I am delighted to witness the outcome of this masterpiece which is the fruit of
some work over several research, enquiries, archiving years and meetings with
the Turkish musicians.
The transcriptions of the partitions made by Doctor Heykel Kchouk have been
executed with a lot of …
I am delighted to witness the outcome of this masterpiece which is the fruit of
some work over several research, enquiries, archiving years and meetings with
the Turkish musicians.
The transcriptions of the partitions made by Doctor Heykel Kchouk have been
executed with a lot of accuracy thanks to his patience, his musical background,
both as an Oud player and a composer and thanks as well, to his very efficient
methodology which certainly has something to do with his training as a
practitioner.
After having been very often consulted by him, in my capacity as a musician,
I can witness that his works are unique and make up a reference for all the
musicians that are passionate with the Mediterranean music. His works answer
to a lot of music historians and ethnomusicologists who have preferred to
pin down the music of the Makams on the pages of history. Indeed, the work
undertaken by Doctor Heykel Kchouk groups together not only the classical
Peşrevs and Semâîs but covers as well the creations and innovations of the
contemporary artists, proving thus the vivacity of this musical expression.
Since the 18th century, the orientalism of the occidental academics, as well as
the eastern academics have always led them to define all the non-European
musics as being ethnic, folkloric, regional and even in certain countries, as
being of a national value. This has changed nowadays and we acknowledge
that Europe was not the unique part of the world which produced universal
value music. Other civilizations had artistic expressions worth to be considered
and ranked at the same level as the European musics, called classical musics,
and this is specifically the case of the Ottoman music.
The melody system of the Makams, used since antiquity by the Asian peoples
and the Egyptian and Hellenic civilizations, as of today, remains as the unique
musical expression and the peoples who have shared the same civilization
have had a joint art and sciences world. In this respect, the philosophical
exchanges between Al Ghazali (1058 - 1111) born in Tus in Persia and Averroes
(Ibn Rushd) born in Cordoba in 1126 and died in Marrakech in 1198 do prove
this point. Likewise, the comments on the Koran made by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi
(1149 - 1210) of Herat was a study topic both in the East and the West, and the
simple immigration of the scholar from Damascus up to Cordoba gave birth to
the Andalusian music, literature and cooking as well. …