Ahmed Adnan Saygun’s Opera “Őzsoy” — a Cultural-Political Project and an Artistic Event in 20th Century Turkish Music

In 1934 in Ankara the world premiere of Ahmed Adnan Saygun’s opera Őzsoy took place. The initiator of its creation was the first president of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatűrk. He came forward as a peculiar curator who accompanied the project at various stages of its preparation: from the choice of the poetical source (the Persian epos Shahnameh by Ferdowsi) and the definitions of the chief ideas in his interpretation to assigning the librettist (Münir Hayri Egeli) and the composer, whom 27-year-old Ahmed Adnan Saygun was chosen to be. The idea of the creation of national opera fit organically into the context of Atatűrk’s reformist endeavors, however the project of Őzsoy was tinged not only with cultural, but also with political tones: the premiere of the opera, timed to the official visit of Iranian leader Reza Shah Pahlavi, was called to be conducive to the strengthening of Turkish-Iranian contacts. In the opera’s plotline, the theme of the mutual relations of the Turkish and the Iranian peoples is played out. Saygun, an adherent of Atatűrk’s reformative ideas, at that time a scholarship recipient of the Turkish Republic and a recent graduate of the Schola cantorum in Paris, turns in Őzsoy to the experience of European opera, but interprets it individually. This is testified by the formal structure and the dramaturgy (a free, at times montage connection of the musical and the talking episodes, a through type of intonational development and a conditional “number” structure), and the style; at the same time, Turkish national features show themselves through the Western European foundation, which is especially perceptible in the rhythmic and the timbral aspects. Such an intercrossing of the traditions of the East and the West has become one of the characteristic tendencies in 20th century Turkish music.