Musicians Agency

   Musa GÖÇMEN / Composer-Conductor    

ENCOUNTER...

What makes an encounter meaningful is the existance of two persons. When one of the persons is absent, encounter cannot ever take place.

Here “Symphonic Sema Performance” is that kind of an encounter. On one side, Mevlevi Ceremonies presented by the utmost maturity of Turkish Music, on the other, refined artistic music of Western Culture.

This idea I started out with while composing this work concentrated on adding a meaning to this encounter. For hundreds of years, Mevlevi Ceremonies have been the works created at the top level of composers’ maturity and have always preserved the place they deserved in Turkish music repertory as magnificent works of art.

This work is not a search of an alternative and already excellent original state of Mevlevi Ceremonies’ has been performed for hundreds of years and will be performed so. This work is an encounter of the best works of art created by these two cultures, that is, only a new colour.

May Mevlana philosophy be a cure to the current state of the world and this work that you’ll listen be an occasion to love and tolerance.

During the formation of the work, having decided upon what I needed to think on a problem of harmony created by technical differences between the two types of music which all of us are familiar with or certainly heard of from somewhere, I used Sufi (Tasavvuf) instruments without making any changes in their scale (makam) structure.

I used the string orchestra in accompaniment, refraining from unison sounding in makamic parts and without hesitation tutti in non-makamic and, where overlapped, with Western Music sections. As known, symphonic orchestras consist of string, wind and percussion instruments.

During orchestrations of the work, in fact, by employing Sufi instruments rather than wind and percussion instruments of the symphonic orchestra, we will have caught the opportunity to listen to a symphonic orchestra which has its own sounding.

May Mevlana philosophy be a cure to the current state of the world and this work that you’ll listen be an occasion to love and tolerance.

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SEMA

Traditional or modern?
Universal or subjective?
Monophonic or polyphonic?
Alliance or conflict?

Let the debate continue, yet we know that humanity can meet at one common language: Music. I would always hear his words: “Either appear as you are, or be as you appear!" After I started studying the Mevlana Philosopy, which I knew only its name until past ten years, I admired the depth of his thought and the order of “sema” ceremony.

In “Sema,” ney (reed flute) and kudüm (small double drum) are the most important instruments. These may be accompanied by violin, oud, kanun, kemençe, tambour, santour and rebab.

The only polyphonic work attempt we know of was made at a ceremony at the Mevlevihane of Kulekapısı, using the first piano brought to Turkey, yet this effort, on which we think was not worked meticulously enough, was abandoned on the ground that there was no harmony between the “intervals” of Western and Sufi Music. That piano is now in municipal museum (*).

Sema ceremony starts with “Naat” Naat is a poem of Mevlana which praises Hz. Muhammed. This work, which is in “rast” scale (makam) and the composition of which belongs to “Itri,” is sung on foot and without the accompaniment of an instrument. This is followed by “ney taksim (improvisation).”

The Ceremony is composed of four “Selams (parts)”:

1. Selam: Comprehension of one’s own servitude (to God),
2. Selam: Admiration before God’s greatness and might,
3. Selam: Transformation of this admiration to love,
4. Selam: Returning of one to servitude.

Now, you may close your eyes and give ear to Ney, which is the sound of Soul’s prayer for returning to God.
(*)Abdülbaki GÖLPINARLI “Tasavvuf” (s.252-253)