Preface

Summary

Although I am of Persian birth and have lived my childhood and teenage years in Persia, my early musical outlook was mainly western. I remember some fascination with Persian music in my childhood when, on rare occasions, my father played the tār. He was an amateur musician who, like most nobility of the time, had learned how to play an instrument in his younger days. But from the coming of radio to Persia, I found myself much more drawn to western music. The first radio station was established in Tehran in 1939. Local musical broadcasts included both Persian and western musics. It was the popular western songs and dances (tangos, waltzes, foxtrots, etc.) which were more commonly heard, but there was also a limited broadcasting of classical recordings.

I was first drawn to the likes of ‘La Comparsita’, ‘J'attendrai’ and ‘The Blue Danube’. From there I moved up to the Caucasian Sketches, Scheherazade and the Second Hungarian Rhapsody. The next step was to Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and so on. As my interest in western music grew and turned into a passion, what little place Persian music had within me was given up altogether. By the time, in my late teens, that I had decided to devote my life to the study of music, I had no feelings for Persian music other than contempt. As compared with the wealth, variety and range of expression in western music, Persian music seemed limited, frail and monotonous.