Modal Modernities: Formations of Persian Classical Music and the Recording of a National Tradition

This dissertation studies the modal system of Persian music. While modern Iranian musicians explain their music as seven dastgāh plus five sub-dastgāh called āvāz, the dominant interpretation in the ethnomusicology literature describes the Persian modal system as a set of twelve dastgāh. Part I of this dissertation studies how the system of seven dastgāh and five āvāz was introduced to the ethnomusicology literature and how it was simplified as a set of twelve dastgāh. Part I shows that the modal system of Persian music was introduced to the ethnomusicology literature by a generation of Persian musicians who were trained in European music and was thus a hybrid of insider and outsider influence.
Part II studies the historical root of the concept of dastgāh. Persian writings on modulating from one mode to another date back to the fourteenth century. The theme of modulation from one mode to another was developed into a few collections of modes that were meant to help musicians as modulation instructions. Those collections were developed further to create a sequence of modes for musicians to perform. Modulation instructions were named “shad” in the seventeenth century. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the shad was developed further and renamed dastgāh.
Part III shows that, while dastgāh was an important concept of multi-modal performance, āvāz was the general term for Persian modes. Various sources form the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, including musical texts, diaries and travel accounts, old newspapers, early European publications on Persian music, early Persian books on music, and the first catalog of Persian records show that āvāz was the general term used when referring to Persian modes.
Part IV studies the impact of early commercial records on the formation of the Persian modal system. During the first recording session, most labels featured an āvāz or a tasnif (song), while seven sets of records were allocated to record the seven dastgāh briefly. During subsequent recording sessions, the number of recorded modes decreased, and more tracks were allocated to the few popular modes. The top ten recorded modes included five āvāz that were the five central modes of five dastgāh, and five other āvāz that became popular through the process of recording. When the seven dastgāh were retrieved as an icon of national identity, the five popular āvāz retained their modal status but the rest of the āvāz were downgraded to just pieces of a dastgāh.
During the interwar recording sessions, the pattern of coupling tracks on double-sided Persian records involved coupling two rhythmic performances in the same mode or two non-rhythmic performances in related modes. Those related modes (āvāz) were usually included in a certain dastgāh or followed a popular āvāz. Each double-sided record became a mode unit; thus, the five popular dastgāh were squeezed into one mode, while the five popular āvāz were extended into smaller dastgāh.