Relationships between prosodic and musical meters in the Beste form of classical Turkish music

Abstract

Classical Turkish music is essentially vocal in nature, and a large portion of its lyrics is taken from Ottoman divân literature. The primary prosodic meter used in divân is arûz, whereas the musical meter utilized in classical Turkish music is usûl. This study investigates the relationships between the large rhythmic patterns (usûl) and the prosodic meters (arûz) utilized in the beste form of classical Turkish music. In an analysis of 466 beste, a relationship was found between each usûl and arûz meter, but an even stronger concordance was discovered between each usûl and a class of arûz patterns called bahir. Thus, this research establishes that, rather than thinking in terms of an arûz-usûl relationship, it is more appropriate to emphasize a bahir-usûl relationship within the beste form. The results of this study confirm the existence of this relationship, which was hypothesized by Tannkorur to exist in the beste form (1990:6). © 2005 by the University of Texas Press.