Quartet No.1 Op.27

Saygun was born in
the waning years of the Ottoman Empire and came of age just as the new Turkish Republic was being established. Like
many national composers of that era he was an avid researcher of his country’s
traditional folk music and he even took Bartók himself on a research tour in Anatolia in 1936. His legacy includes five operas, five
symphonies, five concertos, four string quartets, an oratorio on the Sufi
mystic Yunus Emre and many other works. Although Saygun’s quartets are steeped
in the European heritage, his inclusion of ideas derived from Turkish folk
music ensure his quartets stand out unmistakably when heard alongside other
European works.