Owen Wright. 2009. Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music - An Analytical Perspective

Touraj Kiaras and
Persian Classical Music:

An Analytical Perspective
Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis Group
http://taylora ndfra ncis.com
Touraj Kiaras and
Persian Classical Music:
An Analytical Perspective
Owen Wright
University of London, UK
ROUTLEDGE
Routledge
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2009 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright © Owen Wright 2009
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Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
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Owen Wright has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as the author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Wright, Owen
Touraj Kiaras and Persian classical music : an analytical perspective. –
(SOAS musicology series)
1. Kiaras, Touraj – Criticism and interpretation 2. Music – Iran – History and criticism
I. Title II. University of London. School of Oriental and African Studies
782.4’2169’095
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wright, Owen.
Touraj Kiaras and Persian classical music : an analytical perspective / Owen Wright.
p. cm.—(SOAS musicology series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6328-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Songs, Persian—Iran—Analysis, appreciation. 2. Songs, Persian—Iran—
Interpretation (Phrasing, dynamics, etc.) 3. Kiaras, Touraj, 1938- I. Title.
MT120.W75 2008
782.4216’90955—dc22
2008044421
ISBN 9780754663287 (hbk)

Contents
List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements ix
Note on Transliteration xi
Purpose xiii
Part 1: Touraj Kiaras 1

Historical Context 2
Learning 4
Career Development 6
Westernization and Tradition 9
Exile 18
Part 2: Analytical Frameworks 21

Approaches 21
Indigenous Categories 23
Terminology 26
Creativity 37
Part 3: The Present Performance 39

Format 39
Analysis: Background 40
3a. The Pre-composed Pieces (1) 42

pīshdarāmad 42
moqaddame 51
tarāne 53
3b. The radif Section 59

darāmad 59
chakāvak 81
leyli o majnun 86
ney-e dāvud 100
bidād 104
forud 110
vi Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music
3c. The Pre-composed Pieces (2) 113

tarāne 113
reng 114
Part 4: Epilogue 117
Select Bibliography 129

Index 133
List of Illustrations
1 Touraj Kiaras with, left, Karimi, at the tomb of Hafez (during the first
Shiraz festival, 1967) 8
2 At Persepolis, with Karimi (right), during the celebration of 2500 years
of the Iranian Empire 8
3 A public concert with an all female instrumental ensemble, the Orkestr
Banuvan (1964-65) 13
4 A public concert in the Rudaki Hall (c.1968) with an ensemble led by
Rahmatollah Badi’i 14
5 From the left, Touraj Kiaras, Hoseyn Tehrani, Faramarz Payvar and
Hasan Nahed at the Pahlavi University 14
6 After a performance in honour of the President of India given in
1975. From the left, Faramarz Payvar, Hoshang Zarif, Rahmatollah Badi’i;
the President, H.E. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed; Parvin Sarlak,
Mohammad Esma’ili, Touraj Kiaras and Afsane Kaika’usi 15
7 Performing with, from the left, Faramarz Payvar, Hoshang Zarif,
Rahmatollah Badi’i and Mohammad Esma’ili 15
8 From the left, standing, Touraj Kiaras, Faramarz Payvar, Hoshang Zarif,
Mehrdad Delnavazi and Hasan Nahed at a concert given in Coventry
(1996) 20
Taylor & Francis
Acknowledgements
Thanks are due in the first place to the principal performer of the recording
studied here, Touraj Kiaras, to whom I am indebted for his kindness and patience
in responding to questions, and for his general encouragement. What follows is in
a real sense an act of homage to him as well as to the tradition he represents.
I am also grateful to the AHRC Centre for Music Performance and Dance and
to its Chair, Keith Howard, for having invited me to embark on the present study
under its auspices. It forms part of one of the research activities of the Centre, the
analysis project, and I should like to thank its convenor, Richard Widdess, for his
benevolent patience.
For biographical material and informed critical reaction to an early draft
I am indebted to Leonard Lewisohn. I should also like to express my gratitude
to Anna Contadini, for her helpful comments on Part 1; to Sabry Hafez and
Federico Spinetti, who kindly cast an eye over the Epilogue; and to the anonymous
reader, for expert advice and factual corrections. Responsibility for the shortcomings
that remain is, needless to say, entirely mine.
For the transcriptions a particularly important role was played by
Eleni Kallimopoulou, who prepared a careful first draft of the pitch outline of the
vocal material. This was then amplified and the display revised to incorporate
more precise durational values, and the instrumental accompaniment was added
in places. The resulting versions were then submitted to her for another check,
thereby improving their level of accuracy. I am most grateful to her for her help,
without which the transcriptions would have taken much longer to produce, and
been much the poorer. Thanks are also due in no small measure to Simon Mills, to
whom I am indebted for his expert setting of the music examples.
Taylor & Francis
Note on Transliteration
The stricter academic conventions of transliteration have not been followed

here. That is, the use of diacritics to give a set of one-to-one correspondences
to the letters of the Arabic alphabet has been generally avoided in favour of a
simpler representation of pronunciation. Thus, to take an extreme example, the
visual distinctions diacritics allow between ‫ ز‬, ‫ ذ‬, ‫ ض‬and ‫ ظ‬, all pronounced z
(and represented here as z), are effaced. The exceptions are the representations of
‫ ء‬as ’ and ‫ ع‬as ‘, although both are pronounced as a glottal stop, and of ‫ غ‬as gh and
‫ ق‬as q, although these generally fall together as a voiced or voiceless (depending
upon context) velar stop.
Most consonants are realized approximately as in English, although t and d are
dental (as in e.g. French) and r is a tap or roll (as in e.g. Italian). The consonants
represented by digraphs are:
ch as English ch in church
kh as Scottish ch in loch
sh as English sh in ship
zh as English s in pleasure
Vowels are long or short, and to convey this difference just one diacritic is
used: a macron to distinguish between short and long a (a vs. ā). For the other
vowel qualities the contrasts are conveyed by:
e (short) vs. i (long)

o (short) vs. u (long)
The macron has not, however, been used in proper names, and for pre-modern
names and titles of Arabic origin conventions relating to the transliteration of
Arabic vowel qualities have been preferred, so that we have e.g. Qutb al-Din, not
Qotb od-Din. In references to Western-language publications, the forms of Persian
proper names given there have been retained.
Rather than give possibly confusing Persian plural markers on nouns (-hā or
-ān) or, even more awkwardly, add the English -s, the convention has been adopted
of leaving Persian nouns in the singular form throughout: it is virtually always
clear from context whether they are to be understood as singular or plural.
Taylor & Francis
Purpose
Although an independent study conceived and executed in isolation from its

companions, what follows is intended to be a contribution to a common venture:
a large-scale analysis project involving performers and scholars from various
cultures. This enterprise was no doubt conceived with a variety of aims in mind,
and no single approach was advocated, but central to it was the concept of
foregrounding the insights of the practitioner, or at least placing them in productive
juxtaposition with those of the analyst outsider. The result, it was hoped, would be
to refine, redirect and improve the perceptions and procedures of the latter and, in
addition, to re-examine the very purposes of analysis, or at least to consider how it
might communicate to positive effect across cultural boundaries.
In the present case the area of investigation is Persian classical music, on
which there already exists a substantial critical and analytical literature. But rather
than follow previous models and attempt a general account or concentrate on a set
of specific features, the particular focus here is on both the overall structure and
the individual parts of a single performance, in a recording made by the eminent
Iranian singer Touraj Kiaras and a distinguished instrumental ensemble consisting
of Hasan Nahed, Isma‘il Tehrani, Shahriyar Far-Yusefi and ‘Ali Torshizi-Nezhad.
Their instruments are, respectively, the ney, an end-blown obliquely held bamboo

For a polemical discussion of the terms ‘Iranian’ and ‘Persian’ see H. Farhat,
The dastgāh concept in Persian music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990),
p. 1. Here ‘Iran’ and ‘Iranian’ will be used for the country and its inhabitants, ‘Persian’ for
the language, literature and music.

For the following brief biographical remarks I am indebted to the more detailed
accounts by Simon Cassell published in the sleeve notes to the independent issue of the
recording (SOASIS 05).

Hasan Nahed (b. 1943) began to play professionally in 1960, and has been a
member of several prominent ensembles, including that of Faramarz Payvar. He has
performed together with outstanding masters such as Asghar Bahari, Hoseyn Tehrani and
the singer Mohammed Reza Shajarian.

Composer as well as performer, Isma‘il Tehrani (b. 1948) studied with Nur Ali
Borumand. He has taught at the National Conservatory of Music, and moved to the Vienna
Academy of Music in 1984.
Shahriyar Far-Yusefi (b. 1956) studied with Hoshang Zarif and Ali Shahnazi. He
has worked with the Faramarz Payvar ensemble, toured abroad, and is the director of the
Masnavi Ensemble.
‘Ali Torshizi-Nezhad was born (in 1963) into a musical family, and trained in
the style of Hoseyn Tehrani. He has worked with members of the Golha Ensemble, and has
made several recordings.
xiv Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music
flute; the santur, a trapezoidal box zither with two ranks of bridges; the tār, a
long-necked lute with a figure 8-shaped sound chest and skin table; and the tonbak,
a goblet-shaped wooden drum with a single skin head. But however vital the
contributions of the various instrumentalists, it is the singer who stands at the
centre of the performance, and it is specifically the views of Touraj Kiaras that have
been canvassed in attempting to elucidate various aspects of the performance.
As was only to be expected, the preconceptions and approaches of the two
parties were sometimes quite different. But even when trying to discuss aspects felt
by the performer to be irrelevant or abstruse the would-be analyst has attempted to
respect his reservations, and his comments and evaluations, positive or negative,
have throughout been incorporated. It should be added that Touraj Kiaras’s
answers, even to questions he must sometimes have thought odd or puzzling, were
invariably courteous as well as helpful, whether confirming the appropriateness
of a particular line of inquiry, indicating that incorrect or fanciful conclusions
had been reached, or adding information that provoked further investigation by
pointing in more fruitful directions.
But before embarking on the analytical process and beginning to address the
recording itself, a degree of relevant contextualization may be attempted. This will,
at first, take as its main thread a biographical sketch of the singer, weaving through
and around this a summary account of various cultural themes and historical
developments relevant to the 20th-century situation of Persian classical music.

For further organological information see J. During, La musique iranienne.Tradition
et evolution (Institut français d’iranologie de Téhéran, Bibliothèque iranienne no. 29)
(Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations, 1984), and the respective entries in S. Sadie
(ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of musical instruments and instrument makers (London:
Macmillan, 1984).

It goes without saying that it would also have been rewarding to explore the
perspective of the instrumentalists, but they were not available for comment, having
returned to Iran immediately after the recording was made.
Part 1
Touraj Kiaras
Touraj Kiaras was born in 1938, and his biography as an expert singer of Persian
classical music during the second half of the twentieth century is in many ways
exemplary. First, in the difficulties he faced in pursuing music as a vocation
and the decisions he made about the degree to which he would accept a public
rôle, for his is a culture where a musical career has not normally enjoyed high
esteem. This is not of itself particularly surprising: there have been many societies
in which professional musicians are either outsiders or regarded as of inferior
status by the élites who patronize them, but to understand why this should be so
in modern Iran one needs to take some account of the evolving complexities of a
society where conflicting ideologies have not just competed for power, but have
also offered rival views of the ethical evaluation of music and hence (to use a
secular phraseology) have elaborated different agendas for the control of artistic
policy. What made things particularly difficult for Touraj Kiaras was coming from
what might be called an establishment background, one where there were insistent
family pressures favouring quite other career expectations, and one, moreover, in
which there was no rôle model for public performance.
Typical, too, even if the order of events was unusual, was the way in which
his artistic formation combined different and contrastive elements. He enrolled,
in a perfectly orthodox manner, for traditional oral/aural tuition with a teacher of
recognized authority, one of the grand masters of the classical vocal repertoire,
thereby experiencing a method inculcating scrupulous attention to detail and
requiring the memorization and faithful rendition of material recognized as
normative. But this only happened long after he had already absorbed a variegated
repertoire of vocal compositions, partly through random exposure to both live and
broadcast performances, but largely though listening to gramophone records, a
solitary experience of a medium paradoxically both permissive and authoritarian.
Also, although here one should speak less of the exemplary than the universal,
he was subjected, together with all other musicians, to the dramatic political and
cultural upheavals of the twentieth century. He arrived to maturity in a society that
was attempting in multiple ways to accelerate the process of westernization, and
in the course of so doing both emphasized the still novel concept of an indigenous
‘classical tradition’ and challenged its pre-eminence, even its right to survive,
through the parallel support it gave to an imported and prestigious competitor.
Then, at the age of 41, when he had established a significant reputation as a
technically outstanding singer at the peak of his artistic maturity, he had to come
to terms in 1979 with revolutionary upheaval and a new regime that at least in its
early years was profoundly inimical to the public consumption of music, whether
Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music
viewed as art or entertainment. Like many others he took refuge in silence, and
later chose exile in London, where the cessation of his active singing career has
at least been partially compensated for by his teaching activity, from which,
indirectly, the present study is derived.
Historical Context
In terms of social and cultural background Touraj Kiaras is to be placed securely

within a particular segment of the pre-revolutionary élite. For much of the twentieth
century the prevailing policy of the state was some form of westernization,
irrespective of whether governments veered towards constitutional or (more
usually) autocratic forms, particularly so during the Pahlavi period (1924-79),
and most markedly during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza (1941-79), and
fundamental to the maintenance of power and the ability to prosecute a policy of
modernizing institutions and developing industrial production along western lines
was the loyalty of the armed forces. The fact that Touraj Kiaras’s father was a
senior army officer thus placed him near the centre of the state apparatus.
The importance of the military as an agent of modernization and centralization
as well as a bulwark against western expansionism had become crucial already in
the mid nineteenth century, when Iran, following the same pattern as the Ottoman
Empire and Egypt, attempted to reform its army along European lines. Essential
to this process of change were technological borrowing and the importation of
foreign expertise, to be followed by potentially radical transformations of training
and education. Many of those subjected to the new curricula inevitably showed
a degree of receptivity to western ideas, and not merely of administration and
politics, so that eventually, as elsewhere, there emerged a new intellectual élite
with a western-style educational background, a knowledge of western languages
(usually French in the first instance) and an increasing interest in western art
forms. From this would eventually stem innovations in literature, first through
a shift, encouraged by journalism, from a mandarin style to one more in touch
with the demotic, then later, in the twentieth century, through the introduction
of new forms of narrative prose – first the short story and then the novel – and
the development of theatrical presentations. In the visual arts European elements
had begun to be absorbed much earlier, and already in the nineteenth century
the grand tradition of miniature painting in Iran was virtually abandoned. State
patronage was transferred to the production of western-style oil painting, and the
Qajar ruler Nasir al-Din Shah (1848-96), especially, fostered this development
by commissioning both portraits and large-scale military scenes, and supporting

By which time Iran had already lost territory in the eastern Caucasus and Azerbayjan
to Russia. To the Russian threat from the north would later be added British efforts to
extend their sphere of influence in the south.
Part 1: Touraj Kiaras
the training of artists at western art schools. Their output would, as a result, be
radically estranged from the earlier tradition.
But no such drastic rupture was to take place within music. Here, again,
whatever the local chronological differences, one can trace a broad Middle Eastern
pattern of contact with, and eventual interest in, western music as part and parcel of
an increasingly admired or at least respected culture that was in any case difficult
for local élites simply to ignore. But there is little evidence, except perhaps for the
more cosmopolitan milieu of Istanbul, with its significant minority populations
already more open to western culture, that there was much active engagement or
accommodation with western music outside court circles. Where it clearly did
have an impact, to loop back gradually to Kiaras père, was within the specific
context of the military band. Following the earlier models of the reforms instituted
by Sultan Mahmut II (1808-39) in Istanbul and Muhammad ‘Ali (1805-48) in
Cairo, in 1868 Nasir al-Din Shah invited a French band-master, Alfred Lemaire,
to institute a western-style military band to replace the traditional trumpet and
drum ensembles (naqqāre-khāne) that had served for ceremonial occasions
as well as on the battlefield. Lemaire seems to have been both energetic and
efficient, procuring instruments and introducing basic techniques (and manuals)
of music education through which Persian bandsmen were gradually exposed not

Although it should be noted on the one hand that the importation of western motifs
and techniques within miniature painting had begun considerably earlier, and on the other
that in the twentieth century there would be, in a variety of ways, a re-engagement with
traditional elements ranging from the folkloric to the calligraphic. There is, inevitably, a vast
literature on contact with and reactions to the West. For Ottoman Turkey a classic general
study is B. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London, 1961). For the gradual
infiltration of western ideas into Arabic literature see S. Jayyusi, Trends and movements
in modern Arabic poetry (Leiden, 1977) and S. Hafez, The genesis of Arabic narrative
discourse: a study in the sociology of modern Arabic literature (London, 1993). For Iran
in general (although, interestingly, not at all for music) see the Cambridge History of Iran,
vol. 7, which has sections on art, architecture, and a decidedly thin treatment of modern
trends in literature appended to a history of journalism. For the contrast between earlier
and later, westernized, styles of Qajar painting see the materials in L.S. Diba (ed.), with
M. Ekhtiar, Royal Persian paintings. The Qajar epoch 1785-1925 (New York/London,
1998) and, especially, pp. 58-62.

In Egypt, Cairo and Alexandria also had significant European minorities. But
the extent to which the types of music they patronized percolated into the awareness
of the majority Arab community is difficult to determine, given the paucity of relevant
documentation. The inadequacy of the sources is even more striking in the case of Iran,
as witness the unavoidable thinness of the survey of the nineteenth century provided in
M.T. Massoudieh, ‘Tradition und Wandel in der persischen Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts’,
in R. Günther (ed.), Musikkulturen Asiens, Afrikas und Ozeaniens im 19. Jahrhundert
(Regensburg, 1973), pp. 73-94.
just to notation but also to elements of western theory. But western-style band
music, even if increasingly heard and accepted as part of the reformed military
structures, operated within a restricted milieu, its sonic substance constituting a
cultural enclave. Whatever the eventual implications of the educational structures
and methods associated with it, it made no inroads into the space occupied by
indigenous court music which, in any case, the Qajar shahs continued to support,
as did members of the traditional cultural élite.
Learning
But Kiaras père was not one of its patrons, and was in any case often away on
military duty. Although himself by no means indifferent to music, he did nothing
to further his son’s interest, still less, when it became apparent, his talent, as a
musical career was out of the question. In a brief autobiographical memoir Touraj
Kiaras speaks of a particular family celebration at which he sang when he was
12 or 13 as being the one and only occasion on which his father showed him any
encouragement.
It was in the domestic environment, rather, of his mother that his musical
interests and activities first developed, and already as a young child he would
experiment with the available kitchen and tableware for the sounds they could
produce. In addition to learning songs from those around him he absorbed
whatever the radio had to offer, but initially it was largely through exposure to the
gramophone records his mother liked to play that his interest in singing was sparked
and, by playing them repeatedly himself and imitating what he heard, his potential
developed, so much so that from the age of ten he would be encouraged by friends
and relatives to sing at private gatherings and parties. Within the limitations of
what was available at the time this allowed him to become familiar with samples
of classical and semi-classical singing, as well as with some Azeri pieces. None of
this material had been affected in any significant way by westernizing elements.

He also, in an incidental but amusing illustration of the caprices of autocrats, had to
produce at the behest of the Shah an Iranian national anthem overnight, which involved not
just composing it but having the parts copied, rehearsed and then performed the next day
(C. Huart, ‘Musique persane’, in Encyclopédie de la musique (Lavignac), vol. 1 (Paris, 1922)
p. 3077b). He also provided material to whet Orientalist interest at home, supplying the
Paris public with samples of classical Persian music arranged with piano accompaniment.

For the early development of the record industry see P. Gronow, ‘The record
industry comes to the Orient’, Ethnomusicology, 25 (1981): 251-84, and, more specifically,
H. Tabar, Les transformations de la musique iranienne au début du XXe siècle (1898-1940)
(Paris, 2005).

Some idea of the vocal quality of the great singers of the first half of the twentieth
century may be gained from a 2003 Mahur two-CD reissue of vintage recordings: Gozide-i
az sad sāl-e āvāz/A century of âvaz: an anthology, M.CD-135.
In relation to previous patterns of transmission, the ability to play records

repeatedly and so learn sections or whole songs quickly provided a novel learning
opportunity. However, although at the time this approach was still unusual,
it may be noted that Touraj Kiaras was not alone in benefiting from the legacy
of pioneer recording artists such as Seyyid Hoseyn Taherzade (1882-1956). In
fact, reliance upon recordings was to become an increasingly common element
in the formation of Middle Eastern musicians. Of its profound effects on the
transmission of performance skills just two may be mentioned here: the way in
which it increased access, particularly in societies where the major performers of
classical music were concentrated in the capital city, with opportunities to hear live
performances elsewhere being few and far between; and the way in which, by the
very inalterability of the recording, it served to establish an historically stratified
set of canonical performances. A further radical change associated with both
recording and broadcasting was brought about by developments in technology:
early acoustic recordings reproduce the forceful high-pitched delivery presumably
typical of Qajar practice, but subsequently amplification enabled singers to reduce
both volume and register and aim for greater flexibility, an aesthetic shift already
apparent in the recordings of the 1930s and 40s which were Touraj Kiaras’s
primary sources.
However, whatever the benefits to be gained from technology, he suffered
from the frustrating lack of the direction and discipline that a stable master-pupil
relationship can provide, thus making his case more significantly atypical. As a
teenager singing lessons were denied him, and so he was essentially self-taught:
music did not even form part of the school curriculum. In any case, with his
father being posted to the north-western province of Azerbayjan and able to take
his family with him, Touraj Kiaras continued his school education there, first in
Rezayeh and then, after a further move, in Maraghe, thus remaining far from the
capital and its teachers of classical singing. Given that his family was associated
with the modernizing and secularly inclined Pahlavi establishment, he was also
denied another type of musical training that some classical singers have enjoyed:
involvement in the performance of religious repertoires and, in particular, in
Qur’anic recitation, which has formed a significant part of the musical background
of several prominent Middle Eastern singers, providing in addition to purely vocal
skills a kind of moral cushion that allowed them to transfer from the religious
to the secular domain without compromising their moral integrity in the eyes of
society at large.

The classic case, especially as it also involves the complicating factor of gender,
is that of the great Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum (see V. Danielson, The voice of Egypt
(Chicago, 1997). But there are several other, and earlier, examples in Egypt; in Turkey a
number of major performers and composers were associated with the Mevlevi order; and
in Iran a number of early twentieth-century singers (e.g. Seyyid Ahmad Khan and Jenab
Damavandi) began as religious singers. The current doyen of classical singing, Mohammed
Career Development
Despite this restricted background, Touraj Kiaras’s abilities were recognized early.
He made his public debut through occasional broadcasts on the local Rezaye
radio in Azerbayjan while still a secondary school pupil of 16, performing with a
group of school friends. In these rather informal programmes he would perform
a selection of what might be termed light classical songs (tarāne), interspersed
with a few rather more serious compositions that adhered more closely to classical
norms and even with occasional pieces that he had managed to learn from the
core classical repertoire. His father, as might be expected, was not best pleased
with these developments: despite his own musical interests he could hardly have
been expected to countenance a musical career for a member of his own family, so
that offers of training from singers who had been impressed with Touraj Kiaras’s
potential were summarily rejected, and practice, particularly practice on the
incriminating tār and tonbak, which he had also begun to study, had to take place
surreptitiously, when his father was in the officers’ mess. Despite these difficulties,
after the move to Maraghe he managed to devote himself more seriously to music,
practising intensively. But still trying to steer him away from thoughts of a future
as a performer, his father urged him to continue his education abroad after finishing
high school, and recommended that he should go to Vienna to study for a medical
qualification in ophthalmology. He managed to resist the pressure to go abroad
and returned to Tehran but, not wishing to run wholly counter to his father’s plans
for him, accepted that he had to become qualified for a career in a profession or
in public service, and in 1964 he registered for a degree in political science at the
National University.
At the same time he took the opportunity to engage in formal vocal training.
Having decided that he needed to plug the gaps in his somewhat haphazardly
acquired knowledge, he began to widen and deepen his command of the classical
repertoire by taking an intensive course of lessons with one of the acknowledged
grand masters, Mahmud Karimi (1927-84), that was to last for two years, throughout
1961 and 1962. It is a mark of Karimi’s authoritative status that his recording
of the teaching repertoire, issued on six cassettes in 1977, was accompanied
by a carefully produced volume of transcriptions and analytical notes by the
distinguished musicologist Mohammed Taqi Massoudieh, and produced under
the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Arts. Karimi’s normative versions
provide interesting terms of comparison for the performances by Touraj Kiaras to
be discussed later.
Reza Shajarian (b. 1940), also began in this way, having been trained by his father, an
expert in Qur’anic cantillation.

One of the most prominent academic figures of the last quarter of the twentieth
century, Massoudieh is noted for his detailed transcriptions and analyses (in the manner
of Kuckertz, with whom he studied), for work on regional traditions, and for his RISM
bibliographical survey of the manuscript literature on music.
The course of study Touraj Kiaras undertook with him implied a process of
concentration as much as addition, a move from an unschooled and instinctive
absorption of a variety of styles to detailed study of what by the 1940s had been
accepted unquestioningly as the core of the traditional vocal repertoire. Moreover,
by becoming a pupil of Karimi, Touraj Kiaras placed himself within a line of
transmission that went back though Karimi’s own teacher, Davami (1891-1980),
one of the greatest singers of the 30s, to the last generation of court singers under
the Qajar dynasty, from whom Davami had derived his knowledge of the repertoire.
This link would be strengthened later when Touraj Kiaras was able to come into
direct contact with Davami himself.
The early broadcasts from Rezaye had soon been abandoned because of
disagreements over artistic policy, and in any case a reputation gained there would
have remained local, and would not have carried over to distant Tehran. But soon
after Touraj Kiaras’s move back to the capital his talent was recognized once more,
and he was invited to broadcast on Radio Iran, the prestigious national station
with its roster of distinguished musicians, composers and lyric writers. However,
he did not find the atmosphere congenial, and left to form an ensemble made up
of university students. In October 1963 he was invited by the head of Artistic
Activities in the then National Office of Fine Arts to perform twice a month on its
television programme, an arrangement that continued for four years during which
he worked with various orchestras and alongside such eminent contemporaries as
Khatereh Parvaneh. The Office also organized concerts in provincial cities at which
he performed, promoting the cause of classical music beyond its main centres
of appreciation, and at the same time it employed him as an artistic consultant
to advise on musical matters. His contract tied him to perform only in officially
sponsored events, and when, in 1967, the National Office of Fine Arts, now
upgraded to become the Ministry of Culture and Arts (vezārat-e farhang o honar),
refused to sanction appearances on the newly nationalized television, his public
profile was much reduced. As a result he was never to become, in the following
decade, a household name in the way that Khatereh Parvaneh did, or, among male
contemporary singers, Golpayegani and Shajarian. By them, however, he was,
and still is, respected as an artist of equivalent stature, and that his excellence as a
performer continued to receive official recognition is shown by the invitations he
received to perform at prestigious events such as the Shiraz festival.
Finally, in following this narrative of artistic development, it is worth mentioning
that in 1976-77 the Ministry organized an extensive series of master classes with the
eminent veteran Davami, and chose the by now well-established Touraj Kiaras to be
one of the select participants. Despite already having been exposed, through Karimi,
to a direct line of transmission from Davami, and having thoroughly mastered
this version of the vocal repertoire, these classes still provided Touraj Kiaras with
valuable enrichment, demonstrating new possibilities and allowing different nuances
to be absorbed. They served as a particular example of the general process that he
himself would continue, that of synthesizing differing strands of transmission in
such a way that continuity is assured without sacrificing individuality.
Illustration 1 Touraj Kiaras with, left, Karimi, at the tomb of Hafez (during the
first Shiraz festival, 1967)
Illustration 2 At Persepolis, with Karimi (right), during the celebration of 2500

years of the Iranian Empire
Westernization and Tradition
The period during which Touraj Kiaras worked with Karimi and then began to
develop his career was one marked by interesting tensions in the arts, for it was
during the 60s that the westernizing profile of the regime became particularly
apparent. This would further encourage the espousal of western music as a greater
cultural good among the higher echelons of urban society, and would prompt a
number of musicians who did not wish to abandon Persian music entirely, but
felt that it needed to be modernized, to seek forms of synthesis, incorporating
Western instruments (and sometimes adjusting intonation accordingly) or seeking
to introduce elements of Western harmony and polyphony in newly upholstered
settings of existing material, as in the early recording by Touraj Kiaras included
on the CD. This is a fascinating historical document providing both a window
onto a form of development since largely abandoned and evidence for the ease
with which a singer who chose to train with an acknowledged master of tradition
could at the same time also happily perform within a wholly different and highly
westernized sonic envelope.10 But if the contrary pulls of modernization and
traditional purism (the latter being, in effect, a reaction to and hence a creation of
the former) had not yet led to the establishment of doctrinaire positions, they were
well on the way to doing so, for the tensions between them had been gradually
intensifying, crystallizing around the stubborn opposition of traditionalists to the
innovations that had for some time been energetically advocated by the reformist
‘Alinaqi Vaziri (1887-1979).
One convenient way to approach this issue is through a consideration of
terminology, for this, too, is revelatory of ideological pressures and accommodations.
Already, use has been made above, somewhat reluctantly, of such non-indigenous
and therefore potentially inappropriate labels as ‘classical’, ‘semi-classical’, and
‘regional’. But pre-modern musicological texts within Middle Eastern cultures,
whether appealing to theoretical constructs of purportedly general validity or
to a more specifically Iranian, Arab or Turkish tradition, use only generic terms
translatable as ‘music’. Differentiation, that is, a demarcation of the self as against
the other, comes about only at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the
emergence in Turkish and Arabic of a blanket ‘eastern music’ label (and in the Arab
world it is not until the middle of the twentieth century that this is replaced by the
designation ‘Arab music’). That the concept ‘classical’ is an importation is clearly
shown in Turkish by the use of the loan klasik, while in Persian (where this word

See e.g. B. Nettl, ‘Persian classical music in Tehran: the process of change’, in
B. Nettl (ed.), Eight urban musical cultures (Urbana, 1978), pp. 146-85.
10
As the illustrations show, other ensembles with which he performed variously
included flute, clarinet and (suitably retuned) piano. Also evident is the highly westernized
and extremely formal dress code prevalent in the 60s and, perhaps most important of all, the
public presence of female musicians.
10 Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music
would normally refer specifically to Western classical music)11 there is no precise

terminological equivalence, and we find a slightly different angle being shown on
the same ideological complex, with the kind of music sung by Touraj Kiaras being
termed most frequently musiqi-ye sonnati (translatable as ‘traditional music’) or
musiqi-ye asil (translatable as ‘authentic music’).12 Together, they suggest a profile
combining notions of historical continuity and unquestionably Iranian identity
(with a sub-text of non-contamination by Western elements) together with nobility
(referring to both content and patronage). Leaving aside internal geographical,
social and/or ethnic discriminations, that is, ignoring regional, folk and minority
traditions, the major distinctions within the principal cities, Tehran above all, are
first along an élite/popular axis where musiqi-ye sonnati/asil is often contrasted
with a lighter style termed motrebi, equating broadly with ‘entertainment’ and often
regarded as inferior (mobtazal (‘common, cheap, contemptible’) being a favourite
term of condemnation), and secondly along an Iranian/Western axis where it
competes in status with Western classical music and contrasts with various forms
of western-influenced popular music and their increasing domination of youth
culture.13 Whatever its variety of types and audiences, Western music was thus a
separate world, but one which nevertheless impinged upon Persian music: in the
first place, as already noted, it functioned as a term of comparison or importunate
other forcing particular and unprecedented kinds of discrimination, and by its very
belonging to a dominant and incursive ideology served to trigger an indigenous
emphasis on ‘tradition’ and to circumscribe an area within which change, hitherto
a largely unforced, gradual and therefore frequently unnoticed process, and
certainly not one to occasion alarm, becomes marked as a matter of urgent concern
and debate, to be variously espoused, discouraged, or even anathematized.
Again following a broad Middle Eastern pattern, the musical impingement of
the West on the classical domain appears to have been initially significant less
at the level of practice than at that of concepts. Rather than inspire immediate
attempts at emulation through experiments in sound, Western music provoked
reactions as part of a broader cultural intrusion which increasingly demanded
attention as something to be taken account of, comprehended, and in various ways
intellectually absorbed. There have been, in the Middle East generally, a variety
of responses to the dilemma of confronting the imperialist phase of western
11
Although it is used on occasion in relation to Persian music as well (as in e.g.
H. As‘adi, ‘Bonyādhā-ye nazari-ye musiqi-ye klāsik-e Irān’, Māhur, 22 (2004): 43-56).
12
These are not coterminous: what is sonnati is not necessarily asil, and vice versa.
A further term that sometimes overlaps with one or the other is melli ‘national’. A variety
of discriminations are paraded in J. During, Quelque chose se passe. Le sens da la tradition
dans l’Orient musical, Lagrasse. 1994), pp. 37-65, and M. Shahrnazdar, ‘Jāygāh-e barkhi-
ye mafāhim o vājhehā dar musiqi-ye irāni’, Māhur, 1 (1998): 149-59.
13
For a useful distribution map see B. Nettl, The radif of Persian music, studies of
structure and social content (Champaign, 1987), table V-1.
domination14 in its cultural and specifically musical manifestations, ranging

from enthusiastic promotion grounded upon the necessity of adopting something
considered progressive and more advanced (with a concomitant abandonment of
indigenous traditions) to stubborn but principled rejection (with a concomitant
tenacious defence of indigenous traditions).15 But more common has been the
espousal of a position somewhere between these two extremes, and in the case of
Iran it was the policy advocated by Vaziri that, for much of the twentieth century,
proved to be the most influential and, inevitably, the most contentious. Given the
already well-established bridgehead of western models of teaching and practice in
the military band it was no doubt symbolically appropriate that the chief standard
bearer of this ideological shift should be a retired military officer,16 and the
evolutionary modernization that he argued for was to be furthered by his decidedly
brisk and energetic guiding hand. Its goal may be summarized, equally briskly, as
somehow retaining the essentials while modernizing format and infrastructure.
This meant at one level generalizing and building upon the experience already
gained through the development of the military band (the use of notation as a
teaching tool and technique of standardization, the normalization of intonation
within a uniform theoretical framework, the development of new educational
institutions, the cultivation of large ensemble performances given in public
concerts and the production of newly composed pieces to serve this format) and,
at another, the equally important ideological promotion of music as a prestigious,
morally positive art form in which, most daringly of all, women might be allowed
to participate publicly.
Vaziri’s programme of innovation and reform was inevitably to be more
attractive to some than to others, but whatever the subsequent fluctuations in
his reputation there can be no doubt of his energizing importance. His advocacy
and the reactions it provoked helped mark out clearly the dividing line between
westernizers and rejectionists that is still discernible today, and at the same
time prefigured aspects of the bicultural tensions that marked the unresolved
ambiguities of cultural policy under Shah Mohammad Reza. On the one hand the
regime encouraged, created even, an overtly western profile to match its political
ambitions, supporting a symphony orchestra and funding the related institutional
and educational infrastructure. Yet on the other, because it also sought a form of
nationalistic legitimation through appeal to a millennial Iranian (and specifically
pre-Islamic) imperial past, including a cultural component from which musical
traditions perceived to be ancient could hardly be excluded, it created a parallel
14
For a wider perspective see A. Hourani, Arabic thought in the liberal age, 1798-
1939 (London, 1970) and R. Mottahedeh, The mantle of the prophet: learning and power
in modern Iran (London, 1986).
15
See the range of views in Nettl, The radif of Persian music, pp. 111-21. A more
extended discussion is conducted in During, Quelque chose se passe.
16
It is not without significance that the title page of his tār method should identify
him as Colonel Vaziri.
(and sometimes overlapping) set of structures through which Persian classical

music was supported. Consequently, we find that the activities and patronage of
the Ministry of Culture and Arts included funding various ensembles, supporting
modernizing musicians such as Dehlavi, and organizing concerts not only in the
main Rudaki Hall in Tehran but also in various provincial centres and even abroad.
It was in this environment that the dynamics of westernization within the domain
of Persian music would most obviously be played out, and it was here that Touraj
Kiaras’s public career would find its natural habitat. (Indeed, his relationship with
the Ministry extended beyond performance to his career as a public servant, for
after graduating in politics he was employed as a consultant in the Cultural Attaché
Office, having particular responsibility for promoting Persian arts in Afghanistan,
China and Turkey.)
Opposition to Vaziri’s programme naturally centred on affirmation of the
immutable character of the tradition, which included in addition to the repertoire
itself attitudes deemed intrinsic to it, above all the mystical tinge invested in the
term hāl (‘state’), deemed a necessary condition for performances transcending the
routine, and evidently a further protective envelope against overtly westernizing
tendencies.17 But the perception of a core repertoire – however defined – as
something sacrosanct is an essentially reactionary concept, and one that is not
without its problems, for in the very process of creating a defensive shield around a
corpus felt to be under threat it chokes back the normal flow of internal innovation
and development. In other circumstances this could have led to the preservation
of a frozen repertoire of precomposed material, unwrapped on special occasions
to be shown off as a prized cultural possession, even if to all intents and purposes
a dead museum exhibit, but the particular characteristics of Persian classical
performances, in which there is an insistence upon creativity as an essential
element, fortunately meant that consistency could never be absolute.18 However,
if the core repertoire never congealed internally, it by and large ceased to be open
ended and, if with occasional exceptions, one can discern within musicological
discourse increasing prominence being accorded to an authoritarian view of
what constituted the living space of the tradition, and of the limits that should
17
See J. During, Musique et mystique dans les traditions de l’Iran (Paris-Tehran,
1989), and Quelque chose se passe.
18
Certain other traditions were not so well protected, and from the Maghreb, through
Turkey and (perhaps especially) into Central Asia, manifestations of this tendency towards
an ideologically promoted classicization resulting in ossification have emerged at various
times. Given local differences further generalization would be hazardous (for Tunisia
see e.g. R.F. Davis, ‘Cultural policy and the Tunisian ma’lūf: redefining a tradition’,
Ethnomusicology, 41/1 (1997): 1-21, and for Uzbekistan T.C. Levin, The hundred thousand
fools of God: musical travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) (Bloomington,
1996)).
not be exceeded.19 As a result, those who wished to channel their creativity into
composition rather than performance were in effect prevented from adding to the
core, however close to it they might wish their idiom to remain.
While the modernizing policies of Vaziri were problematic, and could hardly
fail to provoke reactionary opposition, the example he set nevertheless encouraged
a number of musicians to adopt a rather more fluid view of tradition, one that,
according to their lights, respected the corpus transmitted by their teachers
(and expected it to be thoroughly mastered), but did not regard it as closed and
unalterable. In the event, Touraj Kiaras’s most fruitful artistic alliance was to be
with one of the great standard-bearers of this trend towards a more innovative but
still classically-based style, Faramarz Payvar (b. 1932).
Illustration 3 A public concert with an all female instrumental ensemble, the

Orkestr Banuvan (1964-65)
19
A clear parallel is to be seen in the codification of the Iraqi maqām repertoire, where
increasingly rigid demarcations have been made with regard to what forms the core and
what lies beyond it.
Illustration 4 A public concert in the Rudaki Hall (c.1968) with an ensemble led
by Rahmatollah Badi’i
Illustration 5 From the left, Touraj Kiaras, Hoseyn Tehrani, Faramarz Payvar
and Hasan Nahed at the Pahlavi University
Illustration 6 After a performance in honour of the President of India given in

1975. From the left, Faramarz Payvar, Hoshang Zarif, Rahmatollah
Badi’i; the President, H.E. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed; Parvin Sarlak,
Mohammad Esma’ili, Touraj Kiaras and Afsane Kaika’usi
Illustration 7 Performing with, from the left, Faramarz Payvar, Hoshang Zarif,
Rahmatollah Badi’i and Mohammad Esma’ili
Among the foremost santur virtuosi of his generation and schooled in the
tradition of one of the unquestionable grand masters, Abol-Hasan Saba, Payvar
is representative of the more dynamic, progressive traditionalists, and has been
hugely influential as teacher and composer as well as performer. As an innovator
in composition he concentrated in particular on developing metred instrumental
forms, while as a performer he appeared not only as a soloist (sometimes with
a percussion accompanist) but also as the leader of an ensemble.20 In one of
its manifestations this latter activity continued the Middle Eastern court-music
practice of providing solo and ensemble instrumental pieces and, especially,
of having a singer accompanied by a small group of expert soloists playing
contrasting instruments, although now one characterized by greater cohesion and
control. (Touraj Kiaras remarks upon the hard work that went into rehearsing with
Payvar, which implies a desire to achieve greater planning and precision at the
expense, inevitably, of some degree of spontaneity in performance.) But in addition
Payvar attempted ground-breaking arrangements for larger ensembles, although
with these, as with parallel western-inspired developments elsewhere in the
Middle East, the striving after homogeneity and a more massive quasi-orchestral
texture necessitated a degree of direction that ran counter to the earlier norm of
small-ensemble heterophonic freedom, a development deplored, not surprisingly,
and not without reason, by the stricter upholders of tradition.21 It also involved
the creation of a new sound aesthetic, with a plusher string tone and a greater
emphasis, echoed also by the reintroduction of the lute, on a balance between
high and low registers. This, too, was not to everyone’s taste, but Touraj Kiaras
was perfectly happy with Payvar’s innovations and musical direction. Indeed, as
is demonstrated by the recording made during this period which is included on the
CD, he was evidently comfortable singing with an even larger string ensemble, for
the arrangement here, by Dehlavi, is far more radical in its adoption of a polyphonic
texture than anything attempted by Payvar, who may have added the occasional
harmony but always worked within an essentially monophonic idiom.
With Payvar, Touraj Kiaras gave a number of performances at the Rudaki Hall
in Tehran and, from 1965 to 1968, at the Shiraz festival. Prestigious performances
of another kind were those they gave when invited to represent Persian culture
by serving as musical ambassadors abroad, and in this function Touraj Kiaras
sang in India and Turkey at the invitation of their respective arts ministries. At
the same time he continued his non-musical career as an advisor to the Ministry
of Culture and Arts. Indeed, this increased when, in 1975, he took on a second
appointment managing cultural relations, with responsibility for promoting
20
As, for example, on the 1974 CD Nonesuch H-72060.
21
For the level of vituperation that such efforts could provoke see L.C. Miller,
Music and song in Persia: the art of āvāz (London, 1999) p. 35. An interesting presage of
opposition to Payvar’s innovatory tendencies, presumably expressing the purist attitudes of
Safvate, is given in N. Caron and D. Safvate, Iran. Les traditions musicales (Paris, 1966,
repr. 1997) p. 223.
culture both internally, for example by arranging activities in provincial schools,

and externally, working with cultural attachés to sponsor and administer events
aimed at disseminating knowledge of the arts of Iran abroad.
The westernizing thrust behind the arrangements for large ensemble appears
in more muted form in Payvar’s compositions for santur. But while attention can
readily be drawn to certain obvious importations – scalar or arpeggio flourishes,
occasional melodic use of thirds – what is especially striking about such pieces
is what might be termed their public orientation: while never superficial, they
develop the technique of the instrument further and can be extrovert showpieces,
thus running directly counter to the somewhat one-sided emphasis placed by those
who most object to innovation on what may fairly be summarized as the more
introvert aspects of the performance of Persian classical music.22 While these
aspects involve a number of aesthetic values – delicacy rather than brashness in
technique, meditative profundity rather than public projection, and a cultivation
of particular sound-qualities23 – the discourse that supports them tends to hover on
the fringes of religion. It portrays the ideal musician in ethical rather than technical
terms, stressing probity of character as a prerequisite to profundity, and tends either
to invoke a rather vague spirituality24 or, with particular reference to the vocal
repertoire, stresses the Sufi interpretations that much of the verse sung either invites
or permits. It is fairly clear that this runs the danger of becoming little more than a
standard trope on the clash of civilizations theme, contrasting transcendental Eastern
values with Western materialism and technology, and at the same time a technique
for warding off alien incursion. But that does not render it invalid: the religious
background of some singers has already been noted, and it is certainly the case that
a number of prominent musicians have had Sufi affiliations (despite the overtly
antagonistic views of the Iranian Shia establishment), while others, inevitably less
prominent, have shunned the limelight, stressing the contemplative essence of a
corpus most effectively realized in meditative isolation or, perhaps more typically,
shared within a small group of cognoscenti. They thereby align themselves with a
common Middle Eastern cultural model of intimate and convivial social gatherings
devoted to intellectual discussion and the reading of poetry as well as music.
22
Cf the concluding remarks in B. Nettl with B. Foltin Jr., Daramad of chahargah:
a study in the performance practice of Persian music (Detroit monographs in musicology,
no. 2), (Detroit, 1972), pp. 37-8.
23
J. During, La musique iranienne: tradition et évolution (Institut Français
d’Iranologie de Téhéran: Bibliothèque iranienne, no. 29) (Paris, 1984) discusses (p. 43) the
terms used and the qualities they refer to, central being a preference for a bright, resonant
tone (the key term being zang ‘bell’). It is in relation to this aesthetic that can be understood
the objections to the thicker sound-textures of large ensembles and to such specifics as the
change in tone quality resulting from adding felt pads to santur mallets.
24
See on both these points the material (largely about, and from, Safvate) assembled
in Miller, Music and song in Persia: the art of āvāz, pp. 16-18. See also J. During, Musique
et mystique dans les traditions de l’Iran, pp. 527-33.
Although himself happy to perform in public, Touraj Kiaras was by no means

insensitive to these values. There is no need, in Iran, to have connections with
organized Sufism, or even to be overtly religious, in order to be affected by aspects
of a Sufi ethos, since these have helped to form a pervasive sensibility.25 A related
notion is that the deeply personal values enshrined within classical music are in
some way demeaned by pursuing it as a profession, and it is significant in this
respect that Touraj Kiaras would not accept payment for his performances; nor
was he willing to make commercial recordings. His profession was to be that of a
civil servant: even if carried out in public and organized by an official body, music
was an essentially private vocation not to be sullied by pecuniary concerns, and if
circumstances dictated it could retreat to the private domain.
Exile
Whether or not religion was a factor of personal significance for Touraj Kiaras it
remained of crucial social importance, most directly because the westernizing
regime which supported and employed him as a ministry official would eventually
founder on a rock of opposition that was either explicitly religious or articulated in
religious terms. The 1979 Revolution, which toppled the Shah, resulted not merely in
withdrawal of state support but also, in the early years of the regime, deliberate acts of
suppression. But that music could attract such hostility should occasion no surprise.
Nettl noted in his survey of pre-revolutionary attitudes a number of informants who
regarded secular music as at best frivolous and at worst a promoter of immorality,26
and rather than being exceptional such attitudes reflect a perennial strain in Islamic
evaluations of music. It was only to be expected that the centuries-old polemic on its
ethical position (defended by Sufis but, to oversimplify, largely attacked by legists,
whether Sunni or Shi‘i) would have resurfaced after the Revolution. But even before,
such opposition, although by no means universally held, can only have created a
background of potential disapproval that must have been a factor contributing to the
earlier opposition of Touraj Kiaras’s family to a musical career.
With an abrupt curtailment of public performances and broadcasts ushered
in by the Revolution, Touraj Kiaras was reduced, like many other musicians,
to silence and despondency.27 Many left, especially among those at the popular
end of the spectrum, which incurred particularly strong official disfavour, and it
was only because of personal circumstances that Touraj Kiaras’s own departure
25
Particularly marked in the programmatic characterization put forward in N. Caron
and D. Safvate, Iran. Les traditions musicales, pp. 232-6, and evidently reflecting the credo
of Safvate.
26
B. Nettl, ‘Attitudes towards Persian music in Tehran, 1969’, Musical Quarterly,
(1970): 183-97.
27
For a scholarly reflection of this mood see Farhat, The dastgāh concept in Persian
music, p. 6.
was delayed. He worked on at the Ministry of Culture and Arts for a further few
months, but in 1980, having qualified for a pension, retired. He ceased to perform,
and lived quietly with his family until, in 1989, circumstances were such that he
was at last able to leave.
Ironically, by then the regime’s attitudes were beginning to soften, and classical
music, at least, has subsequently enjoyed greater tolerance and recognition. Some
of this may be attributed to an increasing emphasis on Persian national culture
as a result of the Iran-Iraq war, some to changes in the attitudes of the religious
authorities.28 The nationalist impulse led to a gradual restitution of ‘traditional’ art
forms, so that with the continuing suppression of public performances of the lighter
motrebi entertainment styles there was, paradoxically, an opportunity for classical
music to reach a wider audience, a situation appreciated by some musicians.29
In particular, the attitude of the regime strengthened the hand of those who, like
Safvate and Kiani, wished to resist the kinds of development spearheaded by
Payvar. It is also important to note that music (and musicology) re-emerges as an
academic discipline, with support for research publications.30 Public concerts also
resume and, as a final irony, there is a wholly unexpected implementation of one
of Vaziri’s policies, women being allowed to perform publicly, even if restricted
by the regime – in a way he would have thoroughly disapproved of – to appearing
only before all-female audiences. More recently, political attitudes have hardened
again, resulting in (or from) increasing international tension, but the musical
scene remains relatively unaffected, being if anything somewhat more relaxed and
plural, with less overt opposition to popular genres: to obtain permission for rock
concerts might still be problematic, but is not impossible,31 and public space is
invaded by expatriate losanjelesi pop.32 Yet despite this diversification, and the
28
Particular importance being attached to a much more nuanced fatwā given by
Khomeini which, in essence, deemed classical music allowable.
29
Particularly as the motrebi style had been regarded as a menace. Revelatory in this
respect is the publisher’s prefatory note in M.T. Massoudieh, Radīf vocal de la musique
traditionelle de l’Iran par Mahmud Karimi, transcription et analyse (Tehran, 1976), where
Karimi is praised for always having held aloof from it, as it threatened the classical tradition
with decline (enhetāt) and disappearance (zavāl). See also J. During, ‘L’oreille islamique.
Dix années capitales de la vie musicale en Iran : 1980-1990’, Asian Music, 23/2 (1992):
135-64.
30
These are by no means restricted to classical music, and important publications
have appeared on regional traditions and on organology. Also to be noted is the production
of a series of CDs of historic recordings and the diffusion of ethnomusicological as well as
historical scholarship. See A. Movahed, ‘Religious supremacy, anti-imperialist nationhood
and Persian musicology after the 1979 revolution’, Asian Music, 35/1 (2003-2004):
85-113.
31
See L. Nooshin, ‘Underground, overground: Rock music and youth discourses in
Iran’, Iranian Studies, 38/3 (2005): 463-94.
32
For further accounts of recent developments see e.g. S. Fatemi, ‘Le chanteur
silencieux: un apercu general de la vie musicale en Iran, CEMOTI, 29 (2000): 321-43,
increasingly western bias of youth culture, the position of classical music remains,
at least for now, relatively secure and unthreatened.
But Touraj Kiaras could have predicted none of this, and in any case most
members of his family were already established abroad: for him it was time to
leave. He had relatives in Germany, but chose to come to Britain, where his son
was studying, and settled in London. Eventually he was persuaded to become
musically active again, and as well as performing privately at home with friends
he began to teach. In 1992, partly through the efforts of Leonard Lewisohn, he took
up a teaching position at the School of Oriental and African Studies. This activity
he has happily continued up to the present, being equally dedicated to passing on
his expertise to advanced Iranian students and, with infinite patience, to initiating
inexperienced Western students into the complexities of the classical Persian vocal
repertoire and its techniques. But he has only rarely been prevailed upon to appear
in public, and then mainly in an academic setting, and it is specifically through his
academic relationship with the School of Oriental and African Studies that he was
at last tempted into the studio to record the CD to be studied here.
Illustration 8 From the left, standing, Touraj Kiaras, Faramarz Payvar,

Hoshang Zarif, Mehrdad Delnavazi and Hasan Nahed at a concert
given in Coventry (1996)
A. Youssefzadeh, ‘The situation of music in Iran since the Revolution: the role of official
organizations’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 9/2 (2000): 35-61.
Part 2
Analytical Frameworks
Approaches
It is worth beginning with the trite observation that although the domain of
analysis is normally held to include features relating both to the production of
music and to its reception, as an increasingly autonomous province of western
academic musicology it has until recently concentrated almost exclusively
upon unravelling the structures embedded in scores. Although it may claim to
be concerned with ‘the music itself’ – a notion of some ontological complexity,
be it said – it has generally dealt with a blueprint for performance rather than
the realization thereof and the reactions to it, and has only belatedly attempted
to come to grips with oral traditions. Given this bias, it is not surprising to find
that the most sophisticated approaches tend to foreground those features that are
most salient in western notation, or that preference is given in choosing works
for analysis to those in which pitch relationships and their rhythmic organization
appear to be more significant than such vital parameters as timbre and dynamics.
Equally neglected, until recently, have been modalities of reception (as distinct
from reception histories). On the presumption that the analyst qua expert listener
can identify precisely those structures and processes that make the composition in
question effective for ordinary listeners, even if they remain blissfully unaware of
them, their reactions have remained largely unexplored.
This is also the case with those analyses that have been carried out by Persian
scholars, understandably so, since they reflect not indigenous discourse but a
European academic pedigree, adopting models of display and segmentation familiar

I.D. Bent and A. Pople, ‘Analysis’, in S. Sadie (ed.), The New Grove (London,
2000).

Even to the extreme (E. Narmour, ‘On the relationship of analytical theory to
performance and interpretation’, in E. Narmour and R. Solie (eds), Explorations in music,
the arts, and ideas: essays in honor of Leonard B. Mayer (Stuyvesant, NY., 1988)) of
condemning performances that do not exemplify the score-based insights of the analyst.
More seriously, one may detect the traces of this attitude in theoretical ventures viewed as
advances on traditional musicology: it is difficult, for example, in the model proposed by
J.J. Nattiez, Fondements d’une sémiologie de la musique (Paris, 1976), to see the niveau
neutre as other than a re-labelling of the domain occupied by the score.

A useful survey of these issues is provided in N. Cook, Music, imagination, and
culture (Oxford, 1990). See also J. Sloboda, The musical mind: the cognitive psychology of
music (Oxford, 1985).
in the work of such scholars as Kuckertz. Further examples of this approach have
been supplied by Massoudieh, and a similar form of segmentation underlies the
formal analyses proposed by Zolfonoon, while Khatschi had previously attempted
to inflect it in a structural direction, discerning a tetrachord-based set of articulations
as fundamental devices. However, Western analytical approaches employing such
methods, that is, relying upon a metaphorical opposition of surface and depth (and
often implicitly or explicitly invoking parallels with generative linguistics), are
increasingly being challenged, and theorists are showing a greater engagement
with immediately perceived phenomena and the experiential flow of reception.
But although pious lip service is often paid to ethnomusicological materials and
approaches in such potential realignments, they have hardly been brought centre-
stage, and no new analytical orthodoxies that might profitably be applied to non-
European traditions have yet emerged. Meanwhile, despite occasional efforts
to visit upon the music of other cultures some of the more favoured analytical
approaches to the standard Western areas of eighteenth- to nineteenth-century tonal
and twentieth-century atonal compositions, their relevance is by no means clear,
especially when there seem to be no analogues to them among emic perceptions,
and it must be legitimate to query the extent to which they can appropriately
be applied where what might be called the model-to-performance relationship
differs considerably from the western score-to-performance relationship. Seeking
inspiration elsewhere, scholars dealing with cultures incorporating variability in
the creation of monophonic melody have tended to look with particular interest at

Although more involved in South Asian music, Kuckertz also himself provided
an example of his technique of transcription applied to Persian classical music
(J. Kuckerz, ‘Der persische Āwāz-i Afšārī in Darbietungen des Setār-Spielers Ahmad
Rahmānīpūr, Teheran’, in J. Elsner and G. Jähnichen (eds), Regionale maqām-Traditionen
in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Materialien der 2. Arbeitstagung der Study Group ‘maqām’
des International Council for Traditional Music vom 23. bis 28. März 1992 in Gosen bei
Berlin), vol. 2 (Berlin, 1992 [pub. 1994]), pp. 345-54).

M.T. Massoudieh, Avâz-e Shur, zur Melodiebildung in der persischen Kunstmusik
(Kölner Beiträge zur Musikforschung, 49), (Regensburg, 1968), ‘Die Mathnawi-Melodie
in der persischen Kunstmusik’, Orbis Musicae, 1 (1971): 57-67, Radīf vocal de la musique
traditionelle de l’Iran par Mahmud Karimi, transcription et analyse (Tehran, 1976) and,
taking an Arab example, ‘Taqsim-e bayāti’, Māhur, 1 (1998): 45-56.

J. Zolfonoon, Tajziye o tahlil-e musiqi-ye Iran (Tehran, 2001).

Kh. Khatschi, Der Dastgâh, Studien zur neueren persischen Musik (Regensburg,
1962), ‘Das Intervallenbildungsprinzip des persischen Dastgah Shur’, Jahrbuch für
musikalische Volks- und Völkerkunde, 3 (1967): 70-84.

Several of the chapters in the compendious N. Cook and M. Everist (eds), Rethinking
music (Oxford, 1999 repr. 2001) point in this direction.

For a cautious exploration of one such approach see J. Stock, ‘The application of
Schenkerian analysis to ethnomusicology: problems and possibilities’, Music Analysis,
12/2 (1993): 215-40.
Treitler’s work on plainchant.10 Drawing upon the techniques of formulaic analysis

applied to oral epic poetry, this productively addresses issues of text (a notation
is a record of just one possible version among many) and construction (creativity
lies in the selection, adjustment and combination of pre-existing motifs). A similar
approach to the topography of shifting surfaces in Persian classical music is perhaps
not the most immediately obvious method to make central to an examination of
the specific and invariant features of a single performance, which seems to imply
a greater emphasis on what than whence, but it would certainly be relevant to
an attempt to account for their genesis and might well commend itself in a more
general study of creativity within this tradition.
Indigenous Categories
But whatever doubts there may be about the universal applicability of this
approach or that, the analytical enterprise cannot take place in a methodological
void, and the most obvious starting point is to take account of, and attempt to use,
the conceptual framework elaborated within the culture, one familiar, therefore,
to the performer. Unfortunately, Persian musicological and critical discourse
fails to provide us with ready-made models or discovery procedures appropriate
for detailed analysis of the type familiar to western musicologists: it has been
concerned with the generic rather than the particular. Assessments of performances
may well be critically subtle, embodying fine-grained aesthetic evaluations, but
are not always readily correlated with specific structural features, while within
those areas of theoretical investigation that are developed in some detail, such as
categorizations of mode, or the relationship between poetic metre and rhythmic
structure, we seldom encounter scrutiny of isolated instances. Modal analysis,
not unnaturally, has veered towards abstraction and systematization,11 and has
not often seen fit to attend to the precise nature of the differentiation between
closely related segments of the system. As far as metre is concerned, setting aside
studies of what are classed as the musical aspects of poetry, which properly form a
sub-branch of literary scholarship, one may certainly find general overviews of the
relationship between prosodic and musical rhythm.12 But it is symptomatic that
these draw their examples of text setting as much from Western as from Persian
music, and there is again no detailed evaluation of what actually happens in a
10
L. Treitler, ‘Homer and Gregory: the transmission of epic poetry and plainchant’,
Musical Quarterly, 60 (1974): 333-72.
11
As e.g. in Massoudieh, Radīf vocal de la musique traditionelle de l’Iran par
Mahmud Karimi.
12
E.g. M. Forughi, She‘r o musiqi, n.p., 2nd impr. (Tehran, 1984) and, more recently,
H. Dehlavi, Payvand-e she‘r o musiqi-ye āvāzi (Tehran, 2000).
performance.13 Equally general is the network of technical terms and labels that
provides a conceptual map of the repertoire and its constituent elements, however
useful it may be in serving as an essential starting point.
The intellectual responses to music that characterize Persian culture (and are
part of a wider reflective and theoretical territory embracing also the Arab and
Turkish worlds) may, for present purposes, broadly be separated into two types.
One is concerned with the cosmological and ethical domains, tending therefore to
conceptualize music as a phenomenon that resonates through and beyond the life of
man. Its power to influence constitutional equilibrium means that it can be enrolled
for therapeutic purposes, but its parallel power to affect the psyche also renders
it a potentially disruptive element within the moral universe (not surprisingly, it
is here that the debate between the contrary views of legist and Sufis is to be
located). While this approach may result in specifics (for example, a given mode
may have ascribed to it a particular affective profile), it is centred upon perceptions
of and arguments about music as such, rather than the particulars of any given
manifestation of it,14 and for the most part it will be disregarded in what follows.
The other, although embracing a range of disparate topics, may appropriately be
labelled musicological, and it here that we will find the elaboration of analytical
systems. Those that are most immediately relevant concern categorizations (and
therefore perceptions) within the parameters of pitch and duration, considered
separately and together, yielding a theory of modes, rhythmic cycles, and forms.
In dealing with this material one immediate problem concerns the extent to
which it is possible to discriminate between areas of knowledge that are still
pertinent today and those that are historically attested but of no current relevance.
Put crudely, few contemporary musicians, however expert and discriminating they
may be, are at all familiar with the grand textual tradition that would take in, if not
the early Arabic corpus within which al-Kindi (d. c867), al-Farabi (d. 950) and Ibn
Sina (d. 1037) may be mentioned as key figures, then at least al-Urmawi (d. 1294),
before moving on to the more readily accessible Persian-language production of
Qutb al-Din Shirazi (d. 1311) and, especially, ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi (d. 1435),
the most prominent theorist of the Timurid period.15 But this should occasion little
surprise, for the evolution of the court music tradition in Iran has been such that
much of the frequently subtle systematization presented in these texts could hardly
13
That is, they tend to present prescriptive assertions, rather than the results of
empirical investigation, as found in e.g. G. Tsuge, ‘Avaz: a study of the rhythmic aspects
in classical Iranian music’, PhD dissertation (Wesleyan University, 1974) and M.L. Caton,
‘The classical “tasnif”: a genre of Persian vocal music’, PhD dissertation (Los Angeles:
UCLA, 1983).
14
See F. Shehadi, Philosophies of music in medieval Islam (Leiden, 1995), A. Shiloah,
Music in the world of Islam (Aldershot, 1995).
15
Apart from becoming increasingly available in modern editions, this body of theory
can now be accessed through general surveys such as T. Binesh, Shenākht-e musiqi-ye Irān
(Tehran, 1997).
be applied to modern practice: the various changes that took place during the latter
part of the Safavid period and after, both at the level of modal, rhythmic and
formal structures and in the court music repertoire, have significantly altered the
landscape.
These changes, however, are not at all well documented. The verbalization of
musicological concepts tended to be recorded less during the Safavid and Qajar
periods and, when committed to writing, then more starkly.16 It may possibly
have flourished in oral exchanges, even generating subtle elaborations, but of
this we have no evidence, and what survives is, essentially, a nucleus of shared
terminology. This would then be used as the armature for the reelaboration of
theory in the twentieth century when, in the absence of a strong and continuing
intellectual tradition of indigenous theorizing, it was inevitable that there would
be an injection of Western thought. The basics, however, seem to have survived
relatively unscathed, although it should be noted that some of the terminology
that is standard usage among contemporary performers and musicologists was not
so well established or uniform a century ago.17 Apart from the significant step of
adopting staff notation, suitably amended, as a useful explanatory (and, up to a point,
pedagogic) device, modern theorists have by and large compartmentalized their
treatments, relegating, say, concepts of harmony and counterpoint to a specifically
Western section,18 and treating Persian music separately, their discussions being
structured according to the traditional analytical vocabulary familiar to musicians,
and as some of this concerns the large-scale organization of the repertoire one
result, reinforced by the intellectual pressure to create a classical canon analogous
to that of Western music, has been an increasing stress on attempts to codify and
categorize.
16
The literature recorded in M.T. Massoudieh’s exhaustive bibliography, Manuscrits
persans concernant la musique (RISM) (Munich, 1996) is sparse, and invaluable as they
are, the various pre-modern texts published by e.g. A.H. Pourjavady, ‘resāla dar bayān-e
chahār dastgāh-e a‘zam’, Māhur, 12 (2001): 81-92, ‘resāla dar ‘elm-e musiqi’, Māhur, 14
(2002): 101-14, ‘The musical codex of Amir Khān Gorji c. 1108-1697’, PhD dissertation
(UCLA, 2005), and A. Rostami, ‘resāla-ye ‘elm-e musiqi asar-e Mir Sadr al-Din Muhammad
Qazvini’, Māhur, 18 (2003): 81-96 are generally brief and only fitfully informative, certainly
when compared with earlier theoretical texts.
17
For the history of some of the key terms see H. As‘adi, ‘az “maqām” tā “dastgāh”’,
Māhur, 11 (2001): 59-75, and for the later Qajar period N. Zaker-Ja‘fari, ‘bar rasi-ye
mafāhim-e musiqi-ye dastgāhi-ye iran dar barkhi az motun-e avākher-e dawre-ye nāseri’,
Māhur, 27 (2005): 117-28.
18
As in R. Khaleqi, Nazari beh musiqi (1938, repr. Tehran, 1991).
Terminology
The following is a cursory review of this analytical vocabulary, working from

large-scale to small.19
radif
It is generally accepted that the core of the tradition, the essential part that any
proficient musician must master as a prerequisite to being accorded credibility
as a classical performer, is made up of a set of pieces (variable in number,
approximately from 200 to 300, depending on the different lines of vocal or
instrumental transmission) that are globally known as the radif (‘series, row’).
What is particular and peculiar about mastery of the radif is the fact that although
there is often an insistence on interiorizing knowledge through exact repetition
and memorization, this does not generally lead to exact replication in performance.
There is, in fact, considerable variability in this respect: some pieces have melodic
and/or rhythmic properties that need to be adhered to exactly or at least quite
closely, while others may be treated much more freely, and indeed it is a mark of
the creativity of the outstanding musician that each performance should display
these pieces in a different light. For the performer they thus evolve from the fixed
form of a memorized composition in which they are first encountered to a more
fluid state, ending in certain cases as a template for improvisation. Up to a point,
the radif material itself embodies its potential transformation in that it inculcates
the processes by which it may be creatively varied and extended. It is worth
adding in the present context that the operations of segmentation that this implies,
even if not verbalized, are clearly analytical in nature, and are indeed rendered
explicit in the notation of the radif made by Tala’i.20 Although in this instance
the purpose may have been partly visual economy, it nevertheless represents the
outcome of analytical perceptions that identify motivic elements and thereby
render them potentially detachable, to be recombined in different configurations.
Other published radif notations include both prescriptive versions (e.g. that of
Abol-Hasan Saba for violin), and descriptive transcriptions of particular
performances (e.g. by During of a performance on tār by Nur ‘Ali Borumand in
1972,21 and by Massoudieh of the vocal radif sung by Karimi). The fullest version,
19
A parallel set of comments and explanations, also including one or two other terms,
may be consulted in H. Farhat, The dastgāh concept in Persian music (Cambridge, 1990),
pp. 21-6.
20
D. Tala’i, radif-e Mirza ‘Abdollah (Tehran, 1997).
21
J. During, Le répertoire-modèle de la musique iranienne : radif de tar et de setar de
Mirza ‘Abdollah : version de Nur ‘Ali Borumand. Introduction et notation par Jean During
(radīf-i sāzī-yi mūsīqī-yi sunnatī-yi īrān), (Tehran, 1991). But although reflecting a specific
performance, During regards this transcription as a prescriptive version.
no doubt a compilation from several sources, is that of Ma‘roufi and Barkishli,22

a sumptuous state-sponsored publication clearly intended to serve as a monument
to tradition and as a Pahlavi proclamation to the world of the enduring legacy and
high artistic status of Persian classical music.
But despite the symbolic cultural importance that has accrued to it, the genesis
and early evolution of the radif corpus remains obscure. The last major Safavid
song-text collection, dating from c1700,23 displays a quite different modal and
rhythmic nomenclature and, equally important, records pieces by named composers,
thus providing a striking contrast with the earliest modern equivalent, the bohur al-
alhān of 1904, which contains no pre-composed pieces at all, but rather a selection
of texts deemed suitable for singing in such-and-such a modal configuration.24
Tracing the nature and chronology of the radical shift from one type to the other,
given the paucity of source materials, is no easy task,25 but there is no strong reason
for arguing against the generally held supposition that the consolidation of the
radif tradition as now understood is to be located somewhere in the mid nineteenth
century (albeit a period conveniently lacking in documentation) and is to be
associated in particular with musicians at the court of Nasir al-Din Shah (1848-
96). Two major sources of authority among them are cited, Mohammad Sadeq
Khan and Agha ‘Ali Akbar Farahani (1839/40-1917),26 but it is only the lineage
of the latter that serves as the conduit for the twentieth-century transmission of
the radif. This comes, above all, through his sons, Agha Hoseyn Qoli (d. 1915)
and Mirza ‘Abdollah, and it is especially from the latter that the principal modern
instrumental radif derive their legitimation, among the most authoritative being
those of Nur ‘Ali Borumand (1906-78) and Abol-Hasan Saba (1902-57). Largely
because it omits certain metred forms that are essentially instrumental, the vocal
radif generally contains fewer constituent pieces, and as there is no one clear line
back to Farahani and his sons its transmission is more diffuse, with other Qajar
22
M. Ma‘roufi and M. Barkishli, La musique traditionelle de l’Iran (Tehran, 1963).
Striving to be comprehensive, this includes material not enjoying universal acceptance as
part of the radif.
23
E. Neubauer, ‘Zur Bedeutung der Begriffe Komponist und Komposition in der
Musikgeschichte der islamischen Welt’, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der arabisch-islamischen
Wissenschaften, 11 (1997): 307-63, A.H. Pourjavady ‘The musical codex of Amir Khān
Gorji c. 1108-1697’.
24
A similar trajectory towards anonymity and an increasing lack of composed pieces
may be detected in the eastern Arab world (but not in the Ottoman tradition). A possible
explanation in terms of socio-economic factors (especially a decline or even absence of
court patronage) might be adduced for, say, Baghdad, but would seem less persuasive for
Iran, although given the conflicts and upheavals that marked the final years of the Safavid
period and those following some similar rupture may well have occurred.
25
See the recent attempts of H. As‘adi, ‘az “maqām” tā “dastgāh”’.
26
N. Caron and D. Safvate, Iran. Les traditions musicales (Paris, 1966, repr. 1997),
p. 15.
musicians also being cited as authorities. But whether singers or instrumentalists, it

has been common practice for musicians to study with more than one master, with
the result that transmission maps can become quite complex.27 Figure 2.1 shows, in
its simplest form, the particular transmission route which leads to Touraj Kiaras.
Figure 2.1
Whether well-founded in all respects or not, the standard account of the

transmission of the repertoire allows the construction of tradition as monument,
something unchallenged and solidly maintained within the culture that is sufficiently
powerful to resist the pressures and blandishments of westernization. (At the same
time, it allows the interpretation not of accretion but of erosion, of being the residue
of a greater former richness, of resulting from a narrowing down process involving
loss, of radif material developed by past masters that failed to be transmitted.)
As already noted, the concomitant danger of ossification that accompanies such
a process is countered internally by the recognition of variant versions resulting
from different twentieth-century lines of transmission and, crucially, by the
inherent flexibility of the material itself, but it asserts itself nevertheless externally
by controlling its extent. There have, it is true, been occasional additions to the
stock of pieces recognized as legitimate parts of the radif,28 but by and large it is
now regarded as a closed corpus, and the concepts of tradition and authenticity in
their various ways close off experimentation in modal and rhythmic structure.
dastgāh and āvāz
The corpus of pieces constituting the radif is conventionally subdivided into

twelve unequal segments, each one constituting a modal complex dominated by
a particular pitch set (but not, in most cases, to the exclusion of all others, so
that a degree of internal modulation is a standard feature). These segments are
sometimes generically termed dastgāh (and it is normal to speak, particularly
27
Examples may be found in L.C. Miller, Music and song in Persia: the art of āvāz
(London, 1999), p. 9, B. Nettl, The radif of Persian music, studies of structure and social
content (Champaign, 1987), p. R1.
28
These, such as deylamān, the introduction of which is credited to Abol-Hasan Saba,
are generally derived from regional/folk traditions.
when concentrating on modal aspects, of the dastgāh system), but it is common to

distinguish between the more important segments, the dastgāh proper, of which
there are seven, and the remaining five, which are usually termed āvāz. These
have fewer constituent elements, and are deemed to be of subordinate or derived
status.29
The seven principal dastgāh are: shur, segāh, chahārgāh, māhur, rast-
panjgāh, navā and homāyun (the dastgāh to which the material on Touraj Kiaras’s
CD belongs). Of the five āvāz four, dashti, abu atā, bayāt-e tork and afshāri, are
classified as satellites (mote‘alleqāt) of shur, and the fifth, bayāt-e esfahān, as a
satellite of homāyun.
In what follows, unless otherwise specified, the term dastgāh will be used
to refer to all twelve modal complexes, or any one thereof, i.e. as shorthand for
‘dastgāh and/or āvāz’. A dastgāh is made up of a set of largely free-standing
pieces, each with an individual or generic name. As it is only on rare occasions
that the complete set is performed, it may be regarded in general as a repertoire
from which the performer may choose. Choice is, however, limited: some pieces
are regarded as more important and are rarely omitted (while certain others are
performed relatively infrequently, and tend to be relegated to the margins); and the
ordering of those chosen is also subject to certain constraints.
Not to be confused with the above is a further meaning of āvāz: ‘vocal
performance of musiqi-ye sonnati’, with particular reference to the performance
of material comprised within the radif. This sense is relevant to Touraj Kiaras’s
CD, where it designates the central section which contrasts with the non-radif pre-
composed vocal as well as instrumental pieces that flank it. (Other terms which
are sometimes used for modal structure are māye and maqām, but they may be
dispensed with here.)
gushe (tekke, naghme)
The generic term for the pieces that constitute the radif (and hence the set for
each dastgāh) is gushe (‘corner’). They are perceived to be of different types,
and, as noted above, some are considered to be more important than others.
The most substantial ones are termed by some shāhgushe (‘king gushe’), while
the terms tekke and naghme may be used to apply to certain small-scale ones.
Further distinctions are reflected in the gushe nomenclature. Although not wholly
consistent, this consists, broadly, of two types of terms. One is a set of names
each of which is specific to a particular gushe perceived to be different from all
others (examples of this type included on the CD being chakāvak, ney-e dāvud
29
Despite this general agreement, there is still occasional hesitation: Caron and
Safvate, Iran. Les traditions musicales, p. 17, for example, speak of 12 āvāz. As a designation
of a group of modes āvāz is much the more ancient term, being attested from the thirteenth
century. The term dastgāh does occur before the nineteenth century, but not in its modern
sense, and its implications are not always clear.
and bidād). Logically, therefore, a gushe of this type should only appear in one
dastgāh, but there are in fact a few cases where the same (or virtually the same)
gushe appears in two dastgāh (an example on the CD is leyli o majnun, which
occurs in rast-panjgāh as well as homāyun), and there are also cases where a gushe
appearing in two dastgāh is articulated in terms of the different pitch sets of each
while remaining identifiable by virtue of its distinctive melodic contour.
In other cases the same name occurs in several dastgāh, and here it would be
appropriate to consider these a set of class terms. In each instance the gushe in
question is embedded within the modal properties of the specific dastgāh in which
it occurs. Rather than denoting, like the previous set, specific entities characterized
by melodic properties, the class term may sometimes refer to processes. Some of
these are rhythmic:
chahārmezrāb (‘four beats/strokes’) Generally associated with another gushe,

this is an instrumental piece with a particular and regular rhythmic articulation.
It is usually quite substantial, and has a pre-composed melody, although this
may be varied, to the extent, indeed, that performers now frequently treat it with
considerable improvisatory freedom while remaining within the modal confines
of the gushe with which the chahārmezrāb is paired. It stands in a somewhat
ambiguous position to the radif in the sense that it can function less as a specific
melodic/rhythmic model than as a rhythmic/formal framework within which new
compositions can be created and performed in other contexts. Favoured especially
by santur and tār players, considerable rhythmic emphasis is placed on the ostinato
patterns that accompany the melody, and it may also be realized as an exuberant
duet with the tonbak.
zarbi (‘rhythmic’) As the meaning suggests, this is a gushe type with a particular
and regular rhythmic articulation, and like the chahārmezrāb it is characteristic of
the instrumental repertoire. It is usually brief, with a pre-composed melody that
may, however, be varied in performance.
kereshme This also relates to a rhythmic process whereby the melody is articulated
according to a particular metric structure, but one that is not rigorously maintained
throughout, the regularity of pulse in the initial phases diminishing towards the
end.30 It appears in the vocal as well as the instrumental repertoire, whereas
30
For examples of basic rhythmic articulations see e.g. M.R. Ebrahimi, ‘Angārehā-ye
ritmik: kereshme’, Māhur, 1 (1998): 139-43, and for fuller outlines see Farhat, The dastgāh
concept in Persian music, pp. 179-82.
masnavi is specific to the vocal repertoire. Here it is possible to speak of certain

common melodic and rhythmic gestures, but the predominant binding element,
that which the term denotes, is the type of poem always used in this gushe. 31
The other terms in this category are structural and formal with specific reference
to melody:
darāmad (‘introduction’) This is the initial unmetred exposition of the modal

resources of the core lower register of each dastgāh, and is normally the first
gushe to be performed. (In an instrumental performance it may be preceded
by a chahārmezrāb, or it may reappear after a following chahārmezrāb. On
Touraj Kiaras’s CD, for example, the sequence is instrumental darāmad +
chahārmezrāb + vocal darāmad.)
owj (‘peak, summit’) In a few dastgāh there is a comparable specification of the

unmetred development of the high register.
forud Broadly equivalent to an extended cadential descent, this appears in some

dastgāh after gushe characterized by a move away from the initial pitch set, which
it serves to re-establish. As in Touraj Kiaras’s performance, it may contain an
extended development before the familiar cadential material is re-introduced, and
be sufficiently substantial to be considered equivalent to a gushe.
As has been pointed out, musicians do not make random selections from
the available set of gushe. Normally a performance will be structured around a
number of gushe considered to be more important, some, indeed, being virtually
indispensable. The order in which they are played is not always the same, but
there are certain conventions that are generally observed: the darāmad will come
at or near the beginning, and those that follow will usually be organized in such
a way that the pitch range will gradually ascend, to be followed by a more abrupt
final fall. A further general principle of organization is to intersperse metred gushe
among the unmetred ones.
The standard format of a full-scale concert performance by a vocalist with an
instrumental ensemble will have, as on the CD, a substantial central vocal section
of radif material (termed āvāz). But despite the generous relative proportions of
this section, time constraints mean that usually only a small selection from the
gushe repertoire of the dastgāh in question can be performed, normally consisting
of the darāmad and three or four others, for the most part chosen from those
considered particularly important.
This central section will be flanked by forms that call upon radif material but
are not classified as part of it. These are, in their normal order of occurrence:
31
See M.T. Massoudieh, ‘Die Mathnawi-Melodie in der persischen Kunstmusik’,
Orbis Musicae, 1 (1971): 57-67. This notes common features, but is at pains to emphasize
variability between its manifestation in the various dastgāh examined.
pishdarāmad (‘pre-introduction’) As the name suggests, this is a piece designed

to precede the darāmad, and is broadly equivalent to an overture. An early
twentieth-century innovation designed to facilitate ensemble performance, it is a
pre-composed piece in either duple or, more frequently, triple metre, and generally
performed at a rather sedate tempo, that draws upon some of the main gushe of the
dastgāh in question.
tasnif/tarāne (‘composition’) These terms are more or less interchangeable, the

difference, if any, relating less to musical idiom that to degrees of seriousness or
formality (and thus involving variations in performance context also). The tarāne
is the lighter in style, and is sometimes viewed as a development away from the
more serious body of classic early twentieth-century tasnif compositions. Both are
again pre-composed metrical pieces, but this time vocal.
reng This is an instrumental form that concludes the performance. It is another

pre-composed metrical piece, but this time in a dance-like triple metre often with
a significant level of hemiola (alternating between 6/8 and 3/4), and performed in
a moderate to lively tempo.
The next layer of terms relates not to particular categories of piece but to
the inner structure of the more extensive and important gushe (the so-called
shāhgushe).
darāmad This term thus reappears within the darāmad gushe, where it might
be labelled darāmad2 to avoid confusion (so that one can have the darāmad2 of
the darāmad). It again means ‘introduction’, and denotes the first phrases that
serve to identify the dastgāh in question, and, in a vocal performance, precede the
rendition of the poetic text.
she‘r (‘poetry’) This, the main body of the gushe, is a verse setting (and in an
instrumental performance the rhythmic articulation will still be reminiscent of
the way a vocalist responds to the metric organization of the verse). The singer
may adhere fairly closely to the radif model in places, but is expected to show
inventiveness at least in the more florid melismatic passages added at the end of
each hemistich. These passages are termed
tahrir and it is here, especially, that the singer will use a particular technique
involving glottal closure, in effect a very fast and flexible yodelling.32
forud has the same sense as before, but, like darāmad2, operating on a smaller
scale. Within the gushe it designates the final cadential phrases that follow the
tahrir development at the end of the she‘r. Since it must lead to the finalis, and
32
For technical details see M.L. Caton, ‘The vocal ornament tekīya in Persian music’,
Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, 2/1 (1974): 43-53.
since for each dastgāh there tend to be set cadential phrases,33 the forud is more
fixed than the material that precedes it, but may also include tahrir elements where
individual creativity can be displayed.
shoru‘ (‘beginning’) and khāteme (‘end’) are alternative terms preferred by
Touraj Kiaras to designate, respectively, the areas that precede and follow the
central verse-setting block.
The smallest-scale discriminations relate, first, to modal properties, and
concern the identification of significant pitches:
āghāz (‘beginning’) The initial melodic gesture. (Although common in the

literature, Touraj Kiaras avoids this term, preferring shoru‘.)
shāhed (‘witness’) This is the most prominent pitch of the gushe, its salience
marked primarily by relative duration. The verse setting will normally emphasize
it, at least in the early stages.
ist (‘stand’) An intermediate phrase final note other than the shāhed.
motaghayyer (‘alterable’) This term relates to a pitch that may be replaced by

another (either a quartertone or a semitone higher or lower) during the course of
the gushe. The presence or absence of a motaghayyer pitch (and, if present, its
identity and the identity of the pitch that may be substituted for it) is not a matter
of choice, but is a specific feature of the gushe in question.
Secondly, they refer to pitch discriminations:
do, re, mi French solfeggio syllables are now standard to define (relative, not
absolute) pitches, and further specification is provided by: diez ‘sharp’, bimol
‘flat’, sore ‘half sharp’, and koron ‘half flat’.
Most musicians are partially or fully familiar with notation, and for the last two
values use the standard symbols ‡ and respectively. The question whether there
are optimal intonational values for any or all of these, and if so what they are, is a
matter on which no final agreement has been reached. Normative values have been
proposed by some theorists, but musicians blithely ignore them. In other words,
what is important in the first instance is not adherence to some theoretical absolute
but the maintenance of a set of broa`d functional (i.e. phonemic) discriminations,
the (approximate) size of the indivisible intervals used being semitone, threequarter
tone, whole tone and whole tone and a quarter (or plus 2nd, to adopt Farhat’s
terminology). There is, inevitably, a degree of variation in practice, but even if
intonation does not arouse quite the same passions as it does in Turkey, where
there is a quasi-official (but not unchallenged) normative theory, it remains an area
of central concern. Indeed, in the Middle East generally intonation has generated
33
An inventory of these is provided by Massoudieh, Radīf vocal de la musique
traditionelle de l’Iran par Mahmud Karimi, p. 18.
sharply conflicting (and endlessly reiterated) views that reveal clearly its ideological
centrality in the reaction to westernization. In Iran, we find attempts, now discarded,
to regularize practice on the basis of an evidently western-derived tempered system
(the Vaziri approach); an ongoing series of empirical studies34 revealing, as one
might have anticipated, contextually determined variations and personal
preferences; and the perception that there are subtle (and not generally quantified)
differences in the intonation of the same generic interval from dastgāh to dastgāh,
arrived at by the intuitive adjustments the musician makes in accordance with the
individual emotional atmosphere created by each, the hāl, which, with pleasing
circularity, is held to be produced by adherence to the correct intervals.35
To summarize, what is reviewed above is the salient vocabulary that comprises
the formal and analytical conceptual armoury of contemporary musicians. It covers
the large-scale organization of the repertoire; definition of its constituent discrete
units; a typology of those units; and formal segmentation of the larger units, that
is, it provides a range of identificatory labels and presumes the ability to match
sound stretches appropriately to them. However, one problem that this poses for
the analyst is the lack of an intermediate stratum between the level of individual
note function and that of the gushe as a whole or, in the larger gushe, that of its
main divisions (darāmad2, she‘r, tahrir).36
As far the she‘r is concerned it might be argued that the notion of microformal
divisions is redundant, since they would be epiphenomena dependent upon the
verse. But more generally it might be possible to relate the absence of analytical
tools at this level to the lack of surface fixity: if each performance is different the
common ground retreats, possibly even beyond any one radif form, and what
might be perceived as aesthetically significant in a given performance is not in any
obvious sense relatable to the kind of skeletal outline analysis can extract but, on the
contrary, to variations in the surface texture. However, to pursue the analogy, even
if the analyst were tempted to abandon the x-ray for the microscope, it still remains
the case that the purpose of the examination would be to produce topographical
generalizations in relation to which an individual realization could meaningfully be
mapped. One might expect from such a situation that a further set of concepts would
34
E.g. M. Barkechli, ‘Recherche des degrés de la gamme iranienne à partir de la
sensation subjective de consonance’, in Commemoration Cyrus: Hommage universel III
(Tehran-Liège, 1974), pp. 339-60, Farhat, The dastgāh concept in Persian music, 1990.
35
J. During, Quelque chose se passe. Le sens da la tradition dans l’Orient musical
(Lagrasse, 1994), p. 139.
36
For other general accounts adding further detail see, in addition to the literature
already cited, M. Caton, ‘The concept of mode in Iranian music: Shūr’, in V. Danielson,
S. Marcus and D. Reynolds (eds), The Middle East: the Garland Encyclopedia of World
Music, vol. 6 (New York and London, 2002), pp. 59-76, and E. Zonis, Classical Persian
music: an introduction (Cambridge Mass., 1973). For a cyclical interpretation of dastgāh
structure see H. As‘adi, ‘Bonyādhā-ye nazari-ye musiqi-ye klāsik-e Irān: dastgāh beh
‘onvān-e majmu‘e-i-ye chand-modi’, Māhur, 22 (2004): 43-56.
emerge out of discussions of the nature of creativity, but although much might be
inferred from the metaphors deployed in the aesthetic evaluation of the performance
of a given gushe, the literature on creativity has yet again been produced, whether
by Iranians or others, in the context of western academic discourse.
Striking in the above survey is the concentration on formal and, in the broadest
sense, modal vocabulary, and the seeming neglect of specifically rhythmic
properties. However, much formal vocabulary implies either a specific rhythmic
structure or the choice of one among a restricted range of structures. Thus of
the terms encountered tasnif, tarāne, pishdarāmad, chahārmezrāb and reng are
all metred genres, generally duple or triple (and sometimes alternating between
them), and likewise zarbi (which may also on occasion employ aksak cycles of
five or seven), while specific rhythmic properties are inherent in kereshme (where
there is an approximation to a recurrent cycle) and in
bastanegār This term is the name given to various brief gushe characterized by
the preponderant repetitive use of a short rhythmic cell.37
Such cells and cycles tend not to be foregrounded, even though some verbal
labels exist, perhaps the best known being
shir-e mādar (‘mother’s milk’) This is the name of the common triple metre,
involving frequent hemiola, that is employed in the reng form.38
Nevertheless, there is a clear contrast in importance between modal and rhythmic
labelling. The internal grouping of the repertoire is according to preponderantly
modal criteria, up to a point echoing Safavid and even pre-Safavid practice and,
indeed, preserving many early mode names (even if melodic/modal links with
their earlier manifestations may not always be demonstrable). But on the rhythmic
side there is no comparable continuity, and the previous practice of recording
repertoire items by both mode and rhythmic cycle has been abandoned along with
the extensive earlier nomenclature of rhythmic cycles (and the complex analyses
that accompanied it in theoretical texts). Despite the insistent presence of frame-
drums in the iconographical record, and photographic evidence to confirm the
continuing importance of percussion instruments in Qajar ensembles, one might
hypothesize that with the gradual decline of the textual tradition of music theory,
within which analysis of rhythmic cycles had been a significant element, the
transmission of knowledge was increasingly in the hands of melody performers. It
is relevant to note here that the repertoire of rhythmic cycles has also diminished,
leaving only relatively short cycles (in relation to which the melodic material is
often organized in symmetrical sequences)39 and, whether or not as a concomitant,
37
For examples see Farhat, The dastgāh concept in Persian music, p. 182.
38
It should also be noted that tonbak players have a terminology for playing
techniques.
39
From the middle of the twentieth century, largely through the efforts of Hoseyn
Tehrani, the tonbak has acquired significance as a potential solo instrument. But this
one may point to the obvious fact that large parts of the repertoire, and in particular
many of the gushe which form the core of each dastgāh, are unmetred.
But is unmetred music really unmetred? Recent research on flow and pulse40
suggests that some form of previously unsuspected regularity may often be
detected, whether in the surface rhythmic morphology of individual phrases
or in their interrelationships, while with Persian music we have the pervasive
complicating factor (not least because of the terminological overlap) of poetic
metre. That is, even in those parts of the repertoire that are generally classified as
unmetred (and would never be accompanied by a percussion instrument), if what
is sung is a line (or lines) of verse, the metrical structure of the verse will have
an effect on the rhythmical structure of the melody. The nature of that effect is an
ongoing subject of research in Iran, but the general approach is more prescriptive
than empirical, and there is a need for further detailed descriptive accounts of
individual performances before subtler conclusions can be drawn.41
To avoid confusion, in what follows poetic metre will be referred to by the
technical term ‘aruz, the generic designation (in Arabic and Turkish as well as
Persian) for the system of poetic metre governing classical (but not necessarily folk
or contemporary) verse. The metres available are many and complex, but the basic
principles upon which they are based are simple and easily stated. Persian metres
are not, as in English, based on stress nor, as in French, on the number of syllables
to the line but, as in Latin, on the distinction between short and long syllables,
which can then be grouped in particular patterns, usually of three or four
syllables, that can in turn be grouped in particular sequences to form the line.42
The classification of a syllable as long or short in Persian is not always automatic
(i.e. does not always rely on purely phonological criteria). In fact, some distinctions
are script-based; some syllables are potentially either short or long; and some
syllables are regarded as extra long and given the value long + short (— ∪), but
such minutiae need not be delved into here.
To take a particular example, the first line of the verse sung by Touraj Kiaras in
the gushe bidād would be scanned as follows:
development does not appear to have been accompanied by the introduction of more
extended cycles (or the reintroduction of ancient ones).
40
J. Frigyesi, ‘Preliminary thoughts towards the study of music without clear beat:
the example of “flowing rhythm” in Jewish nusah’, Asian Music, 24/2 (1993): 59-88,
D.R. Widdess, ‘“Free rhythm” in Indian music’, EM: Annuario degli Archivi di
Etnomusicologia dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, 3 (1995): 77-95, M. Clayton,
‘Free rhythm: ethnomusicology and the study of music without metre’, Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies, 59 (1996): 323-32.
41
For descriptive data (and analytical conclusions) see Tsuge, ‘Avaz: a study of the
rhythmic aspects in classical Iranian music’.
42
For a theory as to the distribution of patterns see B. Hayes, ‘The rhythmic structure
of Persian verse’, Edebiyât, 4/2 (1979): 193-242.
‘ā she qā n-e / din o don yā / bāz rā khā / si ya- tist
—∪ —— /— ∪— —/—∪—— /—∪ —/
kān na bā shad / zā he- dā n-e / māl o jāh- an- / duz rā
— ∪ —— /—∪ —— /— ∪— — /—∪—/
The ‘aruz structure here is quite straightforward: each half-line consists of three
feet of the pattern — ∪ — — , followed by one from which the final syllable is
deleted, yielding the pattern — ∪ — . The point here, though, is not to be able
to ascertain what the poetic metre is, still less to survey the range of possible
metres, but to consider the extent to which the rhythmic structure of the melody
corresponds to the metre of the verse, or might indeed be generated by it.
Creativity
This brings us back to the general topic of how much in a performance is

predetermined, and where the areas of choice in performance might lie. There
has been a long-standing ethnomusicological concern with the improvisation/
composition contrast, 43 and it is now apparent that placing these terms in opposition,
whether overt or implied, creates a false dichotomy, and one, moreover, weighed
down with undesirable ideological baggage.44 On the one hand, all performances
of so-called improvised music are, in varying degrees, pre-composed in the sense
that they are predicated upon the mastery of a system that supplies both material
and processes to hand. In Middle Eastern traditions, at least, what is created in
the course of performance may involve, say, varying a melodic Gestalt, usually in
fairly predictable ways, but is especially likely to involve cut-and-paste processes
resulting in new arrangements of known formulae, particularly in instrumental
performance, where mastery of technique provides ready-made physical moves
that can be strung together.45 On the other hand, all performances of pre-composed
music involve, at the very least, adjustments (according to the physical and
psychological environment) resulting in changes to tempo and dynamics. But in
many traditions more active interventions and additions to the musical texture are
43
B. Nettl with M. Russell (ed.), In the course of performance: studies in the world of
musical improvisation (Chicago and London, 1998).
44
L. Nooshin, ‘Improvisation as “other”: creativity, knowledge and power – the case
of Iranian classical music’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 128 (2003): 242-96
supplies a useful survey of the sometimes explicit but all too often unacknowledged and
possibly unconscious cultural prejudices that have pervaded scholarship in this area.
45
J. Baily, ‘Movement patterns in playing the Herati dutar’, in J. Blacking (ed.), The
anthropology of the body (London, 1977), pp. 275-330.
allowed, encouraged or, indeed, required, so that what we encounter are myriad
gradations moving from more to less predetermined.
In Persian music, mastery requires competence across the spectrum, but with
the most prized ability being that which can negotiate an individual path through
and around familiar territory, and how that ability is acquired has been a major
topic of attention for several ethnomusicologists. The mechanisms of transfer
from one state to the other are not explicitly taught, but rather absorbed through
exposure, both to performances, in which the range of permissible variation can
be experienced, and, paradoxical as that may seem, to the radif itself, especially
if learned in slightly different forms from different teachers.46 But, as suggested
above in the comments on the radif, even if only one version is internalized ample
opportunity is provided to identify and isolate repeated (and therefore repeatable)
segments, and to absorb the combinatorial grammar of the patterns in which they
occur, thus proceeding via an intuitive form of analysis to master the norms of
creative variation and recombination.
Such processes have not been verbalized within the culture, however, or at
least not until recently, when badāhe sarā’i (‘spontaneity’) has begun to provide
an equivalent of sorts for ‘improvisation’, albeit one not yet generating useful
insights. It does not follow from this, though, that features and patterns the analyst
might identify must be dismissed as insignificant or irrelevant if they cannot
readily be correlated with emic distinctions. There can be no a priori objection
to sifting certain phenomena in a more fine-meshed way than that encountered
in indigenous theorizing. But it is certainly advisable to proceed with a degree
of caution and, perhaps more interestingly, to ask what purpose the analytical
enterprise ultimately serves in such cases, as it can hardly function as an aid to the
performer – one of the standard justifications for the analysis of Western music –
and there is something decidedly presumptuous, in the present case, about thinking
that it might help Persians to understand their own music better. It would be well,
at least initially, to settle for a more modest target: to provide those unfamiliar with
the tradition a guide to listening to what Touraj Kiaras’s CD has to offer.
46
See J. During, ‘L’improvisation dans la musique d’art iranienne’ in B. Lortat-Jacob,
L’improvisation dans les musiques de tradition orale (Paris, 1987), pp. 135-41, Nooshin,
‘Improvisation as “other”’, pp. 260-70.
Part 3
The Present Performance
Format
Except for the final item, Touraj Kiaras’s CD presents a variety of material relating
to the dastgāh homāyun organized in a way that is quite typical of a current concert
format where a vocal soloist and an instrumental ensemble are involved. The
concert as a whole might consist of two such structural complexes, each lasting
about 40′-45′, differentiated only by a possible preference for a slightly faster
concluding tasnif and reng in the second. The overall pattern, with a 20′ interval
between the two halves, is thus clearly modelled on the western classical concert
format, and could be performed in a chamber-music environment or, with suitable
amplification, in a large-scale concert hall. It thus represents a mid twentieth-
century remodelling, dictated primarily by a conscious policy of emulation, but
influenced also, with regard to the particular nature, length and organization of the
component parts, by the exigencies of broadcasting, which imposes a rigid discipline
of timekeeping and creates pressure to plan performance formats in advance. This
is not to suggest that earlier patterns lacked coherence, but to underline, rather, a
contrast with previous norms of flexibility, informality and intimacy. The codes of
Qajar court etiquette, to take one extreme, may in some respects have been rigid,
but they can hardly have involved precise scheduling or, perhaps more significant,
the physical (as against social) disjunction between musician and audience that is
now standard. But a more common performance context was that of the private
gathering, so that in effect the present CD presents us with a paradox: it allows us
to recreate in the intimacy of a domestic environment a reflex of what has become
an institutionalized separation of music from the milieu in which it had previously
been lodged, a separation that results in the inevitable dilution of the relaxed yet
charged atmosphere of shared connoisseurship within which musiqi-ye sonnati
would occupy, together with poetry, intellectual conversation and conviviality, a
recognized zone of cultural refinement among the educated urban élite.
In each half of the modern concert format the broad plan may be likened to
an arch structure the central part of which is made up of an extended section,
dominated by the singer, in which some of the principal gushe are performed.
This radif-related vocal section might include four or five major gushe and last
up to 20′, nearly half of the whole. The present performance conforms to this
model: it lasts just over 46′, of which the central section takes up 30′, within
which the vocalist performs in five gushe lasting 22′. It is here that there is a
concentration of unmetred material, in contrast with what surrounds it, and it is
here, also, because of the direct relationship with the radif, that there is the greatest
opportunity, and pressure, to demonstrate mastery by producing versions that have

an individual stamp but are at the same time recognizable to an informed audience
as representative versions of the gushe in question.
The arch analogy is also appropriate in that both beginning and end consist of
pre-composed instrumental pieces (if differing in metre and tempo), and that, in
this performance, the second and penultimate items are both pre-composed vocal
pieces. We thus have the following shape:
instrumental vocal vocal + instrumental vocal instrumental

composed composed composed composed
pishdarāmad tarāne radif tarāne reng
within which the structure of the central radif section is:
darāmad (tār) + chahārmezrāb + darāmad (vocal) + four further gushe

(chakāvak, leyli o majnun, ney-e dāvud and bidād + forud)
The introductory unmetred instrumental darāmad is thus followed by a metred

chahārmezrāb before the unmetred vocal continuation, and one may note a further
form of alternation occurring within each gushe, where passages rhythmically
related to the metre of the verse alternate with, or are framed by, others that are
not.
Analysis: Background
Before looking at sections individually, it may be worth noting that the dastgāh
to which they belong, homāyun, shares certain pitch-set features with two others,
chahārgāh and bayāt-e esfahān: it is only in these three that the basic modal material
contains a plus 2nd interval, and, to the extent that tetrachordal segmentation is
meaningful, it appears in the context of the same 1 2 3 4 tetrachord. Further,
whereas the remainder of the basic pitch set of chahārgāh does not coincide with
that of homāyun, that of bayāt-e esfahān does (it may be recalled that bayāt-e
esfahān is considered to be derived from homāyun):
chahārgāh ga b c′ d ′ e′ f′
homāyun e f ga b c′ d′ e′
bayāt-e esfahān ga b c′ d′ e′ f′
Although a separation between the three is easily maintained in practice, such

overlaps constitute a form of restraint: developing material in a certain way
might be construed as transgressive. Within the basic exposition of chahārgāh,
for example, a standard move is g a c′, and in order not to reproduce this the
omission of b will normally be avoided in the other two. Similarly, in the exposition
of homāyun f and g are salient, while in bayāt-e esfahān it is the area around c′
that is foregrounded, and while this area is also prominent later in homāyun the
tessitura in the various gushe of bayāt-e esfahān remains generally higher, with c′
being the most common cadence, as against g in most gushe of homāyun.
The point has already been made that intonation cannot be tied down to precise
theoretical norms. On the pre-tuned santur the interval sizes do in fact correspond
very closely to the values suggested by the notation, but as might be expected
voice and ney are more flexible. Ignoring local and occasional alterations, one
may note a general tendency for them to narrow slightly the d – f/d′ – f′ minor
third and, correspondingly, for them to widen slightly the f – g/f′ – g′ whole tone.
In addition, the size of the intervals within the minor third is somewhat variable,
so that the notation e in the lower register as against e′ in the higher represents
an attempt to indicate preferential zones within an area marked by a certain degree
of fluctuation.
Finally, before venturing into a more detailed discussion of the individual
pieces, it is perhaps worth making the obvious point that just as Western musicians
are not trained on a diet of semiotics and Schenker, explicitly formulated analytical
procedures do not form part of the learning process for Iranian musicians. But this
is not to suggest that abstraction is absent: the very fact that musicians have to
arrive at mastery of a particular gushe through generalizing possible configurations
and combinations on the basis of the various teaching versions and performances
of it to which they have been exposed is an indication to the contrary. Indeed, the
underlying process of segmentation may receive verbal expression to the extent
that phrases occupying particular areas are labelled (e.g. as shoru‘, khāteme or
tahrir). Nevertheless, such terms are residues, markers of the already interiorized
rather than classificatory aids to acquisition, and for Touraj Kiaras knowledge
is preferably articulated through actions or judgements, so that we are again
confronted with the problem of the extent to which the western analytic approach
usefully reveals the unstated and not consciously realized or merely articulates
in a laboriously explicit way matters that for the performer and informed listener
are taken for granted or, if verbalized, are deftly and succinctly expressed by
metaphor.

For the various ways this is realized see B. Nettl with B. Foltin Jr, Daramad of
chahargah: a study in the performance practice of Persian music (Detroit monographs in
musicology, no. 2), (Detroit, 1972).
3a. THE PRE-COMPOSED PIECES (1)
The pre-composed ensemble instrumental pieces on the CD (pīshdarāmad,

moqaddeme and reng) are all compositions by Faramarz Payvar. All were played
from score, so that here there would be some justification for approaching them via
standard methods of score-based analysis. Indeed, the composer’s (prescriptive)
notation is already a form of analysis, both in the sense that it articulates in a
quite specific way their optimal formal organization (one, as we shall see, that
performers do not necessarily adhere to) and because it screens out certain features
normally present in performance, most obviously a percussion part. Further, as the
monodic melody line of the score is generally neutral, or at least permissive, with
regard to instrumental realization, a degree of potential surface variation is allowed
for, and it is instructive in this respect to note that in the moqaddame, where the
composer actually specifies a contrast of tone colour and attack (marking first
zehi ‘bowed’ or ‘sustained’ and then mezrābi ‘plucked’ or ‘struck’), the musicians
blithely ignore these discriminations. A further area where the seemingly explicit
nature of the scores is illusory is in the notation of certain pitches of short duration
as grace notes and others not: the distinction is to be regarded as a convention of
presentation rather than the result of an analytical process aimed at establishing a
hierarchy of importance.
pīshdarāmad
This composition is bi-partite, with an immediate and striking, because unusual,

differentiation between the two sections in tempo and metre. In the first, slower,
section the pattern of melodic movement, considered solely in terms of changes of
pitch, is relatively easy to segment on the basis of internal repetition and to represent
as an abstract reduction, so that for segment A (so indicated in the score):
Example 3a.1
we may arrive at:

Apart from the way it is distributed on the page, the full notation as given here
differs from the original only in insignificant details (such as writing an initial minim rest
instead of two crochet rests, or adding a missing dot).
Example 3a.2
For segment B:
Example 3a.3
we may arrive at:
Example 3a.4
and for the remainder (unspecified in the original, but which we may label segment
C):
Example 3a.5
we may arrive at:
Example 3a.6
There is, then, a gradual extension of the pitch range, but contained with a
similar trajectory. Accordingly, the length of the sections progressively increases:
A consists of four measures (articulated melodically as 2 + 2), B of six (2 + 2 + 2),
and C of eight (2 + 2 + 2 + 2). But in addition, each constitutes or initiates a block
of material to be repeated, so that the total number of measures, given that both
B and C are followed in their respective blocks by A + B, is A x 2 + (B + A + B)
x 2 + (C + A + B) x 2 = 8 + 32 + 36 = 76. This gives a playing time, at the tempo
specified for these sections, of 6′20′′ (and the duration of the piece as a whole, if
the score is followed to the letter, would be approximately 7′30′′).
Evident is a basic oscillating motion in A and B covering the three core pitches
fga :
A (e) f g a (b) a gf
B (b) a g f (e) f g a (b) a gf
which is initially shifted up a third in C (and then repeated an octave below) before
reverting to the previous pitch area:
C c′ b a b c′ (d′) c′ b a
(b) a g a gf
g (b) a gf
There is also, along with progressive expansion in length and pitch range, a
gradual filling out. The emphasis on the f → a → f movement shown in Example
3a.2 is supplemented by the inversion a → f → a shown in Example 3a.4,
while the expanded range of C serves as the vehicle for the sequential treatment
of a rhythmically identical descending phrase covering a third or fourth (identified
in Example 3a.6 by the beam below) and ending successively on a a g f and f,
providing, therefore, an extended elaboration of the a → f movement.
The second part provides a series of contrasts, for in addition to metre (moving
from triple to duple) and tempo (the metronome mark is nearly twice that of the
previous one) it differs from the first in length (being much shorter); in register
(being predominantly lower); in ambitus (being much wider); and in melodic
continuity (containing virtually no rests). It also differs from the first part in its
main propulsive mechanism, relying less on an oscillating pattern in various and
subtly shifting rhythmic configurations and more on the iteration of rhythmically
identical phrases, either at the same pitch (repetition) or at different pitches
(sequence).
Analytically, we may again redistribute the notation to show patterns of pitch
repetition, but this time in a slightly simplified form in which groups of repeated
pitches with the same rhythmic configuration (including sequential repetitions) are
identified by a beam without necessarily being arrayed vertically:
Example 3a.7
Reducing this further, we may obtain the following:
Example 3a.8
This suggests that the structure echoes in places the importance of phrases
spanning a third that seemed a crucial element of the first part, but displaces and
continues the series of thirds downwards, so that after the earlier concentration on a
– f we begin with B – d and then, avoiding a step-wise descent and hence omitting
a – f, move sequentially through the descending thirds f – d, d – B and B – G.
B - G. One could infer from this an underlying G B d triad, but it seems rather that
the preponderant structural feature is a D/d - G/g oscillation, with g as finalis in
place of the preceding f, while in the central section we again encounter phrases
moving sequentially through descending thirds, although this time beginning
successively on e′, d′ and c′, with the last one leading to the cadential g.
Mention has been made, to revert to the first part, of rhythmic consistency, and
the reiteration of particular patterns is quite marked. In several cycles we have:
Example 3a.9
while in the remaining cycles, where the first two time units are not notated as
rests, we generally find them to be organized as:
Example 3a.10
In the second section, in contrast, what appears from the notation to be a more
regular flow of pitch changes is made up of a variety of thematic and rhythmic
groupings that subvert regularity. First, though, one may remark on the nature
of its non-composed (but pre-determined) beginning, perhaps the most dramatic
gesture of the whole piece: in so unequivocally asserting in a melodic void a new
rhythmic framework and, especially, a new tempo, the tonbak solo announces
a deviation from the traditional form of the pishdarāmad, with its maintenance
throughout of the sedate tempo established at the beginning.
This denial of expectations continues at the formal level, it may be argued, in
the ensuing large-scale articulations. Thus although the prescribed introductory
8 measures filled in by the tonbak are followed by a first block of 8 measures
(to be repeated with seconda volta variations), the structural predictability that
this implies is counteracted by the internal phrase structure, which is not of
4 + 4 measures but rather 3 + 3 + 2, and it is further undermined in the second
block (also to be repeated), which is not of 8 but of 9 measures (articulated as 2 + 2
+ 2 + 3), and is even extended in the seconda volta to 11. But within the first block
the organization of the material also provides a structural counter-current, for it
can be perceived as conforming to the melodic x + x + x′ cellular division (where
x′ is not just a slightly varied restatement but a significantly longer development of
the material enunciated in x) noted as a typical structural device in unmetred gushe
improvisations. Accordingly, the articulation of 8 measures would be x (1) + x
(1) + x′ (4) (with x′ consisting of x + y (3), and y of a single measure sequentially

L. Nooshin, ‘The song of the nightingale: processes of improvisation in dastgāh
segāh (Iranian classical music)’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 7 (1998): 69-116.
repeated) + z (2). z serves as a link passage from F back to the initial note, B, but
contains in its second measure a shortened version of x, thus counterbalancing
expansion with compression, in this case, indeed, enfolding one in the other; and
at the same time it gives a sense of acceleration as x trips forward, shortened as its
final note is equated with and hence obliterated by the first note of the repeat.
The alternation of expansion and compression can, indeed, be seen as a
constant. After phrases one measure in length we move briefly to a phrase two
measures long, and the first set of 4-time unit sequences is echoed in the second
block by one with phrases of 6 time units. Towards the end the alternations become
more marked: in the prima volta ending of the second block a 5-step ascent laid
out over two measures is followed immediately by a compressed version over
one, and in the seconda volta a (gapped) octave ascent laid out over two measures
is followed by a (full) octave descent laid out over one and a half, and while the
former uses crotchets, the longest note value in this section, the latter is articulated
by a tumbling cross-rhythm made up of successive quaver + semiquaver cells.
What follows, to end the piece, is an even more radical compression, F A being
followed not by G but by g, a final flick of the wrist reversing the previous descent
to jump up to the finalis.
Just as the melodic development in the first block of the second part reflects
a developmental technique characteristic of unmetred gushe performances, so a
particular feature of C in the first part is the way in which measures 2 and 4 contain
an imitation of a tahrir (suggesting its generally unmetred fluidity by notating,
not counting the grace notes, ten semiquavers in the space of eight), and this in
turn suggests that further light might be shed on the pishdarāmad as a whole by
comparing it to the darāmad. One might ask, first, the obvious question of the
extent to which it covers the same ground or departs from it. The following is a
similarly reduced abstraction of the beginning of the darāmad (the pre-text section
and the setting of the first line of verse) in the canonic version of the vocal radif
performed by one of Touraj Kiaras’s teachers, Karimi:
Example 3a.11
This shows fairly clearly, when compared with Examples 3a.2, 3a.4, 3a.6 and
3a.8, the extent to which the composer has incorporated, but has also veered away
from, key features of the darāmad material. The opening of the radif version
is reflected by the beginning of Example 3a.2, as is the ensuing elaboration of
a in Example 3.a4, but the g – f – g ending is replaced by f – e – f, so that
the darāmad finalis proper is withheld till the very end (the emphatic close on
f in the first section is, in relation to darāmad norms, not a sign of completion).
The other main difference lies in the considerably expanded modal dimensions
of the pīshdarāmad: despite the fact that, in Karimi’s version, the remainder of
the darāmad extends the range to d′, the pīshdarāmad does not incorporate its
contours, and the wider ambitus of the second, faster, section of the pīshdarāmad
results from the injection of new material.
That material, and in particular the B c d phrase with which it begins, is
reminiscent of other major gushe in homāyun. Such resemblances, whereby
significant following elements are prefigured, help explain Touraj Kiaras’s
assessment of this particular pīshdarāmad as ‘suitable’ (monāseb), in the sense
that it exactly fits salient properties of homāyun. In the first part it aligns itself
in key respects with the darāmad, but in the second it also adds a ‘hint’ (eshāre)
which gives the ‘scent’ (būye) of two of the main gushe, bidād and ney-e dāvud,
and thus by foreshadowing significant structural elements of the central āvāz
section provides a modally apposite introduction to everything that will follow,
conveying exactly the right ‘feeling’ (ehsās) of the dastgāh.
Examples 3a.2, 3a.4, 3a.6 and 3a.8 (despite not being procedurally wholly
consistent) provide a straightforward reduction of the pitch material, and it may be
argued that they demonstrate a high degree of coherence in the way the small-scale
elaborations of its wave patterns are organized. But they fail to capture fully the
deliberately crafted contrasts between and within both sections of the pishdarāmad,
a limitation associated with taking one parameter as predominant, and a fuller
analysis ought to be able to give a more precise account of further features of
distribution and rhythmic organization. Thus, to revert to the first part (sections
A-C), the reduced representation of the disposition of the pitches in relation to the
metre disguises the considerable degree of meaningful variation that exists (some
of which has been explicated separately in the commentary). As may be seen from
Example 3a.1, in A we have two short phrases (of 4 time units each) followed
by one long (of 8 time units, straddling two measures and therefore providing
the first instance of the melodic utilization of the beginning of a measure). This
longer phrase stretches the pitch range, beginning in measure 3 with a prominent
e and placing as initial in measure 4 the one instance of b, after which comes a
full descent to return to the initial f. It thus provides both an expansion and a sense
of (temporary) closure, the effect reinforced by the rhythmic articulation and the
disposition of the material in relation to the successive measures. This suggests
that the analytical process might usefully worry less about reductions derived
from the pitch contour and its durational disposition and pay greater attention
to other parameters, including those not specified in the score but present in the
performance.
It is time, then, to consider aspects of the music as actually experienced by the
listener. To take just one illustrative sample, a descriptive transcription of section
A might look something like the following (with, in the tonbak part, the main
timbral contrast being indicated but not the specific stroke qualities):
Example 3a.12
An initial, if minor, discrepancy concerns the tempo, which the score specifies
as  = 72, whereas that adopted by the instrumentalists is a rather more leisurely
 = c66. But of greater significance is the rhythmic element omitted from the
score – omitted because once the metre is specified the realization, within limits,
is predictable. The role of the tonbak, in addition to its ability to provide rhythmic
precision, is thus to fill out the initial rests. But this is not the only way in which the
durational specifications of the score are complemented or altered in performance,
for after the first measure the initial rests are also filled out by the resonance of
the tār and especially the santur, the strings of which, as is usually the case, are
not damped (but that they could have been is shown by the deliberately staccato
realization, this time following the score, of a passage in the moqaddame).
Similarly, the rest that occurs at the end of measure 4, marking the end of section
A, is also filled out because of the slow decay on the santur (here, though, the
phrase syntax is marked by the silence of the tonbak). In fact, in the first four
measures (containing 24 time units) the notation suggests that altogether eight and
a half time units should be silent, whereas in the performance none are.
There is thus a blurring effect resulting in a sound continuum, and a further
effect of the resonance, and technique, of the tār is to smudge the end of measure
2. What appears in the score as an emphasis on g is diluted to a hazy almost
tremolando alternation of g and a , just fading towards the end of the measure
but resonating beyond it. As a result, where the score indicates as the four strongly
etched prominent final notes in successive measures a , g, g and f, the performance
realizes the second as a hesitant intermediate step, smoothing the descent and
delaying arrival at g. A different type of smoothing out may be observed in measure
3, where the g – e interval is filled in (and an extra tone is added below). It would
be possible, in addition, to comment on details of dynamics, which in broad terms
confirm the analytical abstracts as maps of prominence, but enough has been said
to show the extent to which (as one would expect) the score has been inflected
according to the stylistic norms (and hence aesthetic aims) of the performers.
Finally, a more radical deviation from the score needs to be noted. This
concerns the form of the piece, and especially of the first part, as it is determined
by patterns of repetition. Overall there is a marked abbreviation in performance
when compared with the score:
notation AA BABBAB CABCAB

performance AA BA CA
The latter thus has a total of 30 measures as against the 76 specified by the
notation. For the performers, evidently, who were not, as frequently happens,
obliged to cut because of time constraints, the resulting form was still evidently
viewed as a coherent and satisfactory structure, with nothing untoward in the
substitution of A for A + B as the ritornello element, presumably on the grounds
that the last two measures of B may be construed as an amplification of the
cadential descent in the last measure of A, so that the latter works equally well as
a concluding device.
The second part is also truncated, or rather simply halved. The internal repeats
are observed, but the dal segno repeat of the whole (that is, what follows the
initial eight measures of tonbak solo indicated in the score) is not, so that the
correspondence is:
notation AA BB AA BB
performance AA BB
moqaddame
Although there is no corresponding mid-point change of metre, the moqaddame

resembles the pishdarāmad in providing a strong metrical contrast, in this case by
including a central repeated passage effectively in the aksak metre 3 + 3 + 2/8),
whereas the remainder of the piece, which is notated as 2/4 throughout, is in duple
metre. In this respect it resembles the second part of the pishdarāmad, although
the tempo is a little slower ( = c60). But it presents a significant contrast in being
resolutely four-square in melodic structure, consisting of successive phrases of
four measures, some clearly made up of pairs of two measures each. The modal
articulation, on the other hand, is similar to that of the pishdarāmad, since we
are presented initially with a further example of micro-variation on the darāmad

material, but again cadencing on f. The first (repeated) eight measures may be
segmented as:
Example 3a.13
thereby highlighting the parallels with the beginning of the pishdarāmad: the same
oscillating motion over the core pitches f g a is fundamental, except that here the
initial move is a descent rather than an ascent. As before, the flanking tones are
also introduced, here with slightly greater weight being accorded to b and slightly
less to e, which is confined to the cadence. A particular feature of the performance
of this initial section is the way in which the instrumentation chosen underlines the
internal repetitions of the melodic structure, with the two echo phrases in measures
2 and 4 being contrastively assigned to the santur.
The following eight measures, which conclude the first section, remain within
the modal domain of the darāmad but, again like the equivalent segment of the
pishdarāmad, shift the emphasis slightly upwards: initial prominence is given
to c′, and the range extends to d′. They are followed by the repeated section of
eight measures where the metre changes, but within which modal identity reverts
emphatically to that of the initial e – b area, within which, predictably, the central
pitches f g a are prominent.
The remainder of the moqaddame resembles the pishdarāmad yet again in
that it both injects new material and makes liberal use of sequential repetition as a
propulsive device. It begins with six measures consisting of three pairs in each of
which material is repeated at the lower octave to outline a d′ – b – g/d – B – G triad,
while what follows is an embellished scalar descent to f (with octave displacement
of the first two notes): e d c′ b a g f, but cadencing finally on g. The whole may
be schematized as:
Example 3a.14
tarāne
Omitted from the performance of this first vocal item is the fairly substantial
instrumental beginning, for which the moqaddame serves as a replacement. The
fact that such substitutions can be made without it being felt that the integrity
of the composition has been infringed in any significant way is itself of interest,
even if the switch replaces one block of material with another that occupies the
same modal territory, traverses it in similar fashion, and consequently can be
regarded as functionally equivalent, so that from an analytical point of view the
relationship between the initial mezrābi (instrumental) and the following āvāz
(vocal) sections has not been altered in any significant way. It would be pleasant
to be able to propose a justification for the switch based on aesthetic criteria that
analysis could explicate: the original introduction provides a pre-echo of the initial
motif of the vocal setting that would argue for its retention, but it does so in a
rather insistently repetitive manner, and it otherwise contains a high proportion
of rhythmically plain rising and falling sequences. Accordingly, it is tempting to
deduce that it might have been thought to have a distinct air of routine about
it which would justify discarding it in favour of the more complex, varied, and
hence more interesting moqaddame. The reality is rather more prosaic, however:
whether or not the instrumentalists would agree with that comparative assessment,
the simple fact, as Touraj Kiaras recalls, is that they were already familiar with
the moqaddame but not with the introduction proper, and given the tight studio
schedule there was not sufficient time to rehearse it. It will come as no surprise,
then, to find that the instrumental interjections within the main vocal section were
played from score, and are performed in exact accordance with it, whereas Touraj
Kiaras, who has memorized the piece and does not refer to the score, interprets
it with a degree of freedom resulting in occasional minor deviations from what is
written. These, however, are without consequence for an analysis of the piece, and
will be disregarded in the following brief account.
At the beginning of the vocal section emphasis is again placed on the core
pitches f g a , but this time presenting g as the first cadence note and marking it
as prominent throughout the setting of the first hemistich:
Example 3a.15
This setting is repeated for the second hemistich and then varied for the second
line, with a (slightly reduced) tahrir-like descent brought forward so that the g
a f g turn straddling the first two measures can recur as the cadence. There is
then a brief instrumental interjection before all the vocal material is repeated, to be
followed by a further instrumental passage that is yet another variant, combining
scalar material within the d – d′ range with reiterations of the g a f g turn, which
again functions as a cadence. Formally this could be summarized, placing the
instrumental passages within square brackets, as:
A (a + a + a′ + [i] +
a + a + a′ + [a′′])
The text setting then resumes with new material, but again incorporating the same
cadence formula, now transposed a fourth lower (but in the performance the whole
passage is realized a fifth higher) and with the following tahrir-like descent lower
still, so as to cadence on G (therefore in the performance on g, as at the beginning).
There follows a more extended instrumental interlude, again characterized by
scalar passages and sequences, but this time outlining descending then rising thirds
(g – e – c – A – F; d – B – G; G – B – d). With only minor variations, and the
briefest of instrumental interjections, the final vocal section consists of a repetition
not of the initial setting but of most of the fourth-lower (/fifth-higher) material.
Formally the second part of the tarāne could be summarized as:
B (p + p + q + q′ + [r + s] +
p′ + p + q)
although this is misleading to the extent that it fails to reveal the amount of material
common to these various subdivisions. Example 3a.16 gives an abstraction of the
whole piece (minus the missing introduction) which demonstrates how closely its
melodic processes resemble those found in the preceding instrumental pieces.
Example 3a.16
(As before, sequential groups are marked by a beam above, but here in truncated
form, only the first note being given of the second and subsequent occurrences.
The chains of descending thirds are marked by a broken beam below.)
The nature of the text setting is worth considering from a number of aspects. With
regard to its rhythmic characteristics, it may be noted briefly that there is a potential
initial uncertainty: the notation is in 6/8 throughout, but after the brief introductory
tonbak flourish, which gives no hint of the metrical structure to come, the voice
enters with a stressed long syllable not on the first or fourth time unit of the measure
but on the third, followed by an unstressed short syllable on the fourth, so that in the
absence of the score it is possible at the beginning to hear a duple rhythm:
Example 3a.17
As expected, the text setting adheres to the simple general principle that the
distribution of long and short syllables determined by the prosodic structure of the
verse should be reflected in the composition by assigning a (sum) durational value
to each long syllable that is not less, and normally greater, than that assigned to
any short syllable. If we regard a quaver of the notation as representing one time
unit, it will be seen from Example 3a.15 that the first hemistich of the text:
sāl-e nou ast o ‘eshq-e nou (‘it is a new year and a new love’)
the eight syllables of which have the following metrical structure:
— ∪ ∪ —/∪ — ∪—/
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
is set with the following assignment of durations to syllables:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1 0.5 0.5 2 1 2 1 3
This is clearly in accord with the principle: the durational range for the short
syllables is 0.5-1, and that for the long 1-3. A further point to note is that the
distribution of material in Example 3a.15, moving broadly from shorter to longer
average durations per text syllable, conforms to the typology of text setting
within the vocal radif generally (one which may also, incidentally, be discerned
in the surviving song-text collections of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries
that represent the court repertoire of the Persianate cultural sphere): in order
to ensure comprehensibility the first words are enunciated clearly, their setting
being predominantly syllabic, while the melismatic tahrir is reserved for the final
syllable, the setting of which is the longest in duration.
Finally, we may raise the question of the implications of the choice of text
itself. The title given in the notes to the separate issue of the CD, ān-ke halāk-e
man, is that by which this tarāne is generally known, being the beginning of the
poem (again by Sa‘di) that was set in the original composition. It is one that clearly
invites a Sufi interpretation, depicting as it does the steadfastness of the yearning
lover/soul. The first couplet is:
ān-ke halāk-e man hami khāhad o man salāmatash

har che konad ze shāhedi kas nakonad malāmatash
(‘She who keeps wishing my ruin while I [wish for] her wellbeing,
whatever she brings about through her beauty, let no one blame her.’)
and the lines as a whole, which go on in the second of the three couplets to speak
of the garden which will yield its fruit to no one, explore the theme of the self-
sacrificing lover who persists in his unwavering devotion despite being spurned
by the tyrannical beloved.
The lines substituted by Touraj Kiaras begin, however, in a decidedly different
tone. He wished to abandon the theme of unfulfilled desire and convey a more
positive emotional charge, and so chose, following a suggestion made many years
ago by Payvar, verse (again by Sa‘di) that begins with the theme of renewal and
articulates a love that dares to hope. The first line of the text is:
sāl-e nou ast o ‘eshq-e nou ‘eshrat-e pār-e man che shod
(‘It is a new year and a new love – what has become of my past pleasures?’)
and the contrast between this and the previous beginning is sufficiently marked to
call into question the usual assumption of a close fit, a congruity of mood, between
setting and text. The notion of appropriateness, of the suitable matching of text
and mode formulated by medieval theorists, also constitutes a standard element
in modern thinking, being a principle of selection in an anthology compiled in
1904 that contains one of the earliest formulations of the radif repertoire. Implicit
here is the notion of a broad agreement as to the emotional character of each
dastgāh and the corresponding thematic range beyond which it would be unwise
to go in choosing verse for it. It would be mistaken to view Payvar’s initiative as
a deliberate flouting of this consensus, but it certainly entails a less strict view

E.g. ‘Abd al-Qadir Maraghi, jāmi‘ al-alhān (ed. T. Binesh) (Tehran, 1987),
pp. 232-3.

Forsat al-Dawla Shirazi, bohur al-alhān (repr. Tehran, 1966). This consists principally
of a collection not of existing song texts but of poetic material selected as appropriate for
singing, organized according to the dastgāh for which the verse is deemed most suitable.
The preface gives under each of seven dastgāh a list of gushe.
of the relationship of words and music: melody (or at least certain melodies), it
suggests, can either function as a neutral medium for the mood and emotional
charge articulated by the text, or, preferably, it can have what Touraj Kiaras calls
its own autonomous ‘personality’ (shakhsiyat), functioning then, at least up to a
point, separately from the text.
3b. THE RADIF SECTION
The tarāne marks the end of the initial sequence of pre-composed pieces. Scores
are put aside, and the performers now embark on the central āvāz area, where a
memorized corpus is to be creatively re-worked as the members of the instrumental
ensemble typically take turns in performing each gushe as a duet with the vocal soloist.
A gushe may begin with an instrumental introduction, but thereafter the role of the
instrumentalists is essentially subordinate in that they follow rather than initiate, first
echoing the singer’s phrasing as they shadow the voice to produce an intermittent
heterophonic texture, and then prolonging the melodic material developed by the
singer in interludes and postludes, indicatively termed javāb (‘answer’), which are
thus perceived as reactions to the so’āl (‘question’) put by the soloist. In the darāmad
and the following gushe, chakāvak, Touraj Kiaras is accompanied by Shahriyar
Far-Yusefi on tār, in leyli o majnun and ney-e dāvud by Isma‘il Tehrani on santur,
and finally in bidād and its concluding forud by Hasan Nahed on ney.
darāmad
As the first and often most extended part of the radif-based section, the darāmad
holds a position of particular importance, and in this type of concert format presents
the soloists with particular challenges. It is still in a certain sense (and not just
etymologically) introductory, but as the modal fundamentals have already been
displayed from various angles and extensively developed in the previous pieces
the need to demonstrate the material in a non-routine way becomes pressing. For
Touraj Kiaras there is the further factor that his own performance of the darāmad
is preceded by that of the tār-player. The tār exposition is, however, fairly brief,
lasting only 1′41′′, and recollection of the particular way in which it expounds
the modal basics is liable to have been largely effaced by the following lengthy
(7′02′′) and somewhat garrulous chahārmezrāb.
Taking as representative of the whole gushe the part (darāmad2) that
precedes the text-setting (she‘r) in the version of the vocal radif recorded by
Touraj Kiaras’s teacher, Karimi, and comparing with it the complete account in

These terms are also used by North Indian instrumentalists, for whom, though,
they indicate a rather different relationship, one where the ‘question’ is a challenge to the
percussionist, who has to answer by reproducing the rhythmic patterns given on the melody
instrument. The end product is an increasingly quick-fire volley of exchanges.

What appears on the CD is in fact a slightly edited version, the original being judged
to be rather rambling towards the end. (The tonbak player appears ready to end before the
tār player, who drags things out. One may note in passing that the pattern of interchange
between the two is characteristic of modern performance style, in which the tonbak plays
a more assertive role.)

Notated by M.T. Massoudieh, Radīf vocal de la musique traditionelle de l’Iran par
Mahmud Karimi, transcription et analyse (Tehran, 1976), p. 114.
Tala’i’s performance of the instrumental radif, we can arrive at a broad view of the
constituent elements of the darāmad. Predictably, both versions are built around
the core pitches f g a , and from them can be derived the abstraction presented at
the head of Example 3b.1, which suggests that the essential elements are, after an
initial brief ascent, large-scale elaborations of, successively, a and g. However,
although the following reduction of the two performances shows common areas
and a consensus as to the main points of emphasis as well as the general trajectory,
it also reveals areas of divergence or, rather, a formal fluidity manifest in the
possibility of giving different emphases to the segments to be developed, and of
reverting to them at different junctures:
Example 3b.1
(The rough-and-ready distinction between pitches represented by void note heads
and the remainder is based upon the durations indicated in the notations supplied
by Massoudieh and Talā’i, values of crotchet length and above being assigned
void note heads. The brace above pairs or groups of notes indicates that they are
repeated a number (not specified) of times before proceeding.)

D. Tala’i, radif-e Mirza ‘Abdollah (Tehran, 1997) p. 237.
Thus where they most significantly diverge the c′ → a descent is extended

in the instrumental version to link up with a recurrence and further development,
absent from the vocal performance, of the initial f e f g a phrase. That such
structural flexibility is a normal feature of the darāmad is further demonstrated by a
comparison of the above outline with the example (itself presumably a conflation)
provided by Farhat. The first, abstract line of Example 3b.1 accounts for fully
three quarters of the material represented in this example, the brief remainder of
which, before we reach the same g – c′ – g cadential motif as in Tala’i’s version
(conventional in the instrumental radif), can only be related rather tenuously to
the material presented by Karimi and Tala’i.
The decision to compare Tala’i’s complete version only with the first segment
of Karimi’s realization is justified by the fact that the following text-setting section
in the vocal performance is closely related to the initial exposition, so that it could
readily be integrated into Example 3b.1 without distorting in any significant way
the account there given. In the first hemistich, which is repeated, the setting consists
essentially of a brief ascent to a , reached on the fourth syllable, and it is maintained
as the melodic focus throughout the following ten syllables. In the second hemistich
the setting develops the descent from c′ to g. The second line provides a slightly
compressed variant of the setting of the first, extending the range of pitches
employed, and the concluding untexted tahrir consists of a further elaboration of
the a → g move, ending with the same g a f g cadence as before.
When it comes to Touraj Kiaras’s performance of the darāmad, we may note,
the tār episodes apart, a pattern of time management, shown in Figure 3b.1 (in
seconds), at first closely resembling that encountered in Karimi’s recording.
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Figure 3b.1

The differing preferences in intonation, e in the vocal rendition as against e in the
instrumental, are not critical.

H. Farhat, The dastgāh concept in Persian music (Cambridge, 1990), p. 149.

Where it is given the name bāl-e kabutar (‘pigeon’s wing’).
Thus although the respective totals (2′40′′ as against 4′38′′) are quite far apart,
the length of the purely vocal element provided by Touraj Kiaras matches Karimi’s
version closely until the second verse is reached. At this point, however, they
diverge, the proportions of the Touraj Kiaras’s text-setting section especially being
more generous, while the final tahrir is also more extended.
But let us consider, first, the introductory material (darāmad2) before the
onset of the verse. Compared with the outline sketched in Example 3b.1,
Touraj Kiaras’s version suggests further possibilities, and even when Karimi and
Tala’i offer possible alternatives he produces yet another variant. A significant
indicator of formal malleability is the fact that the differences between Touraj
Kiaras’s performance and the version he learned from Karimi occur not only in
the morphology of the phrases used but also in their disposition, as may readily be
seen from Example 3b.2, where the two are juxtaposed.
Here, as in the following examples, the dotted barring is placed at one-second
intervals. Note heads generally indicate a fairly clear attack, after which the pitch
is sustained, unless otherwise indicated, until the next attack. The comma indicates
a brief break in the breath flow, a bar the end of the phrase (i.e. the onset of a breath
pause). The distance between this and the following bar indicates the length of the
ensuing gap, which in Touraj Kiaras’s performance is filled by a tār part, omitted
from the transcription. The resumption after the gap comes at the beginning of the
next system. The glottal closure that is characteristically used in tahrir passages is
indicated by a dot above.

Even though the Karimi recording is deemed here to embody what he transmitted
to Touraj Kiaras, it should be recognized that he would hardly have reproduced the same
version exactly in each lesson, in other words that although it is perfectly serviceable for
comparative purposes, and may reasonably be termed normative, it should be taken as
representative rather than definitive.

Here the notation of Karimi’s radif version takes as its starting point Massoudieh’s
extremely detailed transcription, but amends it (apart from very minor deviations in the
representation of pitch) by attempting greater precision in the definition of durations. It
also ignores the distinctions suggested by Massoudieh’s use of grace notes and the contrast
between normal and smaller note-head sizes.
E
xample 3b.2a
E
xample 3b.2b
In Karimi’s version the first three phrases (a phrase being understood here
simply as the amount of melodic material covered before a breath pause) may
be viewed as a microcosm of all that is to follow, setting forth, in particular, the
material that will form the backbone of the central she‘r section:
(p) an ascent to a sustained a , the pitch on which much of the verse will
initially be sung;
(q) a tahrir around a ;10
(r) a tahrir around g, the cadence note of the gushe
(s) a c′ → g descent.
This exposition of essential elements is completed, including internal breath

pauses, in no more than 28.5′′. The remainder develops these elements further:
its tahrir elements are more varied, and it gives greater emphasis, in particular,
to (s), developing also what might be designated as (t), a descent from a to f
followed by a cadence on g. The formal structure of the whole gushe is highly
schematic, for the disposition of material in the expository block is matched within
the she‘r, being shared out between the two hemistichs and then slightly varied
when repeated for the second line.
Of these four elements one may identify (p), (q), (r) and (t) in Touraj Kiaras’s
version of the exposition, but (s) is held back until after the first section of the
she‘r. However, the identification of elements is sometimes approximate: for
example, although the beginning may be labelled (p), it continues without a break
into what had better be labelled (r) followed by (t) (descending to e and without the
final cadence): the three are telescoped. Correlated with the delay in introducing
(s) is the absence from this introductory section of the higher notes c′ and d′, the
pitch range being restricted to e – b. With regard to the structure of the gushe as a
whole, the formal relationship between the segments of the introduction and those
of the verse setting appears less schematic that in Karimi’s version, but is close
nevertheless. Thus although the rising phrase that is initial in the she‘r appears not
in the first but in the second occurrence of (p) in the introduction, the continuation
of the first occurrence of (p) into (r) and (t) reappears, greatly compressed, in the
repeat setting of the first two words.
10
Here the term tahrir is used loosely to denote a rapid melismatic elaboration that
may or may not use the particular gruppetti with glottal closure more particularly associated
with it.
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Figure 3b.2
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arbitrary, and arguable.)
Similarity of overall conception is also suggested by the comparable timings

of the various phrases of the initial pre-text material, which are shown in
Figure 3b.2 (in seconds). Thus although generalization is hazardous, the figures
given here suggest a preference for segment lengths within discrete zones: assuming
that telescoped elements (those joined by +) are best aggregated, the shorter and
more variable are in the region of 2 – 3.5′′, the longer in the region of 5 – 8′′, with
this possibly to be subdivided into long (5 – 6′′) and extra long (8′′). Except for one
longer tār interlude in Touraj Kiaras’s performance, gaps are definable as breath
pauses, and unless very short are normally between 0.7′′ and 1′′ in length.
If we turn now to the verse setting (the she‘r section), we find, initially, a
high degree of congruence between Touraj Kiaras and the Karimi radif recording
with regard to the basic melodic shape, both singers developing motif (p) with
an initial (f) e f g a ascent, and a is maintained throughout the hemistich as
what one might be tempted to call a chant tone, yielding only at the very end to a
brief g. There is, however, an immediate difference of strategy thereafter: Karimi
proceeds straight through the whole hemistich, completing it in 10.5′′, whereas
Touraj Kiaras repeats a segment and the timing (excluding a brief tār interjection),
is a more generous 21′′, exactly double. The two versions are juxtaposed in
Example 3b.3, where similarity of pitch pattern is foregrounded at the expense of
duration: Karimi’s superimposed model is split into two parts so as to provide a
closer fit to the uninterrupted flow of Touraj Kiaras’s realization.
Example 3b.3
Apparent from this is that except for the repetition of the first two words
with a different setting in Touraj Kiaras’s version (enclosed within └ ┘) and the
immediately following a g f setting of the beginning of the next hemistich,
the general melodic contour is quite similar, and in both cases is clearly to be
identified as a reformulation of the material previously employed in the exposition
of homāyun.
The essentials can thus be summarized as consistency in adhering to a particular
ordering of the prominent pitches, each of which may receive extensive elaboration,
coupled with freedom in otherwise ordering and/or revisiting subordinate areas of
approach to them, and the performances of both the tār-player and Touraj Kiaras
accord with this general outline. The tār, for example, traverses the pitch set more
rapidly in the first darāmad, soon developing the b c′ area, but the context is still
the large-scale elaboration of the a → g move. Further, it will readily be seen
that a reductive description would allow the differences between Karimi and
Touraj Kiaras to be stated in terms of options relating to a minimal number of
basic features:
prominent a : the initial approach may either ascending or direct, and

may occur a variable number of times;
prolongation of a : there may be variable emphasis on pitches below
or above
optional: inclusion of a cadential descending figure after pre-final
elaboration of g.
In both cases the fundamental a → g modal move identified in Example 3b.1

can readily be discerned. (Differences in layout, e.g. with regard to the distribution
of tahrir elements, will be considered below.)
Excluding the text repetition, however, there still remains a contrast between
the two singers in duration (10.5′′ as against 17′′) for which there is no sufficient
prosodic cause: each hemistich in the verse chosen by Touraj Kiaras is a mere
one syllable longer. In fact, the difference results primarily from the longer
duration he accords to the prominent a , and points therefore to what might in
the broadest sense be considered a difference in the rhythm of text setting. Both
singers conform in this section to the general principle of allotting more time to
long syllables, but the proportions differ somewhat. Before the final syllable the
duration of long syllables in Karimi’s performance is, approximately, between
2 and 6 times greater than that of short syllables (the duration of which is fairly
constant), and it may also be noted that by far the most common pitch relationship
is for a short syllable to be one step below the following long. Only with the
last two syllables of the hemistich do we have melismatic elaboration, and only
with the last syllable does the duration exceed 1′′, reaching 3.5′′. We thus have a
text-book example of the general pattern of setting formulated by Tsuge,11 according

to whom the tendency to have longer durations towards the end of the hemistich
is explicable in terms of a ‘compression-relaxation technique’, while throughout
there is a preference for iambic (short + long) patterns which, it is suggested, may
be regarded as fundamental in āvāz.
Turning to Touraj Kiaras’s performance, the validity of this conclusion may
be considered in relation to his realization of the darāmad as a whole, which is
transcribed in Example 3b.4. If we consider first the hypothesis of an underlying
iambic phrase structure in verse setting it is clear that Touraj Kiaras’s performance
provides a perfect test case, for the poem he has chosen has a metre in which the
basic foot is / — ∪ — — /, which to the outside observer might be construed as
trochee + spondee.12 The first obvious feature of his treatment of this prosodic
structure at the head of each hemistich (which occurs in systems 8, 9, 11, 12, 18,
19 and 20 of Example 3b.4) is that the setting of the first syllable is temporally and
melismatically extended in only one case (system 20, where it is also repeated):
the most frequent pattern is for it to be hardly longer than the second, short syllable
(systems 12, 18, 19). It may also be noted that in these three cases it is at the same
pitch as the second syllable, which, however, is followed by a higher pitch. On the
basis of this evidence it might be concluded, as claimed by Tsuge, that the iambic
pattern is indeed dominant: the (first) syllable that precedes the central iambic
∪ — suffers a relative reduction so that the foot as a whole is made to approach
/ ∪ ∪ — — /, with the melodic stress, expressed in terms of both duration and
relative pitch, being on the third syllable.13
Elsewhere, however, matters are more varied, the conclusion less secure. In the
first hemistich the first syllable certainly fails to conform to this pattern (although
for the very good reason that it could not be made to, since dost properly has
(and is written with) a long vowel (dust) and therefore has the prosodic value
— ∪ ), while if we take other feet into consideration regularity is hard to find.
The second, for example, consists of the syllables ram ma nin nā, in which the
first is extended, and the short second (ma) is no shorter that the following two,
the duration of which is no more than c. 0.2′′ each, while similar short values for
long syllables appear in system 19. This seeming relaxation of the principle that
short/long syllables should be correspondingly differentiated would appear to be
related to a tendency for the hemistichs after the first to be covered more rapidly,
11
G. Tsuge, ‘Avaz: a study of the rhythmic aspects in classical Iranian music’, PhD
dissertation (Wesleyan University, 1974), pp. 159-76.
12
Contrasting, therefore, with Karimi, whose verse begins with the iambic foot / ∪
— ∪ — /. We may simply accept without further demonstration that the remainder of
Karimi’s performance conforms to this pattern.
13
That Touraj Kiaras’s approach is here quite standard is shown by comparing, say,
Karimi’s treatment of the first syllable in the gushe shāhkhatā’i (Massoudieh, Radīf vocal
de la musique traditionelle de l’Iran par Mahmud Karimi, pp. 224-5), where the metre is
the same.
E
xample 3b.4a
E
xample 3b.4b
E
xample 3b.4c
(Within tahrir passages rhythmically significant groupings are indicated by beams.)
leaving more space for the melodic elaboration of the last syllable or two, or for a
following tahrir section.14
This suggests that the validity of the iambic text-setting principle may be local
and conditional rather than universal. Comparison with one other example, the
forud, the final section of the āvāz, would tend to reinforce this conclusion. The
setting here is of another line of the same poem, and hence in the same metre, and
what it shows in relation to the middle ∪ — syllables of the foot is an alternating
pattern, that is, the first and third feet exhibit the predicted iambic emphasis, with
the duration of the long syllable being much greater, but the second does not (the
short/long distinction being in fact effaced), while in the second hemistich the
iambic emphasis appears only in the second foot. In both halves, the syllable that
has the longest duration and presents the greatest melodic complexity is the last,
and the reason is not because it is a long syllable15 but precisely because it is the
last, at the point where considerations of meaning finally fade, giving free rein
to melody and hence to the inclusion of tahrir elements within what is now only
notionally still part of the text setting.
All this suggests that although prosody is evidently significant, it interacts
with, and may have to yield to, other factors, formal as well as phonological
and semantic.16 At this point, then, it would be appropriate to address Tsuge’s
projection of the ‘compression-relaxation’ principle onto the formal plane,17 where
it is deemed relevant primarily to the distinction between text-setting and tahrir,
but to consider it in the context of the gushe as a whole and, in conjunction with it,
to take into account the propulsive pattern of ‘extended repetition’ that Nooshin18
detects as a creative matrix. This is definable as an x + x + x′ shape where x′ is less
a varied repeat than an inventive extension, and despite the evident integration of
its parts this may to a certain extent be viewed as embodying a similar contrastive
perception. Even if read, more interestingly, in psychological terms as a build up
of tension (for both performer and audience) towards release, it suggests either
a possible parallel to Tsuge’s conceptualization or, perhaps more justifiably, a
counter to it, implying rather than relaxation an increase in creative energy.
14
In Karimi’s version the first hemistich is shorter when repeated, while the third is
shorter than the first two, at 8′′ as against 11′′, while the duration of the fourth is again 8′′ if
one subtracts the 2.5′′ devoted to the elaboration of the last syllable.
15
One may discount the theoretically iambic structure resulting from the ghost short
syllable value generated by the preceding extra-long syllable.
16
To take a specific example, in the second foot, raft o far dā, the long syllable of the
iambic o far is passed over briefly in favour of dā, which is the final (and stressed) syllable
of the word, and, in addition, ends in a vowel.
17
G. Tsuge, ‘Rhythmic aspects of the avâz in Persian music’, Ethnomusicology, 14/2
(1970): 205-27, ‘Avaz: a study of the rhythmic aspects in classical Iranian music’.
18
L. Nooshin, ‘The processes of creation and re-creation in Persian classical music’,
PhD thesis (University of London, 1996), ‘The song of the nightingale: processes of
improvisation in dastgāh segāh (Iranian classical music)’.
In Touraj Kiaras’s performance of the darāmad one might, from this perspective,
begin by considering variations in surface activity, and point to the existence of
clearly differentiated zones, as represented in Example 3b.4 by, say, systems 12
and 15. These can be quantified fairly readily according to the average number
of attacks and/or pitch changes (even if these may occasionally involve arbitrary
decisions) as measured against duration, say per second:
attacks pitch changes
system 12 1.6 0.9
system 15 8.5 8.5
But if one wishes, by scanning on this basis, to detect possible patterns of

contrast which might be presumed to be formally significant, the problem arises
of how to assign material that is intermediate and where to determine the points
of transition between one zone and another. In the verse setting areas we might
also wish to involve the text by considering the number (again sometimes an
approximation) of pitches employed within the duration (measured in seconds)
assigned to each text syllable. This would allow a comparison of, say, the treatment
of the first hemistich (systems 8-10) and that of the last (20 and 21):
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Figure 3b.3
From this it would be straightforward to derive variations in melodic density

per syllable in terms of pitch changes divided by a unit of duration, but it is already
apparent that there are more peaks of activity in the second hemistich than the
first, and in any case it can be argued that this way of presenting data is both
cumbersome and less revelatory than its source, the transcription, which shows
clearly where pitch changes are bunched: it is apparent from Example 3b.4 that
from this perspective the setting of dost midāram belongs to one zone and that of
suz rā to another.
Figure 3b.4
(The apostrophe indicates a pause too brief to function as a break between
phrases.)
The approximate measures of duration for each text syllable might if anything
be of rather more use in considering whether it is possible to detect some form
of periodicity or pulse. Here various layers are conceivable, the largest, for the
singer, being that constrained by the physiological fact of breath. Apart from one
phrase of 14′′ (systems 14-15), Touraj Kiaras’s longer breath units are of the order
of 9-12′′, while a number are a little over half this length (thus confirming the long/
extra long distinction suggested before). However, the pattern of the performance
as a whole needs to include also the intermediate tār passages, so that from one
vocal onset to the next we have the durations given in Figure 3b.4. This exhibits
a pattern in which units of 9-12′′ predominate, but with other clusters definable
as secondary longer (around 15′′) and shorter (6-7′′) bands, which suggests that
we might be dealing with multiples of c3.5′′, and this also seems to apply to the
purely vocal element, in which we find eight phrases of 9.5-11.5′′ (average 10.4)
balanced by eight in the 5.5-8′′ range (average 6.4).
Although not consciously conforming to such timing bands, Touraj Kiaras is
certainly alert to the stylistic appropriateness of maintaining both long-held notes
and melismatic passages within certain temporal bounds. This applies not just
within the verse-setting section, where a loose form of pulse might be suggested
in places by prosodic patterns, but also more generally, a situation which implies
a form of periodicity.19
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Figure 3b.5
19
Reference to the phrase lengths in the detailed transcription of a North Indian
dhrupad ālāp presented in R. Sanyal and R. Widdess, Dhrupad: tradition and performance
in Indian music (SOAS Musicology Series) (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 330-45 suggests the
potential for fruitful cross-cultural comparisons here.
However, it is within the verse setting, because of the disposition of the

verse, that temporal units of around 3.5′′ can most readily be perceived or, more
accurately, a drift from initial units of around 4′′ down to 3′′. These are displayed
in Figure 3b.5 above, which refers to the systems of Example 3b.4, citing the
beginning of each hemistich.
However, a word of caution is in order. Not all the divisions proposed are
unequivocal, and the range, from 2.1′′ to 4.7′′, is sufficiently wide to call into
question the notion of regularity. Nevertheless, it can hardly be fortuitous that
the variations in the first division of each line are not very wide: the maximum
deviation from the average (just over 3′′) is no more than 20 per cent. Also to
be noted is a tendency for the second division to be longer that the first and,
where there is a third, for the third to be longer than the second.20 We are thus
approaching the notion not quite of a form of regular pulse but certainly of a
set of stylistic constraints producing regularities in the organization of duration
(or, more precisely, preventing large variations), the result being that in both
lines the global duration of each hemistich is almost identical. A further form of
patterning is that the initial phrases of each hemistich, typically covering three
or four text syllables, tend to exhibit a concentration of pitch changes towards
the beginning, so that one may speak of an internal head + tail structure, a short-
long pattern of the order of 1 + 2. In this particular context the projection of a
fundamental iambic articulation onto higher levels argued for by Tsuge appears to
have some validity. But the interpretation is more contentious, for the tail is often
a single sustained pitch that is both modally and positionally prominent, and is not
well characterized by ‘relaxation’.
There is yet another form of pulse that needs to be taken account of, this
time one ignored by the transcription: the singer’s alteration of tongue position
during long-held notes to vary the formation of the mouth cavity and hence vowel
quality as the profile of formants changes.21 The impression produced is of a wave-
like oscillation (creating the illusion of alterations in pitch) that appears to be
similarly controlled, even if unconsciously, to conform to the same 3-4′′ pattern.
This effect can only become apparent on sufficiently long-held pitches, the most
obvious being the a at the beginning of the pre-text section. However, although
this type of periodicity is clearly manifest here, the others detected in the text-
setting area are less apparent, for elsewhere in the pre-text section the placing of
long-held notes is less predictable, and with the exception of the last phrase, of just
over 6′′, which can fairly readily be divided into nearly equal halves, the kind of
scansion into 3-4′′ units that was possible in the text-setting areas here encounters
resistance. This is partly because of the presence of a tahrir element, and to
judge by the more extended tahrir passages within and after the text-setting area
20
Specifically, a < b in six cases, a = b in one, a > b in three; a < b < c in two, a < b >
c in one, and a > b < c in one.
21
Cf. D.W. Hughes, ‘No nonsense: the logic and power of acoustic-iconic mnemonic
systems’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 9/2 (2000): 93-120 (see especially pp. 98-9).
different criteria appear to obtain, so that instead of loose concatenations of larger

blocks we encounter precise iterations (as in Example 3b.4, systems 14, 15 and
23) of small units (albeit ones containing a large number of pitch changes), each
with a duration normally falling between 0.5′′ and 0.9′′. The effect is to produce
a clear regularity for just a few seconds before the pattern is changed or the rapid
iterations cease, and as a result one can identify brief bursts of strongly pulsed
material embedded within a zone the durational organization of which appears to
be somewhat looser than elsewhere.
Even if the layout is different, it is perhaps in these pulsed tahrir areas that one
can see the closest analogy to the creative use of the technique of extension that
Nooshin finds characteristic, at least in the sense that the reiteration of a single
tahrir formula (but sometimes more than once) seems to generate a dynamic
extension of the process. Elsewhere, however, it would appear difficult to make a
case for the x + x + x′ development playing a major rôle, although one can certainly
find passages where material is repeated (although not necessarily identically) as
if a springboard for a related but more complex passage. Examples that could be
viewed in this light include systems 6, 16 and 17, and 25 and 26:
Example 3b.5
If these various factors combine to suggest the presence of a number of

coherent durational constraints, it is equally clear that they combine with a pattern
of motivic recurrences throughout the darāmad. Together they suggest that further
light on structure (or construction) might be shed by attempting a simple form
of the segmentation practised in semiotic analysis. As Example 3b.6 shows, it is
certainly possible to produce arrays of initial and cadence formulae.
Example 3b.6
As defined, the initial formulae show a predictable preference for ending with
the upwards step g – a . The cadence formulae, likewise, show a predictable
preference for a final downwards step, but vary between ending on g, f or e:
unexpectedly, though, the most frequently used formula has the upwards step
g – a and is, indeed, identical in outline with the most common of the initial
formulae. Equally evident, and again predictable, is that no particular pattern of
associations emerges: all but one of the initial formulae that occur more than once
combine with more than one cadence formula.
It has been assumed that the decisions made about where the initial formulae
are deemed to end are not particularly controversial (they depend primarily on
relative duration). But thereafter matters become more problematical, and it is
difficult to arrive at satisfactory criteria either for determining where cadence
formulae begin (so that in some cases longer or shorter versions could have been
proposed in Example 3b.6) or for cutting up what lies between the initial and final
zones in order to pursue this line of enquiry: whatever divisions are proposed
appear to be disconcertingly arbitrary. It might be argued that where, as here,
there can be no very firm appeal to rhythmic factors, the same defect weakens
the analytical cogency of the types of reduction previously proposed, but these at
least have the advantage of presenting the order of events in a rather more reader-
friendly fashion than would a set of paradigmatic columns. Nevertheless, the sheer
amount of material would render a complete account of the darāmad derived in
the same way rather unwieldy, and in the event Touraj Kiaras’s performance may
perhaps more usefully be displayed in the form of an analytical dissection that tries
to cope pragmatically with the procedural difficulties mentioned above, and in the
course of so doing decants more material into the final, cadence column, some of
the entries in Example 3b.6 being attached to a previously descent that cannot be
severed from them neatly. Example 3b.7 thus tries to fill the gap in Example 3b.6
as economically as possible, distributing a similarly abstracted version of material
across columns according to pitch contour relationships.
Example 3b.7
(As before, the brace above covers material that may be repeated.)
Although it would be unjustified to claim that each column isolates a

recognizable repertoire segment, 3 and 5 do represent, respectively, more generally
medial cadences with a characteristic descending contour ending on f or e, and
generally final cadences in which g is prominent (even if followed by an adjacent

pitch). There is no implication that, say, the first realization of 1 would normally
be followed by the first realization of 2, and so forth. As might be expected, moves
are not always to the right, and even if the majority are (with occasional repeats),
they frequently skip one or more columns:
1 2 2, 1 2 3, 1 2 3 (3) 5 5, 1 2 4 5, 1 3, 1 5,
2 4 5, 2 5
but there are some that involve a backward step:
1 2 1, 1 3 1 5, 1 5 2 3,
545
This variability inevitably means that the global abstract suggested at the head
of Example 3b.7 cannot be viewed as a statement of an inexorable progression,
rather of one that allows for looping back, although not at random. It may be noted
that:
1 is only returned to once after 2;

if not followed by 4, 2 collocates with 3;
4 collocates with 5;
3 may be followed by 5, but 5 is not followed by 3.
chakāvak
The following four gushe have in common that they all begin with the area around,
and then increasingly above, c′, thus providing a clear contrast with the lower
register of the darāmad and its initial emphasis on a . They tend, successively, to
extend the range upwards, so that the structure of the group as a whole accords with
the general norm of a gradually unfolding ascent before the final forud rounds off
the melodic development by returning to the area first developed in the darāmad.
In chakāvak (‘lark’) the melodic core may be defined fairly readily as an
elaboration of c′ followed by the descent c′ b a (g). The beginning of Touraj
Kiaras’s realization is virtually identical to the first phrase in Karimi’s radif: both
consist essentially of a long-held c′ and a brief descent to g. They are also identical
in duration, and as Touraj Kiaras proceeds directly with material closely matching
Karimi’s second phrase, even if not identical with it, and again with the same
duration, the expectation must be that his version of this gushe will prove to be
fairly or even extremely close to the model imparted to him by his teacher. Indeed,
the total duration is nearly the same, and the correspondence continues to hold
largely true throughout the pre-text section, the lengths of the successive phrases
(with breath pauses in square brackets) being:
Karimi 8 [1] 5 6 [1] 5 8
Touraj Kiaras 8 - 5 [1] 8 + 5 [1] 11
But the melodic contour of the final three phrases in Karimi’s version is
not replicated with the same degree of fidelity. In Touraj Kiaras’s performance
the first certainly presents the same development, introducing d′ in alternation
with c′, but it injects a brief tahrir before the concluding d′; the second, which
follows without a break, includes the b – c′ alternation of Karimi, but incorporates
it within a wider falling-rising-falling contour covering the range from d′ to
a ; and in the third there is a similar amplification, for whereas Karimi presents
an alternation of a and b followed by a nearly parallel alternation of g and
a , Touraj Kiaras incorporates the first within an ascent from a to c′ and the
second within a repeated descent from c′ to a . These differences, each apparently
minor, add up cumulatively to a distinctively personal version, and one may also
note the integration of tahrir material encountered on a gramophone record of a
performance by Seyyid Ahmad Khan that Touraj Kiaras was able to study. The
version we now have thus exemplifies the creative combination and adjustment of
pre-existing elements transmitted through different channels, thereby providing a
clear example of how the radif can be subtly enriched and altered as successive
generations of masters pass on their own syntheses to their pupils or commit them
to posterity in recorded form for others to engage with creatively in their turn.
Touraj Kiaras’s performance as a whole, ignoring the lengthy (45′′) tār
introduction and a substantial (36′′) tār interlude between the pre-text section and
the verse setting, is given in Example 3b.8.
Example 3b.8
One obvious feature distinguishing this transcription from the previous one
is the addition of note stems at certain junctures, pointing up areas where there
is a clearer than usual pulse (even if, as the spatial disposition shows, durations
still vary somewhat), consisting in this case of a regular long c′ + short d′ pairing.
Otherwise, the general form of this gushe corresponds closely to that of the
darāmad, and may therefore be dealt with in more summary fashion, especially
as it is more condensed, setting only a single line of verse. Both because of this
and because of the shift upwards in register the impression is created of greater
intensity, with the alternations of long-held notes and tahrir occurring at shorter
intervals, while the tahrir passages themselves consist of relatively compressed
bursts, usually of some 3′′ duration, as against the more sustained passages
elsewhere. Yet as far as the phrasing is concerned the breath units are on average
longer than in the darāmad, and are more consistent, five out of the seven being
in the 11′′-13′′ range. Not surprisingly, in so far as it is possible to subdivide them
convincingly into constituent parts, many of these are also somewhat longer, the
approximate timings being:
SKUDVH

Figure 3b.6
But perhaps rather more significant is to note the relatively restricted nature of
the motivic material, for the whole gushe can be regarded as a working out of the
very first phrase, with just one significant change towards the end, a shift in the
relative emphasis between c′ and d′, the latter briefly becoming prominent. The
nature of the working out can be seen quite readily from the analytical reduction
given in Example 3b.9.
Example 3b.9
leyli o majnun
In contrast to both the darāmad and chakāvak, in this gushe Touraj Kiaras adheres
fairly closely, although by no means slavishly, to the melodic contour of the version
he learned from Karimi. This is partly because the limited recording time available
denied him adequate rehearsal or the multiple takes that might have been required
if the instrumentalist had experienced problems in adjusting to a less familiar
version, but partly, no doubt, because of the related fact that he has chosen to
sing the same verse as Karimi, the one exception, therefore, to the unity of rhyme
and metre in all the other gushe resulting from the selection of lines from the
same poem.22 For present purposes, however, this self-imposed limitation has the
advantage of allowing us to adopt a slightly different approach and call upon not
only the Karimi version but also a number of other accounts related to the radif,
including reductions that demonstrate some of the ways in which analysis has
been conducted. In addition, attention will be paid to aspects of the relationship
between the vocal part and that of the accompanying instrument.
The most extreme reduction of leyli o majnun is that given by Massoudieh:23
Example 3b.10
Although the visual conventions are somewhat different, this is in certain

respects analogous to the outlines of underlying structure that have been suggested
above (e.g. at the head of Example 3b.9), and like them may seem unhelpfully
distant, especially as it is if anything even more schematic. The reason for this
is that it forms part of a complete set of scalar outlines onto which are mapped
significant features such as variations in levels of prominence, the purpose being
to differentiate as much as define, to map in contrastive terms the modal complex
constitutive of the dastgāh as a whole rather than to capture precisely the melodic
contours of the individual gushe. Nevertheless, in addition to showing levels of
prominence through note length and the thickness of the lines, Massoudieh also
gives an indication of initial and final notes,24 here c′ and g respectively, thereby
suggesting that the core of this gushe is a descent over a tetrachord.
Comparison with the parallel outline he provides for the darāmad:
22
The metre in question is, for each hemistich, – – ∪ ∪ – ∪ – ∪ – – . It may be noted
that this contains within it (beginning from the second syllable) the metre of the preceding
tarāne, which is – ∪ ∪ – ∪ – ∪ – .
23
M.T. Massoudieh, Radīf vocal de la musique traditionelle de l’Iran par Mahmud
Karimi, transcription et analyse (Tehran, 1976), p. 27.
24
The terms used are sadā-ye shoru‘ and sadā-ye khāteme.
Example 3b.11
suggests that at this level of abstraction the contrast between them recedes to little
more than a slight upwards extension of the pitch range combined with greater
emphasis on c′ and d′. The outline given for chakāvak is naturally even closer:
comparison between the two would indicate as the essential differences extension
of the range one step upwards in leyli o majnun, inclusion of f, and slightly greater
emphasis, within the same fundamental g – c′ tetrachord, being accorded to a
and b.
This last point, though, is hardly borne out by the outline proposed by Farhat,
who presents, in his usual way, what he terms a ‘basic melodic formula’:25
Example 3b.1226
As a generalization this is instructive, but exactly how it has been arrived at

is not clear, and no indication is given of how, if at all, it relates to a version
(or versions) of the radif and, consequently, how distant from performance
realizations it might be.27
Turning to the published radif versions, there are two derived from the
instrumental radif of Mirza ‘Abdollah, one transcribed by Jean During from a
recorded performance by Nur ‘Ali Borumand, the other performed and transcribed
by Tala’i. Setting aside minor differences relating to the notation of duration and
the number of internal two-note repetitions in a descending sequence, these are
identical. For present purposes that of Tala’i is the more interesting, since its layout
is analytical. This is achieved in part by reducing the representation of repeats, but
primarily by vertical alignment of similar material. The following copy is slightly
altered in order to spell out one or two abbreviations and adjust the format by
extending further the logic of vertical alignment:
25
H. Farhat, The dastgāh concept in Persian music (Cambridge, 1990), p. 69.
26
The original is one octave lower.
27
Of the first such ‘formula’, that presented for the darāmad of shur, he says only
(p. 29) that it is the precipitate of a process of ‘analysis of numerous improvisations’, thus
suggesting that it is not derived directly from one or more versions of the radif.
Example 3b.13
With this we may compare a further instrumental version, that of Abol-Hasan

Saba:
Example 3b.1428
For the vocal radif we have the transcription made by Massoudieh from the
recording made by Karimi, and, as a curiosity, we may refer also to the version
transcribed by Miller,29 which he states to be that used by Karimi as a teaching
tool. This is not sufficiently different to warrant being reproduced here, but it does
demonstrate one significant deviation from the recording, the omission of part of
the final section after the verse setting, again pointing to an essential element of
flexibility in the small-scale manipulation of form, even at the level of the radif of
a single master.
The transcription of Karimi’s recording offered in Example 3b.15 differs from
Massoudieh’s principally, as before, in abandoning complexities of rhythmic
representation in favour of the usual second by second display of duration. The
numbers after each system indicate the length, in seconds, of the following pause.
Glottal closure is only fitfully indicated.
28
The original is notated a whole tone higher.
29
L.C. Miller, Music and song in Persia: the art of āvāz (London, 1999), pp. 323-4.
Example 3b.15
What these various versions demonstrate quite clearly is that even without
stepping beyond the confines of what are deemed the authoritative pedagogical
models we are liable to encounter considerable variety in the pacing of events,
in the formal arrangement and relative extension of a common stock of melodic
moves. Identifying these moves impressionistically as:
we may segment the three radif versions as shown in Figure 3b.7. But, as might be
expected, variability does not mean anarchy: all versions begin with 1; all end with
4; and, rather as in the darāmad, all explore one or both of what might be termed
the medial (3) and final (4) cadential areas before developing 2, the upper register
that is the most distinctive feature differentiating leyli o majnun from chakāvak,
for all that it is relatively brief. Further, 2 is always followed by (usually) 3 or 4
before any return to 1.
7DOD¶L

6DED

.DULPL

Figure 3b.7
As indicated at the beginning, in terms of melodic contour it is against the

Karimi version that Touraj Kiaras’s performance can most usefully be aligned, for
he adheres quite closely to it, at least in the she‘r where, in consequence, exactly
the same segmentation can be identified. Yet within this apparent straitjacket
the treatment of the verse and the handling of the phrases still allow scope for a
personal imprint; indeed, a glance at the timings given in Figure 3b.8 shows that
by comparison with the general similarity of proportions in the second line the first
exhibits a startling contrast, even what appears to be a quite deliberate reversal
of the distribution of phrase lengths adopted by Karimi. Again, one may note the
consistent bandings of phrase length. For the first line and the first hemistich of
the second both alternate (but in reverse order) long and short phrases, the former
mostly around 12-13′′ (including breath pauses), the latter around 3-5′′. Only in the
last hemistich do the differences narrow somewhat, both versions using phrases of
intermediate length.
.DULPL >@ >@

7RXUDM.LDUDV >@ >@ WDKULU>VDQWXU@
.DULPL >@ >@
7RXUDM.LDUDV >@ >@ WDKULU>VDQWXU@
.DULPL >@ WDKULU>@
7RXUDM.LDUDV WDKULU>@
.DULPL >@ >@
7RXUDM.LDUDV >@ >@
Figure 3b.8
(/LQGLFDWHVWKHHQGRIWKHKHPLVWLFKSDXVHVDUHLQEUDFNHWV
indicates the end of the hemistich; pauses are in brackets.)
The following transcription of Touraj Kiaras’s performance also includes the

lengthy santur interludes as well as briefer gap-fillings in order to give a typical
instance of the way an instrumentalist responds to the preceding vocal exposition.
(However, only sporadic indications are given of what the santur is playing while
Touraj Kiaras is singing – normally only the few overlapping notes at the end of a
vocal phrase are transcribed.) Nor has any attempt been made to reflect the subtle
use of dynamics except to mark the end of phrases by using an apostrophe which
also normally implies a preceding and often quite lengthy diminuendo where decay
is consciously used as a concluding effect. Conversely, the following phrase will
normally have at or near its head an accent or accents indicating a strong dynamic
contrast. Much detail is omitted, and frequent recourse is had to a vague tremolo
marking. Apart from a passage in which dots above indicate a staccato damping
no notes are damped, so that unless cancelled by another attack on the same course
they will continue to sound as long as the decay of the instrument permits.
Apparent here is the close correspondence between Touraj Kiaras’s treatment

of the first hemistich and that of the second; we are dealing with an only slightly
varied repeat: overall timings are very close, except for an abbreviation of the
second half of the second hemistich, and the similarity also extends to the timing
(virtually identical) and the melodic contour of the tahrir that follows each
hemistich. As noted above, there is a striking reversal of Karimi’s short-long
relationship between the two halves of each of the first two hemistichs, so that
instead of the traditional delivery of a relatively large section of the verse within
a relatively short duration, thereby ensuring comprehensibility, we have – albeit
without any sacrifice of comprehensibility – 12′′ devoted to the first half of the
hemistich, and less than 4′′ to the second. Also to be noted is that most melodic
attention is devoted to the internally rhyming syllable concluding each first half,
and although one of these can be said to be semantically prominent, the other
(the preposition bar ‘on’) most decidedly can not, so that what is given aesthetic
prominence here is not the poetry but the musical logic.30
In the remainder of the gushe Touraj Kiaras follows Karimi’s structure for the
second line, introducing a tahrir after the first hemistich and including another
briefer one within the second, and given that the phrases are now shorter than
the previous long ones the effect is of telescoping and acceleration, and the
intensity is increased by the further extension of the range as f′ is introduced. In
the lengthier tahrir following the second hemistich the Karimi version recedes
to the background, and it is individual creativity that comes to the fore as the
model is treated with increasing freedom. Thus the first phrase maintains the same
general morphology (a rising-falling arch) and the identity of the initial and final
notes, but the detail of the working out is quite different; in the second there is a
slight resemblance in the melodic movement, but set a pitch lower; Karimi’s third
phrase has nothing that correspond to it; and while the final two phrases begin in
similar fashion they deviate thereafter before, in the last, converging on the final
g a f g cadence.
30
It may be noted that parallels can be found in the more detailed fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century song-text anthologies.
Example 3b.16a
Example 3b.16b
Example 3b.16c
Example 3b.16d
With regard to the role of the santur, we may note that, as in the first vocal
phrase and in the briefer passages where it emerges to prominence during the
singer’s breath pauses, it follows the melodic outline of the voice with a delay
of some 2-2.5′′. As a result, at the end of the first hemistich it is still sounding c′
when the voice has completed the descent to g, so that its rendition of the descent
overlaps with Touraj Kiaras’s commencement of the next phrase; and the same
occurs almost identically at the end of the second hemistich.
The first of the extended solo passages may be divided into three phrases.
The first lasts 7.1′′, with the more substantial second and third nearly twice as
long (13.2′′ and 12.6′′ respectively), and since the performer is not physically
constrained in the same way as the singer it is particularly interesting to note here the
strong similarity between the vocal and instrumental versions in time management
(for which further evidence is provided by the second solo). In addition, among the
various features of technique we may single out dynamic contrast as a means of
articulating phrases internally, and note that according to this criterion one might
arrive at the following subdivisions of the three phrases making up each of the
first two solos:
GHFD\
GHFD\
GHFD\
GHFD\
GHFD\
GHFD\
GHFD\
Figure 3b.9
Although further evidence would be required to substantiate the case, such

data suggest, rather than random variation, a preference for zones of 2-3′′ and 5-7′′
contrasting with a lengthier but more variable one in phrase-final position (from 7′′
to 11′′). The final phrase of the second solo is considerably longer than the others,
but appears to resemble them in its internal articulation.
With regard to melodic content, the first solo functions as a postlude to the
first vocal she‘r and tahrir, and in its first phrase provides direct continuity by
approximating to the outline of the second half of the preceding tahrir. In the
longer second phrase we have the contrast of a shift to the lower register, while
the melodic material is this time a varied recapitulation of the ground covered
by Touraj Kiaras in the first hemistich. The main differences consist of a slight
emphasis given to the highest pitch, e′ (barely touched by Touraj Kiaras), and the
replacement of the following c′ – d′ alternation by c′ – b. The final phrase reverts
to the higher register, and is a more personal contribution, but it again outlines
the essential features of an initial (rise to) c′ followed by a b – a – (g) descent,
and its trajectory is broadly relatable to that of the preceding tahrir. The overall
effect is thus to provide something between an extension, followed by a loose
form of repetition that acts to reinforce what has gone before, and a commentary
that recollects but also has its own intrinsic interest.
The longer second solo relates, predictably if somewhat distantly, to the vocal
treatment of the second hemistich, but as this is a slightly varied repetition of the
first it is hardly surprising to find that the treatment is somewhat freer (albeit without
any contrastive change of register). It begins, as before, with a cadential descent,
but this time completing what is only implied in the immediately preceding tahrir,
and then reverts to the fundamental melodic outline of the gushe, although here
the initial emphasis on c′ and d′ is combined with brief ascending and descending
phrases over g, a and b. Only subsequently does the ascent to e′ appear, to be
followed by multiple developments of the c′ – g descent (with a final cadence on
a ).
The third solo, a coda that follows Touraj Kiaras’s arrival at the final cadence,
is yet more substantial, lasting 41′′. It offers one last exploration of the essential
modal constituents of leyli o majnun, setting forth in the first phrase the pitches c′
and d′, and in the longer second the complete upper tetrachord (c′ – f′), followed
by a tahrir-like descent to the first (non-final) cadence on a . In much of the
remainder, which at 25.5′′ is somewhat longer, the dynamic level is lower, and
the general pattern is of a series of short phrases, two being repeats at the lower
octave, which gradually unfold but at the same time fragment the descent from c′
to the final cadence on g.31
Finally, we may consider relative duration, that is, the proportion of the total
time allotted to each pitch, as an indication of prominence. A rough and ready
subjective reading of the vocal part gives the following, rounded to the nearest
second, for each pitch, and as the total is 105 each figure may be regarded as an
approximate percentage:
e f g a b c′ d′ e′ f′
1 2 17 16 15 35 11 6 2
The picture this reveals is too clear to require further comment. It tallies exactly
with the emphases suggested in the previous verbal descriptions, and likewise with
the prominence reserved for c′ in the following abstraction, which gives what may
be discerned as a skeletal outline with, below, some indication of the main types of
amplification, most of which may be subject to multiple repetitions:
31
The further material included on track 8 of the CD properly belongs to track 9, as
it is the pre-text section of the following gushe, ney-e dāvud.
E
xample 3b.17
ney-e dāvud
The remaining two gushe are typologically akin to the preceding ones and
consequently do not require discussion in quite such detail. In ney-e dāvud
(‘David’s flute’) we encounter again the standard tripartite structure of darāmad2
+ she‘r + tahrir and, as expected, all three are congruent in their development of
pitch resources. The first is slightly more extended than the other two, of which
the she‘r is marginally the shorter, although rather than their relative proportions it
is perhaps more significant to note that in this gushe the verse is dispatched more
rapidly than hitherto (it is completed in 23′′, as against an average of 28′′ per verse
in chakāvak and leyli o majnun, and 32′′ in the following bidād). The performance
is completed by a lengthy (1′) santur postlude. In order to provide further notated
examples of instrumental commentary the transcription (Example 3b.18) includes
outlines of both this and the santur solo following the pre-text section. As the
transcription shows, phrase length bands in the vocal part conform to the norms
discerned in the previous gushe, as does the relatively greater weight attached to
the treatment of the final syllable of each of the five verse segments.
Striking in this particular gushe, in contrast to leyli o majnun, is the way in
which Touraj Kiaras departs from the Karimi radif not by manipulation of phrase
length while retaining much of the shape set forth in that model, but by drifting
away from it melodically, and by more radical formal departures. Thus the first
phrase of the pre-text section begins by conforming fairly closely to Karimi’s
version, displaying the core b c′ d′ e′ d′ c′ b outline and cadencing on c′ (covered
in the first 6.6′′), but thereafter it develops the material differently, being more
extended and complex, and the relationship between the two versions in the later
phrases is even more tenuous: Touraj Kiaras uses different cadence formulae and
lengthier tahrir phrases, with the result that the total duration of his performance
is almost a third longer.
In the somewhat compressed setting of the verse the line is treated less as two
hemistichs than as almost equal quarters, one of which is repeated, thus yielding
five segments, as against the symmetrically balanced four hemistichs sung by
Karimi, which have a clear a + b + a + b′ structure. There is also an interesting
difference in the relationship between melodic articulation and the prosodic pattern
of the verse. The metres used may be aligned thus:
Karimi ∪ ——— /∪ — ——/∪ ——/

Touraj Kiaras — ∪ — — / — ∪ — — / — ∪ — — / — ∪ — /
and one might therefore expect that Touraj Kiaras would follow Karimi’s model
closely, with only a minor adjustment at the beginning and some textual compression
(or melodic extension) at the end. The beginning conforms to expectations:
Touraj Kiaras’s initial syllable precedes his use of the Karimi model, which he
starts at the second syllable. But although much of Karimi’s melodic material
is preserved thereafter it is treated with considerable freedom: some is omitted,
Example 3b.18a
Example 3b.18b
and part repeated, so that the distribution of material in relation to the metre is
subverted, with the first three feet of Touraj Kiaras’s text being compressed into
the melodic area occupied by Karimi’s first two feet. In fact, none of the various
elements of Karimi’s text setting is reproduced exactly, and Touraj Kiaras adopts
in addition a different cadential arrangement, so that the sections of each end as
follows:
Karimi c′ d′ c′ d′ b c′ c′ d′ c′ (d′)
Touraj Kiaras d′ c′ b c′ d′ d′ c′ b d′ d′ c′ b c′
Again, although traversing the same modal terrain, the tahrir patterns, as before,
are rather different. Karimi includes an extensive tahrir within the final syllable
of the verse, which Touraj Kiaras does not, and in the section following the
completion of the text he descends for the first time from d′ to g (and includes
also f). Touraj Kiaras, on the other hand, completely ignores the area below b:
his final tahrir section ranges over the area from b to f′, and he concludes with
a cadence centred on c′ resembling that at the end of Karimi’s pre-text section.
(This suggests that the final phrases in Karimi’s version should be regarded as a
forud, a standard coda returning to the darāmad area but not an element vital to
the identity of ney-e dāvud.) Nevertheless, despite these significant differences,
we are once again faced with micro-variations and alternative orders of what is
essentially the same material, so that the fundamental modal identity of ney-e
dāvud is not compromised by the differences in the strategies the two singers
adopt. This is particularly so because the final descent in Karimi’s version, which
is also found in the instrumental radif, is included in the santur interlude between
the initial section and the she‘r. This resembles Touraj Kiaras’s exposition fairly
closely, but instead of following him in reverting to a prominent d′ after the first
brief tahrir (system 3) it continues a loosely sequential descent down to d and c
(system 7) and then repeats the descent from f to d, continuing on thereafter with
the forud material in the lower register to cadence on G.
Given that Touraj Kiaras does not use this material in the following she‘r and
tahrir, its absence from the lengthy santur postlude confirms that the accompanist
is prepared to follow the particular realization of the vocalist quite closely. After
an initial echo, in the lower register, of the cadential c′, the morphology is similar
to that of the vocal exposition, with an initial c′ – d′ – e′ rise followed by a series
of mainly descending phrases the underlying pattern of which is a rising sequence,
so that e′ to b is followed by f′ to c′ and, eventually, g′ to c′. There is no descent
to g, and although the organization of the final phrase is rather different to that of
Touraj Kiaras, it echoes it exactly in terms of its pitch range, being an elaboration
of the descent from e′ to the cadential c′.
Given this general congruence, we may summarize selectively in arriving at
the following abstraction:
Example 3b.19
bidād
In this, the final and longest gushe, which incorporates (or to which is appended) an
extensive forud section setting a third line of text, the voice is accompanied by the
ney. The transcription (Example 3b.20) omits the forud, which will be discussed
separately below. It includes the ney interludes and postlude and also its gap filling
but only some of its accompanying overlap with the voice.
The general proportions and structure of bidād are similar to those of the
preceding gushe, as is the general approach to the setting of the text. There is,
however, one major contrast: whereas in the Karimi radif there is a considerable
degree of modal and melodic similarity between bidād and ney-e dāvud, both of
which, except for the final descent in ney-e dāvud, employ the same pitch range,
Touraj Kiaras begins by stressing the upper end of the tessitura of bidād, and
soon goes beyond that of ney-e dāvud: f′ is reached earlier and given greater
prominence, while g′ is also touched and, at one point, even a ′. Like leyli o
majnun, this is a gushe in which Touraj Kiaras begins immediately with the text
(whereas Karimi has a pre-text section), and his treatment is strikingly individual.
Omitted is Karimi’s initial ascent from b to the prominent d′, and likewise the
concentration on d′ and the notes immediately flanking it throughout the first
hemistich; rather, after the beginning on d′, the effect is of a series of descents to it
from an increasingly prominent f′,32 and it is precisely on the pitches d′, e′ and f′
that the following tahrir concentrates, whereas in Karimi’s version the range is b
to e′: the two share only a cadence formula, but not even at the same pitch, Karimi
concluding on c′, Touraj Kiaras on d′; and whereas the Karimi bidād ends at this
point, Touraj Kiaras’s version has a great deal more material to come.
The contrast with the material presented in the Karimi radif is even greater
in the remainder of the gushe, beginning with the first ney interlude, which is
of approximately the same length as the preceding vocal section. Having
accompanied the setting of the first line in the upper register, the ney now switches
to the lower and introduces a modal shift found in the instrumental tradition,33 so
that we have e as against the e′ of the upper register, but without in any way
altering the melodic emphasis: f is constantly reiterated, and is also emphasized
by the rhythmic regularity of the articulation, and within the c – g range it is again
the d – f core that is prominent. As if in imitation, Touraj Kiaras also now opts for
32
This particular emphasis is reminiscent of the opening of rāje‘, another gushe of
homāyun.
33
E.g. D. Tala’i, radif-e Mirza ‘Abdollah, pp. 246-8. In this version there are frequent
shifts between the two pitches.
Example 3b.20a
Example 3b.20b
Example 3b.20c
the lower register (while the accompanying ney reverts to the higher). The switch
allows him to develop phrases including not only f and g but also a and even
b with great flexibility, especially in the lengthy and complex final tahrir. The
setting of the second line of verse that precedes it, however, is a model of restraint,
presenting a series of micro-variations on a single fundamental phrase structure
consisting of a long-held g, now much the most prominent note, followed by a
descent to d. Unusual about the disposition of material is that another lengthy (33′′)
ney interlude separates the first and second enunciations of its first hemistich. This
echoes the rhythmic patterns of the previous interlude and, predictably, it develops
further and more complex variations on the phrase enunciated by the singer: it
includes ascending as well as descending phrases, and in particular emphasizes the
e f g ascent. Yet further variations appear in the setting of the final hemistich, and
the tahrir explores the area from e to a in a large-scale arch before cadencing
again on d. The ney postlude, on the other hand, although clearly relatable to the
preceding phrases, is less obviously a varied restatement of them. Structurally it
consists of two pairs of phrases of almost equal proportions, with the first member
of each pair twice as long as the second. In the first pair g is again particularly
prominent, being followed by a descent to c matched in the second member by an
ascent to g, while in the second pair there is a more varied development centred
around g and f, followed by the concluding descent to d.
Given the contrasts between the high and low register material, the following
abstraction might be proposed:
Example 3b.21
But also analytically relevant, as before, is a significant aspect that the above
type of reduction tends to efface, namely the pacing of events. This can be stated as
contrasts in types of activity and variations in melodic density within the framework
of the formal alternation of voice and instrument and, for the former, of text setting
and tahrir segments. In spite of the difficulties, apparent from the transcription,
of precisely measuring pitch changes against duration, it is worth attempting an
approximate representation (given in Figure 3b.10) of the distribution of these
elements. As this shows, there is a consistent pattern in the vocal part (V), which in
each hemistich segment (H) consists of an initial low level of pitch change activity
followed by a rise for the melismatic (M) treatment of the final syllable and then
a final cadential reduction. Further, when two hemistich segments are juxtaposed
(H1 and H2; H3 and H4) the second contains, either instead of or in addition to
M, a final tahrir (T) where there is a peak of activity, again followed by a final
cadential reduction. In contrast, the ney has a flatter profile, in which most of the
peaks occur in the interlude before the final vocal segment, but as with the vocal
part each section ends with a reduction in melodic activity.
Figure 3b.10
(Each point represents the number of pitch changes, as indicated on the vertical
scale, per second; the gaps for pauses are approximately pro rata.)
Maps of the preceding gushe would exhibit a similar pattern, especially in the
vocal part, but what now follows departs from it in some respects.
forud
The difference concerns not the large-scale sectional structure, although this
reserves the main instrumental contribution for an extensive postlude, but the
internal organization of the vocal segments. These begin in orthodox fashion, but
are marked by an earlier onset of melismatic passages within which small-scale
tahrir elements are injected. Thus in the first hemistich the two settings of the first
part last 7.5′′ and 6′′ respectively (with an average of 3 pitch changes per second),
while that of the last two words (mawjud nist) lasts 11′′ and is highly melismatic,
including two brief tahrir bursts producing peaks of 8-10 pitch changes per second.
Rather than an instrumental interlude, this is then followed by an untexted vocal
passage preceding the setting of the second hemistich, which is sung twice. The
first realization resembles that of the first hemistich in the distribution of elements,
but the second conforms more closely to the pattern seen in bidād, with a lengthy
final tahrir.
In general terms, the function of this concluding section of the āvāz is to effect
a return from high register to low, to move from the zone developed in leyli o
majnun, ney-e dāvud and, especially, bidād, back to that of the darāmad, and to
re-establish the modal characteristics of the latter. It may be noted that there is no
named forud in either the Karimi radif or the instrumental radif of Borumand,34
so that although by its nature and dimensions in the present performance it is
effectively equivalent to a gushe, properly speaking it constitutes the final part
of bidād, to which, indeed, it is melodically related. However, the lack of a radif
model means that Touraj Kiaras has greater freedom in negotiating the retrograde
transition as he winds back from the initial high register material to the final
darāmad cadence on g.
The forud has no pre-text section, and the repetition of the first half of the first
hemistich follows the structure in bidād. It also uses the same melodic material
initially, thereby emphasizing the identity of the point from which the return
begins. In the following setting of the two final syllables the preceding series of
f′ → e′ → d′ descents is extended, first by including g′ and then by a final e′ → b
descent. This last is a departure from the melodic model of bidād, and marks the
beginning of a major shift from phrases descending to d′ to an area in which c′
is prominent (but without recalling chakāvak, as it is generally approached from
below). The transition is effected, in the following vocal passage before the second
hemistich, through sequential descents:
34
The more comprehensive collection of M. Ma‘roufi and M. Barkishli, La musique
traditionelle de l’Iran (Tehran: Secrétariat d’État aux Beaux Arts, 1963) contains one, but
this bears little resemblance to Touraj Kiaras’s version.
e′  d′  c′  b
d′  c′  b a
c′  b a
There is then an extended treatment of the a – b – c′ area for the setting of the second
hemistich, cadencing eventually on g, while the substantial tahrir explores a rather
wider pitch range before finally reaching the characteristic darāmad cadence. The
ney postlude follows the same overall trajectory (but reverting contrastively to the
upper register), so that for purposes of analysis it can be subsumed under the vocal
part. The resulting profile may usefully be appended to those previously arrived
at for the individual gushe, thereby yielding Example 3b.22, which presents a
comprehensive modal flow chart for this particular āvāz performance. As a linear
abstraction this has the usual virtues and vices: while allowing an overview of the
broad shifts of emphasis, and signalling changes in prominence with some clarity
as the performance progresses, it fails to register a number of aspects that have been
highlighted. It can, therefore, constitute only one element of an effective analytical
enterprise, and even if the others are less readily condensed into equivalent abstract
forms they should nevertheless be given comparable attention in any attempt at
summing up. It should be stressed, therefore, that the patterns of organization
discussed in detail in relation to the darāmad provide a structural underpinning
throughout, as do the fluid but controlled contrasts of pace and density that have
been graphically represented for bidād. Finally, mention should again be made of
the analytical importance of an elusive element that has been insistently reverted
to throughout this section, namely the constantly varied relationship between the
radif model and its realization, discussion of which has attempted if not to define
then at least to suggest the importance of the vital ingredient of individuality that
transcends the routine, the creative element to which the expert listener pays
particular attention and attributes particular aesthetic value.
E
xample 3b.22
3c. THE PRE-COMPOSED PIECES (2)
tarāne
The performance concludes with two further compositions by Faramarz Payvar,

the first a tarāne somewhat different in character from the one that preceded the
āvāz section. Not so much in the text, for the poem (which give the CD its title)
again ends by asserting the unswerving devotion of the lover:
namidānad ke del joz u degar yāri nadārad
she does not know that my heart has no other friend than her
But the tempo is decidedly faster (at 1 = 240), and the text is also traversed much
more briskly: the setting is largely syllabic, and each hemistich is dispatched
in 5-6′′, just half the equivalent time in the first tarāne. There is also a much
more incisive feel to the rhythm, which has to do with accentuation and the use
of repetitive patterns as much as tempo, with frequent use of dotted divisions
within the basic 6/8. Within the 25 measures of the instrumental introduction, for
example, the first half of no fewer than 15 is articulated as , while there are
nine cases of the combination . But through their very repetition such
articulations emphasize a pulse that avoids simple regularity, and a preference for
displacements of the beat is in evidence throughout: among the more common
combinations in the remainder of the composition are:
Example 3c.1
Thus although in one pattern the configuration of the first half of the measure
is repeated in the second, variation is more common. The melodic line is also
comparatively freer than hitherto, in the sense that it is less tied to the characteristic
features of one gushe or another, and ranges more widely. The opening phrase,

The metre also differs from those that have been used hitherto, being based upon
the foot / ∪ – – – /.
for example, is a descending scale beginning from c′, emphasizing a and f but
then continuing into the lower octave, ending on G, and whereas the first vocal
phrase begins in the territory of the darāmad, the compass of second is the
b – e′ area inhabited by leyli o majnun and ney-e dāvud. The sense of a swifter
pace is also conveyed by the fairly constant alternations of voice and instruments,
and by the rapid scalar passages and sequential repetitions in the instrumental
parts. Nevertheless, comparison with the plummy and lushly orchestrated tarāne
(on the last track of the CD) that Touraj Kiaras recorded in the 1960s shows that
this impression is created less by features intrinsic to the song type than by the
fleet manner of the performance, and the feeling of exuberance it conveys after the
seriousness of the āvāz section is reinforced by the fact that it is followed without
a break by the
reng
Even more swiftly despatched, this last instrumental movement may give
the impression of being no more than a brief coda to the tarāne, with which it
shares both tempo and rhythm. Nevertheless, it may also be thought to provide
a distinctively light-hearted sense of relaxation and closure by finally confirming
through a sublimated dance the transition away from the high seriousness of the
āvāz, even abandoning the setting of poetry which had served as the backbone
of the successive narratives traced by the various gushe and was still central to
the tarāne. On the rehearing that recording allows it becomes less insubstantial,
taking on, rather, the character of a quite deliberately planned gesture, one that is
at the same time emphatic and elusive. Such mixed reactions may be correlated
with two technical features: one, inherent in the form, is the shifting nature of the
rhythm, sure-footed yet frequently employing hemiola substitutions of duple for
triple; while the other, after the modal freedom of the tarāne, is the way in which
the melody returns in a more focused way to the specifics of homāyun as they have
been expounded since the beginning of the performance. In particular, despite its
brevity it manages to summarize and deftly re-enact the modal comportment of the
introductory metred instrumental compositions, and especially the moqaddame.
Indeed, as Example 3c.2 shows, for long stretches the pitch organization of the first
half of the two (that of the reng is displayed below, that of the moqaddame above)
is almost identical, and the gestural parallelism even extends to the inclusion of
a contrastive passage, with the same pitch contour, of rhythmically displaced
staccato repeated notes.
There are similar echoes and parallels in the remainder, but the reminiscence
now, as we dash towards the finishing line, is of the faster second part of the
pishdarāmad, thus establishing a connection with the very first piece. The final
passage (of which Example 3c.3 gives an abstract) manages its effects with the
simplest of means: slower regular ascending scales (two or three pitches to the
measure) forming a descending sequence in thirds, counterbalanced by faster
descents made up of cascading sequences in descending seconds, first in the lower
Example 3c.2
register but then settling on the e – f′ range within which had taken place the core
development of the āvāz, from the beginning through to bidād and the forud. The
final cadence then focuses on the move that lies at the heart of the darāmad, from
a , via a descent from d′, to g.
In sum, the reng variously encapsulates, rhythmically transformed, modal
moves and procedures present in both introductory instrumental compositions.
By reverting to this material, which also pervades part of the āvāz, it provides
continuity; but at the same time, through contrasts of tempo and duration, it clearly
rounds off the performance.
E
xample 3c.3
Part 4
Epilogue
It would be appropriate to attempt a parallel farewell gesture in relation to the

preceding discussion as a whole. Although this may have the character of an essay,
with all that that implies of the speculative and exploratory, it warrants a similar
summary, and a suitable way to begin would be to measure it against its initial
proclamation of intent. It is reasonable to ask, for example, whether it provides
convincing evidence for the proposition that the relationship between analyst and
performer necessarily leads to deeper insights and analytical refinements deemed
valid and useful by both parties. That such productive outcomes can and do
occur goes without saying, and there are, indeed, cases of new findings emerging
from such collaborative explorations that should be revelatory not only for the
ethnomusicological community standing outside the culture in question but also
for scholars and interested musicians within it. In the present case the would-be
analyst is happy to confirm that through his positive and amicable relationship
with a courteous and patient performer he has been helped both to a deeper
understanding and, equally importantly, to an avoidance of misconceptions. But
it does not follow from this that the result quite serves the ecumenical ideal of
the enterprise that provided the original impulse, for to the extent that this was
geared towards a conjunction of two constituencies it perhaps implied less the
achievement of greater analytical profundity than an emphasis on re-examining
what is heuristically appropriate.
As far as the evaluation or elaboration of analytical procedures is concerned
there has long been an awareness that these may not always be (or cannot be)
culturally neutral, and that there is a need to take account of indigenous perceptions
and categories, whether articulated verbally or not. The current stress on the
insights of the performer is thus in essence a reaffirmation or refinement of an
established process of consultation designed on the one hand to alert the analyst
to the unsuspected possibilities vouchsafed by emic perceptions and, on the other,
to defend against the importation of inappropriate etic assumptions. But, it might

A striking recent example is R. Sanyal and D.R. Widdess, Dhrupad: tradition and
performance in Indian music (SOAS Musicology Series) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). For
Persian music one may cite the earlier productive collaboration of N. Caron and D. Safvate,
Iran. Les traditions musicales, Paris: Bûchet/Chastel, 1966. repr. 1997.

A counter case, for the complete autonomy (and cross-cultural applicability) of
certain analytical procedures, is made in J. Rahn, A theory for all music: problems and
solutions in the analysis of non-Western forms (Toronto/London: University of Toronto
Press, 1983).
be asked, inappropriate to whom? One does not need to argue for an ontology of
immanence with regard to musical meaning to allow for the possibility that it could
make sense to discuss various parameters of a particular repertoire in a manner
possibly alien to those who produced it, especially if this aided comprehension
and appreciation amongst a non-native audience. Nevertheless when, as here,
the perceptions revealed by the indigenous theoretical vocabulary are taken into
consideration but then largely left in the background, we revert to a line of thought
that runs the risk of leading directly back to an authoritative discourse of external
origin. Cleaving to western techniques of analysis still implies universalist
assumptions that run counter to the objectives of the present enterprise, which
should culminate, ideally, in the construction of an agreed model that can speak
equally powerfully to both parties.
It would be presumptuous to suppose that this particular goal has been achieved
here, even if the findings have, in general, been approved by Touraj Kiaras. From
a western perspective, it could fairly be objected with regard to the pre-composed
pieces that although the abstractions presented distil patterns of pitch relationships
with reasonable clarity, this is because they are already fairly near the surface of
the original notations. The discussion of the āvāz may be rather more informative,
but it would be difficult to claim that the discussions of form and creative strategies
reveal deep structures (to continue with this standard but questionable metaphor),
even if it might aid and enrich cognition and understanding. On the Iranian side
of the cultural divide, perhaps more tellingly – and the point is not a trivial one
– the analyses proposed would not, in the absence of a bi-lingual text, be readily
accessible to many listeners, and even if they were, the limitations placed on them
by cultural distance would be liable to reduce their potential usefulness.
Quite apart from accessibility, there is also a legitimate question mark against
the appropriateness of the analytical net that has been cast, even if it is by no means
clear that an alternative would yield better results. The reason is that although to
proceed in this way may clarify the architecture of the larger spans of melodic
structure, the value of what has been gained may be small, for in dealing with an
idiom that in terms of pitch resources operates rather on the principle of multum
e parvo, scraping away the surface is not a particularly profitable operation. If
the currently favoured forms of western analysis typically seek to disclose what
unites a corpus or, more frequently, to unearth what lies beneath the surface of an
individual work, one might argue that for Persian classical music a scalpel is an
inappropriate tool: the tendons it lays bare are the commonalities, a vital presence
but at the same time, for those with insider knowledge experiencing the music, an
already given – a mere preliminary to the immediate creation in performance of
the epidermis to which their critical faculties are attuned.

Cf R. Fink, ‘Going flat: post-hierarchical music theory and the musical surface’ in
N. Cook and M. Everist (ed.), Rethinking music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999 repr.
2001) on Reich. For a more elegant formulation of the issues rehearsed here see J. Stock,
At this point it is difficult to resist the conclusion that what is needed is a more
rounded account arrived at not just on the basis of scores and recordings pored
over and repeated, segmented, dismembered and re-assembled in nuclear form,
but involving also a deeper awareness of the phenomenal world of production and
reception. Here, perhaps, we move from analysis to a more broadly conceived
musicology, and thereby step outside the limitations of the present study. On the
other hand, for the analysis itself to be more than an arid intellectual exercise it
needs to be rooted not just in a search for elegance of articulation but also in an
attempt to go beyond the immediate physical existence of the music as recorded
and approach an understanding of its position as an integral element within a wider
cultural complex.
This is especially so as connections with other arts and cultural constructs
have frequently been stressed, thereby situating Persian classical music within an
ideological world where interpretations of history and politics jostle, and where
identity or, rather, multiple identities are endlessly contested and redefined. Some
hint as to the factors involved has been given in the introductory section, and to
conclude it might be helpful to reengage with some of these, even if briefly. The
particular issues singled out as relevant here concern ideological positions and,
more specifically, notions of interconnectedness among the arts and the related
construction of overarching concepts of hermeneutic import.
To consider the latter first, one may note as a standard trope in academic
discourse the elaboration of a web of analogies which imply the claim that music
is in some way structured like calligraphy, poetry, painting or architecture (and
of course the reverse). As a result we are faced with an essentialized notion of
an Iranian cultural world possessing a unified aesthetic with a merely contingent
plurality of manifestations. This has an obviously nationalistic tinge, but a more
significant element is the underlying religious concept of tawhid, the indivisible
oneness of God that can easily be associated with notions of the fundamental
unity of the cosmos. In any event, we are generally confronted by assumption or
assertion: criteria on which specific claims of relationship might be grounded are
taken as read rather than argued for. For example, exactly what is implied (and
‘The application of Schenkerian analysis to ethnomusicology: problems and possibilities’,

Music Analysis, 12/2 (1993): 215-40, at pp. 221-4.

Pertinent here are the attempts in B. Nettl, The radif of Persian music, studies of
structure and social content (Champaign, Ill.: Elephant & Cat, 1987) to interpret the radif
in the light of perceptions of the structures of authority in Iranian society.

Considerable attention has been paid to the relationship of music and poetry, although
in the event many of the works in question (e.g. M. Forughi, She‘r o musiqi, n.p., 2nd impr.
1984) deal with the so-called music of poetry (i.e. euphony, assonance, the interaction of
word stress and prosodic pattern) and properly form part of poetics. It is thus to this area
that should be assigned such statements as ‘Persian poetry is entirely woven from musical
sonorities’ (J. During and Z. Mirabdolbaghi, The art of Persian music (Washington DC:
Mage Publishers, 1991), p. 157).
how might the comparisons be justified?) when it is said that music is structured
like a carpet design, or that the choices made by a singer like Touraj Kiaras in
traversing the various gushe are akin to those made by shoppers exploring a
bazaar? But even if, in the present context, we can disregard such comparisons,
irrespective of whether we find them illuminating or not, we do need to take
account of the cultural ideology underpinning them, which can be summarized as
a pervasive belief in a profound interrelatedness, with music integrated within a
series of connections, despite the fact that the common elements that are alleged
to exist between the arts usually resolve upon closer inspection into parallels of a
rather general order. Thus the similes drawn from one art form that are intended
to be helpful in understanding another tend to assert a relationship rather than
explain or illuminate it. To speak, for example, of calligraphy having rhythm may
alert one to certain spatial dispositions, but demonstrates no connection between
calligraphy and music over and above the presence in both of regularities. For
the manner in which parallels between poetry and music are discussed we may
take as representative Yar-Shater, who sees clearly the methodological pitfalls
(and, incidentally, the dangers of anachronism), but then relapses into unhelpful
generalities10 before exploring the fraught yoking together of the two under the
rubric of ornamentation in a way that suggests, if anything, the need to abandon
or transcend it.

The analogy is developed at length with regard to the closely related Azeri mughām
tradition in I. Naroditskaya, ‘Azerbaijani mugham and carpet: Cross-domain mapping’,
Ethnomusicology Forum, 14/1 (2005): 25-55, which investigates the ‘interplay of repetition
and disruption, symmetry and asymmetry in both art forms’. (A similar visual language is
referenced by the projection in M. Kiani, Haft dastgāh-i musiqi-ye Iran (Tehran: mo’allef
bā hamkāri-ye mo’assase-ye sāznawruz, 2nd impr. 1992), p. 209.)

J. During, ‘Music, poetry and the visual arts in Persia’, World of Music. 24/1 (1982):
72-88. This analogy was sufficiently enticing to be reproduced, verbatim, in During and
Mirabdolbaghi, The art of Persian music.

The analogy of rhythm in relation to calligraphy is harmless enough. But the
weakness of the presumed relationship becomes clear when the direction is reversed, and
it is suggested that ‘The gushes are also worked out in a horizontal fashion’ (During and
Mirabdolbaghi, The art of Persian music, p. 187). More generally, the same work (p. 190)
avers that ‘This principle of symmetry is omnipresent in Persian music as well as in all
decorative arts’, without in any way revealing how symmetry might be manifest in music.
(For similar Western generalizations see B. Nettl, The radif of Persian music, studies of
structure and social content, p. 3.)

E. Yar-Shater, ‘Affinities between Persian poetry and music’, in P. Chelkowski (ed.),
Studies in art and literature of the Near East (Middle East Center: University of Utah and
the New York University Press, 1974), pp. 59-78.
10
Such as ‘Persian poetry and music have both been inspired by the rhythmical
impulses appropriate to the musical tendencies of the Persians’ (p. 69).
However, the point here is not to attend to the questionable (because

fundamentally metaphorical) nature of these putative relationships.11 Rather, it is
to recognize their hold on the critical (and, one supposes, public) imagination, to
observe the ideological potency of the resulting complex of ideas, and to note how
it situates classical music and binds it within an area which, whatever changes
may currently be coursing through it, is perceived as the continuation, the still
living representation of the high achievements of a now long distant cultural past.
It is thus framed in a way that invites a rhetoric of preservation enshrining and
promoting a reverential attitude to a concept of tradition that accords higher status
to the masters of past generations and views innovation with suspicion. Such
fundamentally defensive conservatism holds a strong position within academic
discourse, where it may, indeed, become aggressive, seeking to discredit and
denigrate whatever is viewed as a lapse from traditional norms. Not unexpectedly,
particular emphasis is laid on the relationship, although its nature is never fully
clarified, between āvāz and the poetry set. This, drawn most frequently from such
great classical thirteenth- and fourteenth-century poets as Hafez and (as on Touraj
Kiaras’s recording) Sa‘di, is liable to be considered open to, or even require,
mystical interpretation, thereby reinforcing the meditative, Sufi-tinged character
often thought integral to the music. The religious dimension is, indeed, sometimes
emphasized by musicians,12 who may, further, stress the need to communicate
ideally with an audience of initiates (ahl-e rāz). A related strand is the insistence
by some on the need for a musician to live a sober and morally upright life in
order to be a successful exponent of this profound art. Beyond the general sense of
seriousness and solemnity thus conveyed one may perhaps discern not merely an
almost deliberately cultivated nostalgia, but also an aestheticization of abstinence:
it is true that scholars writing in this vein frequently refer positively to the ability
of music to transport the listener – to create a hāl which will surround and bind
together performer and audience – but it is striking that they never speak of
anything as basic as pleasure. We are offered, rather, an absence, a puritanical
deletion of the carnevalesque obverse of the Sufi/darvish coin, rend: the element
of boisterous enjoyment and alcoholic excess that leads to dissolution of self not
through asceticism but through dissoluteness. The body is likewise restrained,
its physical responses held in check: the initial pishdarāmad speaks a sobriety
11
This is not to imply the absence of the metaphor elsewhere. Most language
about music, the present text included, is profoundly metaphorical, even when it aspires
to analytical rigour. The contribution following that by Yar-Shater (W.L. Hathaway,
‘Commentary: interart correspondences’, pp. 79-84) is, ironically, a brief but trenchant
critique of such claims. For a discussion of comparisons between music and the visual arts
see also O. Wright, ‘The sight of sound’ in D. Behrens-Abouseif and A. Contadini (ed.),
Essays in honor of J.M. Rogers, Muqarnas, 21 (2004): 359-71.
12
J. During, Quelque chose se passe. Le sens da la tradition dans l’Orient musical
(Lagrasse: Verdier, 1994), p. 159.
preparatory to the actualization of the meditative potential of the āvāz; and for all
its lightness the final reng is a dance that is no longer danced.
In all these ways classical music is tied reverentially to the past. Emphasis
is placed on its links with the other arts of the great tradition, and the discourse
that has tended to dominate abjures innovation and speaks in terms of profundity
conveyed through a restrained mastery that despises showmanship and is
ideologically positioned in opposition to the perceived shallowness of a facile
westernizing modernity. But the picture thus drawn is inevitably partial, and
invites subversion: concert formats, like broadcasts, erode intimacy and impose
formality and distance; methods of tuition change along a similar trajectory; and,
more importantly, the perennial urge to innovate will inevitably erode what for
the moment may seem sacrosanct. Regional traditions are increasingly emerging
as complementary elements within the national musical landscape and thus may
again become sources of renewal. Younger audiences and musicians increasingly
chafe against what are perceived as restrictions and wish to welcome different
styles, including the hybrid, with all their unpredictable consequences.
It is at least arguable that the foregoing analysis is impoverished by its divorce
from the complex cultural world sketchily revisited here. Coolly holding up each
gushe like a faceted stone the design of which, to be fully understood, needs to
be examined under a magnifying glass, it has attempted to itemize types of cut
and catalogue their interlocking patterns, while lacking sensitivity to the aesthetic
domain of appreciation, to the emotional world of audience response. It might
therefore be useful to end with one or two suggestions designed to demonstrate that
the gulf is not as unbridgeable as it perhaps appears. But as research into audience
response, whether collective or individual, does not form part of the present
work, these will inevitably be both speculative and tentative, and are perhaps best
articulated in terms of a drawing together of the individual analyses, that is, a
return to the formal framework within which they are set, the overall structure and
sequence within which the individual gushe appear, and the relationship between
the āvāz and the surrounding compositions.
That the latter is contrastive is as important as it is obvious. It is not merely
that we move from the fully composed to the less, from the insistent presence of
rhythmic cycles to an area of metrical fluidity with its own internal ebb and flow,
and from the full ensemble to thinner textures, but rather that the combination of
these factors provides a strongly articulated formal division where the first section
opens onto, and the final one closes, a core area where creativity in performance is
emphasized. It is here, as the triptych opens out, that the audience is given access
to the most concentrated and intensely felt exploration of the most prestigious part
of the repertoire; and it is here that the music-poetry relationship is emphasized
even more strongly than in the flanking tarāne settings, for it is only in the āvāz,
freed from the trammels of a fully composed and rhythmically organized setting,
that the singer can work upon the text to project it in a fully individual fashion.
Yet the position, and hence function, of the text is paradoxical. Calling upon a
body of work known to many, the singer may certainly be said to communicate the
verbal structure without hindrance and hence to connect the audience with a familiar
and highly esteemed world of meaning and feeling, of emotional and philosophical
depth, and the way each hemistich is framed within the gushe, and sometimes
repeated in part, generally allows for reflection upon the multiple resonances of
its semantic content. Nevertheless, the relatively low proportion of time devoted
to the text, the speed with which it is often dispatched, and the frequently stark
nature of the way in which much of it is projected, means that what is essentially
being engineered is an immersion less into verbal meaning than into the modal
material constitutive of the gushe, especially so when, paradoxically, this is a
given, however variable its realization, while in most gushe the singer may choose
appropriate verse. The text, in effect, is sometimes no more than a stepping stone
towards the emotional and aesthetic engagement of the listener with the technical
mastery displayed in negotiating, adjusting and re-arranging familiar melodic
elements: the verse may be essential, but is sporadic, and although the audience
obviously engages with it so that its sense may reverberate in the mind as the
gushe proceeds, it is surely the musical creativity of singer and instrumentalist that
is increasingly foregrounded as the primary object of aesthetic reflection.13 Further,
it is significant that the lop-sidedness of the relationship is not just statistical: it is
evidenced both by the way in which elements of tahrir, where the emphasis is on
purely vocal artistry and the semantic content is nil, are not just supplementary to
the setting of the verse but constantly manage to invade and interrupt it, and by the
presence of lengthy instrumental commentaries. The virtuosity required for tahrir,
and the strain it imposes on the voice as the tessitura rises, also invite involvement
with it as an intensely and insistently physical accomplishment, and to that extent
draws attention away from whatever message might be imputed to the verse.
A particular clear case in point is provided by the concluding forud. This sets,
appropriately, the last line of the poem, but whatever the multiple implications of
what has gone before, it is one which now conveys an unequivocal theme:
Sa‘diyā day raft o fardā hamchenān mawjud nist
dar meyān-e in o ān forsat shomār emruz rā
Sa‘di! Yesterday has gone and tomorrow is not yet here.
Between the two, count your opportunities today.
13
Commenting on the relationship between music and poetry, Massoudieh (Radīf
vocal de la musique traditionelle de l’Iran par Mahmud Karimi, p. 40) is interestingly
ambivalent. Having emphasized metrical/rhythmical correlations, he cautiously comments
that the melodic movement ‘produit même une atmosphere qui traduit le contenu du
poème’. But this comes after a more forthright denial: ‘La musique n’exprime donc pas le
contenu du poème’.
In relation to the larger structure of both poem and āvāz one might reasonably
speak of a match in terms of climax and finality, but within the local dimensions
of the forud no comparable parallelism obtains. Rather, verse and music pull
in opposite directions: the line moves from negative to positive, culminating
semantically in a final injunction clinched by emruz (‘today’), while the forud
melody ebbs away from the intensity generated by the initial high-pitch phrases
towards a cadential resolution from which it would be perverse to attempt to read
off anything approaching the sense of carpe diem clearly conveyed by the verse.
In thus pursuing its pre-determined transition from tension to repose the melodic
contour of the forud works quite independently of the verse, and in this case
against the semantic grain, so that rather than graft on further layers of resonance
it isolates it as a quotation.
As for the instrumental commentaries, these may well contain stretches where
the rhythmic organization mimics the voice as it responds to the prosody of the
verse, but such echoes and residues still function primarily as glosses upon the
modal text, replaying it in slower motion as if to invite contemplation while they
refract and develop the preceding melodic material further before fading away to
yield the stage once more to the voice. More than the text, then, it is the particular
melodic realization of soloist and accompanist that is insistently intertextual,
requiring meaning and aesthetic satisfaction to be constructed according to the
listener’s ability to situate it in relation to, and measure it against, memories of
previous performances.
To this extent it is reasonable to claim that the whole performance is organized
so as to present a series of contrasts and oppositions, expansions and contractions,
tensions and resolutions. But if so, they are dynamic rather than static in that their
inescapably linear progression is not randomly sequenced but forms a particular
trajectory through a modal complex, and as entry and exit are, except in tempo,
closely related, it is one marked by an inevitable circularity. Neither tragic catharsis
nor comic resolution, this structure nevertheless provides the psychological
satisfaction of desire granted after having been held in check, but perhaps more
importantly it guarantees the narrative finality of return after venturing forth. This
is, perhaps, already implied in the almost palindromic symmetry of the overall
form as outlined in the initial description of the performance, but what was not
explicated there was the particular nature of the modal organization of the whole,
and its temporal asymmetry. The metaphorical reference to an arch structure is also
frequently used in relation to modal progression as the area of melodic prominence
rises in pitch, and is evidently apposite, but it is at the same time misleading to
the extent that it implies that the highest point is in the middle, whereas, as Figure
4.1 shows, the actual proportions are significantly different: within the 30-minute
span of the āvāz the low register reappears in bidād, but the final descent only
occurs in the latter part of the forud, the effect being thus of a sudden, if controlled,
winding down after the increasing tension of the rising tessitura of the preceding
four gushe.
Figure 4.1
The gradual intensification followed by sudden release that these proportions

suggest is reinforced by other features. The greater tension already implicit in
the brevity of the text setting in ney-i dāvud and the omission of the final forud
element from the vocal rendition is echoed in the more dynamic santur postlude,
marked initially by rising scale passages, and in the changes of register that then
spill over into the whole performance of bidād. The vocal tension of the high
register in the first part of bidād is intensified by the brevity and repetitive nature
of the phrases before the expanded tahrir, and is recreated by the resumption of the
same phrases in the forud and by the following structure of compact alternations.
The subsequent unwinding to the darāmad cadence is then followed by the abrupt
contrast of the ensemble rendition of the final section of the performance, where
the mood lightens, partly for technical reasons (the use of full ensemble, the
resumption of rhythmic regularity, the elements of repetition in the compositions)
but also because of the contrastive associations of the tarāne form, considered less
serious than āvāz with regard to both its musical content and its association with
other performance contexts. The reng, finally, may be thought to provide not only
a distinctively light-hearted sense of relaxation but also closure, a deft infolding
of the third panel of the triptych that returns to the purely instrumental texture of
the beginning and, more importantly, plays out a highly condensed but emphatic
re-run of the shape of the modal narrative that had slowly unfolded before. It thus
constitutes a fleet and airy but conclusive gesture of farewell that is at the same
time recall and summation.
The sense of arrival and plenitude that, according to this interpretation, may
be engendered by the formal properties of the complete structure is nevertheless
likely to be a background phenomenon, possibly analogous to the long-range key
schemes, beloved of analysts of Western classical music, of which the average
listener may not be consciously aware. More likely to be responded to immediately
are the particular local felicities of rendition within each successive gushe. Here,
perhaps, it may be claimed that there are parameters to which analysis, broadly
conceived, can be sensitive, even if, in the absence of information on reception
sufficient to circumscribe something approaching a horizon of expectation, it
can be neither sufficiently well contextualized nor sufficiently precise. That is,
it lacks the supplementary tools that might provide adequate explanatory power
to account for (or predict) a culturally informed response to the ways in which
each individual realization may be judged against an already interiorized version
and, likewise, to explicate the nature of the potential psychological satisfaction to
be gained from the completion of the smaller-scale narratives represented by the
structure of each gushe. This, it may be noted, may contain within the outline of
the setting of each line, as Figure 3b.10 indicates with specific reference to bidād, a
microscopic analogue, in terms of pitch fluctuations and increasing surface activity,
to the macro-structure of pitch contour in the āvāz as a whole as represented in
Figure 4.1. But, as before, it may be argued that of greater significance than any
awareness, conscious or not, of such structural parallels would be the perception
of the foreground, the immediate response to the individual creativity at play in the
successful negotiation of an unfolding series of intermeshed poetic and melodic

challenges. It is this crucial area that is the least readily reducible to schematic
representation, or the one to which such representation is least apposite, and for
that reason an effort has been made to discuss it at some length in the commentaries
to the various gushe: here, for want of more effective methods, analysis becomes
description.14
Finally, among much that lies wholly beyond the domain of analysis one
might also venture to discern another trajectory, a more private and discreet
form of homecoming, that of the performer himself. Having first been forced by
circumstances to turn his back on public performance, and then having opted for
the estrangement of exile, for Touraj Kiaras Persian classical music long remained
a private, closed world, only gradually to be prised open by and with friends and
pupils, and only now, finally, as a veteran communing with other long-established
performers, to be offered to a Western public. The recording discussed here is
thus not just a significant addition to the stock of available recordings of Persian
classical music but also, over and above that, a peculiarly affecting personal
document, a re-affirmation of belonging, a spiritual return and a reclamation of
lost time.
14
If some small grain of comfort is to be gained from this admission of failure, it
might be to view such description positively, at least when underpinned by a degree of
analytical awareness, as a potential stepping-stone towards that more informed critical
orientation advocated in J. Kerman, Musicology (London: Fontana Press/Collins, 1985).
Taylor & Francis
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Index
‘Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi 24 al-Farabi 24

abu atā 29 Farahani, Agha ‘Ali Akbar 27, 28
afshāri 29 Farhat, Hormoz 33, 61, 87
Agha Hoseyn Qoli 27 Far-Yusefi, Shahriyar xiii, 59
āghāz 33 formulae 37, 79
‘Ali Khan Nayeb al-Saltane 28 forud 31, 32-3, 40, 59, 73, 104, 110-11
‘aruz 36, 37 123-4, 126
āvāz 28-9, 31, 53, 59, 111, 114, 121, 122,
124, 126 Golpayegani, Akbar 7
gushe 29-30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 41, 48,
Badi’I, Rahmatollah 14, 15 59, 65, 123, 126
Bahari, Asghar xiiin
bāl-e kabutar 61n Hafez 121
Barkishli, Mehdi 27 Haj Agha Mohammed Irani 28
bastanegār 35 hāl 12, 34, 121
bayāt-e esfahān 29, 40, 41 homāyun 29, 30, 39, 40, 41, 49, 114
bayāt-e tork 29
bidād 30, 36, 40, 49, 59, 100, 104-9, 110, Ibn Sina 24
111, 124, 126 intonation 9, 11, 33-4, 41
bimol 33 Irāqi maqām 12
bohur al-alhān 27 ist 33
Borumand, Nur ‘Ali xiiin, 26, 27, 87,
110 Kaika’usi, Afsane 15
Karimi, Mahmud 6, 7, 8, 9, 19n, 26, 28, 48,
calligraphy 119, 120 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 69n, 81, 82, 86,
chahārgāh 29, 40, 41 88, 91, 92, 100, 103, 104, 110
chahārmezrāb 30, 31, 35, 40, 59 kereshme 30, 35
chakāvak 29, 40, 59, 81-5, 87, 100 khāteme 33
Khatschi 22
darāmad 31, 32, 40, 48, 49, 52, 59-81, 86, Khomeini 19n
110, 111, 126 Kiani, Majid 19
dashti 29 al-Kindi 24
dastgāh 28-9, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 39, 57 klasik 9-10
Davami 7, 28 koron 33
Dehlavi 12, 16 Kuckertz, Joseph 6n, 22
Delnavazi, Mehrdad 20
deylamān 28n Lewisohn, Leonard 20
diez 33 leyli o majnun 30, 40, 59, 86-99, 100
do, re, mi 33
During, Jean 26, 87 māhur 29
Malek al-Zakerin 28
Esma‘ili, Mohammad 15 maqām 29
Ma‘roufi 27 sadā-ye khāteme 86n

masnavi 31 sadā-ye shoru‘ 86n
Massoudieh, Mohammed Taqi 6, 22, 26, Sa‘di 57, 121
60, 62n, 86, 88 Safvate, Daryush 18n, 19
māye 29 santur xiv, 16, 17, 30, 41, 50, 52, 59, 91,
metre 23, 36-7, 56, 69, 73, 86, 100 97, 100, 103 126
mezrābi 42, 53 Sarlak, Parvin 15
Mirza ‘Abdollah 27, 28, 87 segāh 29
Mohammad Reza 2, 11 Seyyid Ahmad Khan 5n
Mohammad Sadeq Khan 27 Seyyid Hoseyn Taherzade 4
moqaddame 42, 50, 51-3, 54, 114 shāhed 33
motaghayyer 33 shāhgushe 29, 32
motrebi 9, 19 Shahnazi, ‘Ali xiiin
musiqi-ye asil 9 Shajarian, Mohammed Reza xiiin, 5n, 7
musiqi-ye sonnati 10, 29, 39 she‘r 32, 34, 62, 65, 66, 91
shir-e mādar 35
naghme 29 shoru‘ 33
Nahed, Hasan xiii, 14, 20, 59 shur 29
naqqāre-khāne 3 sore 33
Nasir al-Din Shah 2, 3, 27 Sufi(sm) 17, 18, 24, 57, 121
navā 29
Nettl, Bruno 18 tahrir 32, 33, 34, 48, 56, 61, 62, 65, 73, 77-
ney xiii, 41, 59, 104, 108-9, 111 8, 82, 84, 92, 103, 110, 123
ney-e dāvud 29, 40, 49, 59, 100-104, 126 Tala’I, Daryush 26, 60, 62, 87
Nooshin, Laudan 73, 78 tār xiv, 6, 11n, 26, 30, 40, 50, 59, 61, 62,
68
owj 31 tarāne 6, 32, 35, 40, 53-8, 113-14, 126
tasnif 32, 35, 39
Parvaneh, Khatereh 7 tawhid 119
Payvar, Faramarz xiiin, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, Tehrani, Hoseyn xiiin, 14, 35n
20, 42, 57, 113 Tehrani, Isma‘il xiii, 59
pishdarāmad 32, 35, 40, 42-51, 52, 114, 121 tekke 29
phrase length 66, 76, 91, 97, 100 text setting 56, 68-70, 74-6
poetry 119, 120, 121, 122-4 tonbak xiv, 6, 30, 35n, 47, 50, 51, 56, 59n
prosody see metre Torshizi-Nezhad, ‘Ali xiii
pulse 76, 77, 78, 84 Tsuge, Gen’ichi 69, 73, 77
Qutb al-Din Shirazi 24 al-Urmawi 24
radif 26-8, 31, 34, 38, 40, 48, 49, 56, 59, Vaziri, ‘Alinaqi 9, 11, 12, 13, 19, 34
60, 62n, 86-9, 110, 119n
rāje‘ 104n Yar-Shater, Ehsan 119
rast-panjgāh 29, 30
rend 121 zarbi 30, 35
reng 32, 35, 39, 40, 114-16, 122, 126 Zarif, Hoshang xiiin, 15, 20
zehi 42
Saba, Abol-Hasan 16, 26, 27, 28n, 88 Zolfonoon, Jalal 20

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Persian Classical Music:

Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Owen Wright 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 9780754663287 (hbk)

List of Illustrations vii

Part 1: Touraj Kiaras 1

Part 2: Analytical Frameworks 21

Part 3: The Present Performance 39

3a. The Pre-composed Pieces (1) 42

3b. The radif Section 59

3c. The Pre-composed Pieces (2) 113

Part 4: Epilogue 117

Select Bibliography 129

The stricter academic conventions of transliteration have not been followed

e (short) vs. i (long)

Although an independent study conceived and executed in isolation from its

In terms of social and cultural background Touraj Kiaras is to be placed securely

In relation to previous patterns of transmission, the ability to play records

Illustration 2 At Persepolis, with Karimi (right), during the celebration of 2500

Westernization and Tradition

would normally refer specifically to Western classical music)11 there is no precise

domination14 in its cultural and specifically musical manifestations, ranging

(and sometimes overlapping) set of structures through which Persian classical

Illustration 3 A public concert with an all female instrumental ensemble, the

Illustration 6 After a performance in honour of the President of India given in

culture both internally, for example by arranging activities in provincial schools,

Although himself happy to perform in public, Touraj Kiaras was by no means

Illustration 8 From the left, standing, Touraj Kiaras, Faramarz Payvar,

Treitler’s work on plainchant.10 Drawing upon the techniques of formulaic analysis

The following is a cursory review of this analytical vocabulary, working from

no doubt a compilation from several sources, is that of Ma‘roufi and Barkishli,22

musicians also being cited as authorities. But whether singers or instrumentalists, it

Whether well-founded in all respects or not, the standard account of the

dastgāh and āvāz

The corpus of pieces constituting the radif is conventionally subdivided into

when concentrating on modal aspects, of the dastgāh system), but it is common to

gushe (tekke, naghme)

chahārmezrāb (‘four beats/strokes’) Generally associated with another gushe,

masnavi is specific to the vocal repertoire. Here it is possible to speak of certain

darāmad (‘introduction’) This is the initial unmetred exposition of the modal

owj (‘peak, summit’) In a few dastgāh there is a comparable specification of the

forud Broadly equivalent to an extended cadential descent, this appears in some

pishdarāmad (‘pre-introduction’) As the name suggests, this is a piece designed

tasnif/tarāne (‘composition’) These terms are more or less interchangeable, the

reng This is an instrumental form that concludes the performance. It is another

āghāz (‘beginning’) The initial melodic gesture. (Although common in the

motaghayyer (‘alterable’) This term relates to a pitch that may be replaced by

‘ā she qā n-e / din o don yā / bāz rā khā / si ya- tist

kān na bā shad / zā he- dā n-e / māl o jāh- an- / duz rā

This brings us back to the general topic of how much in a performance is

opportunity, and pressure, to demonstrate mastery by producing versions that have

instrumental vocal vocal + instrumental vocal instrumental

within which the structure of the central radif section is:

darāmad (tār) + chahārmezrāb + darāmad (vocal) + four further gushe

The introductory unmetred instrumental darāmad is thus followed by a metred

Although a separation between the three is easily maintained in practice, such

3a. THE PRE-COMPOSED PIECES (1)

The pre-composed ensemble instrumental pieces on the CD (pīshdarāmad,

List of Illustrations vii

Part 1: Touraj Kiaras 1

Part 2: Analytical Frameworks 21

Part 3: The Present Performance 39

3a. The Pre-composed Pieces (1) 42

3b. The radif Section 59

3c. The Pre-composed Pieces (2) 113

Part 4: Epilogue 117

Select Bibliography 129

7.

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