Last Friday's lesson included coverage of one of the basic gusheh of Persian classical music. Gusheh, I suppose, can be thought of as melodic fragments. Certain gusheh, when combined together, become a dastagh, which is very roughly equivalent to a Western scale, but not really. There are 400 gusheh in the classical repertoire.
This gusheh falls into the non-metrical category of Persian music. This means there is no designated time signature or tempo. In notated form, the note values are treated as approximations - more emphasis is placed on the durations of the notes in relation to each other than the Western notion of tying the notes down to a time signature and tempo. I do not know if all gusheh are non-metrical like this, but apparently improvisation in Persian music begins with the study of gusheh.
Some of my teacher's thoughts on playing gusheh:
Before the age of the fossil fuels, the world was quiet. It was not as noisy as today. It's just the age of fossil fuels... the airplane,the automobiles... So the music, in order to compete with the noises, has become louder and louder, and we lost our ears... our ears are completely distorted... Just imagine the world without automobiles and without planes... so that you could listen to the music of the wings of a butterfly... So, I want you to close your eyes and sit down and play this. It's a sort of meditation. It has to give you the melody, that tranquility. If that happens, you're good, otherwise it's not a matter of technicality. So you have to get into the essence of it. You have to open up, you know, this, and go inside deep and try to get the beauty out. So, this [the notation] is just a reference.
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