About

A surprising number of Western classical music works show Persian influence. This blog will explore these works, providing musical examples from YouTube and elsewhere whenever possible. This Western music shows little or no influence from or knowledge of actual Persian music. Instead, it is Persian poetry, Persian stories, Persian history, and Western impressions, fantasies, and misconceptions of Persia that appear in these Western songs, operas, and instrumental music.

I can read classical Persian, and do, just about every day, and have read through every one of the ghazals of Hafez in Persian, many more than once. I've also read through much Rumi, Nezami (who well deserves more Western attention), Sa'adi, Khayyam, and others. Having said that, I still feel like a student castaway afloat on a flimsy raft in a vast ocean. I also read Arabic (The Thousand and One Nights!), but slowly and carefully. My German and French are good enough for enjoyable reading, and I'm working seriously on Japanese and Chinese (though still far from reading-for-leisure level). I tell you these things so you can adjust your bogosity meters when reading through my posts.

Genuine Persian classical music is fantastic. I also love Western classical music, and I'm writing this blog because there probably aren't a lot of others who could do so and because I find the subject interesting. However, if you've found your way here without having heard Persian music, get busy on YouTube right now, starting with Mohammed Reza Shajarian, Kayhan Kalhor, Mohammed Lotfi, and enjoy the many great classical Persian artists who deserve to be much better known in the West.