Between the year 1403 (2024–25) and today, the name of Mohammadreza Tafazzoli—composer and faculty member of the Faculty of Music at the University of Art, Iran—has appeared several times as a composer with various orchestras. In 1403, part of his suite *Dena* was performed by the National Orchestra; in 1404, the same work was performed in full by the Mitra Orchestra, and in the same year, his symphony *Vaghouyeha* (*Murmurings*) was staged with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. Recently, in Mordad of the current year, we witnessed the performance of *Elegy* for string orchestra by the Vivo Orchestra, composed by him. Tafazzoli has tested diverse languages in his works—from the neotonal and at times atonal language of the twentieth century to a fully tonal language. But in most of his works, the combination of Iranian melodies with the neotonal language of the first half of the twentieth century is most visible. Below, on the occasion of the staging of *Elegy* by the Vivo Orchestra, we spoke with him about his activities and the atmosphere of his works. What follows is the text of that conversation.
At the beginning of this conversation, please tell us what musical works you currently have in hand, and how the performance of works and the holding of workshops are progressing.
At present, I am working on the final revision of the finale of String Quartet No. 2, titled *Tehran*, which after revision must be delivered to the performers for performance. Of course, since holding educational workshops is also one of my concerns, I had a workshop organized by the Scientific Association of Music at the University of Tehran—a workshop that was supposed to be held in Dey of last year, but due to the events of Dey and their aftermath and the war, its holding was delayed by about seven months. This workshop was held in three sessions and included an analysis of the form of Symphony No. 5 by three composers: Mahler, Sibelius, and Shostakovich. I am glad that I finally succeeded in holding it, although due to the current circumstances it had to be online. In the past few weeks, *Elegy* (a lament) for string orchestra was performed by the Vivo Orchestra under the baton of Ms. Paniz Faryousofi, alongside works by other Iranian composers including Mohammad-Saeed Sharifian, Mani Jafarzadeh, Hasan Rahimi, and several Western classical works by Handel, Tchaikovsky, and Elgar—a concert that was extended due to audience demand.
Please explain the atmosphere and features of your recent work, *Elegy*, which was staged by the Vivo Orchestra.
*Elegy* was written on commission from Ms. Paniz Faryousofi and is dedicated to her. Since this work was written for a broader spectrum of audiences rather than solely professional listeners of academic music, it explicitly uses a tonal language—so much so that in the concert brochure its title was given as “*Elegy in D minor*.”
You in a sense reflect national music in your works; in fact, the “Iranianness” of the music matters to you. What works have you composed so far with this concern?
Apart from specific national themes, it would not be bad to offer a preamble before answering this question. When I began my music studies in Tehran—that is, in the final years of the 1360s and also the early 1370s—the issue of identity was the main issue for composers. In such a way that all composers had this goal: that their work should *sound* “national,” and in fact this was the dominant discourse among Iranian composers and it existed. Among the composers who wrote orchestral works—Morteza Hannaneh, Ahmad Pejman, Hossein Dehlavi, Farhad Fakhreddini, Hossein Alizadeh, Kambiz Roshanravan, Hooshang Kamkar, Mohammadreza Darvishi, Mohammad-Saeed Sharifian, and others—each pursued this goal in some way. Despite the common goal, the categories of the musics were different, and this itself led to differences in the tone of the composers.
