Strategies of the Westernizationist for Coping with Oriental Music in the Process of Darülelhan

Darülelhan (‘The House of Sounds/Melodies’) was the first national music conservatory of the Ottoman Empire founded on the basis of European examples. During its founding years, the Jeune (Young) Turk opposition was in power over the Union and Progress Party, and the devastation of the First World War was under way. The Young Turk ideology was based on a radical transformation movement aimed at incorporating European civilization into the Ottoman world. We observed that supporters of this great transformation to Westernization display two main tendencies in terms of the politics they follow: one is total and the other is partial. Fans of total Westernization viewed European civilization as a whole and argued that it was impossible for Westernization to take place with a selective attitude. On the other hand, defenders of partial Westernization considered it enough to take only science and technology from the West while opposing the transformation of existing cultural characteristics. This article provides a comparative analysis for four official texts about the process of structuring Darülelhan penned between 1914 and 1926 from the perspectives of content, discourse, and ideology. Specifically focused on tasks and objectives, this analysis shows that a ‘gradual’ transformation during time period mentioned in ideological and discursive terms. As a result, the process that began with the discourse of partial Westernization was rapidly adapted to the goals of the total Westernizationists. In other words, the discourse that began with the goal of preserving and reviving Oriental/Ottoman/Turkish music resulted in first subjecting this music to a radical ‘evolution’ program using means and methods peculiar to European music, and then completely banning it from conservatory education