Sunday 25 March 2012

A noisy paradox (or waking up on the wrong side of one's bed)

There's a lot of paradox involved in the notion of the 25th of March as somehow being a 'national holiday' (in Cyprus, jiolis), to be celebrated with, among other things, parades. At least one of the paradoxes is a musical one, and has to do with the history of the kind of music that is employed in celebrating 'the overthrow of the Ottoman yoke', and/or the refusal to pay Ottoman taxes.

Music, and particular brands of noise, had been employed in military practice since antiquity. I've heard that the Byzantines, for example, are known to have attempted to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies by using the hydraulis, an organ that used water to create its sound.

Here's some more recent examples of water organs:






One of the most distinctive innovations associated with the Ottoman army was its use of marching bands, the so called mehterân (according to wikipedia, 'thought to be the oldest variety of military marching band in the world'). They look and sound kind of like this (in historical reenactment):



The music of these bands, closely interlinked with the janissaries, were to later influence the music of various notable European composers (Mozart, Beethoven, etc) in their alla turcas.

E.g. Mozart's Overture to 'The Abduction from the Seraglio' (from Concerto Köln and Sarband's 'Dream of the Orient'):



[Slavoj Zizek makes much of this dimension of turquerie (in 'The Disturbing Sounds of the Turkish March', 2007), talking about Turkey's appearing in the role of Europe's other in Beethoven's ninth symphony. I attended one of his lectures on this, at the end of which a gentleman (I regret that I do not know his name) pointed out that the march in Beethoven's ninth symphony, though often misunderstood to be a Turkish march, is in fact a French march.]

In other words, ironically, the 'European-style' marching music that is used to celebrate independence from the Ottoman empire really copies music that mimicked Ottoman marching music.

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