Composer
(B. 12th January 1924, Mersin – D. 1st September 2009,
Mersin). His full name was Mehmet Nevit Kodallı. He completed his elementary
and secondary education in Mersin. With the impact of his tendency to music
starting from his early ages, he participated to the exams of the Ankara State
Conservatory and he became the student of Necil Kâzım Akses. He graduated from
the department of composition and conductorship in the year 1947. The artist,
who participated in a European competition organized in the same year, won the
first place with a chorus work and a fugue he composed. Kodallı, who went to
Paris in 1948, attended to the class of composition of Arthur Honegger in the
Ecole Normale de Musique and received his diploma in 1951. He was assigned as
an academician at the Ankara State Conservatory when he returned to the
homeland in 1953. In the ceremony of the transfer of the corpse of Atatürk from
the Ethnography Museum to Anıtkabir in the same year, he performed the Atatürk
Oratoryosu that he composed from through poem of Cahit Külebi, for the first
time. He worked as the deputy music manager of the Ankara State Opera in the
years of 1955 – 1962 and he worked as the director of the same institution for
a while.
Kodallı, who was one of the
representatives of the second composer generation during the republic, made his
unique style accepted in the first years of his career with his experiments in
every type and style. However, after having found his personality, he couldn’t
show his renovator face because he maintained the same style with a
conservative insistence. In the compositions of Kodallı that were made with the
habitual tonal system, it was observed that national and regional elements were
used with a limited reflection. Especially in big forms such as opera and
oratorio, the melody and rhythm concepts were more directed to universal
habits. The modal tendency was almost none present.
Nevit Kodallı, who was given the
title of State Artist in the year of 1981, advanced to professorship in the
year of 1985. He enabled the opening of the Department of Composition within
the structure of the Çukurova University in the year of 1989. In the same year,
he founded the Polifonik Korolar Institution in Ankara. After having retired,
he moved to Mersin and he gave lessons at the Çukurova State Conservatory and
made the consultancy of the Mersin Filarmoni Institution. The artist was
awarded the “Gold Medal of the Honor Award” by the Sevda-Cenap And
Institution in 1997.
MAIN WORKS: Yaylı Çalgılar Dörtlüsü (T.N. Quartet
for Strings) (1946),
Yaylı Çalgılar Altılısı (T.N. Sextet for Strings) (1945-46), Süit (T.N.
Suite) (1946-47), Senfoni (T.N. Symphony) (1947-49), Sinfonietta
(1949), Piyano Sonatı (T.N. Piano Sonata) (1950), Atatürk, Epik Oratoryo (lyrics: Cahit Külebi, 1950), Van Gogh (lyrics: Bülent Sokollu -
Orhan Asena - Aydın Gün, 1954-55), Antigone (1958), Gılgamış (lyrics:
Orhan Asena, 1963).
