Giriftzen Âsım Bey was born in 1851 in Yenişehir in Thessaly and died in Istanbul in 1929. His life was spread across three callings that seem unrelated: he was a reed-flute player trained in a Mevlevi lodge, he served as an officer in the Ottoman fire brigade, and he spent more than twenty years in Amasya, where he formed the nucleus of a musical society. The instrument whose name he carries, the girift, is a short and difficult variety of the ney in Turkish music. No player took it up after him, and today it survives only in museums and private collections. His tie to Amasya began as an exile rather than a choice and later turned into a settlement.

From Yenişehir to Istanbul

Sources give his birthplace as Thessaly, Yenişehir of Thessaly, or Yenişehir-i Fenâr, which is today the city of Larissa in Greece. His father was Muhzırbaşızade Ali Efendi. He took an interest in music as a child and began attending the Mevlevi lodge of Yenişehir. By his own account he was fourteen, enjoyed listening to the lodge's ayin ceremonies, and one day joined those reciting the ayin and the naat. They told him his voice was beautiful. He began taking ney lessons from Hasan Dede, an apprentice of Yûsuf Paşa. In the third month the sheikh ordered that the taksim in the ayin be left to Âsım, and from then on the boy sometimes played and sometimes sang. The TDV Islamic Encyclopedia gives his age at this point as thirteen and describes the sheikh entrusting him with the ney taksims after three or four months of training. The difference in age most likely arises from the narrator's memory on the one hand and the encyclopedia's way of recording it on the other.

The sheikh of the lodge was the poet Nazif Efendi. The young Âsım won his favor and read the Mesnevi with him. He also says he read the Gulistan with a Persian teacher whose name he does not give, and that this served "the pursuit of perfection" for a few years. The Mevlevi ayin tradition, Persian and the Mesnevi readings formed a body of learning that is hardly visible in his later life but that lay beneath his music. At about seventeen he took a post at the Ministry of Finance and went to Istanbul. After a time he was assigned to Izmir and Aydın, where he worked for about three years in administrative duties. When the age of military service came he went to Izmir to join his maternal uncle, Colonel İbrâhim Bey, who was a commander there. While working as a military accounting clerk he became an officer with the rank of second lieutenant.

A Reed-Flute Player in the Fire Brigade

In 1872 he returned to Istanbul and joined the fire brigade founded by Sultan Abdülaziz as a captain. According to his own recollections he first did not want to accept the post, because he took it for mere pump-carrying. His superiors insisted, he accepted, and he served in the brigade for many years. In his memoirs the founder of the organization is named as Ziçni Paşa, of Hungarian origin, whereas the encyclopedia entries tie its founding to the reign of Abdülaziz. The fire brigade was a new institution in those years, and the reason for Âsım Bey's initial reluctance was that he identified the work with the old pump-crew firefighting.

He took part in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 as a company commander. When he came back from the war he was appointed fire brigade commander with the rank of major. The sources call this post sometimes the commandership of the Istanbul fire brigade and sometimes that of the Üsküdar fire brigade. In one of his recollections he gives his last post as that of a major in Üsküdar. Having a conveniently portable instrument when going to war was one of the factors that brought him together with the girift.

What the Girift Is

The word girift, which in Persian means "bound together, intertwined, mixed", is the name of a wind instrument made of reed like the ney. It is shorter than even the bolâhenk nısfiye of the ney family (about 520 mm), and roughly half the length of the şah ney (858 mm) and the dâvud ney (910 mm). Like the ney it is held at an angle and blown with the same position of lips and head; the breath enters the instrument through a mouthpiece, the başpâre, made of water-buffalo horn and fitted to its head end. Blowing the ney and girift with a başpâre is a method peculiar to Turkish players. According to Süleyman Erguner's entry in the TDV Islamic Encyclopedia, the name of the instrument probably comes from the difficulty of playing it: its range is narrow compared with the ney, and its fingering is harder and different, so lip and finger skill decide the quality of a performance.

The girift usually has six segments, but examples with four, five, seven and nine also exist. It has eight finger holes in all, seven on the front and one on the back. The six upper holes on the front lie on one axis, while the seventh is opened slightly to the left, and this is one of the details that distinguish the girift from the ney. The example in the Mevlana Museum in Konya is 39.5 centimeters long. Despite its short length its sound is duller and more plaintive than the ney's; its range is one and a half octaves in some examples and two in others. The player is called a giriftzen. It is known that in the küme fasıl ensembles of the Ottoman palace sometimes the ney and sometimes the girift was used. The instrument seems to have been in greater demand from the eighteenth century onward, and among those known for playing it skillfully are Mehmed Nûri Efendi, Musâhib Said Mehmed Efendi, Üsküdarlı Rızâ Bey, Hacı Fâik Bey and Âsım Bey. A couplet by Nâbî, "Nâm-âver iken girift ile mey / Çaldı galebe girift ile ney", and one by Enderunlu Vâsıf, "Feryâd-ı girift olsa da dünyâda müessir / Nây-ı dil-i nâlânıma nisbet ne düdüktür", show that the instrument also appears in literature. The word girift is also used for a style of ornament made of interlocking motifs, and for calligraphy whose letters are packed tightly and run into one another.

The Name Giriftzen

Âsım Bey's first ney teacher was Hasan Dede, an apprentice of Neyzen Yûsuf Paşa. After coming to Istanbul he studied with the famous neyzen Sâlim Bey. When he left Istanbul for the Russo-Turkish War, his teacher Sâlim Bey gave him a girift as a gift so that he could carry it easily. Âsım Bey occupied himself with this instrument during the war years and came back a good giriftzen. Instrument and name became so closely joined that he gained fame as Giriftzen Âsım Bey; the encyclopedia entry regards him as the last master of the girift. Since then the girift has found no new player, and Erguner writes that restoring the instrument to Turkish music would be a great service.

After the war he attended the music gatherings of Istanbul. He made friends with masters such as Neyzen Yûsuf Paşa, Hacı Ârif Bey, Bolâhenk Nûri Bey, Tanbûrî Ali Efendi and Medenî Aziz Efendi, and learned from them. The group he formed with Tanbûrî Cemil Bey and Kemânî Tevfik Bey was preparing concerts to introduce Turkish music in Europe. According to the biography of Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey, the meetings were held at Cemil Bey's house, with Âsım Bey and Kemânî Tevfik Bey present. But because members of the group fell ill, the European tour never took place and the venture came to nothing.

Müşir Fuad Paşa and the Exile in Amasya

Among Âsım Bey's friends in Istanbul was Müşir Fuad Paşa, a member of the Senate. The two exchanged ideas and knowledge on music, and the friendship between them grew steadily firmer. Some denunciations and complaints about Fuad Paşa reached Abdülhamid II, and the pasha was sent into exile. Âsım Bey, known for his closeness to the pasha, was among those sent away and was compelled to reside in Amasya.

The date of the exile differs in the sources. One group of sources and local accounts give 1883, while the TDV Islamic Encyclopedia entry writes 1900. Since Âsım Bey says in his own account that he stayed in Amasya "for about 25 years", and the return coincided with the Constitutional Revolution of 1908, the date 1883 seems more consistent with that length of time. That he spent more than twenty years, about twenty-five, in Amasya is common ground in many sources. The exile lasted until 1908.

As the account goes, Âsım Bey, as soon as he had recovered from the shock of exile, formed friendships with people he felt close to. Almost every day forty or fifty guests came to the farm where he was staying temporarily, and he held music lessons for them. He grew closer to the musical families of Amasya, and his work gradually gathered under the name "Amasya Music Society". In those same years he lost his wife; with the help of his Amasya friends he was married to Lütfiye Hanım. From his two marriages he had twenty-four children in all. An interview states that eight of them were then living and that seven had grown up to be musicians or stage artists.

The Amasya Music Society

Âsım Bey is remembered as the person who awakened musical taste and enthusiasm in Amasya; for years he devoted himself to teaching music like an idealist and trained many apprentices. Among the students to whom he taught the kanun and all the forms of music was İsmail Safa Olcay; on his return to Istanbul he took him along, introduced him to Vitali and Artaki Candan, two of the best-known musicians of the time, and arranged for him to take lessons from them. When the exile ended in 1908 he went back to Istanbul and resumed his old post as fire brigade commander, this time with the rank of colonel.

When he retired he came back to settle in Amasya. The reason given for this return is that the people of Amasya were warm and sincere and valued music and friendship. In 1916, in his own house, he brought together the group that would later take the name Amasya Music Society, and he served as its honorary president. Udî Hulûsi Bey (Tiryaki), named among the founders of the society, served as its chairman. Among the instrumentalists of the group were Nısfıye Dede Sâmi, Âmâ Mehmet, Udî Tahsildar Mustafa Efendi, Karavaiz İsmail Efendi, Alişan Efendi and Nişan Efendi; the singers included Çuhacıoğlu Terzi Sabri, Hâfız Memduh and Topuzubüyük Mustafa.

There are two accounts of the beginnings of the society: one regards the gatherings that began at the farm in the exile years as its seed, the other takes the meeting of 1916 as the founding date. The two do not exclude each other; an informal activity begun in exile may have become, in his retirement years, a group with a name and a place. It should also be said that the sources point to no definite document on this question.

In 1924, when President Mustafa Kemal and his wife Lâtife Hanım visited Amasya, Âsım Bey and his ensemble presented examples of Turkish art music in the Municipality Mansion where they were hosted. According to the account, the pasha and Lâtife Hanım greatly admired the concert.

His Compositions

The notation of forty-three of Âsım Bey's instrumental and vocal works has survived to the present day. His melodies are said to be very rich and colorful, and in the songs he built on various rhythms one feels a refinement, an elegance and a playful grace of his own. He is said to have composed his songs quickly and without difficulty. In a story told as an example, he was once called to the palace of one of the sultanas. The sultana, listening to him from behind a lattice, asked whether he could compose a song on the spot; the young artist wrote the lyrics right there, set them in the makam Rast and sang them: "Serta kadem ey pembe ten / Mecburun oldum işte ben / Lütfeyle gel ey gül beden / Virâne gönlüm eyle şen." This story is a palace anecdote and has not been confirmed by any other source.

His best-known work is the song in the makam Uşşak, "Cânâ rakîbi handân edersin". Its words are: "Cânâ rakîbi handân edersin / Ben bi-nevâyı giryân edersin / Bîgânelerle ünsiyet etme / Bana cihânı zindân edersin." In today's language, a lover addressing the beloved complains of being made to weep while the rivals are made to laugh, and asks the beloved not to keep company with strangers, because that behavior turns the world into a dungeon for him. According to the account, Mustafa Kemal heard this song as a child in Salonica, loved it very much and learned to sing it. Years later at the Çankaya Mansion and in Yalova he would have it played and sung by singers and instrumentalists, and joined them himself. Some of those close to him used to say that the song was connected with one of his first loves. This last piece of information is a rumor of his circle that rests on no firm testimony.

Âsım Bey did not limit himself to composing works of art music. After the War of Independence ended in victory, he also composed a setting for the Independence March (İstiklâl Marşı) as adopted; this setting is among the compositions that are not sung today. It is also said that Hasan Ferit Alnar, one of the composers of modern Turkish music, wrote the first movement of his Kanun Concerto under the influence of Âsım Bey's "Rast Peşrevi"; this information, too, is not based on a definite document.

His Children

Many of the twenty-four children entered the world of art. Among them are Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey, Cevad Âsım Bey, the radio artist Âsım Yücesoy, the pianist and composer Nihal Erkutun, the music teacher Selahattin Yücesoy and the stage actress Muazzez Kurtoğlu. Giriftzen Âsım Bey is also the grandfather of Işıl Yücesoy and Cem Kurtoğlu.

Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey

The best known of his children is Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey. He was born in Üsküdar in 1884. He studied at the Üsküdar Merkez Rüşdiyesi and the Üsküdar İdâdîsi. His father noticed his musical talent at an early age, and he began taking lessons from his father and from his elder brother İbrâhim Sâbir Efendi (Mustafa Sabir in some sources). From his father he learned music theory together with the girift, and he became a good player of that instrument. Together with his father he attended gatherings joined by masters such as Yûsuf Paşa, Hacı Ârif Bey, Zekâizâde Hâfız Ahmed Irsoy Efendi, Müezzinzâde Rifat Bey and Bolâhenk Nûri Bey; the sessions held at Tanbûrî Cemil Bey's house with his father and Kemânî Tevfik Bey also helped him acquire a broad repertoire. Hüseyin Sadettin Arel, Mesut Cemil Tel and Ruşen Ferit Kam describe him as the artist with the highest and richest classical knowledge and manners among the musicians of the last century.

In 1910 the state sent him to Berlin to study music, and he graduated from the Royal Prussian Academy and the Stern Conservatory. On his return he taught at the Çapa Girls' Teachers' School, the Men's Teachers' School, the School of Political Science (Mülkiye), the Selçuk Girls' Lycée and the Theater Vocational School. On 14 September 1923 he took over the directorship of the Dârülelhân (called the Istanbul Conservatory after 1927), which had been put into operation a second time under the Istanbul City Prefecture, and taught music history and composition. He argued that Turkish music should draw on Western music, but that while turning to these innovations no concession should be made on the essence and spirit of Turkish music. Of his compositions, the hüzzam song "Sen sanki bahârın gülüsün, şen çiçeğimsin", the mâhur song "Tâc-ı hüsnün hükmeder şâirlerin dîvânına" and the nihâvend song "Sûziş-i aşkınla ben nâlân iken" still appear in repertoires. The march he composed in 1919 to words by Cemal Ethem Yeşil was first called the "Fatherland March" and later became the anthem of the Mülkiye school as the Mülkiye March. Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey, who never married, resigned from the directorship about two years before his death because of heart trouble, kept up his teaching, and died on 2 December 1932 in his house in Laleli. He was buried in Merkezefendi Cemetery. One source gives 1931 as the date he left the directorship.

His Last Years

Ruşen Ferit Kam, describing his old age in Istanbul, writes that Âsım Bey kept his vigor until he took to his bed, going down the Laleli slope with quick, firm steps and climbing apartment stairs in one breath. Among the newspapers of the time, İkdam published a visit report about him in 1925 and Vakit an interview in 1926. He fell ill in Istanbul, where he had gone on a visit, and died on 26 February 1929. He was buried in Merkezefendi Cemetery. After his death his name was given to a street in the Aksaray area.

Of his personal belongings in Amasya, his girift is today in the Amasya Museum and his piano in the Amasya Lycée Museum. The fate of his other belongings is unknown. A local source writes that the nickname Giriftzen, taken from the instrument he played, keeps him, together with his works that became the property of the people, among the artists who are "always sought after, loved and never grow old".

Chronology

1851: Born in Yenişehir (Thessaly); his father was Muhzırbaşızade Ali Efendi.

About 1864-1865: Began his musical education at the Yenişehir Mevlevi lodge (at thirteen or fourteen).

1872: Joined the newly founded fire brigade in Istanbul as a captain.

1877-1878: Took part in the Russo-Turkish War as a company commander; occupied himself with the girift given by his teacher Sâlim Bey.

1883: Sent to Amasya at the time of Müşir Fuad Paşa's exile (the TDV entry gives this date as 1900).

1884: His son Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey was born in Üsküdar.

1908: Returned to Istanbul with the proclamation of the Constitution and resumed the fire brigade commandership with the rank of colonel.

1916: In Amasya, brought together in his house the group that would later be named the Amasya Music Society.

1924: Gave a concert during the visit of President Mustafa Kemal and Lâtife Hanım to Amasya.

26 February 1929: Died in Istanbul and was buried in Merkezefendi Cemetery.

Sources

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources