Persian scales

Here's something else the Wayback got from the old Gharib site:

MUSIC: Naveed's beautiful summary of published research in Iranian Scales and Todd's response
Mohammad's Footnote:

* Vaziri's idea of quarter tone is misleading and is only good for teaching elementary level students of music
* Dr. Barkeshli's experiments are very erroneous
* The concept of Limas and commas: L+L+C vs L+C+L are all irrelevant in Persian Music.
* These articles summarize the evolution of theories regarding intervals in Persian Music.

From: Navid Badie
Newsgroups: rec.music.iranian
Subject: Re; What IS iranian music, anyway?
Date: 31 Oct 1995 21:35:10 GMT
Here's an article I posted to SCI about a year ago on the same topic. I posted it at the time within a thread relating to the definitions of the koron and sori. I have made a few editorial corrections in the text below, so it is not exactly as it appeared on SCI.

Navid

The school which holds that it is an exact quarter tone is that of the late Ali Naqi Vaziri, who brought many western concepts into Iranian music. He was the one who coined the terms "sori" (he used it for a tempered quarter tone sharp) and "koron" (tempered quarter tone flat). His ideas can be found in one of his books, "Musiqi-e Nazari".

The traditional musicians of the time did not accept Colonel Vaziri's ideas, partly because the idea of tempered intervals was artificial to them (the dastgahs did not sound the way they should), and partly because he had a low opinion of them (because they did not know notation and western music) and they thought he had not spent enough time learning Iranian concepts and methods (for instance they thought he did not appreciate the variety and power of Iranian rhythms). They did not bother to criticize him, but chose to ignore him. So there was a split in the musical community in Iran at that time.

The first person to advocate a different theory for Iranian intervals after Colonel Vaziri was Dr. Mehdi Barkeshli, a physicist, who wrote the introduction to the Radif of Mirza Abdollah gathered by Musa Ma'rufi. He went back to the books of Farabi, Safieddin, etc... and traced their theoretical work. Essentially, in his opinion the scales used in Iranian music are not tempered, but rather close to the Pythagorean intonation. He carried out experiments with a group of singers who sang in different dastgahs, and deduced that the main intervals in Iranian music are the same as those of pythagorean music, the fundamental quantities being "limma" (90 cents) and "comma" (24 cents).

In this school the sori and koron are obtained as a result of various combinations of the limma (L) and comma(C). Dr. Barkeshli advocates a 22-tone scale that uses the intervals L, L+C, L+L and L+L+C.

The work of Dr. Barkeshli is valuable, but others criticized it later by pointing out some of its weaknesses. Nelly Caron and Dariush Safvat, in their book "Iran: Les Traditions Musicales" (1966) mentioned that it is very unreliable to use singers to establish intervals. They themselves used Dr. Safvat's tuning of his setar for each dastgah and included in the book a graph of the _intervals_ (not the scale) for each dastgah. Jean During, in his book "La Music Iranienne: Tradition et Evolution" (1984) in turn criticized Caron and Safvat for not being thorough enough. He suggested that a large scale experiment has to be carried out, using different Masters of instruments such as the tar and santur etc..., with tests of repeatability and and attempts to determine whether there is any variance to the intervals.

It may also be argued that Dr. Barkeshli committed the same error that Colonel Vaziri had committed before him, namely that they both had a theory in mind (Vaziri had western equal-tempered intonation, Barkeshli had Pythagorean intonation) and tried to fit the reality to it. In fact Iranian musical practice is much more variable, and not nearly as precisely defined as the theorists might like it to be.

A third school is represented by the work of Dr. Hormoz Farhat in his PhD dissertation (1965), which he later published as a book, "The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music" (1990). He advances what he calls the "theory of flexible intervals". He considers that to the extent that it is possible to define the intervals, there are five distinct intervals in Persian music:

1. Semi-tone or minor second (ca. 90 cents) 2. Small neutral second (ca. 135 cents) 3. Large neutral second (ca. 160 cents) 4. Whole tone or major second (ca. 204 cents) 5. Plus tone (ca. 270 cents)

So, in this theory, the sori and koron are the results of applying the small and large neutral seconds or the plus tone, starting from a note on the diatonic scale. (eg. starting on G and applying a small neutral second we get a note above Ab and below A, which we call Ap [la koron], or starting on E and applying a large neutral second we get F> [fa sori].)

There is also the work done by Mohammad Reza Lotfi and others, some of which appears in "Ketaab-e Shaydaa". They suggest that it is no use defining a scale based on the octave for persian music, since the concept of octave as used in western scales does not exist in Iranian music (i.e. there is no tonic, no dominant, and none of the other things that go with the concept of scale, and the scale is not the same in every octave). He suggests that the notation and theory for persian music should be based on the tetrachord. This suggestion, as I see it is not contradictory with the theory of flexible intervals.

To end, let me say that most of the current theorists and practitioners of persian music consider Colonel Vaziri's work in the theoretical domain to be irrelevant to the current practice, and only of historical interest. This is not to say that they do not value his contributions, just that these contributions do not affect the practice of radif music greatly at this time. Therefore, the sori and koron, which have been kept as the names for microtonal intervals in Iranian music, do not represent 1/4 tones in current usage. At the same time, one must point out that the effort to include polyphony in Iranian music cannot go very far without some kind of temperament, the most consistent form of which would be the 24-tone scale advocated by Colonel Vaziri decades ago.

--Navid Badie
From: mccomb@... (Todd Michel McComb)
Newsgroups: rec.music.iranian
Subject: Re: Re; What IS iranian music, anyway?
Date: 31 Oct 1995 19:19:25 -0800
In an excellent article <4764qe$193@...>,
Navid Badie wrote:
>In fact Iranian musical practice is much more variable, and not nearly
>as precisely defined as the theorists might like it to be.

This is true of all musical practice. :-) Even in Western music, where the practice has been somewhat dictated over the years, there are many elements which refuse to be pinned down.

>There is also the work done by Mohammad Reza Lotfi and others, some of
>which appears in "Ketaab-e Shaydaa". They suggest that it is no use
>defining a scale based on the octave for persian music, since the
>concept of octave as used in western scales does not exist in Iranian
>music (i.e. there is no tonic, no dominant, and none of the other
>things that go with the concept of scale, and the scale is not the
>same in every octave). He suggests that the notation and theory for
>persian music should be based on the tetrachord. This suggestion, as I
>see it is not contradictory with the theory of flexible intervals.

Yes, I believe this is the natural scheme. It is also difficult.

Indian musical theory is based on tetrachords, but then things are laid out in scale based on the tetrachord scheme.

In any case, I don't think one can really follow it without thinking about tetrachords.

>At the same time, one must point out that the effort to include
>polyphony in Iranian music cannot go very far without some kind of
>temperament, the most consistent form of which would be the 24-tone
>scale advocated by Colonel Vaziri decades ago.

I must disagree here. Early Western polyphony was not tempered (at least not in nearly so severe a way). One is only forced to a "strong" temperment when modulating widely on a fixed tuning instrument. Even a plucked-string fretted instrument can allow some flexibility of tuning, especially if one does not modulate too far. This is as true in individual performance as it is in ensemble performance.

The medieval system used a theory of linked hexachords for ensemble singing. Today, the application of accidentals in this system is not well understood. A purely tetrachordal system ought to be more than adequate to encompass polyphony in Iranian music. (For instance, in Alizadeh's NeyNava he is not tempering intervals between the individual lines.)

Todd Michel McComb
mccomb@...
http://www.best.com/~mccomb
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