Ashura Opera was composed by Behzad Abdi, the Iranian composer, in 2008 based on librettos compiled by Behrouz Gharib. The main source for the libretto is poems by Mohtasham Kashani, a sixteenth century Iranian poet.
Tag Archives: Amer Shadman
Latest posts
- Farhad Poupel: The Voice of the Shahnameh in the Orchestras Around the World
- Five Major Myths About Mozart’s Life
- Bahma Rajabi Passed Away!
- Reza Vohdani; Unveiling unpublished works, preservation of Iranian classical music
- Ahmad Pejman Passed Away!
- Timeless or Timely: The Role of Historical Context in Defining Artistic Value
- Leading the Charge in Censorship
- The Legacy of Khosrow Jafarzadeh
- Transition to Enlightenment: Six Lectures on Mozart’s String Quartets (4)
- Fereydoun Shahbazian, An Iranian Musical Icon Passed Away
- Transition to Enlightenment: Six Lectures on Mozart’s String Quartets (3)
- Journey to Iran Revisited: Celebrating 20 Years of Guity Adjoodani’s Return to Persian Roots
From Past Days…
A year without Mohsen Ghanebasiri
The year 1396 (21 March 2017-20 March 2018) was the most sorrowful year for HarmonyTalk journal. One month after holding HarmonyTalk’s 13th establishment anniversary in Mohsen Ghanebasiri’s house in Tehran in April 2017, he untimely passed away. Mohsen Ghanebasiri was the prominent HarmonyTalk author.
Parviz Meshkatian’s Heart Beat for People (I)
Amidst the popularity of traditionalism in the Iranian music, Parviz Meshkatian (1955- 2009) moved from Neyshabur to Tehran. He learnt to play Santour and became educated in the Radif of Iranian music at the Centre for Preservation and Promotion of Music which was at the forefront of promoting the return to musical traditions. Despite his studies at a centre which promoted the use of the phrase “traditional music” in Iran, Parviz Meshkatian emerged as a creative artist whose innovative and unique ideas attracted the admiration of Iranian artists and people from different walks of life. This article studies the reason behind Meshkatian’s deviation from the wrong approach of traditionalism strongly promoted by the Centre and argues that apart from the issue of theory of Iranian music, he can be considered as Ali Naqi Vaziri’s successor.
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.
Loss of Development in Iranian Music
The mention by music instructors, academicians, students, and music enthusiasts about the lack of development in Iranian music is a topic that has been repeatedly heard, resulting in a superficial understanding and misinterpretation of Iranian music, which has been conveyed to students of the arts. This short essay aims to critique and examine this claim.
Principles of Violin Playing (III)
Violin players should always pay attention to the proper position of the left thumb and other points related to it and to its joining point to the palm.
From the Last Instrumentalist to the First Composer (I)
Music as an art has its own special history; emergence of a singer, of an instrumentalist and then the emergence of the strong character of a composer covers three significant phases of the art of music. With the emergence of composer which was simultaneous with the emergence of the language of music, this art managed to offer a domain for criticism for its composer; a procedure which led to a magnificent variety and evolution in musical production. Even though the conflicts between singers and instrumentalists have not met their end in the Iranian society and while singers can achieve high, instrumentalists have yet to play behind curtains . In a special era, with the efforts of musicians such as Ali Naghi Vaziri (1887-1979) and Rouhollah Khaleghi (1906-1965), glimmers of a composing era started to glow bearing fruit in Khaleghi’s achievement as Iran’s first professional composer. Khaleghi made his reputation as a composer while Vaziri deserved to pioneer this path. By then Vaziri was well-known as a Tar player.
Principles of Violin Playing (IX)
4.3.1. To practice playing of doubles of notes involving two different fingers, each note is played at separate bows with slow tempo, each note is played perfectly regarding its bass and tenor sounds and then the considered double is played at another bow while considering the resulted sound of the double.
Polyphony in Iranian Music (II)
With regard to each polyphonic form, only one specific and distinguished example is analyzed. These polyphonic forms are as follows:
Three singers in one larynx
Sima Bina (b. 1945) is a unique singer among the singers of Golha radio programmes which were broadcast on Iranian National Radio for 23 years from 1956 to 1979. She received her first lessons in music from her father who was a poet, a musician and the most important supporter of Sima’s cultural activities.
Interview with the Makers of the New Qeychak (II)
Regarding the classification of a new instrument in an instrument family, one can point to a number of fundamental issues, one of the most obvious of which is the instrument’s visual features. If we look at how the new instrument has changed compared to its historical versions, the set of visual elements that link the instrument to the Qeychak family becomes apparent. But other characteristics such as the geometric dimensions of the instrument, characteristics of the instrument’s various parts and how they relate to each other, its systematic performance, its sound range (compared to modern versions), the material and color of the sound, the way it is played and the like, can be considered in order to classify the instrument in the Qeychak family.