hafez and kereshmeh, a metric and rhythmic analysis, by payman akhlaghi, short paper, 2011 v02

of 5© 2011, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.

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NOTE:In its current form, this draft containsseveral minor mistakes, and a major errorby omission.

This short essay was originally meantmerely as a brief suggestion forconsidering alternative metricinterpretations of standard prosodies, andnot a comprehensive catalogue of suchmetric possibilities.

Nevertheless, a revised edition is in theworking to be published soon, which willcontain the most common interpretationof this prosodic meter. Thank you.

-- The Author.


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Hafez and KereshmehA Brief Metric & Rhythmic Analysis

Prepared by Payman Akhlaghi

© 2011, Payman Akhlaghi. All rights reserved.

To come across any meter other than 6/8 and 4/4 in Persian musicremains a delightful surprise, given the prevalence of the two meters acrossthe entire spectrum of this musical culture. Over the past two decades,admirable attempts have been made to introduce 5 and 7 meters into therepertoire of traditional ensembles. However, the prosody of Persian poetrytells us that historically, this music once enjoyed a much more diverse metricand rhythmic life than its recent history suggests, especially considering theintimate connection between Persian poetry and its music.

I came across a poem by Hafez, the rhythmic structure of which intriguedme enough to prepare a brief analysis of its basic meter to share with myFriends (1).

Kereshmeh is a goosheh, that is, a standard melody of Persian traditionalrepertoire, one of the very few with which I am briefly familiar, as mystudies have been largely dedicated to Western Classical music. A salientfeature of the rhythm of Kereshmeh is what’s described in today’s standardterminology as a hemiola.

Hafez himself has made a reference to this traditioal goosheh in thesecond verse of his poem, found below; and the rhythm of Kereshmeh isindeed present in the prosody of the poem, forming the fundamental rhythmof the first half of each mesra’, i.e., Mafā'elon Fa'alātan:

Ma-fā-'e-lon Fa-'a-lā-tan | Ma-fā-'e-lon Fa-'a-lan

Notwithstanding the above, an alternate interpretation of the prosodyseems possible, which would render it more symmetrical. By introducing aquarter rest after Fa'alātan, the remainder would shift forward; the polarity


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of accents in the second Mafā'elon would be reversed; and the second half ofeach mesra' would fall on Kereshmeh, too, albeit a syncopated variant of it.

Indeed, this is likely to be the more common way this poem is recited, i.e.by articulating the first Mafā'elon on the downbeat, but starting the secondMafā'elon as an upbeat, following a syncopation; and it could have been aswell the way it was originally conceived. After all, one could always wishthat the tradition had devised a more precise method to designate suchsubtleties as rests and syncopations in the underlying prosodies. But I’d liketo emphasize that taken on its face value, this particular prosody doesn'treadily offer a “rest and syncopation” at that point in the phrase, leavingmuch room for the validity of the analysis offered earlier in this essay.

Up until recently, most traditional musician would have found ways to fitall poems into metrically symmetrical phrases, 6/8 or 4/4, in particular.However, the foregoing argument could show us that, after all, this was notmeant to always be the case, as it was demonstrated by examining this poemand its prosody, beating at the eighth-note level, and observing only theemphases it offered literally.


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Special thanks and due credit goes to Dr. S. Moghadasi for introducingthe poem and its prosody to me; to the late composer M. Hannaneh for hisdiscussion of Kereshmeh(2); and to M.R. Shajarian for an audio recording ofa lesson on Kereshmeh (3).

Notes:

1) First draft published on www.Facebook.com/PAComposer, Augustthe 5th, 2011. All rights reserved for the author.

2) Hannaneh, M.: Gāmhāy-e Gom-Shodeh, “Lost Modes”, book inPersian, published ca. 1987 by Soroush publications.

3) M.R. Shajarian on Kereshmeh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8vjVI0XbWU

Appendix 1:

Text of the poem in picture format, due to possible distortion of Persian texton Scribd:


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Appendix 2:

A Phonetic transliteration of the poem by Hafez, prepared by PaymanAkhlaghi:

delaa besooz, keh sooz-e to kaarhaa bokonadniyaze nim-e shabi daf'e sad balaa bokonad

etaab-e yaar-e pari chehreh aasheqaaneh bekeshkeh yek Kereshmeh talaafiy-e sad jafaa bokonad

ze molk (or malak) taa malakoutash hejaab bardaarandhar aan keh khedmat-e jaam-e jahaan namaa bokonad

tabib-e eshq massiha-dam ast o moshfeq, likcho dard dar to nabinad, keh ra dava bokonad

to baa khodaaye khod andaaz kaar o del khosh daarkeh rahm agar nakonad modda'i khodaa bokonad

ze bakht-e khofteh maloolam, bovad keh bidaaribeh vaqt-e faateheye sob-h, yek do'aa bokonad

besookht Haafez o booyi beh zolf-e yaar nabaradmagar delaalat-e in dolatash sabaa bokonad

Appendix 3

The poem as text.Due to current distortion of text in Persian on Scribd.com, the following was alsopasted above as a picture file. To view this and all other such documents withoutany distortion and in their original format, you may always turn off the HTMLviewing under your Scribd Account Settings:

نیاز نیم شبی دفع صد بال بکنددال بسوز کھ سوز تو کارھا بکندصد جفا بکندکھ یک کرشمھ تالفی عتاب یار پری چھره عاشقانھ بکشھر آن کھ خدمت جام جھان نما بکندز ملک تا ملکوتش حجاب بردارند

چو درد، در تو نبیند، کھ را دوا بکندطبیب عشق مسیحادم است و مشفق، لیککھ رحم اگر نکند مدعی خدا بکندتو با خدای خود انداز، کار و دل خوش دار

بھ وقت فاتحۀ صبح، یک دعا بکندریز بخت خفتھ ملولم، بود کھ بیدامگر داللت این دولتش صبا بکندبسوخت حافظ و بویی بھ زلف یار نبرد

hafez and kereshmeh, a metric and rhythmic analysis, by payman akhlaghi, short paper, 2011 v02

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