KK 24 Eren Arın's "Sonat for Horn Trio" at the 9th Çanakkale Biennial September 20th, 2024

With the friendly support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation

KK 2024 - “Putting the KK Composers Cauldron into Türkiye’s Festivals"

Performed at the 9th Çanakkale Biennial September 20th, 2024
Opening Concert in Mahal Studio
https://www.canakkalebienali.com/?l=en


Organized by the Klasik Keyifler Music Association (a Turkish NGO)
http://www.klasikkeyifler.org/

Featuring
Troia Trio:
Eda Delikçi, violin
Senem Z. Ercan, piano
Koray Ay, horn

Sound: Turan Akkale
Visuals: Hüsam Süleymangil

Program Notes
This piece, financed with the friendly support of E.v. Siemens Musik Stiftung and
Chamber Music Exchange, is an 11-minute piece of music for horn trio, consisting of
three movements, in accordance with the traditional trio sonata structure in the neo-
classical style. The harmonic plan, the first of which is a major triad and the second is
based on an intense tone cluster contrast, determined the structure throughout the
music. In this context, the harmonic contrast in question manifests itself in the first
movement as a rather conventional sonata allegro (in the style of the First Viennese
School), while in the second movement it appears with a more formal understanding
that references the tone-centered styles of our era. The third movement presents the
same harmonic contrast in an energetic scherzo style. The practice of the performers
in the Second and Third Movements, who read the written texts indicated in the notes
aloud while playing, is not only a reference to the concept of Parlando determined by
the Classical Keyifler Music Association for their 2024 call, but also serves to make
more visible the historical/stylistic contrasts that form the core of this music in terms
of the content of the texts used, and the journey undertaken through a kind of parallel
construction between different historical stylistic periods and between the present and
the past as symbolized by them. In this context, the following passage from the work
of Aristotle (384-322 BC), considered the masterpiece of storytelling,

“Poetics” was used in the second movement: “But it is clear that things that happened in the past
were possible, because if they were impossible, they would not have happened.”
In the third movement, beyond the thematic reference to the famous Horn Trio by
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), considered the masterpiece of the Horn Trio literature,
the reference given to this masterpiece is reinforced with the words Hi Brahms-By
Brahms, which the performers are expected to say out loud at various points in the
music.
As a result, the musical adventure, which continues throughout the work through
references to different historical periods/styles but does not fit into a chronological
order in the historical plan, has gained a more hazy, grainy expression through the
texts used. In this way, the aim was to give the contrast provided in the harmonic
basis of music a more formal appearance.
E. A.

Eren Arın
Mustafa Eren Arın studied Composition and Turkish Makam Music Composition
with Emin Sabitoğlu, Mutlu Torun, Selahaddin İçli, Yavuz Özüstün and Ali Eral in
the composition department of ITU Turkish Music State Conservatory, which he
started in 1997 and graduated in 2003. While he was pursuing his Master's
Degree in Theory at ITU Music Advanced Research Center (MIAM) between 2003
and 2007, he continued his composition studies with teachers such as Kamran
İnce, Michael Ellison and Ruben Latour at the same institution. He graduated
from ITU Social Sciences Musicology and Music Theory Doctoral Program in
2014, to which he was accepted in 2008. In 2009, he went to the Estonian Music
Academy for 5 months as part of a student exchange program to study
composition with composer Toivo Tulev who is of the leading representatives of
Baltic Contemporary Music, and during these studies and in the following years,
the composer's music turned towards a style that can be roughly described as
"mystical expressionism"
. Arın's music is based on the "taksim" form, which
represents the improvisational performance tradition of Turkish Makam Music,
as its compositional essence. In his works, the composer investigates the timbral
possibilities of today's music, based on the highly flexible time/space fiction of
the taksim form.
Arın's works have been performed by his wife, ney player Ayça Arın, and other
musicians/music ensembles in various international/domestic academic and
artistic events, and he currently serves as a faculty member in the Department of
Composition and Orchestral Conducting at Kocaeli University State Conservatory,
Department of Music. The composer's works are included in the babelscores
catalogue. The composer is an active member of Besomder and klank.ist (a
collective of Istanbul-based composers).