Last summer I went to Sophia, Bulgaria, for a performance of my Symphony Istanbul Tales by the Sophia Philharmonic.

Symphony Istanbul Tales is very personal to me. The themes that comprise the work were first composed during my days as a student at a European-Turkish style conservatory in my native city of Istanbul. I started my conservatory education when I was 11 years old. The conservatory was on the European side of Istanbul, so I used to go to Europe from the more suburban Asian side everyday. I would often take the ferry in the morning. If any of we conservatory students saw one of our friends getting on the ferry, we would whistle a short motif (a fast staccato of c-d-e-c-d-c) and this would attract the other’s attention immediately. Then we could ride the ferry together and have deep philosophical conversations (not really, probably we were just being silly).

I do not know how this whistling tradition started, but naturally, this motif was one of the musical gestures I used in the symphony.
I was very excited about the Sophia performance. One of the fairy tale heroes who hide in between the musical notes, the maestro Hakan Sensoy, was going to conduct the symphony. His musical and personal friendship since my childhood has been very important, and his conducting of the piece in that evening’s concert carried a special meaning and significance.

I arrived at the Bulgaria Hall with my cousin Tuncay from Germany, who came just for the concert.

The conductor already had several rehearsals and I was going to be present for the dress rehearsal and the concert. After listening to the first rehearsal, I noticed that something was missing in the performance. They were not playing the whistling motif! During the break I approached the conductor and asked him why they were not playing that particular motif. He informed me that my little motif had created quite a stir in the orchestra. Apparently it meant something very dirty in Bulgarian slang—they refused to tell us what that was—and everybody thought that it would have been a huge insult for the Bulgarian audience. The flute player who was supposed to play the motif solo several times during the first movement refused to play the part altogether, and consequently it was completely taken out from that night’s performance.
…
The absence of my little motif contributed to the success of the concert that night. A terrible insult for the Bulgarian public, which was the last thing I had in mind, was avoided. But the Sophia Philharmonic is actually considering the piece for a recording project and now I am thinking what to do with that dirty motif.

Symphony 1: Istanbul Tales

Each movement of the symphony tells its own tale of my time as a student at the Istanbul Conservatory. The symphony contains stylistic transformations within a complex rhythmic texture of many musical gestures and real quotes from my earlier student compositions.

Movements:

1. Tale in the Folk Song Without Words (Lento Moderato and Allegro Ben Ritmato)
2. Lost Tale in the Skopjian Poem (Adagio)
3. Giant’s Tale (Moderato)
4. Tale of the School Children (Allegro Vivace)

Here is the end of the first movement:

Biography:

A composer, performer, and scholar, Münir Beken received his PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Maryland. He studied composition with Cemal Resit Rey, Yalçın Tura, and Stuart Smith, and participated in composition workshops with such luminaries as George Crumb, Lukas Foss, Philip Glass, Roger Reynolds, Steve Reich, and Charles Wuorinen. His compositions have been performed internationally with considerable recognition in some of the most significant concert halls in the world. The performance of his Triple Concerto featured the eminent violinist Shlomo Mintz. His symphonic poem Gallipoli was premiered in March 2005 and A Turk in Seattle featured Seattle Chamber Players in February 2006 at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. The world premier of his Blue Monologue for solo violin was performed in June 2006 at Carnegie Hall. Some of his works have won awards in international competitions. His recent composition “I Am A Corpse” for violin and orchestra will be released with conductor Robert Ian Winstin and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra by ERMMedia. His compositional style redefines itself from work to work. His music is published by Amplitude Music in France, and he is a member of ASCAP.

He has given recitals in such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. In 1994 he won the Individual Artist Award of Maryland State Arts Council and became the Executive Director of the Center for Turkish Music at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. American composers Melodie Linhart, Eric Flesher, and Christopher Shainin have written original compositions for Mr. Beken. He conducted the ITU Chamber Orchestra in Istanbul and Siena Chamber Orchestra in up-state New York.

Münir Beken is currently Assistant Professor of theory and composition in Ethnomusicology Department at University of California Los Angeles. His scholarly interests include the phenomenology of music, cognitive musicology, and melodic modal systems of the Middle East and Central Asia. He has written several articles for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and other scholarly publications.

—–

[Photos: #1-I used to pass by the Maiden Tower (look Hera and Leandros story) on my way to the conservatory (photo by Sally Hawkridge).
#2-Cousin Tuncay and me at the concert (photo by Tuncay Tükel and yes, he has very long arms). #3-Münir Beken (far left) with conductor Hakan Sensoy, orchestra administrator-conductor Angel Stankov, and violinist Cihat Askın in the Bulgaria Hall backstage after the Sophia Philharmonic concert (photo by “I have no idea.”)