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2323 results in Ethnomusicology

Page 110 of 117

  • 17 - Compositional forms

  • Hormoz Farhat
  • Book:
    The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music
    Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    31 August 1990, pp 113-120

  • Summary

    The main body of Persian classical music is the radif of traditional pieces, which are subject to extensive variation through improvisation, as has been shown in the preceding chapters. Recent developments, dating back only to the late nineteenth century, have added a new genre of pieces to the classical repertoire. These pieces differ from the traditional body of the radif in three ways: they are composed pieces of more or less defined form; they are rhythmically stable, and fall into regular metric patterns; they are mostly composed by known contemporary musicians, and, as such, they represent an ever-expanding repertoire.

    These compositions fall into three instrumental categories: pišdarāmad, reng and Čahārmezrāb; and one vocal form, the tasnif or tarāne.

    Pišdarāmad

    In the late nineteenth century, as a result of influences from Europe, Persian musicians became interested in group playing. Since the overwhelming bulk of traditional music is improvisatory and cannot be effectively rendered by more than one person at a time, a need for compositions with fixed melodic and rhythmic form was keenly felt. As a response to this need, an instrumental form called pišdarāmad was introduced. This innovation has been attributed to Qolām Hoseyn Darvis (1872–1926), a famous tār player and a gifted composer.

    A pišdarāmad is intended as an overture to precede the darāmad section of the dastgāh, and the name simply means pre-darāmad, or pre-opening.

  • 13 - Dastgāh–e Navā

  • Hormoz Farhat
  • Book:
    The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music
    Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    31 August 1990, pp 81-88

  • Summary

    Dastgāh–e Navā and Dastgāh–e Rast–Panjgāh are the two least performed of Persian dastgāhs. There are not many musicians who know all the gušes of these two dastgāhs. It is difficult to find a reason why Navā is not more commonly performed. While it contains a number of pieces which are performed in one or more of the other dastgāhs, it does embody a number of gušes peculiar to its own repertoire. Rāst–Panjgāh's lack of popularity, on the other hand, is due to more tangible reasons which will be discussed in chapter 15.

    Traditionally, Navā is regarded as one of the seven dastgāhs. But, among twentieth-century Persian musicians, Ali Naqi Vaziri and his disciple, Ruhollāh Xāleqi, have considered Navā as a derivative of dastgāh–e Šur. Their view is a personal one, based mostly on the fact that the scale of Navā can be constructed from the 4th degree of the scale of Šur. This is the same sort of argument which is given to establish Bayāt-e Esfahān as a derivative of Homāyun, considered and rejected in the preceding chapter. Again, it must be emphasised that the very notion of scales is quite irrelevant to Persian music. Persian modes are conceived around a few notes, often not exceeding a tetrachord. Above all, it is the role of these tones and their relationships to one another that determine the identity of the modes.

Page 110 of 117