RESOUNDING ECHOES: From August 2022, Robert McCarney's regular series features little-known twentieth century classical composers.
PODCAST: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Classical Music and Visual Disability, including contributions from Charlotte Hardwick, Robert McCarney, Halida Dinova and Giuseppe Pennisi.
Taşbebek is a 1934 single act Turkish-language opera by twentieth century composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907-1991). It was one of a group of operas commissioned by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (circa 1881-1938), the first president of Turkey - now known as Türkiye - as part of his cultural transformation, and it was Saygun's second opera.
Taşbebek is just one of the many words hidden in my latest word search puzzle, below, provided here for your Sunday entertainment, similar to those which I've published here over the last few months. You may not know the meaning of some of these words, but which words could depend on your musical background. So while you attempt to solve the puzzle, why not try looking up those words that you don't know - for example Adaskin, Bomarzo, Claman, Mavra, Pelekis, Phantasmen or Zingarelli.
Just to remind you, with these puzzles, words can be hidden vertically, horizontally, diagonally and in retrograde.
The solution is complex as many letters are used multiple times, making these puzzles very dense, so only marking a line 'stroke' through the word is necessary. (Many commercial puzzles specify that each word should be circled when found; on these hand drawn puzzles, however, it is necessary just to stroke.)
My 'Find a word' puzzle Taşbebek is shown above. How many words can you find? If the puzzle is not visible, or if you can't see the letters in the puzzle clearly, then please click here. All of the words below are hidden in the puzzle above. If you can't see the list of words clearly, please click here. You may find it useful to print out the puzzle and the word list, so that you can mark the squares with a stroke and mark the words that you've already found.
It's also worth noticing that for words containing an accented letter, that letter will be shown in the puzzle without the accent and so could share a square with a non-accented letter from another word. In this puzzle, the words with accented letters are Carreño (the Venezuelan pianist, soprano, composer and conductor María Teresa Gertrudis de Jesús Carreño García, 1853-1917), Fauré (the French composer Gabriel Fauré, 1845-1924), Kvěch (the Czech composer and teacher Otomar Kvěch, 1950-2018), Lutosławski (the Polish composer and conductor Witold Lutosławski, 1913-1994) and, obviously, Taşbebek.
Good luck! Please let me know how you get on, via the Classical Music Daily contact page. You might also wish to suggest words - composers, compositions, musical terms etc - for a future puzzle.
Copyright © 25 February 2024
Allan Rae,
Calgary, Canada