“I love the feeling of finishing a piece and finally getting to step into rehearsals. During the process, I’m absolutely fine to be on my own and write and deliver it — and then get the rush of excitement in the room.”
Elif Karlidag
Elif Karlıdağ is a versatile composer who works with acoustic and electronic mediums often within orchestral, media and stage work settings. Studying a Masters in composition at Dokuz Eylül University State Conservatory under Istemihan Taviloglu followed by time at Guildhall School of Music and Drama under Julian Philips on the Opera Makers course, her work explores a plethora of non-standard instrumentation, the interweaving of electronic elements into operatic works, medieval and renaissance themes, as well as graphic notation, within visual and collaborative endeavours. Elif is a 2025/26 Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composer with the London Symphony Orchestra, and was a 2024/25 Philharmonia Composers’ Academy composer; her work has also been platformed by Royal Festival Hall, Kings Place, Three Choirs Festival, and Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival. Elif co-founded ELSE (East London Sound Ensemble), an electro-acoustic group dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices in the contemporary classical music scene.
Elif is currently working on a commission with CoMA as well as a piece for the ENO Engage Programme. In amongst performances by The Carice Singers at Spitalfields Music Festival and the CoMA performance at Keele University in August, Georgie West sat down with Elif to discuss ancient influences, use of graphic notation, collaborative methods of working and operatic explorations…
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Georgie/PRXLUDES: We’re chatting ahead of the second performance of your piece ‘Sïnglïyï ïr’ for The Carice Singers at Spitalfields Music on the 1st July, can you tell me more about the inspirations behind the piece?
Elif Karlidag: Yes, Spitalfields is coming up on Tuesday1 with the Carice Singers. They have performed it before, so it’s not going to be the first time, and they are so good. I feel quite comfortable and I don’t have any fears about that, except the fact that — I don’t know if that happens to you — whenever somebody performs your music, you kind of get nervous… It’s like being exposed! It is a very strange feeling. They are a fantastic ensemble, so I’m sure that it’s going to be absolutely fine.
‘Sïnglïyï Ir’ is inspired by the ancient Issyk inscription: an undeciphered text discovered on a silver bowl in Kazakhstan, thought to date back to the 4th century BC. I was fascinated by the mystery surrounding this script, and chose to use Zaur Hasanov’s version, which suggests it may be an early form of ancient Turkic language. I wanted to create a sound world that feels timeless and ritualistic — evoking a sense of connection to a forgotten voice while giving singers freedom to shape its meditative flow through breath and resonance.
And you also have your commission for the 2025 CoMA Summer School at Keele University on 17-23 August 2025, can you tell me more about what this entails?
Definitely — they are going to perform it on August 22nd. It is a bit of a different thing because CoMA usually performs concert music, but I wanted to focus more on instrumental theatre. I based the idea around Paracelsus — a Swiss physician and alchemist [from the] 16th Century — who is seen as an early pioneer of modern medicine for linking the mind and body in understanding disease. He studied the dancing mania, a strange phenomenon where groups of people would dance uncontrollably for days, and he divided it into three types which he called chorea imaginativa, chorea lasciva, and chorea naturalis.
Chorea imaginativa was caused by the mind and linked to hysteria or mass psychosis. Chorea lasciva came from uncontrolled desire and excess, showing how he believed wild dancing could be driven by lust or indulgence. Chorea naturalis was due to physical conditions in the body such as nerve or brain disorders. Today, these ideas roughly connect to what we now call psychogenic movement disorders and mass hysteria for imaginativa, impulse control or manic states for lasciva, and neurological conditions like Sydenham’s chorea or Huntington’s disease for naturalis. I took these ideas and made a scene out of each of them. The best part is the direction from Loré Lixenberg — she’s incredible — and it is definitely going to have some weird, fun and entertaining elements. I’m going to be there for the whole week for the rehearsal, so I’m definitely going to have fun!
The first scene — Chorea imaginativa — is inspired by dance choreographers’ written dance notation. In the same spirit, I created a graphic notation that shapes both the music and the movement on stage. The piece begins with one performer (like one patient becoming ill) and gradually spreads like a contagion to the rest of the ensemble. So I expect that for everyone — vocalists or instrumentalists — they can do something with that. In the second scene, I have a very rhythmic structure that is unpitched, which means that whether you are an instrumentalist or a vocalist you can do something. I can expect that there’s going to be choreography in between them.
The last scene — Chorea naturalis — is the type of chorea Paracelsus believed came from physical causes in the body, such as nerve or brain disorders. Inspired by illnesses like Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s, this scene is written for four soloists who play a four-part piece while the rest of the ensemble takes on the role of the illness itself. Their bodies show small, shaking movements that begin almost invisibly and then grow and spread across the stage as the music develops.
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These ideas surround graphic score formats and writing for amateur ensembles, which involves creating a shared vocabulary that translates across disciplines — demonstrating that you are tapping into musical formats that everybody can contribute to no matter their background…
That’s my aim. And because it is a piece based around movement, I was researching how choreographers notate or write their dancing choreographies and was heavily influenced by that. Although it is instrumentalists, there’s going to be some sort of aspect of physical movement which Loré knows more about at this time.
Alongside CoMA, you are also writing a new children’s operatic piece for ENO Engage as part of their Finish This… 2025/26 programme. Can you tell me a little more about this and how you approach community projects?
So that is a children’s opera and it is an animation. The brief was [to create] an animation film for children to learn composition, so I thought that I wanted to do a piece about climate change. I have been working with librettist Hazel Gould; and because it’s for children, we wanted them to feel connected with it, so the piece takes place in the school. The premise is that the child is in school and when it’s time to leave she hears a bird. She forgets her bag at school, goes back in to get it, hears the bird and begins to follow it. The bird takes her to Mother Nature — and the piece is subsequently a conversation between Mother Nature and the child about the state of the world now, and what we can do to save our planet in the future. The aim is that the children will watch the animation and then they will write a final scene using graphic notation. They will then record what they have done and send it to us and we will have thousands of these to listen to!
I was super open to everything on this project and I wanted to diversify with the instrumentation, so I picked three unconventional instruments. I like to work with unconventional instruments a lot. We have an instrument called a biwa. It’s an old Japanese instrument; it’s really cool, it reminds me of an oud or guitar. It is amazing that the ENO found a performer in the UK because ordinarily they are very rare, even in Japan. Then we had the Indian tabla, which was very easy to source. And then we have the Fujara, a Slovakian flute which you have to play standing up. The shepherds used to play it in the mountains to call their animals or to communicate between each other, and it’s basically this massive flute that makes amazing multiphonics.
At the moment, we have been filming all the accompanying educational videos. I am very excited about the whole project and I hope the children will like it in September when it gets released to the schools.
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Your work explores many different facets of the compositional art-form ranging from installation work, film and documentaries, theatre and contemporary classical music. How did you get into composing and what do all these different elements mean to you as a composer?
When I was a teenager I studied piano; and at that time, in my head, I felt like I wasn’t creating. I was just playing the piano pieces that someone else had written. I wanted to do the creating myself. I then said to myself [that] I would study composition at university and did so. I always liked to create — I mean, that’s something that I can’t stop doing — it’s just there. Actually, when I was four, I wanted to become a scientist because I wanted to invent things… -laughs- Seriously, I was a weird child. So therefore, composing just naturally happened, in a very stubborn way…
With regard to composing for different things, it depends completely on the time and place. I mean, what I like the most is definitely stage work. I was led into more media work when I assisted Michael Nyman and I really like electronic music and the visual arts too. I think they’re all within me, and then when in the right space and time and there’s an opportunity, I tap into that part of me.
You have graphic score sketches on your website, is this a form of notation you naturally lean towards?
They are all sketches, but they are all aimed to be performed and played. I do lean towards more traditional notation as it is more welcome within my network at the moment. I just like exploring graphic notation because it’s fun and I love being able to touch it and create something tangible.
With the ENO project, most of it was written in standard notation; but the aim was to get the children to explore graphic notation, so that the children can see how I work with it. I really like when the creation starts with you, and then you pass it on to the performer and they carry on creating. I really, really enjoy that when they are open to it. So most of the time, that’s the aim. What I do — which sometimes can get a bit confusing — is that I don’t write performance notes. I prefer not to unless they really need them, so that it’s just completely open and they can translate whatever they want. Strangely, most of the time it comes across quite close to what I wanted. It then really depends on the performer whether they are comfortable with working in that way. It’s completely about their state of mind, as well; it’s nothing about the skill, it’s just a personal thing. I really enjoy extended technique and strange sounds too. It’s very difficult for performers to learn to make a beautiful sound, and then suddenly, you want them to make this sound that they weren’t allowed to make for a very long time. It’s all about making your performers feel comfortable.
Can you tell me about your experiences regarding collaborative operatic writing?
So I have worked on four operas now: The Reborns with Stanley Lawson for Opera Makers, the ENO piece at the moment, then The Game with librettist Sam Redway and The Sea in collaboration with Laila Arafah. With Laila, it was the first time I had co-composed something and it was brilliant. I think because Laila is such a lovely person, we worked really well. Everybody was very open and it was fantastic to work with her.
With the librettists, as with everything, it’s a very personal endeavour. One way of working with one won’t necessarily work with another. So it’s really dependent on how the other person likes to work and collaborate. But I really enjoy collaborating with people. I like doing films and collaborating with the director. I think it’s really entertaining, but obviously working with people can be very difficult as well! But I guess if you want to make a piece together, everybody does try to give space and give ideas to each other.
With Laila, we had the libretto and we decided which part of the libretto we each wanted to do. We wanted to avoid sounding like two different musical voices that had been put together, so we co-composed two scenes — Laila doing half and I the other half — and then swapping over for the second scene. This ensured a mutual sound world. With the characters, we didn’t divide them between us. Laila sent to me what she imagined a character to sound like, and then I tried to match in my scene the voice that she created. It was an interesting exercise for me. Funnily enough, I don’t think we were ever in the same room as each other. But that’s very easy to do with composition, isn’t it? That’s what you do in the media world, sending material, receiving edits, writing music and sending it back. You don’t see each other’s faces in the real world, you communicate on zoom and from a screen.
I am very used to being in my own space and don’t mind that at all. It’s really nice to have conversations with people in real life. But I love the feeling of finishing a piece and finally getting to step into rehearsals. During the process, I’m absolutely fine to be on my own and write and deliver it — and then get the rush of excitement in the room.
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And in The Game, can you tell me a little more about the role of electronics and multimedia in your compositional practice and how this informed your operatic writing?
In The Game, it was fun to use multimedia and electronics as it was a video game in itself. I have a tendency to enjoy the very old and the very new. This one was a very small-scale stage work; we had four singers, one clarinettist, and then the conductor also played the piano in one scene. I had the idea to do it like a Monteverdi opera; and there’s one scene where a counter-tenor sings a very old aria antiche. The rest is heavily influenced by 1980’s video-game music.
I had written that very old music scene first, and then I turned it into this 80s video game music tune that was constantly playing throughout — even when the audience were coming in — and all the electronics were subsequently based on that. I wanted to disturb the audience slightly — especially in the cockfighting scene — and I used a heavy techno track. People were loving it; even if the subject matter was quite heavy and dystopian, it seemed as though people were having a really good time!
It was based around the myth of Sisyphus, who is the game “player”. And basically, the idea centered around the whole myth. When I was thinking about the video game players, I thought that they don’t just play for the fun of it, they don’t play just to finish the game. I thought this resonated a lot with Albert Camus, who wrote a book about the myth of Sisyphus. In the book, he talks about the meaninglessness of it all and how the next day will start and everything will fall all over again. So we did this first person video game where the Sisyphus character controls the game player and talks about how everything is meaningless. It gives some tasks throughout the opera, but the tasks end up not meaning anything. The opera was also filled with messages about society being locked within digital media culture, but with a more comedic twist, and that alongside the opera singing and the electronics… People did really enjoy it!
What do you think of the accessibility of opera in general and the presence, as you mentioned, of the old versus the new?
In general, opera is an amazing form. I think it is seen as elitist, which it sometimes can be. But I have a big appreciation for the old operatic tradition as well as the new. So for me, it works. I know that for many people, it’s overwhelming and like it belongs to a class, but it doesn’t have to be like that. There are composers and festivals that are doing really good work to open it up like Philip Venables and Tête-à-Tête. The operatic practice is being explored in a very novelistic way, which is something I think matches today’s world. People just need to go and see it all.
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Learn more about Elif and her practice at:
- http://elifkarlidag.com/
- https://www.instagram.com/elifkarlidag_
- https://soundcloud.com/elifkarlidag
References:
- Ned Pennant-Rea, ‘The Dancing Plague of 1518’ (2018), Public Domain Review
- Sydenham’s chorea, Royal Society of Paediatrics and Child Health
- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). London: Penguin Classics
Footnotes:
- This interview took place ahead of The Carice Singers’ concert on 1st July 2025 at Spitalfields Festival. ↩︎
