Recovering Disembodied Spirits: Teaching Movement to Musicians
By Kathryn Woodard
Published in British Journal of Music Education

Understanding physical movement is an integral part of learning to make music. This article presents the action research that the author has pursued while teaching movement to musicians. The narrative provides a theoretical underpinning for the teaching practices discussed. It provides examples of musicians’ movement with analyses of the anatomical structures involved, and it discusses the influences of bodily perception on observing and learning movement (e.g. the body map). The implications of the study are to provide a somatic foundation for music education and thereby to enhance the understanding of music as embodied experience.

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Music Mediating Politics in Turkey: The Case of Ahmed Adnan Saygun
By Kathryn Woodard
Published in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

As a proponent of musical reforms following the founding of the republic in 1923, Ahmed Adnan Saygun became a figurehead of Turkish nationalism, and his music came to represent the reform-era political ideology that sought closer ties with Europe. In conjunction with compositional strategies that reflected reform rhetoric, performances of his music at several high-profile venues served to mediate political alliances with and beyond Europe. In this essay I discuss the contexts of four performances, two of the opera Özsoy and two of the oratorio Yunus Emre, and how they enable Saygun’s music to establish or solidify alliances with Iran, the post-Soviet republics of central Asia, the United Nations (UN), and the Vatican. By contextualizing Saygun’s compositional style, particularly the practice of pastiche, and by analyzing the presenting, promoting, and reviewing strategies for the performances, I establish a framework for considering the role that music, specifically music performance, plays in mediating politics in Turkey.

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Western Music in Turkey from the 19th Century to the Present
By Kathryn Woodard
Published in New Music Connoisseur

From works such as Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio and Beethoven’s The Ruins of Athens many music listeners are familiar with the practice of evoking the sound of Turkish music, specifically music of the Janissary corps, within European works of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. What is less known in the West is that shortly after the alla turca style had reached its peak in Europe, Western music also made its way to Turkey, as a substitute, in fact, for the Janissary music that Europeans had come to associate with the Ottoman Empire. This turn of events was the result of Sultan Mahmud II’s decision in 1826 to abolish the Janissary corps after decades of previous attempts by his predecessors at reforming the Ottoman army with little success. Mahmud’s goal was to form a new army along European lines and this included forming a European military band to replace the music of the Janissary corps.

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