The day I met my supervisor and teacher Matin Peymani, he had bombarded me with knowledge about Persian music history that I had to write the things he went through in my notebook (diary style). Matin is a special figure in my project. His enormous knowledge and passion for music is very easy to find when you sit and have a conversation with him.
In Iran, his role extends beyond teaching music; he educates youth from the Baha'i faith, a minority religious group.
If you are believer of the Bahaí faith, as Matin also is, you are systematically marginalized and essentially erased from official recognition are systematically marginalized and essentially erased from official recognition
For the very reason that Matin have had this responsibillity as a music teacher (and other subjects) for the iranian Bahaí youth, his expertise is immense.
You can read my experience of his knowledge here under.
The text is not edited.
Today, I met Matin Peymani. A composer and musicologist from Iran by route via Tbilisi to Copenhagen. He might be one of the most important people on my project so far. His immense knowledge of music history and especially Persian music history is so deep that he’s able to root down every single compositional tool there is in Persian music. A lot of these facts he told me isn’t made available for non-arabic or farsi readers. So where do we start?
Let me start by saying that we only have to do with philosophers from middle east. Some of these are knownas Islamic philosophers and it appears that Islamic philosophers are known to spread the belief for Islam, andthis is not the case for all of them. Some had other priorities.
As known Greek philosophy was first translated to Arabic and in the 1200’s the Arabic translations were translated into Latin and made available to the Europeans.
As far as it can be documented back, it’s said that this music culture has been based on outer space. The stars and planets are out of our reach. It’s not documented how it’s been used, but it’s something known in the Persian culture. Music has been made for living. For every part of the day and evening there’s been music made for exact that time of day. Music to wake up to, music to eat to, music to relax to, music to sleep to and so on. And for every day these songs are different throughout the week. This is the period of Sasanian Empire. In the period of Veda, Mithra (Persian god) and the Zoroastrians. From here the cultures separated to Turkish, Indian and Arabic, but the ground culture of their music is alike. There are 2 methods for this music. Metric and non-metric time signatures.
If you can imagine this music being circular, you have an advantage of imagining the flow and rhythm. (This took place at the House of wisdom – darul hikmat)
'The post-islamic period (after Islamic entered Persia) philosophers like Al-Kindi, Al-farabi and Ibn Sina had the influence of their culture around them, and the principle of the Tetrachord was founded. Melodies are based on 4 notes.
In the period of Safi al-Din al-Urmawi we found out that 91 scales were possible (7x13=91). 7 tetrachord and 13 pentachords are possible.
Basic time signature in chants: 3/2.
The form was better defined when music was getting put into form by their time signature and scale.So basically, these two points could make a form for a piece:
Metric or non-metric
Scale
From here we can put these values into musical blocks and switch modes until we are satisfied with our piece. This is basically what a dastgah is based on.
After defining this the regional Maqams were invented. The Europeans brought classical music to Iran, the Persian tradition brought dastgah and the mix between was Vaziri that artists like Morteza Mahjubi from radio Golha were a part of until the Islamic republic came into power and shut down the economic support for the western classical and Vaziri music.
From here only Dastgah tradition remained, since the Islamic republic didn’t have any interests in western influence.