Dastgah

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Dastgāh (Persian:دستگاه) is a musical mode in the traditional Persian art music which consists of twelve principal musical modes or dastgāhs; in spite of 50 or more extant dastgāhs, theorists generally refer to a set of twelve principal ones. A dastgāh is a melody type on the basis of which a performer produces extemporised pieces.

The etymology of the term dastgāh is related to the idea of "the position (gāh) of the hand (dast) [on the neck of a musical instrument]", that is the scale; a similar idea of position (that is gāh) appears in the names of other musical modes, such as Dogāh and Segāh. It is more appropriate however to translate dastgāh as "system", for a dastgāh is first and foremost a collection of discrete and heterogeneous elements organized into a hierarchy that is both entirely coherent and flexible.^{[citation needed]}

Each dastgāh consists of seven basic notes, plus several variable notes used for ornamentation and modulation. Each dastgāh is a certain modal variety subject to a course of development (sayr) that is determined by the pre-established order of sequences, and revolves around 365 central nuclear melodies known as gushehs (each of these melodies being a gusheh) which the individual musician comes to know through experience and absorption. This process of centonization is personal, and it is a tradition of great subtlety and depth. The full collection of gushehs in all dastgāhs is referred to as the radif.

The dastgāh system is similar to the maqam system in the Arabic music, both of which are deeply rooted in the Sassanid Persia's melodies which entered into the Islamic world following the Arab conquest of Iran in the 7th century.

The system of twelve dastgāhs and gushehs has remained nearly the same as it was codified by the music masters of the nineteenth century, in particular Mîrzā Abdollāh Farāhāni (1843-1918). No new dastgāh or large gusheh has been devised since that codification. When in the modern times an āvāz or dastgāh has been developed, it has almost always been through borrowings from the extant dastgāhs and gushehs, rather than through unqualified invention. From this remarkable stability one may infer that the system must have achieved "canonical" status in Iran.^{[citation needed]}

1 The Twelve Dastgahs
2 References
3 Further reading
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The Twelve Dastgahs

The following is a list of the twelve dastgahs:

Bayāt-e Tork

Bayāt-e Isfāhān

Abuata

Segāh

Chāhār Gāh

Rāst-Panjgāh

Shur

Mahour

Homayoun

Dashti

Navā

Afshāri

[edit] References

Hormoz Farhat, The Dastgāh Concept in Persian Music (Cambridge University Press, 1990). ISBN 0-521-30542 X, ISBN 0-521-54206-5 (first paperback edition, 2004). For a review of this book see: Stephen Blum, Ethnomusicology, Vol. 36, No. 3, Special Issue: Music and the Public Interest, pp. 422-425 (1992): JSTOR.