Dr Saeid Kordmafi presents at the Musical Heritage Across Borders conference/workshop
Dr Saeid Kordmafi, a Lecturer in Musicology of the Middle East at SOAS, gave a speech in the conference/workshop ‘Musical Heritage Across Borders – Materiality as an Indicator of Distribution Channels’ of which he was also a member of the scientific board.
Titled "‘When Anonymous Texts Speak Out!; Addressing a Lacuna in Historiography of Classical Iranian Music Through Safavid-Oriented Writings", Dr Kordmafi's talk explored the historical evolution of the contemporary tradition of classical Iranian music, unravelling how this distinct musical idiom emerged out of the cosmopolitan aesthetics of music-making in the Islamic world. To address this arguably most challenging question of the historical musicology of Iranian music, the speech provided a brief overview of a corpus of often anonymous textual materials that had been previously dismissed by the preceding scholarly endeavours mainly due to their perceived lack of clarity and precision in their accounts of theoretical concepts. The paper in part aimed to illuminate the significance of this newly discovered corpus of musical writings in the exploration of crucial dimensions of classical Iranian music history.
Dr Kordmafi also sought to demonstrate that the convergence between textual materials and sonic realisation might foster opportunities for methodological innovations, that is, combining historical musicology and ethnographic research. Moreover, the lecture attempted to show the potential of the given corpus of Persian treatises to facilitate cross-cultural study of the contemporary traditions in the Islamic world which resemble the modern Iranian music in terms of music-making mentality.
The conference/workshop was organised by the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) and took place in the Cluster of Excellence, University of Hamburg from 28–30 May 2024. This event brought together experts from various cultures and disciplines to discuss questions arising from the main theme of the conference.
