In this article, Erol adopts a comparative approach to Ottoman music culture in order to shed light on music’s place in “the nationalist discourses and the politics of culture in Greece and Turkey” (165). Her methodological framework is based on the concepts of “transfer,” “exchange,” and “interplay.” These concepts are used to investigate the romantic, nostalgic, and modernist discourses in Greece and Turkey. Furthermore, Erol places these discourses within the “wider European problematic of the instrumentalization of music in a plethora of nationalisms” (165). Erol compares various primary sources from the Greek and Turkish contexts, including many texts written by musicians. Erol’s methodology supports her interrogation of identity problematics in the context of music and nationalism.
Erol first notes that her inspiration for this paper came from historical research in the Franco-German context, especially the work of Michel Espagne and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink. Next, Erol describes Greek nationalism as a model for many other national ideologies. For example, the Greek nationalist demand for the purification of the Greek language (as articulated by Adamantios Korais) shaped the ideas of Ottoman intellectuals. To trace this dynamic Erol draws on the work of Johann Strauss, who showed that intellectuals like Şemseddin Sami became convinced that Turkish must be purified of its “foreign” elements. Erol sees a strong similarity between the discourse surrounding language and that surrounding music. As demonstrated in Erol’s other work (e.g. “The ‘Musical Question’ and the Educated Elite of the Greek Orthodox Society in Late Nineteenth-Century Constantinople”) the state of music was perceived by the Greek Orthodox community as a clear indicator of national self-esteem. Erol argues that this is why many musical texts of the nineteenth century place so much value in “progress” and “improvement.” After all, if music is identified with the nation then ameliorating the state of music also promotes “national dignity.” The emphasis on “progress” also reflects the Enlightenment ideals of “science” and “objectivity” that motivated calls to reform Greek Orthodox music. These same discourses also resonated with “the modernist project of the Ottoman Turkish educated elite” (169). Erol gives the example of the nineteenth-century musician Ali Rifat Çağatay, who lamented the neglect of theoretical, scientific music, claiming that this is why music had “waned in comparison to its previous grandeur” (170). In sum, Erol convincingly demonstrates “the emergence of a repertoire of certain tropes and themes pertaining to music throughout the nineteenth century, i.e. the ‘decline,’ ‘corruption,’ and ‘progress’ of music, the ‘scientific’ rules of music, and the notion of music as ancestral heritage” (170).
Erol next shifts from “an entangled history” (170) of musical contexts t0 “a comparative and transfer history” of “national” music (171). To do this, Erol broadens her scope to cover the whole European continent. Erol notes that national movements across Europe – including Hellenism, Slavism, and Turkism – saw “folk music as the authentic musical heritage of the nation” (171) and called for the elimination of idioms that did not conform to this ideal. Erol notes, though, that the creation of “national” music is not completely in opposition to Western, metropolitan ideals of music. Rather, the use of folk music by nationalist movements contributes to the “complicated processes of perception and meaning formation between the center and periphery” (172). This is particularly evident in the Turkish case. There, the project was explicitly to create “a music which was both national and European” (174, citing Ziya Gökalp). Drawing on the work of Füsun Üstel, Erol argues that the “codification and dissemination of folk music by the political power” was part of the Republican project of constructing a united, definable, and hence controllable Anatolia. In Greece, the creation of a national music was less teleological; instead of subsuming the national into the European, Greek musicians dealt with the “debated age-old distinction between the Hellenic vs Romeic thesis” (173). Unfortunately, Erol does not deal with this tension in the Greek context at length. Yet the overall point is clear: the creation of “national” musics in both Greek and Turkish contexts had to tackle “the Western/Eastern identity problematic” (175).
This article has two main aims, as Erol acknowledges. First, the author sketches common discourses pertaining to music in the Greek and Turkish contexts. This aim was better fleshed out in Erol’s other work. But what makes this paper particularly stimulating is that it begins to link these discourses synchronically and diachronically. By adopting a comparative method and using the concept of “cultural transfers,” Erol shows that identity problematics resonate in both Greece and Turkey, yet also differ significantly because of broader sociopolitical projects and tensions. This is a valuable addition to the scholarship of music and nationalism, but it represents only a first small step in a promising direction.