Improvisation plays an essential role in Persian Music and it is more based on interpretation of the Dastgah feeling and principles which maestros have made. A good improvisation needs good skills on instrumental techniques or singing and complete knowledge of Dastagahs and Avazes, melody and rhythm structure of their Gushe’s and their arrangement order.
There are three methods to have a masterly performance of Persian Music :
1. Even though it seems that it is not necessary to improvise in order to play the Radif, the musician does it in some cases because it is not possible to separate improvisation from Persian music.
2. In playing Phantasy music, they use unusual modulations. Performance begins in an accidental point and goes throughout the Gushes very freely.
3. Morakkab-Khani is a very difficult style when the musician starts in a certain Dastgah and then goes through some other Dastgahs and at the end goes back to the first one.
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The Setar
The origins of the setar go back to a pre-Islamic lute called the tanbouré Khorassan, from the family of long neck and small resonating chamber plucked instruments. In the evolution of Persian music, this instrument underwent many transformations, especially with regard to the shape of the resonating chamber, the number and placement of the frets, and the number of strings. This last transformation took place at the beginning of the twentieth century. A fourth string was added to the setar (the literal meaning of which is ‘three strings’) by Moshtaq Ali Shah, who positioned it between the second and the third.
Today the setar has 4 strings, two singles and one doubled. The setar is tuned in different ways depending on the mode in which the musician plays. A wide variety of tuning can be adapted to the setar regarding the desired effect by the instrument, modal or non-modal. The instrument has between 25 and 29 moveable gut frets (depending to players) organized in microtones according to the Persian musical scales. The setar has a range of two and a half octaves.
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We do not know very much about the earliest Persian civilization music. Great music scholars like Farabi (tenth century), Ebne-Sina (eleventh century) and Sa- fioddin Armavi have left us very important musical knowledge, but there is not any credible document before Farabi. The Persian Empire of Achamenean dynasty (550-331 B.C.) has revealed almost nothing about their music. But Greek histori- ans have written some about Persian classical music; as Herodotus mentioned the religious rituals of Zoroastrians which involved a chanting of sacred hymns and Xenophon in his Cyropedia speaks about the martial and ceremonial music of the Persian Empire.
The first documents from the Persian music which have come to us are from the Sassanian Period (A.D. 226 642). In the court of Sassanian they hired musicians such as Barbod, Nakisa, Ramtin and… Barbod the most illustrious musician in the court of Chosrous 2. Numerous stories have been told about his skills as a per- former and composer, he organized a musical system containing seven modal structures known as Royal tones (Xosrovani), thirty derivative modes (Lahn) and three hundred and sixty melodies ( Dastan). The numbers correspond with the number of days in a week,amonth and a year. (Farhat 1990, 3)
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There are three theories about Persian music intervals. The first one, which was done in 1920 by Ali Naqi Vaziri, identifies Persian musical intervals based on a 24 quarter-tone scale. The second one was done by Mehdi Barkeshli in 1940 and defines Persian music intervals within a 22 tone scale. And a third one was pre- sented by Hormoz Farhat who is representing Persian Musical intervals within five intervals with which all of the Persian Musical modes are constructed and does not recognize any basic scale concept.(Farhat 1990, 7)
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Source : Rhythmitica
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So many of the Persian or non-Persian musicians have tried to compose some music in theiranian traditional music modes or use some Persian melodies in their compositions; however, it has always been under question how to express Persian music in western musical system where there are no such intervals as there are in Persian music; the second problem has been the lack of harmony: how is it possible to harmonize Persian music.
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Rhythmitica online music classes are designed for people who do not have direct access to Iranian music instructor all of the world. Via this method of learning, everyone will be able to learn the fundamentals and advanced techniques from expert instructors.You will experience continuous learning and tangible progression through weekly sessions with your instructor.
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