In this book, Owen Wright analyses a single recording of classical Persian music made by Touraj Kiaras, a distinguished singer, accompanied by four noted instrumentalists. The analysis identifies salient structural features in a way accessible to the western reader, but it also takes account of the analytical metalanguage used in Persian scholarship, and includes consideration of the relationship between music and poetry. It is also framed by an introduction which combines a biographical sketch of Touraj Kiaras with a survey of the twentieth-century evolution of Persian classical music and of the position of the vocal repertoire within it, and an epilogue which examines further the ideological basis of prevalent attitudes to music, and seeks to explore the validity of the analytical enterprise within this context.

In this book Hormoz Farhat has unravelled the art of the dastgah by analysing their intervallic structure, melodic patterns, modulations, and improvisations, and by examining the composed pieces which have become a part of the classical repertoire in recent times.

An exploration of rhythm and the richness of musical time from the perspective of performers, composers, analysts, and listeners.

Most classical musicians, whether in orchestral or ensemble situations, will have to face a piece by composers such as Ligeti, Messiaen, Varèse or Xenakis, while improvisers face music influenced by Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, Aka Moon, Weather Report, Irakere or elements from the Balkans, India, Africa or Cuba. Rafael Reina argues that today’s music demands a new approach to rhythmical training, a training that will provide musicians with the necessary tools to face, with accuracy, more varied and complex rhythmical concepts, while keeping the emotional content. Reina uses the architecture of the South Indian Karnatic rhythmical system to enhance and radically change the teaching of rhythmical solfege at a higher education level and demonstrates how this learning can influence the creation and interpretation of complex contemporary classical and jazz music. The book is designed for classical and jazz performers as well as creators, be they composers or improvisers, and is a clear and complete guide that will enable future solfege teachers and students to use these techniques and their methodology to greatly improve their rhythmical skills. An accompanying website of audio examples helps to explain each technique. For examples of composed and improvised pieces by students who have studied this book, as well as concerts by highly acclaimed karnatic musicians, please copy this link to your browser: http://www.contemporary-music-through-non-western-techniques.com/pages/1587-video-recordings

This dissertation studies the modal system of Persian music. While modern Iranian musicians explain their music as a of seven dastgah plus five sub-dastgah called avaz, the dominant interpretation in the ethnomusicology literature describes the Persian modal system as a set of twelve dastgah. Part I of this dissertation studies how the system of seven dastgah and five avaz was introduced to the ethnomusicology literature and how it was simplified as a set of twelve dastgah. Part I shows that the modal system of Persian music was introduced to the ethnomusicology literature by a generation of Persian musicians who were trained in European music and thus were a hybrid of insider and outsider. Part II studies the historical root of the concept of dastgah. Persian writings on modulation from one mode to another date back to the fourteenth century. This theme was developed into a few collections of modes which were meant to help musicians as modulation instruction. Those collections were developed further and found an order which advised musicians to perform modes in sequences. Modulation instructions were titled "shad" in the seventeenth century. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the shad was developed further and was renamed dastgah. Part III shows that, while dastgah was an important concept of multi-modal performance, avaz was the general term for Persian modes. Various sources form the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, including musical texts, diaries and travel accounts, old newspapers, early European publications on Persian music, early Persian books on music, and the first catalog of Persian records show that avaz was the general term to refer to Persian modes. Part IV studies the impact of early commercial records on the formation of the Persian modal system. During the first recording session, most labels featured an avaz or a tasnif (song), while seven sets of records were allocated to record the seven dastgah briefly. During the subsequent recording sessions, not only the number of recorded modes decreased, but also more tracks were allocated to the few popular modes. The top ten recorded modes included five avaz that were the central modes of five of the seven dastgah, and five other avaz that became popular through the process of recording. When the seven dastgah were retrieved as an icon of national identity, the five popular avaz retained their modal status but the rest of the avaz were downgraded as pieces of a dastgah only. During the interwar recording sessions, the pattern for coupling tracks on double-sided Persian records was coupling two rhythmic performances in the same mode or two non-rhythmic performances in related modes. Those related modes (avaz) were usually included in a certain dastgah or followed another avaz that was more popular. Each double-sided record became a mode unit, thus, the five popular dastgah were squeezed into one mode while the five popular avaz were extended into smaller dastgah.