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FOREWORD
The biggest motivation and the inspiration behind this work is İlhan USMANBAŞ himself. Having built an immense musical universe, opened up new possibilities in the minds of the audience, closed the ‘distances’ between music, listener, composer and performer, and also developed unique ways to engage with different disciplines. His persistence and dedication to creating, developing, teaching; in short truly being in every aspect of music, extended the understanding of music and it's limits in every direction. First of all, I would like to thank İlhan USMANBAŞ. I can never truly express how grateful I am to him for allowing me to meet the new worlds.
This thesis would never have been completed without her enthusiasm and encouragement; I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Zeynep KUBAN TOKGÖZ for taking me as a student and providing the opportunity to work on this subject, as part of the art history graduate programme. I will always appreciate her guidance and continual encouragement during this very long journey. I must also thank Robert REIGLE and Lewis JOHNSON, who supported me like supervisors with their comments and suggestions at every opportunity. Simon SHAW-MILLER, who has enriched the field of music and visual arts relations with his extensive studies and has also played a major role in shaping this thesis, while it was still at the conceptual level. I owe him a great deal.
It has been a long, long journey. I would like to express my thanks to a number of individuals who have supported and assisted me in the various states of this study. I also owe my greatest acknowledgments to my family who have deep faith in me and my study.
January 2021 Bilge Evrim AYDOĞAN
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
FOREWORD ............................................................................................................. ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... xi
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................. xiii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................. xv
SUMMARY ............................................................................................................ xvii
ÖZET ........................................................................................................................ xix
1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1
1.1. Literature Review .............................................................................................. 3
1.2. From Interart to Intermedia ............................................................................... 8
1.3. Ekphrasis: Transformation from One Work to Another ................................. 11
1.4. The Purpose and Scope of the Study .............................................................. 17
2. SURREALISM AND MUSIC ......................................................................... 21
2.1. Aesthetical, Technical and Ideological Conflicts Between Surrealism and Music ...................................................................................................................... 24
2.1.1. Aesthetical conflicts ................................................................................. 24
2.1.2. Technical conflicts ................................................................................... 28
2.1.3. Ideological conflicts ................................................................................. 30
2.2. Surrealist Reflections in Music ...................................................................... 31
2.2.1. Serial music and Surrealism on the path to aleatory ................................ 34
2.3. Reflections of Surrealism in Turkey .............................................................. 41
3. USMANBAŞ HIS MUSIC AND ITS RELATION WITH VISUAL ARTS 45
3.1. The Life and the Music of Usmanbaş ............................................................ 46
3.1.1. 1950’s Ankara .......................................................................................... 47
3.1.2. Bülent Arel ............................................................................................... 52
3.1.3. Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat .................................................................................. 54
3.1.4. Helikon Association ................................................................................. 56
3.2. From Twelve Tone to Aleatory Music ........................................................... 59
3.3. Visual Elements in Usmanbaş’s Music on Poems ......................................... 66
3.4. Usmanbaş’s Music with Paintings ................................................................. 77
3.4.1. Henri Matisse ........................................................................................... 77
3.4.2. Alexander Calder ..................................................................................... 78
3.4.3. Victor Vasarely ........................................................................................ 82
3.5. Assessment ..................................................................................................... 84
4. THREE PAINTINGS FROM DALÍ: A MUSICAL COUNTERPART ..... 89
4.1. Dalí and His Systematic Approach ................................................................ 90
4.1.1. The Temptation of Saint Anthony ............................................................. 95
4.1.1.1 Musical interpretation: The Temptations of Saint Anthony................ 101
4.1.2. El Centauro ............................................................................................ 105
4.1.2.1 Musical interpretation: El Centauro .................................................... 109
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4.1.3. Angel Explotando Armonicamente ......................................................... 112
4.1.3.1 Musical interpretation: Angel Explotando Armonnicamente .......... 116
4.2. Assessment .................................................................................................. 119
5. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................... 123
REFERENCES ....................................................................................................... 129
APPENDICES ........................................................................................................ 137
APPENDIX A : Musical Works for Dalí and the Content of the DVD. ............. 138
APPENDIX B : The time line of Usmanbaş’s musics on poems and paintings. 143
APPENDIX C : The Survey Questions and Feedbacks of the Concert Project Seeing the Unheard Hearing the Unseen ........................................................... 144
CURRICULUM VITAE ........................................................................................ 151
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LIST OF TABLES
Table A.1 : List of Musical Examples on Dalí’s paintings ..................................... 138
Table A.2 : List of Musical Examples on Dalí. ....................................................... 140
Table A.3 : The Content of the DVD. .................................................................... 141
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1 : Clüver and Vos’s Schema of Word-Image Relations. .......................... 10
Figure 1.2 : The map of musical ekphrasis by Bruhn (Bruhn, 2000, s. xvii). ........... 12
Figure 1.3 : Pablo Picasso, La Femme Fleur (Francoise Gilot), 1946. ..................... 13
Figure 1.4 : Paul Klee, Little Blue Devil, 1933. ........................................................ 15
Figure 2.1 : Victor Brauner, The Portrait of Thelonious Monk, signed 17 August 1948 (Steve Lacy, "More Monk" Soul Note album cover, 1991) ........ 22
Figure 2.2 : Un Chein Andalou, piano scene, 1929 .................................................. 26
Figure 2.3 : Salvador Dalí, Swans Reflecting Elephants, 1937. ................................ 30
Figure 2.4 : Max Ernst, La Femme 100 Têtes, 25.1 × 19.2 cm, collage book (Paris: Éditions du Carrefour), 1929 ................................................................ 33
Figure 2.5 : Pierre Boulez, Troisiéme Sonate pour Piano-Formant 3-Miroir, 1957.38
Figure 2.6 : Paul Klee, Monument at the Edge of Fertile Land, watercolor on canvas, 69.5 × 50.5 × 3.2 cm, 1929 ................................................................... 39
Figure 3.1 : Nurullah Berk, Nargile İçen Adam, 1958, oil on canvas, 93,5 x 60 cm, Istanbul State Art and Sculpture Collection, 1940’s............................. 48
Figure 3.2 : Bülent Arel, Untitled, reproduction, İlhan Usmanbaş Collection. ........ 53
Figure 3.3 : Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat, Fırat Küğ Düşünüyor, 54x74,5 cm., watercolor on cardboard, 1971-72. .............................................................................. 56
Figure 3.4 : Helikon Chamber Orchestra concert program. ...................................... 58
Figure 3.5 : Three Paintings From Dalí, The Beginning of Part 1. .......................... 61
Figure 3.6 : Usmanbaş together with Davidovsky, Milton Babbitt, Lucas Foss and Aaron Copland in Tanglewood. ............................................................ 62
Figure 3.7 : Raslamsal I (1967), First page of the music score. ............................... 64
Figure 3.8 : Bale için Müzik, 1968 ............................................................................ 66
Figure 3.9 : Çizgiler, 1986 ........................................................................................ 66
Figure 3.10 : William Carlos Williams, Metric Figure, 1915-16. ............................ 68
Figure 3.11 : Usmanbaş, Şiirli Müzik, page 17 and 19. ............................................ 69
Figure 3.12 : Mallarmé, Un Coup de Dés, 1897. ...................................................... 70
Figure 3.13 : Pierre Boulez, Troisiéme Sonate pour Piano-Formant 3-Miroir, 1957 ............................................................................................................. 71
Figure 3.14 : Usmanbaş, Şenlikname, 1970. ............................................................. 73
Figure 3.15 : Ece Ayhan, Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara. ................................................... 75
Figure 3.16 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara, page 3. ............................... 75
Figure 3.17 : Behçet Necatigil, Divâne Derkenar, 1970 .......................................... 76
Figure 3.18 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Divâne Derkenar notation of the first stanza........... 76
Figure 3.19 : Earle Brown, December 1952 ............................................................. 79
Figure 3.20 : Earle Brown, Available Forms 1&2. Performance and music score ... 80
Figure 3.21 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Özgürlükler, 1970. ................................................... 81
Figure 3.22 : Vasarely, Black and White Series, 1956. ............................................. 83
Figure 3.23 : İhan Usmanbaş, Perpetuum Immobile, 1988. ...................................... 83
Figure 3.24 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Sketch Drawing for Symphony, 1979. .................... 85
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Figure 4.1 : Persistence of Memory (1931) and Disintegration of Persistence of Memory, (1954) ..................................................................................... 93
Figure 4.2 : Preparatory Drawing for Leda Atomica, 1947 ...................................... 94
Figure 4.3 : Leda Atomica, 1947 .............................................................................. 94
Figure 4.4 : Max Ernst, Temptation of St. Anthony, 1951 ......................................... 96
Figure 4.5 : Film stills from Bel Ami......................................................................... 96
Figure 4.6 : The Temptations of St. Anthony, oil on canvas, 89.7 x 119.5 cm., 1946. Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium ............................. 98
Figure 4.7 : Swans Reflecting Elephants, 1937 ......................................................... 99
Figure 4.8 : The Temptations of St. Anthony in a triangle. ...................................... 101
Figure 4.9 : Symmetrical planes of Dalí’s The Temptations of St.Anthony. ........... 102
Figure 4.10 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Three Paintings from Dalí, part 1. ......................... 103
Figure 4.11 : İlhan Usmanbaş, the melody of the violin, the viola and the cellos. . 104
Figure 4.12 : Audio-visual Performance, themes of the first movement ................ 105
Figure 4.13 : El Centauro, Chinese sepia ink and pencil, 77,5x54,4 cm. c.1951 ... 106
Figure 4.14 : The Phenomenon of Ecstasy, photo collage in Minotaure (Paris), 1933. .......................................................................................................... 108
Figure 4.15 : Triangles of El Centauro ................................................................... 109
Figure 4.16 : Radial lines and geometric structure of El Centauro ........................ 110
Figure 4.17 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Three Paintings from Dalí, Part two, score ........... 111
Figure 4.18 : 18. Following the melody along the meter ........................................ 112
Figure 4.19 : Audio-visual performance, second movement .................................. 112
Figure 4.20 : Angel Explotando Armonicamente, oil, gouache and pencil on panel, 24.2 x 19 cm. c.1951. ........................................................................ 113
Figure 4.21 : Angel Explotando Armonicamente, 1951; Raphaelesque Head Exploding, 1951 and The Wheelbarrow (Pantheon formed by Twisted Wheelbarrows, 1951.. ........................................................................ 114
Figure 4.22 : Leonardo da Vinci, Study of the Head of Leda, pen and inc on black chalk, 19,8 x 16,6 cm., c.1505-07 and Salvador Dalí, Head Bombarded with Grains of Wheat (Particle Head Over the Village of Cadaques) 1954 26x17cm. oil / cardboard, Private collection 1951. ................. 116
Figure 4.23 : Sketches for Mystical Manifesto ....................................................... 117
Figure 4.24 : The Cube, in the audio-visual performance of the third movement. . 119
Figure 4.25 : The musical score with removed the add-on bar lines. ..................... 120
Figure B.1 : The time line of Usmanbaş’s musics on poems and paintings. .......... 143 Figure C.1 : Audience feedback form. .................................................................... 144
Figure C.2 : Age distribution among participants. ..................................................... 147
Figure C.3 : The comparison of participants’ responses to the concepts “Extended Sounds” and “Fragmentation of Sounds”.......................................... 148
Figure C.4 : The comparison of participants’ responses to the concepts “Clustering Sounds” and “Disintegration of Sounds”........................................... 149
Figure C.5 : The subjective responses of the participants for the passage of time in the second performance..................................................................... 150
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THREE PAINTINGS FROM DALÍ:
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MUSIC AND VISUAL ARTS
IN THE CONTEXT OF İLHAN USMANBAŞ’S MUSIC
SUMMARY
Interart relations indicate a wide range of interdisciplinary fields that leads us to search various artistic practices and pursue the fluid ideas between different art forms. Within this framework, interart relations constitute a collective history, which can be dated back to Antiquity in its search for the secrets of beauty and harmony, leading up to today’s inter-artistic practices, such as new media and multimedia art.
Mutual influences and interaction between different art forms have been admitted as a topic of interest and, by its very nature, addressed as a multi-directional subject matter. The relationship between music and visual arts, on the other hand, is one of the remarkable subjects in this diversity, and has a vast historiography, often manifest in major turning points, in parallel to the cultural developments in history. Modernism, which is one of the last stages of this process, seen as a catalyst for the transformative experiences in art practices and innovations - concentrating on spatial or temporal concerns - with the idea of medium specificity, brought about an environment where formal relations gradually increased.
Faced with the limitations of pure formalism, the 1950s, which brought openness and exchange of ideas in every field, and also indicated a significant shift in modernism discussions. This period offered a transition not only between autonomous disciplines, but also between the boundaries that encircled social, cultural, and political fields. The choice of subject matter from the music discipline as a study of art history, is an unavoidable consequence of this intertwined historical process. However, this inevitable outcome also brings with it the challenges a field of study faces as its scope expands. Nevertheless, this issue opens space for productive questions within art history, enables new inquiries and engagements in interart relations.
There are different approaches examining the art practices that articulate visual and sound dimensions. One of them presents a historical, social and cultural flow in the field of interart tradition; the other, investigates the accommodation of sound in visual arts and vice versa, the notion of visuality in musical practices, by exploring their transmedial and conceptual aspects. Recently, intermedial studies have developed categories by means of how the medium is produced. Although they present under different titles, these categories appear to have a similar approach. The Introduction part of the study provides an overview of these theories and introduces the concept of ekphrasis as a valid interdisciplinary model among these common approaches.
Focusing on İlhan Usmanbaş's (1921) Three Paintings from Dalí (1952-1955), this thesis examines the composer's music, shaped by contemporary composing techniques, through the relationship he established with visual arts, opening an
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experimental field and offers a methodology for approaching a musical work inspired by visual arts.
The framework of this study has been determined by taking into consideration the above mentioned approaches as well as the possibilities offered by Three Paintings from Dalí. This symphonic work reveals a three-layered relationship. First and foremost, it created a re-encountering among Surrealism and serial music in the historical flow. The second aspect is the cultural one: This music allows us to examine the reflections of 1950s modernism in Turkey, the role of Usmanbaş in this period, and the environment that brought him together with Dalí's paintings. Finally, the study turns its attention to the artwork itself, the Three Paintings from Dalí. The aim of the analysis of the piece, which incorporates visual and auditory, as well as spatiotemporal and spatial elements, is also an attempt to present the modern role of ekphrasis and its potential relational outcomes.
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DALÍ’DEN ÜÇ RESİM:
İLHAN USMANBAŞ’IN MÜZİĞİ BAĞLAMINDA
MÜZİK VE GÖRSEL SANATLAR ARASINDAKİ İLİŞKİ
ÖZET
Sanatlararası ilişkiler, sanatsal pratikleri ve farklı sanat formları arasında geçiş yapan fikirleri takip etmemizi sağlayan disiplinler arası bir çalışma alanıdır. Bu alan, güzelliğin ve uyumun sırlarını araştıran Antik Çağa kadar uzanan, yeni medya ve multimedya gibi günümüzün sanatlararası pratiklerini kapsayan ortak bir tarih oluşturmaktadır.
Sanat formları arasındaki etkileşim, doğası gereği çok yönlü bir çalışma alanına hitap etmektedir. Müzik ve görsel sanatlar arasındaki ilişki ise bu çeşitlilik içinde, dikkat çeken konulardan biri olarak, kültürel gelişmelere paralel ilerleyen geniş bir tarih yazımına sahip olmuştur. Bu sürecin son aşamalarından biri olan modernizm, mekânsal-zamansal kavrayış ile medyuma özgüllük fikrine yoğunlaşarak, biçimsel yeniliklerin giderek artmasına imkan sağlamış ve bunun bir sonucu olarak sanat pratiklerindeki dönüştürücü deneyimlerin bir katalizörü olarak görülmüştür.
Saf biçimciliğin kısıtlayıcılığı karşısında, her alanda açılım ve görüş zenginliği getiren 1950’ler, modernizm tartışmalarında önemli bir dönemece işaret etmektedir. Bu dönemin sağladığı geçişkenlik, yalnızca disiplinlerin özerk alanları arasında değil, sosyal, kültürel ve siyasal alanları kuşatan sınırlar arasında da gerçekleşmiştir. Öyle ki, sanatsal pratiklerin kesişen yönlerini keşfetmeye çalışan bir sanat tarihi çalışmasının konusunu müzikten seçmesi, birbiri içine giren bu tarihsel sürecin kaçınılmaz bir sonucudur. Ancak bu kaçınılmaz sonuç, aynı zamanda, bir çalışma alanının kapsamı genişledikçe karşılaştığı zorlukları da beraberinde getirmektedir. Yine de üretken sorulara alan açarak, sanatlararası ilişkilerle bağlantılar kuran yeni araştırmalara da olanak tanımaktadır.
Görsel ve işitsel boyutları birleştiren sanatsal uygulamalar, farklı yaklaşımlarla incelenmektedir. Bu konuda ortaya atılan yöntemler, sanatlararası geleneğin izinde tarihsel, sosyal ve kültürel bir akışı; görsel-işitsel çalışmalar başlığı altında ise görsel alanda sesi (ve sessizliği) ve ses alanında görselliği, hem bir malzeme hem de kavramsal yönleriyle incelemektedir. Son yıllarda bir çatı kavram olarak kullanılan medyalararası çalışmalar ise, müzik ve görsel sanatları, bir araya gelme biçimine göre kategorize etmektedir. Farklı başlıklar altında sunulmuş olsalar da, medyayı bir araya gelme biçimine göre ayırmış olmalarından dolayı bu kategorilerin benzer bir yaklaşım sergiledikleri görülmektedir. Çalışmanın giriş bölümü, sözkonusu teorilere genel bir bakış sunmakta ve bu ortak yaklaşımlar arasında geçerli bir disiplinler arası yaklaşım modeli olarak ekphrasis kavramını tanıtmaktadır.
İlhan Usmanbaş’ın (1921) Dalí’den Üç Resim (1952-1955) eserine odaklanan ve bestecinin çağdaş besteleme teknikleri ile biçimlendirdiği müziğini görsel sanatlarla
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kurduğu ilişki üzerinden inceleyen bu tez, bir deney alanı açarak, görsel sanatlardan ilhamla üretilmiş bir müzik eserine yaklaşıma dair bir yöntem önerisi sunmaktadır.
Çalışmanın çerçevesi, yukarıda bahsedilen yaklaşımların yanı sıra Dalí’den Üç Resim eserinin sunduğu olanaklar dikkate alınarak belirlenmiştir. Buna göre; tarihsel, kültürel ve sanatsal olmak üzere üç katmanlı bir ilişki ortaya çıkmaktadır:
Dalí’den Üç Resim, tarihsel akış içinde çağdaş besteleme tekniği olan dizisel müzik ile Sürrealizmi yeniden karşı karşıya getirmiştir. Sürrealizm, yüzyılın ilk yarısındaki diğer modern akımlarının aksine müziğe mesafeli durmuş olan bir sanat akımdır. Bu duruş, İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası gelişmelere parallel olarak yön değiştirmiş ve akımın müzikle ilişkisi, özellikle caz müziği üzerinden belirginleşmeye başlamışsa da; 1950 öncesi müzik ve Sürrealizm ilişkisine dair çok az şey söylenmiştir. Buradan hareketle çalışmanın ikinci bölümünde, Sürrealizm ve müzik arasında yalnızca benzerlikler üzerinden değil, farklılıklarla da biçim alan olası yeni bağlar kurulmaya çalışılmıştır. İlk olarak Sürrealist hareketin müziğe karşı negatif duruşunun nedenleri tartışılmıştır. Ardından kendini sürrealist düşünceye yakın hisseden bestecilere yer verilmiştir. Akım ile hemen hemen aynı zamanda ortaya çıkmış, sürrealist hareket gibi modern sonrası gelişmelere yön veren 12 ton tekniği ile müziğin 1950’e uzanan süreçte sürrealist düşünceye hangi noktalarda yakınlaştığı incelenmiştir. Son olarak, Dalí’den Üç Resim’in yaratım sürecine bir arka plan oluşturması amacıyla Sürrealist hareketin Türk sanatındaki yansımalarına yer verilmiştir.
Eserin sunduğu bir diğer olanak, eserin kültürel boyutudur. Dalí’den Üç Resim, 1950’ler modernizminin Türkiye’deki yansımalarını, Usmanbaş’ın bu süreçteki rolünü ve onun Dalí’nin resimleriyle buluşmasını sağlayan kültürel ortamı inceleme fırsat vermiştir. 1950'ler Türkiye’si her alanda geçmişle hesaplaşan bir dönem olmuştur. Bu hesaplaşma dönemi aynı meselelerle uğraşan farklı alanlardaki sanatçıları birbirlerine yakınlaştırmıştır. Kurucuları arasında Usmanbaş’ın da olduğu Helikon Derneği gibi oluşumlar bu yakınlaşmanın göstergelerinden biridir. Öte yandan Bülent Arel ile Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat gibi Usmanbaş ile aynı kuşaktan, yakın dostluk kurduğu diğer bestecilerin de görsel sanatlarla kurduğu yakınlık, dikkat çekicidir. Çalışmanın üçüncü bölümünde buradan hareketle ilk olarak, Dalí’den Üç Resim eserinin ortaya çıktığı dönemin koşulları, bestecinin sosyal-kültürel çevresi ve müziğindeki gelişmeler paralelinde diğer sanatlarla kurduğu ilişkiye odaklanılmıştır.
Usmanbaş Henry Matisse, Alexander Calder ve Victor Vasarely’den esinle bestelediği müzikleri bulunsa da en çok çağdaş Türk şairleri ile kuruduğu ilişki ve şiirler üzerine yazdığı müzikleri ile tanınan bir bestecidir. Müzikal dönemlerini uyguladığı tekniklere göre ayırdığımızda, her yeni dönemine şiir veya resimle kurduğu ilişkiyle başlamış olduğu görülmektedir: 1950’lerin başında önce on iki ton tekniği ve hemen ardından dizisel yöntem denemelerini, Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat’ın şiirlerinden hareketle yazdığı Üç Müzikli Şiir ve Dalí’den Üç Resim eserleriyle gerçekleştirmiştir. 1950’lerin sonlarındaki raslamsal uygulamaları ise William Carlos Williams’ın Metric Figure’ü, Mallarmé’nin Un Coup de Dés’i ve Paul Eluard’ın Repos d’été şiirleri ile biçim almıştır. Açık yapıt düşüncesiyle grafik öğeler kullanmaya başladığında ise çağdaş Türk şiirine yönelmiştir. Besteci son olarak 1980’lerde minimal unsurları müziğine taşırken ise Vasarely’in optik uygulamalarından ilham almıştır. Usmanbaş’ın resim ve şiirle etkileşimli bu müzikal yolculuğu içinde Dalí’den Üç Resim, dizisel yazı, raslamlar denemeler ve taslak çizimleri gibi pek çok yeniliğin bir arada görüldüğü; sonraki dönemleri için model olmuş bir eseridir. Bu eser aynı zamanda Usmanbaş’ın, müziğin sınırlarını sorguladığı, anlamını ve mantıksal dilini araştırdığı bir çalışma alanı yaratmıştır.
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Son olarak eser, bir ekphrasis örneği olarak sanat nesnesinin kendine yönelme fırsatı vermektedir. Dalí’den Üç Resim, Usmanbaş'ın belirli bir resimle kurduğu ilişkiyle müziğini şekillendirdiği ilk eseridir. Üç bölümden oluşan eserde sırasıyla Salvador Dalí'nin (1904-1989) üç resmi kullanılmıştır: Temptations de Saint Anthony (1946), El Centaur (1951) ve Angel Explodanto Armonicamente (1951). Bu üç resim, Dalí’nin 1951 yılında Mystical Manifesto’da duyurduğu yeni resimsel üslubunun özelliklerine sahiptir. Bu özelliklerin Usmanbaş’ın müziğinin organizasyonunda nasıl rol oynadıklarını anlamak için öncelikle 1950’lere uzanan süreçte Dalí’nin sanatsal evrimi incelenmiş, üç resmin kompozisyon özelliklerinin detaylı analizi yapılmıştır. Bu analizler ışığında, bestecinin resimleri müziğe dönüştürürken kurduğu ilişkilerin, diğer bir değişle müziğin zamansallığı ile resmin mekânsallığı arasında yakaladığı geçişkenliklerin izi sürülmüştür. Bestecinin resimsel özellikleri yapısal bir unsur olarak müziğine nasıl aktardığı ise müzikal yorumlamalar bölümündeki ele alınmıştır. Buradaki yaklaşım, eserin müzikal organizasyonunu armonik çözümlemesini yapmaktan ziyade bu organizasyonun kurgusundaki tematik unsurlara odaklanılmıştır.
Dalí’den Üç Resim, ne yazık ki Usmanbaş’ın pek çok eseri gibi hak ettiği ilgiyi görmemiş bir eseridir. İlk kez 1979 yılında Gürer Aykal yönetimindeki Cumhurbaşkanlığı Senfoni Orkestrası tarafından seslendirilmiştir. İkinci seslendilişi, eserin ulaşılabilirliğini sağlamak ve hakkında yapılacak çalışmalar için bir kaynak oluşturması amacıyla tez çalışması kapsamında düzenlenen Sanat Tarihi, Müzik ve Dijital Medya projesi kapsamında gerçekleşmiştir. İTÜ Bilimsel Araştırmalar Birimi’nin desteklediği bu projede; Dalí’nin daha önce tespit edilmemiş El Centauro ve Angel Explotando Armonicamente resimleri belirlenmiş, bestecinin el yazması notaları dijital ortama aktarılmış, bir orkestra oluşturularak eserin stüdyo kaydı alınmış ve yeni medyanın olanakları kullanılarak Usmanbaş’ın müziği ile Dalí’nin resimleri arasındaki ilişkinin incelendiği görsel-işitsel bir konser etkinliği düzenlenmiştir. Duyulamayanı Görmek / Görülemeyi Duymak başlıklı bu konser etkinliğinde Dalí’den Üç Resim, iki kez sahne almıştır. İlkinde orkestra, yalnızca eseri seslendirmiştir. Kısa bir aradan sonra eserin ikinci seslendirilişinde, görsel sanatçılar Refik Anadol ve Mert Kızılay’ın hazırladığı gerçek zamanlı üç boyutlu görseller müziğe eşlik etmiştir.
Konserde müziğe eşlik eden görseller, Usmanbaş’ın Dalí’nin resimlerine yaklaşımındaki gibi, müziğin ses alanı ve seslerin bütün içindeki hareketi temel alınarak hazırlanmıştır. Öte yandan Anadol ve Kızılkaya, Usmanbaş’ın müziğiyle kurdukları ilişkinin yanı sıra konsept geliştirme sürecinde bu müziğe kaynaklık eden Dalí’nin resimlerini de inceleme şansı bulmuşlardır. Dolayısıyla, her bir bölüm için üretilen üç görsel, Usmanbaş’ın eseri ile Dalí’nin resimleri arasında bir bağ kurarak, bu iki disiplin için bir arabulucu rolü üstelenmiştir. İmgeden müziğe, müzikten tekrar imgeye dönüşen bu çok katmanlı ilişki çalışmamızın Three Paintings from Dalí: A Musical Counterpart başlıklı döndüncü bölümünde, müzikal analiz ile birlikte değerlendirmeye alınmıştır. Görsel-işitsel performanslar, farklı medyumları biraraya getiren yapısı dolayısıyla multimedia ve intermedia sanatları arasında kendi başına bir çalışma alanı oluşturmaktadır. Bu projede estetik ve algısal boyutta müzik ile görsel sanatlar arasındaki etkileşimin ve bu etkileşimin yaratığı deneyimin incelenmesi hedeflenmiştir. Her iki dinleme sonunda dinleyicilerle bir anket çalışması yapmışmış ve dinleme pratikleri ile ilgili sorular yöneltilmiştir. Projenin çıktıları ve anket sonuçlarının değerlendirilmesi, tez çalışmasının ekler bölümünde yer almaktadır.
Dalí’den Üç Resim eserinin, Dalí’nin resimleri üzerine yazılmış en erken tarihli orkestra müziği olması, sanatlararası gelenek içindeki bir diğer özgün bir değeridir. 3 yıl süren titiz bir çalışmanın ürünü olan bu eser, İlhan Usmanbaş’ın müzikal anlayışını
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ve bestecinin diğer sanat formları ile ilişkisini hem müzikal pratik, hem de daha geniş bir perspektifte sanatlararası gelenek üzerinden değerlendirmemize olanak sağlamıştır. Öte yandan bu eser, yalnızca iki sanatçı ya da medyumu değil, coğrafi sınırları da aşan bir geçişkenliği gözlemeyebildiğimiz bir örnek oluşturmuştur. Bu tez çalışması görsel-işitsel ve zaman-mekansal boyutları birleştiren Dalí’den Üç Resim eserini yarattığı bu izdüşümler ile birlikte, ekphrasis kavramının modern işlevini ve potansiyel ilişkisel sonuçlarını sunma girişimidir.
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1. INTRODUCTION
Interart studies is an interdisciplinary research field where the relationship between different art forms such as painting, music, poetry, and architecture are explored. Through the artworks re-presented through another art form, this field examines the similarities between different arts, each defined within its own boundaries, their influences on each other, and the competition between them in a broader perspective and in the light of a tradition dating back to antiquity.
In ancient thought, all arts were regarded in a mutual relationship that came together under the roof of dramatic poetry. This holistic understanding took its power from the triad of mediums opsis, melos and lexis, respectively presenting image, music and text, which Aristotle defined as the elements of dramatic poetry (Frye, 2000, p.244) (Shaw-Miller, 2015, p.209-324). The Greek historian, Plutarch, attributed the following quote to the poet Simonides (556-469 BC), “poetry is a speaking picture, painting is a silent poetry”. Later, the Roman poet Horace famously said, “as is painting, so is poetry” (ut pictura poesis) – thus accentuating this point of view. The concept of ‘sister arts’ is also used to refer to this cohesiveness, to indicate the proximity of arts of the same origin and the competition between them.
When considered as art forms, image, music, and text correspond to painting, music, and poetry. The functions of this trinity and their relationship with each other have varied according to the understanding of representation changing in line with the aesthetical and technical possibilities of different historical periods. For instance, during the Renaissance, perspective was perceived as a technical application and theoretical knowledge; painting, declaring its legitimacy as an independent form of art, had gained a privileged position over other arts (Wallenstein, 2010). Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who advocated this idea in his work, Paragone, while claiming the superiority of the eye over the ear, defined painting as the highest form of art against poetry and music. Although he mentioned the similarity between the structural composition of painting and musical proportions, for da Vinci, music had the
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unfortunate feature of disappearing with the passage of time, soon after its creation (Da Vinci, 2015, p. 39).
With the Enlightenment in the 18th century, music, along with poetry, which is another temporal form of art, arose to a privileged position. The Laokoön oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (1767), of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781,) in which he systematically categorises the arts, according to the boundaries and sign systems specific to each medium, was one of the primary sources of this new aesthetic approach.
In Lessing's idea, painting and sculpture represents a moment frozen in time, through the use of natural signs. On the other hand, poetry uses language in such a way that it functions as an arbitrary sign system and presents concepts and images to mind in a temporal flow. This new aesthetical approach, which stands against ut pictura poesis, a longstanding ancient ideal, finds it dangerous for the art forms to exceed their spatial and temporal boundaries and approach each other. Lessing exemplified this situation through the means of expression in art. For him, the priority of painting and sculpture is material beauty. However, when it comes to reflecting a strong emotion, as in the Laocoon group, the pure state of the form that creates beauty is in danger of deteriorating. Yet, beauty is secondary to poetry. It is aimed to express moral beauty as an alternative to the physical one (Özgü, 1944, p. 540). In other words, poetry seeks the representation of an abstract and inner world rather than a description of the visible external world.1
In the 19th century, the dominant role of poetry among arts devolved to music. Channelling the spiritual and the internal, music was regarded as the least imitating form of art. It is glorified with a romantic perspective concentrating on the emotions and irrational mind. Schopenhauer (1788-1860) has characterised music as the only art form that can convey subjects or emotions without imitating them (Schopenhauer, 2009, p.182). Nietzsche (1844-1900), who adopted the Schopenhauerian approach, grounded the music’s superiority over other arts on the dialectical relationship he symbolised with Dionysus and Apollo. For him, Apollo represents the extrovert,
1 Lessing's Laocoon is an incomplete work. However, as understood from his drafts, Lessing planned two more chapters in which he deals with the music (McCormick 1962, xxv). Robert Phillimore states that, in the introduction of the book’s English translation, Lessing admits that music as a universal language, but thinks that Lessing assigned preeminence to poetry, especially dramatic poetry, over painting and music (Phillimore 1905, p.40).
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rational and formalist, while Dionysus stands for the vigorous and introvert. Although Nietzsche connected all the arts with establishing the balance between these two, he favoured an aesthetic associated with Dionysus. He thought that the holistic principle of art was lost as a consequence of the wrong interpretation of rational thought. According to him, the power to regain artistic integrity is in “the unified stream of the melos”, that is, Dionysian music (Nietzsche, 1994, p. 26).
The idea that music will reunite all arts has been placed in a theoretical framework with Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. For Wagner, the highest form of art is opera, which can only exist if it embraces all the forms of art (Wagner, 1895 (1849), p.56). He adopted an aesthetic shaped by the mutual relationship of the senses in the combination of different mediums. The union of senses, which is complementary to Wagner’s holistic understanding of art and corresponds to the concept of synaesthesia, another common reference point of 19th century aesthetics.
By the end of the century, many artists and theorists had adopted Wagner’s thought and applied it in fields other than the opera stage. Traces of this ideal can be observed in the artistic approach of the Vienna Secession artists (Silverthorne, 2011), in the theoretical thought developed by Camillo Sitte (1843-1903) for urban planning, and John Ruskin’s (1819-1900) idealisation of combining arts and crafts (Vergo, 2012, p. 106-153). Indeed, avant-garde stage performances of the early 20th century, Dadaist and Futurist activities, and even today’s multimedia art are considered heirs to this past (Packer & Jordan, 2002, p. xxii-xxiii).
1.1 Literature Review
The 19th century has been regarded as a starting point for studies investigating the relationship between music, literature, and visual arts, as they are the source of today’s art, shaped by intertwined styles and mediums. In this frame, Rival Sisters, Art and Music at the Birth of Modernism (2014) compiled by Thomas H. Rubin and Olivia Mattis examines bilateral convergences within the 19th century, such as Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) and Eugéne Delacroix (1798-1863); Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903); Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Franz Liszt (1811-1886); Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).
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The same historical model can be followed in both books of Peter Vergo, an art historian known for his music and visual arts studies for over three decades. In The Divine Order (2005), Vergo defined the relationship between the arts, from the Ancient World onwards, through tracing the similarities in mathematical proportions and the physical order of the universe, until the 19th century.2 In his last book, The Music of Painting (2010), he gave a wide range of examples concerning Wagner’s ideas of art of the future, expanding to John Cage (1912-1992).3
A similar chronological flow can be observed in the book Music and Modernism (2011), in which the papers presented at the Royal Music Conference in 2008 were compiled, under the editorship of Charlotte de Mille. Following the chapters in which the 19th-century Wagnerian approach is explored with examples from Germany, France, England, and Russia, the book analyses ‘visual music’, jazz music interaction and finally includes two studies from La Monte Young (1935) and Yannis Xenakis (1922-2001) on post-1950 artistic practices.
Peter Dayan, who examines the transition between arts, not only between painting and music, but also adding poetry by referring to two poets, two composers and two painters (Guillaume Apollinaire 1880-1918 and Francis Ponge 1899-1988; Erik Satie 1866-1925 and Igor Stravinsky 1882-1971; James Abbot McNeill Whistler and Georges Braque 1882-1963), unlike the other studies, tried to trace aesthetics created
2 The first chapter of the book is devoted to Ancient Chinese and Ancient philosophies where cosmology was synthesised with nature and music. The following chapters respectively examines; Gothic Architecture and the spatial understanding of Renaissance architects such as Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) based on musical principles; painting of Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) derived from modes in music and Newton and Louis-Bertrand Castel's ‘ocular harpsichord’ which is one of the approaches attempting to bring colour and musical sounds physically closer for the first time. The epilogue of Vergo’s book, which mentions Rimington's ‘colour organ’, Scriabin's symphonic work Prometheus: The Poem of Fire and ‘colour music’, is as an introduction to the 19th century.
3 Vergo, following the first chapter in which he investigates Wagner's aesthetic and the paintings of Henri Fantin-Latour and Seurat, who worked in the footsteps of this understanding; examines examples corresponding to each other from the worlds of music and images, such as Delacroix and Chopin, Impressionism and Debussy, the symphonic poems of Liszt and Mussorgsky. In the third chapter, he deals with the works of Vienna Secession artists in the light of Wagnerian thought, and Schoenberg and Kandinsky who came together under the roof of Der Blaue Reiter and practiced each other's art forms. The fourth chapter is on Kandinsky's paintings that emulate the abstract characteristic of music and the relationship between abstract painting and atonal music. The fifth chapter, in which Bach is on the foreground again and his influence on painting through art of fugue, is devoted to examples from Ciurliniois, Kupka, Klee. The futurists' noise music and the abstract animations of Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger are also a continuation of the visual music that Vergo mentions in the epilogue of his first book.
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by the value that various art forms convey to each other. Excluding the Wagnerian approach, Dayan defines interart aesthetic in five laws (Dayan, 2011, p.3): 4
1. The interart aesthetic is that the work of art should properly be considered as an object, a thing, a ‘new reality’.
2. The second law of the interart aesthetic is that between art in any two different media (for example, poetry and music), any equivalence must always be incalculable. There can be no direct translation, and no unproblematic collaboration. Poetic form, for example, cannot gain any value by imitating musical form; conversely, a piece of music ceases to be music if it aims to model its meaning on that of words.
3. The third law of the interart aesthetic concerns the artistic tradition. All intermedialists believe that true art is of timeless and international validity. However, no intermedialist believes it is possible to say in words, or to calculate in any objective way, what it is that all great works of art have in common (with one exception, which forms the fourth law). That common property exists; but it cannot be defined, it can only be asserted.
4. The fourth law concerns the one property common to all works of art which we can in fact define: it is that they are all different, all unique, all original. Each one, indeed, is a new reality. This is absolutely necessary, if only because this difference of the artwork is the guarantee that the quality of art can never be defined or calculated. The uniqueness of the work of art is the echo of the uniqueness of art as a whole.
5. And the fifth law is this: the only way to convey the incalculable relations that pertain between works, or between media, is to describe work in one medium as if it were operating in another – as if all the arts worked in the same way. Art as poetry, poetry as music, music as art and so on, round all possible permutations. That is the interart analogy.
Simon Shaw-Miller was another figure who, like Dayan, approached interart relations as a historical phenomenon. Shaw-Miller stated that the boundaries between visual arts and music have been transient throughout history; and they have been united and
4 For Dayan, Wagner opposes interart aesthetics because he has committed "the sin of believing that words and music could work together in pursuit of a common dramatic aim" (Dayan 2011, p.3).
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separated as the ideological conventions and culture permits (Shaw Miller, 2002, p. 4). Unlike Dayan, he has not excluded Wagnerian aesthetics. For him, Gesamtkunstwerk is an alternative paradigm of Modernism. At the beginning of the century, despite the modernist aesthetic, shaped with the purity and spatio-temporal categorisations of art forms, of Irving Babbitt (The New Laokoon, 1910) and then Clement Greenberg (Towards a Newer Laokoon, 1940), he referred to this notion while studying the interaction between music and visual arts and the formal and contextual intersections between them, in a chronology, similar to that of the Vergo’s work, along a line that extends to Cage.
Although Shaw-Miller found Dayan’s laws useful in bringing a methodological perspective, he cited the pictorial compositions developed by Paul Klee (1879-1940) with his interest in polyphony and counterpoint. He stated that these laws are not fully applicable to all interart instances (Shaw-Miller, 2013, p. 216). In the first chapter of his book, Visible Deeds of Music, he suggested a classification that would cover all of the transitional practices between art forms, by referring to the categorisation used for ‘hybrid art’ forms by Jerold Levinson.
In his 1984 article, Levinson defined hybrid art forms as “arising from the actual combination or interpenetration of earlier art forms” and examined it under three labels: Juxtaposition, Synthesis, and Transformational (Levinson, 1984, p.6). Shaw-Miller renamed these categories as ‘multidisciplinary’, ‘interdisciplinary’, and ‘cross-disciplinary’, which he thinks as more appropriate terms for analysis. According to this:
- Multidisciplinary (Juxtaposition) art forms consist of each discipline’s elements accompanying each other in a way that can be perceived simultaneously. The use of sound and music in site-specific installations and symphonies accompanied by light shows are evaluated under this category. Cage’s activities at Black Mountain College with Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) towards the end of the 1940s are among the examples of these as well.
- Unlike Multidisciplinary, in Interdisciplinary (Synthesis) relationships, artistic elements are not perceived separately. A new whole emerges from their combination. For example, as in ‘concrete poetry’ where in an art piece both the sculptural and textual features exist. The works of Frank
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Stella (1936), which function as a canvas and have a minimalist sculpture’s spatiality, falls into this category. Gesamtkunstwerk’s aesthetics, in which Wagner brings drama, music, dance, and libretto together and achieves unity, is also evaluated under this title.
- In the third category, Crossdisciplinary (Transformational), an art form is converged to another art form. As a result, a combination in which an artistic element melts into another and contributes to its transformation. Levinson shows kinetic sculptures that gain a temporal dimension with mobility as an example of this category. Hence, Shaw-Miller also recalled Earle Brown’s (1926-2002) Available Forms (1961) and included the open form and graphic notation shaped by visual elements in music, which aims to capture the aesthetics of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) in this category.
Shaw-Miller states that the most prominent elements in the combination of music and visual arts, whether juxtapositional, synthetic or transformational, appear with the help of similarities and differences (which is also a constant negotiation) (Shaw-Miller, 2002, p.4); therefore, he stated that rather than purity, it is more appropriate to see hybridity as the natural state of the art, for the reason that purity is a historical contingency. Nevertheless, “hybridity is part of the flux of creativity itself: the putting of things together” (Shaw-Miller, 2002, p. 27).
In the light of all these thoughts, the meaning of the medium that was previously a pure reference point for the arts and used to determine its boundaries has also changed – and expanded. Beyond being a concept defined only with materialistic and physical dimensions, the medium is now seen as an advanced method of using the spatiotemporal extent of (artistic) material with specific properties and possibilities. The use of “medium” instead of “art” as the general discourse of interdisciplinary studies is an outcome of this change.
Although, as a term, the definition and the common usage of ‘medium’ is ambiguous. Medium, in the most general sense; is used to describe any type of communication channels that allow the transmission of a message, data, information, or a statement. However, this definition varies within the field of study of different disciplines and alters depending on the researchers’ academic background. For instance, “media”, the plural form of the concept, has generally associated with the communication technologies that reach the mass audiences such as television, newspapers, and the
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Internet, and widely studied in cultural, visual, and communication studies. On the other hand, “medium” corresponds to specific art forms such as music, painting, sculpture, literature, and architecture for an art critic. While a philosopher from the phenomenological school sorts the medium as instruments used in visual, auditory, verbal, and even olfactory and tactile processes, an artist can associate it with the material he benefited from while creating his work (Ryan, 2004, p. 15-16). Eventually, the medium is diversified either with technical tools, non-technical tools such as body and language; or materials such as stone, paint, fabric, and clay; it is accepted as a phenomenon serving as a mediator between the forming, transmitting, and receiving a message, meaning or expression.
This multifaceted aspect of the 'medium,' or its plural term 'media,' has also drawn our attention to how we perceive and interpret them as mediators. We may think of the medium experience as a multi-sensory process, as in film or theatre, or in painting and sculpture, where the sense of touch can evoke while looking at them. From that standpoint, the idea that W.J.T Mitchell put forward “all media are mixed media” emphasizes this multi-sensory aspect of the medium and its internal cooperation with other media (Mitchell, W.T.J., 2005, p.215). In the field of interart studies, Mitchell's assertion has yielded a variety of significant outcomes.
The next part of this chapter introduces intermedial studies, as a transdisciplinary discourse, aiming to cover both the traditional and modern usage of medial connections with the categories established by the relations of the various media and art forms to each other. All these efforts of intermedial scholars, who've attempted to put forward a systematic approach to the idea of ‘all media are mixed media’ lead us to the concept of ekphrasis, where the artwork is re-presented in another form of art.
1.2 From Interart to Intermedia
The concept of “intermedia”, which has been used as the umbrella term for interdisciplinary studies in recent years, also evaluates the medium in this diversity. All kinds of communication, from cave paintings to the tools shaped by the possibilities of today’s new media, have been defined as medium (Packer & Jordan, 2002), and according to this approach, art is regarded as the aesthetically advanced form of the medium (Elleström, 2010). Thus, the interart tradition, which brings the transitional examples between image, text, and sound together throughout history, has
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been assessed as a background that enables us to comprehend the multi-layered relationship in today’s mediums (Clüver, 2007).
The historical development of intermedia discourse has been associated with the emergence of comparative literature, studies that examine the relationship of literature with other art forms – which were later expanded to other arts in the 1950s when the artistic approach defending the medium’s autonomy began to be abandoned.5
As a concept, intermedia was first used by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins (1938-1998) in his article, Statement of Intermedia (Intermedia Manifesto) in 1966. In the article, Higgins discussed the hybrid art forms formed by the combination of different media, such as performance art and concrete poetry, and expressed that he regards art as a single means of communication. Higgins, who deals with artistic practices that evolve by the way the medium is handled, in a manner that covers other communication tools that are a part of daily life, defined intermedia as an approach emphasises the dialectic between mediums:
For the last ten years or so, artists have changed their media to suit this situation, to the point where the media have broken down in their traditional forms, and have become merely puristic points of reference. The idea has arisen, as if by spontaneous combustion throughout the entire world, that these points are arbitrary and only useful as critical tools, in saying that such-and-such a work is basically musical, but also poetry. This is the intermedial approach, to emphasise the dialectic between the media. A composer is a dead man unless he composes for all the media and for his world. (Higgins, 1966)
In addition to the fact that intermedia has a wide range from new media, digital arts, to communication studies, it is observed that its connection with comparative literature, which is the starting point of studies to determine its definition and scope, still continues. Therefore, in these studies, mostly literary references appear in the foreground (Figure 1.1).
5 Sources among the first academic reflections of this dissolution: Etienne Souriau's La Correspondance des Arts (1947), Susanne K. Langer's Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art (1953), Calvin S. Brown’s Music and Literature (1948), Jean Hagstrum’s The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (1958) (Clüver, 2007). In addition to these sources, the special edition of ‘Interrelations of Art’ published by the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism in 1953 might also be included into this scope.
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Figure 1.1 : Clüver and Vos’s Schema of Word-Image Relations.
In this schema, where Claus Clüver and Elic Vos updated Leo Hoek’s categorisation in 1995, the intermedia relationship between image and text has been categorised under four titles (transmedial, multimedia, mixed media, and intermedial). Examples that are grouped according to variables such as the structural features (coherence, polytextuality), the style of reception (distinctiveness, simultaneous reception), and the production process (simultaneous production) are presented in the bottom rows.
Another more recent categorisation belongs to Irana O. Rajewsky. In order to make a concrete analysis by covering all types of medial articulations, Rajewsky created a narrowly conceived theory that would uniformly apply the different conceptions, and proposed three subcategories: The first one is “medial transposition”. It includes studies mainly focusing on a medium-specific transformation process such as film and novel adaptations. Rajewsky’s second category is “media combination”. It contains examples formed by the articulation or combination of at least two different media such as opera, film, theatre, performing arts, manuscripts, comics, sound installations. In the last category, “intermedial references”, the way of association or imitation constitutes the basis: “Rather than combining different medial forms of articulation, the given media-product thematises, evokes, or imitates elements or structures of another, conventionally distinct medium through the use of its own media-specific means” (Rajewsky, 2005, p. 52). She included the term ekphrasis used to describe an
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artwork that reproduces another form of art with the possibilities of its medium under this category.
Although all these categories bring the relationship between different media or art forms under different titles, they share a common approach, since they are classified according to how they assemble. Another common point is the concept of ekphrasis used for works in which an artwork is re-represented in another art form to which Clüver referred for transmedial, Rajewensky for intermedial references, and Shaw-Miller for cross-disciplinary (transformation) relations.
1.3 Ekphrasis: Transformation from One Work to Another
Ekphrasis is a rhetorical exercise practiced in Ancient Greece. It means conveying a subject in a way that can be fully envisioned through words or texts. The shield of Achilles, described by Homer in the epic Iliad, is accepted as the first literary example of ekphrasis (Bruhn 2000, p. 553). This term, brought back to the literature agenda by Leo Spitzer in 1955, was used to describe the re-representation of a visual work of art in poetry or prose writing (Clüver, 2007) (Bruhn, 2000, p. xviii).
However, ekphrasis is not a concept limited only to the verbal and visual intersection. Its field has expanded in a framework that can be valid for different binary encounters such as musical composition of a visual work of art or, on the contrary, visual and literary art works interpreting with a musical piece. Sigling Bruhn, who brought a new perspective to the subject in regards to musicology, mapped the scope of the concept in her book Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding to Poetry and Painting (2000) as follows (Figure 1.2):
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Figure 1.2 : The map of musical ekphrasis by Bruhn (Bruhn, 2000, p. xvii).
Bruhn’s has examined this multi-layered transformation between music, text, and image under five categories: Transposition, Supplementation, Association, Interpretation, and Playfulness:
Transposition as an ekphrastic stance includes works in which an artistic expression is interpreted in another form of art. In this case, the primary artwork is recreated utilizing the other form of art. In this type of transition, not only contextual but also structural transitions are used. Bruhn includes Concerto for Orchestra (1969) by Elliott Carter (1908-2012) composed under the influence of Saint-John Perse’s (1887-1975) poem The Winds (Vents 1946) among the examples of this category. Based on the poem consisting of four parts, Carter composed a piece of four parts, divided the orchestral instruments into four groups. Also, he arranged harmonic values such as rhythm, beat, and tempo under four groups. In her another article, Bruhn cited Walter Steffens’s (1934) work for flute and piano dated 1966, which Steffen composed in reference to Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) painting La femme-fleur (1946). A linear abstraction prevails in the painting where a woman’s body (of Francoise Gilot’s) transforms into a flower form (Figure 1.3). Bruhn stated that the composer benefitted from the technique of serialism to concretise this abstraction musically. The repeating shapes formed with contours in the painting correspond to the melodic structure that is fragmented and recombined in the musical composition (Bruhn, 2001, p. 583-586).
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Figure 1.3 : Pablo Picasso, La Femme Fleur (Francoise Gilot), 1946.
In Supplementation, the artist recreates the sensory (sound, smell, touch, etc.) or physical (spatiotemporal) elements that cannot be transmitted in the primary artwork, using his medium. The ballet music Nobilissima Visione, composed by Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) after Giotto’s frescoes, on the life of Saint Francis and in the Santa Croce Church in Florence, is included in this category. The inner happiness and religious devotion of Saint Francis were musically re-presented. The emotions in frescoes that can only be visually depicted have been transformed into a temporal narrative in music (Bruhn 2000, p.577).
In Association, instead of sensory or visual expression, building connections with a new thought or feeling inspired by the transformed artwork is preferred. In this category, Bruhn investigated the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s (1879-1936) Boticelli Triptych (1927). The composer created three-part music based on Sandro Botticelli’s (1445-1510) paintings Primavera (1477-1482), The Adoration of Magi (1475-1476), and The Birth of Venus (1485-1486). Instead of describing the paintings separately in his music, the composer handled the three parts in a way that demonstrated to each other and represented them as an imaginary triptych.
The Interpretation type of transformation occurs in two forms. In the first, the artwork is interpreted in the light of information not represented in the original work of art but associated with it. In the second, the interpreting artist evaluates the art work with a
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critical perspective; and he aims to explore the possible reasons for the choices that he thinks may have been made by the artist of the work, by interpreting those choices. Bruhn used two musical compositions written for Marc Chagall’s (1887-1985) stained-glass as an example of these two cases. The first of these examples is The Chagall Windows (1974) by John McCabe (1939-2015). The British composer produced music that makes religious references based on stained-glass depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The second example is Jacob Gilboa’s (1920-2007) The Twenty Jerusalem Windows by Chagall (1966). Unlike McCabe, Gilboa did not prefer to make religious references to the twelve tribes; instead, he focused on the medium itself and investigated the impact of the luminous effect created by the coloured stained-glass (Bruhn, 2000, p. 581).
Playfulness is the most “light-hearted” one of the ekphrasis categories (Bruhn 2000, p.582). A composer is expected to adopt an enjoyable sense of musical humour in such a transformation. Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (1959) by the American composer Gunther Schuller (1925-2015) is among Bruhn’s works cited as an example of this approach.6 Schuller preferred different musical styles for the music he composed on Klee’s seven other paintings. For instance, in his piece composed for Little Blue Devil, he transformed the “comic-seriousness” of the devil in the painting into a jazz piece dominated by “a perky and distorted melody and instruments with the tone of blues” (Figure 1.4). Furthermore, he explained that in Twittering Machine, he adapted the concrete mechanical structure of the serial technique to a humorous language suitable for birds, depicted on a mechanical component in the painting (Schuller, 2014).
6 The Klee’s paintings in this album are respectively; Antique Harmonies (c.1925), Abstract Trio (1923), Little Blue Devil (1933), The Twittering Machine (1922), Arab Village (1923), An Eerie Movement (1912) and Pastorale (1927).
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Figure 1.4 : Paul Klee, Little Blue Devil, 1933.
Although ekphrastic variations are defined under separate categories, it is also possible to see them combined in a musically transformed work. On the other hand, this concept (as presented in Bruhn’s mapping) brought up the issue of representation in music, including Programme Music and Symphonic Poetry.
Representation in music is handled in two ways: firstly, it is pure music based solely on the instrumental arrangement and does not imitate a particular story. It is this ideal that glorifies music in the abstract art category. The other one is the music that contains extra-musical elements, like in Programme Music and Symphonic Poetry, and is shaped by extra-musical elements. In this type of music, a story, a character, an emotion, a thought, or a visual scene transforms into an auditory representation. Bruhn, who explores this type of representation under the umbrella of musical ekphrasis, argued that the composer not only creates the model of the content imagined in a scene or story but also the unique details specific to the form and compositional features of an art work (Bruhn 2000, p. 563). Bruhn supported this complex representational relation in music with the arguments of Susanne Langer (1895-1985) based on her book Feeling and Form (Bruhn, 2001, p. 557-561).
For Langer, art, especially music, creates perceptible forms that express emotions that an ordinary language cannot convey.7 Although the form changes physically according
7 Langer noted this privilege of music by referring to Walter Pater's famous phrase "all art constantly aspire the condition of music" written in 1873 in his book The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (Langer 2011, p.73). Another reflection of Pater's thought can be observed in the article Towards a Newer Laocoon, written in 1940 by Greenberg, who exemplifies the understanding of pure painting
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to the materials of different art disciplines, it corresponds to a common creational principle for all arts. On the other hand, the form is a symbolic transformation of the knowledge (motion, emotion, feeling) that we experience in life, directly or intuitively. However, Langer did not use the term “symbol” as a concept that functions as a mediator and points to a particular idea and thought, as it is in its general use in visual arts or language. For her, form is the sign itself, the concrete form of thought, the pattern of thinking (Langer, 2012, p. 112).
Langer approached the interart relationship with a similar structural perspective and argued that each type of art has its specific principles of creation. Accordingly, the primary principle is nascence; it emerges in the organisation of space in painting and organisation of time in music. Determining the artwork’s real character as a substance is the nascence that is unique to the medium. The secondary principle is defined as the elements that bestow the artwork with richness and give the freedom of creation to the expression of feelings and emotions. Langer argued that the primary principles of music and painting respectively in time and space might appear in another, like an echo, but this time as a secondary principle. Accordingly, secondary principle occurs in time in painting; and space in music. For Langer, this “gives us a hint of the basic community of all arts” (Langer, 1953, p. 118). Langer also suggested that if examined intensely, one could reach a point where no distinction could be made between different art forms (Langer, 2012, p. 66).
Langer’s approach to the concept of ekphrasis is more restrictive.8 For her, an artistic activity can only exist in one art discipline. According to this, in a poem adapted to music, the text disappears and assimilates within the song. The same is valid for dance, in music. However, Langer did not apply this generalisation to the relationships between art forms in which the engagement depends on structural analysis. Langer, who proposes T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets as an example, which Bruhn will examine under the Transposition stance of musical ekphrasis years later, argued that artistic transformation is possible with “an ultimate abstraction”. For her, even if there are no technical means to transform one art form to another, there are comparable
over the formal and aesthetic autonomy of music. Shaw-Miller examined Greenberg's adaption of Pater's thoughts in the first chapter of Visible Deeds of Music (Shaw-Miller 2002, p.p.1-35).
8 Langer did not use ekphrasis as a term. She explained it as a recreation of an artwork in another art form.
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forms unique to principles of primary and secondary appearances (Langer, 2012, p. 72-73).
Based on Bruhn, Lydia Goehr (1960), who studies philosophy of music, brought the most modern approach to the concept of ekphrasis. Goehr, in her article How to Do More with Words: Two Views of (Musical) Ekphrasis, discussed the meaning of ekphrasis, which is based on “description”, together with its ancient and modern definitions. Accordingly, early ekphrasis definitions focus on speech and written action, while modern ekphrasis focuses on art techniques that transform artwork into an aesthetic asset (Goehr, 2010).
Eventually, it is understood that ekphrasis’s modern function seems to mean more than a re-representation of a work of art in another art form. This concept allows us to observe the interaction between different mediums, styles and practices. On the one hand, it makes it possible to follow the creative process of an artist, in terms of the relationship that they have established with the artwork, which is used as an influential source. Furthermore, based on this relational representation, it can be claimed that it also suggests a new dimension to the experience of the audience’s reception.
1.4 The Purpose and Scope of the Study
This thesis uses the modern function of ekphrasis as an instrumental model and aims to examine the relationship of contemporary Turkish composer, İlhan Usmanbaş, with the visual arts. By concentrating on his seminal work, Three Paintings from Dalí (1952-1955), it is intended to explore the historical, cultural and aesthetical connections that the composer developed between music and visual arts.
Three Paintings from Dalí is the first work that Usmanbaş shaped his music with the relationship he established directly with particular paintings. In this symphonic work (written for 22 string instruments)9 consisting of three parts, Usmanbaş respectively used Salvador Dalí’s (1904-1989) three paintings: Temptations de Saint Anthony (1946), El Centaur (1951), and Angel Explodanto Armonicamente (1951). This piece was written in three years, shortly after Usmanbaş had experienced the twelve-tone technique and began to use serial elements into his music. Since it gives clues to innovations, such as aleatoric explorations, that would be brought by Usmanbaş in his
9 12 violins, 4 violas, 4 cellos, 2 contra bass. (instruments could be multiplied by 2 for 44 players)
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future works, it is also considered to have been an important point of reference in the musical life of the composer. In addition to all these, the fact that it is the first orchestral music inspired by Dalí’s paintings (see Appendix A.1 and A.2), is another remarkable feature of this work (URL-1).
When Usmanbaş started his serial music compositions, the closeness he established with Dalí’s paintings led us to rethink the historical aspect of the relationship between music and Surrealism, within the scope of this study. Surrealism, unlike other modern movements of the first half of the century, is an art movement that kept its distance from music. Although this stance changed direction in parallel with the developments after World War II, the relationship between the movement and music started to become more evident, especially through jazz music. However, little has been said about the relationship between music and Surrealism before 1950. Thus, in the second part of the study, possible new links between Surrealism and music, shaped not only by similarities, but also by differences, have been targeted to be discovered. First, the reasons for the negative stance of the Surrealist movement towards music will be discussed. Afterwards, composers who had shown a tendency towards Surrealist thought will be explored. The second part of the study deals with how the twelve-tone technique, which emerged almost simultaneously to the Surrealist movement, has engaged with Surrealist thought through the 1950s. Finally, the Surrealist movement’s reflections in Turkish art have been investigated to build a background to the creation of Three Paintings from Dalí.
In Turkey, the 1950s were a period of reckoning with the past in social, economic, cultural, and artistic fields. The study's third chapter focuses on these conditions of the period, when Three Paintings from Dalí emerged, and examines the composer’s social environment in parallel with the changes in his music, by emphasizing his engagement with paintings and poetry.
Usmanbaş is best known for his relationships with contemporary Turkish poets and his musical compositions on their poems. However, he also created compositions inspired by Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and Victor Vasarely (1906-1997), in different periods of his musical career.10 Within the scope of
10 A musical piece inspired from Japanese woodcuts titled Dört Japon Estampı (Four Japanese Engravings) dated in 1956, written for women choir and orchestra is included in Usmanbaş’s the List of Works, with a note that it’s score is missing (Usmanbaş, 2015, p. 296).
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Chapter Three, the composer's use of visual and poetic elements in his music will be examined through the works he directly or indirectly transformed into music.
The fourth chapter of the thesis focuses on Dalí’s three paintings, Temptations de Saint Anthony (1946), El Centaur (1951), and Angel Explotando Armonicamente (1951) and how Usmanbaş adapted them into his music. These paintings have new pictorial features that Dalí declared in Mystical Manifesto in 1951. To comprehend what role these features play in the organisation of Usmanbaş’s music, the process of Dalí's artistic evolution, up to the 1950s, has been evaluated, and the composition features behind the three paintings have been analysed in detail. In the light of this analysis, this part of the study will trace the connections that the composer established while transforming the images into music, in other words, the transitional possibilities that he caught between the temporal features of music and the spatial features of the paintings.
However, Three Paintings from Dalí had shared a similar misfortune with the composer’s many other works: it was never performed again, after its first performance in 1977, conducted by Gürer Aykal (1942) with the Presidential Symphony Orchestra. The fact that most of Usmanbaş's major works have largely been ignored – typically left out of concert programmes, with relatively few works being released in or performed on stage – has led to a lack of sources that allow us to study the composer's music. In order to fill this gap to a certain degree, the project Seeing the Unheard / Hearing the Unseen was supported by ITU Scientific Research Projects and realised as a part of this Ph.D. study.
Within the scope of this project, Usmanbaş’s handwritten musical notation was digitised, and the piece was recorded at ITU Centre for Advanced Music (MIAM) recording studios, before being premiered live on stage as an audio-visual concert, on 4th October 2013 at Mustafa Kemal Hall, at the Maçka Campus of Istanbul Technical University.11 The DVD contains all of the recordings, as well as the music sheets, in the hope of providing documentation for future studies. (see Appendix A.3).
11 The concert was conducted by Orhun Orhon and the orchestra was supervised by Ahmet Altınel. The sound and video recordings of the project can be found on the DVD and have been published on ITU Scientific Researh Projects’s website.
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Usmanbaş actually envisaged the possibilities of digital media, observing scientific and technological developments closely, suggesting that these developments must come side-by-side with music:
In this century, visual [art] and music, which are trying to embrace each other, and this, being a close embrace, can only be achieved by film and computer. Plastic arts and music live together in time and space, rather than side by side, would give birth to the artist, who would be able to realise both. […] sooner or later new possibilities would give birth to new kinds of artists. (Usmanbaş, 2003)
Refik Anadol and Mert Kızılay, who were the visual artists of the performance, certainly fit into this new category of artist, described by the composer. Analysing the temporal flow, pitch values and movement of the musical sounds by computer-supported algorithmic calculations, these two young artists used the data they gained through this analysis, to generate real-time visual graphics at the audio-visual concert event of the project. The visuals, based on the algorithms of Usmanbaş's piece and accompanied to the concert performance live on stage, were themed separately for the three parts of the music. Thus, the mediation of the visuals between the paintings and the music will also be also examined, in parallel with the analysis of Dalí’s paintings and Usmanbaş’ music, in chapter four.
Three Paintings from Dalí, beyond being a re-presentation of artwork in another art form, created a unique study for Usmanbaş, and offered itself as an aesthetic asset where the composer explored the spatiotemporal limits of his music.
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2. SURREALISM AND MUSIC
Surrealism is one of the most influential art movements in today’s art practices. It has instilled concepts such as alienation, revolution, ethnographic viewpoint and the glorification of everyday life inherited from Dada, into the 20th Century thought. It played a privileged role in transferring the developments from pre-war Europe to the post-war period due to its presence between the two world wars and its internationally organised structure. In other words, Surrealism served as a bridge connecting Modernism to Postmodernism.
Surrealism, which emerged as a revolutionary movement in poetry in 1924, immediately expanded its interest to painting, sculpture, photography, architecture and cinema. Yet, despite its Symbolist and Dadaist origins, it purposefully dissociated itself from music. However, this attitude of Surrealism had a turn after the disintegration in the movement, towards the end of 1930s and during the exile years, in America, of artists such as Breton, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst (1891-1976), André Masson (1896-1987).
The relationship of the Surrealist movement with music became more apparent after the Second World War. The rediscovery of jazz music and especially the rise of free improvisation are seen as the manifestation of Surrealism in music (Szekely, 2011). Furthermore, it is known that Surrealists in Europe also followed the albums of musicians such as Charles Parker (1920-1955), Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993), Bud Powell (1924-1966) and Thelonious Monk (1917-1982); and that even André Breton (1896-1966), who was prejudiced against music, attended jazz concerts during his exile in America (Breton, 2006, p. 348). Romanian Surrealist artist Victor Brauner’s (1903-1966) Portrait of Thelonious Monk (1948) (Figure 2.1) and Claude Tarnaud (1922-1991)’s poems ‘Miles Davis’, ‘Theloniuos Monk’ and ‘Max Roach’, from his book La Forme Réfléchie (1953), are regarded as examples of the Surrealists’ accordance with music through jazz during this period (Garon, 1996, p. 215).
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Figure 2.1 : Victor Brauner, Portrait of Thelonious Monk, signed 17 August 1948 (Steve Lacy, "More Monk" Soul Note album cover, 1991).
Besides jazz, another link between Surrealism and music is associated with the techniques applied in contemporary music. By comparing free improvisation with automatism, and applications such as simultaneities, pluralities and borrowings with collage techniques, LeBaron claims that the actual influence of the movement emerged with post-modern music (LeBaron, 2002, p. 4-27). Jonathan D. Kramer has a similar thought on this issue. Stating that Surrealism expresses more than a style like Postmodernism, Kramer indicated that Surrealist theories has provided valuable learnings to post-modern music, and both are attitudes, a way of thinking about the world and a state of mind (Kramer, 2016, p. 178-180).
Nevertheless, contrary to the post-1950s period, there are few studies focusing on the relationship between Surrealism and music pre-1950. Nicolas Slonimsky’s Surrealism and Music article (1966), which explores the topic, within a broad historical context, is among these works. Describing the equivalence of Surrealist approaches in music as a reaction to tonal music dedicated to saloon music and virtuosity, Slonimsky first outlines examples of music containing Surrealist elements from both Russian and European avant-gardes and assessed that the adventure of music, starting with Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) and moving on to John Cage, before discussing graphic notation as the reflection of surrealist thinking in music. Slonimsky also states that the reflections of Surrealist techniques, such as collage and montage, emerged with Pierre
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Schaeffer (1910-1995) and Pierre Henry’s (1927-2017) ‘musique concrete’12 towards the end of the 1940s (Slonimsky, 2003, p. 138).
Jacqueline Chenieux-Gendron also shares the thought that electro-acoustic music is more aligned with the Surrealist spirit. However, Chenieux-Gendron, in her book, in which he devotes only a few pages to the relationship of the movement with music, claims that the appropriate atmosphere for Surrealism to meet with music has been irretrievably missed in historical perspective (Chenieux-Gendron, 1990, p. 168). Daniel Albright explores the relationship between Surrealism and music in his book Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources, in which he collected the writings of composers, critics, poets and thinkers. Referring to the examples of composers such as Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Georges Auric (1899-1983), Arthur Honegger (1892-1955) and Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), who have included Surrealist features in their music, Albright expresses that music had a vital role in modern art movements, such as Expressionism, Neoclassicism and New Objectivism, but in turn is underrated by the Surrealists. This, according to Albright, related to the tendency of artists of the movement not to take an interest in music (Albright, 2004, p. 309).
The Surrealists' lack of collective ideas about music could be explained by the diversity of the artists who were either members of, or in contact with, the Surrealist movement. However, it is particularly associated with André Breton, the movement's founder and theorist's negative attitude toward music. The fact that the Surrealists, who had few hesitations about expressing their thoughts on any topic, hardly mentioned music in their writings could be an indication that the majority of the movement followed Breton’s lead. Nevertheless, there are two significant texts on music written by Surrealists.
The first of these is Music is Dangerous, written as a speech note13 by Paul Nougé, a poet and founding member of the Belgian group, who despite Breton's impactful
12 The first electronic music experiments realised on a magnetic tape by the leadership of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry are named as ‘musique concrete’. ‘Elektronische Musik’ is a name given to the works of Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) in Köln Radio. Musique Concrete and Elektronishe Musik are in common since both provide a wide range of sound for the composers. Musique concrete uses the recordings of natural sounds. Therefore, it is also called concrete music. On the other hand, the sounds that are created in ‘Elektronische Musik’ are electronically generated (Mimaroğlu 1991, p.23-24).
13 Despite the fact that Nougé's text is the first comprehensive text on music, it was published after Breton's Silence is Golden. It first appeared in the Charleroi Conference booklet in 1946, and later an
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thoughts, is known for his affinity for music. In a conference during the exhibition and concert event that he held in 1929 with René Magritte (1898-1967) and André Souris (1899-1970) in the Belgian city of Charleroi, Nougé affirmed that they could not escape from music. Discussing the effects of musical experiences on the minds of the listeners, Nougé also made evaluations on the relationship of music with language and meaning (Nougé, 1946).
The other text is Breton’s 1946 Silence is Golden. It was published in Modern Music magazine, along with other articles written in honour of the seventieth birthday of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Breton, who had previously drawn a hard line between himself and music, seems to have revised his views in this article. After addressing his own valid reasons for denying music, he confirmed that the tension between music and Surrealism needed to be resolved, and that this could only be achieved through renewing principles of both sides (Breton, 2006, p. 350). This article, in which Breton reconsidered his thoughts on music, represents a shift in the movement's relationship with music.
The 1950s were a turning point in the relationship between Surrealism and music. This chapter focuses on the pre-1950s period, when the relationship between Surrealism and music remained unclear and it aims to provide insight on the points where music intersects with Surrealism, on the way to serial and aleatory music. Firstly, the study discusses the negative stance of the Surrealist movement towards music. Conversely, it includes the composers who felt close to Surrealist thought and used Surrealist elements in their music. After noting how serial music verged on Surrealist thought in the period leading up to the process towards the 1950s., the study investigates the echoes of the Surrealist movement in Turkey, where Three Paintings from Dalí has emerged.
2.1 Aesthetical, Technical and Ideological Conflicts Between Surrealism and Music
The composer, Francis Poulenc (1889-1963), who was a member of the Paris Les Six group in the 1920s and took a close interest in the Surrealist movement, complained that all Surrealists were musically ignorant, except for the poet Paul Eluard (1895-
abbreviated English translation was published in December 1946 and Spring 1947 issues of View magazine in America.
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1952) (Albright, 2004, p. 309). On the other hand, LeBaron explains that the interruption between Surrealism and music is the result of jealousy and misunderstanding, and this is explained by the influential thoughts of Breton, who defines music as “the most confusing form” among all arts (LeBaron, 2002, p. 30). It is possible to analyse Breton’s negative attitude affecting Surrealist view under three categories: aesthetic, technical and ideological.
2.1.1 Aesthetical conflicts
The Surrealists’ imagery is not independent from the external world. On the contrary, the artists of this movement tried to make a connection between physical reality and the mind’s imaginative power. According to this viewpoint, abstract expression was incapable of establishing the relationship between these two worlds full of images. Therefore, Surrealists also considered music, which they regarded as an abstract form of art, as inferior, like the abstract painting. The recognition of the movement's anti-abstract attitude can be traced through the transformation of Dalí in his first years in the Surrealist group.
In 1928, in the first edition of the article New Limits of Painting, written just months after Breton’s article, ‘Surrealism and Painting’, Dalí had already attempted to exceed the boundaries of Cubism and mediated between Surrealism and abstract art (Dalí, 1998, p. 73). The most striking part of this article is that it includes an extended excerpt of the Purist artist Ozenfant, who has often explained his thoughts – mostly with musical metaphors. In this quote, Ozenfant associates the practice of painting with the systematic establishment of the piano, consisting of colour and form. For him, like the piano, where the required and sufficient sounds are selected among the infinite possibilities, the painting should function as a kind of keyboard, consisting of primary colours and forms.
The change in Dalí, who prefered to strengthen his painting's boundaries with musical metaphors, appeared in the second edition of the article published just a few months later. This time, Dalí started his article by claiming that it is obligatory to take a stand against Ozenfant’s purist approach (Dalí, 1998, p. 85). This rapid change in Dalí, who included examples from Joan Miró, Max Ernst and Jean (Hans) Arp (1886-1966), indicates Breton’s influence on him and the process of adapting to Surrealist principles. He had now become an advocate of art that explores the relationship
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between the perception of reality and psychological factors. In another article, he would soon claim that “instinctual and psychic emotional reactions were going to replace the normative values of abstraction as in musical style” (Dalí, 1998, p. 229).
Dalí also benefited from photography and cinema in his process of analysing Surrealist ideas and adapting them to his art. According to him, “nothing is more favourable to the osmosis between reality and surreality than photography” and the camera is the best tool to see the hidden reality between the spiritual layers (Dalí, 1998, p. 95). The film Un Chien Andalou (1929), which he produced with Luis Buñuel (1900-1983), is an outcome of this interest. In the film, which contains absurd and disturbing images, excerpts from Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde and two Argentinian tangos were used, as leitmotif elements. This dual situation, intertwined with music creates both contrast and an absurd dialogue between seriousness and cynicism. Another conspicuous musical element in Un Chien Andalou is the piano – presented in a way we have never seen before, in real life (Figure 2.2). Dead donkeys were placed into the piano, which was pulled with ropes by two priests. According to Finkelstein, this “ludicrous procession of burden” is a part of Buñuel’s anti-religious rhetoric (Finkelstein, 1998, p. 120). On the contrary, approaching from a more structural point, Douglas Kahn associates the visual play between the keyboard and the teeth of dead animals with Dalí’s degrading perception of music (Kahn, 2001, p. 34).
Figure 2.2 : Un Chein Andalou, piano scene, 1929.
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In fact, in his article Abrégé d’une Histoire Critique du Cinéma (Short Critical History of Cinema), published a few years after the film, Dalí would claim that cinema is also another abstract art form due to the rhythmic nature of the flow in the images. For him, rhythm is an outcome of harmony; and “harmony, a sublime product of abstraction, is at the antipodes of the concrete, and consequently, of poetry” (Dalí, 1998, p. 133). In his article, in which he refers to the hierarchical art order that Breton emphasises most frequently, Dalí expresses his thoughts on cinema with parable to music as:
Contrary to common opinion, the cinema is infinitely poorer and more limited, with regard to expression of the real functioning of thought, than writing, painting, sculpture, and architecture. There is hardly anything below it unless it is music, whose spiritual value, as is well known, is practically nil. (Dalí, 1998, p. 137)
According to Breton’s hierarchical understanding of art, poetry is the first art form that achieved freedom through Romanticism, allowing it to influence all other arts. Then comes painting that stopped reflecting what appears in the outside world and succeeded in building a correlation between reality and the subconscious mind, by using imagination, follows poetry; then sculpture and architecture, which took shape in the direction offered by poetry, and finally music comes (Artun & Altınyıldız, 2014, p. 23). This hierarchy of the arts also suggests an order among the senses. Accordingly, seeing is the most important among the other perceptual processes. As a matter of fact, images that appear during the state of dreaming gain a meaning with the value of sight.
However, unlike Breton, the Belgian Surrealist, Nougé, believes that music is not separate from the outside world. For him, music also has a visible world, and this world emerges with consciousness, just like dreams. Apart from that, another visual merit in music is accomplished when the listener becomes the spectator. This act, which is not just a matter of watching the performers or the performances on stage, is a practice familiar to the Surrealists (in their experiments). It also allows the audience to engage in the performance and, just like reflections in the mirror, it provides the opportunity to observe oneself, other audiences and the setting in which the event is located (Nougé, 1946). Therefore, the act of looking may also be experienced in the presence of music.
Conversely, Nougé thought that music belonged to a tangible, concrete world. After all, music is described by the concepts of the world of visible and palpable forms.
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Noting that we define, perceive and even imitate form and movement, the two fundamental elements of music, with our experiences, Nougé claims that music creates the same effect. He explains that we shape our action in response to music, just as we do in the connections we establish with any physical object, in line with its form and movement it suggests:
Let us not forget that music exists first as a physical object, in the manner of a tree, machine or animal. Thus, just as we experience, as we mimic, as we substitute ourselves for the movements invented according to play of form and colours, so we mimic, we make our own the movements that music proposes. (Nougé, 1946)
2.1.2 Technical conflicts
Surrealists perceived automatism, which was inspired by psychoanalysts' free association technique and considered a revolutionary discovery, not only as technical practice but also as the exact equivalent of the Surrealist ideal. Breton describes Surrealism as “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, through the written word, or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought.” in his first manifesto, in which he did not remark on painting art (Breton, 2009, p. 31). For that matter, immediately after the publication of the manifesto, poets such as Max Morise (1900-1973) and Pierre Naville (1903-1993) claimed that the painting could not be Surrealist since the painters use their ability in a controlled way. (Artun & Altınyıldız, 2014, p. 13). This early suspicion of the Surrealists towards painting was sharper and more precise when it comes to music. For them, music didn’t have enough formation to apply automatism as a technique, neither during its composition process, nor during its performance.
However, American composer and critic, Virgil Thomson, has suggested that automatism is not a new concept for music. In his article, written in response to Breton’s Silence is Golden, he stated that the source of inspiration for composers is the subconscious and related the creation process, formed by associations in music, to automatism. Based on this, Thomson claimed that this technique had been practiced for centuries in music by referring to Bach, who is known as the master of improvisation (LeBaron, 2002, p. 37).
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However, this technique, which was once considered to be an instrument of discovery, had become unexplorable by the end of the 1930s. Pure automatism, which was seen as the key to transforming the mind into a dream state, had reached a point where it was blocked, due to its difficulties in application. This blockage was also seen as a sign of disintegration in the movement (Laurent & Trezise, 1989). Indeed, even the meaning that Breton attributed to automatism has changed. In his article from the early 1940s, he admitted the possibility “for automatism to enter into the composition of a painting or a poem with a certain degree of premeditation” (Breton, 2006, p. 296).
It is comprehended that the unique methods of Surrealist artists started to come to the fore when automatism was congested. Max Ernst improved “decalcomania” and then “oscillation” techniques towards the end of the 1930s, after having applied the frottage technique for years.14 On the other side, Dalí offered his Paranoiac Critical method, as a way out of this blockage in automatism. Dalí, who created the basis of his method in the early 1930s, claimed that the first phase of Surrealist experiments had been completed (Dalí, 1998, p. 238). Describing this first phase as the night zone that includes automatism and dreams, Dalí states that the second phase has a deeper relationship with the reality of daily life. Moreover, he specified that researchers who have progressed to this stage have a desire to interfere in Surrealist experiments.
Dalí’s method proposes an active and systematic transformation towards automatism, which remains passive over time. Images that can often multiply - doubling, tripling, or more - provide the viewer, in Dalí's words, with an experience of seeing the constant change of reality together with the objects presented in it. (Figure 2.3). It is possible to find a similar transformation to Dalí’s images in the ‘objets sonores’ (sound objects) that Schaeffer used in ‘musique concrete’ (concrete music) experiments. For Schaeffer, in this music, in which the original sounds are sometimes arranged beyond recognition, the bell sound can turn into a human voice, the human voice into a violin, and the violin into the sound of a sea bird (Schaeffer, 2012, p. 41).
14 Decalcomania is a technique in which various surface textures are obtained by pressing paper and glass materials onto paint spilled over canvas. These textures are then used to be transformed into forms resembling coral or seaweed. Improving the ‘oscillation’ technique in his years in America, Ernst poured the paint on the canvas through a bottle with a hole and by using bodily undulations. The lines and forms that appear on canvas in this way become the starting point of Ernst’s pictorial plane.
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Figure 2.3: Salvador Dalí, Swans Reflecting Elephants, 1937.
Electroacoustic experiments, which began with the Futurist’ noise music at the beginning of the 20th century and introduced a new dimension to music with the advent of recording technology, emphasized the physical characteristics of musical sounds and added a palpable value to it. Born in radio studios towards the end of 1940s, this music drives from the natural sounds of the external world. Aaron Copland assessed these ‘objets sonores’ as the equivalent of visual images (Copland, 2015, p. 172).
2.1.3 Ideological conflicts
Art and revolution are the two inseparable bonds of Surrealist ideals. In a collective manifesto, published to contemporary critics in 1925, the Surrealists, described themselves as the masters of rebellion, clearly stated that they will not avoid any action they consider necessary, in which they would associate the name of the movement with revolution. A revolution is needed for the complete liberation of art, as well as the independence of art, it is necessary for the public to be prepared for the concept of revolution. This idea was emphasised in Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art (1938) signed by Breton and Trotsky published in Partisan Review in USA (Artun, 2010, p. 231).
Ideological disagreement between Surrealism and music starts at this point. According to Breton, concerts and salon music are against the revolutionary ideals of Surrealism
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since they serve the bourgeoisie. The Surrealists, meanwhile, looked down upon the public's popular taste. The attitude of Breton towards the group called Les Six, which gathered through Eric Satie's guidance and eventually became popular in the Paris cultural scene, and the naming of Jean Cocteau, who was in the group's leading position, as a “fake poet”, are all reflections of this disposition (Breton, 2006, p. 350).
However, while Breton ignored it, there were similar outflows on the music side. Satie’s ‘furniture music’ (musique d’ameublement), written not to listened to, but to be perceived, as a whole, by the noises surround us in the background, was seen as an intervention into the bourgeois sense of musical pleasure (Albright 2004, p.68). Schoenberg’s twelve-tone music, which was introduced almost simultaneously with the Surrealist Manifesto, on the other hand, had a similar stance. The anti-hierarchical characteristic of the sound sequences is much a criticism of the order in the social classes as it is a harmonic feature. The Society for Private Music Performances, founded by Schonberg in 1918, to rehearse and perform music that is not accepted by commercial events, also parallels Breton’s approach, which stands against the general taste of the public. Just like Breton, Schoenberg expressed his clear and opposing attitude towards stereotypical art criticism by not taking critics to the association’s events (Slonimsky, 2003, p. 137)
2.2 Surrealist Reflections in Music
After World War I, developments in music evolved in different directions. On the one hand, there was the conception of neoclassical music that had not broken its ties with the past; on the other side were composers like Les Six, trying to get rid of the weight of classical music and sought simplicity, humour and easy-to-understand music. Among all this, the sound of ‘new music’ arose with Schoenberg and his students Alban Berg (1885-1935) and Anton Webern (1883–1945). No matter how much Surrealist artists try to stay away from music, it is possible to encounter composers who feel close to Surrealism in this form.
There are different opinions about how Surrealist thought resonates in music. For instance, LeBaron states that during the 1920s and 1930s, the Surrealist experiments in music were mostly isolated and moreover “not substantial enough to participate equally with the literary and visual components so vital to the realisation of Surrealist ideals” (LeBaron, 2002, p. 33). Whereas Slonimsky puts Breton’s impact aside and
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examines the subject through Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), who coined the word ‘sur-réalisme’15 and he presents examples containing Surrealist elements in a wide frame, ranging from neoclassical music to serial technique. Like Slonimsky, Albright also believes that the effect of Surrealism in music can only be revealed if Breton’s authority can be set aside (Albright, 2004, p. 320).
Although he died soon after the Surrealist Manifesto was published, Erik Satie was the first name mentioned when it came to the relationship of Surrealism with music. Identifying Satie as a pioneer (“avant la lettre”) Surrealist, Albright describes the composer's Three Valses (Les trois valses distinguées du précieux dégoûté, 1914) reflecting the bohemian lifestyle of the era, as a “Surrealist montage” due to its harmonic and absurd associations (Albright, 2004, p. 321). Integrating with jazz music and including unusual sounds, such as typewriter, aeroplane propeller, sirens and a ship whistle along with absurd texts, Satie's music has taken the composer to a point where he heralds Surrealism along with Futurist and Dadaist influences.
Another name associated with the movement is the composer Francis Poulenc (1899 – 1963), a member of Les Six. Having a close relationship with Surrealist poets such as Apollinaire, Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon (1897-1982), Poulenc also composed music for their poems. Albright describes one of these works, Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1944), of which the libretto is by Apollinaire, as a Surrealist opera and he states that the composer deliberately chose misrepresentation between music and text to have a dizzying effect on the audience (Albright, 2004, p. 103). Slonimsky likewise draws attention to the contradiction between this tonal music and the fantastic story of Apollinaire (Slonimsky, 2003, p. 135).
George Antheil (1900 – 1959) is another name mentioned in the connection with the Surrealist movement. Antheil was a composer who streamed the sounds of modern times into his compositions. In the music of Ballet Mécanique (1924), directed by Fernand Legér (1881-1955) and produced with cinematographic contributions from Man Ray, Antheil included eight pianos, two electronic bells and aeroplane
15 Apollinaire first used the term ‘super-realism’ [sur-réalisme] in the programme notes of the ballet Parade (1917). The music of this avant-garde ballet, written by Cocteau and stage and costume designed by Picasso, composed by Erik Satie. For Apollinaire, this work, which portrays a parade held in the circus, has elevated art to a level that captures developments in science and industry. Above all, this ballet is a kind of ‘question of transforming reality’ (Gulliame Apollinaire, "Programme Notes for Parade" (1917), (Ed.) Daniel Albright, Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources, 2004, p.320).
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propellers.16 Although the composer began to work on another project collaborating with Aragon and Breton, the project failed due to the disagreement between two poets (LeBaron, 2002, p. 31).
Antheil’s musical piece composed for Max Ernst’s graphic novel, La Femme 100 Têtes (1929), is an example of taking Surrealistic influence beyond the stage performances. La Femme 100 Têtes is a nine-chapter collage book, created with 19th century engravings. The image on each page is accompanied by a conspicuous, bizarre caption (Figure 2.4). Inspired by this book, Antheil composed a series of 45 preludes. These short pieces, like the images and texts on every page, are listened to quickly and all at once, enabling the listener to rely on their own imagination.
Figure 2.4 : Max Ernst, La Femme 100 Têtes, 25.1 × 19.2 cm, collage book (Paris: Éditions du Carrefour), 1929.
Nevertheless, none of the composers above, including Antheil, were official members of the Surrealist movement, despite the Surrealist elements that they included in their music. At this point, André Souris is distinguished from the others, as an official member of the Belgian Surrealist circle, as a poet and composer. The music of the composer, who remained in the Surrealist group from 1925 until his expulsion in 1936,
16 Projects gathering artists were quite common in post-First World War Europe. During this period there existed almost no artist who hadn’t worked on a stage production. The ballet Relâche (1924), one of Satie’s late works, is one of them. The composer worked with Picabia in this ballet with the contributions of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. René Clair’s avant-garde film Entr'acte was shown during the intermission.
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was influenced by Stravinsky and Satie. In the event that he organised with Nougé and Magritte in 1929 Souris included the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky and Arthur Honegger alongside his own compositions in the concert programme. At this event, nearly twenty paintings of Magritte were exhibited, and Nougé held the conference, titled Music Is Dangerous. In addition to his commitment to Surrealist ideals, Souris was closely involved in gestalt theories, existentialism, structuralism and semiotics, and after 1945 he focused on serial music, and he became a model of younger generation of musicians such as Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) and Henri Pousseur (1929-2009) (Campbell, 2010, p. 26).
Although Souris turned to serial music practices as a composer with a Surrealist background, little was said about the relationship between the development of serial music and Surrealism, in the period leading up to the 1950s. However; twelve-tone technique, which was the origin of serial composition, emerged almost around the same time as Surrealism, as a revolutionary development in music.
Although claiming that the twelve-tone technique melodically creates a Surrealist effect, within the historical perspective, Slonimsky sees Schoenberg’s school closer to expressionism (Slonimsky, 2003, s. 139). In fact, according to LeBaron, the first attempts in serial music were far from Surrealist aesthetics (LeBaron, 2002, p. 31). The main reason for this distance is that they adopted opposite approaches in the process of creation. One decides on absolute freedom of thought (automatism), the other prefers to establish its own rules each time, to keep the power of possibilities (predetermination). However, although they go in different ways, both seek to liberate the artist, in the creative process.
2.2.1 Serial Music and Surrealism on the path to aleatory
Basically, either art or chance is preferred. Either by organising it, or by catching something while it's happening. Why wouldn’t it be? Because when you choose one or the other faithfully, you automatically fall into the one or the other. (İlhan Mimaroğlu quoted from Jean-Luc Godard)
The twelve-tone technique is a point Schoenberg reached on his journey in atonal music that he commenced at the beginning of the century. In 1922, the composer announced this technique, which he saw as a way to free up the sound world trapped in harmonic ideals over centuries. In short, this composing technique is formed by
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creating unique rows containing twelve semitones in the chromatic scale, in a pattern determined by the composer’s choice, each of which is to be used only once. The melody in music is created by these rows, varied by taking certain rules into consideration.17
This music, which is formed by combining different derivatives of the rows, has matured with the work of Schonberg’s students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Although this technique was praised as a promising revolutionary breakthrough to discover a new sound world, the composers of this music have seen the point that they reached as a result of subsequent historical developments. For instance, for Webern, who meticulously practices serial music, rows are like the law. Reminding us that the Greek word ‘nomos’ means both law and melody, the composer affirms that the ideal way to regulate the chromatic universe of sound, just like the law of nature, which gives different forms to each ice crystal, is to use rows (Grant, 2005, s. 90).
However, these rows, which form the music and are calculated during the composition process, are not noticed during listening. On the other hand, the inability to determine the orientation of the musical movement renders the listening process more complicated. Slonimsky claims that this creates a surreal effect. After all, the sounds are from the same musical world that the listener is accustomed to, but here presented in an unorthodox way. In this music, the accepted logical organisation of music is broken by its own elements and possibilities, and this reintegration in a sense, creates a new reality within the accepted musical reality.
The similarity between Surrealism and serial music arises when the fundamental principles that both used as a starting point became inadequate after a while. Breton’s automatism was uncontrollable, while Schoenberg’s technique had become overfilled with monotonous control. Artists like Dalí and Ernst solved this congestion with the new techniques that they developed, directing their artistic practice from passive to active and from unsystematic to systematic. On the other side, Pierre Boulez came up with a solution to the congestion caused by over-control in serial music. 17 Each of the twelve sounds has an independent value. This principle eliminates the hierarchy between musical sounds. After 12 notes are heard once, they are repeated in another sequence. It is a prerequisite that the repeated row is not the same as the other. For this purpose, the sound row is rearranged from end to beginning or vice versa. By turning the intervals from top to bottom and sometimes from bottom to top, other new layouts are created. In order to maintain rows, mathematics and mathematics' permutation and matrix system are utilised extensively.
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Boulez was the pupil of Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1965) who linked his music with mystical and religious concepts and was engaged with developments in electroacoustic music. He was also influenced by the composers from the previous generation, such as Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, Debussy (1862-1918), Souris and Varése (1883-1965). Among his contemporaries, Boulez had a close relationship with John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His interest in philosophy, literature and visual arts nurtured his musical world. His closeness to the Surrealist artists such as René Char and Antonin Artaud shaped his early musical ideas. In his 1948 article Proposals, he described music as a “state of collective hysteria”, based on Artaud’s ideas. Benefitting from the texts of Breton and Aragon in his lectures at the Darmstadt summer school (Campbell 2010, p.31), Boulez also caused a splash befitting the Surrealist movement’s controversial and revolutionary approach with his 1951 article Schoenberg is Dead, published shortly after Schoenberg’s death.
In his article, Boulez has criticised Schoenberg for not going further in his technique. According to him, this method remained only as a structural intervention (Boulez, 1968). The composer believed that when the series began to be used, not only for sounds in chromatic scale, but also for the other musical elements such as rhythm, dynamics and durations, to create music that leaves its structural phase and forms a unifying expression (Copland, 2015, p. 163). However, unifying all the elements with serial technique has given the music a dry and monotonous character. At this point, Boulez attempted to incorporate automatism into the composition process. He explains how he experienced automatism while he was working on his piece Structures in 1951-52:
The first piece was written very rapidly, in a single night, because I wanted to use the potential of a given material to find out how far automatism in musical relationships would go, with individual invention appearing only in some really very simple forms of disposition – in the matter of densities for example. [...] I wrote down all the transpositions, as through it were a mechanical object which moved in every direction, and limited my role to the selection of registers – but even those were completely undifferentiated. Boulez (1976), cited in (Stacey, 1987, p. 23-24)
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Boulez did not get the results he expected from this experience, but he continued to adapt Cage’s ‘chance operations’ in his own way.18 The idea underlying chance operations is to ensure that the composer leaves the control over decision making during the composing process. The musical notes are decided by methods defined by chance operations, such as rolling dice or flipping a coin. Therefore, with this technique, the composer is provided with unlimited possibilities, as in Breton’s automatism. Yet, Boulez favored controlled freedom. He thought that the musical idea would get lost in excessively flexible arrangements.
The difference between Cage and Boulez has resulted in two approaches to the concept of 'open form.' In the first one (indeterminacy), organisation of musical composition is left to chance. In the second one (aleatoric music), the idea of open form occurs during the performance of the work. According to this technique, the composer leaves the determination of musical elements to the performers. In his 1951 letter to Cage, Boulez stated that he believes it is possible to control the phenomenon of automatism in this way. Thus, the composer’s hegemony over the entire work is broken; music is reinterpreted among performer, composer and listener, offering new possibilities each time it is performed.
Boulez was a composer, who created the intersection points between Surrealist thinking and developments in post-1950 music. In his early years, he was inspired by the movement's polemical attitude, praised the writings of poets such as Breton and Aragon, and then experienced automatism. Furthermore, he was closely following Paul Klee, an influential figure in the Surrealist movement, and Joan Miro. In 1958, an exhibition was held at a festival in Baden-Baden, featuring Miro’s graphic works and Boulez’s handwriten partitions (Joan Miro: Graphic, Pierre Boulez: Handschriften und Partituren). After the exhibition, Miro wrote to Boulez, expressing his admiration for the composer's music, which he visualised through various colours (Campbell, 2010, s. 35) (Figure 2.5).
18 John Cage, who discovered that the instruments could change their production of sound in his experiments - like the prepared piano in the 1940s, is regarded as the composer who determined the aleatoric music's point of origin with his chance operations. (Copland, Aaron, 2015, p. 166).
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Figure 2.5 : Pierre Boulez, Troisiéme Sonate pour Piano-Formant 3-Miroir, 1957.
On the other hand, Boulez's admiration for Klee was strong enough to influence his music. Stating that he discovered this affinity with the painting of Monument at the Edge of Fertile Land (1929), which he encountered while working on Structures 1a (Figure 2.6), Boulez has perceived Klee’s structural features, which emphasise line and form, as a transcription of a musical melody:
In 1951-52, I wrote Structure Livre 1 for two pianos. I was just finishing the first of these Structures when, if I remember correctly, I saw in a volume a black and white reproduction of this watercolour of Klee entitled “Monument at the edge of Fertile Land”. What struck me then was the rigour, the severity of division of space in more or less equal sections, but which slightly varied an invention which was subtle and rich, although reduced to minimum of diversity because of a manifest discipline… This coincided with my preoccupations at that time. (Boulez 1989, p.169)
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Figure 2.6 : Paul Klee, Monument at the Edge of Fertile Land, watercolor on canvas, 69.5 × 50.5 × 3.2 cm, 1929.
Klee is an artist influenced by both art and music.19 Being also a talented violinist, in 1905, he wrote in his diary that he was beginning to see a growing relation between music and visual arts, both of which are temporal art forms that can be easily demonstrated. (Klee, 2005, p. 169). In his lectures at the Bauhaus, he often mentioned the analogies between music and visuals (Vergo, 2012, p. 241-250). He considered the painting process to be more important than the finished piece. In a work of art, he believed that, just like music, the entire composition and its relation to its elements should be determined in advance (İpşiroğlu, 2006, p. 79-81). Klee has brought concepts such as fugue, polyphony and simultaneity borrowed from music to the literature of the visual arts .
In response; this time Boulez developed the concept of ‘heterophony’, derived from Klee in music (Campbell, 2010, p. 211). The composer based the framework of this
19 Being an inspiration to many composers, most of Klee’s paintings were transformed into music. Some of them are: Sandor Veress Hommage a Paul Klee (1951); Bülent Arel Klee’nin Dört Resmi Üzerine Emprovizasyon (Improvisation on Four Paintings of Klee) (1950’s?); Peter Maxwell Davies Paul Klee – Pictures (1962); Edison Denisov Drei Bilder von Paul Klee (1985); Water Steffens Vier Aquarell nach Paul Klee (1991); Tan Dun Death and Fire Dialog with Paul Klee (1992); Jean-Luc Darbellay Ein Garten für Orpheus (1996); Jörg Peter Mittmann Bilder des Südens (1992); Michael Denhoff Haupt und Nebenwege (1998); Groupe Lacroix 8 Pieces on Paul Klee (2003); Iris Szeghy Ad Parnassum (2005).
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concept on the compositional features of Klee's paintings, which offer various possibilities and so can be viewed in a number of different ways, starting from any point and moving in any direction. In 1989, Boulez published The Fertile Land: Paul (Klee Le pays fertile: Paul Klee), in which he detailed how he associated his music with Klee’s art.
After all, as Breton predicted in Silence is Golden, it can only be considered that an affinity that will be achieved, when the renewal of the principles of both arts, happens within the practices mentioned above. The fact that serial music, which has evolved into a repetitive and highly controlled practice over time found its alternative in Surrealist learnings and that these learnings also do provides a suitable basis for aleatory music and graphic notation that take it one step further, gives a new perspective to the relation between Surrealism music. Similarly, it is seen that Surrealist artists, on the other hand, employed new techniques so that they could able to participate actively to their creating processes: In Mystical Manifesto (1951), Dalí presented the latest phase of his paranoiac critical method, which he had developed over the years, and introduced the technical skills based on mathematical equations and golden ratio implementations used for the composition, like a compass that would take the artist beyond the painting and a guide to liberate the mind (Dalí, 1998).
It was not possible to escape the impact of serial music spreading to the world in the 1950s. İlhan Usmnabaş was one of the composers directly affected by this situation. After briefly experiencing twelve-tone technique in the early 1950s, he moved towards serialism and created his piece Three Paintings from Dalí. Since the composer went beyond classical notation and realised his first aleatoric experiments, this piece also played a significant role in the development of the composer's music.
Usmanbaş, has seen serial music on the road to aleatory as an inevitable dialectic. For him life is composed of an infinite number of possibilities, and everything that we do, every choice that we make is always associated with the chain of events. Thereby, like moving towards serial music, his encounter with Dalí’s painting was also one of the possible consequences of the above-mentioned developments. Indeed, there was also a strong impact from Surrealist trends in Turkey, as well as across the rest of the world, in the 1950’s. The following part of the study focuses on the reflections of Surrealist ideas in Turkey, with the aim of determining how implicit and explicit connections
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had created certain circumstances for Usmanbaş to make his musical piece the Three Paintings from Dalí realised.
2.3 Reflections of Surrealism in Turkey
Rooting the chance has always been existed (just like the tablature of the famous I Ching, in ancient China); but it appeared as an inevitable dialectic in the beginning of century, together with the Surrealists: first in literature; then it appeared in America in painting and music – particularly in music – in a period when all predetermined compositional methods (such as total serialism) had reached its peak. (İlyasoğlu, 1977)
The first Surrealist influences in Turkish poetry became apparent with the Garip Akımı (Birinci Yeni Akımı / The First New Movement), towards the end of the 1930s, which which brought together poets Orhan Veli, Melih Cevdet and Oktay Rıfat.20 In 1937, the artists of the group published Surrealist Oyunlardan Diyalog (Dialogue from Surrealist Games) in Varlık magazine and did not deny the possibilities provided by Surrealist thought. However, they didn’t accept to the label, ‘Surrealist’, since it was contrary to the authentic language that they had adopted, Orhan Veli explained his concerns about this as follows:
For us to be Surrealists, we have to write like them. However, our poems are unlike any of the poets of modern Europe. We benefit from our folk artists, their poems, their manners rather than western poets (Veli, 2001, p. 299).
It was the poets of the İkinci Yeni Akımı (Second New movement) who evidently indicated their closeness to Surrealism. The movement emerged in the early 1950s and included poets such as Ece Ayhan, İlhan Berk, Cemal Süreyya, Turgut Uyar, Edip
20 Parallel to the Garip movement in the 1930s, D Grubu appears in Turkish painting. Among the artists having late Cubist features in their paintings, Cemal Tollu, Zeki Faik Izer and Nurullah Berk studied painting in the studio of André Lhote in Paris. Artists of this D Grubu include local elements in their paintings similar to the Garip movement. The Surrealist effects in Turkish painting are seen after the 1960s. At this point, the paintings of Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat gain attention as a subject for study. Starting painting after 1960, Fırat mostly depicts his inner world in his compositions, which he forms with intense colour and form. Fırat, who deals with social subjects from a Surrealist point of view, also has works that reflect his musical thoughts. Another artist working on the path of Surrealist heritage is Yüksel Aslan. Aslan, who went to Paris as a guest of Breton in 1961, made experimental works with different materials such as grass, tiles, charcoal, blood, honey, petrol and urine. Aslan realised his arture series between 1961-67 which he identifies as an art form between painting-writing and painting-poetry. Other than Aslan, Cihat Özegemen, Komet, Alaettin Aksoy and Bilge Alkor can be named for inclining towards the subconscious, using images between fantastic elements, reality and dream.
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Cansever and Sezai Karakoç. By mid-decade, it gained publicity through Muzaffer İlhan Erdost’s column in the weekly newspaper Pazar Postası.
In comparison to the Garip Akımı, which solely focused on everyday life and, as Erdost put it, was merely considered "witty," (Erdost, 1997, p. 57) the poets of İkinci Yeni aimed for formal and structural deterioration in poetry. In Turkish poetry, this new expression, in which the form was recomposed, the words were taken out of context, and the regular patterns were structurally alienated, serves as a breaking point. According to Ahmet Oktay, (1933-2016) the more Surrealism garnered global interest, the more seriously Turkey should take the İkinci Yeni (Altan, 2014, p. 26). Ece Ayhan has explained their goal in poetry as being:
To open the second front, to argue that there is meaning outside the mind, to act like anarchists, regarding the rules of poetry, to go towards the meaning of meaninglessness, to transcend language because it is not possible to limit the reality with restricted rules of the language, to liberate the words from its content, to bring the new form, which is the mandatory result of the new essence, to bring the new essence, which is also the mandatory result of the new form. (Ayhan, 1993)
İlhan Berk was the poet of the İkinci Yeni who was most interested in painting. He attributed his characteristic of rejecting the mind and being “a dream loving poet” with his interest in Klee, Ernst and Miro. He has ekphrastic poems written on Picasso’s paintings Guernica and Nu au Fauteuil Noire and Klee’s Ad Marginem. He wrote poems inspired by Picasso’s Guernica and Nu au Fauteuil Noire and Klee’s Ad Marginem. However, his interest in visual arts goes beyond the poems he wrote, inspired by the paintings. According to him, poems and paintings are nourished by each other in a formal manner, while they are being created. He likens poetry to a painting made with words and the painting to a poem written in colours, lines and shapes.
The other poet of the movement interested in painting was Ece Ayhan. He also drew a connection between the paintings of Kandinsky, Klee, Chagall and Miro and his poetic world. In the 1980s, he conducted interviews on art, music and cinema with painters who were, in his own words “marginal”, such as Cihat Özegemen, a representative of Surrealist trends in Turkish painting.
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Ece Ayhan was also closely interested in contemporary music. This interest began in the early 1950s at the Helikon Association, where he stated that he got the idea for “searching for a kind of atonality equivalence in poetry” (Batur, 1998). He associated the İkinci Yeni with the second generation of Turkish composers including İlhan Usmanbaş, Bülent Arel and İlhan Mimaroğlu and also twelve-tone music, which he met through the Helikon Association, with names such as Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. By adding Kandinsky, Miro and Klee to these names, he created a map of the resources that the İkinci Yeni strengthened in this period (Ayhan, 1993, p. 13).21 In an interview, he addressed a question about his relationship with Surrealism and atonal music as follows:
Frankly speaking, I have been atonal since the beginning […] I don’t know if I have any direct connection with Surrealism? I was glued to Jean Rousselot’s beautiful anthology in 1952-53. I was very fond of Lautréamont. Or Rimbaud of Harrar. I would later learn that Istanbul, where we suddenly came from Çanakkale in 1940 with my father Behzat from Gallipoli, my mother and sister from Eceabat, was one of the two capitals of the Surrealists. […] Anyway. Let’s talk about Atonality. And isn’t Surrealism a derivative of Atonality? Or (just the opposite) the counterpart of Atonality in poetry (and painting). (Ayhan, 1993, p. 135)
These two representatives of İkinci Yeni were the poets whom Usmanbaş found close to himself. Their friendship, which started in the mid 1950s, later influenced Usmanbaş’s music. The composer caught a temporal harmony with the poets of İkinci Yeni at the end of 1960s, and created his compositions based on İlhan Berk’s Şenlikname and Ece Ayhan’s Bakışsız bir Kedi Kara.
In the 1950s’ Turkey, poetry, music and painting entered into a joint quest. In contrast to the past, this period’s modernist artists from different disciplines were beginning to seek structural changes, and that brought them closer to each other. As being one of
21 “Surely The İkinci Yeni (The Second New) was not only a protractor, compass and miter. Helikon: Bülent Arel, İlhan Usmanbaş, İlhan Mimaroğlu, Faruk Güven, Üner Birkan, mobile sculptures, atonal music, 12 tone music, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Wozzeck, Anton von Webern, Bagateller, Stravinsky, Bartok, Richard Strauss, Hindeminth, Mahler; Bunuel, Visconti, Yeni Dalga, Chair du Cinéma, A. Resnais, Godard, L. Malle, truffaut, R. Enrico, Marcel Camus, J. Rouch; Chas Addams - Kafka’s equivalent in caricature in a sense; Kleist’s Michael Kohlhass, Kandinsky, Miro, Klee; Lautrémont”
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the actors of this period, Usmanbaş also took part and shaped his musical world, under the influence of this cross-cutting issue.
Usmanbaş was interested in both poetry and visual arts. His approach to these art forms has also resulted in his musical works. He composed music on the poems and the paintings of the artist whom he found influential and able to meet the needs of his music. Among these compositions the difference appears in choice of artists. It is understood that Usmanbaş had felt more comfortable interpreting the works of the Turkish poets rather than the Turkish painters. One of the early indications of this attitude could be exemplified with the two compositions which are regarded as milestones in his musical journey, as he had begun to experience the serial technique, the Üç Müzikli Şiir (1952) written for the poems of Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat and the Three Paintings from Dalí (1952).
Usmanbaş is best known for his intimacy with poetry and close friendship with contemporary Turkish poets. Nevertheless, apart from Dalí's paintings, he has composed musical pieces inspired by artists like Henri Matisse, Alexander Calder and Victor Vaserely in different stages of his musical journey.
The composer's approach to poetry and visual arts, the influences of local and global modernist tendencies in the 1950s, and how he formed concepts for rendering poems and paintings in an ekphrastic manner will all be covered in the next chapter.
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3. USMANBAŞ, HIS MUSIC AND ITS RELATION WITH VISUAL ARTS
İlhan Usmanbaş, one of the composers of the second generation in Turkey, has not only shaped contemporary Turkish music with his music, but also with his academic presence as well as his writings and translations. One of the most important factors that nourishes his music is the relation that he has established between different disciplines. Traces of this versatile artistic understanding of the composer could be seen in his numerous works where he challenges the boundaries of music, like twelve-tone technique practices, serial music, aleatory and open form.
Usmanbaş has indicated that he felt the closest to poetry among his field of interests. As a matter of fact, he composed his first piece, while he was a student in conservatory, on Paul Valéry’s (1871-1945) poem La Ceinture.22 Later on he carried the unique names of world literature such as Williams Carlos Williams (1883-1963), Stéphane Mallarmé (1841-1898), Paul Eluard (1895-1953) and the representatives of contemporary Turkish poetry; Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat (1923-2014), İlhan Berk (1918-2008), Ece Ayhan (1931-2002) and Behçet Necatigil’s (1916-1979) to his music. Due to his personal connection with contemporary Turkish poets, the composer’s relation with poetry has been emphasised the most.23
22 La Ceinture was added to the list of works as “-1” (minus 1) by the composer. (Köksal, Nemrutlu, Şenürkmez 2015).
23 List of sources on Usmanbaş’s relationship with poetry:
Özler, Evrim Hikmet. 2007. Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara, Kareler ve Şenlikname Adlı Yapıtları Bağlamında İlhan Usmanbaş’ın Müzik Dilinin Çağdaş Türk Şiiri ile İlişkisi,(unpublished master dissertation), Musicology Department, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.
Öğüt, Evrim Hikmet. 2012., Söz ve Sesin Sınırında Ece Ayhan Şiiri ve İlhan Usmanbaş’ın Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara’sı,MSGSÜ Journal of Social Sciences, issue: 6, p..78-88.
Ayhan, Ece. 1987. İlhan Usmanbaş’la Atonal Müzik Üzerine, Gergedan Magazine, issue: 8, October, p. 98-99.
Ayhan, Ece. 1987. İlhan Usmanbaş’la Bir Söyleşi, Şiirin Bir Altın Çağı, YKY (1993) p. 257-259.
Batur, Enis. 1991. Ses, Harf, İmge: İlhan Usmanbaş’la Düet, Sanat Dünyamız, No.44.
Batur, Enis. 2000. Usmanbaş’ın Kareleri, Sanat Dünyamız, issue:76.
Yavuz, Hilmi. 1987. Necatigil’in Kareleri ve Atonal Müzik, Broy Magazine, April, p. 25-26.
Usmanbaş’s writings on poetry:
Usmanbaş 1987. Şairlerim/Müziklerim ve Bazı Yanıtsız Sorular, Broy, issue:18, April, p.18-24
Usmanbaş 1997. Şiir: Ece Ayhan, Müzik: İlhan Usmanbaş, Ludingirra, issue: 1, March, p.90-92.
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However, Usmanbaş’s interest in visual arts is also notable as well. He closely followed the developments in art and composed music on Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí and Victor Vasarely’s paintings (see Appendix B). Moreover, the composer’s emphasis on the visual is beyond his compositions based upon the paintings. He is a composer who has thought of music with visual aspects
3.1 The Life and the Music of Usmanbaş
İlhan Usmanbaş, born on September 28, 1921 in Istanbul, completed his primary and secondary education in Ayvalık due to his father Hilmi Bey’s (1887-1964) work. Ayvalık was a small industrial town with factories and had a busy port, where Turkish citizens from Crete, Mytilene and Macedonia were settled after the population exchange in 1923. This town at which Usmanbaş spent the summer months for many years had impacts on the life and music of the composer. He said in an interview that the sounds of ferries and the sirens of factories enriched his sound world; and he also mentioned that the resemblance between a grand orchestra and a big factory were shaped by his memories there (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 45).
Usmanbaş’s childhood was in a family intertwined with music. He first started his musical education with the violin lessons from his mother Münire Hanım (1889-1972), then switched to cello at the year he finished primary school with his brother’ guidance. In his own words, Usmanbaş grew up in a life with “alafranga” (European) connections, far from Turkish folk and the maqam music.
Usmanbaş moved to Istanbul to enrol at Galatasaray High School in 1936; continued his cello practices with the school’s music teacher, Sezai Asal, during his high school education. Galatasaray High School has been a school that encourages their students to pursue various branches of art.24 Thus Usmanbaş spent some of his time with his close friend, Turgut Cansever, at the school's painting studio, which they had dubbed the “Tekke” (dervish lodge). Cansever describes this studio, where students like Cihat Burak and Avni Arbaş, who would later study painting at the State Academy of Fine
24Most of Galatasaray High School's teachers were interested in music. Cellist Sezai Asal and violinist Seyfettin Asal were music teachers and gave private lessons for talented students. However, the name who influenced Usmanbaş to become a composer was school’s math teacher M. Delors. Delors encouraged Usmanbaş who was conditioned to become an engineer, by saying “there are lots of engineers in the country but hardly any composers” (İlyasoğlu 2000, p.48).
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Arts, spent the majority of their time, as a place where not only art, but many different subjects were discussed, and where ideas were exchanged (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 54).
Cansever, who completed his architecture degree in Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts, mentions that Usmanbaş and him had built a close relationship during their student years at Galatasaray. Usmanbaş stayed at Cansever’s house in Beyazıt for 8-9 months until he moved to Ankara, after graduating from high school. Usmanbaş tells this period as: “While Turgut was going to the Academy and making sculpture, I was practicing cello. He used to try making my bust as I used to exercise during his practice” (Ilyasoğlu 2000, p.54). Additionally, in his memoires Cansever mentions their visits to painter Halil Dikmen’s studio. Also a ney player, Dikmen is the person who introduced the composer to poet Asaf Halet Çelebi. The relationship Usmanbaş has established between different disciplines such as poetry and visual arts since his high school years forms the basis for the composer's approach that will be nourished from these two disciplines in the future.
After high school, he enrolled at the Istanbul University Philosophy Department and, at the same time, joined rehearsals at the Municipal Conservatory. Usmanbaş decided shortly after to become a composer and moved to Ankara in 1942, to continue his education at the State Conservatory.
3.1.1 1950’s Ankara
Usmanbaş had the opportunity to practice with all of the first generation of the Turkish composers, known as the Turkish Five. The year he finished high school, he took composition lessons from Cemal Reşit Rey (1904-1985) in Istanbul; harmony and counterpoint lessons from Hasan Ferit Alnar (1906-1978), and then later became student of Necil Kazım Akses (1908-1999), Ahmet Adnan Saygun (1907-1991) and Ulvi Cemal Erkin (1906-1972), the other members of this generation in the Ankara State Conservatory.
The name of the Turkish Five is associated with the first-generation composers and used as a reference to the Russian Five (New Russian School) for their efforts to transfer traditional elements into music with nationalist ideals (Aydın, 2011, p. 23). The music of this generation, which blends local elements with polyphonic western music, was considered as the reflection of the official ideology of newly established Republic and often grounded on the ideologist of that period, Ziya Gökalp’s (1876-
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1924) idea of the integration of the east and west, local and universal is necessary to reach the level of a modern civilisation (Ergur, 2009) (Köksal A., 2015).
The first generation of composers adopted a musical understanding that derives from traditional and local content, as well as techniques from the West. A similar approach can also be seen in the different branches of art. İkinci Ulusal Mimari (Second National Architectural Movement), which was developed from the 1940s onwards is the reflection of this tendency in terms of architecture. During this period, the research on conventional civil architecture became the sources that influenced both the style of interior and exterior design (Tapan, 1997, p. 366). The other equivalents of this trend are the Garip Movement in Poetry, Group D in Visual Arts which was active between 1933-1951. The artists of this Group D, whose representatives were Zeki Faik iser (1905-1998), Nurullah Berk (1906-1982), Elif Naci (1908-1987), Cemal Tollu (1899-1968), Abidin Dino (1913-1993) and sculptor Zühtü Müridoğlu (1906-1992) had tried to form a link between local motifs and the abstract forms of cubism (Tansuğ, 1999, p. 181) (Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1 : Nurullah Berk, Nargile İçen Adam, 1958, oil on canvas, 93,5 x 60 cm, Istanbul State Art and Sculpture Collection, 1940’s.
The concepts of ‘local’ and ‘universal’, depending on the form of internalisation, have always been the subjects of discussion in Turkish art since the beginning of its
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modernisation period. In Music Investigation, prepared by Varlık Magazine in 1982 and Adnan Benk’s interview published in Eleştiri Magazine in the same year, show that this issue was still being discussed on the same level years later.
Adnan Benk criticised first generation composers as “western wannabes” in his interview İlhan Usmanbaş’ın Özgürlüksüz Özgürlükleri (İlhan Usmanbaş’s Unfree Freedoms) aiming to show in what aspects Usmanbaş as a composer differ from prior generation. He described their music as “üstü cepken altı frak pantolonlu” [an idiom for odd-looking, wearing unmatched clothes] (Benk, 1982, p. 9). Benk’s interview resonated in art circles soon after its publication. Ahmet Say, in his column in journal of Türkiye Yazıları, criticizing the harshness of Benk's style, stated that the first generation composers, who were conditioned to westernise, tried to synthesise east and west as much as they could (Say, 1982, p. 8). Melih Cevdet Anday came up with another response to those discussions. Anday based the ideological foundation of the first generation of composers, who tried to create western Turkish music, on Ziya Gökalp’s thoughts by bringing a solution to conflict between East and West. Anday, who thinks that the impasse here lies in the divisive distinction between civilisation and culture, said that the acceptance of civilization as universal and western, and culture as local and traditional is due to not being able to overcome the dilemma between 'us' and 'others' (Anday, 1982, p. 2).
Ali Ergül, who views these past discussions over the relationship between society and music, noted that the ideologically-driven pre-acceptance of the axis of ‘local’ and ‘universal’, does not function in today's society (Ergur, 2009, p. 191). In his article, Ergur underlines the necessity of examining Turkish music in a sociological depth, other than political/ideological preliminary acceptances in order to treat Turkish music as a whole and make good sense of the process of rapid change it has been subjected to.
At the point where Usmanbaş discarded tonal music and turned to contemporary techniques, the issue of locality reached a conceptual dimension in his music. The 1974 Devr-i Kebir is one of the works worth examining in this respect. Devr-i Kebir is one of the styles in Turkish makam music. However, Usmanbaş does not use this technique as a method in his music; instead, he focuses on the concepts behind the term’s literal meaning ‘transformation’ and ‘big transformation’ (Usmanbaş, 1990). Usmanbaş’s Devr-i Kebir consists of a rhythmical pattern running fifteen times in a
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row. 6 performers use 5 different instruments in every repetition of this rhythm. The composer left an improvisation space for the performers to match the tempo within the rhythmical pattern specified at the end of the fifth repetition. This improvised part that occurs at the middle of the piece is a reference to the ‘big transformation’ concept (Usmanbaş 2015, p.264). Usmanbaş gives a new musical value to a definition which he borrowed from traditional Turkish music by conceptualizing it. On the other hand, bringing instruments from different geographies in this piece is another indication that he deals with locality in a universal dimension. Evin İlyasoğlu on her article touching on the common points of Usmanbaş and painter Adnan Çoker, resembles the composer’s local-universal issue presented by Devr-i Kebir with Çoker’s abstract compositions he created with geometric shapes evoking niches, arches and dome (İlyasoğlu, 2013, p. 269).
In the years after Usmanbaş graduated from the conservatory (1948), there was a period of recovery after the destruction of the Second World War and the whole world ought to find a new balance. In parallel to this, there have been radical changes in Turkey as well. In 1945, Turkey became a member of the United Nations; the one-party system was switched to a multi-party system; and in 1950, with the Democratic Party coming to power, a prosperous environment was created and an outward-looking political culture, which was relatively demilitarised, compared to the dominant ideology of the first twenty years of the republic, began to be followed. Doğu Erbil, points out that between the years of 1948 and 1953, the national income per capita has increased about 25%, the surplus of production in agriculture as well as an abundance of goods with the arrival of imported products under the name of American assistance (the Marshall Plan) (Erbil, 1975). Consequently, new consumption habits emerged, and urban life began to grow. Ahmet Oktay mentions the interest shown in the newly opened American Markets in Ankara, the extravagant window stores, the city lights illuminated by neon lamps, the taverns and bakeries where artists and journalists came together in his memoires (Altan, 2014, p. 14-16).
In this period, which Aykut Köksal describes as ‘1950’s Modernism’, the direction of art also changed. Discussions on traditionality and locality increased; a new generation who were coming to terms with the past in the fields of music, literature, painting, sculpture and even caricature, emerged correspondingly. (Köksal A., 2015). However, even though this reckoning may look like the generally accepted characteristic of
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Modernism, it brought a distinctive form of it to Turkey. Germaner explains this unique situation by the absence of an art education which atrophies creativity, as it typically does in the West, with salon judges who rule the world of art and a bourgeois class with a strict scale of appreciation (Germaner, 2008, p. 3). Thus Usmanbaş speaks of his education in the conservatory as being far from conservative and that some of his teachers had a very open-minded approach (Altan, 2014, p. 53).
Another prevalent tendency in the 1950s was abstraction. Here; artists like Hadi Bara (1906-1971), Zühtü Müritoğlu, Sadi Çalık (1917-1979) and Ali Teoman Germaner (1934-2018) in sculpture; Nuri İyem, Selim Turan (1915-1994), Ferruh Başağa (1914-2010), Adnan Çoker (1927) and Lütfü Günay (1924-2020) in painting; and as parallel to them İlhan Usmanbaş, Bülent Arel (1919-1990), Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat (1923-2014), İlhan Mimaroğlu (1926-2012) and Nevit Kodallı (1924-2009) in music appeared.
The composers, Nevit Kodallı and Bülent Arel, studied composition at the conservatory, together with İlhan Usmanbaş. These three young composers who were trained by the Turkish Five, were privileged among second-generation composers for adopting contemporary techniques.25 Especially Usmanbaş and Arel, by rejecting the idea of continuing the synthesis that the previous generation attempted to build with local elements such as maqam music and folk songs. This attitude has motivated them to create a new musical language with a path of their own, in the face of the influence of the first generation:
[…] The generation before us was very oriented towards the natural models. Our generation was taking refuge in the formalist side of neoclassical music. Our cultural interest was more universal, and we paid little attention to the local facets of our culture. (Benk, 1982, p. 12-13)
25 Yılmaz Aydın divides the second generation Turkish composers (İlhan Usmanbaş, Nevit Kodallı, Bülent Arel, Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat, İlhan Mimaroğlu, Ferit Tüzün, Cengiz Tanç, İlhan Baran and Muammer Sun) into two groups: The first group includes İlhan Usmanbaş, Bülent Arel, İlhan Mimaroğlu and Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat, who used contemporary techniques in the path of new music. Among them, Mimaroğlu and Fırat completed their education in law. Later on, Mimaroğlu studied electronic music in New York; and Fırat enhanced his musical identity through his close relationship with Usmanbaş. As for the second group, they are the follow-up composers of the Turkish Five, inspired by Turkish Folk and traditional art music.
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3.1.2 Bülent Arel
The relationship between Usmanbaş and Arel started at the conservatory, quickly becoming a close friendship,since both of them were educated at Galatasaray High School and had shared interests such as literature and visual arts. Usmanbaş describes Arel as someone “very active”, “humorous”, “gives the clues of the future”, and “has knowledge in different fields” (Yedig, 2002); and mentions that in the lively environment of Ankara, together with Arel, they were trying to discover and build a new musical world together (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 61).
Bülent Arel was interested in mechanics and electronics, and had a prominent personality with his skills in these fields. Unlike Usmanbaş, this characteristic directed him into electronic music. Arel, who initiated his first sound experiments in the early 1950s at Ankara Radio, where he worked as a tonmeister, won the Rockefeller scholarship at Ankara Music Festival, in 1958, with his piece Kuartet ve Elektronik frekansmetresi için Müzik (1957) he played with the sine-wave generator that he built himself. He worked at Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center for a year with composers like Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990), Otto Luening (1900-1996), Edgar Varése and Milton Babbitt (1916-2011), and later started as an instructor at Columbia University. The composer, who became one of the leading figures in electronic music, later designed and installed the electronic music laboratories at Yale and New York State Universities, and taught at these universities (Ali, 2002).
In an interview, Usmanbaş resembled the music of Arel, whom he said was "full of surprises'', to flying balls of colour; reminding Stravinsky's phrase, "music is for the eye", the composer in some ways draws attention to the synaesthetic features of Arel's music (Yedig, 2002). As a matter of fact, Arel, like Usmanbaş, wrote music that incorporated visual elements. He’s shown this interest with the paintings he transformed into music. There is an improvised music composed on four paintings of Klee dated before 1958 in the list of works prepared by Güntekin Oransay (Ali, 2002, p. 203). His student and close friend Daniel Deutsch, in his writing in memory of Arel, noted that his Keman ve Piyano için Beste (1966) was composed for a Japanese painting in which a branch of a was depicted (Ali, 2002, p. 14). Deutsch mentioned in the same article the similarities between Arel’s electronic work Stereo-Electronic Music No.2 (1970), which is considered one of his masterpieces, and Stanley Kubrick’s (1928-1999) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), another creative work of the
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from the same era.26 Deutsch found the last section of Arel’s music as chilling as the scene in the film where the astronaut disappears into space.
Arel felt close enough to visual arts to create works in this field (Figure 3.2). Besides paintings, since the 1950s he has designed mobile sculptures inspired by Calder.27 The family life of Arel also had a great impact on his interest in art. His mother Müzdan Hanım, was one of the first female students of Sanayi Nefise Mektebi which was founded in 1914, and has been an active and productive artist. Arel grew up witnessing the advancement of both western and Turkish art as a result of this influential family environment.
Figure 3.2 : Bülent Arel, Untitled, reproduction, İlhan Usmanbaş Collection.
Arel’s social circle included many painters, among them were Orhan Peker (1926-1978), Leyla Gamsız (1921-2010), Turan Erol (1927) and Cemal Bingöl (1912-1993), in 1950s Ankara (Altan 2014, p.52). Peker, Gamsız and Erol were among the founders of the Onlar Grubu. These artists created works that preserve natural forms and combine Anatolian geography and its figures with abstract colour fields. Also, Cemal Bingöl worked in André Lhote's studio in Paris from 1948 to 1950 and began to create paintings dominated by abstract geometric forms - something that he prioritised, after he returned to Turkey. However, this environment was created by the gathering of
26 This cult movie, created by Kubrick in a synaesthetic harmony between music and images, is also considered as an example of totalising impulse in art (Gesamtkunstwerk) (Shaw-Miller, 2013, p.133).
27 Ece Ayhan mentions that Arel’s mobile sculptures are exhibited in Helikon Association (Ayhan 1993, p.85).
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young artists, who sought to explore the developments of the era, rather than through organised collaborative production. Although institutions, such as the Helikon Association, which bought musicians, poets and painters together under the same roof, had been founded, Usmanbaş complained that painters were not very interested in contemporary music and the artistic possibilities it provided (Altan, 2014, p. 65).
Usmanbaş and Arel shared their artistic backgrounds and knowledge with their inner circle, in Ankara, and also with their pupils. Filiz Ali, who in the 1950s took lessons from both composers, describes them as "a key that opens the door to what is being done in the name of contemporary music and art". She talks about the influence of artists such as Miró, Klee, Ernst and Calder, whom she had met through them, as students who were eager to learn of anything (Ali, 2002, p. 87).
Usmanbaş and Arel continued to share their artistic impressions and experiences, even though they worked in different countries. In his letters from America, Arel was reporting his experiences of the exhibitions in particular. In his letter, dated 24 March 1960:
I went to Calder’s new exhibition. He had made quite economic, yet colossal, stabiles and mobiles. Forms are in complete repetition. The composition is very much simplified and completely settled. I went to the exhibition three times, there was nobody. Klee has an astonishing exhibition. It makes you feel like you have been hit with a hammer in the head. (Ali, 2002, p. 48)
Arel made his last visit to Turkey in 1968. During the 35 years he spent in America, he founded many music studios and continued his composition studies, outside of his busy lecturing schedule at the university. The composer, who was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1980, died on November 24, 1990. In the obituary notices published in newspapers, it was stated that the composer was also known as a painter and sculptor, in addition to discussing his life and musical work (Ali, 2002, p. 153).
3.1.3 Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat
Another important figure in Usmanbaş’s life was Ertuğrul Oğuz, whom he met through Arel. Born in Malatya, in 1923, Fırat first entered the Archeology Department of Istanbul University in 1940, then in the following year, returned there to enrol at the Faculty of Law. With his music compositions, poems, writings and paintings, Fırat was a versatile in his creativity. Between 1943-44, he took harmony lessons from Karl
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Berger and turned towards composing. His poems and stories, which he started writing during his year at the university, were published in magazines such as Pazar Postası, Türk Dili, Opus, and Küğ. Fırat, has also written four books: Karmakarışık Öyküler (1995), Seviçıra (1997) Umursanmamış (1999) and Çağdaş Küğ Tarihi için İmler (1999); and began his career as a painter after his mother's death in 1960.
The relationship between Usmanbaş and Fırat had been a close friendship that would continue for many years, after they met in 1947. Usmanbaş defined this closeness as a natural development of “people who deal with and suffer from loneliness in the same issues” (Usmanbaş, 2010). In these letters, where they shared their opinions about each other's work, Usmanbaş nourished the composer side of Fırat with his comments and feedbacks. The two friends had shared their opinions on different fields, ranging from philosophy and poetry to technical issues in music, and the current developments in their personal lives. From time to time they wrote letters to one another about the role of contemporary music, both in Turkey and across the rest of the world, as well as the difficulties they faced as musicians. Although Fırat has proved his artistic creativity through nearly a hundred musical compositions, very few of them have been performed or recorded. Perhaps less known are the paintings he began creating after 1960. These paintings, his music and writings, speak a language which invites the audience to his inner world.
Fırat has explained the common features of his art as “density” and “being an investigator, constantly searching for innovation, a new path, a new method and for form and style” (Uğurlu, 1999). Köksal states that the "feeling of improvisation" is the other common characteristic of Fırat's works (Köksal A., 2016). Another key feature of his productions is the transition between different mediums of art. There is imagery in his writings, lyricism in his paintings, and expressiveness in his music that embraces the possibilities of modern composition techniques. As with his music, many of his paintings are accompanied by a poetic title. Besides that, he created paintings with musical themes and relations such as Lutoslawski’nin Dördül’ü (Lutoslawski’s Quartet, 1968-1969), Küğ’ü Düşünüyor (Contemplating Music, 1970-1971) and Fırat Küğ Düşünüyor (Fırat Contemplates Music, 1971-1972) (Figure 3.3). Fırat blends his paintings, which focus on both his private life, and social issues, with a mystical atmosphere and surreal elements.
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Figure 3.3 : Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat, Fırat Küğ Düşünüyor, 54x74,5 cm., watercolor on cardboard, 1971-72.
Usmanbaş describes Fırat as “living in his own tradition, his own Modernism, […] a person who has actualised a world that we all live in collectively, by bringing records, writing compositions and painting,” (Usmanbaş, 2010). Along with his artistic practices, Fırat brought attention to his intellectual personality. After his retirement in 1979, the artist settled in Ankara and hosted listening sessions at his home every Saturday, where he opened the doors to his music archive to everyone interested, until his death in 2014.
3.1.4 Helikon Association
The new generation of artists - who followed developments in the art world through music records, books, magazines and catalogues - shared their ideas and opinions through the conversations they had with one another or through written correspondence, developing a common cultural life in 1950s Ankara. The Helikon Association, which invigorated Ankara's art scene, with its art gallery and orchestra, was the product of such an environment. Usmanbaş explained how the association was born with the following words:
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Our greatest happiness in Ankara during the 1950s was the Helikon Association, where we got together with other artists. It was a self-established organisation - means that it was founded with the support of several pioneers, who came forward spontaneously. The idea was like this: we're in barren land, but we all know something, we're reading, we're producing, we're writing, then let's build an environment where we can mutually exchange what we know. In an association, we thought that an exhibition could be held, music studies could be carried out, open audience rehearsals could be organised, and painting could be practiced. (Altan, 2014, p. 52)
Ankara was the capital of an educated middle-class civil servant population, devoted to the Republican revolution. Participation in cultural and social activities was seen as a part of modernisation; the concerts of the Presidential Symphony Orchestra, the State Theatre, established in 1949, and the State Opera and Ballet programmes were of great interest to the people. (Ecevit, 1953, p. 121).
In Ankara, which was the center of stage and performing arts, such as theatre and concerts, private galleries and exhibition spaces also emerged during the early 1950s. The first of them was the Sanatseverler Society. This association, where seminars and music concerts were organised besides exhibitions, was an institution with an emphasis on public service, rather than an intellectual environment (Önsal, 2006, p. 94).28
Founded in 1952 by figures such as Bülent Arel, Semra Arel, İlhan Usmanbaş, painter Rasin Arsebük, Zerrin Arsebük, Bülent Ecevit, and Rahşan Ecevit, the Helikon Association presented an intellectual atmosphere, in the following in the footsteps of the era's innovative thinking. Taking its name from the mountain where the muses are located in Greek mythology, the Helikon Association aimed to bring together different art fields under the same roof. The Helikon Association, which was established without any support from any state or private institution, hosted the first private gallery in Ankara. It organised concerts, contemporary music events (with explanations),
28 The Milar Gallery, founded in 1957 by the architect, graphic designer, and publisher Selçuk Milar, an important figure in Ankara's cultural life, was another pioneering gallery in Ankara. The gallery, located inside the furniture and decoration store of Milar, had been a space that filled the gap which emerged after the closure of the Helikon Association in 1955, except for in the field of music. (Önsal 2006, p.91)
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theatre and cinema screenings, seminars and exhibitions, in the three years of its activity, and provided an intellectual space for the city’s cultural life (Figure 3.4).
Figure 3.4 : Helikon Chamber Orchestra concert program.
Usmanbaş, Judith Rosen-Davidoff, Gülden Arıman, Erol Aygün, Arman Özarın and Bülent Arel. Bülent Arel was the music director of the association, which has its own orchestra. They also included their own music in the programs where classical and contemporary works came together. In this orchestra, Usmanbaş played the cello and Arel played the piano and sometimes took charge as the conductor.
Alongside the concerts, music nights, featuring examples of contemporary music movements, were performed within the association. Bülent Ecevit, in an article written during this period, mentioned a two-night programme which Usmanbaş organised on Alban Berg's Wozzeck with explanatory texts. (Ecevit, 1953).
The presence of young artists among the followers of Helikon's activities provided an atmosphere of mutual interaction, especially between poets and composers in the 1950s art scene. Poet Ece Ayhan, one of the representatives of the İkinci Yeni movement, stated that he first encountered the philosophy of new music here and accordingly got caught up in the idea of searching for a kind of atonality in poetry (Batur, 1998).
Adopting the mission of promoting the artists of the younger generation, by supporting contemporary music and contemporary art, the Helikon Association became the first private gallery to bring Turkish abstract painting to the art scene. Lütfü Günay and
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Adnan Çoker’s exhibition, titled Orijinal Sergi Öncesi (Before the Original Exhibition), which they held at Ankara University’s Faculty of Languages, History and Geography in 1953, serve as a precursor to the second exhibition they would organise at Helikon, a year later (Ecevit, 1953). Sezer Tansuğ defined this exhibition, this time titled, Non-Objektif ve Abstre Resimler, at Helikon between 6-19 February 1954, as the exhibition where studies on the subject of abstract art matured (Tansuğ, 1999, p. 246).
The events that took place in Istanbul on 6-7 September 1955, had a negative impact on the Helikon Association. In the protests that followed the false news that Atatürk's house in Thessaloniki had been bombed by the Greeks, violent attacks were carried out on Greek and non-Muslim homes, shops and places of worship, with many cases of rape and looting. After the events of 6-7 September, an investigation was initiated against the Helikon Association, because of its name. After a few months of investigation, the association had to close, having lost its former vitality (Ecevit, 1988).
Even though the Helikon Association only existed for a short time, it was a place that brought together young artists, who were driving contemporary Turkish music and painting, engaging in the holistic aspect of art by bringing different disciplines together in the same space and pursuing an innovative language. It is possible to evaluate the work of Three Paintings from Dalí, which Usmanbaş wrote with a serial technique (hinting at the indeterminacy implementations that he would use in future musical compositions) between 1952-1955, when the association was active, as a product of this environment.
3.2 From Twelve Tone to Aleatory Music
It was not possible for Usmanbaş, Arel and Fırat to escape from the impact of twelve-tone music, which spread around the world in the 1950s. This music provided a musical and ideological ground for not only presenting an abstract form of expression the dead-ends of Modernism, but also to follow a free and unique musical path. On the other hand, the sources they found inevitably led these young composers to twelve-tone. Among the examples that Usmanbaş encountered during this period and said that it was difficult to escape from their influence, he cites the René Leibowitz's book, Schoenberg et son Ecole, which he accidentally discovered in 1950, at the Hachette
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Bookstore in Ankara, and Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw (1947), which he had the chance to listen to on the radio, that same year (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 101).
Usmanbaş saw the twelve-tone technique as a way to be directly alone with the musical notes, enabling him to free himself from being too parochial and from the influences of other composers. He began composing his first piece, Sözcü, Yaylı Orkestrası, Yaylı Dördülü, Piyano ve Timpani için Müzik, in 1950, with this in mind. That year, he presented Yaylılar için Senfoni, before Viyolonsel ve Piyano için Müzik No.1 (1950). In 1952 he composed Üç Müzikli Şiir, which he wrote on the poems of Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat and where he fully applied the twelve-tone technique.
Usmanbaş completed the first part of Üç Müzikli Şiir in Ankara. The same year he went to America with a UNESCO scholarship and completed the second and third part under the supervision of Luigi Dallapiccola.29 This first visit of the composer to America was a turning point for Usmanbaş. For the first time, the composer had the opportunity to listen to the music of his contemporaries' live performances; he had the opportunity to work with and get closer to composers like Luigi Dallapiccola and Luciano Berio.
Although he saw the twelve-tone technique of Schönberg as a way out, Usmanbaş felt that to get rid of its binding effect, he had to push his limits a little more. He describes Schönberg's technique in his 1954 letter to Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat as a game, "set by itself and played with a set of rules, which is a great pleasure to fulfill rather than overcome" (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 117). Usmanbaş came to a turning point, after composing in twelve-tones for a short while. Boulez's polemical writings, especially as it was emphasized -without giving its name-, one of his articles influenced the composer's direction (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 105).
Usmanbaş shifted to serial writing, hoping that the crossroads introduced by Boulez would bring his music a little closer to the point where he would go in the name of freedom. The first piece he wrote with this technique is Dalí’den Üç Resim, which is the subject of our study. Another feature of this piece is that it contains Usmanbaş’s trials, that would pioneer the openness and aleatoric elements that he would carry to his music in his later works (Çöloğlu, 2015, p. 145). For instance, he removed the bar
29 Üç Müzikli Şiir, was performed during the composer's second visit to America (1957) and led to Usmanbaş winning the Koussevitzky Foundation Award.
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lines from the score, as he wanted to leave the temporal flow of the music to the inner tempo of the conductor (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 106). This arrangement also brought a new visual quality to the appearance of the musical sheet (Figure 3.5).
Figure 3.5 : Three Paintings From Dalí, The Beginning of Part 1.
The bar lines in the score were added by the conductor in 1979 (Pöğün 2015, p.192).
Usmanbaş continued to compose with serial music until the end of the 1950s. During this period, his flexibility in notation increased gradually. The pieces he wrote for the Metric Figure by William Carlos Williams (1958), Un coup de dés by Stéphane Mallarmé (1959) and Repos d'été by Paul Eluard (1960), are examples of the gradually increasing implementations that we find in the first signs with Three Paintings from Dalí. In this period, when Usmanbaş started to move away from conventional notation and gave hints that he would move further towards the idea of open form and graphic notation, he began to challenge Boulez's dominant role. He expressed his thoughts to Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat in his letter he wrote on 29.05.1956 with the following words:
There is this Boulez, the heretical. He pushes all to write exactly like him. Saying, “There is only one way out” is a new fashion. Everybody in the music world wants to be like Bach. It should not be forgotten that Bach was first betrayed by his sons. (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 34)
Usmanbaş made his second trip to America between 1957-58, this time on a Rockefeller scholarship. During this visit, he met composers such as Milton Babbitt,
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Henry Cowell, Eliott Carter, Molton Feldman and Aaron Copland, and had the chance to attend exhibitions and concerts (Figure 3.6). On the other hand, within this period, the composer concentrated on aleatoric experiments, which are the implementation of the idea of controlled openness in music (Yayalar & Yüceer, 2015, p. 172).
Figure 3.6 : İlhan Usmanbaş, (standing with dark t-shirt on the left) together with Davidovsky, Milton Babbitt, Lucas Foss and Aaron Copland in Tanglewood.
The music of indeterminacy, in other words aleatoric implementations, is a way of writing or performing music that emerged in the 1950s, in countries such as America, Germany and France. John Cage, who discovered that he could change the sounds generated from an instrument in an unconventional way, for example, using a prepared piano,30 built in the 1940s. Later, he was recognised as the composer who pioneered the use of chance operations and the music of indeterminacy (Copland, 2015, p. 166). The idea underlying Cage’s chance operations is to make the composer abandon the
30 Prepared piano was actualised when Syvilla Fort asked Cage to write music for a Bacchanale dance performance in 1940. Although Cage thought of preparing a piece of music for percussion for the content of the performance, he could not find enough space for the instruments on the stage, where only one piano is present. Cage then placed the plates he broke into the piano and generated percussive sounds (Larson 2012).
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conscious side of controlled creativity. In this music, the possibilities of notation are determined by chance operations, such as tossing coins or throwing dice.
Cage's music, based on chance operations - like Breton’s automatism, opened a field of absolute freedom for the composer. Using this method, with serial applications, European composers such as Boulez and Stockhausen adopted an approach in favour of controlled freedom. In his letter to Cage in 1951, Boulez expressed the difference between them with the following words:
Everything you say about the tables of sound, durations, amplitudes, used in your Music of Chance is, as you will see, along exactly the same lines as I am working at the moment […] The only thing, forgive me, which I am not happy with, is the method of absolute chance (by tossing the coins). On the contrary, I believe the chance must be extremely controlled: by using tables in general, or series of tables, I believe that it would be possible to direct the phenomenon of the automatism of chance, whether written down or not, which I mistrust as a facility that is not absolutely necessary. (Nattiez & Samuels, 1995, p. 112)
Usmanbaş, on the other hand, situates the concept of ‘chance’ in a wider perspective. In his interview with İlyasoğlu in 1977, he indicated that he saw the creative process as the choice of some from the many possibilities. According to him, every step and every decision is essentially a choice among many possibilities. As a musical method, he defined aleatory as an inevitable dialectic of certain design methods, such as all seriality at a time when they were at their extreme (İlyasoğlu, 1977).
Usmanbaş's ultimate point in aleatoric music is Raslamsallar I-II-II (1967-68). This work, written for piano, double bass, trumpet and viola, contains parts given in groups for each performer to choose. Unlike the traditional scores, the instruments are presented together on the musical sheet (Figure 3.7). Apart from these sections, to be played selectively, written instructions are also given.
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Figure 3.7 : Raslamsal I, 1967, First page of the music score.
Usmanbaş stated that the method of improvisation, which we have known for centuries, is the music of indeterminacy - although in a slightly altered form. The composer also asserted that graphic notation, which is one step further than this, is also linked to the previous discoveries like music of indeterminacy, therefore such innovative approaches should be perceived as a natural result of developments in music:
The development of art, or in other words, the discoveries of unknown fields within it, has actually been due to the gradual emergence of some hidden powers in the seed, for centuries. Each new step has opened another door. Considering that notation was a purely visual method in the Middle Ages, and that certain memorised melodies used to be memorised by means of points, commas and curves, today's visual music (graphic lines that are instinctively turned into sound by the performer) should not be found at all. However, the music education of today is in such academic limitation that these new methods are regarded as stranger by this audience than ever before […] Although it is a discovery; and, like every invention, its extremes will be rasped, or after a while will become part of another method. (İlyasoğlu 1977, p. 59-60)
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Due to the possibilities it provides, the aleatoric implementations, that become evident through its freedom, given to the performer and the graphic notation, in which it is carried one step further, are called "open work" or "open form". Umberto Eco explained the concept of open work in music, with the variety of possible relations that Boulez put forward, with the total serial method. According to him, openness is a way which followed by the structural organization of serial thought (Eco, 1989, p. 218). In serial thinking, composers need to have a position to feel free in choosing one of many possibilities, compared to a tonal composition. In a similar way, the concept of openness removes the barriers between the performer and the audience. For Eco, the change in the reference point of the music, emerging according to perceptual ability, differs from person to person and therefore the diversity that emerges in interpretation is the consequence of another idea of openness (Eco, 1989, p.ii).
Open form is a concept used in music, literature, poetry and visual arts. This concept incorporates the mobile sculptures of Calder, the abstract expressionist paintings of Pollock and the writings of Mallarmé or James Joyce into a common formal characteristic, without claiming a historical or stylistic unity. As a matter of fact, Usmanbaş mentioned that the mobiles of Calder and Arel had influenced him, in heading towards aleatoric and graphic notation (Usmanbaş, 2003. p. 17). The composer thought that he could create a similar condition in music, with the constantly changing appearance of these sculptures over time.
Usmanbaş began writing graphic notation, created with visual elements such as dots and lines instead of musical notes, towards the end of the 1960s. Bale için Müzik, dated 1968, is one of the first examples of this method being applied (Figure 3.8). The composer included English and Turkish instructions for how the graphical lines would be played musically. In 1970s, in his works took inspiration from the Second İkinci Yeni poets İlhan Berk (Şenlikname), Ece Ayhan (Bakışıksız bir Kedi Kara) and Behçet Necatigil (Kareler), Usmanbaş used graphic notation and aleatoric elements. The ultimate point that the composer would reach in graphic notation was Çizgiler (Lines), in 1986. In this work, each page’s duration - of approximately 10 seconds - was written for the clarinet, piano, guitar and percussion instruments. Performers are expected to interpret the figures on these pages from left to right and to determine how the lines and the squares could imply the direction, duration and pitch (Figure 3.9).
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3.3 Visual Elements in Usmanbaş’s Music on Poems
For Usmanbaş, the closest form of art to humans is poetry. He expressed, in one of his interviews, that he was deeply inspired by poetry because the words, our most basic instruments in everyday life, are transformed on the page into the product of another world (Usmanbaş, 1984). As a composer, he approaches poetry through formal features. He mentioned that, when transforming a poem into music, he tears it apart like in an anatomy lesson, using it only as a material rather than its meaning (Enis, 1991, p. 11).
Instead of building a semantic setting, Usmanbaş interacted with poetry in such a way that he would expand the possibilities of the writing technique he worked on and transform its logic into the logic of music. What is more significant, however, is that while forming this relationship, Usmanbaş considered the visual aspect as an important connecting instrument.
The composer described that in Üç Müzikli Şiir, as in cubist paintings, he attempted to capture a spatial and temporal unity (Usmanbaş, 1987, p. 20).31 He tried to obtain this
31 This work, written on Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat's poems, Zamanın Örümceği and Bitmeyen and Güzellik Sevinci, was first performed in America by Atıfet Usmanbaş and Lionel Nowak in 1957 and won Usmanbaş the Koussevitzky Prize. The composer, in his work written for the soprano and piano, states
Figure 3.8 : Bale için Müzik, 1968.
Figure 3.9 : Çizgiler, 1986.
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unity between the lyrics, the constant mobility of the music which accompanies it, and the transition of the themes. The themes of "time" and "lullabies" attract the audience’s attention in the first poem, Zamanın Örümceği that gives the inspiration to the first movement. As for the second movement, repeated triple concepts driven from the second poem Bitmeyen (“we liked, we grew up, we became beautiful” / “we thought, we broke up, we met” / “black is not in the black, idea is in the idea, colour is in more than the colour”) were featured, with three beats overlaping each other. Usmanbaş created the third movement in three parts for Fırat’s poem Güzellik Sevinci. In the first part, there is a repeating musical figure. The composer claimed that he conducted "a painting experiment" for the second part of the third movement and musically created an image of a sea. He used a small section from Debussy's La Mer (1903-1905) to support this conception (Usmanbaş, 1987, p. 20). In the last part of this movement, there is a return to leitmotifs to the first poem, Zamanın Örümceği. For Usmanbaş, the leitmotif is the most suitable technique in the unity of poetry and music that provides a relationship between the whole and its parts. According to him, just like the spatial unity in a Cubist painting, leitmotifs creates the same effect on a temporal plane:
The Leitmotif technique of Wagner realises the effort of the Cubists to show us the invisible aspects of the object in space, over time. In the third part, the time concept of the first movement and its trembling ending curiously overlap each other and combine the idea of space-time. (Usmanbaş, 1987, p. 20)
Usmanbaş, in his work Şiirli Müzik / Metric Figure (1958), traced the images created by words. The composer used William Carlos Williams's poem of the same name, written for the mezzo-soprano and five instruments (a flute, a clarinet, a bassoon and two violins).
In Williams’ (1883-1963) poetic language, what is known as imagism was evaluated within the modernist movement in poetry. A feature of this movement is the creation of clear and concrete images with a plain language. Williams, who is known for his affinity with modern painting, depicts a sunny day, sea and beach in his Metric Figure poem (Figure 3.10). This depiction of nature in the poem, according to Christopher MacGowan, is like a transition from Impressionism to the solid geometry of modern
that he created an environment for his music through poems rather than interpreting them (Usmanbaş 1987, p.19).
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art (MacGowan, 1989, p. 140-141). By separating the words from unusual points, the visual impression of the text is achieved. Thus, poetry gained a semantic, an aural and a visual movement (lines represents the waves breaking on the shore).
Figure 3.10 : William Carlos Williams, Metric Figure, 1915-16
While Usmanbaş transformed this short text into seven minutes of music, he acted from a similar approach. Despite the short and plain language, the composer thought that words and images were in a "flowing, expanding, spreading movement". In the explanatory notes of the work, he informs us that the images created by words resonate in the mind through time and he tries to bring this effect to his music, within the flow of time. (Usmanbaş 1987, p.20).
The appearance of Şiirli Müzik on the page represents an innovative change. This innovation is an indication of Usmanbaş's move towards the idea of openness in music (Yayalar, Yüceler 2015, p.172). He has created an uninterrupted flow of time, without giving bar-lines. On another page, he has shown his attitude eliminating the temporal hierarchy, this time with a system divided into grids (Figure 3.11).
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Figure 3.11 : Usmanbaş, Şiirli Müzik page 17 and 19.
Another poem that Usmanbaş’s uses for musical re-presentation is Stéphane Mallermé’s (1842-1898) Un Coup de Dés (1897), which draws attention with its visual arrangement. In this poem, the words are spread across the page, like a graphical notation. Mallarmé deconstructed the poetry, both linguistically and visually. The flow of the text has also changed accordingly and made the reader’s interaction open to interpretation. On the other hand, poetry has also gained a spatial value on the page. Usmanbaş, who encountered Mallarmé while he was a student at the conservatory, stated that what influenced him in this poem was the layout of the page that “looks like music” (Batur, 1991, p. 9) (Figure 3.12).
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Figure 3.12 : Mallarmé, Un Coup de Dés, 1897.
Mallarmé was also an inspiration for Pierre Boulez. The composer tried to transform the formal and visual features of Un Coup de dés to music in the early 1950s; however, he left the work that he had started to write for choir and orchestra incomplete (Nattiez & Samuels, 1995, p. 62). Later, Boulez brought Mallarmé to his music with his piece Pli Selon Pli, dated 1958. In this work, which he wrote for the soprano and orchestra, Boulez painted a musical portrait of Mallarmé's personality as a poet, rather than referring to a specific poem of his.
Mallarmé, on the other hand, is indeed significant for Boulez, as an influence on forming his music. This impact is akin to the literary equivalent of the composer's relationship with Klee. Mallamé was pointed out by Boulez as the reference point against Cage's technique, based on pure chance operations (Temple, 1998, p. 166-168). Boulez brought the opportunity offered by the poet to the reader to interpret the text differently each time, to the musical plane for the performer. The similarity between the visual quality of Piano Sonata No.3 (1955-1957) (Figure 3.13), and the typographic arrangement in Mallarmé's Un coup de dés is striking.
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Figure 3.13 : Pierre Boulez, Troisiéme Sonate pour Piano-Formant 3-Miroir, 1957
As a matter of fact, Usmanbaş has achieved a similar connection in his musical piece, Un Coup de Dés. It was written as an aleatoric piece for the great choir and orchestra in 1959. He therefore, before writing the music, examined the distribution of spaces in the text, the typographical features of the words, and which word sequences were formed when similar typefaces were combined (Batur, 1991, p. 10). Usmanbaş transformed the structure of the text into the organization of the music using this information:
Only the phrases UN COUP DE DES.. JAMAIS… N’ABOLIRA… LE HASARD were taken from the entire poem. In front of it, in the middle and behind, it is an allegory of the voiced consonants of the poem. A non-french text is being conducted. In its complete sense, poetry has been stripped of its connotations and language and has become a mere vocal repertoire. However, the above sentence with capital letters is like islands in an ocean of 15 minutes of choral / orchestral music. (Usmanbaş, 1987, p. 40)
In the same year as Un Coup de Dés, Usmanbaş composed Repos d'été for soprano and string quartets. This poem, written by Paul Eluard (1895–1952) who, after the disintegration of Dada, took part in the formation of the Surrealist movement. He was a poet who enriched the world of imagery in his poems by the influence of his
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relationship with members of the Surrealist group, such as André Breton, Max Ernst and Dalí. Still, Eluard did not choose to keep his world of images away from the external reality. As a matter of fact, Usmanbaş also has drew attention to this feature of the poet in the description of the work:
The story and images in poetry presented to us, the liveliness of the beginning of the day, after the night, and the inevitable turmoil of life appear in music instrumentally. However, the "working day" begins and does not respond to "summer rest" at all, making people prisoners to work, but also giving them hope […] The arrangement of the second intermezzo with short, broken figures merges with words that denote the image of a single grain of wheat, the product of the labour that the poem has glorified. (Usmanbaş, 2015, p. 239)
The common feature of the three poets is the intensity of the imagery in their poems. The semiotic meaning, created by the words, drew Usmanbaş’s attention, due to both its intrinsic and visual qualities on the page. It is striking that, as the aleatoric elements increased in the composer's music, his choice of poetry followed a path towards Surrealism. Among them, Metric Figure, won the Tanglewood Koussevitzky Prize in 1958; however, this work has never been performed, but like the other two pieces written for the poems of Williams and Mallarmé. Usmanbaş turned to his fellow contemporary Turkish poets, a decade after these compositions, and developed his pieces, in which he effectively used aleatoric elements, where he sometimes referred to graphic notation.
Usmanbaş was in close contact with the poets of the İkinci Yeni movement. This relationship, dating back to the times of the Helikon Association, brought the representatives of both artforms together, under a common aesthetic. Ece Ayhan stated that he had first encountered the philosophy of the new music in this association and consequently was caught up seeking the equivalence of a kind of atonality in poetry (Batur, 1998). Years later, in an interview with Usmanbaş, he stated that randomness was a part of every creation and every creator (Ayhan, 1987).
The first Turkish poet that Usmanbaş transformed into his music was İlhan Berk (1918-2008) and his poem Şenlikname. This poem is a classic example of an ekphrasis, which is an adaptation from a visual story. It is the reenactment of an Ottoman miniature, dating from the 16th century, questioning the structural order of the poem
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in prose form.32 In this ekphrastic poem, Berk made leaps that lead the reader into the stories in the details of images while describing the painting in the creation process of the miniature. This style of expression, which is repeated throughout the text, allowed the reader to approach the text and the visual descriptions (like experiencing a miniature visually) from various perspectives.
Usmanbaş transformed these leaps, which he defines as “alternations between the vitality and the irreversibility of painting”, into “an illustration that will give a festive atmosphere” in his music (Usmanbaş, 1987, p. 44). This transformation is also recognised on the musical page (Figure 3.14). The schematic expression on the page resembles the two-dimensional plane of the miniature, divided into scenes. In music, this two-dimensionality manifests itself with instruments and vocal organisation. Percussion instruments are dominant in the music that accompanies the vocal parts (Öğüt 2014, p. 32). The percussion group, divided into two groups as drums and cymbals, emphasises the two-dimensionality and at the same time makes the spectator feel the festive atmosphere. The women's choir stands around a single sound (the note D) and, as the composer put it, is like the ornamental border of the miniature Şenlikname. Thus, through Berk's poetry, he also interacted with the miniature that was the source of this work.
Figure 3.14 : Usmanbaş, Şenlikname, 1970.
32 The miniature painting that is the source of the poem was made by Nakkaş Osman in 1582. In this miniature, the subject is the festival organised for the circumcision of Prince Mehmet, son of Murat III (Öğüt 2007, p.19).
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Usmanbaş's Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara, dated 1970, is a series of poetry published in 1965 by Ece Ayhan, another member of the İkinci Yeni.33 For the nine poems in this series, the composer wrote nine musical compositions, using piano and human voice. Ece Ayhan is a poet who saw poetry as an art form linked with other disciplines. He associated Second New Movement with various composers, painters, writers and concepts such as Klee, Kandinsky, Kafka, Schoenberg, Webern, Usmanbaş, Arel, Mimaroğlu, atonal music and twelve-tone technique (Ayhan, 1993, p. 17). In the İkinci Yeni Soruşturması (Second New Investigation) published in the 1957, he explained his approach in poetry as "defending that there is a meaning in the irrational mind", "acting as an anarchist, regarding the the rules of poetry", "going towards the meaning of meaninglessness" (Ayhan, 1957).
This attitude brought Ayhan close to Surrealist thought. In his response to the question of how he relates to Surrealism and atonal music, during an interview in 1988, he stated that he regards these two fields as equivalents of each other (Ayhan, 1993, p. 135).
Ayhan is one of the most unique Turkish poets, in terms of his usage of words and images. The fact that he created incomprehensible descriptions by breaking the rules leads the reader to make a reading that is open to interpretation (Figure 3.15). In his article, published in 1967 in Yeni Dergi, Mustafa Öneş, drew attention to the visual aspects of the poems in the series, Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara, and the tension of their presentation. He stated that the overall composition created by the poet with words is worthy of contemporary painting (Öneş, 1967). Usmanbaş created a music parallel to Ayhan's poems, based on these features (Figure 3.16). The multifaceted connotations in these poems have helped the composer to further develop aleatoric applications (Öğüt 2012, p.83).
33 There are nine poems in this series: Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara, Firavun, Kılıç, Mısrayim, Kargabüken, İki Tekerlekli At, Ey Kanatsızlık, Ortodoks-Ortodoks and İpeka.
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Figure 3.15 : Ece Ayhan, Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara.
Figure 3.16 : İlhan Usmanbaş Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara, page 3.
Lastly, Usmanbaş composed music for Behçet Necatigil's series of poems.34 The feature that distinguishes Necatigil from other Turkish poets, which Usmanbaş used for his compositions, is that he is a poet that cannot be included in any movement. Even though there are ones who align him with the İkinci Yeni Movement, due to its innovative language, Necatigil stated that he did not find this attribution particularly suitable for him. He sees the İkinci Yeni as “A pile of idle images that do not cling to a particular theme. Canned images, juxtaposed, scrambling in a row, unrelated to each other, thought to improve poetry as their number increases […]” (Necatigil, 1999, p. 27).
In his poems, where Necatigil composed a series of verses consisting of a few words, he put forward a style that will take the reader out of the conventional reading practice. Thus, he aimed to enable the reader to create their own text (Figure 3.17). The poet also stated the visual arrangement that he believed necessary to provide this opportunity in his letter to the publishing house before the poem was published:
[…] In the poems of the Kareler section of the book, a special setting has been pursued, paying attention to the alignment of the words, column by column, from top to bottom. The spacing between phrases in each line will be at least
34 The poems in this series: Ah Akşam Oldu, Karışık Tarife, Eksik Yakınlıklar, Savaş, Yaşlanmak, Yergi, Divane Derkenar, Lale, 66, Uzun Köprü.
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one letter, which will be adjusted according to vertical columns. […] Otherwise, the look I pursue would disappear. (Necatigil, 2001, p. 251)
Usmanbaş tried to evaluate the opportunity offered by these arrangements in his work, Kareler (Figure 3.18).
Figure 3.17 : Behçet Necatigil, Divâne Derkenar, 1970.
Figure 3.18 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Divâne Derkenar, notation of the first stanza.
He created combinations of different functioning for each poem in the series, combining the random movement provided by the sliding eyes through the texts with the possibilities of music:
All of the implementations in the Kareler could be counted as part of musical development, it could also be transformed into a stage arrangement that looks like choreography. Every word in the poem makes meaningful-meaningless (actually nothing is meaningless) encounters with other words (dancers) in other aspects of the scene, like a dancer, plays games, or suddenly reveals a hidden meaning. The movement of musical sounds originates from the rhythm, meaning, highness and lowness of the words. The music is integrated with the poetry. (Usmanbaş, 1987, p. 42)
Written for eight vocals and ten instruments,35 Kareler is like Bakışsız Bir Kedi Kara, in terms of the way the text is used and the deformations in the vocals. Another
35 Clarinet, bass clarinet, vibraphone, siliphone, piatto, harp, piano, viola, cello, double bass and, additionally, violin.
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common feature between these two works is that the semantic clarity in their texts is also reflected in the music. Şenlikname, on the other hand, has a closed narrative form, compared to the other two poems. Here in Karaler, Usmanbaş provided the idea of openness by leaving the temporal parametre in the vocal party to the freedom of the performer (Öğüt, 2014, p. 36).
The point where three pieces of music meets; is because the composer prioritised a formal approach such as sound deformations and visual expression on the musical score. They have a "transposition" type of stance, within the ekphrastic categories. However, the connotation of the sounds created by the use of percussion in the Şenlikname indicates a supplementary transformation. These are the sounds that cannot be conveyed in the original work, that is, in miniature, nor in Berk's poetry into which the miniature has been transformed, which animate an Ottoman festive scene with the connotation created by the percussion instruments. Usmanbaş created a multi-layered example of ekphrasis that transformed from miniature to text and from text to music in the Şenlikname.
3.4 Usmanbaş’s Music with Paintings
The time frame of music and the spatial frame of painting should come together at some point. Painting becomes music, if it moves through time (Usmanbaş, 1984).
Like his relationship with poetry, the music of Usmanbaş, which he formed on the basis of painting, goes back to his conservatory years. This interest continued in his later periods, such as serialist, aleatoric music, graphic notation, and his minimalist works.
3.4.1 Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse is the first painter that Usmanbaş incorporated in his music. In 1947, the variations part at the end of the Yaylı Dörtlü, which he composed in memory of Béla Bartók in Ferit Alnar class at the Conservatory, took form under the influence of Matisse.36 Each variation, an interpretation of the lines and colours of Matisse's paintings, is presented in a concentrated form (Usmanbaş, 2010). The fluidity, the
36 This work won the Fromm Award (Fromm Music Award Chicago) in 1954.
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contrasts, the pure colours, the twists and the ornaments in Matisse; appear to the composer as a visual equivalent of the effect he wanted to create in his music. Rather than transferring the images in a particular Matisse painting, Usmanbaş brought the structural features, colours and linear movements that dominate all the pictures in the album, to his sound world:
If we need to compare images and music, in the last part of the Yaylı Dördül, which is about 10 variations on a theme, is made in parallel with the line and colour changes in a few of Matisse's paintings. In this, both the striking colours, the change in the lines, and some relationships that come from one frame of a painting to another, emerge by making connotations of the same relations. I also have to say this; This theme also brings together an effect of the Black Sea kemençe with Matisse's paintings. (Usmanbaş, 1984)
Although the Matisse catalog, which Usmanbaş used while composing the Yaylı Dördül, has not survived, it is seen that the instabilities that occur with the figure-ground relationship we are used to in Matisse are similarly reflected in the music. The local instrumental sounds of Black Sea region also increased this effect. The composer presented Matisse's ornamental attitude embodying the movement and the timbre of the bright colours he used in his paintings with the sound features of the kemençe.
3.4.2 Alexander Calder
The kinetic sculptures of Alexander Calder, which are called ‘mobiles’ for short, are dated to the early 1930s. These mobiles have given the sculpture new spatial dimensions in terms of both the relationship with both its physical environment and its components. On the other hand, it also brought a time-based feature to the static characteristic of the sculpture. Calder came over to the idea of bringing movement to the sculpture, driven by motor, inspired by the abstract geometrical arrangements of the Constructivists. Nevertheless, the artist's attraction to an arrangement that would occur spontaneously, instead of a controlled movement, was formed by the relationship he had with the Surrealist movement (Janson and Janson 1997, p.852).37
37 In response to his work that inspired contemporary music, Calder included an element of sound in his sculpture. He named these sculptural works "Noisemobils", which can produce unexpected sounds with random movements (Vergo 2012, p.342).
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Mobile sculptures are one of the sources of inspiration for the idea of openness in music. In the early 1950s, Earle Brown associated the idea of music moving in an endless uncertainty with Calder's mobiles. With this thought, he made his work, December 1952 in the Folio series (Figure 3.19). The notation of this work, which can be played with any instrument, resembles an abstract composition. Except for the composer's signature in the lower right corner, there are no directional hints. Thus, the performer is left alone with a work that he can move in the direction he wants, starting from anywhere.
Figure 3.19 : Earle Brown, December 1952.
In his works Available Forms I and II (1961-1962), Brown this time physically included a sculpture of Calder (Figure 3.20). In this work, where the movement opportunity offered by the sculpture is applied exactly, Calder's work named Chef d'orchestre was included, and it functions both as an instrument and as a conductor of the performance.
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Figure 3.20 : Earle Brown, Available Forms 1&2. Performance and music score.
Francis Miroglio is another composer who referred to Calder in his music (1924-2005). Miroglio, who completed his musical education at Darmstadt summer school, associated the idea of openness in his music, which he created with graphic elements such as Brown, with Calder’s 'mobiles' (Bosseur, 1993, p. 26). The composer, who met Calder in 1965, worked with him on two ballet works and composed the Pink Squash (1980) in memory of the artist after his death.
According to Usmanbaş, the understanding of music created with aleatoric practices and graphic elements emerged as a reaction to predetermined organisation in music, that is serialism, which leads the sounds of the 1950s generation to an unnatural resonance (Usmanbaş, 1987, p. 47). As a composer who experienced the dissolution of serial music towards chance and indeterminacy at the end of the 1960s, Usmanbaş began mobile applications in music, like his contemporaries. In 1967 and 1968, he composed the Raslamsallar series, in which the performers would play the musical figures in the order they preferred. This freedom given to the performers provides the musical piece to be realised differently in each performance. According to Usmanbaş, the role of performers in forming music has brought a new value to music:
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“In aleatoric music, by forming the piece while choosing and performing, the performers have a new opportunity: to participate in creation. For the musicians who have grown up with traditional musical education, in which the strictest obedience to the principle is applied, adapting this new playing method, following the progress - not the togetherness - and evaluating the constructive and formative qualities of the related or unrelated figures in a developing musical flow brings a brand new perspective.” (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 147)
For Usmanbaş, the creation of music is actualised with the joint contribution of the composer and the performer (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 18). Özgürlükler of 1970, which he wrote for choir and percussion instruments, emerged as a product of this idea. This music, in which all graphic elements are used, is presented on a single page where each musician can see all parts at the exact same time (Figure 3.21). Usmanbaş defined this interaction between musicians as "the creative fusion of an occurrence" due to both their appearances on the musical score and their choices during the performance (Usmanbaş, 1987, p. 47). Usmanbaş intervened in both the chronological time of music on the musical notation and the psychological time that occurred during the performance with his graphic works.
Figure 3.21 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Özgürlükler, 1970.
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3.4.3 Victor Vasarely
Victor Vasarely (1908-1997) was another painter that influenced the composer, who tried to break the perception of time in music through visual or spatial elements. The artist, of Hungarian origin, is one of the representatives of Op Art, which focuses on the physical and psychological aspects shaped by optical illusions. The artists of this movement have created the illusion of movement created by the viewer's own perception on a two-dimensional plane and the changes over time.
Since the first time that Usmanbaş came across Vasarely's paintings, he wanted to reflect them in his music. However, he stated that his music had to undergo certain processes for this to happen (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 18). The Bas Klarinet x Bas Klarinet from 1977, dedicated to Harry Sparnaay (1944-2017), is his first piece with the Vaserely influence. In this music, the clarinet played live on stage is accompanied by another pre-recorded clarinet. It was aimed that with the recorded sounds, heard from the loudspeakers placed on the right and left of the stage, would sometimes expand the physical space and sometimes create an effect that it "dances' around" the performer on the stage (Usmanbaş, 2015, p. 264-265).
The music written by the composer, based exclusively on Vasarely, with both its organisation and appearance, was his 1988 work Perpetuum Immobile / Perpetuum Mobile. ‘Perpetuum mobile’ is a musical term where the instruments play notes of equal lengths, rapidly and in a repetitious fashion. However, the phenomenon of immobility, which is the equivalent of ‘perpetuum immobile’, is a concept that is not easy to consider together with music. While transferring this idea to music, Usmanbaş used a drawing from Vasarely's early Black-White (1953-1959) series as a reference point (Figure 3.22). This drawing has been visually represented on the page, in addition to the sound effect it creates (Figure 3.23).
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Figure 3.22 : Vasarely, Black and White Series, 1956.
Figure 3.23 : lhan Usmanbaş, Perpetuum Immobile, 1988.
The kinetic motion that he wants to arrive at in the painting interestingly […] carries both the kinetics (perpetuum!) and the stationary (immobile!) inside. The most interesting aspect [of this work] for me is that the similarity of the lines, beginning from the first page of the music, progresses gradually by bringing new images. (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 18)
The linear shapes in Vasarely's work create an illusion of ambiguity between foreground and background. Although a transition from white to black and back to white can be felt, this picture stands as a mass in Usmanbaş's words, and according to him, something standing in mass should take form as immobility in music (Usmanbaş, 2010).
Usmanbaş associated his works Görsel Üçül/Trioptic (1990) and Üçül Solo / Trio de tre (1991), he created in the following years with Vasarely's Gestalt Series, which emphasises the three-dimensional effect, dated between 1969-1978. Both works are written for three instruments. The sound repetitions, transitions and gaps created by these instruments, sometimes together and sometimes with independent movements, reflect the motion of the third dimension in the image.
It is natural that Vasarely's Op Art evokes the Minimalism of the 1970s. The foundation of minimalism is to make the music slide to other points with the endless
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repetition of similar elements, but by making small changes between these repetitions. Achieving the same effect in painting would require placing the endless repetition of the same picture side by side and applying minor changes in these repetitions. (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 18-19)
3.5 Assessment
Usmanbaş's relationship with painting, just like his relationship with poetry, was realised through the common formal elements intertwined with his music. The composer specifically stated that he was not interested in conveying the subject, content or atmosphere of the paintings he worked on (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 16). As a matter of fact, he did not refer to a specific painting in his first piece based on Matisse; he treated the visual elements we are familiar with in Matisse’s paintings as a musical idea. The transformation of Calder and Arel’s mobile sculptures into a musical idea is also not inspired by a particular artwork. There is a transformation here that expands the possibilities of the medium. Mobiles are essentially a hybrid artform that gives movement and temporality to the static and spatial characteristics of sculpture. Although every element of these sculptures was designed by the artist; The form that emerges as the whole takes its form with the freedom of movement it has. Because of this feature, mobiles have been a suitable model for aleatoric music composers. The musical idea is based on translating the aesthetic possibility of sculptures into the language of music.
However, the situation is different in Vasarely. Although Bas Klarinet x Bas Klarinet, Görsel Üçül and Üçül Solo do not refer to a specific painting, these are pieces of music inspired by Vasarely's Gestalt Series, which he started in 1969. The common feature of the paintings in this series is that impossible three-dimensional shapes, consisting of cubic and cell-like structures, have created three-dimensional spaces. The perception of the third dimension also contains an illusion of motion with the effect of different colour versions and light. In the music he wrote for Vasarely with Perpetuum Mobile - Perpetuum Immobile, he sought a temporal equivalent of these paintings - by using the possibilities of music. such as instrument selection and sound organisations.
The common point of the works of Usmanbaş, which goes back to his student year with Matisse - after which he referred to poetry and painting with his twelve-tone
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technique, aleatoric music and open work applications - is that he analysed the sound organisation and temporal flow of these works of music in a spatial arrangement.
Usmanbaş thought that the change of temporal elements in his music should first occur on the two-dimensional plane, that is, on the page, which is the spatial dimension of the music. For him, this 'frozen time' is a kind of visual and aural abstraction that brings together the beginning and the end of the music simultaneously (Usmanbaş, 1990). The fact that the composer drawing sketches, during the creative process of composing, is an indication of his way of thinking about spatial organisation, not only in the music he wrote on different works of art, but also in transforming music into notes in general, on a spatial level:
The drawings in the notebook are the opposite of the open work. So, from the very beginning, it indicates where the music will go visually. It is like spreading something that what notation gives us in space. It is the opposite of open work: closed artwork. Because these lines show where the musical piece will start and finish, from the beginning to the end, which elements will enter in -between, and which high pitches we will reach. It is a drawing made within 5 minutes of a work that lasted 20-30 minutes. After this first drawing, the detailed work begins. Which chord should we put here, which of the lines fitted onto them can be considered separately. So the sketch is completed in some kind of a space. It is like fitting the time into the space (Usmanbaş, 2010).
Usmanbaş used sketch drawings, especially when composing large-scale musical works. These drawings, which are the imaginary representation of a musical idea, the spatial equivalent of the movement of the sound, sometimes present the music in a concentrated form with its thin and thick values (Figure 3.24).
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Figure 3.24 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Sketch Drawing for Symphony, 1979.
Usmanbaş used the idea of closed composition for Çizgiler (1986), as he demonstrated in his sketch drawings (see Figure 3.9). This work is the most radical music written with graphic notation. No explanatory notes or musical symbols are used on the musical score. A flow of lines and shapes, formed by their proximity to each other. is presented. This unrestricted presentation gives the impression of an open work at first sight - however, on the contrary, it is a visual representation of the form that sound will take form in a given time course. The duration is thought to last 10-15 seconds for each page. The composer gave instructions on how to perform this piece, written for clarinet, piano, guitar and percussion instruments, through a small sample in the description. In a way, it leaves the performer to experience the music, with a similar transformation to that found in composing through sketches. According to Çöloğlu, with this composition, Usmanbaş gets the performer out of the way and minimizes the difference between listener and interpreter. With an even more speculative interpretation, he stated that the aural experience of this work could take place in the mind of the listener, “who is now turning into the audience" (Çöloğlu, 2015, p. 164).
In the light of all this progress, Three Paintings from Dalí once again emerges as a reference point for us. In addition to being the first piece of music to be shaped by the direct relationship it establishes with painting, it is Usmanbaş's first work in which drawing sketches were used during the composition process. Although the drawings
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of Three Paintings from Dalí have not survived, a study based on Dalí’s paintings will give us some clues on how Usmanbaş formed this music.
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4. THREE PAINTINGS FROM DALÍ: A MUSICAL COUNTERPART
Many composers have undoubtedly experienced the situation of that space, and time cannot be parallel. When I intended to transform Three Paintings from Dalí into sounds, I have also experienced the difficulty of finding out where the composing logic of two different environments coincided, and at which point switching from one to the other forces our chain of thought. (Usmanbaş, 1990).
Usmanbaş encountered Dalí’s paintings, when he began his music experiments in serial music.38 The composer, who regards these paintings as a structural reference for his music, composed this symphonic work for 22 solo string instruments, consisting of three parts, in which he used The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1946), El Centaur (1951), and Angel Explotando Armonicamente (1951) respectively.39
To understand where Usmanbaş’s music approaches Dalí’s paintings, first of all, the structural features of these three paintings should be examined. This chapter of the study investigates the systematic approach that Dalí used in the period dating back to the 1950s, explores the composition features of the three paintings, and analyses how Usmanbaş transferred pictorial features into his music.
38 The composer stated that he came across the paintings that were the source of his music in a catalogue, in Bülent Arel's home (Usmanbaş, 2010). Just one publication in which the three paintings were together was found as during the study. This publication is a catalogue, published after the Spanish American Biennial (Primera Biennial Hispanoamericana), which was held for the first time in 1951. The paintings of Dalí in the Biennial and his current works related to these paintings are included in the catalogue by Raphael Santos Torroella.
39 The composer stated in the description of the work that this work was written for 22 strings or 44 bowed strings. The contents of the instrument are 12 violins, 4 violas, 4 cello, 2 double bass in 22 instrument arrangements; and 24 violins, 8 violas, 8 cello, 4 double bass in 44 instrument arrangements.
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4.1 Dalí and His Systematic Approach
Dalí was a Surrealist artist who has been an ardent advocate of the irrational mind. In his paintings, in which he establishes a connection between mental processes and the unconscious world, based on Freud’s thoughts and psychoanalytical approach, he depicted a world of associations, libidinal impulses, and repressed desires. These are the features that first attract attention in Dalí’s paintings. However, in his paintings, he used a systematic approach model that effectively created a world of images and dreams, thus keeping his thoughts alive.
Dalí has founded the immersive relationship he established between art and science, based on the systematic approach model he developed over the years. This relationship, which ensured his paintings’ semantic and structural integrity, has been determinant for Dalí’s stylistic periods. He combined paranoiac critical thought, on which he based his Surrealist view, with the natural sciences and Einsteinian physics. In the 1950s, he associated this knowledge with scientific developments, such as nuclear physics and quantum mechanics.
Dalí’s interest in the relationship between art and science arose with the Catalan avant-garde movement. However, the development of his thoughts and their formation more comprehensively and systematically came about with his engagement with the Surrealist group. Impressed by Breton’s idea of “becoming acquainted with scientific discoveries” that he deemed necessary for the Surrealist perspective, Dalí took a close interest in fields such as the natural sciences, botany, and entomology from an early age (Ruffa, 2005, p. 2). He became a follower of the underwater documentaries of Jean Painlevé (1902-1989) and the close-up photography of Albert Renger-Patzsch. He also aroused an interest in the possibilities of photography and documentary films towards the end of the 1920s. In one of his articles, he explained this convergence as follows:
Let us hope that the first irrational attempts, free from any aesthetic sense, paralleling attempts that are strictly scientific, will present us with a documentary of the long life of the hairs of an ear, or a documentary of a stone, or that of the life of an air current in slow motion. (Dalí, 1998, p. 104)
Dalí built an analogy between the empirical approach used in natural science research and Surrealist experiments. Just as science focuses on specific phenomena, objects and quantitative values to scientifically explain or predict natural phenomena, the
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Surrealist view should focus on its subject and object, with a similar principle of determination. In Dalí’s paranoiac critical paintings, images detached from their context in the objective world arose from this idea.
The paranoiac critical method is an active interpretation and association model that emerged against Breton’s passive automatism and was adopted quickly by other artists of the Surrealist movement, especially Breton. In short, it is an observation of the functioning of thought. The most obvious application of this observation is the image of multiple figurations, which we often encounter in Dalí’s paintings. These images, which can sometimes reproduce in double, triple, or more numerous forms, offer the person an experience with which he can observe the continuous and successive change of the reality and the objects perceived in this reality (Dalí, 1998, p.256-262). This perspective, which Dalí formed, was based on the experimental approach employed in natural sciences. It has also been the fulcrum of the opposites used in his paintings, such as reality and imagination, conscious and unconscious minds, the internal and external world, libidinous desire and morality, dreaming and being awake.
Another scientific source of the Paranoiac Critical method is Einstein’s physics. Undoubtedly, Einstein altered the dimensions of reality, which were accepted as accurate at all times, with the critical approach he brought to Newton’s mechanical world-view and the Euclidean understanding of geometry. This revised physical reality provided a unique model for Dalí to strengthen the interactional structure between the world of objects and the irrational mind. On the other hand, it formed the basis of the formal and spatiotemporal construct of his paintings. In his 1935 article, titled Non-Euclidean Psychology of a Photograph, he expressed this idea with the following words: “... the theory of relativity, which teaches us that there is neither absolute time nor absolute space and that only the union of time and space has physical significance” (Dalí, 1998, p. 305).
The Persistence of Memory (1931) is an example that reflects Dalí’s approach to the time-space continuum. The soft, melting clocks in the painting inspire the viewer to question the perception of present-past-future in spatial integrity. As a result, it conveys the concept that instantaneous circumstances in time melt into one another and form a single whole; therefore, time, space, and the materials associated with them are not separate, but rather are linked by a relative connection. For Dawn Ades, this picture is “a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic
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order” (Ades, 1982) . In other words, with this painting, Dalí defines a new physical reality against the concrete world and expresses this scientific reality in a Surrealist language.
The relationship that Dalí established between science and art had gained a new dimension during the years when he was in America. Atomica Melancholica (1945) and Three Sphinxes of Bikini (1947), both influenced by America’s nuclear tests and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasakis, are the paintings that herald this new approach. However, Dalí was not concerned with the destructive power, environmental or social impact of nuclear power, but its atomic aspect. This interest brought formal and structural innovations to his paintings:
The atomic explosion of 6 August 1945 seismically struck me. Since that time, the atom has become my favourite subject of reflection. Many of the landscapes painted over this period express the great fear I felt at the news of that explosion. I was applying my paranoiac critical method to the exploration of that world. I want to see and understand the power and hidden laws of things, so as to gain control over them. In order to penetrate into the marrow of reality, I have the genial intuition of having an extraordinary weapon available to me - mysticism, the deep intuition of what is, an immediate communion with the whole, absolute vision through the grace of truth, by divine grace. (Dalí, 2006)
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, dated 1954, is an example that demonstrates the point where this change has come (Figure 4.1). The concrete world is represented by a rocky landscape in a previous version of the painting, and facing it, the soft clocks, representing the unity of time and space, have been preserved as they are. However, the clocks are not in the foreground, as in the first painting. They have receded into the background with the effect of dispersal. This time, the foreground is filled by the beach, where the pedestal's parts are distributed in a geometric pattern towards the sea. This image, which arouses a feeling of great emptiness, represents a new spatial understanding, in which all elements are intertwined.
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Figure 4.1 : Persistence of Memory (1931) and Disintegration of Persistence of Memory, (1954).
Dalí has integrated this period, which he called Nuclear Mysticism, with the golden ratio and the virtuosity of the Old Masters. The artist’s bond with the Old Masters manifests itself in all of his periods, just like his interest in scientific developments. For instance, he explained his paranoiac critical paintings by building an analogy between these paintings and Leonardo da Vinci’s conception of art. For Dalí, da Vinci, who was advising his students to look for marks and stains on the wall for inspiration, was the principal inventor of the paranoiac critical method (Dalí, 1998, p. 335).
Dalí’s Nuclear Mysticism period emerged during the years when he was excluded from the Surrealist group and stayed away from the lands to which he felt connected. In a way, it became the fulcrum of the artist’s Surrealist ideal and the rational connections that would defend this ideal. Dalí based his critical attitude towards abstract painting on this approach; because, for him, modern art had taken the wrong path, due to its inability to create depth and its unwillingness to be free from the surface of the canvas. He clarified these ideas in 50 Magic Secrets of Craftsmanship, published in 1948, along with his suggestions on how to apply perspective and the golden ratio. The first reflection of this phase is observed in the 1947 paintings of Feather Equilibrium and Dematerialization Near the Nose of Nero. The pictorial elements in these paintings, that began to be disintegrated and scattered with the atomic effect, achieved integrity within the Renaissance tradition framework and its mathematical proportions.
The sketches he made for Leda Atomica (Figure 4.2). in the same year, are almost like a schematic description of the application that he mentions in 50 Magic Secrets of Craftsmanship (Figure 4.3): “To obtain your golden section most simply and surely,
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begin drawing a pentagon. From the ends of the base to the top of the pentagon, draw the two lines which, as you must know, is the perfect triangle” (Dalí, 1998, p. 362).
Figure 4.2 : Preparatory Drawing for Leda Atomica, 1947.
Figure 4.3 : Leda Atomica, 1949.
Dalí introduced the final version of his artistic statement, which he fused with the research and current scientific developments that he had followed during his stay in America, in the Mystical Manifesto, published in 1951. Defining himself as an “ex-Surrealist” in the article, Dalí explained his aesthetic criteria and the morphology of his paintings:
The paroxysmal crisis of Dalinian mysticism mainly relies on the process of the particular sciences of our times, especially on the metaphysical spirituality of the substantiality of quantum physics, and at a level of less substantial simulacra, on the most ignominiously super gelatinous morphology – and their own coefficients of monarchic viscosity – of the whole morphology. The Dalan principles on which rely and rest the Bramantean bases of the aesthetic soul of paranoia critical activity are, in brief, the following: form is a reaction of matter under inquisitorial coercion ‘on all sides’ of ‘hard’ an unrelenting space. (Dalí, 1998, p. 363)
This new stylistic approach, in which the paranoid critical method is based on the technical skills of nuclear science, mysticism, religion and classical art, indicates the conclusion that the artist has achieved, based on almost a decade of research. While El
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Centauro and Angel Explotando Armonicamente shed light on the intellectual environment of the 1950s by presenting a synthesis of all times, The Temptation of St. Anthony informs the post-1945 developments that ushered in this period.
4.1.1 The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Dalí’s eight years in America between 1940 and 1948 were productive. During this time, he completed his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942), and published his first novel, Hidden Faces (1943). Dalí, whose writings and drawings were featured in fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, also stepped into the dazzling world of Hollywood. He was active in various different fields of the American cultural industry, such as fashion, cinema, and the performing arts.40
Dalí painted The Temptation of St. Anthony during this period, upon the invitation of the Bel Ami International Art Competition, organised by Hollywood’s leading film company, Loew-Lewin. In the contest, to which twelve artists were invited, the participants were asked to submit a painting on the subject of the Temptation of St. Anthony.41 The winning artwork was to be featured in The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, an adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s novel, in which George Sanders was acting. The jury members, including Marcel Duchamp, Alfred J. Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, and Sidney Janis, a renowned art dealer, awarded Max Ernst's painting 1st Prize, out of the eleven submitted works.
Ernst’s painting resembles a nightmare (Figure 4.4). The demons, which St. Anthony encountered during his retreat into the desert, have been transformed into bizarre Ernstian monsters, depicted tugging and shredding St. Anthony’s body with their paws and beaks. For the painting, the artist chose the most brutal and crucial moment from the spiritual and bodily temptations experienced by St. Anthony. The striking expression on the subject’s face was probably the main reason for this painting being selected as the winner.
40 Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) and Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride (1950) are among the films Dalí contributed. Apart from these, Destino, a joint project with Walt Disney may be included (1945). This animation was completed in 2003.
41 The artists invited to the competition are: Ivan Albright, Eugene Berman, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Louis Guglielmi, Horace Pippin, Abraham Rattner, Stanley Spencer, Dorothea Tanning. All painters, except Leonor Fini, submitted their paintings. The exhibition, in which all the pictures participating in the competition were held, toured European cities for a year.
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Figure 4.4 : Max Ernst, Temptation of St. Anthony, 1951.
The film Bel Ami shot in black and white, but Ernst’s painting was shown in a single frame in color for 10 seconds at the breaking point, just after Bel Ami encountered the painting. The painting has turned into a metaphorical representation of the emotional moment in which Bel Ami, the protagonist, rising in 19th century Paris high society by abusing the women whom he seduced with his charm, confronts himself and experiences an internal reckoning (Figure 4.5).
Figure 4.5 : Film stills from Bel Ami.
After these two frames, the scene where Ernst’s painting displayed in color for ten seconds is shown.
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Information about St. Anthony’s life was conveyed by the Alexandrian bishop, Athanasius I, in the 4th century.42 Having chosen a solitary life in the Egyptian desert by giving up everything he had, St. Anthony faced many difficulties, and his physical and spiritual experiences turned him into an important figure, a religious hero of the early Christian period.
St. Anthony’s experiences represent the power of faith and will against worldly pleasures, desire, lust, and violence. In the Western tradition, it appears as a subject that has been covered many times from, in both classical and modern art. Michelangelo, Grünewalt, Bosch and Cezanne are among the artists who have produced works on this theme.43 In almost all of these paintings depict St. Anthony’s fight against demons and seductive pleasures, as well as the physical and moral difficulties that he experienced.
One of the most exciting elements of the story is that St. Anthony did not choose a secure, isolated place for seclusion like other monks in early Christianity - on the contrary, he decided on an untouched, open setting with no borders. The theme of heroic characters being tempted in the wilderness is actually typical in Greco-Roman Pagan mythology. Often in these stories, the heroes, through confronting monsters, disorder, and death, acquire supernatural powers such as strength, wisdom and sometimes even immortality, as a result of their experiences. On the other hand, cloistered spaces, where one seeks to achieve spiritual and bodily purification, are mostly observed in monotheistic religions. For Dag Øistein Endsjø, the life of St. Anthony in the desert presents a conception of nature, in which the beliefs of the early Christian period were synthesised with Pagan thought (Endsjø, 2007, p. 14-15).
Dalí’s choice of this subject for the contest can be considered interesting in a number of ways. First of all, the story's religious references were quite relevant to Dalí, who was a practising Catholic. On the other hand, the desert is a place that contains opposing concepts such as life and death, or reality and fantasy. This setting also
42 Bishop Athanasius I of Alexandria became embroiled in the power struggles within the Early Christian Church and was exiled many times because of his anti-Arian ideas. Athanasius, who spent most of his life in exile, had the opportunity to spend with the desert monks in Egypt, during this period. In addition to having much in common with St. Anthony, his biography of the saint provided a means for Athanasius to defend his own religious viewpoints.
43 Grünewald devoted one wing of the Isenheim Altar panel to the temptation of St. Anthony. This scene was musically transformed in the third movement of Paul Hindeminth's opera Mathis der Maler (1934).
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features a landscape with a vast horizon, reminiscent of Catalan geography, which Dalí enjoys using in his paintings. Moreover, St. Anthony’s struggle against supernatural events, lust, sexuality, and desire were undoubtedly attractive points for Dalí.
In the painting, St. Anthony is depicted in the endless desert, where he is confronted with the elephant caravan led by a huge mare (Figure 4.6). However, in this painting, demons and fantastical female images are not portrayed as frightening monsters, as had been the case many times before. There was no attempt to employ a distinctive language of expression to depict St. Anthony’s bodily suffering either. Contrarily, St. Anthony takes a defiant stance with the cross he holds in his hand. He shields his naked body against the creatures he was confronted with, receiving support from the rock he is leaning on. In a sense, this shining moment, frozen in the silence of the desert, blesses Anthony’s bodily and spiritual triumph.
Figure 4.6 : The Temptations of St. Anthony, oil on canvas, 89.7 x 119.5 cm., 1946. Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium.
The image of the horse, which is a symbol of power, but which sometimes also stands for lust and passion, is portrayed in all its glory, standing in front of St. Anthony, unlike the tired and exhausted elephants. The expression on its face, its head thrown backwards, its wind-blown manes and the stalactites on the horseshoes, offer the viewer a frozen image of a moment filled with tension. This frozen moment also signals that the caravan, slowly heading behind the horse, will stop at this point. The elephants represent the different stages of this moment, which will come to a halt with their ever-smaller steps.
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Each elephant in the painting links St. Anthony’s religious and mystical experience with his burden. These burdens are symbols of worldly pleasure and desire, such as lust and passion. The first elephant bears a nude female figure on a golden bowl. The posture of the body that the woman displays with passion is in harmony with the rearing of the horse in front of her. Just behind him is the second elephant, carrying the mystical obelisk. The third and fourth elephants carry a Palladian building, on their backs. At the back, another elephant moves alone, beyond the caravan and along the horizon line bearing a a tall, somewhat phallic tower. It is thought to allude to the Escorial, the celebrated monastery and royal palace, which can be glimpsed on top of the nearby cloud. (Descharnes, 1985, p. 108).
Dalí used the earliest example of the elephant theme in his Swans Reflecting Elephants, in 1937. However, the elephants here appear as reflections of swans in the water, not with long thin legs and loads on their backs as in The Passion of St. Anthony (Figure 4.7). It is an example of the application of a typical paranoiac method, showing the power of association. The image and its reflection offer a subtle and delicate balance between reality and imagination.
Figure 4.7 : Swans Reflecting Elephants, 1937.
Before The Temptations of Saint Anthony, long-legged elephants are encountered also in the paintings Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening and Atomica Melancholica, dated to 1944 and 1945, respectively. Later, Dalí used these elephants in The Elephants, in 1948, and on the cover of the ballet programme for a production of As You Like It, in the same year, and finally in
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1953, The Grape Pickers, Bacchus Chariot (The Triumph of Dionysus). These gigantic creatures, rising on their articulated, long and fragile legs, are usually depicted moving slowly in a specific order. Their lightened bodies are in subtle contact with the world. In a sense, they functioned as tools with symbolic meanings between the two worlds.
Undoubtedly, Dalí was inspired by Bernini’s monumental Baroque sculpture on the Piazza della Minerva. This statue, which was the last sculpture commissioned by Pope Alexander VII before his death, is dedicated to consolidating allegorical and symbolic meanings and glorifying the Catholic faith. Together with the obelisk it carries, the sculpture offers a synthesis of Christianity and Pagan beliefs as in St. Anthony’s story.
The elephant, an animal of Eastern origin, generally stands for wisdom and power. Apart from its exotic meaning, it appears as an important military unit used in wars from the Western perspective.44 They are depicted in many medieval manuscripts with a castle loaded on their backs. It is possible to say that Bernini dedicated a new meaning to the elephant in the footsteps of such a tradition. So the elephant in this magnificent monument does not only function as an ordinary pedestal; but also it plays an intermediary role with symbolic meanings as in Dalí.
For Dalí, Baroque art was a crucial style that shed light on the fundamental questions of art, with its dynamism that glorifies meaning and its effect on perception, using optical knowledge and illusion. Indeed, the fact that he includes Palladian architecture in his painting, is indicative of his passion for classical art, as is his reference to Bernini. Palladio (1505-1580) was a Venetian architect, who Dalí defines as “the world’s greatest architect” (Dalí, 1998, p. 336), adapted the Greco-Roman tradition to his time. He defended the harmony between architectural and mathematical proportions with an approach based on musical consonances, like that of Leon Battista Alberti, who lived about a hundred years before him (Vergo, 2005, p. 156).
A small figure playing a woodwind instrument, similar to a horn from ancient times, is placed on Palladio’s structure in the painting. The stance of this figure supports the mass movement rising upward in the centre of the composition, reinforcing a meaning that signals the caravan’s arrival.
The composition is arranged with the elements rising towards the top of the obelisk, yet at the same time pointing downwards, creating a large triangle in the pictorial
44 William S. Heckscher covers this subject in detail in "Bernini's Elephant and Obelisk" (1947).
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plane. (Figure 4.8) This triangle, which constitutes the composition's main skeleton, also made it possible to depict the opposing relationships in the painting in a balanced way. St. Anthony’s raised arm and the rising horse that rises evoke a feeling of brilliant resistance, while directing the viewer's gaze upwards; on the other side, the elephants and the horse’s tapering legs divert the viewer's attention downwards and add a stillness to the scene. This triangle is the precursor of the geometric arrangement that we will see in the sketches of Feather Equilibrium and Leda Atomica that Dalí painted a year later.
Figure 4.8 : The Temptations of St. Anthony in a triangle.
Dalí perceived mathematical calculations and the golden ratio as a compass that would take the artist beyond painting. Contrarily, he suggested that the painters not devote themselves to making these calculations and avoid spending their days and hours on it, advocating instead that this practice should serve as a guide to free the mind. Thus the painter will spontaneously find as many golden ratios as he wishes to (Dalí, 1998, p. 361).
From this point of view, it is possible to see other proportional relations in Dalí’s work that he created quickly for the contest. For instance, the elephant that appears with the Escorial among the clouds in the background is placed in a rectangular plane of the same size as St. Antony (Figure 4.9). This proportional similarity points to a symbolic/semantic equality between St. Anthony and the Escorial; they can also be considered as elements that balance the background and foreground of the painting
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symmetrically, over two opposite points.45 Together, with the small figures placed on the axis between them, these two points also constitute reference points that enable us to perceive spatial depth.
Figure 4.9 : Symmetrical planes of Dalí’s The Temptations of St.Anthony.
4.1.1.1 Musical interpretation: The Temptations of Saint Anthony
The first painting is The Temptations of St. Anthony. It features a prominent horizon line, which we come across in many of Dalí’s paintings, rearing monsters and lines running from top to bottom. Resistance, strength, and calmness: all at the same time. These were transferred to music with the same method: notes floating from top to bottom over the prolonged sounds. (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 16).
Usmanbaş did not include a representative narrative about St. Anthony’s struggle or the difficulties he faced in his music. He even stated that he specifically avoided transferring St. Anthony, who stands out with the cross he held, into his music (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 16). St. Anthony’s figure dominates the whole painting - Usmanbaş evaluated that reflecting such a vital figure in the music would create an effect that would collapse over the entire melody. For Usmanbaş, this situation went against the logic of the structure of music.
Usmanbaş was interested, not in the religious aspect of St. Anthony’s, but in the form he took in the painting. The resistance he exhibited in the face of the caravan that
45 The transformations in time and pitch axis applied in total serialism allows for a symmetrical structuring in music, just as Dalí’s positioned St. Anthony and the lonely elephant on the horizon together with the Escorial.
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turned towards him only existed as a movement he preferred to use in shaping musical sounds. Similarly, the other figures in the painting were stripped of their symbolic meanings and used as a formal value in the composer's music.
The long legs that direct the caravan's movement, the loads carried by the elephants, the outstretched arm of St. Anthony, and the upward-facing positions of the woman and the horse figure are the elements that create linear undulations that dominate the whole painting. The transformation of these elements into sounds, sometimes given as mass movements with a combination of instrument groups and sometimes by the movement of a solo instrument breaking away from this mass in a thin line (Figure 4.10).
Figure 4.10 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Three Paintings from Dalí, part 1.
In this first part, which is about six and a half minutes long, a melody is followed in which violin, viola, and cello are articulated one after the other (Figure 4.11). Acting like a solo instrument, this wide ranging melody progresses in the silence of the orchestra almost to the middle of the first part. On the other hand, this rhythmic movement, which suggested a serialized flow, is heard to repeat from time to time in the part. This melody can be regarded as a musical equivalent of the rise of the caravan in pictorial composition.
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Figure 4.11 : İlhan Usmanbaş, the melody of the violin, the viola and the cellos.
In music, there are instrumental parts that extend horizontally in different temporal flows, each time with different instrument groups. These horizontal sound groups playing in the background are the connotation of the horizon line in the painting. Usmanbaş stated that prolonged sounds were the most crucial element for the first part (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 106). This opportunity provided, by the timbre of the string orchestra, is further emphasised by the frequent use of ties that prolong the musical notes and the high and low pitch organisation of the sounds.
The visual performance accompanying the music in the concert event, which brought Three Paintings from Dalí and the audience together, took shape over the features described above. The flowing and extending lines used in the visual prepared for the first part created a movement synchronised with the music. Even though these linear movements were dispersed and united within themselves, just like in music, they arose the feeling that they were in a body throughout the parts. Although this visual movement is not independent of the music, it has an image that moves on an autonomous and sometimes random plane. In a sense, it abstracted Usmanbaş’s music in his own space (Figure 4.12).
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Figure 4.12 : Audio-visual Performance, themes of the first movement.
4.1.2 El Centauro
El Centauro has a vast and flat landscape setting, as in The Temptation of St. Anthony. A mountain, placed in the right corner of the horizon, small figures getting further away and lines directing the eye towards the escape point reinforce the perception of depth in the painting. The location of the vanishing point gives rise to the feeling that the story takes place in a larger landscape that expands towards the left. The foreground of the painting is occupied by a large door, leaning onto the left edge and by the centaur image, in the form of an angel that uses Gala’s portrait is depicted passing through the hole in the head of a key (Figure 4.13).
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Figure 4.13 : El Centauro, Chinese sepia ink and pencil, 77,5x54,4 cm. c.1951.
Centaurs are not a common theme in Dalí’s paintings. In the late 1930s, when he started using mythological characters, he used this figure in his paintings such as Centaure aux Tiroirs (1940) and Family of Marsupial Centaurs (1940). El Centauro, which he created ten years later, carries the characteristics of his new era, where he combines classicism with mystical and religious subjects.
Centaurs, half-human and half horse, are mentioned as wild and raging creatures in mythology.46 They are creatures that belong to a nature that is not under human control. In Dalí’s painting, this earthly and Paganic creature has been transformed into an ecstatic winged figure (an angel) with divine and celestial meanings. One of the striking elements in the painting is the image of the key that enables this transformation. The key is placed in the middle of the door, which directs the gaze to the centre of the painting. Thus it divides the picture into two in terms of form and meaning: In the lower part is the lower body of the centaur, standing on its feet with great strength and resistance; on the upper part, there is an angel figure, with the face of Gala gliding and rising with its lightened mass. These two bodies emphasise
46 Although they are not especially common in Greek mythology, female centaurs, called "Centaurides", are often encountered in Roman and Late Greek mosaics.
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dualistic meanings, such as the earthly and the heavenly, resistance and surrender, body and soul, heaviness and lightness.
The deformation of the stretched body is redolent of the spatiotemporal unity in the Persistence of Memory. It seems that Dalí desired to emphasize the process itself, rather than the eventual consequence. Indeed, in the article he wrote for Minotaure magazine in 1933, he described his thoughts on ecstasy with the following words:
Ecstasy is a critical mental state par excellence that incredible, hysterical, modern, Surrealist, and phenomenological current thought desires to render ‘continuous’ […] During ecstasy, with the approach of desire, pleasure, anxiety, all opinion, all judgement (moral, aesthetic, etc.) undergoes an astounding change. –[It is as if ecstacy opens the way to a world that is as distant from reality as the world of dream is. The repugnant can change to the desirable, affection to cruelty, the ugly to beautiful, failings to virtues to dire wretchedness. (Dalí, 1998, p. 201)
The photo collage that accompanies Dalí’s article is visual proof of his approach to the subject. He used images of women from photographs documented by Jean-Martin Charcot during his hysteria studies. Their upward-looking faces carry an expression of surrender and a smile similar to that of a centaur. Among these, a series of ear photographs placed in a line draw the viewer's attention (Figure 4.14).
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Figure 4.14 : The Phenomenon of Ecstasy, photo collage in Minotaure (Paris), 1933.
According to Dalí, the ear is always ready to become ecstatic (Dalí, 1998, p.201). From this point of view, it can be evaluated that he emphasises the sense of hearing that is active even during hypnosis or sleep.47 The collage's unbalanced chair image refers to the “atmospheric”, sensitive and instantaneous state of ecstasy. Additionally, Art Nouveau and Baroque sculptural details, which are the “symbol of spiritual dignity” against the concrete world for Dalí, grab the viewer's attention (Dalí, 1998, p. 231).
Dalí used the state of ecstasy in the Mystical Manifesto he wrote in 1951, with religious and mystical elements to indicate a spiritual purification. He explained this process as “the flesh of soul cannot help but rise to the sky”. Therefore, the centaur's stretched and elongated form in the painting emphasises the mystical and spatiotemporal continuum of the ecstatic state. On the other hand, the door contrasts with its massiveness as an object belonging to the concrete world. This contradiction represents the interweaving state of reality and imagination. The door also brings to mind the following lines in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1794) from William Blake (1757-1827), who questions the reality of images, like Dalí, and arguing that the divine can be achieved through sexual and spiritual surrender states that: “If the ‘doors
47 The photos are taken from the catalogue created by police chief Alphonse Bertillon (p.408). All ears in the collage belong to men.
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of perception’ were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite”48 (Blake, 1997, p. 32).
The formal structure of the painting is once more based on proportional values, as in The Temptation of St. Anthony. The key in the door divides the picture plane into two, displaying the upper and lower body of the centaur, and space has been created in the middle to draw attention to the tension between the two bodies.
No matter how it distorts the structure and form of matter in the integrity of a spiritual moment, Dalí kept on preserving the geometric order of the composition. For instance, when you draw a line from the upper edge of the picture towards the corners, it is observed that the composition is placed in a descending triangle. Likewise, when these lines are repeated from the lower edge to the upper corners, pictorial planes appear that contain the visual elements in a balanced way (Figure 4.15).
Figure 4.15 : Triangles of El Centauro.
It is possible to reproduce the geometric planes by taking references from different points in the painting. For example, following the short edges of the door (the lower baseline should be on the edge of the painting), a large triangle like the one in St. Anthony appears. When the same triangle is placed on the opposite side, symmetrically, a rhombus form occurs in the middle and the triangles appear around
48 Blake was a significant figure, who became popular again with the Beat generation in the 1950s, but he was also a source of inspiration for the Surrealists. Allen Ginsberg's auditory hallucinations, which he calls "Blake visions", Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956) are indicative of this generation's respect and gratitude towards Blake.
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it. The synchronisation of the rhombus here, with the formal structure of the elements of the painting, is bizarre. Finally, by multiplying the radial lines, carried out from the exact reference points, a geometric structure (hexagon) is formed (Figure 4.16).
Figure 4.16 : Radial lines and geometric structure of El Centauro.
4.1.2.1 Musical interpretation: El Centauro
The second part is El Centauro, a human-horse figure. It’s a tremendous power, but it’s stuck in the keyhole right in the middle of the painting — just that. Here, the music found the opportunity to take form by movements that ramify in two or three areas, despite a stubborn twist in the middle. (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 16).
Usmanbaş’s starting point for the second part of his composition is the tension presented in the middle of the painting. The keyhole and the image of the body stretching through it became the reference for his music. Usmanbaş reflected this pictorial feature to the music with the organisation of the viola group playing continuous melody from the beginning, until the middle of the piece, but moving within itself and actually getting nowhere.
Violas have a medium amplitude character, in terms of timbre, compared to the sounds of other instruments in the orchestra (Usmanbaş, 2015, p. 232). Thus, Usmanbaş transforms the scene that divides the painting into two, with the organisation of dynamics and the timbre of the sounds.
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The rest of the orchestra, including the instrument groups of violin, cello and double bass, accompany the violas that progress in the middle by creating sometimes sharp and sometimes soft sound spaces throughout the second part. In the 15th and 18th meters, the sound mass formed by the violin group overlapping each other with the high beats designates an upward movement (Figure 4.17). The sharp gestures of the double bass and cello that end with periodic rests remind us of the centaur in the painting, with its two feet on the ground. These beats serve as a form of percussion, with their low pitch quality and musical gesture.
Figure 4.17 : İlhan Usmanbaş, Three Paintings from Dalí, Part two, score.
The empty planes are critical in Dalí’s painting. Usmanbaş also provided this idea of emptiness in his music, sometimes by pauses and sometimes by muting the instrumental groups other than the viola. Another significant element in the music score is that the musical notes beam together beyond the multiple staves and unite different instrumental groups, so that the integrity within the orchestration is also emphasised on the page (Figure 4.18). There is also an attempt to preserve the idea of unity in the rhythmical organisation of music. Usmanbaş stated, in his work’s explanatory notes, that rhythmic values constitute a particular sequence, and the conductor should not focus on the metre signatures, but the rhythmic integrity (Usmanbaş, 2015, p. 233).
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Figure 4.18 : 18. Following the melody along the meter.
In the audio-visual concert event, the graphic elements used for the second part took shape in these three visual fields, as in Dalí’s painting and Usmanbaş’s music. The circular shape in the middle refers to the most striking element for the composer, the keyhole in the painting. This centred form also indicates a symmetrical division. This division is supported by the visual fields created by the linear movements accompanying from upper and lower sides correspondingly. It is an abstract visualisation of two separate planes in the pictorial composition, divided into two by the keyhole and also its equivalent in music (Figure 4.19).
Figure 4.19 : Audio-visual performance, second movement.
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4.1.3 Angel Explotando Armonicamente
Angel Explotando Armonicamente, dated 1951, is among the unfamiliar paintings of Dalí.49 It has similar pictorial features to the Raphalesque Head (1951) and The Wheelbarrow (1951). It is one of Dalí's paintings, in which he embodied mysticism and classicism in a woman’s body, dissolved by an atomic explosion (Figure 4.20).
Figure 4.20 : Angel Explotando Armonicamente, oil, gouache and pencil on panel, 24.2 x 19 cm. c.1951.
Dalí’s relation with the woman body and the architectural space can be followed through the paintings Leda Atomica and Port Lligat. In both paintings, Gala is the model and depicted as a mythological and religious figure. Gala does not appear in these paintings only as a portrait. Occasionally she appears as a leitmotif in Dalí's paintings. Dalí established a contextual and theoretical link with his art and her existence. He found exciting associations and symbolic relationships between Gala’s physical features and pictorial techniques; like associating his re-inspiration from classicism, discovering the sublime beauty of Renaissance architecture through Gala’s
49 The picture is presented in Rafael Santos Torroelle's book dated 1952, as picture number 27. The name "Study for the Head of the Virgin" was used for the picture, which was sold at the auction organised by Christie's on February 6, 2013.
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body.50 He expressed this relationship in 50 Magic Secrets of Craftsmanship with the following words: “[…] she poses. And poses mean to architectural space. But also, with her pose she ‘silences’, she dematerialises, she quenches your thirst, she banishes anguish” (Dalí, 1998, p. 359).
Dalí reinterpreted the harmony between the female body and architectural space, which he discovered with Gala's paintings, with Angel Explotando Armonicamente, Raphaelesque Head and The Wheelbarrow (Figure 4.21). He explicitly referred to Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) with the portraits in these three paintings that he painted in the same year as the Mystic Manifesto. The references given both by the figures and by the architectural structure mark the era of nuclear mysticism, when Dalí combined classicism, mysticism, and spiritual elements with atomic disintegration.
Figure 4.21 : Angel Explotando Armonicamente, 1951; Raphaelesque Head Exploding, 1951 and The Wheelbarrow (Pantheon formed by Twisted Wheelbarrows), 1951.
The figures in these three paintings are not presented in a particular space. Everything occurs in a great void. On the other hand, space has only existed to emphasise an architectural feature, together with the figure that forms the subject of the painting. Raphalesque Head and The Wheelbarrow explicitly refer to the Pantheon in Rome; in Angel Explotando Armonicamente, the figure is loaded with a dome.
The knowledge that the atoms that consist of matter are composed of non-contact particles has turned into a factor determining the spatial relationship in these paintings. The moving particles that spread around added a third dimension to the pictorial
50 The 1945 painting My Wife, Nude, Contemplating Her Own Flesh Becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture can be regarded as an early example of this relationship.
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surface. This movement, which strengthens the spatial effect, also visualises a mystic process in the atomic dimension. In a sense, it provides a visual equivalent of the expression “Matter is a constant and accelerated process of dematerialisation, of disintegration” (Dalí, 1998, p. 365) stated by Dalí in the Mystic Manifesto.
On the other hand, for Dalí, atomic diffusion is an effect created by the state of ecstasy in the matter. Having this spiritual experience is "explosive", "disintegrated", "supersonic", "undulatory", "corpuscular" and also "super-gelatinous". This aesthetic enthusiasm of Dalí is to emphasise the ecstatic state, which he perceives as the only experience that can allow him to try the paradisiacal happiness in this world in maximum.
Dalí has planted a grain of wheat at the centre of Angel Explotando Armonicamente. Despite its scattered grains and its delicate appearance, this wheat has become one of the most striking elements in the painting with its constant appearance and brightness. In a sense, it represented the symbolic meaning of the mystical ecstasy in the picture. Dalí expressed the statement corresponding to this figure with the following words:
In a state of ecstasy, a grain of wheat floating in the air at the height of one metre and a half above ground will be so firmly fixed that a grim elephant pushing with its brow with all might will not succeed in dislodging it. (Dalí, 1998, p. 364)51
Dalí built a formal resemblance between the ear of wheat and the fragments scattered from the braid. Thus, parallel to the explosion and disintegration, he also creates another motion that moves from the periphery through the centre.
David Lomas examined the formal similarity between the braid and the ear of wheat in his article, in which he discussed Dalí’s affinity with da Vinci through Head Bombarded with Grains of Wheat (1954) and da Vinci’s Study for the Head of Leda. Indeed, this similarity is more apparent in Angel Explotando Armonicamente (Figure 4.22).
51 Haim Finkelstein noted in The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí that he could not find a painting similar to Dalí's description in the Mystical Manifesto (note: 23, p435). It is understood that the painting Angel Explotando Armonicamente, which is not widely circulated, was not known by Finkelstein either.
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Figure 4.22 : Leonardo da Vinci, Study of the Head of Leda, pen and inc on black chalk, 19,8 x 16,6 cm., c.1505-07 and Salvador Dalí, Head Bombarded with Grains of Wheat (Particle Head Over the Village of Cadaques) 1954 26x17cm oil/cardboard, Private collection.
In his article, Lomas pointed out the direction of motion of the grains and stated that Dalí associates the ecstatic state in this painting with the function of the ear: “Wavelike strands of loose hair in the Leonardo painting mutate in Dalí’s picture into motile spermatozoa that invade and fecundate via ear, provoking an explosion that is voluptuous, ecstatic and corpuscular” (Lomas, 2006, p. 23). Lomas reminds us of the belief that Mary, which is the medieval belief, was impregnated through the ear, that is, by hearing the voice of the angel, and he accentuated the possibility that Dalí also may build an analogy by this story.
Another remarkable element in the painting is the dome over the head of the figure. This dome represents the “anarchic monarchy” conceptualised by Dalí from a philosophical and cosmological perspective. Dalí mentions that he used this concept as a weapon of argument against his friends' policies for the first time in 1921 (Dalí, 1993, p. 125). Thus, in a sense, he has integrated his apolitical and dualistic worldview, that is, both anarchic and monarchic at the same time, with this concept. He described this concept, which will hold an essential place in his repertoire with its deepening meanings over the years, as the harmony of oppositions in the Mystical Manifesto:
Absolute monarchy, perfect aesthetic dome of the soul, homogeneity, unity; biological, hereditary, and supreme continuity – all this above, brought up near the dome of the sky. Below, swarming and supergelatinous anarchy, viscous
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heterogeneity, ornamental diversity of ignominious soft structures compressed and yielding the last juice of their ultimate forms of reaction. (Dalí, 1998, p. 366)
Dalí has visualised this explanation with a few sketches he drew (Figure 4.23). These sketches are almost like a draft of the dome at Angel Explotando Armonicamente. On the other hand, he brought all the dichotomies/oppositions, such as the old and new, or classicism and modern science, together in an architectural structure with a holistic aesthetic understanding.
Figure 4.23 : Sketches for Mystical Manifesto.
The sphere and dome represent monarchy and anarchy with spermatozoid forms and fragmented elements stuck under the dome.
Unlike the other two paintings, in Angel Explotando Armonicamente, Dalí didn’t present any identifiable place, neither one where any other figure is included, nor a landscape. He arranged the compositional space within the body of the angel. The mystical geometry of the picture is also included in the sphere formed by the figure itself. For Dalí, the sphere is an overarching concept like anarchic monarchy; it has a form also known as Platonic Solids, which complements five polygonal bodies52 with equal and smooth faces (Dalí, 1998, p. 373).53
52 Four faces (Tetrahedron), six faces (Cube), eight faces (Octahedron), twelve faces (Dodecahedron), twenty faces (Icosahedron).
53 Dalí explains this idea in his “The Cylindrical Monarchy of Guimard” (1970) as following: “since Luca Paccioli, with the help of Leonardo and Pierro della Francesca, explained very well to grand aristocrat, the Duke of Urbino, that the sphere was the symbol of the monarchy because it contains and controls in an absolute way the five regular polyhedrons –including tetrahedron, the cube, the dodecahedron- known as the five Platonic bodies”.
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4.1.3.1 Musical interpretation: Angel Explotando Armonnicamente
An angel figure is scattered all over the canvas, but the eye connects these parts automatically, and the angel appears as a whole. The point that music was supposed to reach here was to give hints of an equal and continuous motion, as if it would make musical figures reach into the whole, in terms of meaning contrary to all their sound fields. (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 16)
Angel Explodanto Armonicamente, unlike the other two paintings, does not consist of pictorial planes that can be identified separately. Only the angel figure, formed by the combination of parts appears in a whole. Each piece has a holistic structure that disperses harmoniously or merges with it. Usmanbaş took this pictorial feature as a reference point for creating the sound organisation of the third part. The fragmentation and disintegration of the elements in Dalí’s painting has guided this organisation of sounds that shifted, prolonged and dispersed in the third part.
In this part, the violas correspond to the orchestration's central theme, as in El Centauro. In the explanatory notes of the work, Usmanbaş stated that he conveyed the angel figure, which was scattered but perceived as a whole, to his music with the soft and extended sounds of violas tied in quarter notes. (Usmanbaş, 2015, p. 233). The fragmented and scattered elements in the painting accompany the timbre of the viola and the other instruments of the orchestra and bring the picture to its integrity. This part ends with the completion of disintegration and the sound masses in which the individual pitches are minimised and later disappeared by raising their frequency level.
The interpretation of the third part in the audio-visual performance was based on the common features of the painting and the music of Usmanbaş. The visuals, which initially started linearly, later turned into small pieces that leave traces in the air they move in. This organisation, which follows a particular flow, is a visual expression of the dispersion of sounds and their sliding over each other. On the other hand, they formed a representation of the scattered elements that constitute the unity in Dalí’s painting. Whether they are in groups or alone, they suggest an action that appears to be under the influence of gravitational force. The cube form that appeared, after a while, supported this integrity (Figure 4.24). Moving in its own oscillation, this cube has turned into an abstraction of the musical elements and the angel figure in the painting, with the parts that both disintegrate from it and compose it.
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Figure 4.24 : The Cube, in the audio-visual performance of the third movement.
4.2 Assessment
If to review respectively, one can observe that the style existing in Dalí's paintings goes from linear geometry to mass unity. The content of these three paintings is not independent from the formal structure, which created them. With a systematic approach, Dalí developed the formal organisation of those paintings on mathematical and atomic balances. Conversely, Usmanbaş realised the organisation of his music through the compositional structure of these paintings. Instead of dealing with the figures in each painting separately, or their iconic and symbolic representation in the stories, he was interested in the formal structure they presented as a whole and the elements that constitute the main framework of the paintings.
In this frame, the composer considered the orchestra - consisting of violins, violas, cellos and double basses - as a whole. This unity is also reflected visually on the musical score by the removal of the bar lines and the time signatures out of the stave (Figure 4.25).
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Figure 4.25 : The musical score with removed the add-on bar lines.
Besides that, the only time related information (measures and durational units) is given only as a note value on the top of the page. Thus, with all these references, the flow of musical notes played by different instruments on the same axis and connected with tied notes able to create a unity of perception not only, aurally but also visually, without being subjected to any intervention.
Three Paintings from Dalí is Usmanbaş’s first work that he made sketch drawings for, as a compositional process, before transforming his large-scale works into notes. Although the sketches he made for this work have not survived, he shared his experience on it, in his letter to Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat, dated 1 April, 1955 while working on the third part:
After I decided to start the composition, I did the first sketching - with shapes, but no musical notes and no values (I have been starting compositions with sketches like this for a little while). The general structure becomes clear. However, after that, I search for the twelve note series and the most appropriate one for the composition comes out. Then the rhythm, and finally, the chord sequences from the series of musical sounds. Thus, I write the enormous tableaux of the series very diligently, and as you know, I bring that in front of me in the mornings. (İlyasoğlu, 2001, p. 108)
It will be deficit by considering Usmanbaş’ Three Paintings from Dalí as merely a transformation of an art work into another art form. This work had influenced all the oeuvre of the composer. It is the first step in the composer's understanding of music as
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a meaning that integrates time and space, form and content, in addition to providing a starting point for his sketch drawings.
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5. CONCLUSION
When we divide the musical periods of Usmanbaş according to the techniques he applied, it can be observed that he started each one of these periods with either poetry or painting: he began his experiments of first twelve-tone technique and then serialism in the early 1950s with his Three Poems in Music, adapted from a poem of Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat, and Three Paintings From Dalí. His aleatoric compositions in the late 1950s were shaped by William Carlos Williams's Metric Figure, Mallarmé's Un Coup de Dés, and Paul Eluard's Repos d’été. When he began to use graphic elements with the idea of open form, he gravitated towards contemporary Turkish poets and poetry. Finally, when the composer brought minimalist features to his music in the 1980s, he was inspired by Vasarely's optical illusions.
Usmanbaş has established a strong bond between the visual arts and poetry, throughout his musical journey. The Three Paintings From Dalí, however, as a work of art, stood apart from his rich oeuvre, merging many innovations such as serial technique, hints of indeterminacy and the use of sketch drawings - becoming a model for his later periods. This work has also created a field of study for Usmanbaş to question musical boundaries and investigate its meaning and logic. While defining music as "a whole of symbols and movements that could fit and could not fit into the numeric world", in Philosophy and Art Symposium (1990), he refers to his experiences gained by Three Paintings from Dalí:
Many composers have undoubtedly experienced the situation of that space, and time cannot be parallel. When I intended to transform Three Paintings from Dalí into sounds, I have also experienced the difficulty of finding out where the composing logic of two different environments coincided, and at which point switching from one to the other, forces our chain of thought […]. (Usmanbaş, 1990)
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For Usmanbaş, music functions both with its notation, or graphic image, created on the page based on a particular system; and with the experience and perception of the person (composer, performer, and listener) who interprets it. With this approach, the composer has pointed to two significant temporal flows of music: the first is "chronological time" constructed with logical and mathematical analysis; the other is the "psychological time", in which the composition develops within the chain of events, for example, through listening and during performances (Usmanbaş 1990). Usmanbaş aimed to change the music by using its elements and possibilities to get rid of the binding structure of its temporal organisation, which encompasses the language of music. The composer's music, which started with Three Paintings From Dalí and developed in a line towards graphic notation, has been formed by these features.
The primary qualification that Three Paintings from Dalí brought to Usmanbaş's music is shaping the temporal organisation of music, through the possibilities offered by spatial relations. The spatial aspects of Usmanbaş’s music appear in three ways: on the musical score, during the performance, and in musical thought:
- For Usmanbaş, the music sheet is a (spatialised) piece of frozen time; it is a kind of abstraction that allows us to see the beginning and the end of a piece together (Usmanbaş 1990). Removing the bar lines allows this musical abstraction to be grasped at once. The purpose of this intervention is to present time as it is, not in its fragmented form, but in a total flow, as in a pictorial plane. This arrangement on the music notation also provides a visual representation that compliments all the orchestral sounds and instruments. Thus, the orchestra becomes, acts and reveals itself on the page, as an instrument of its own.
- Another spatial aspect of Usmanbaş's music appears in the performances. For him, listening to the musical piece and watching the orchestra, while making certain sounds, provides an experience for the audience to be able to reach the completion of music (Atak, 1994, p. 87). This experience leads one to evaluate the music together with the place where it is performed. Furthermore, this experience determines another kind of spatial notion: the distance established between the audience and the music they listen to. Usmanbaş creates a space where the audience questions their own existence, collectively, through the medium of music. On the other hand,
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the Three Paintings from Dalí, as an ekphrastic representation, brings the listeners to a position where new interpretations and multiple layers of meanings can be evocative. Tolga Tüzün claimed that this spatial relationship between the Usmanbaş's music and the listener is based on “mutual flexibility” and adds that, “The subject (the audience), who does not open oneself as a resonance space, can not engage the artwork and can not allow the music to resonate in itself. Thus, every temporal unit is a historical micro-moment, in which the subject will decompose and then recompose itself like a work of art" (Tüzün, 2015, p. 215).
- The spatial elements in Usmanbaş's musical thought manifest themselves in the process of creation. Draft sketches, starting with Three Paintings from Dalí, are the most concrete example of that. Usmanbaş started creating drafts regularly for his music in 1960. In his own words, these drawings, "pursuing the same event by the eye and the ear in two different fields," were produced at a speed almost equal to the flow of music (Usmanbaş, 2003., p. 16). Thus, they have enabled the musical work 'to be visualised' at the stage of its transformation into 'real' music with its note value. These drafts formed the basis for open form and graphic notation where the idea of music coexists within the page layout. At this point, they gained a pictorial value as well. He stated that a musical score with graphic notation might also be regarded as an artwork (İlyasoğlu 2011, p.317).
In one of his interviews, while referring to the dynamism that Dalí's paintings added to his music, Usmanbaş mentions "a structure that can be created by the eye and gain action in time, although it seems like it has already taken place, in the painting'" (Enis, 1991, p. 30). Indeed, looking at a painting is the eye's strolling on the two-dimensional plane. However, there is no specific point where this act of looking begins or ends, nor any particular route that it follows; it contains different possibilities in every single action. The glancing over the pictorial plane is sometimes stable, staying in the same places and sometimes shifts by jumping from one point to another. In a way, the temporality in the paintings lies in the movement of the eye and the dynamism of the form the composition contains. Usmanbaş, in his work with which he transformed Dalí, represented the pictorial values, not with their symbolic connotations, but with this glancing over the pictorial plane. Listening to this music is like following a
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possible invisible gaze: it appears as the movement of sounds, sometimes extending, moving to different directions, dispersing, converging, or sometimes remaining stable.
For Usmanbaş, movement is the first aspect that constitutes sound. When these movements turn into a musical form with the choices made among different possibilities, they include the content. In Three Paintings from Dalí, the content is formed with the compositional features dominant in the paintings. This mutual relationship, between content and form, established by Usmanbaş, has been the starting point of his music. This relationship also corresponds to the multi-layered function of ekphrastic representation, which is used to describe something absent.
In the project Seeing the Unheard Hearing the Unseen, the concert performance of the Three Paintings from Dalí was seen as an extra ground to observe the audience’s ekphrastic experience by tracking the multidirectional flow from image to music and back to image. Based on this idea, the piece was designed to be staged twice in the concert event: first acoustically; then after the short break, as a real-time audio-visual performance, with the visuals created by Refik Anadol and Mert Kızılay. After each performance, the audience were given a short questionnaire, including questions regarding the musical experience, the perceptual difference on duration of each performance, and the effects of the visuals on listening practice (see Appendix C).
The audience were not shown Dalí’s paintings and expected to recognize the concepts ‘Extending Sounds’, ‘Fragmentation’, ‘Clustering Sounds’, and ‘Disintegration’, which were stated by Usmanbaş in his letter to E.O. Fırat during the composition process of the piece: “[…] extending sounds (extending sounds are very significant in this work) were the sounds emerging as structural elements gaining meaning alone or with being such long”, and “[In the third painting] there are two things to be interested in for me: Fragmentation and disintegration (désintegration: just as disintegration of atoms), in the essence of the original painting that occurs simultaneously in painting” (İlyasoğlu, 2000).
In the survey, the audience was also asked to see if these four concepts were appropriate, and if they noticed any other concepts during the performance. Concepts such as ‘Interference’, ‘Merging’, ‘Leaping’, ‘Reflection’, ‘Fluidity’, ‘Spaces between Sounds’ and ‘Circular Structures’ should be included, according to the 47.8 percent of participants who said terms given in the survey weren't adequate. Remarkably, 26.7 percent of 56 comments, emphasized the necessity of emotional concepts, other than
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the terms related to the spatial movement of the sounds. Indeed, some of the members of the audience commented that the music evoked ‘Spookiness’ and ‘Sorrow’ as well as some double tuned emotions, such as ‘Peace and Silence’, ‘Excitement and Tension’, ‘Chaos and Harmony’.
Ekphrastic experience, proposes a method that allows the interpretation of various possibilities. Thus, ekphrasis goes beyond its traditional meaning, based on ‘description’, and expands to reflecting content-related features and the structural features that condition the content. For Lydia Goehr, modern treatments of ekphrasis increasingly aspire to use another artform's condition and capability, by sticking to the medium of a particular art form (Goehr, 2010, p. 399). Three Paintings from Dalí signifies itself at this point. It transfers spatial movements of paintings into music to produce an aesthetic presence. Beyond work-to-work relation, this aesthetic presence reveals the comparable relationship between the concepts such as time and space, content and form which cannot be evaluated separately from one another.
The fact that Three Paintings from Dalí is the earliest dated piece of orchestral music, composed on Dalí's paintings, adds another unique significance to it, in the interart tradition (see Table A.1 and Table A.2). It raised the connection between Surrealism and music to the agenda, allowing us to see the differences and similarities of serial music to Surrealism's technical and aesthetic applications.
Finally, Usmanbaş's preference for Dalí's paintings appears as a point to be discussed. This subject is required to be evaluated within the conditions of Turkey, where the work is composed. First of all, the 1950s are a period in which a remarkable dynamism among the arts arises. It is observed that the artists who both have outreach and an ability to face their pasts, in different fields, have close relationships with one another, enhancing and creating foundations, such as the Helikon Association. Usmanbaş, on the other hand, did not engage with Turkish paintings and painters during this period, as he did with Turkish poets and poems. However, this choice cannot be attributed solely to the fact that he was a composer who avoided using local elements.
Usmanbaş was a composer who tended to work with non-musical elements in a way that allowed him to completely internalize them. This is shown by his relationship with Ertuğrul Oğuz Fırat in the 1950s and the İkinci Yeni poetry movement after 1960. On the other hand, considering the artistic environment of the 1950s, it can be understood
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that the distant stance of Turkish painters (whom he had known) to contemporary music was also influential in the composer's preference.
Three Paintings from Dalí, the product of three years of meticulous work, is a musical piece that enables us to evaluate the composer's musical understanding and its relationship with other artforms, through both Usmanbaş's musical practice and, in a broader perspective, the interart tradition. Nonetheless, Three Paintings from Dalí serves as a model, through which we can observe not only two artists or mediums, but also a transition that transcends boundaries between geographies.
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APPENDICES
APPENDIX A : Musical Works for Dalí and the Content of the DVD..
APPENDIX B : The time line of Usmanbaş’s musics on poems and paintings
APPENDIX C : The Survey Questions and Feedbacks of the Concert Project Seeing the Unheard Hearing the Unseen
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APPENDIX A : Musical Works for Dalí and the Content of the DVD.
Table A.1 : List of Musical Examples on Dalí’s paintings
Composer
Title of the Musical Work and Inspirations
Written for
Date
Tzvi Avn (1927)
The Five Pantomimes
piccolo, flute, clarinet, horn,
trumpet, viola, double bass, piano,
drums
1968
Inspirations:
Picasso: Guernica (1937)
March Chagall: I and the Village (1911)
Kandinsky: La petite émouvante
Dalí: The Persistence of Memory (1931)
Klee: Seventeen Crazy (1923)
Allan Rae (1942)
Concetro for bass (four paintings of Salvador Dalí)
double bass, string orchestra
1977
Inspirations:
Dalí at the Age of Six When He Thought He Was a Girl Lifting the Skin of the Water to See the Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Sea (1950)
The Dream of Christoper Columbus (1959)
Le Sommeil (1937)
The Resurrection of the Flesh (1945)
Le Sommeil (1937)
Wolfram Unger (1946)
Peintures Célèbres
piano and slide projection
1979
Inspirations:
Edvard Munch: Der Schrei (1893)
Pieter Bruegel: The Peasant Wedding (1567)
Joan Miró: Dialogue of Insects (1924-25)
Salvador Dalí: Premonition of Civil War (1936)
Lyonel Feininger: Vogelwolke [Wolke nach dem Sturm] (1926)
Matthias Grünewald: Isenheimer Altar - The Temptation of St. Anthony (1510-1515)
Wassily Kandinsky: Komposition in Blau
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller: Am Fronleichnamsmorgen (1857)
Paul Klee: Schwarzer Fürst (1927)
Victor Vasarely: Tridem K (1968)
March Chagall: I and the Village (1911)
Steve Heitzeg (1959)
Nine Surrealist Studies (after Salvador Dalí)
orchestra
1985
Inspirations:
Illumined Pleasures (1929)
Three Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra (1936)
The Persistence of Memory (1931)
La Main (Les Remords de conscience) (1930)
The First Days of Spring (1929)
Evocation of the Apparition of Lenin (1931)
Honey is Sweeter Than Blood (1927)
Daddy Long Legs of the Evening… Hope! (1940)
Skull with its Lyric Appendage Leaning on a Bedside Table which should have the Exact Temperature of a Cardinal's Nest (1934)
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Table A.1 (continued) : List of Musical Examples Dalí’s paintings.
Composer
Title of the Musical Work and Inspirations
Written for
Date
Gerard Brophy (1953)
Nymphe-Echo Morphologique
solo amplified flute
1989
Inspiration:
Echo Morphologique (1934-1936)
Cristóbal Halffter (1930)
Daliniana
for chamber orchestra
1994
1. Rolejos blandos
2. El sueňo
3. Nacimiento de las angustias liquidas
Inspirations:
The Persistance of Memory (1931)
The Dream (1931)
The Birth of Liquid Anguish (1932)
Manuel Hidalgo (1956)
Dalí – The Great Masturbator
stage piece in 4 Parts
1998-1999
The Great Masturbator (1929)
Joanna Bruzdowicz (1943)
16 tableaux d'une Exposition Salvador Dalí
piano
2004
Inspirations:
1. La Tentation de Saint Antoine (1946)
2. Girl from the Ampurdan (1926)
3. Portrait of Paul Eluard (1929)
4. The Enigma of My Desire (1929)
5. Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking (1944)
6. Honey is Sweeter Than Blood (1927)
7. Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943)
8. Nature morte vivante (1956)
9. The Persistance of Memory (1931)
10. Le Sommeil (1937)
11. Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951)
12. Leda Atomica (1949)
13. The Burning Giraffe (1937)
14. The Portrait of Picasso (1947)
15. El Torero Alucinógeno (1969–1970)
16. La gare de Perpignan (1965)
Joe Satriani
The Persistance of Memory
solo improvisation
2015
Inspiration:
The Persistance of Memory (1931)
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Table A.2 : List of Musical Examples on Dalí.
Composer
Title of the Musical Work
Written for
Date
Tzvi Avn (1927)
The Destruction of the Temple
choir and chamber orchestra
1968
Wolfram Fürstenau (1928-1992)
Hommage à Dalí
guitar
1970
Flemming Christian Hansen (1968)
A la memoire de Dalí
1. Apparation
2. Existence fugitive
3. Dalí parmi nous
four saxophone
1989
Trygve Madsen (1940)
Salvador Dalí op.77
symphonic portrait for grand orchestra
1993
Peeter Vähi (1955)
To His Highness Salvador Dalí
flute, violin and guitar
1995
Bassols Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002)
Folia Daliniana
flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, string orchestra, percussion instruments
1996
Gheorghi Arnaoudov (1957)
Etre Dieu
orchestra, fragments of opera (libretto by Salvador Dalí)
2005
Marc Aurel Floros (1971)
Gala Gala
orchestral piece for opera, libretto by Elke Heidenreich
2006
Walther Prokop (1946)
Dalí
piano
1995-1996
Georg Pier (1918-1976)
Les Portraits
3. Pablo Picasso
4. Salvador Dalí
6. Il Croce (Salvador Dalí)
orchestra
1992
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Table A.3 : The Content of the DVD.
Title of the Document
Format
1
Seeing the Unheard Hearing the Unseen audio-visual concert performance.
.mpg video
2
Studio Recording of Three Paintings from Dalí
Credits:
Conductor:
Visual Artists:
F. Orhun Orhon
Refik Anadol and Mert Kızılay
Performers:
Violins:
Aida Pulake
Semih Kartal
Çağlar Haznedaroğlu
Gizem Başak Tatlıcı
Belemir Baran
Eylem Arıca
Banu Selin Aşan
Hande Gözalan
Melisa Uzunarslan
Aslı Özbayrak Çivicioğlu
Erkan Çavdaroğlu
Fati Fehmiju
Leyla Guseynova
Tülay Karşın
Bahar Meriç
Yankı Karataş
Burcu Bülbül
Başak Erdem Atasoy
Ayça Akdoğan
Göksel Coşkun
Violas:
Pelin Burcu Ülkü
Zeynep Paftalı Botazzini
Gül Eylem Ersoy Pluhar
Kahraman Şeref
Cellos
Yılmaz Bişer
Çağlar Çeliker
Çağlayan Çetin
Poyraz Baltacıgil
Özlem Gürsoy
Gözde Yaşar
Levent Aydın
Double Basses:
Buse Ünlüoğlu
Aycan Bilginer Beşikçi
Ceren Akçalı
.wav
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Table A.3 (continued) : The Content of the DVD
Title of the Document
Format
3
Handwritten Score of the Three Paintings from Dalí
.pdf file
4
Digital Score of the Three Paintings from Dalí
.pdf file
5
The orchestral partitions of the Three Paintings from Dalí
.pdf file
143
APPENDIX B: The time line of Usmanbaş’s musics on poems and paintings.
Figure B.1 : The time line of Usmanbaş’s musics on poems and paintings
[...] Work number given in the list of İlhan Usmanbaş’s works
144
APPENDIX C : The Survey Questions and Feedbacks of the Concert Project Seeing the Unheard Hearing the Unseen.
The participants of the survey were the volunteers among the concert audience. In order to determine the participants profile in detail and make a better demographic range, the audience was asked questions related to their music listening habits, whether they play any instrument and have music training (Figure C.1):
İhan Usmanbaş, Görülemeyeni Duymak Duyulamayanı Görmek Konser Projesi /
İlhan Usmanbaş, Seeing the Unheard Hearing the Unseen Concert Project
DİNLEYİCİ GERİ BİLDİRİM FORMU / AUDIENCE’S FEEDBACK FORM
Cinsiyet (Gender) : Kadın (Female) □ Erkek (Male) □
Yaş (Age) : 18-20 □ 21-30 □ 31-40 □ 41-50 □ 51 ve üstü (and older) □
Müziksel Geçmişiniz Hakkında Birkaç Soru / Musical Background
1. Herhangi bir müzik eğitimi aldınız mı?
Have you had any musical education?
Evet/Yes □ Hayır/No □
Cevabınız ‘hayır’ ise, lütfen 2.inci ve 3.üncü soruları boş bırakınız
If your answer is 'no', please leave the 2nd and 3rd questions blank.
2. Kaç yıl müzik eğitimi aldınız? _______ Halen müzik eğitimi alıyor musunuz?
How many years have you studied music? _______ Are you currently having music education?
Evet (Yes) □ Hayır (No) □
3. Bir müzik enstrümanı çalıyor musunuz? Evet □ Hayır □
Are you playing any musical instrument
4. En sık dinlediğiniz müzik türü/türleri nedir?
What are the musical genres you listen to most often?
_____________________________________________
Figure C.1 : Audience feedback form.
145
Konser Deneyiminiz Hakkında Birkaç Soru /
A Few Questions About Your Concert Experience
BİRİNCİ DİNLEME / THE FIRST LISTENING
1. Eserin ilk seslendirilişinde, aşağıda verilen müziksel tanımlamalardan birini (ya da daha fazlasını) işitsel olarak algıladınız mı? Cevabınız evet ise, lütfen aşağıdaki bir ya da birden fazla seçeneği derecelendiriniz. Did you perceive one (or more) of the musical descriptions given below audibly in the first performance of the piece? If your answer is yes, please rate one or more of the options below.
Yok/None
Az/Few
Orta/Fair
Yüksek/High
Seslerin uzaması
Extension of sounds
□
□
□
□
Seslerin parçalanması
Fragmentation of sounds
□
□
□
□
Seslerin kümelenmesi
Clustering of sounds
□
□
□
□
Seslerin dağılması
Disintegration of sounds
□
□
□
□
İKİNCİ DİNLEME / THE SECOND LISTENING
2. Eserin ikinci seslendirilişinde, aşağıda verilen müziksel tanımlamalardan birini (ya da daha fazlasını) işitsel olarak algıladınız mı? Cevabınız evet ise, lütfen aşağıdaki bir ya da birden fazla seçeneği derecelendiriniz. Did you perceive one (or more) of the musical descriptions given below audibly in the second performance of the piece? If your answer is yes, please rate one or more of the options below.
Yok/None
Az/Few
Orta/Fair
Yüksek/High
Seslerin uzaması
Extension of sounds
□
□
□
□
Seslerin parçalanması
Fragmentation of sounds
□
□
□
□
Seslerin kümelenmesi
Clustering of sounds
□
□
□
□
Seslerin dağılması
Disintegration of sounds
□
□
□
□
Figure C.1 (continued) : Audience feedback form.
146
3. Size göre yukarıda verilen tanımlamalar dinlediğiniz bu eser için yeterli tanımlamalar mıydı? In your opinion, were the definitions given above were sufficient definitions for this piece
Evet / Yes □ Hayır / No □
Cevabınız hayır ise, işitsel olarak algıladıklarınızı siz nasıl tanımlardınız? Lütfen kısaca yazınız. / If your answer is no, how would you describe what you perceive auditory? Please write briefly
_________________________________________________________________
4. Eser ikinci kez seslendirildiği zaman, süre açısından bir farklılık algıladınız mı? When the piece was performed for the second time, did you notice any difference in terms of duration?
Daha kısa sürdü □ Daha uzun sürdü □ Aynıydı □
Lasted shorter Lasted longer Same
5. Görseller ile dinlediğiniz müzik arasında uyum algıladınız mı? Have you perceived harmony between the visuals and the music you listen to?
Evet / Yes □ Hayır / No □
Cevabınız evet ise, lütfen aşağıdaki seçeneklerden birini işaretleyiniz.
If your answer is yes, please tick one of the options below
Baştan sona güçlü bir uyum vardı / Strong □
Çoğu zaman uyumlu idi / Fair □
Ara sıra uyumlu idi / Low □
6. İkinci kez seslendirme sırasında görsellerin eklenmesi, müziği algılama biçiminde (ilk dinlediğiniz ile karşılaştırdığınızda) bir farklılık yarattı mı? Did the visuals during the second performance make a difference in the way you perceive music (compared to your first listen)?
Evet / Yes □ Hayır / No □
Cevabınız evet ise, nasıl bir farklılık yarattığını kısaca tanımlayınız.
If your answer is yes, briefly describe what kind of difference the visuals made.
_________________________________________________________________
7. Son olarak eklemek istediğiniz herhangi bir şey var mı?
Finally, do you have anything to add?
Figure C.1 (continued) : Audience feedback form.
147
The survey had a total of 177 participants (59.3% female and 40.7% male), with the majority of the audience falling into the 21-30 and 31-40 age brackets (Figure C.2).
Figure C.2 : Age distribution among participants.
The participant’s most frequently listened to musical genres include Classical (34.4%), Jazz (24.8%) and Rock (24.2%) music. Electronic, Folk, Indie and Pop music genres were listed in second most given answers. Apart from these, music genres within a broad spectrum from Arabesque to House, from Turkish Classical Music to Trash and Death Metal were also identified. Almost half of the participants (a part of 47.4%) stated that they played an instrument.
Music education was another criterion of the survey. According to the results, a total of 100 respondents (57,4%) said they had undergone music training. Within the total attendance, those who received training for 5-10 years (24 participants) and those who received training for more than 10 years (16 participants) make up a category of 22,9%.
It was observed that compared to the first listening there is a small tendency of increasing in the values of ‘none’, ‘low’ and ‘high’; and on the other hand, decrease in ‘fair’ in the grading of first term ‘Extension of sounds’. In the second term ‘Fragmentation’, there is an increase in the grading of the values ‘none’, ‘low’ and ‘fair’ and decrease in ‘high’ (Figure C.3). When the response of the both concepts are compared, no big difference is observed at the end of each performance and it is concluded that ‘high’ and ‘fair’ values are dominating the overall recognition.
148
The First Listening: The Extending Sounds
The Second Listening: The Extending Sounds
=2,9 =12,7 =31,2 =53,2
=4,3 =13 =25,5 =57,1
The First Listening: The Fragmentation of Sounds
The Second Listening: The Fragmentation of Sounds
=2,9 =12,7 =31,2 =53,2
=6,3 =15,2 =34,8 =43,7
None Low Fair High
Figure C.3 : The comparison of participants’ responses to the concepts “Extended Sounds” and “Fragmentation of Sounds”.
In the ratings made for the two other concepts ‘Clustering Sounds’ and ‘Disintegration’, the difference between two listening becomes more definite compared to the previous ones. A clear increase was observed in grading ‘high’ and all other ratings tended to decrease (Figure C.4).
149
The First Listening: Clustering Sounds
The Second Listening: Clustering Sounds
=6,6 =24,6 =46,7 =22,2
=5 =15 =37,5 =42,6
First Listening: Disintegration of Sounds
Second Listening: Disintegration of Sounds
=2,4 =29,2 =40,5 =28
=3,8 =14,4 =30,6 =51,3
None Low Fair High
Figure C.4 : The comparison of participants’ responses to the concepts “Clustering Sounds” and “Disintegration of Sounds”.
In the survey, the audience was asked about the passage of time. Certainly, the perception of time shall vary depending on the psychological and even physiological conditions. In this part of the study, the goal was to see how the visuals that accompanied the music affected the perception of time (Figure C.5).
150
Shorter Same Longer
Figure C.5 : The subjective responses of the participants for the passage of time in the second performance.
The key point appeared in the group saying that the second listening lasted longer. It was observed that this group's response to the given concepts tended to decrease at the end of the second listening. In this regard, while a small group stated that they listened with increased sensitivity in accordance with the visuals, the vast majority (composed of those with less than 5 years of music training or no music training) stated that the visuals accompanying the work during the second performance predominated the music and distracted them. The collected feedback of the participants has shown that in parallel to the distraction of the visuals, perceiving the musical/spatial concepts decreased and the perception of the passing of time seemed to have lasted longer.
151
CURRICULUM VITAE
Name Surname : Bilge Evrim AYDOĞAN
EDUCATION :
• B.A. : 2001, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Art History,
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Art History Department.
• M.A. : 2006, Istanbul Technical University, Graduate School,
Art History Department.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES AND REWARDS:
• 2005-2007 Research Assistant at Istanbul Bilgi University.
• 2007- Part-time lecturer at Istanbul Bilgi University.
• 2014- Part-time lecturer at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.
PUBLICATIONS, PRESENTATIONS AND PATENT ON THE THESIS:
Erkin, Bilge E., (2009): İlhan Usmanbaş’ın Eserleri Bağlamında Resim-Müzik İlişkisi, İzmir Ulusal Müzik Sempozyumu, Ege and Yaşar Universities, November 5,6 2009. İzmir, Turkey.
Erkin, Bilge E., (2014): Seeing the UnHeard / Hearing the UnSeen: Three Paintings from Dalí, Music and Figurative Arts in the Tweentieth Century, Centro Studi Opera Luigi Boccherini, 14-16 November 2014. Lucca, Italy.
Aydoğan, Bilge E., (2020): 1950 Öncesi Sürrealizm ve Müzik İlişkisi: Anlaşmazlıklar ve Yakınlaşmalar. Sanat Tarihi Yıllığı - Journal of Art History 29, p.p. 21-43.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS, PRESENTATIONS AND PATENTS:
Erkin, Bilge E., (2010): Installation Art as Audible Spaces, Music and Sonic Art: Practices and Theories Symposium, 2-6 August 2010. Baden-Baden, Germany.
Erkin, Bilge E., (2010): Füsun Onur ve Sarkis’in Yerleştirmelerindeki Müzikal Evren, Uluslararası Müzikte Temsil Müziksel Temsil Sempozyumu II, İTÜ, 19-22 October 2010. Istanbul, Turkey.
Erkin, Bilge E., (2011): Hybrid Art Forms: The Way of Seeing Music, ISEA 2011: Istanbul 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art, Sabancı University, September 14-21.