Zeynep Gedizlioğlu: Kelimeler

»The goal is in the way.« That is roughly how Zeynep Gedizlioglu–in complete contrast to Josep Sanz’s open-ended approach to composing–formulated her situation in the last stages of composing Kelimeler. For she wanted the nascent piece to be clearly different from her earlier chamber works.
»Kelimeler became a work that, through conflict with itself, invents and defines its own «identity”, substance and content, distances itself from it and regains it. The way this conflict is carried out is connected to a search for relationships, connections and non-connections; for the obvious in the absent and vice versa. It is both a statement and a question, circling itself tirelessly with the same words and sentences, and the way out, through this insistent and insistently interrupted yet still turning circle, can be intuited and felt.”
Not the elaboration of a movement coming from an impulsive gesture, then; not the buildup of tension, no ornamental passages or rhythmic layering, and not the familiar instrumental agility.
Rather, »something with edges«–two contrary musical ideas, actions that are stopped by others, registral extremes, ruptures. Zeynep Gedizlioglu describes in the video, which was made while protests were going on at Taksim Square in Istanbul, why she does not like vocal arabesques or the direct emotionality of Arab pop music. Kelimeler is perhaps her reaction to that. The composer develops it from the character of the Turkish language, and she chose words of darkness, words of determination–yeter, »that’s enough«–to transfer her version of directness to music. A restless, raw, insistent piece.
»There’s no contrast. That’s what I find interesting about it. There’s no contrast or balance, or anything that makes the darkness go away. Or rather, there’s no compromise between darkness and darkness. There’s no light or white darkness, only a dark darkness. I love the fact that there’s no compromise.«