“Guitar Memories” Released

 

The album “Guitar Memories” consists of the performance of baroque to recent era masterpieces, by Mehrdad Mahdavi, and is published by Tanin-e Honar Publication.

In this album there are pieces composed and arranged by artists such as: Sylvius Leopold Weiss, Johann Anton Logy, Fernando Sor, Yuquijiro Yocoh, Leo Brouwer.

Objective of performing these familiar masterpieces is particularly presenting sole capabilities of classical guitar for playing them.

These pieces resemble the pleasant memories of first music classes and the performer make an effort to share those fantastic and memorial feelings with audiences.

This album presents 12 pieces arranged for solo classical guitar, which was performed and recorded in Spring 2016.

For purchasing this unique album you can visit here.

Introducing Composers

Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687 – 1750)

Composer and player of the German lute instrument in Baroque Era. Even today many consider him the greatest lute player of all times. By the year 1717 he became a member of the small orchestra of Dresden Kingdom of Germany. Later he went on many tours for performing in Dusseldorf, Munich, Vienna, Prague, and other cities. Weiss composed many pieces for solo lute.

Johann Anton Losy (1650 – 1721)

He was an aristocrat in Prague, playing and composing masterpieces for lute in the Baroque era. His works are a combination of Brisé (French) with Cantabile (Italian) styles. At the period when playing lute was most popular in Bohemia, he was probably among the best lute players and composers.

Fernando Sor (1778 – 1839)

Great Spanish guitar player and composer, born in Barcelona, celebrated by some as “the Beethoven of the guitar”. Besides compositions for guitar, he has written music for opera and ballet performances as well. With no doubt études provided by Sor are the best of their kind. Because Sor was a guitar instructor, he was supposed to prepare études for teaching his students. An abstract of 20 of Sor’s études could be found in the collection provided by Andrés Segovia.

Yuquijiro Yocoh

Born in 1925, Hita, Japan, because of great enthusiasm for playing guitar left studies in dentistry at Keijoh College, and became a self-instructed guitar player and composer. Theme and variation of his style is most characteristic in his piece for a Japanese folk song named “Sakura”, performed and recorded by numerous guitarists worldwide, which is also his most famous composition till date.

Leo Brouwer

Born 1939 in Havana, Cuba, conducted music lessons in Juilliard School in New York, US. Pieces composed by Brouwer are considered among the most favorites for guitar. He has also composed many pieces for other instruments as well. In his resume there are many orchestral compositions for music of movies. Many of his compositions for guitar are famous worldwide and have a fixed position in current guitar repertoire.

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The Legacy of Khosrow Jafarzadeh

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the passing of Khosrow Jafarzadeh (Khosrow Djafar-Zadeh), a distinguished architect and pioneering researcher of Iranian music, whose contributions to the magazine “Harmony Talk” have left an indelible mark on the field. The absence of this remarkable individual has significantly impacted the expansion and advancement of his theories, which are heralded as some of the most progressive in the history of Iranian music

Whose dream?! Whose reality?!

(A review of the “So Faraway” album; Tar and Tonbak duet; Siavash Imani, Pedram Khavarzmini)

From Past Days…

Quality Decline in Regional Music Festivals

Regional music festivals are organized to, firstly, introduce the music of different regions and, secondly, to support its performers. Regional music festivals are held in large cities for various reasons, including the availability of financial and executive facilities and the presence of an audience. However, the organization of these festivals has always been one of the challenging issues of ethnomusicology. The reason is that the presence of regional music performers in large cities places them in a context other than the context they would normally perform in their homes; consequently this change in situation leads to changes in the quality of their performance.

A few steps on the “Road to Bach”

The world of music has unparalleled respect for Bach. Bach is considered the spiritual father of classical music; Bach’s great position is due not only to his great achievements in the fields of harmony, counterpoint, and compositional sciences but also to his respect for and adherence to the artistic principles of classical music. In the history of classical music, it is recorded that Bach walked about fifty kilometers to listen to the music played by the great German organist Dieterich Buxtehude, and this is the path that every idealistic classical music student should walk.

Polyphony in Iranian Music (I)

Despite the fact that Iranian folk music (regional music of Iran), like the Radif of Iranian traditional music, is monophonic and follows heterophony in principal, we experience polyphonic forms, albeit, majorly unconscious.

Women and the Music Environment in Iran

The life territory of the female-male relations in the Iranian cultural context is basically a domestic territory and not a social-living one in the labour and leisure domains. To prove this, it only suffices to consider the Iranian men’s viewpoints about women. For the Iranian men, there are three perspectives regarding the women: mother, sister and wife. Mother represents the emotional territory; sister represents the logical territory at home while wife represents the sexual territory.

The Structure of Kurdistan Daf (VI)

Researcher: Mohammad Tarighat Translator: Fatemeh Alimohammadi Hooks and attached rings: The junction of the ring to the arch is about 3 centimeters from the skin.  The ring with its side rings should be as far as the diameter of a ring (about one and a half to one and eight centimeters) to make a proper…
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Principles of Violin Playing (II)

Since for playing violin, it’s necessary that the player’s palms and fingers be inclined toward the fingerboard, therefore, the player, while bringing up his hand, should turn it toward the fingerboard.

Payam Taghadossi: Talented Iranian-Austrian Cellist

Payam Taghadossi (born in 1989) started his musical education at the age of 4 years with Monika Scherbaum in Bregenz (Austria). At the Conservatory Feldkirch he joined the class of Imke Frank and Martin Merker. Later he studied in Zurich (Switzerland) with Thomas Grossenbacher and Christian Proske, where he 2011 graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance. Two years later as the student of Rafael Rosenfeld he received his Master of Arts in Music Performance diploma and later graduated as a Master of Arts in spezialized Music Performance in 2016 from the Hochschule für Musik Basel FHNW.

Is the Iranian National Anthem a Copy? (I)

The alleged similarity between the Iranian and South Korean National Anthems has been a matter of discussion among musicians in Iran for several years. Earlier in 2021, the issue was taken to the media again with not only claims that the anthem is very similar to another song but also the suggestion that its musical content should draw more on the Iranian national music. Some even went to the extent to suggest replacing it with the song “O, Iran” composed by the late Rouhollah Khaleghi. Before delving more into the main issue, it would not go amiss to consider some technical characteristics of the song “O, Iran” composed in 1944.

Illusion or Ingenuity?

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From the Last Instrumentalist to the First Composer (II)

Rouhollah Khaleghi was the master of composing beautiful melodies. He was the premier of the course of history which was first established by Ali Naghi Vaziri and which improved the Iranian music from simply a gathering music to the classical music of the country. First efforts to compose independent and instrumental music can be also traced in Khaleghi’s works.