Central Europe fought the Turk but appropriated some of his music in the form of the ‘Turkish march’. Some famous examples of this have enjoyed a fresh outing by being played on electronic gadgets of one sort or another. Beethoven’s march from The Ruins of Athens is a favourite demo tune on keyboards, for example. And at Christmas we were given a hand-held game (the idea is to join up pieces to form an electrical circuit) which plays Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca from the piano sonata K331 when the circuit is complete.
What is it about Turkish marches that lends itself to this sort of treatment? It must be the rather jingly, abrupt style, deriving from the percussion-heavy janissary bands that inspired them, that transfers well to electronic reproduction.