SOAS Musicology Series Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music: An Analytical Perspective 9780754663287, 2008044421

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
Purpose
Part 1: Touraj Kiaras
Historical Context
Learning
Career Development
Westernization and Tradition
Exile
Part 2: Analytical Frameworks
Approaches
Indigenous Categories
Terminology
Creativity
Part 3: The Present Performance
Format
Analysis: Background
3a. The Pre-composed Pieces (1)
pīshdarāmad
moqaddame
tarāne
3b. The radif Section
darāmad
chakāvak
leyli o majnun
ney-e dāvud
bidād
forud
3c. The Pre-composed Pieces (2)
tarāne
reng
Part 4: Epilogue
Select Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music: An Analytical Perspective

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Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music: An Analytical Perspective

Owen Wright University of London, UK

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2009 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA 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 or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. 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 ISBN 9780754663287 (hbk)

2008044421

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on Transliteration Purpose

vii ix xi xiii

Part 1: Touraj Kiaras Historical Context Learning Career Development Westernization and Tradition Exile

1 2 4 6 9 18

Part 2: Analytical Frameworks Approaches Indigenous Categories Terminology Creativity

21 21 23 26 37

Part 3: The Present Performance Format Analysis: Background

39 39 40

3a. The Pre-composed Pieces (1) pīshdarāmad moqaddame tarāne

42 42 51 53

3b. The radif Section darāmad chakāvak leyli o majnun ney-e dāvud bidād forud

59 59 81 86 100 104 110

vi

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

3c. The Pre-composed Pieces (2) tarāne reng

113 113 114

Part 4: Epilogue

117

Select Bibliography Index

129 133

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

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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.

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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.

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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.



Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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.

Part 1: Touraj Kiaras



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



Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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.

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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.



Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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

Part 1: Touraj Kiaras



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.

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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 barkhiye 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.

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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   For a wider perspective see A. Hourani, Arabic thought in the liberal age, 17981939 (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. 14

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(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

 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)). 17

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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.

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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

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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

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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.   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. 21

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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.

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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.

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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,

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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).

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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 centrestage, and no new analytical orthodoxies that might profitably be applied to nonEuropean 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.

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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 alalhān 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 (184896). 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   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. 22

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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  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. 27

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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, rastpanjgāh, 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 precomposed 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Part 2: Analytical Frameworks

35

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 framedrums 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,   For examples see Farhat, The dastgāh concept in Persian music, p. 182.  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 37 38

36

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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.

Part 2: Analytical Frameworks ‘ā she qā n-e / din o don yā / bāz

37

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.

38

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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 twentiethcentury 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

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

40

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

composed

composed

pishdarāmad

tarāne

radif

vocal

instrumental

composed

composed

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 homāyun bayāt-e esfahān

e

f

ga

b c′ d ′ e′ f′

ga

b c′ d′ e′

ga

b c′ d′ e′

f′

Part 3: The Present Performance

41

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).

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Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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).

Part 3: The Present Performance

Example 3a.2 For segment B:

Example 3a.3 we may arrive at:

Example 3a.4

43

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Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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′′).

Part 3: The Present Performance

45

Evident is a basic oscillating motion in A and B covering the three core pitches fga : A B

(b) a

g f

(e) f g a

(b) a

gf

(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

b c′ (d′) c′ b a

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:

46

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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:

Part 3: The Present Performance

47

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.

48

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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

Part 3: The Present Performance

49

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

50

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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

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51

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

52

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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:

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53

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

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

54

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:

Part 3: The Present Performance

B

55

(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

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

56

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 1 0.5 0.5 2

5 1

6 2

7 1

8 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.

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57

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 har che konad ze shāhedi

khāhad o man salāmatash 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 selfsacrificing 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. 

58

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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.

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59

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.

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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.



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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. 





.DULPL

GDUƗPDG 





SDXVH  

























WDKULU 



















VHFRQGYHUVH 







WDKULU 













ILUVWYHUVH



ƍƎ 



.LDUDV WƗU





WƗU













BB

ƍƎ ƍƎ

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’).

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

62

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

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65

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.

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

66

S 

T 

U 

V 

W 

.

































7. 





































































































$ K\SKHQ FRQQHFWV PDWHULDO DVVLJQHG WR GLIIHUHQW KHDGLQJV WKDW

Figure 3b.2 QHYHUWKHOHVV IRUPV SDUW RI WKH VDPH SKUDVH VLPLODUO\ ZLWK  ZKLFK (A hyphen connects material assigned to different headings that nevertheless forms LQGLFDWHV IXUWKHU WKDW WKH LV indicates, VRPHZKDW further, DUELWUDU\that DQGthe division part of the same phrase; similarly withGLYLVLRQ +, which is somewhatDUJXDEOH 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

68

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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

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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.)

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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)’.

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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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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Part 3: The Present Performance

75

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.)

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

76

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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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.

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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 shortlong 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 wavelike 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 textsetting 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).

78

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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.

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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 readerfriendly fashion than would a set of paradigmatic columns. Nevertheless, the sheer amount of material would render a complete account of the darāmad derived in

80

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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

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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:

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

82 Karimi

8

Touraj Kiaras 8

[1]

5

6

[1]

5

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

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Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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:

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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.

Part 3: The Present Performance

Example 3b.9

85

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

86

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.

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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:

 H. Farhat, The dastgāh concept in Persian music (Cambridge, 1990), p. 69.   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. 25 26

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

88

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.  L.C. Miller, Music and song in Persia: the art of āvāz (London, 1999), pp. 323-4.

29

Example 3b.15

Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

90

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: 1

2

3 4

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

































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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



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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.

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Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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

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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:











 













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 GHFD\ 



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 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

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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

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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

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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 Touraj Kiaras d′ c′ b

c′ d′ c′ d′ b c′ c′ d′ c′ (d′) 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:

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Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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

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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

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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.)

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Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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.

Part 3: The Present Performance e′ 

d′  d′ 

c′  c′  c′ 

b b b

111

a 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

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113

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 / ∪ – – – /.

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Touraj Kiaras and Persian Classical Music

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

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115

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).

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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,

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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

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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’.

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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

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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

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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 Taylor & Francis Group http://taylora ndfra ncis.com

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Index ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi 24 abu atā 29 afshāri 29 Agha Hoseyn Qoli 27 āghāz 33 ‘Ali Khan Nayeb al-Saltane 28 ‘aruz 36, 37 āvāz 28-9, 31, 53, 59, 111, 114, 121, 122, 124, 126 Badi’I, Rahmatollah 14, 15 Bahari, Asghar xiiin bāl-e kabutar 61n Barkishli, Mehdi 27 bastanegār 35 bayāt-e esfahān 29, 40, 41 bayāt-e tork 29 bidād 30, 36, 40, 49, 59, 100, 104-9, 110, 111, 124, 126 bimol 33 bohur al-alhān 27 Borumand, Nur ‘Ali xiiin, 26, 27, 87, 110 calligraphy 119, 120 chahārgāh 29, 40, 41 chahārmezrāb 30, 31, 35, 40, 59 chakāvak 29, 40, 59, 81-5, 87, 100 darāmad 31, 32, 40, 48, 49, 52, 59-81, 86, 110, 111, 126 dashti 29 dastgāh 28-9, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 39, 57 Davami 7, 28 Dehlavi 12, 16 Delnavazi, Mehrdad 20 deylamān 28n diez 33 do, re, mi 33 During, Jean 26, 87 Esma‘ili, Mohammad 15

al-Farabi 24 Farahani, Agha ‘Ali Akbar 27, 28 Farhat, Hormoz 33, 61, 87 Far-Yusefi, Shahriyar xiii, 59 formulae 37, 79 forud 31, 32-3, 40, 59, 73, 104, 110-11 123-4, 126 Golpayegani, Akbar 7 gushe 29-30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 40, 41, 48, 59, 65, 123, 126 Hafez 121 Haj Agha Mohammed Irani 28 hāl 12, 34, 121 homāyun 29, 30, 39, 40, 41, 49, 114 Ibn Sina 24 intonation 9, 11, 33-4, 41 Irāqi maqām 12 ist 33 Kaika’usi, Afsane 15 Karimi, Mahmud 6, 7, 8, 9, 19n, 26, 28, 48, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 69n, 81, 82, 86, 88, 91, 92, 100, 103, 104, 110 kereshme 30, 35 khāteme 33 Khatschi 22 Khomeini 19n Kiani, Majid 19 al-Kindi 24 klasik 9-10 koron 33 Kuckertz, Joseph 6n, 22 Lewisohn, Leonard 20 leyli o majnun 30, 40, 59, 86-99, 100 māhur 29 Malek al-Zakerin 28 maqām 29

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Ma‘roufi 27 masnavi 31 Massoudieh, Mohammed Taqi 6, 22, 26, 60, 62n, 86, 88 māye 29 metre 23, 36-7, 56, 69, 73, 86, 100 mezrābi 42, 53 Mirza ‘Abdollah 27, 28, 87 Mohammad Reza 2, 11 Mohammad Sadeq Khan 27 moqaddame 42, 50, 51-3, 54, 114 motaghayyer 33 motrebi 9, 19 musiqi-ye asil 9 musiqi-ye sonnati 10, 29, 39 naghme 29 Nahed, Hasan xiii, 14, 20, 59 naqqāre-khāne 3 Nasir al-Din Shah 2, 3, 27 navā 29 Nettl, Bruno 18 ney xiii, 41, 59, 104, 108-9, 111 ney-e dāvud 29, 40, 49, 59, 100-104, 126 Nooshin, Laudan 73, 78

sadā-ye khāteme 86n sadā-ye shoru‘ 86n Sa‘di 57, 121 Safvate, Daryush 18n, 19 santur xiv, 16, 17, 30, 41, 50, 52, 59, 91, 97, 100, 103 126 Sarlak, Parvin 15 segāh 29 Seyyid Ahmad Khan 5n Seyyid Hoseyn Taherzade 4 shāhed 33 shāhgushe 29, 32 Shahnazi, ‘Ali xiiin Shajarian, Mohammed Reza xiiin, 5n, 7 she‘r 32, 34, 62, 65, 66, 91 shir-e mādar 35 shoru‘ 33 shur 29 sore 33 Sufi(sm) 17, 18, 24, 57, 121

Parvaneh, Khatereh 7 Payvar, Faramarz xiiin, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 42, 57, 113 pishdarāmad 32, 35, 40, 42-51, 52, 114, 121 phrase length 66, 76, 91, 97, 100 poetry 119, 120, 121, 122-4 prosody see metre pulse 76, 77, 78, 84

tahrir 32, 33, 34, 48, 56, 61, 62, 65, 73, 778, 82, 84, 92, 103, 110, 123 Tala’I, Daryush 26, 60, 62, 87 tār xiv, 6, 11n, 26, 30, 40, 50, 59, 61, 62, 68 tarāne 6, 32, 35, 40, 53-8, 113-14, 126 tasnif 32, 35, 39 tawhid 119 Tehrani, Hoseyn xiiin, 14, 35n Tehrani, Isma‘il xiii, 59 tekke 29 text setting 56, 68-70, 74-6 tonbak xiv, 6, 30, 35n, 47, 50, 51, 56, 59n Torshizi-Nezhad, ‘Ali xiii 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, 60, 62n, 86-9, 110, 119n rāje‘ 104n rast-panjgāh 29, 30 rend 121 reng 32, 35, 39, 40, 114-16, 122, 126

Vaziri, ‘Alinaqi 9, 11, 12, 13, 19, 34

owj 31

Saba, Abol-Hasan 16, 26, 27, 28n, 88

Yar-Shater, Ehsan 119 zarbi 30, 35 Zarif, Hoshang xiiin, 15, 20 zehi 42 Zolfonoon, Jalal 20