In this book Owen Wright analyses a single recording of classical Persian music made by Touraj Kiaras, a distinguished singer, accompanied by four noted instrumentalists. The format of the recording is typical of a public concert performance, and thus includes instrumental compositions as well as a central exploration of vocal repertoire and technique. The analysis identifies salient structural features, whether of the individual components or of the whole, in a way accessible to the western reader, but it also takes account of the analytical metalanguage used in Persian scholarship, and...

The AA yat al-maa-lAb fA a ilm al-adwA r wa-'l-a,urAb by Ibn Kurr is the only theoretical text of any substance that can be considered representative of musicological discourse in Cairo during the first half of the fourteenth century CE. Indeed, nothing comparable survives from the whole Mamluk period, which extends from 1260 until the Ottoman invasion and conquest of Egypt in 1516. But its value does not derive merely from its fortuitous isolation: it is important, rather, because of the richness of the information it provides with regard to modal and rhythmic structures, and also...