MUSIC PERSIANA

Music 05-min

Music 04-1-min

Music 03-1-min

Music 02-1-min

Music 01-1-min

The material in this section is taken from the catalog of exhibition on the musical instruments of Iran, creator and curator architect Antonio Bianchini, held in Rome at the National Museum of Musical Instruments in the period from 5 to 20 April 2008 in collaboration between the aforementioned museum and that of Music in Tehran.

Introduction

Anthony Bianchini

Iran in the broadest sense of the Iranian plateau occupies a barycentric geographical area between Europe, Africa, China and India and as such constitutes a hinge capable of joining East and West. A strong territorial identity has been formed in this pivot, testified from the beginning of civilization by its own cultural and artistic traditions of great refinement and sensitivity such as the Achaemenid, Sassanid and Safavid ones.
As evidenced by the archaeological finds of the city of Susa the very ancient bronzes of Lorestan, the rock reliefs of the Sassanid site of Taq-e Bostan up to the most recent paintings of the Qajar period, an autonomous cultural product is developed, also the result of the influences of neighboring civilizations, which under the Muslim push is then exported to the West where it is grafted into scientific disciplines and artistic experiences as well as in musical theory.
Precisely from the Safavid period are some of the most beautiful representations in the sparkling miniatures of signs and colors representing court scenes: here as evidence of the importance of music, ensembles of reclining musicians can be seen in a central position, between dignitaries, kings and elegant girls. often on a splendid one carpet, paradigm par excellence of the refined sensibility of this people.
Like poetry, music is a distinctive trait of Persian culture, a symbol of a civilization that has spread over vast territories for centuries and whose influence has gone beyond the territorial boundaries of the empires that flourished under it.
Even through the history of musical instruments proper to these territories it is possible to reconstruct the links and contacts that civilizations have established between them; the skill of craftsmen in the precious inlays and decorations, by the great master builders of instruments, it combines in an indissoluble whole, musical theories, philosophical thought and construction techniques from different geographical and cultural fields, modifying, refining and reworking influences that testify exchanges between cultures, mutual knowledge and individual evolutions.
The coexistence of populations of different ethnicity and religion, the presence of communities is not negligible Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Nestorian, Manichaean and Buddhist, rooted in the territory for more than a millennium, each with its own cultural traditions, contributed under mutual influences to form a complex and fascinating musical panorama that perhaps can be summarized in the tradition of "art music" Persian that boasts great interpreters and performers heritage of humanity.

History and musical traditions of Iran

Antonio Di Tommaso

Music in ancient Persia

There are numerous archaeological finds that inform us about the contexts and instruments of musical practice in ancient Persia and of Persian music, and that provide concrete confirmation to the literary testimonies that have come down to us through the writings of Greek authors such as Herodotus, Athenaeus and Xenophon, and from certain Muslim authors who lived in medieval times, such as the Persian poet Firdousi, who drew their knowledge on ancient Persian music from sources of oral tradition.

Approximately two millennia before the birth of the kingdoms of the Medes and the Persians, the area between the eastern borders of Mesopotamia and the Zagros mountain range was occupied by the kingdom of Elam, consisting of an ethnic group distinct from the Sumerian, Babylonian or Assyrian; to this civilization belongs the oldest representation of a together music reached to us: discovered in Chogha Mish, in Khuzistan, it shows a singer, a trumpet player, an ARCUATA harp player and a drum player, and has been dated between 3300 and 3100 BC. Two other representations of harps arched, found in south-eastern Iran and dated one to 2500 BC and the other between 2300 and 2100 BC, clearly show the magical-religious context in which the instrument performed its function: the first of them is difficult interpretation, as it presents, among the numerous symbolic figures that surround a goddess with snakes, a harp without a player. The second instead has a more defined meaning: a god with snakes on his shoulders, among whose worshipers there is a harpist.

An important center of archaeological finds is that of the city of Susa, where in addition to the representation of a GIANT LYRAS dating back to 2500 BC, representations of instruments similar to the famous Mesopotamian BULL LYRES, excavated in the site corresponding to the ancient city of Ur and dating back to 2450 BC Another interesting depiction of a player of bull lyre comes from the Faylaka island of the Persian Gulf and is dated to around 1900 BC with a long handle in the presence of various animals including the lion, panther, antelope, horse, ox and ostrich. Dating back to about 2000 BC, there are small ceramic statuettes, depicting similar naked long-necked lute players, in this case both Da Susa also come from very ancient representations of LUTE A LONG HANDLE, such as those on a border of the Babylonian type (Kudurru) from the 12th century BC, in which some bearded men (with hunting bows on their shoulders) play the lute men and women.

The findings presented so far refer to western Iran, or to the edges of the so-called fertile crescent; a testimony instead on the peoples who inhabited the vast area of eastern Iran and the Indus valley are the BACTRO-IRANIAN TRUMPETS, built in various metals such as gold, copper, silver and bronze, belonging to the archaeological complex concerning the excavations at the Bactria and Margiana oases (which includes, besides Iran, the territories of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, southern Turkmenistan and northern Afghanistan). Dated between 2200 and 1750 BC, they are the oldest trumpets in the Iranian area, as well as a copper and bronze trumpet, very similar to the Bactro-Margian ones, found in a tomb in Shahdad and dated around 2300 BC.

In the second millennium BC the arched harps seem to disappear from the Middle Eastern area, replaced by the ANGULAR HARPS, represented on numerous terracotta plaques. A millennium later, still within the Elamite civilization, the existence in the cities of Madakcu and Kul-e Fara is witnessed to real royal ensemblesdi musicians, mainly vertical and horizontal angular harp players, and percussionists. In the mural reliefs found in the Kul-e Fara valley, numerous harpists are shown, often in groups of three. As for Madaktu, however, there is a representation on the walls of the palace of Nineveh, an Assyrian city, dated 650 BC, in which the exodus of the Elamite court, therefore of the numerous harpists, following the victory of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal on the Elamite Army, near the city of Madaktu.

With the foundation of the Achaemenedi dynasty by Cyrus the Great (Kourosh II) in the sixth century BC, centuries of magnificence and splendor begin for Iran, the testimony of which is still clearly expressed in the remains of the art and architecture of places like Persepolis. The archaeological remains, however, seem to be silent on musical practice, while some Greek or biblical literary sources begin to speak of it. From Herodorus we have information on the sacrificial rite that was performed in the mountains in the presence of a Zoroastrian priest who accompanied the ceremony with the singing of a theogony. The importance of Persian music and musicians in court life is instead testified by two other sources: if the book of Daniel (VI, 18) tells of the "sad night" in which King Darius, after having thrown the prophet Daniel in the lions' den, he did not want musical instruments to be brought in his presence, from Xenophon we learn of the existence in the court of numerous singers and musicians, who played the same role as the Kinati Babylonians, later become the qaynat among the Arab peoples and the courts of the caliphs. Of how much importance and consideration this figure enjoyed in the ancient world we are told by an anecdote referred to us by Ateneo, which tells of the Greek general Parmenion who, following the conquest of Damascus, took care to take possession of 329 Kinati belonging to the court of King Darius III (m. 330 BC).

In the fourth century BC, with the end of the Achaemenid dynasty, the regency of the Persian Empire passed to the Macedonian dynasty of the Seleucids for about a century, during which the cultural contamination between the Greek world and the Persian world intensified considerably. The religion of Zarathustra, which was already the state religion during the Achaemenid reign, was supplanted by the religious syncretism that accompanied the cultural phase of Hellenism, which also lasted during the following Parthian empire (IV BC-11 AD), a dynasty native to Central Asia. With the dynasty instead of the Sassanid kings (III AD-VII AD), founded by Ardashir I (d. 241), the kings took back the Achaemenid title of Shahanshah, or King of Kings, and the religion of Zarathustra was again the state religion. We often speak of the Sassanid era as the golden age par excellence of Persian music: already the founder of the dynasty took care to unite all those who practiced musical professions in a single social class, whose importance was increased with King Bahram Gur (or Varahvan V, 421- 439) who founded a Ministry of Music and brought 12.000 musicians from India to Persia. The apex of the importance of music was probably reached during the reign of Khosrow II (591-628), about which numerous stories tell the Shahnameh, o Book of Kings, of Firdousi, and the Khamseh, “Five poems”, by Nezami, both written in the Islamic era. Barbad, Ramtin, Bamshad, Azadvar-e T changi and the Greeks Sargash and Nakisa belonged to the elite court singers, who apparently also practiced extremely refined instrumental music, which according to the Islamic author Qutb aldin al-Shirazi (d. 1311) had already been organized by Barbad in seven "real" musical ways at the time (Khosrovam) 30 derived modes (Lahn) each for a Zoroastrian day of the month, and 360 melodies o dastan, each for one day of the Zoroastrian year. A brief mention deserves the famous vision of Mazdak, founder of an important heretical-communist movement, in which King Khosrow II, transfigured into the solar god, is described as surrounded by four figures also symbolizing four cosmic forces, three of which are senior ministers and the fourth is a musician.

As for the archaeological evidence of the Sassanid period, the XNUMXth century mural depictions found inside a cave of Taq-e Bostan, near Kermanshah, in western Iran are significant: in them Khosrow II is represented in hunting scenes to wild boar and deer, in the presence not only of hunters riding elephants, but also of hosts of harpists, singers and trumpet players. The silver cups of Kalar Dasht, in Mazandaran, a territory south of the Caspian Sea, date back to the following century; one of these depicts a SHORT-HANDED LUTE player and a MOUTH ORGAN player, an instrument introduced in Iran from China, which experienced a very short period of use.

Show less

Persia, Music and Islamic Civilization

The history of Persian music in Islamic civilization was characterized by the presence of an urban court music which seems to have maintained, in a period ranging from the eighth to the sixteenth century, a certain homogeneity of language, such as to allow us to speak of a single music classic, sponsored from time to time by the courts of the Abbasids, the Jalairids, the Timurids, the Ottomans and the Safavids.

The reign of the Umayyad caliphs (661-750) is a period of musical innovation in which the already millennial culture of Persian music begins to exert a decisive influence on the nascent Islamic music. With the conquest of the Sassanid kingdom, numerous Persian cultural elements were adopted by the new courts of the caliphs, such as the customs and customs of imperial ceremonies; on the other hand, the weight of the Persian traditions of instrumental music will be considerable: we know, in fact, that the music of the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period was centered on singing and poetry, while with the conquest of Persia instrumental music began to be cultivated also among the Arabs, as can be deduced from their adoption of the BARBÀT, a Sassanid short-necked lute, which became the lute 'uo, or LAÙD in the Spain of the Moors. Moreover, the contribution also seemed to be that of the diffusion of a "style of singing unknown to the Arabs" by the Persian workers, already in the years of the construction of the age of Mecca.

What distinguished the era of the Umayyad caliphate was the absence of a consolidated tradition of musicians affiliated to the court on a permanent basis: the musical events seem to have been performed by itinerant musicians. The change in this situation occurred with the Abbasid dynasty (750-1258) and its new capital Baghdad, in whose imperial court were concentrated talented instrumentalists, singers and singers. The main source of information on this period is the Kitab al-aghìni, or the Songbook, of Al-Isfahani (897-967), in which numerous biographical information on the most important musicians of the Baghdad court are reported, who despite the Arabic names, it seems they were all of Persian origin. Among these are the authoritative figures of the master Ibrahim al-Mawsili (742-804) and his son Ishaq al-Mawsili (767-850); above all the latter represents in an exemplary way the figure of the court master, with his roles as composer, performer, poet and intellectual, in this case expert in philology and jurisprudence. His greatest rival was Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdì (779-839), a talented singer, who seems to have contributed to a further graft of Persian musical elements, whose nature is difficult to reconstruct. What we can deduce is that already in the Abbasid era there were two different styles of court music, thaqil ("Heavy") e khafif ("light"), the second of which is more imbued with Persian elements, including the sophistication of the melodic lines and the tendency to improvisation and free interpretation of the compositions.

The work of the famous musician Ziryàb (d. 852), also of Persian origin, who was a disciple of Ibrahim al-Mawsili in Baghdad, is also placed in the XNUMXth century. Ziryàb stayed in the courts of Syria and Tunisia, before settling in Cordoba at the court of the Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Rahrnan II, where he established a musical tradition that seems to be the basis of Arab-Andalusian music; his personality was influential not only in the musical field but also in matters of taste, customs and cuisine. Towards the end of the XNUMXth century, the Abbasid kingdom began a political fragmentation, with the increase of the independence of the provinces and a consequent development of the individual court traditions related to them: the artistic and musical knowledge centralized in the court of Baghdad spread in the regions of the Islamic world, and a notable part of this process was due to the flourishing intellectual and scientific activity that took shape in numerous schools and treatises, initially written in Arabic (XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries), and in Persian and Turkish over the centuries following.

Show less

Music theory

The Abbasid Caliph al Màmun founded in Baghdad in 832 la Bayt al-hikma; o House of Wisdom, or a laboratory of Arab translators who for generations were involved in adapting texts in Greek and Aramaic into Arabic, perpetuating the work of translating Greek knowledge already undertaken in the centuries preceding the Hegira (622) by Syriacs and Nestorians.

The translation of the Greek authors and the cultural heritage, therefore, which from the West reached Baghdad through Syria and the Near East was fundamental for the nascent sciences and philosophies of Islam. However, this was not the only line of inheritance through which Islam was able to welcome the knowledge of the ancient world into its civilization: a second movement, no less important, was the one that saw the displacement of numerous scholars from the cities of northern Iran. -east towards the new center of Islam; among these were Nawbakht the Persian, director of the Baghdad library and translator of works from pahlavi (language of the Sassanid Empire) to Arabic, and the translator Ibn al-Moqaff'a, a Zoroastrian Persian who converted to Islam. The cities from which these scholars came were those of the "way of the East" traveled centuries earlier by Alexander, who in their turn were already inheritors of Greek, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Manichean, Nestorian and Christian cultures. What, therefore, the nascent culture of Baghdad disposed of was a conspicuous body of works and knowledge of the ancient world ranging from philosophy and medicine to mathematics, astronomy, alchemy, natural sciences plus a whole series of works pseudo-epigraph, including the famous one Theology of Aristotle, which is nothing but a paraphrase of the last three Enneadi of Plotinus, and which was so dear to the Arab al-Kindì, demonstrating the influence that Neoplatonism had on the early Islamic philosophy.

Abu Yùsof al-Kindì (796-873), the "philosopher of the Arabs", who lived in Baghdad for most of his life in the midst of scientific fervor and translations of ancient texts, was also the first major theoretician of music. In him two speculative tendencies coexist which in the following centuries will very often be divided: one that we could define as marked by a descriptive rationalism and empiricism of the musical phenomenon, and another dedicated to detecting the relationships between music and the science of numbers. , cosmology, the temperaments of the human body.

Regarding the first of these two trends, it must be said that al-Kindì provided a speculative model for the theoretical discussion of intervals, scales and musical modes, which was adopted in the following centuries by all the major theorists: he describes the tetracordal structures by referring to the positions of the fingers of the left hand on the fingerboard of the short necked lute 'UD; also describes the intervals using the Pythagorean measures of limma e apotome, which added together give the whole tone, and theoretically adds a fifth string to the lute to obtain a melodic scope of two octaves, corresponding to perfect system of Greek music theory.

We find the same speculative procedure in the most eminent theoretician of music in the dross of Islam: the Persian Abu Nasr al-Farabì (872-950), who also studied logic, grammar, philosophy, music in Baghdad. mathematics and natural sciences, acquiring an intellectual and spiritual authority that earned him the epithet of Magister Secundus, or According to Aristotle, whose title was Magister Primus. He is the author of the Kitab al-musìqi al-kabìr, o Great book of music, a voluminous work consisting of an introduction and three books, each consisting of two sections, in which the various aspects of musical making are dealt with with method accuracy in relation to philosophical considerations on the nature of man, the origins of music, physics of sound, the characteristics of musical intervals, tetrachords, octave divisions, rhythmic structures and cycles, composition and musical performance. He then takes up the al-Kindì model with which he clarifies the questions concerning the interval structures through the description of the feel of the string instruments, which in this case are in addition to the UD, also the TUNBÙR (TUNBÙR) of Baghdad and the TUNBÙR of Khorasan. Farabì's description is decidedly more complex than al-Kindì's, including main and supplementary positions; in addition, the famous one also appears in it middle of Zalzal; that is the interval of the third neutral which seems to have been introduced by Zalzal, teacher of Ishaq al-Mawsilì.

In the introduction to the second book, called Tool Book, Farabì clearly sets out the usefulness of an organological dissertation within a treatise on music: after having reviewed, in the Introduction and in the first book o Book of elements, the "principles and first elements" of musical science, with a specific treatment on the instruments of the time, the author wants to carry out an "experimental check" of these principles, making explicit, in short, the consequences, needs and results of their applications practices; in this way the reader who will tackle the study of the work "will realize that the theory is not a simple affair of names, but is what is confirmed by the testimonies of the auditory sensations that are familiar to him". Farabì's most illustrious successor was Abù Alì Ibn Sìnà (980-1037), known in Europe as Avicenna, also Persian. We recall fleetingly that the work of this man, which he held positions of vizir at numerous courts in the territory of Iran and which has left us a bibliography of 242 titles, it has been for centuries, in the West and in the East, the basis of medical studies. His musical treatments were inevitably more dense and reduced than those of Farabì, but certainly no less valid; to him we also owe the introduction of a terminology in Persian language, which appeared for the first time in the chapter on music in the section on mathematical sciences in the encyclopedia Kitab al-shifà, o Book of Healing. These Persian terms are the names of the twelve primary modes described by Ibn Sìnà, which are still used today in the current tradition classic Persian, as names of the type-melodies or secondary modes called Gushe-ha.

The Persians Farabì and Ibn Sìnà did not participate in the second speculative trend we mentioned earlier, that is, the one concerning the numerical and cosmological relationships between sounds and the world of natural phenomena. In addition to al-Kindì, who devoted considerable interest to such questions in his work, there is also the encyclopedia of the Brothers of Basra Ikhwàn al-Safa: or «Brothers of Purity and Friends of Loyalty», dating back to the 10th century, which were a secret society of thought affiliated with the Ismaili movement. In their 51 Rasà'il, or epistles, there is first of all a defense of the Platonic-Pythagorean theory of the music of the spheres, which was totally denied by an author like Farabì, and then a series of dissertations on numerical correspondences, therapeutic effects of music, and correlations between the strings of the UD and the humors of the body.

In the following centuries, at the time when the break-up of the Abbasid empire and the advance of the Turkish and Mongol conquerors began, an echo of the cosmological doctrines concerning the "harmony of the spheres" came into the work of the shayk al-Isbràq Shihàboddìn Yahyà Sohrawardì (115 5-1191), originally from north-western Iran, whose thought is important for the understanding of the phenomenon of mystical experience, inextricably linked to music in the history of Iranian civilization, as well as to poetry and dance and to visual art, all activities that can be defined as "means of expression of the unspeakable". According to Sohrawardi's work, the plane through which the understanding of supersensible reality is realized is the mundus imaginaLis o alam al-mithàl, intermediate level between material reality and spiritual reality, only within which it is possible to hear the truth music of the spheres. Sohrawardì enunciated his doctrine as a "restoration of the wisdom of ancient Persia", pointing to the eminent figures of Hermes, Plato and Zarathustra as his predecessors; this last association between the Greek philosopher and the reformer of the cult of Ahura Mazda was curiously pursued a few centuries later also in Europe, by the Byzantine philosopher Gemisto Pletone, at the dawn of the Renaissance.

About two centuries after Avicenna's work is the birth of the school of music theory called, by Western scholars, "sistermatista", since it is dedicated to the description of "a systematic inventory of the modes in use": ": whose founder he is the Persian Safì al-Dìn al-Urrnawì (d. 1293). In his Kitab a-adwàrvi the descriptive analysis of the divisions on the keyboard of the Khorasan TUNBÙR already carried out centuries earlier by Farabì is resumed; the novelty lies in the system with which the author progressively subdivides the octave into 17 parts: this is made up of two tetrachords separated by a whole tone; the tetrachords are in turn formed by 2 whole tones more 1 limma; il whole tone is formed by 2 limma more 1 comma. From this analysis Urmawì deduces a system of 84 possible scales and 18 musical modes, divided in turn into 12 shudùd and 6 awàzàt. In the book there is also a description of the rhythmic cycles and a series of fragments of notation, a decidedly original feature for the time.

With the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century and the sack of Baghdad in 1258, the era of the Abbasid Caliphate can be considered concluded: from this moment on, the center of musical life seems to move towards Iran and Central Asia, in cities such as Tabriz, Herat, Isfahan, Samarkand. Safiuddìn's work achieved a notable resonance throughout the eastern Islamic world and with his disciple Qutb al-Dìn Shirazi and the other successors of the Sisternatist school, a flourishing literature of music theory in Persian language was started, the last most authoritative representative was the composer 'Abd al-Qàdir al-Maràghì (d. 1435), who lived during the reign of Tamerlano. The influence of Urmawì, Shirazi, Maràghì and the systematists in general on Persian, Turkish and Arabic classical music was of such a magnitude as to allow historians to hypothesize a high homogeneity between the musical practices of the courts of Isfahan, Baghdad, Damascus, Mardin and Erzincan , in the centuries ranging from 1200 to 1500. It was towards the middle of the XNUMXth century that this production of theoretical works ceased completely, and that the traditions of Turkish-Ottoman, Arab and Persian music undertook that process of differentiation, the apex of which was reached in the XVIII century, with the fall of the Safavid dynasty in Iran.

Show less

Persian Classical Music The Safavid period

The advent of the Safavid kingdom marked a new period of splendor for the musical life of the court in the cities of Iran. Already with Shah Esrnà'il I (1502-1524) the city of Tabriz became a rich musical center: this sovereign held in high esteem the music of Ashiq, or Azerbaijani bards, and he delighted himself in writing verses on mystical love and on sci'a, and in playing the lute with the long handle SÀZ or QOPÙZ. It was also at this time that Persian musical practice definitely influenced the younger music of the Turkish-Ottoman courts, which housed numerous Persian musicians and singers in the 16th and 17th centuries.

During the reign of Shah Abbàs I (1587-1528), at the court of the new capital Isfahan, the musical and artistic life probably reached the highest level, as well documented by the numerous miniature and artistic representations representing various aspects of musical life. There were four groups of musicians at the court: women, men, Armenians and Georgians, plus some groups of eunuchs, as was customary in European courts of the same period. The most important composers that history remembers were Shah Moràd, Mohammad Qazvini, Aqà Mo'men and the Georgian Amir Khàn Gorji. In this period a flourishing production of musical treatises also resumed, however, dedicated to a purely descriptive activity of the practice, or to a symbolic and cosmological speculation; there is no longer any trace of the analytic attitude that characterized the first great theorists and the systematic school. In discussing musical practice and interpretation, these treatises suggested the coherent concatenation of pieces or modal entities, in such a way as to form suites, in which we began and ended with the same musical way, just like in the practice of dastgah-ha, which will gradually be formed from the beginning of the nineteenth century to culminate in the creation of the radif, by the masters of the Qajar court.

Show less

Persian Classical Music The Qajar period

With the Afghan invasion and the fall of the Safavids in 1722, the rich musical tradition of Isfahan seems to disperse, with the displacement of many masters to the courts of Turkey, Central Asia and Kashmir. During the brief reigns of the Afsharide and Zand dynasties (from 1737 to 1794), classical Persian music decisively disappeared from the historical scene, only to reappear in the XNUMXth century at the Qajar court. It is in this transition phase between the Safavid and Qajar kingdoms that a clear separation occurs between the three great Turkish-Ottoman, Iraqi and Persian musical traditions: from the XNUMXth century onwards they will develop independently.

During the long period of regency of Nasereddìn Shah (1848-1896) the music regained a remarkable favor: it recreated an elite of court musicians, who sat in front of the king and accompanied him in his every move like family members. Among these were Mohammad Sadeq Khan, who excelled in the art of the zither on the SANTUR table, and Alì Akbàr Farahànì (d. 1857), master of the long-necked lute TÀR, whose fame reached Europe already around 1859, thanks to the travel stories of the Count of Gobineau, a French diplomat who had the opportunity to listen to his music during his stay at the Qajar court. In this period the type of takes shape ensembleche still today it is representative of classical Persian music; it generally consists of the voice and one or two solo instruments, or two or three solo instruments, accompanied by the ZARB chalice drum or the DUF frame drum. The solo instruments in use are the KAMANTCHÈ viella, the SANTUR zither on table, the NEY flute and the long neck lutes TÀR and SETÀR, the latter more suitable to be played alone, or together with the voice and the NEY flute, than in the ensembles, because of its characteristic little voluminous stamp.

From Alì Akbàr Farahànì was also born the main school of style traditional of Persian classical music: having died prematurely in 1857, his repertoire and features of his style were transmitted to his two sons Mirza Abdollah (m. 1918) and Hoseyn Qoli (m. 1915), through their uncle Aqà Gholàm Hoseyn. At the beginning of the 20th century, these two became the major authorities of the canonical repertoire: Mirza Abdollah was the one who systematically developed and organized a repertoire-model for the TÀR and SETÀR lutes called radif, later adapted also to the other tools, which is still the basis of teaching and of performance music.

Show less

Persian Classical Music The radif

Despite being a set of musical units or Gushe-ha (plural of Gushe, which means “corner”) each with a title, the radif it turns out to be a decidedly more complex entity than a simple model-repertoire, or a simple modal system. Its function is not only to allow the conservation and learning of a corpus of compositions and to provide common models and bases for the performance (which is characterized by a high degree of extemporaneousness);

it is also a tool for transmitting mainly one style, of a particular musical attitude, and of an ethics, who find their cultural explanation in the links with the vast and complex world of Persian mysticism.

In its macro-form the radif is divided into 7 dastgah-ha and 5 avaz-ha. Definable as modal complexes, each dastgah-ha o avaz-ha is characterized by one or more ways or Maye, which technically differ from each other due to the tetrachords or dang-ha which make up the scalar structures, and for an internal hierarchy of heights that establishes the functions of shahed o main note (highlighted by the melodic line); this stop note of the melody; aghàz or initial note; motaghayyer or variable note (which may be altered by a quarter tone); and finally the final function, note with which the melodic sentences are concluded.

The most important dastgah it is undoubtedly dastgah-e shur, from which four derive avaz-ha: abu'atà, bayat-e tork, afsharì e Dashti; then follow dastgah-e mahur, dastgahe chahargah, dastgah-e homayun, which generates the avaz-e bayat-e isfahan; then dastgahe rastpanjgah, dastgah-e navà and finally dastgah-e segah. There is also a sixth avaz, named kord-e bayat, which is usually incorporated into dastgah-e shur.

The internal form of each of the 12 modal complexes is given by a sequence of gusheha; these present a remarkable formal variety, which does not allow an unambiguous definition of the concept of Gushe but it obliges to establish at least four main types:

autonomous modal complex (shah gusheh), having a scalar system and a hierarchy of autonomous heights with respect to dastgah in which it occurs, and a series of internal modulation sections and of Gushe-ha secondary; for example: Mokhalef Hesar, Delkash, Shekaste, 'Araq, Ràk-,
semi-autonomous modal complex, with the same independence of the modal characteristics of a shah gusheh, but without secondary and modulating internal sections;
melodic compositions, which can also be found transposed into various dastgah-ha;
rhythmic or melodic motifs, lacking an association with a particular structure

Interval, then transferable from a dastgah to the other.

A further formal distinction in the set of Gushe-hava operated between the categories of daramad, which means "introduction" and precisely a presentation of the modal characteristics of the dastgah or the 'avaz in question; naghme or "melody", then a short composition in free rhythm; chaharmezrab whose name refers to a motor pattern consisting of four plectrum strokes and is precisely a composition characterized by repetition with variations of a rhythmic-motor sequence; reng, which means "dance" and is a type of measured composition based on very ancient dance rhythms; forud, or a kind of cadence movement, which usually concludes a modulating section to bring back to the initial modal structure of the dastgah. From the examination of the Gushe-ha there is a clear prevalence of the free, non-measured rhythm over the measured rhythm: to understand the meaning of this particularity, it is necessary to consider that the metric articulation is very close to that of classical Persian poetry, therefore of the quantity, or subdivided into succession of long and short accents. The rhythmic gait of Persian classical music is often described as being similar to an "articulated word"; in radif for singing, moreover, the Gushe-ha they are performed on the poems of classical poets like Hafez, Rumi, Omàr Khayyàm and Sadì, which are composed in meters of ghazal, of the dobeytt and Masnavi.

Read more

Show less

Performance and musical teaching

The execution of classical Persian music is, traditionally, reserved for private rooms strictly occupied by a very limited audience of connoisseurs: in houses, in gardens, once in the courts of sovereigns and music lovers. The performers are usually a singer accompanied by one, two or three instruments with a decidedly little voluminous tone; you sit on the floor in an environment decorated with showy carpets and the contact between musicians and listeners is practically colloquial.

The music performed is mainly composed of a succession of Gushe-ha selected from one of the 7 dastgah-ha or 5 avaz-ha; it is often introduced by a composition in measured rhythm of the type pishdaramad, usually serious and solemn, followed by one or more daramad with which the suite of pieces of the radif This suite consists of an alternation of Gushe-ha in free rhythm e Gushe-ba in measured rhythm accompanied in some cases by the ZARB chalice drum; especially in the first case these are mainly used as bases for improvisation, which involves numerous aspects of the performance. The radif in fact, thanks to its internal structure, it offers a very wide range of interpretative and improvisational possibilities:

first of all, there are various ways of decorating the melody, which make it possible to give greater prominence to some melodic elements rather than to others; then we can dwell on separating motivic fragments from Gushe and repeating them the same or varied; it is possible to prolong some melodic movements with melisms and transpositions or insert "extemporaneous compositions" between a Gushe and the other. These various ways of implementing the radif they depend mainly on the level of the musician: in the traditional musical vision it is conceived a graduality according to which the musician should in the first years simply learn to perfectly perform the radif of the master without variations, once he learned this radif he can, as he gains experience, explore its interpretative possibilities by varying certain elements.

The last stage occurs when the musician has completely internalized the style and has fully understood the meaning of the various modal systems: at that point he can create scratch, both in improvisation and in the composition of new ones Gushe-ha.

The mechanism described above inevitably leads us to deal with an important aspect of Persian culture. The traditional way of teaching music in Iran - whether it is classical music or music linked to "regional" traditions such as that of the bards, or of semi-professional musical activities such as that of the singers of the zurkhanè consists in spending a long period of one's life, which usually consists of 12 years, in close contact with a master, Ostad o Morshed, thus becoming more than his own student, his own disciple

It has been repeatedly pointed out that this method is identical in the context of mysticism: the young person who wants to be initiated into spiritual wisdom has no other way than to be welcomed into the home of a Darwish (dervish), to achieve its purpose.

Spiritual teaching and musical teaching show a further affinity: traces of are totally absent in them conceptualizations, which would take the form of verbal explanations and clarifications from master to disciple; learning is done strictly for imitation and this is not limited, in the case of the musician, to musical imitation, but must also be extended to modus vivendi of the master. The disciple must daily, through observation, become imbued with the habits, style, vision of the master's life.

In the specifics of musical teaching, we can speak of lessons which initially consist in showing the disciple the performance of short melodic pieces. The disciple strives to reproduce exactly what he sees and hears, thus gradually acquiring the ability to perform the main musical “gestures” (therefore the various ornamentation techniques).

Having achieved a fair technical mastery, the master begins by showing the disciples the first Gushe-ha of the radif, perhaps in a simplified version. To learn an integer radif, approximately 10 or 12 years are estimated to be necessary: during this long period of time, and through this rigorous method, indispensable qualities are developed in the disciple, including memory, the ability immediate imitation, the faculties attention and increased concentration, and, as Safvate states, a precious sense of the details. All fundamental qualities whose function is ambivalent: on the one hand they are necessary in the performance, since they are at the basis not only of improvisation but also of the extemporaneous accompaniment of the song, based precisely on an imitative game of anticipations and delays; on the other hand they represent the most suitable means and faculties for grasping and expressing the deepest sense and meanings, of a spiritual nature, which this music possesses, but which it hardly shows externally.

This teaching method seems to be out of use, also due to the socio-cultural changes that in the last century allowed the birth in Iran of music schools such as the Tehran Conservatory, marked by a Western-style teaching, which uses partially of notations, technical explanations, recordings and so on.

Show less

The principle and the sense of melodic ornamentation in Persian music

As in most musical traditions belonging to the cultures of the East, Persian classical music is homophonic. Nevertheless it presents a high degree of sophistication, which is not given as much by the length and variety of the melodic lines and by the complexity of the rhythmic cycles, as it is for other rich oriental classical traditions, but from the principle of ornamentation, whose meaning is contained in the very simple "traditional" maxim referred to by Dariouche Safvate: "it is not important what you play, but like it is played ».

In the case of radif and other Persian traditions such as the sacred lute repertoire TANBUR of the Kurdish brotherhood Ahl-e Haqq, the instrumental repertoire for the DOTAR of Khorasan, or that of the QEYCHAK monoxyl viella of the Baluchi, the ornamentation reaches a level of density that generates a real doubling of the perceptive level of the melody. Some notes are placed in the foreground, while in the background there are constantly lower volume sounds, allusive notes, tremors. Perhaps appearing as a simple "embellishment" technique, in reality the ornamentation is the result of a particular approach that the musician applies to the instrument; it is the expressive vehicle of hto the; a term dear to the mysticism of Islam, a particular state of consciousness therefore whose modalities and affinities with ecstasy or en-stasis would require very thorough studies.

According to some Persian scholars of the Persian music tradition, such as Darioush Safvate and Seyyed Hosein Nasr, the Hal it is what gives meaning to musical performance and makes it full of value spiritual, as well as ethical ed aesthetic. The expression of the Hal, therefore, it is mainly achieved through ornamentation; in fact, it forces the musician to a particular type of concentration, in which the effort required is not so much of a physiological order as of a mental one, and whose success is accompanied not by fatigue, but by a sensation of pleasure in playing the instrument. Following the definition given by Jean During, this effort can be described as aimed at the musical realization of a principle of a spiritual order, that is unity between three ontological levels: the agent, the act and half, which have a sensitive order correspondence in musician, in musical gesture and in tool.

Read more

Show less

The traditions of poetry sung

The musical tradition of Iran, in both urban and rural contexts, is inextricably linked to poetry. Some medieval literary sources (Qutb al-Dìn Shirazi; Nezami) show us the importance that sung poetry already had in the Sassanid era: 360 were the "arias" called Dastan composed by Barbad, one for each day of the Zoroastrian year.

Some names of these melodies have survived in the classical Persian epic, for example Arayishn ì khvarshèdh ("The beauty of the sun"), Takht-i Ardechìr ("The throne of Ardashir"), Nauroùz-i bozorg ("The great Spring"), Ròchantchèràgh ("The bright flash"), Haft guendj ("The seven treasures"). There are no traces left of the lyrics, written in the language Pahlavi. It was in the centuries between the 12th and 14th centuries that Persia saw the flourishing of a poetic tradition classic of mystical inspiration, by Jalaloddìn Rùmi, Sadì, Hafez and Omàr Khayyàm, whose echo has definitely crossed the borders of Iran. This poem, which uses the classic meter of ghazal is still central to the executions of radif for singing, as well as in the more modern form of a classical “hall” concert that adopts large instrumental ensembles. It also seems to have a very deep structural link with the radif, whose phrases in free rhythm are comparable to a “curled word.

In the executions of radif vocal and in the suites from concert the singer associates a particular poem with the verses of the poem chosen Gushe-ha; these verses sung are then alternated with parts of vocalise or instrumental only, or with tracks in measured rhythm. During the singing of the couplets of the ghazal; the accompanying instrument follows the voice in unison, but with games of anticipations, delays and overlaps, which require both sides to have a considerable mastery of the models of the radif, as well as a certain emotional harmony.

Poetry is also at the center of musical life outside the big cities, especially thanks to the professional and semi-professional figures of bards or storytellers. They are heirs of a very archaic heritage that has its roots both in ancient Persia, and in the most remote past of all the populations of Turkish-Tatar origin that from the first centuries of the last millennium have occupied the northern territories of Iran. The performance some bards consist of long narratives carried out with the alternation of sung poems, accompanied by instrumental music, and sections of spoken prose. The bard uses melodies for every moment of the narration from the ethos different; in Khorasan, for example, a cheerful character is distinguished (Shad) of dance (Sùznàk) Martial (Razmi) and melancholy (Hoznavar).

All the great ethnic groups that make up today's Iran have their own tradition of storyteller, starting with the Persian-speaking ethnic groups: the Persian bard or naqqàl has a vast repertoire of oral tradition of epic poetry elaborated on traditional literary sources, of which the main one is it Shahnameh by Firdousi. This poem collects in an epic form the cultural and spiritual heritage of an ancient civilization: in it the historical events of the pre-Islamic era merge with the archaic myth, of Zoroastrian and Indo-European matrix. Equally remote origins are those of the epic heritage of the Turkish-speaking ethnic group, which in Iran are represented by the Azerbaijanis and Turkmen, settled mainly in the north-west and north-east respectively. The Azerbaijani bard, or Ashiq, it boasts a more urbanized tradition, present not only in Azerbaijan but also in eastern Turkey; historical sources mention this figure starting from the fifteenth century, during the Safavid period it enjoyed considerable social prestige, even within the court. The repertoire of Ashiq is composed of dastanlar, traditional epic poems whose themes are common to all Turkish-speaking peoples of Central Asia. These are performed by theAshiq accompanying himself with the long-handled SÀZ lute, in some areas with a small one together consisting of the BALABAN double oboe and the QAVAL frame drum (or DAYERÈ).

As in all musical traditions of the eastern world, the bard also learns his art through a long period of life in close contact with a teacher. In addition to those who come from a family tradition, there are many who are dedicated to learning for a personal choice, while in the Turkish-speaking ethnic groups there is a tradition according to which some Ashiq, they learn their art through the dream of masters or ancestors. Especially among Islamized nomadic peoples like the Turkmen this element is part of a cultural conscience that attributes to the bardo, or bagshy, the spiritual heritage of the ancient figure of the shaman.

In Iranian Khorasan there is an important tradition of bards, called Bakhshi, which has many affinities between Persian music and the Turkmen tradition, including the use of the long necked lute DUTÀR as an accompaniment to singing. This tradition also experienced a long period of patronage in the great courts of Khorasan; currently it is linked to the professions of the barber and the doctor, and to other musical activities such as the Shi'ite liturgical drama ta'zye, and the responsorial song of the nowheh. The own repertoire instead of the Bakhshi it uses the three main languages of Khorasan, namely Persian, Kurdish and Turkmen, and includes the typical dastan, whose main topics are love, spiritual experience and heroism, plus other poems from various sources, including lo Shahnameh. Il Bakhshi has a hundred Ahang (melodies) memorized orally, while using a personal book as a support for memory and study ketabche, on which are written the lyrics, sometimes copied from some books in circulation containing Dastan ancient, some from Azerbaijan, Bukhara and Khiva, others of unknown origin.

In the southernmost territories of Khorasan we find another refined and ancient epic tradition of Persian music: that of sha'er of Baluchistan. Traditionally he practiced his art at the courts of sovereigns, or in weddings, with the accompaniment of the monossil SORUD (or QEYCHAK) vielle, and the long-handled drone lute TANBURAG. The themes of fiction, or sheyr, they are always heroic in subject, interluded by dynamic love affairs; a recognized master of this art achieves the title of Pahlaván, or "singer of heroism".

A final tradition that deserves to be mentioned is that of the Kurdish bards or beytbij, which is distinguished from the others by the absence of an instrumental accompaniment to the song of the so-called epic sher, o Beyt. They follow a code of conduct that does not allow them to participate in or sing in songs for the dance; there are also numerous cases in which the men who perform these songs do not make their art a "profession", refusing any type of remuneration.

Show less

Persian Musical Instruments

The musical instrument is an object that faithfully records and reflects the evolution of the civilization of a territory. Describing in a few lines a subject so vast and complex as it involves a multitude of aspects, requires identifying which ones allow us to reconstruct the most evident traces in a journey made up of times and places. Just as the marks left by the performer and time on the body of an instrument allow us to reconstruct its history as well as on the body of this Persian music instrument which is the territory of Iran, the instruments are the signs of an ancient civilization capable of expanding in the neighboring territories its original characters by virtue of a poetic and refined cultural domination.

To make the subject of Persian music complex, is the presence, in the present Islamic Republic of Iran, of a great variety of ethnic groups and regions with very pronounced characteristics: the Persian official language, it is spoken by little more than half of the population and other languages characterize strong cultural identities such as those of Azerbaijan, Baluchistan, the Turkmen Plateau (Iranian), the Kurdistan (Iranian), the regions of the Persian Gulf, all regions whose ethnic groups cross the territorial borders making the national belonging more uncertain. ...