The Politics of Style in Classical Persian Music

Abstract

This dissertation uncovers the role musicians have played in Iran’s social and political life by examining their 20th century rearrangements of dastgāh music’s canonic repertoire. As musical centerpieces for the chapters that follow, I examine stylistically diverse rearrangements of Abolqassem Aref Qazvini’s 1912 composition titled “From the Youth’s Blood (Az Khūn-e Javān).” Composed in reaction to the aftermath of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), the piece carries great national significance tied to both the founding of the modern nation state and the continued pursuit of political freedom. I argue that each rearrangement of the composition articulates a contrasting ideological position on national progress within Iran’s political discourses. My analysis uncovers how musician’s stylistic decisions have mediated notions of Western modernity’s “advancement” and “superiority” in different ways. By either adopting strategies of mimicry, subversive accommodation, or rejection, musician’s different arrangements inscribe upon the national genre divergent notions of modernity, authenticity, and national progress. In four chapters I outline how the conventions of rearrangement operate within the representational politics of classical Persian music. Chapter One explores the socio-political context in which the dastgāh music of the late 19th century Qajar courts was refashioned into the music of the modern nation state. Here I outline how the values and priorities of Persian nationalism informed the representational functions the music would adopt following the Constitutional Revolution. Chapter Two presents a framework for analyzing the “politics of style” in Persian music, explaining the ways in which compositions are treated as canvases that arrangers inscribe meaning upon. In Chapter Three, I analyze Ruhollah Khaleqi’s 1961 rearrangement of “From the Youth’s Blood” for a hybrid orchestra of symphonic and Persian instruments. I show how Khaleqi’s innovative microtonal polyphony was a strategy for localizing modernity amidst a larger national pursuit of accommodating Western notions of civilization. In the fourth chapter, I analyze Faramarz Payvar’s 1976 rearrangement of “From the Youth’s Blood” for an exclusively Persian ensemble that strove to display dastgāh music’s compatibility with Western notions of virtuosity and music literacy. In this chapter I delve into the contentions between divergent stylistic approaches. I compare Payvar’s rendition to Mohammad Reza Lotfi’s 1976 rearrangement that both rejected Western influences and took an anti-imperial revolutionary stance, positioning itself as an “authentic” rebuttal to modernist styles. By bringing together historical inquiry, ethnographic research, and music analysis I examine these case studies to uncover the political functions of classical Persian. I show that compositions in the dastgāh music tradition, rather than being fixed artifacts, are discursive processes in a continued state of re-inscription within the nation’s shifting socio-political context. Through this inquiry, the stylistic leanings of rearrangements provide insight and commentary on individual and collective mediations of dominant political discourses on national progress throughout the 20th century.