Alla Turca, the Origin of the main Percussion Instruments in Symphony Orchestras and the Romanian Principalities

Abstract

Alla turca, percussion instruments of a symphony orchestra and the Romanian Principalities are, at first glance, a strange and inappropriate combination of words. Yet, if one goes deeper into the subject, one may easily find a silver thread running through them all, which facilitates the understanding of these combinations of words and especially the reason for their combination. In this case, the culture of mobility is extremely visible and interesting. Alla turca was a cultural phenomenon specific to Western Europe since the 17th century, which was due to the interest shown by Europeans in the oriental culture gradually brought to Europe by the Ottomans. The increasingly powerful Ottoman Empire, its incursions towards the West and frequent military, diplomatic and cultural contacts piqued the Europeans’ interest in the exoticism of the new world with which they came in contact, music being one of the main areas of influence. This is due to Ottoman military music (mehterhane), consisting mainly of percussion musical instruments, which produced extremely loud music accompanying the Ottoman armies on the battlefield and supporting the efforts of the soldiers through its marches. At the same time, the effect of this music on their opponents was the complete opposite, as they were not used to such sonorities and were easily intimidated by it. The effectiveness of Ottoman military music proven on the battlefield and its physical appearance impressed the European monarchs who tried to imitate it in various forms and by various methods and implement it both in their armies and in their ceremonial music, as a symbol of political power, since the mehterhane was also a powerful political symbol in the Ottoman Empire. Starting from here, various European composers, the most important being Mozart, were also influenced by the exotic features of this music and by its novelty and used it in their own creations, at first playing it using Western musical instruments and then gradually adopting in the orchestra instruments specific to mehterhane, the so-called “Turkish drums”, thus developing the symphony orchestra to the form in which it is present today. As far as the Romanian Principalities are concerned, their connection with the elements mentioned above consists precisely in the fact that their geo-political location allowed the contact between the West and the East and the occurrence of alla turca influences, since the mehterhane had been present in the Romanian Principalities since the 15th century and foreign Western travellers crossing these regions listened to it and described it in their memoirs, making it known to the West, its most important promoter being Franz Joseph Sulzer.