This project report outlines some of the most compelling themes that have emerged over the course of the research progress of the ERC project in the last two years, both from a musicological and compositional view. Here we look at especially concerned with the framing of old paradigms and their integration with new ones in the project’s team-authored book: Turkish Makam Instruments and Voices in Contemporary Music.  The title of the talk refers to challenges in gaining enough ‘emic’, insider perspective without stifling the introduction of ideas that can potentially be useful from outside (etic). These have to do with issues such as: how to guide composers writing for classical and folk makam instruments, the conception of sound in makam music, the conception of tuning, the notation of accidentals, the translation of orality into notation (or not) and how a composer can approach this, as well as problems with labelling musics and the shifting of paradigms.  The libretto process for the project’s ‘migration’ opera Binboğalar Efsanesi-Where To? and process of notating for singers from a mainly oral tradition, which is itself currently undergoing significant changes is also discussed.   

 

Team members Michael Ellison, Argun Çakır, Robert Reigle, Amanda Bayley, Simon Jones 

 

 

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The Beyond East and West project systematises practical processes essential for the creation of a new, East-West strand of contemporary music and opera. Its tripartite approach of workshop-ethnography-theory combining with public events will offer a new model for transcultural praxis, while opening a door to the world for deeper understanding of Turkey’s exquisite musical traditions. Workshops and public performances--culminating in a team-authored book and the premiere of two chamber operas--will map out entirely new ways of bridging respective cultures, with the aim of creating music not of East or West, but simultaneously above and beyond both.