The instrument

The saz belongs to that vast family of long-necked lutes that was already depicted in Sumerian artworks and whose region of distribution corresponds to the Silk Road, extending from Japan to Eastern Europe. It was made by peasants, and its body, carved from the trunk of a mulberry tree, took on shapes that varied from one region to another. The “country” saz had no more than 10 or 12 frets (frets are strips, usually of metal, embedded in the neck, or fretboard, of the lute, giving the different notes of the scale), which limits its use to a few modes. The “urban” saz, however, is intended for multimodal music, and therefore has up to 23 or 24 frets.

In various cultures – Kurdish, Turkish, Armenian, Assyro-Chaldean and others – the saz is the instrument of the aşık, a sort of bard, at one and the same time poet, composer, musician and singer. It is also used to accompany türküs, ltraditional popular songs.

The course

At the first lesson, Cumali will take it upon himself to assess the level of each student and will then begin studies and exercises of scales in order to aid learning. For practice he will concentrate a lot on repetition of the movements, because he maintains that this is the best way to assimilate a score. The repertoire studied in the course will be varied (Turkish, baroque, renaissance, …) and will be chosen according to the level reached by the students, but also to match their expectations. The main objective of the course is to enable students to develop a certain musical autonomy. “Solfège” (musical theory) is not an essential requirement for this course.