Three Analyses of the Dastgah: Farhat, During, and Talai

The modern understanding of the Persian dastgah system rests on three foundational analyses, each approaching the same musical tradition from a different angle. Hormoz Farhat's The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music (1990), Jean During's The Art of Persian Music (1991), and Dariush Talai's A New Approach to the Theory of Persian Art Music (1993) are not competing accounts — they are complementary lenses that together provide a far richer picture than any one alone.

Farhat: the systematic analyst

Established Hormoz Farhat's The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music is the standard English-language reference for dastgah theory. Published by Cambridge University Press, it provides the most systematic treatment of the dastgah system's intervallic and structural properties.

Established Farhat's approach is analytical and interval-focused. For each dastgah and avaz, he documents:

• The characteristic scale with approximate cent values
• The shahed (emphasized pitch), ist (secondary resting pitch), and forud (cadential descent target)
• The moteghayyer (mutable pitches) and the conditions under which they shift
• The principal gusheh and their melodic contours

Attested Farhat's defining contribution is his insistence that dastgah intervals are approximate, not fixed. He explicitly rejects 24-TET (quarter-tone equal temperament) as a model for Persian music, arguing that the intervals performers produce are neither equal divisions nor reducible to any simple ratio system. His cent values are presented as approximations, with explicit acknowledgment that different performers and different performance contexts produce different values.

Attested Farhat also provides the clearest exposition of the moteghayyer concept — documenting specific pitches in each dastgah that function at two distinct frequency levels depending on melodic direction and gusheh context. This formalization of pitch mutability is one of his most enduring contributions.

Practice Farhat's limitation is the limitation of any analytical approach: by extracting scales, intervals, and functional pitches from the radif, he necessarily abstracts away the musical context in which those elements acquire meaning. His account tells you what the dastgah contains but says less about what the dastgah feels like in performance or why it matters to its practitioners.

During: the ethnomusicologist

Established Jean During's The Art of Persian Music (co-authored with Zia Mirabdolbaghi and Dariush Safvat) approaches the same tradition from an ethnomusicological perspective. Where Farhat analyzes structure, During emphasizes context — the cultural, spiritual, and aesthetic dimensions of Persian classical music.

Attested During's account places the dastgah within the broader framework of Persian artistic culture. He discusses the concept of hal — the elevated emotional-spiritual state that both performer and listener seek in a successful performance. He examines the relationship between music and Persian poetry, the social contexts of performance, and the way meaning is constructed through the performer's interpretive choices rather than through fixed compositional structure.

Attested During brings comparative perspective that Farhat largely avoids. His extensive fieldwork across Iran, Central Asia, and the broader Islamic world gives him a framework for situating Persian music within a wider geography of related traditions — Azerbaijani mugham, Central Asian shashmaqam, and Sufi musical practices.

Practice During's limitation is the inverse of Farhat's: by emphasizing context and meaning, he provides less technical detail about intervals, scales, and modal structure. A student who reads only During will understand why the music matters but may struggle to describe its intervallic content.

Talai: the performer-theorist

Attested Dariush Talai's A New Approach to the Theory of Persian Art Music introduces a third analytical framework that departs from both Farhat's interval analysis and During's cultural ethnomusicology. Talai, himself a distinguished tar and setar performer, reorganizes dastgah analysis around what he calls nuclear tetrachords — small intervallic units that serve as the generative cells from which gusheh and entire dastgah are built.

Attested Talai's approach privileges the performer's perspective. Where Farhat catalogs the contents of each dastgah from the outside, Talai asks how a performer navigates the modal landscape from the inside — which intervallic patterns serve as landmarks, how one gusheh connects to the next, and how the radif functions as a map rather than a fixed itinerary.

Attested Talai's version of the radif (which he has also recorded in full on setar) reflects his analytical framework: gusheh are organized to reveal their structural relationships through shared tetrachordal cells rather than being presented simply in traditional performance order.

Practice Talai's limitation is accessibility: his framework introduces new analytical vocabulary that can be difficult for students already struggling with the established terminology. His approach is most valuable for advanced students who have already internalized one of the other frameworks and can use Talai's perspective to deepen their understanding.

How they complement each other

Practice The three analyses function best as a sequence:

1. Start with Farhat for structural foundations — learn what each dastgah contains, which pitches are moteghayyer, how shahed and forud define modal identity. This is the essential reference.

2. Add During for context and meaning — understand why the music is performed, how performers relate to the tradition, and how the dastgah system connects to Persian culture more broadly. This prevents purely mechanical understanding.

3. Advance with Talai for performative depth — once you know the structures (Farhat) and the context (During), Talai's framework helps you understand how performers actually navigate the modal landscape, making connections between gusheh that neither of the other accounts fully articulates.

Points of disagreement

Attested The three scholars do not always agree. Notable divergences include:

• Interval values: Farhat's cent measurements sometimes differ from Talai's, reflecting different performers' practices and different analytical priorities.
• The role of the radif: Farhat treats the radif as a reference corpus from which modal properties can be extracted. Talai treats it as a generative grammar — a system of relationships, not just a collection of melodies. During emphasizes its function as a vehicle for spiritual and aesthetic experience.
• Classification: the seven dastgah and five avaz are differently weighted across the three analyses, with each scholar emphasizing different aspects of the hierarchical relationships.

Practice These disagreements are features, not bugs. They reflect the genuine complexity of a tradition that resists reduction to any single analytical framework. A student who encounters these disagreements is learning something important about the music: it is rich enough to sustain multiple valid interpretations.

Where to go from here

The system they all analyze: The Dastgah System. Functional pitch relationships: Persian Modal Identity. The radif as framework: Radif Structure. Melodic models: Gusheh. The mutable pitches: Moteghayyer. The scholars in context: Key Figures in Persian Music Theory.