Two Treatises – Two Streams

DESCRIPTION

Two Treatises—Two Streams presents two important Persian-language works on music theory from the post-scholastic era (16th–18th centuries). They are Resalah-e Karramiyyah by Davrah Karami (Sofrachi) and Resalah-e Musiqi in Mohit al-tavarix by Mohammad Amin (b. Mirza Zaman Boxari; Sufiyyani).

Mehrdad Fallahzadeh introduces and discusses the works, the authors, the various manuscripts, and the editorial method and technique applied in editing. He has critically edited and translated the texts into English. Both the Persian text and the English translation are accompanied by copious footnotes explaining specific terms and variations. A concise analysis of the theoretical discussions and musical terms used in each work is also presented.

In editing the manuscripts, Fallahzadeh has applied both the traditional and the stemmatic method. This might be the first time the stemmatic method has been used on a Persian manuscript prosa. It is also the first time that the procedure of eliminatio lectionum singularium has been applied to the editing of a Persian literary work.

These works are not only of value to music theorists, ethnomusicologists, and music historians. Students of literature will find them valuable in that there are very few available examples of Persian “learned literature” from the post-scholastic era. This volume makes available two significant texts of the genre and period. 

Two Treatises—Two Streams contributes to the better understanding of the evolution of music, music theory, and literature in Iran and Central Asia from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

AUTHOR

MEHRDAD FALLAHZADEH was born in Iran and has lived and studied in Canada, Sweden, Russia, and India. He has been studying many aspects of Iranian and European art music for more than thirty years.

He is the author of Persian Writing on Music: A Study of Persian Musical Literature from 1000 to 1500 and has written a number of articles on the theory and history of Persian music, including entries in the prestigious Encyclopaedia Iranica. He taught at Uppsala University between 2001 and 2003. He presently is a visiting research associate at McGill University, Canada.