During a meeting in Paris, Kudsi Erguner, one of the greatest interpreters of the ney, shares his thoughts on transmission, memory, writing and improvisation in Ottoman art music since its origins.

Kudsi Erguner is a Turkish ney player and scholar, whose family has sung this ancestral reed flute from father to son since the court of the last Sultan. Musician, composer and teacher in Rotterdam and Venice, he has collaborated with Peter Brook, Maurice Béjart, Bartabas, Carolyn Carlson, Georges Aperghis and Marc Minkowski, and is currently working with Robert Wilson.

The ney is a special instrument in the history of Ottoman music, symbolizing the soul of the divine. You yourself come from a long line of musicians in the Sufi tradition. You inherited your knowledge from your father, Ulvi Erguner. How did you come to learn Ottoman art music? How is it transmitted? We often talk about the oral transmission of non-European music...
First of all, I'd like to point out that my father set up a school, so we can talk about personalizing the tradition, there's an Erguner style.
And no, there's no oral tradition!
The ethnologist wants to see non-European musical culture as a culture that has no science and is only transmitted orally. But this is not true. From the 5th to the 11th century, many books were written on music theory, often in connection with Greek philosophy. This began with Pythagoras and the mathematical calculation of specific intervals. There is both a mathematical and a speculative contribution. We've also had scores since the beginning of the 10th-11th centuries, written with letters (in the Arabic alphabet), ABCDEF.
But our relationship to written music is not the same as in Europe, where great precision is demanded, especially from the 18th century onwards, if it is to be played by symphony orchestras. For us, writing is above all a memory aid. We memorize the music and only consult the score to remember certain passages.

So we knew Byzantine writing, for 80-90% of the repertoire.
Then Dimitri Cantemir, a Moldavian prince who lived in Istanbul and was welcomed by the sultan at the palace where he was taught music, transcribed over 350 instrumental works from the 16th and 17th centuries, according to a personal alphabetical system of notation, known today as Cantemir writing.
Then came Hamparsum Limonciyan, an Armenian theorist and musician from Istanbul, who used Armenian neumatic* writing.
Finally, in the 18th century, a new notation was introduced by Giuseppe Donizetti (Gaetano's brother), a band musician in the Italian army who also resided at the court of Sultan Mahmoud, where he organized concerts and welcomed celebrities such as Franz Liszt.
At first, it didn't work. Until my parents' generation, we used Armenian notation, but after 1940-45, we started writing with staves.

How do you fit in with the other musicians?
To put it simply, in our writing, we don't change keys, and therefore pitches. We decide together which key we're going to play in, and everyone knows how to transcribe immediately. That's always a problem when I play with Europeans!

Can you explain what maqâms, or models, are, and what taqsims, or improvised parts, are ?
In the East, we have this system called maqâm. In this modal system, which organizes the intervals between each note and at the same time gives the feeling associated with each mode, there is no pitch, whereas in Europe the sound is fixed in the scale (tempered diatonic).
What's important for us is the relationship with sounds.
In contemporary music, it's even different. A few years ago, I played a piece by John Cage, with a Japanese flute. Cage draws graphs and you're free to travel between the notes. It was the same with Nicolas Frize, who wrote for the ney, but only in a graphic way. Then there was Georges Aperghis. We're very good at deciphering this kind of graphic score!
As far as improvisation is concerned, there are two kinds: rhythmic and non-rhythmic. First of all, there's a memory full of melodies. Each mode has its own ethos, its own character, and you have to get to know them by memorizing them. There are some 490 maqâms, each with its own intervals
Contemporaries often say it's a scale, but it's not.

What does it mean to you?
For me, it's a melodic itinerary that has very specific intervals and incorporates a hierarchy in these intervals.
From one maqâm to the next, the atmosphere changes. This is the seyir, the itinerary.
In all art music, there is a link with Ottoman literature; there are successive forms, rhythmic cycles. These forms form a suite, but the centerpiece of a suite can be 14 or 15 pages long! It's not a ditty, it's long, and therefore difficult to memorize.

So what are the differences between Ottoman and Western music?
There's a difference in the notation itself. The European tempered scale is called diatonic because it has 12 tones.
With us, it's different: the subtlety lost with equal temperament has been retained in the subtlety of the intervals. We have 7 thirds when you only have 2, for example. So you can play this music with a diatonic keyboard, but it's ugly, you recognize the melody but there's no interval...
I'll tell you a story: in 1932 in Cairo, Egypt, the Arab world met in congress to find out what to do: how to write music? It was decided to halve the diatonic scale, and so 24 intervals were created.
It was just as catastrophic
But it was preserved in the Arab world, in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, and even in North Africa. We Turks kept the 24 intervals to preserve this simplification, but not in a tempered way.

So what happened after 1932 in Turkey?
My generation thought in terms of maqâm, but today's generation has changed that.
A certain Arel(Hüseyin Sadeddin Arel, ed.), from Turkey's nationalist and fascist generation, who came from Western music, conceived, from 1943 onwards, a musical system that is still the most widely used today. He wanted to develop a theory of Ottoman music, but it was a terrible simplification.
Socrates - through the voice of Plato, in The Republic - said that if you want to see the transformation of a society, you have to see the transformation of music. But Atatürk did the opposite: he changed music to change society. To create a progressive society, a society copied from that of the Europeans. Whereas Europeans progressed century by century, we didn't!
So, at that time, conservatories were created, young people were sent to Germany, and this generation hated modal music.

A clean slate policy?
I think that any policy that interferes with cultural life is a disaster.

How did Ottoman art music live on?
The Ottoman heritage was not national. Turkish music was needed for Turks, so we jumped ahead of Islam. The idea of the republic was to rediscover pre-Islamic culture and marry it with Western music. We invited Bartók, Moussorgski and others; we wrote oratorios like Yunus Emre's for orchestra. But I think that was the wrong direction.
During this period, modal music was forbidden. My grandfather, for example, used to receive guests every Tuesday, or in tekke(Sufi establishments) : 200-300 people would get together at weekends, and music would be played. Others set up associations and university choirs. As a high-school student, I used to go to them, and that's where I learned to practice.

Against this backdrop of revolution and counter-revolution, what happened in Turkey?
Around 1976-77, the first Turkish music conservatory was opened. But I'm against this idea: music has no nationality, it has to circulate. Who does Turkish music belong to?
We wanted to incorporate polyphony into the heritage of Ottoman music, to make music for orchestra, but it's often very kitsch!
People say that Ottoman music is monodic, but no, it's heterophonic. While playing the same melody, each interpretation is different. Everyone has their own version, with different variations and ornaments.
The fascists have unified everything, absolute unison. The singers breathe at the same time, it's cold, I was disgusted. I'm a bit of a reactionary (smile)!

You studied in London and Paris, starting out in architecture, while pursuing your career as a musician. How did the transition between the two cultures come about?
One day in 1972, when I was on a stopover in Paris, I ended up staying with a friend of my father's - my father had friends all over the place, in London and Paris, who were interested in Mevlevi music and who came to Turkey to meet him. This architect friend, Hervé Baley, and a young filmmaker, Pierre-Marie Goulet, took me in, and I was stuck there. I went on to study architecture and then musicology, all the while playing in concert or for the radio. I met musicians from all walks of life. When I listen to Indian, Arab or Balkan music, that's my world too. Political borders are much more restricted than cultural ones.

How do you work with artists from different cultures?I've initiated a lot of projects, but not the kind of "fusion" projects we see today. Music that comes together has to be close to each other. For the Taj Mahal record, I played with Indians.
I also collaborated with flamenco musicians, because we have a lot in common: from the 7th to the 15th centuries, Andalusia was Muslim. It was a fascinating project, linked to the philosopher Ibn Arabi Sufi, who was born in Murcia and came to Konya, in southern Turkey. He died in Damascus in 1240. I found a book of his poems and wrote the music for the show L'Orient de l'Occidentwhich we performed at the Festival Grec in Barcelona in 1994.
And then I composed a lot: for the Mahabharata by Peter Brook, for Peter Gabriel, but also for Maurice Béjart, Didier Lockwood, Jean-Michel Jarre; I've worked with Tony Gatlif, Bartabas(Lever de soleil) and Markus Stockhausen (Gazing Point). I've also worked with a number of Turkish artists, such as theater directors Mehmet Ulusoy and Genco Erkal, and pianist Fazil Say.
My contemporaries are often prejudiced, thinking that I play traditional music because I play the ney; if I played the piano, they'd say it was contemporary. It's the instrument that creates the listening experience.
I see myself as a contemporary who creates projects that evoke tradition.

You currently teach at CODARTS, Rotterdam's University of Performing Arts, and have created a Bîrûn ensemble at the Fondazione CINIin Venice. How is ney taught today? How do you pass on this knowledge?
I teach ney, but I don't consider myself a ney teacher: I teach music first and foremost. For example, in Rotterdam, I have a Chinese student who plays the erhu, a one-string violin, another who plays the electric guitar, another the oud... I don't teach them ney technique, but maqâm.

Who are these students? And what are they looking for?
There are lots of Greeks, Syrians, French, a young Dutch girl who plays the harp.
I'll tell you another story: in the 1970s, I gave a concert at Saint-Merri church in Paris. Three days later, a young man came knocking at my door (there was no other way of reaching people in those days!) and said: "I play the oboe and I teach at the Conservatoire, I'm the 1st oboist in the Orchestre de Paris; I've seen you play on your own without a score for an hour, but my classmates and I can't play without a score! That's what I want to learn. He was looking for a soloist's identity, a soloist's path.
And indeed, many of these young people are in this quest for memory. Except for the Greeks, who already have this practice: they've been told they're Europeans, but in fact they're also Anatolians, and they come to me to rediscover their history.
There are young people of all nationalities who are interested in maqâms, but among them, very few young Turks. I myself play very little in Turkey.

You give concerts all over the world, and in 2016 you were recognized as a UNESCO Artist for Peace and Dialogue between Cultures, dedicating your career to keeping alive the musical heritage of your native Turkey. Do you think about your own heritage?
There are all these students, my ensembles, theBîrûn Ensemble, theLâmekân Ensemble... That's my heritage!

Interview by Sandrine Maricot Despretz

Listen to France Culture, in Chrétiens d'Orient, "From Byzantium to Istanbul, with Kudsi Erguner"

*neumatic: A sign of musical notation in plainsong, grouping several notes on a single syllable, particularly at the end of a word.