About persian music
History of persian music
Achaemenian dynasty (550-331 BC). The writing of Herodotus and Xenophon
suggests that music played an important role in court life and religious
rituals during this period. However, little else is known about musical
activity in the Persian Empire.
Sassanian Dynasty (AD 226-642). Exalted status was conferred to court
musicians. Barbod, the most famous of these court musicians, reportedly
conceived a musical system consisting of seven royal modes, thirty
derivative modes, and three-hundred sixty melodies. (He is playing
the 'ud in the painting at the bottom of the index page.) This was
the oldest Middle Eastern musical system of which some traces still
exist. Its enduring heritage is the names given to some dastgahs in
the modern system of Persian music.
Arab Invasion (AD 643-750). Musical activity was suppressed during this period.
Abbasid dynasty (AD 750-1258). This increasingly secular dynasty reestablished music at the courts, and Iranian musicians were scattered throughout the Muslim world. Abu Nasr Farabi, whose Kitab al-musiqi al-kabir laid the foundations of the musical tradition of the core Muslim world, for example worked at the royal court in Baghdad. Abu Ali Sina, Safiaddin Ormavi, who codified the mode into twelve divisions with six melodies also lived at this time.
Social power for the next few centuries was dominated by Shiite clerics who frowned on musical expression, and were responsible for its suppression. The imperial courts of the Safavid and Qajar dynasties did patronize the arts, however, maintaining a faint link to the traditions of the past. The modern dastgah system, a codification and reorganisation of the old modes, dates back to the late Qajar dynasty.
The Pahlavi Dynasty brought with it an intense push towards westernisation. In response to this pressure, and in a misdirected effort to "raise" Persian music to the level of Western music, two theories on the intervals and scales of Persian music were proposed in the twentieth century:
The 24 quarter tone scale
This conception of Persian music was published by Ali Naqi Vaziri
in his Musiqi-ye Nazari. He proposed this reformulation to fascilitate
the composition of polyphonic pieces in a system which was traditionally
monophonic. His efforts also brought about the notation of microtonal
raising and lowering of pitches.
The 22 tone scale
A 22 tone scale was proposed by Mehdi Barkesli. This system is grounded
in the origininal theories of the Abassid dynasty theoreticians, Farabi
and Ormavi.
An Alternative
After extensive laboratory studies of the Persian musical repertoire,
Hormoz Farhat has come to the conclusion that the notion of scale
or octave is entirely foreign to Persian musical performance, being
no more than an artificial construct imposed on the system to make
it agree with certain Western notions of what is essential to the
concept of music. Mr. Farhat insists that the more important concept
in this music is that of the mayeh or melodic type. These are melodic
formulas through which the music is articulated, and they transcend
the notions of octaves or scales.
