The sounds and cultural meanings of the clarinet: A study on musical perception

The aim of this research is to compare the musical sensations of clarinet players in the Aegean, Thrace and Elazığ, where the clarinet is identified with local music, within a cultural framework. The study group of the research consists of 15 artists who play clarinet in Aegean, Thrace and Elazig and who voluntarily participated in the research. In this study, which was carried out with the phenomenology approach, one of the qualitative research methods, the clarinet players were asked to perform the piece called „High Minaret, Candles Burn‟ belonging to the Elazig region, and a semi-structured interview form with five open-ended questions prepared by the researcher was applied immediately after the performance of the piece. The questions in the interview form were directed to the participants by the researcher through face-to-face interview, zoom connection and video WhatsApp call methods, and video recordings of the interview process were taken with the consent of the artists and then the interviews were transcribed. NVIVO 12 package programme was used to analyse the data obtained during the interview process and evaluated by content analysis method. As a result of the research, the music culture of Elazığ region was evaluated as an extremely rich and unique music culture by the clarinet players in the Aegean and Thrace regions; the artists from Elazığ participated in the opinion about the rich melodic structure of the piece at a higher level than the Aegean and Thrace artists; It is seen that the artists in Elazığ give the most importance to the performance of the piece by being loyal to the spirit of Elazığ, reflecting the emotion, the story of the piece and using traditional performance techniques specific to the Elazığ region; while the artists from the Aegean Region pay less attention to the melodic structure and rhythmic structure of the piece compared to the artists from Elazığ, instead they focus more on its form and story. The study also shows that there are different factors affecting the differences in clarinetists' behaviour and it does not seem possible to attribute the differences in clarinet performances to a single factor. Keywords: Music, Clarinet, Culture, Musical Sensation, Music Taste.