornamentations in playing on these scales when making an extemporization or improvisation on the maqam, called Taksim. Not having a method for this complicated music style, makes a new learner to rely solely on learning by ear and learn through imitation, which is today often performed by listening to recorded sources. In my personal experience, it took many years of careful listening and imitating to learn how to play Middle Eastern music on the violin.          As an accomplished violinist and teacher, now I want to establish and develop my method so students can take advantage of it and learn this music more thoroughly, faster and become more accomplished in expressing themselves within the style. My hope is that this method will help preserve the Middle Eastern style of violin playing and make it easier to pass on to the next generations. Furthermore, the method will also help an interested foreigner to understand and potentially learn Middle Eastern music on the violin. Thus, my research interest is to investigate in what way I can describe, notate the pertinent stylistic elements of the music for to develop a ‘Method for oriental violin playing’, including notations, exercises, and teaching process, that can make a musician understand the Middle Eastern music styles and learn to play them. The ultimate aim is to pass the tradition easier and faster, giving aspiring violinists possibility to develop their violin playing within this field. Hopefully, from notating and transcribing these styles the tradition can be preserved. A specific question is also to investigate the usefulness of the method for groups of violins.   Secondary research interest is to investigate how this work might influence the development of my own playing, in terms of technique and expressing.    Summary of research questions:    -              How can I describe and notate the Middle Eastern violin styles with details? -              What are the most important stylistic elements and techniques?  -              How can I teach this music? -              How can I pass on the tradition faster and easier with the help of a method in a way that develops the field of Middle Eastern violin styles? -              Can I develop my own playing and artistic skills by applying exercises for stylistic features? / <p>Samai Hijaz                                       Göksel Baktagir (Turkish) Bogazici                                            Baki Kemanci (Turkish)</p><p>Alan Kamil – Violin </p><p>Feras Sharstan – Kanun</p><p>Saman Taha – Piano</p><p>Mårten Hillbom – Raqq and Cajon </p><p> </p><p>Swedish folk music meets Kurdish folk music!    (Kurdish and Swedish)</p><p>Alan Kamil – Violin </p><p>Tommy Lundberg – Violin </p><p> </p><p>Pirozbe                                          Nasir Razazi’s Song (Kurdish)</p><p>              Violins:</p><p>Alan Kamil</p><p>Tommy Lundberg </p><p>Anna Ekborg</p><p>Sandra Arvman</p><p>Nichelle Johansson</p><p> </p><p>Saman Taha – Piano </p><p>Mårten Hillbom – Cajon</p><p> </p><p>Swan Lake                                        Mojtaba Mirzadeh (Persian) Soran Badinan                                  Dilshad Said (Kurdish)</p><p>Alan Kamil – Violin </p><p>Saman Taha – Piano </p><p> </p><p>Nassam Aleyna el Hawa                 Rahbani Brothers – Fairouz (Arabic)</p><p>Alan Kamil – Violin </p><p>Feras Sharstan – Kanun</p><p>Saman Taha – Piano</p><p>Mårten Hillbom – Darbuka </p><p> </p><p>Eshveh                                              Bijan Mortazavi (Persian)</p><p>Alan Kamil – Violin </p><p>Saman Taha – Piano </p>