Haluk Yücel's inventory of Amasya songs gives the name "Yüce dağ", high mountain, on two separate rows, and the two rows indicate two different types. This work, recorded under the short name, stands among the long songs (uzun hava) and the metre table places it under free metre. "Yüce dağ başında koyun güderken", a little higher up, is classed as a kırık hava, with a nine-beat metre. Yücel keeps the two as separate works; about the long song itself he gives nothing beyond its name, type and metre.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; there is no long song of this name in the Amasya section of the TRT repertoire
  • Region: Amasya (district not stated)
  • Type: uzun hava, long song (Yücel 2018, Table 5, p. 380)
  • Metre: free (Yücel 2018, Table 6, p. 384)
  • Mode (makam): not recorded
  • Source performer and collector: not shown
  • Place and date of collection: unknown
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Link: no TRT link exists; Yücel's article

Lyrics

In Yücel's table the long song's name is limited to two words; whether it is a line or a title attached to the piece is not clear. No known publication prints its words or its notation. Since "yüce dağ" opens the first line of a great many songs in folk poetry, it is not possible to guess the text from the name either.

Collections and Variants

One long-song text opening "yüce dağ başında", on top of the high mountain, has been published with an Amasya attribution: the piece that a team sent by the Ankara State Conservatory put on disc from Osman Samsun on 4 July 1943, in Amasya, and entered on its card under the heading "Bozuk". An eight-line text opening with almost the same line has also been published in an online archive of folk songs under the Amasya region; the two witnesses are discussed together on the Yüce Dağ Başında Bir Ciz page. This is the only Amasya text that matches Yücel's long song in type. Since Yücel does not show his source, however, it cannot be documented that the two names belong to the same melody. Yüce Dağ Başında Koyun Güderken, a kırık hava, is a separate song and is kept apart in Yücel's table too.

Story

Whose voice the long song carries, and after what event it was sung, no written tale relates. The name offers no lead: it goes no further than a high mountain.

Musical Features

Of the 89 Amasya songs he examined, Yücel counts seven as long songs and places them at the very end of the type table. "Yüce dağ" is the fifth name in this short series; "Üç Gün Önce Gördüm" comes before it and "Dağlar dağladı beni anam" after it. That all seven sit under "free" in the metre table is consistent with Yücel's definition of the long song as a melody not bound to a metre. Of the melody's makam, range or melodic course the article says nothing at the level of the single song.

Performers and Recordings

For the long song itself no singer's name has come down, and no disc or radio recording is documented. Osman Samsun's 1943 performance survives as the A side of the conservatory archive's disc no. 1106; no link can be made between that disc and the long song Yücel lists. Amasya's other long songs, alongside its folk songs, get fuller treatment where the region is surveyed as a whole: The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources