Saygun's Sonata for Cello and Piano Op. 12 was dedicated to David Zirkin, a German cellist who fled Nazi Germany and taught in Turkey.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Ahmet Adnan Saygun, a prominent Turkish composer, aimed to combine Turkish folk music and Western musical heritage to create a new identity for modern Turkish music.
Composer Biography
İlhan Usmanbaş, a major representative of the second generation of Turkish composers, was a student of the prominent 'Turkish Five' but shifted towards movements they neglected, such as twelve-tone composition and aleatoric music.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Özkan Manav, a Turkish composer, describes his frequent use of folklore in his music as reminiscent of a 'double life' or being an 'amphibian'.
Compositional Technique
Hasan Uçarsu's 'Elif Dedim Be Dedim' includes extended playing techniques and requires the cellist and pianist to sing a line of the folk song while playing to express its ethos.
Compositional Technique
Saygun's early works, including the Cello Sonata, are characterized by pentatonicism, a five-note scale system he considered a cornerstone of Turkish musical roots.
Composer Biography
Ahmet Adnan Saygun conducted research into Turkish folk music in southern Anatolia with Béla Bartók, a renowned Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist, in 1936.
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