Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey (1884-1932) was a composer, pianist and player of the girift and the oud, and above all a music teacher, who stood at the head of the group that rebuilt Turkey's official music education in the first years of the Republic. When the Dârülelhân, the state's first official school of music, opened for the second time on 14 September 1923, he was appointed its director, and he remained in the post for a long time after the institution took the name Istanbul Conservatory in 1927. The name that ties him to the story of Amasya is that of his father, Giriftzen Âsım Bey. Âsım Bey lived in Amasya for more than twenty years, trained many pupils there and in the end settled in the city to spend his retirement; Mûsâ Süreyyâ, one of his artistically gifted children, became the most influential figure in carrying the family's musical heritage into the institutional musical life of Istanbul.

The House of Giriftzen Âsım Bey

To understand Mûsâ Süreyyâ one must first look at his father's house. Giriftzen Âsım Bey was born in Yenişehr-i Fenâr (Larissa), now within the borders of Greece, began his musical life as a child at the Mevlevi lodge of Yenişehir, and reached such early maturity that he joined the lodge's ensemble of musicians at the age of thirteen. His first teacher on the ney was Hasan Dede, a pupil of Neyzen Yûsuf Paşa. After coming to Istanbul he studied with the celebrated neyzen Sâlim Bey. His career as a soldier and civil servant took him to İzmir, to Aydın and finally to the fire brigade in Istanbul. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, in which he served as a company commander, he never let go of the girift that his teacher Sâlim Bey had given him because it was easy to carry, and this was the beginning of his reputation as the finest player of his day on this nearly forgotten variety of the ney.

After his return from the war Âsım Bey was appointed commander of the Üsküdar fire brigade with the rank of major and became a much sought-after figure at the leading musical gatherings of the age. Neyzen Yûsuf Paşa, Hacı Ârif Bey, Bolâhenk Nûri Bey, Tanbûrî Ali Efendi and Medenî Aziz Efendi were among his friends. Together with Tanbûrî Cemil Bey he formed an ensemble intended to introduce Turkish music to Europe, but because both men fell ill the European tour never took place. Âsım Bey had twenty-four children by his two marriages, and a considerable number of them devoted themselves to music and the performing arts. It was into this large family, steeped in art, that Mûsâ Süreyyâ was born in Üsküdar in 1884.

The Connection with Amasya

The family's Amasya chapter begins with an exile. Âsım Bey had formed a close friendship with Müşir Fuad Paşa, one of the leading statesmen of the period. When, in the reign of Abdülhamid II, denunciations against the pasha led to the banishment of Fuad Paşa and his circle, Âsım Bey too was compelled to reside in Amasya because of his closeness to the pasha. The sources give different dates for the start of this exile: some cite 1883, while the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam records 1900. In both accounts the exile ended in 1908 with the proclamation of the Constitutional Monarchy, when Âsım Bey returned to Istanbul and resumed his post in the fire brigade, this time with the rank of colonel.

Âsım Bey's relationship with Amasya did not end with his exile. After the death of his first wife he made his second marriage in Amasya, to Lütfiye Hanım, and as soon as he retired he returned to the city to settle there. The musical circle he gathered in his own home in 1916 later took the name Amasya Music Society, and Âsım Bey became its honorary president. Over the more than twenty years he spent in Amasya he trained many pupils in the city, and during the Turkish War of Independence he composed one of the settings of the İstiklâl Marşı (the national anthem) that are no longer performed today. His girift is now kept in the Amasya Museum and his piano in the Amasya High School Museum. The fact that Muazzez Kurtoğlu, the stage actress and one of Mûsâ Süreyyâ's younger sisters, was born in Amasya shows how genuine the family's bond with the city was.

How much of Mûsâ Süreyyâ's own life was spent in Amasya, however, is not clear from the documents. The sources that give his biography record that he was born in Üsküdar and studied at the Üsküdar Central Rüşdiye school and the Üsküdar İdâdî secondary school. If 1883 is accepted as the date of the exile, it is possible that part of his childhood was spent with his father in Amasya. If 1900 is accepted, he was a sixteen-year-old secondary school pupil when the exile began. It is therefore more accurate to regard Amasya as the city where his father's music took root and which became the family's second home, rather than as the city where he was born or raised. Even so, the musical world in which he grew up and the heritage of a father attached enough to the city to found a music society there spring from the same source, and it is through this bond that Mûsâ Süreyyâ's name holds a place in the cultural history of Amasya.

Childhood and Early Musical Training

Mûsâ Süreyyâ's gift for music was noticed by his father when he was still a small child. He received his first lessons from his father himself and from an elder brother. The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam gives this brother's name as İbrâhim Sâbir Efendi, while other sources call him Mustafa Sâbir Bey. From his father he learned music theory as well as the girift, and he became an accomplished player of this rare instrument. It appears that he also learned the oud during these years. For him the house served as a true school of meşk: before any written curriculum, he grew up within the old tradition of oral transmission from master to pupil.

The most valuable part of this training was the musical gatherings he attended with his father. In assemblies where masters such as Neyzen Yûsuf Paşa, Hacı Ârif Bey, Zekâizâde Hâfız Ahmed (Irsoy) Efendi, Müezzinzâde Rifat Bey and Bolâhenk Nûri Bey were present, he had the opportunity to hear and learn almost all the famous works of Turkish music directly from the performances of these masters. The rehearsals held at the home of Tanbûrî Cemil Bey with his father and Kemânî Tevfik Bey, in preparation for concerts in Europe, also enriched his repertoire. Later authorities such as Hüseyin Sadettin Arel, Mesut Cemil Tel and Ruşen Ferit Kam described him as the musician with the highest and richest classical knowledge and experience among those who lived in the last century. This praise shows how fully Mûsâ Süreyyâ had mastered the traditional repertoire of Turkish music before he ever went to Berlin.

The Berlin Years

Having drawn attention with his talent at an early age, Mûsâ Süreyyâ was sent to Berlin by the state in 1910 to study music. This state-funded education also laid the groundwork for the institutional role he would later take on. In Berlin he studied at the Prussian Royal Academy and at the Stern Conservatory, and graduated from both institutions.

In Germany he systematically acquired the Western tradition of harmony, composition and music history. He also advanced his piano playing during this period, and in later years he was known as a fine pianist. When he returned home, therefore, he carried two distinct bodies of knowledge: on the one hand the classical Turkish music he had absorbed in Âsım Bey's house and in the musical gatherings of Istanbul, on the other the academic music education of Berlin. This double training placed him in a position that few musicians of the period enjoyed, and it earned him recognition not only as a performer but also as an intellectual versed in the scholarly side of music.

Return Home and Teaching

After his return from Berlin, Mûsâ Süreyyâ's life was spent largely in the classroom. He taught music at the Çapa Women's Teacher Training School, the Men's Teacher Training School, the Mülkiye School (the School of Civil Administration), Selçuk Girls' High School and the Theatre Vocational School. A significant number of these were teacher training institutions, and his lessons there contributed indirectly to the formation of a new generation of music teachers. He is known to have given his lessons at the piano and to have remained in his students' memory for his sensitive and courteous character.

Among his students was Sadi Yaver Ataman, who would later become one of the leading names in the collection of Turkish folk music. While studying at the Istanbul Conservatory, Ataman was a pupil of Mûsâ Süreyyâ as well as of Rauf Yektâ Bey, Zekâizâde Ahmet (Irsoy), Kaşıyarık Hüsâmettin, Muallim İsmail Hakkı, Mehmet Zâti, Veli Kanık and Hoca Ziya, and he graduated from the conservatory in 1930. The collecting work that Ataman carried out across Anatolia from 1929 onwards took shape in the same period as the growing interest in folk music at the institution Mûsâ Süreyyâ directed.

The Mülkiye March

Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey's best-known work today is a march. In April 1919, some six months after the Mekteb-i Mülkiye reopened in 1918, a student of the school, Cemal Edhem (Yeşil) Bey, wrote a poem entitled "Vatan" (Homeland). This poem, composed in the oppressive atmosphere of the Armistice years, was set to music by Mûsâ Süreyyâ, who was then the music teacher at the Mülkiye. Thus a work born in the days when Istanbul was under occupation became a march whose first line is "Başka bir aşk istemez, aşkınla çarpar kalbimiz" (Our hearts want no other love, they beat with love for you) and whose refrain is "Ey vatan, göz yaşların dinsin, yetiştik çünkü biz" (O homeland, let your tears cease, for we have come of age).

The birth of the setting was recounted by Mûsâ Süreyyâ's sister, the pianist and composer Nihal Erkutun: one night during the Armistice years, while the family was gathered at the home of a friend, the lyrics of the march were brought in; her brother was deeply moved on reading them, rose at once, sat down at the piano in the room and composed the march that very night. Known at first as the "Vatan Marşı" (Homeland March), the work was adopted as the school's official march under the name "Mülkiye Marşı" in the sixtieth year of the school's foundation. The later career of the lyricist Cemal Edhem Yeşil, who served as undersecretary to the Prime Ministry, secretary-general of the Presidency and ambassador, further strengthened the march's place in the Mülkiye tradition.

Cem Eroğul, a member of the faculty of the Faculty of Political Science, points out that the words of the march were written a month before Mustafa Kemal landed at Samsun and were set to stirring music by Mûsâ Süreyyâ, the music teacher of the same school, and he regards the work as one of the most important expressions of the Mülkiye tradition. The march is still sung today as the anthem of the Ankara University Faculty of Political Science, performed by students and graduates on the faculty's founding anniversary on 4 December and during the traditional İnek Bayramı festival in May. Since only the first stanza is widely sung, the other two stanzas are unknown to most people.

At the Head of the Dârülelhân

The post that truly inscribed Mûsâ Süreyyâ's name in the history of music was the directorship of the Dârülelhân. The institution had a prehistory. In 1914 the Mayor of Istanbul, Cemil Bey (Topuzlu), set out to establish the Dârülbedâyi as a school of music and theatre under the direction of the theatre director André Antoine, whom he had brought from Paris, but because of the First World War the venture was left unfinished, and its department of Eastern music closed on 14 March 1916. The Dârülelhân was then founded under regulations drawn up by the Music Committee of the Ministry of Education and put into force by order of Sultan Reşad. The school's men's and women's sections opened in Şehzadebaşı on 1 January 1917. Amid the hardships of the Armistice, the occupation of Istanbul and the Turkish War of Independence, the men's section closed in 1918, while the women's section survived for some time longer with a small staff.

Shortly before the proclamation of the Republic, through the close interest of the Governor and Mayor of Istanbul, Ali Haydar Bey (Yuluğ), and by decision of the Provincial General Assembly, the Dârülelhân was brought back into operation for the second time under the Istanbul Municipality. According to the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, the opening took place with a ceremony on Friday, 14 September 1923. Some sources give this date as 1924. Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey, who had completed his studies in Germany and returned home, was appointed its director. In the speech he gave on the opening day he described the Dârülelhân as a centre that would lead the country's musical life toward currents capable of reasonable and sound development, a phrase that clearly reveals his view of the institution. Alongside the directorship he personally taught music history and composition. Some sources credit this second founding of the institution directly to his efforts.

Under the new regulations the old Music Committee was abolished, and Western music took its place in the institution as a separate department alongside Turkish music. Students admitted after primary school spent a year in a preparatory class before being divided among the departments. The Alafranga (Western music) department had classes in composition, voice, piano, cello, flute and the other orchestral instruments, while the Alaturka (Turkish music) department had classes in violin, kemençe, santur, ney, tanbur, oud, kanun and singing. All students were required to attend courses in music theory, solfège, harmony, fugue and music history, as well as orchestra and choir rehearsals. That Mûsâ Süreyyâ, a man who knew both Turkish and Western music, directed both departments under one roof was the institutional counterpart of the double education united in his own person.

The teaching staff during his directorship reads almost like a roll call of the musical life of the age. In the Western music department taught figures such as Cemal Reşit (Rey), Ekrem Besim (Tektaş), Zâtî (Arca), Mesut Cemil (Tel), Edgar Manas and Chevalier Geza de Hegey, and in the Eastern music department masters such as Rauf Yektâ Bey, Zekâizâde Hâfız Ahmet Bey, Muallim İsmail Hakkı Bey, Ruşen Ferit (Kam), Ziyâ Bey (Santur) and Refik Bey (Fersan). The TDV Encyclopedia of Islam describes this period as the most productive years of the Dârülelhân. Alongside teaching, field trips to collect folk music were begun and work was done on documenting classical compositions; the Dârülelhân Mecmuası, a journal published from 1924 and running to seven issues until 1926, and the score series known as the "Dârülelhân Külliyâtı" were products of these years. The first 120 scores of the series were printed in Ottoman script and the remaining 60 in Latin letters. Student concerts by both the Western and the Eastern music departments were also among the regular activities of the period.

The 1926 Reorganisation and the Istanbul Conservatory

Mûsâ Süreyyâ's directorship also coincided with a decision that came as a shock to the teaching of Turkish music. In the time of Minister of Education Mustafa Necati Bey, a decision of the Fine Arts Committee of the Board of Education dated 9 December 1926 changed the institution's regulations and curriculum, abolished the Alaturka department and brought the teaching of Turkish music to an end. Work in the field of Turkish music was confined to the activities of the newly established Turkish Music Performance Ensemble and the Committee for the Classification and Documentation of Historical Turkish Musical Works. On 22 January 1927 the Dârülelhân was attached to the Istanbul Municipality under the name Istanbul Music Conservatory, and its curriculum was modelled on Western conservatories.

Mûsâ Süreyyâ remained at the head of the conservatory after this reorganisation as well. The sources give the date of his departure with a slight difference: the TDV Encyclopedia of Islam writes that he left the directorship because of a heart condition about two years before his death, while other sources state that he held the post until his resignation in 1931. No document has been found in the sources, however, showing what stance a director who insisted that the essence of Turkish music must never be compromised took toward this decision.

His Work as a Composer and His View of Music

Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey was known among the important musicians of his day as much for his compositions as for his teaching. Although he wrote works in the Western style, lieder, études and pieces for children, the main weight of his output lies in songs in the makam tradition, which are notable for treating Turkish music with an elegant style and a classical bearing. Yılmaz Öztuna published in his encyclopedia a list of his works consisting of three marches and nineteen songs.

The lyrics of some of his songs were written by his close friend Ercümend Ekrem Talu. His song in the hüzzam makam beginning with the line "Sen sanki bahârın gülüsün, şen çiçeğimsin", his song in mahur beginning "Tâc-ı hüsnün hükmeder şâirlerin dîvânına" and his song in nihavend beginning "Sûziş-i aşkınla ben nâlân iken" still appear frequently in the repertoire today. His nihavend song beginning "Bir gün o güzel şad edecek ruhumu sandım" and his suzinak song beginning "Sensiz geceler geçti hayalat ile bîhab" are also counted among his well-known works.

His view of music reflects the balanced outlook of an artist trained in two separate traditions. He argued that Turkish music should benefit from Western music, and that the musical edifice of the future could be built upon the new face that would emerge in this way. Yet he insisted that in turning toward these innovations the essence of Turkish music must never be compromised. The effort to bring the makam tradition of the East together with the method of the West was one of the central pursuits of his generation, and Mûsâ Süreyyâ embodied it concretely both in his compositions and in the curriculum of the institution he directed.

His Final Years

Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey, who never married, is remembered as a man who devoted his life to music and to his students. Even after leaving the directorship because of his heart condition, he did not give up his classes at the Istanbul Conservatory and in the high schools. His father, Giriftzen Âsım Bey, had fallen ill and died in February 1929 in Istanbul, where he had come from Amasya on a visit, and had been buried in the Merkezefendi Cemetery. Mûsâ Süreyyâ died of a heart attack at his home in Lâleli on 2 December 1932 and was buried in the Merkezefendi Cemetery, where his father lay. He was only forty-eight years old at the time of his death.

His Siblings and the Family's Artistic Circle

The fact that a significant number of Giriftzen Âsım Bey's twenty-four children turned to the arts means that Mûsâ Süreyyâ was no isolated exception but the most visible member of a large family of artists. Among his siblings, Cevat Âsım Bey was a musician, Âsım Yücesoy a radio performer, Nihal Erkutun a pianist and composer, and Selahattin Yücesoy a music teacher. The family's surname is Yücesoy, and some of the siblings became known under this name.

Muazzez Kurtoğlu (also known as Muazzez Lutas) was born in Amasya, entered the Ankara State Conservatory in 1936, was among the first graduates of its theatre department, appeared on stage for many years with the State Theatres and from the 1960s onwards also acted in films. Her year of birth is given as 1920 in some sources and 1922 in others. The artistic tradition continued into the next generation as well: the singer and stage actress Işıl Yücesoy and the actor Cem Kurtoğlu are grandchildren of Giriftzen Âsım Bey. Reaching from a musical household founded in Amasya to the stages, conservatories and radio of Istanbul and Ankara, this family is one of the most striking examples of the point where the city's cultural history intersects with the artistic life of Istanbul.

Chronology

1884: Born in Üsküdar, Istanbul, the son of Giriftzen Âsım Bey.

1883 / 1900: His father Âsım Bey was exiled to Amasya because of his closeness to Müşir Fuad Paşa (the date varies by source).

1908: With the proclamation of the Constitutional Monarchy, Âsım Bey returned to Istanbul and to his post in the fire brigade.

1910: Sent to Berlin by the state to study music; graduated from the Prussian Royal Academy and the Stern Conservatory.

1916: Âsım Bey founded, in his home in Amasya, the circle that would later take the name Amasya Music Society.

1917: The Dârülelhân opened for the first time in Şehzadebaşı on 1 January.

1919: In April he set to music Cemal Edhem Yeşil's poem "Vatan"; the work later took the name Mülkiye March.

1923: The Dârülelhân reopened for the second time on 14 September; Mûsâ Süreyyâ was appointed its director (1924 in some sources).

1924-1926: Seven issues of the Dârülelhân Mecmuası were published.

1926: The teaching of Turkish music was abolished by a decision dated 9 December.

1927: On 22 January the institution took the name Istanbul Music Conservatory.

1929: His father Giriftzen Âsım Bey died in Istanbul in February.

1930-1931: Left the directorship because of a heart condition but continued teaching.

1932: Died at his home in Lâleli on 2 December; buried in the Merkezefendi Cemetery.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Cem Eroğul, "Mülkiye Marşı Üzerine Kısa Bir Değinme", Mülkiye Dergisi, vol. 25, no. 231, 2002, pp. 7-8.
  • Aydın İlik, "Seksenüç Yıllık Mülkiye Marşı", Mülkiye Dergisi, vol. 26, no. 233, 2002, pp. 273-276.

Other sources

  • Nuri Özcan, "Mûsâ Süreyyâ Bey", TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 31, Ankara 2020, pp. 225-226.
  • "Âsım Bey, Giriftzen", TDV Encyclopedia of Islam.
  • "Dârülelhan", TDV Encyclopedia of Islam.
  • "Ataman, Sadi Yaver", TDV Encyclopedia of Islam.
  • Articles "Musa Süreyya Bey", "Giriftzen Asım Bey", "Mülkiye Marşı", "Darülelhan" and "Muazzez Kurtoğlu", Turkish Wikipedia. tr.wikipedia.org
  • Baki Süha Ediboğlu, Ünlü Türk Bestekârları, Istanbul 1962, pp. 169-175.
  • M. Nazmi Özalp, Türk Mûsikîsi Tarihi, II, pp. 181-183.
  • Yılmaz Öztuna, Büyük Türk Mûsikîsi Ansiklopedisi, II, p. 70.
  • Gönül Paçacı, "Kuruluşunun 77. Yılında Dârülelhân ve Türk Musikisinin Gelişimi I", Tarih ve Toplum, XXI/121 (1994), pp. 48-55.

Online sources