Dastgah

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Dastgah (Persian dastgāh دستگاه) is tradition of Persian art music embodies twelve modal systems, known as dastgahs. Dastgah is a melody type on the basis of which a performer produces extemporised pieces. Although 50 or more dastgahs have been used, theorists generally discuss a set of twelve principal ones.

The etymology of the term dastgāh can be associated with the idea of "the position (gāh) of the hand (dast) [on the neck of the instrument]," that is, the scale, for a similar idea of position appears in the names of modes like Dogāh and Segāh. It is more appropriate to translate it as "system," however, for the dastgâh is first and foremost a collection of discrete and heterogeneous elements organized into a hierarchy that is entirely coherent though nevertheless flexible.^[1]

Each dastgah consists of seven basic notes, plus several variable notes used for ornament and modulation. Each dastgah's certain modal variety subjected to a course of development (sayr) that is determined by the preestablished order of sequences,^[2] and revolves around 365 central nuclear melodies known as 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 dastgahs is called the Radif. Each of those seven dastgah represents a complex of skeletal melodic models on the basis of which a performer produces extemporised pieces. The dastgahs revolve around unspecified central nuclear melodies which the individual musician comes to know through experience and absorption.

The dastgah system is similar to the Arab use of maqam, which bothe deeply rooted in Sassanid Persia melodies during, and transmitted into Islamic world after the Arab conquest of Iran in 7th century.

The system of twelve dastgāhs and gushehs has remained generally the same as when it was codified by the masters of the last century, in particular Mîrzā Abd-Allāh (d. 1918). No new dastgāh or large gusheh has been devised since that codification. When an āvāz or dastgāh has been further developed, it has almost always been through borrowing materials from other dastgāhs, rather than through invention. From this remarkable stability it can be deduced that the system has achieved "canonical" status in Iran.^[3]