Turkish Belly Dance
Text Source
N/A
Music
Don "Orfeo" Rechtman
Instrumentation
Simple piano
Sheet Music
(To copy the score to your computer, right-click the link and select "Save target as... ".)
Piano Score PDF
Sibelius Score SIB
Recording
Piano MIDI (.MP3 1MB)
Video
Piano MIDI with score (MP4 3MB)
I dined at a Turkish restaurant in 1985 in Chicago, and enjoyed the live band and belly dancer. (I still remember the belly!) Unique to Turkish music are microtonal invervals such as eighth tones. This did not stop me from attempting to emulate the musical style within the twelve-tone system, and that resulted in this dance.
For a long time, I was confused by the scale. Although in the key of one sharp, it was a C sharp instead of an F sharp, and the tonal center was around E. This did not fit any traditional Western tonal scale or mode, but after much deliberation, I realized that, as it was in a Turkish style, it must be in the key of Asia minor!