Zuhâl

In November 2024, I completed my piece Zuhâl for piano quartet and analog synthesizer, which describes a very personal journey for me. It was impossible for my never-ending passion for space since childhood- perhaps obsession would be a more accurate description- to not sprout again in 2023 with the telescope we bought. I spent the entire summer of 2023 trying to calibrate its focus, observing the apartment roo ops, pigeons and chimneys during the day, and trying to find my way in the deep space at night. (The Moon, which hovers beside our planet like a gi for those new to astro-observation, is a great way to practice.) But my biggest goal from the very beginning was to see Saturn's magnificent rings with my own eyes. It took me a long time to achieve it, but it le behind a memory that I remember as one of the most emotional and important moments of my life seeing a gas giant about 1.2 billion kilometers away from our planet as the size of a fingernail from our home window, and being reminded again how small we are in the universe. As I gained more experience with my new telescope, I observed and photographed Jupiter and its moons, and some stars like Sirius, but for me- perhaps because it is more difficult to observe and photograph than others because of the distance- Saturn has always held a special place. I think the reason why it fascinated the earliest astronomers in history as much as it does those of us living in the 21st century is that it is distant and mysterious. Since Uranus and Neptune were difficult to spot with the naked eye, and Saturn was thought to be the last planet in the Solar System at the time, ancient cosmologists in Anatolia must have been similarly impressed when they named this planet “Zuhâl star”, meaning “the distant one”. In this music, I tried to describe my adventure of observing Saturn, a distant and mysterious planet, even if it is a very big step for me and a small step for humanity.

Ceren Türkmenoğlu, violin

Tuğçe Baydar, viola

İrem İlayda Canduran, cello

Erberk Eryılmaz, piano

Berfin Deniz Çarıkcıoğlu, analog synthesizer