The Journey of a Musical Idea: An Investigation into a Musical Form Through Society and Time

In the story and reconstruction of cultural traditions, active notions such as individual memory and social memory play a significant role. It is widely accepted that the various elements constituting a tradition must have been produced or practiced by an individual first before they are spread around the society they are related to. It follows that this product or practice can only start to be rooted in its place within the related tradition through other individuals’ conscious memory, before it takes roots deeper into the unconscious levels of both the individuals and the society. Accordingly, a musical idea generated by Hacı Arif Bey, who is generally accepted as the founder of “the song reform”, is identified, analyzed, and traced down throughout the modern age of a reconstructed/reformed traditional Turkish art music in this essay. The solution he found for composing a specific vezin (mef’ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün/fa’lün) with the usul Türk Aksağı which is scaled with a 5/8 rhythmic structure is the main element of this study and is analyzed structurally and functionally. Hypothetically, this musical idea is accepted as ‘the origin’, because no similar ideas have been found in a scan of traditional Turkish art music repertoire. This musical idea is investigated throughout the meşk chain (or other musical relations), which is the teacher-student sequence. The spread of the musical idea is also analyzed to explain how the continuity of the meşk chain’s is achieved. As a result of this study, a demonstration of a musical idea that gets transferred throughout the generations is made, and as a side result, structural plans of the songs constructed with the usul Türk Aksağı and the vezin ‘mef’ûlü mefâîlü mefâîlü feûlün/fa’lün’ are given.