Klasik Türk Müziği Kategorisinin Doğuşu ve Rauf Yekta: Öteki Müzikler Karşısında Klasik Türk Müziği
Onur Güneş AyasBu çalışma, Rauf Yekta’nın klasik Türk müziğini ayrı bir kategori olarak inşa ederken diğer müzikler karşısında nasıl konumlandırdığını incelemektedir. Geleneksel Osmanlı musikisinin elit beğeniye hitap eden unsurları ilk kez on dokuzuncu yüzyılın sonunda klasik müzik kategorisiyle ilişkilendirilmeye başlamıştır. Klasik Türk müziği kategorisi, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e geçiş sürecinde beğeni hiyerarşileri içindeki yeri belirsizleşen ve bir meşruiyet krizi yaşayan Osmanlı-Türk yüksek müzik kültürünün statüsünü korumak, sınırlarını çizmek ve onu millî musiki söyleminin bir parçası olarak yeniden tarif etmek amacıyla yaratılmıştır. Bu çalışma, Rauf Yekta’nın bu süreçte klasik Türk musikisi kategorisini inşa eden, sözcülüğünü üstlenen, sınırlarını çizen ve diğer müziklerden üstünlüğü konusunda argümanlar üreten öncü isim olduğunu iddia etmektedir. Buradan hareketle Rauf Yekta’nın ilk yazılarının yayınlandığı 1890’ların sonundan 1935’teki ölümüne kadar kaleme aldığı metinler ve yaptığı röportajlar, geç Osmanlı ve erken Cumhuriyet dönemi tartışmalarının bağlamı içine oturtularak müzik sosyolojisi perspektifiyle tahlil edilmiştir. Rauf Yekta’nın çizdiği düşünsel çerçevenin Cumhuriyet dönemi müzik kültürü içinde klasik Türk musikisinin konumunu şekillendirmede çok önemli bir rol oynadığı sonucuna varılmıştır.
The Emergence of the Category of Turkish Classical Music and Rauf Yekta:Turkish Classical Music Versus Other Musics
Onur Güneş AyasThis study examines how Rauf Yekta positioned Turkish classical music in contrast to other musical genres while formulating it as a distinct category. Elements of traditional Ottoman music that appealed to elite tastes were associated with the category of classical music for the first time at the end of the nineteenth century. The category of Turkish classical music was established to preserve the status and demarcate the boundaries of Ottoman-Turkish high music culture, whose place in hierarchies of taste had become blurred and which experienced a crisis of legitimacy during the transition from the Ottoman Empire to Republican Türkiye. This reformulation was also part of the efforts to incorporate it into the discourses of national music. This study argues that Rauf Yekta played a pivotal role in constructing the category of Turkish classical music, delineating its boundaries, and developing arguments to establish its superiority over other music genres. Accordingly, the primary texts written by Rauf Yekta, spanning from the late 1800s to his death in 1935, as well as the interviews with him, were analyzed from the perspective of music sociology within the framework of the late Ottoman and early Republican discussions. It is concluded that the position of Turkish classical music throughout Republican Türkiye’s history has been significantly shaped by Rauf Yekta’s intellectual framework.
The elements of traditional Ottoman music that appealed to elite tastes were associated with the category of classical music for the first time at the end of the nineteenth century. This new category emerged as an attempt to maintain and elevate the status and demarcate the boundaries of this music, whose place in hierarchies of taste had become blurred and which was beginning to experience a crisis of legitimacy. This reformulation was also part of the efforts to incorporate it into the discourses of national music. Unlike many popular music genres, critics, intellectuals, and writers are essential in shaping the values and standards of highbrow cultures, such as classical music traditions. Through the discourses they generate, they demarcate the boundaries between the genre and the other music cultures, define its canons, and formulate arguments to maintain and elevate its position in the hierarchies of taste. This study argues that Rauf Yekta played a pivotal role in constructing the category of Turkish classical music, delineating its boundaries, and developing arguments to establish its superiority over other music genres. Rauf Yekta’s social and educational background, his upbringing in elite music circles, his knowledge and authority in various fields of music, the public duties he undertook at the Istanbul Conservatory and official boards, his reputation in Türkiye as well as in the international community as a respected musicologist, and his influential polemical articles in newspapers made him the best person to assume this role. This does not mean that he completely invented the category of Turkish classical music. Rather, this article argues that he reformulated components that had already existed for centuries in the oral and written traditions of elite music culture to which he belonged.
In this context, the primary documents written by Rauf Yekta, spanning from the late 1800s to his death in 1935, as well as his interviews and polemics, were analyzed from the perspective of music sociology. This allowed for the identification of the taste hierarchies he established between Turkish classical music and other music cultures along different axes. On the horizontal axis, Rauf Yekta compares highbrow music cultures, which he believes are somewhat equivalent to each other. On the vertical axis, he contrasts these highbrow musical genres with popular and folk music cultures, which he considered to be beneath them in the hierarchy of taste. Finally, he evaluates whether these musical genres have a national character, contrasting them along the nationality axis. In each of these axes, which contrast various music cultures along binary oppositions, he places Turkish classical music at the top of the hierarchy of taste.
When he refers to Western classical music as the counterpart of Turkish classical music, he makes positive statements about it, viewing both as superior to popular music genres. However, because he was always skeptical about the mutual understanding and enjoyment of musical cultures by listeners from different societies, he labeled Western music as something totally alien to the Turkish soul. He reformulated Ottoman/Turkish classical music as the national music of new Türkiye, positioned folk music as a primitive and plebeian branch of national music, and classified Western music and Western-oriented Turkish polyphonic music, which he called “the new school of composition,” as non-national. Although he justifiably opposed the Eurocentric approach, arguing for the non-hierarchical coexistence of different musical systems with their own values and standards, he developed an ethnocentric approach motivated by his polemical language, conservative/nationalist leanings, and prejudices against Western music culture. Accordingly, he attempted to prove the superiority of Turkish classical music over Western music by reversing the Eurocentric scheme and contrasting polyphonic and maqam-based music cultures from a dichotomous perspective.
In his early writings, he was relatively more favorable towards innovations in Turkish music using Western music techniques. However, he gradually hardened his stance against all Western-oriented musical practices. Regarding popular music, he was rigorously strict about demarcating the boundaries between popular and classical music, viewing commercialized popular music- which he frequently referred to with derogatory terms like “market,” “tavern,” or “vulgar” music, etc.- as lacking aesthetic value and not deserving of inclusion in national music. Throughout the Republican era, the Turkish classical music community’s mentality patterns have been influenced by Rauf Yekta’s framework. As a result, this community transformed into an insular, conservative group that adopted a hostile attitude towards popular music, restricted its repertoire to specific eras in a way that extols the old while being skeptical of anything new, and set rigid boundaries between Turkish classical music and other musical genres and styles. On the other hand, Rauf Yekta’s efforts played a pivotal role in maintaining the aesthetic standards and values of the classical tradition, preventing its assimilation into popular entertainment culture, and reinforcing its status and group identity at a time when its symbolic status and legitimacy were declining.
