The history of Iran’s rich musical culture presents a paradox. On the one hand, there is a distinctive Persian style of music, different from its Arab, Turkish, Central and South Asian neighbors. It has its own modes, its own vocal styles, its favorite instruments, its own performance genres. On the other hand, for many centuries the frontiers of Iran were fluid; a series of wars and revolutions transported its cultural centers from east to west and back again. At times the royal court existed only in camps, and indeed the musicians, dancers and singers lived in tents as well. Foreign invasions and conquest of adjacent countries brought a steady supply of musicians from exogenous traditions: Indians, Georgians, Armenians. And from time to time, Islamic rigorism banned music altogether. So what is Iranian music and how did it survive over the centuries?
Iranian music is based on modes, which can be described as on a continuum between scales and melody, richer than the former but not as individual as the latter. Traditions prescribed the sequencing of the modes, and also their tempos. Within the expected sequences of modes and rhythms, musicians invented, giving listeners an entertaining blend of expectation and surprise. Music served many different social functions in Iranian culture, including military music using sonorous reeds and kettle drums, court music that replicated the harmonies of the celestial spheres, joyful dance music to celebrate Now Ruz, weddings and circumcisions, and sentimental music for amatory poetry. Each genre used appropriate modes and rhythms, and the same acoustic psychology would have underpinned Iranian music for thousands of years.
Against this bedrock of sound, the music terminology employed to explain music in Iran has changed greatly. Pourjavady attributes this to the political and cultural turmoil that played out in Iran over the last 500 years. In the earlier centuries, polymaths like Marâghi provided a theoretical basis for Iranian music: an elaborate and consistent description based on mathematics. In the Timurid era, with its emphasis on classification and canons, this academic tradition (which Pourjavady calls “systematizing”) wielded much influence. Gradually, however, practicing musicians paid less attention to theory, inventing their own, less systematic terminology, which is difficult for us to understand in the absence of aural examples.
This shift from theory to practice became a chasm in the 18th century, when Iran suffered the greatest disruption since the time of the Mongols. The Afghans, Russians and Turks occupied and plundered most of the country. A courtly center ceased to exist. The music that emerged after this dark period reflects almost entirely practice and apprenticeship. As Tehran became the political and cultural capital of a newly-constituted empire, the scattered musicians migrated there and started new schools of performance. One of these musicians, Mirza Abdollah Farahani, called his music “Radif”, and this name has stuck to what is now considered Iranian classical repertory. Radif means “sequence”. While Mirza Abdollah used many ancient model sequences, he classified which sequences should appear in which order, and defined how an individual concert should be organized. It’s a little like the imposition of the sonata form in Western music under Haydn and Mozart. This means that a Radif concert does not sound at all like the music played for Tamerlane. But just as Mozart could sneak in a traditional Länderle melody, so an ancient model sequence like “shur” is common to both the current Radif and Iran’s lost classical music.
To understand the persistence of Iranian music traditions, Pourjavady evokes its courtesan culture in some detail, devoting an entire chapter to this. The imperial courts had a tradition of training concubines, that is, slaves and lesser wives of the shah, who played music for the harem. Accomplished (male) teachers taught these women. As the shah’s private property, they were forbidden to give public performances. For street celebrations, the shah paid equally erudite courtesans to entertain his subjects. These women gained tremendous notoriety. Shah Abbas sent two famous courtesans to accept the surrender of Kandahar as a special humiliation for the defeated Mughals. It is easy to imagine that the courtesans acted as a ballast for Iranian musical culture in its darkest hours. When Nader Shah careened like a comet across the battlefields of Asia, he brought hundreds of courtesans with him. The ability to make music, even during bloody wars, brought a measure of safety to these cultured women.
Music Making in Iran presents a complete, if sometimes slow going, account of this great musical culture, and clarifies the shifting meaning of the terms over time—making it easier to understand older accounts of Iranian music and its relationship to other musical traditions of the Middle East. Good use too is made of western accounts of Iranian music, showing that European visitors of the 16th and 17th century found both charm and challenge in appreciating it.