NOTE: In its current form, this draft contains several minor mistakes, and a major error by omission.

This short essay was originally meant merely as a brief suggestion for considering alternative metric interpretations of standard prosodies, and not a comprehensive catalogue of such metric possibilities. Nevertheless, a revised edition is in the working to be published soon, which will contain the most common interpretation of this prosodic meter. Thank you. -- The Author.

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Hafez and Kereshmeh A Brief Metric & Rhythmic Analysis

Prepared by Payman Akhlaghi
2011, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved. To come across any meter other than 6/8 and 4/4 in Persian music remains a delightful surprise, given the prevalence of the two meters across the entire spectrum of this musical culture. Over the past two decades, admirable attempts have been made to introduce 5 and 7 meters into the repertoire of traditional ensembles. However, the prosody of Persian poetry tells us that historically, this music once enjoyed a much more diverse metric and rhythmic life than its recent history suggests, especially considering the intimate connection between Persian poetry and its music. I came across a poem by Hafez, the rhythmic structure of which intrigued me enough to prepare a brief analysis of its basic meter to share with my Friends (1). Kereshmeh is a goosheh, that is, a standard melody of Persian traditional repertoire, one of the very few with which I am briefly familiar, as my studies have been largely dedicated to Western Classical music. A salient feature of the rhythm of Kereshmeh is whats described in todays standard terminology as a hemiola. Hafez himself has made a reference to this traditioal goosheh in the second verse of his poem, found below; and the rhythm of Kereshmeh is indeed present in the prosody of the poem, forming the fundamental rhythm of the first half of each mesra, i.e., Maf'elon Fa'altan: Ma-f-'e-lon Fa-'a-l-tan | Ma-f-'e-lon Fa-'a-lan

Notwithstanding the above, an alternate interpretation of the prosody seems possible, which would render it more symmetrical. By introducing a quarter rest after Fa'altan, the remainder would shift forward; the polarity
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of accents in the second Maf'elon would be reversed; and the second half of each mesra' would fall on Kereshmeh, too, albeit a syncopated variant of it. Indeed, this is likely to be the more common way this poem is recited, i.e. by articulating the first Maf'elon on the downbeat, but starting the second Maf'elon as an upbeat, following a syncopation; and it could have been as well the way it was originally conceived. After all, one could always wish that the tradition had devised a more precise method to designate such subtleties as rests and syncopations in the underlying prosodies. But Id like to emphasize that taken on its face value, this particular prosody doesn't readily offer a rest and syncopation at that point in the phrase, leaving much room for the validity of the analysis offered earlier in this essay. Up until recently, most traditional musician would have found ways to fit all poems into metrically symmetrical phrases, 6/8 or 4/4, in particular. However, the foregoing argument could show us that, after all, this was not meant to always be the case, as it was demonstrated by examining this poem and its prosody, beating at the eighth-note level, and observing only the emphases it offered literally.

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Special thanks and due credit goes to Dr. S. Moghadasi for introducing the poem and its prosody to me; to the late composer M. Hannaneh for his discussion of Kereshmeh(2); and to M.R. Shajarian for an audio recording of a lesson on Kereshmeh (3).

Notes: 1) First draft published on www.Facebook.com/PAComposer, August the 5th, 2011. All rights reserved for the author. 2) Hannaneh, M.: Gmhy-e Gom-Shodeh, Lost Modes, book in Persian, published ca. 1987 by Soroush publications. 3) M.R. Shajarian on Kereshmeh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8vjVI0XbWU
Appendix 1: Text of the poem in picture format, due to possible distortion of Persian text on Scribd:

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Appendix 2: A Phonetic transliteration of the poem by Hafez, prepared by Payman Akhlaghi:

delaa besooz, keh sooz-e to kaarhaa bokonad niyaze nim-e shabi daf'e sad balaa bokonad etaab-e yaar-e pari chehreh aasheqaaneh bekesh keh yek Kereshmeh talaafiy-e sad jafaa bokonad ze molk (or malak) taa malakoutash hejaab bardaarand har aan keh khedmat-e jaam-e jahaan namaa bokonad tabib-e eshq massiha-dam ast o moshfeq, lik cho dard dar to nabinad, keh ra dava bokonad to baa khodaaye khod andaaz kaar o del khosh daar keh rahm agar nakonad modda'i khodaa bokonad ze bakht-e khofteh maloolam, bovad keh bidaari beh vaqt-e faateheye sob-h, yek do'aa bokonad besookht Haafez o booyi beh zolf-e yaar nabarad magar delaalat-e in dolatash sabaa bokonad

Appendix 3 The poem as text. Due to current distortion of text in Persian on Scribd.com, the following was also pasted above as a picture file. To view this and all other such documents without any distortion and in their original format, you may always turn off the HTML viewing under your Scribd Account Settings:

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