Persian Vocal Music

Vedic and Avestan chants can be considered among the older forms of Indo-Iranian vocal music. Vedic chant utilizes three adjacent notes sung in a variety of rhythm patterns (C Bb and Db in the key of C). The rhythms seem to be strongly affected by the rhythm of the Sanskrit language in which the Vedas are chanted. ¹ Language has often been an influence on melodic constructions in vocal music as seen, for instance, in Vietnam and related music cultures where the rising, falling and stable tone patterns of the language dictate the melodic structures. In tritonic and tetratonic Vietnamese singing, the vocal performance can fluctuate between sung recitation and melodic song. ² Thus, linguistic features obviously do influence vocal music and Persian singing is no exception in this respect.