An investigation of folk songs made polyphonic by Turkish Fives in terms of harmony understanding

This research aims to present the harmony understanding of the Turkish Fives in their polyphonic folk songs in choir system, and through pre-determined harmony sense, reveal the developmental stages of Turkish contemporary polyphonic music during the Republic era and the role of the Turkish Fives in this process. This study also intends to show how the musical transformation process in the framework of 'Music Revolution' affected the harmony perception of the Turkish Fives and how they reflected this to the folk songs which they made polyphonic in choir system. To do so, music culture and Turkish music culture were examined in terms of society-culture-art relations, Westernization efforts in music during the Ottoman Empire and the Republican Era were studied, and the lives of the Turkish Fives and their roles in the musical developments of the era were investigated. Besides, thirty-two folk songs which were made polyphonic by the Turkish Fives were analysed musically. This research is a qualitative study in which historical research and survey models were used. The collected data was depicted by content analysis. In addition, the numerical data obtained were digitized in the form of descriptive statistics, tables and graphs such as frequency and percentage by using SPSS 20 data analysis software. The findings obtained through the study suggest that the historical roots of Turkish music culture goes back to thousands of years ago, and that Turks kept developing their musical culture in every period and geography they lived, and that the musical developments of the late Ottoman Empire period redounded up Republican era and that the Turkish Fives played an important role regarding Music Revolution. Furthermore, it can be inferred from the research findings that the harmony conception of the composers in the folk songs made polyphonic by the Turkish Fives through choir arrangement was influenced by the political ideology of the period, the music education they received and contemporary music movements of the period, and that the composers were trying to build unique tonal chord structures and wanted to create a sense of solidarity and belonging among people by making polyphonic the folk songs they chose from different regions of Anatolia; and that they used tonal and modal elements in these songs; and also that they often used vertical and horizontal polyphony methods together and performed the sequence patterns such as pentatonic, whole tone, minor and major in their own style. Keywords: Turkish Fives, Turkish Folk Music, Turkish Music Culture, Harmony Understanding, Polyphony in Turkish Music, Music Revolution.