Cinuçen Tanrıkorur

Cinuçen Tanrıkorur — Biography

Born in Istanbul on 20 February 1938, Cinuçen Tanrıkorur was introduced to music by his uncle Mecdinevin Tanrıkorur, a former student of Münir Nurettin Selçuk, and took up the oud through his mother's influence, composing his first pieces at the age of fourteen. He graduated from the Italian Lyceum in Istanbul, studied architecture, and at twenty-two joined Istanbul Radio as a musician.

After settling in Ankara, he worked as a government architect while directing the traditional-music section of Ankara Radio for many years and teaching at Selçuk University. He also chaired the TRT commission that reviewed works submitted for broadcast, and, drawing on the influence of Yorgo Bacanos as well as the legacies of Ûdî Nevres and Şerif Muhittin Targan, developed a distinctive oud style close to the tanbur tradition; a method he wrote for the instrument was honored with a TRT prize.

A composer of some 505 works, Tanrıkorur devised the Şedd-i sabâ, Zâvil-aşiran and Gülbûse makams, and is regarded, after Münir Nurettin Selçuk, as the composer who set the largest number of Yahya Kemal's poems to music, alongside many settings of verses by Feyzi Halıcı. In 1986 he became the first Turkish artist to have an LP produced by French state radio. He died of cancer on 28 June 2000, at the age of 62.