Music Perception and the Dominance of Social Inhabitancies over Music Training School: Case of Western Music Performers Living in Iran

Analyzing the conventional music of different cultures using their own generated tools of music theory is a preferred approach to illustrate the fundamental structure of music by insiders. Facts made available through the mentioned approach explains the construction of music and the musical matters in every culture which are not known through the conventional analytical systems, developed and spread by western music theory. Such efforts have been done in examining the rhythmic principles of Iranian music in some previous studies of authors. What occurs more in the current study is using the music theory generated within the Iranian culture to examine the western viewpoint of music performers living in such cultures to see how breathing in a different culture can influence the fundamental musical perspective and the music perception, even if one plays a music coming from thousands of miles outside that specific culture. In perusing this project a subject of 70 performers participated. Among them 35 performers or the players of various western musical instruments wore living in Iran (mostly natives) and the 35 persons were among players of Iranian traditional instruments, and all of the them have participated voluntarily. The average professional background of the performer was over 7 years. Three kinds of pieces played for both groups. The first one was purely a piece of western music recorded and produced in West, entitled “Night is my sister” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Soprano by Wendy Lashbrook with 2’ 25” duration. The second piece was a Russian one by Rimsky-Korsakov called “The Rose and the Nightingale” with 2’ 32” duration. The third one was a piece of Purely Iranian traditional music by Aref-e-Ghazvini, recorded in Iran entitled Āmān, with association of one of the masters of lyric / vocal Iranian traditional music, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, and its duration was 4’ 26”. A questioner which was designed based on the fundamentals of Iranian music theory handed to subjects to fill after listening to each piece. Some of the questions were merely designed to examine the musical taste as well as the habit of subjects. There were questions among them for testing if they think the pieces contain enough repetitions, ornamentations, rhythmic complexities, distinguishable melodies, the compass, etc.; while the other ones examinedthe musical ability and understanding of the subjects, such as asking about the strategy of composer to extend the melodic range, boundaries of phrases, causes of rhythmic complexities, the nature of ornamentations, lyrical-musical relationship and so forth. Results showed that the subjects of both groups shared views in many significance issues in the two specific lines of investigations: musical tastes and the musical judgments. The players of western music participated in this project have mostly been educated in conservatories, in which the only kind of music that was taught has been the Western one, and The methodology and principles of teaching were same as the methods taught in West. Therefore, it can be concluded that the cultural inhabitancy influences on musical outlook of the person, more than the musical schools do. In the other words, the common view points between the performers of Iranian instruments and those of the Western, mostly based on the musical habits coming from the principles imposed mostly by the culture, rather than anything else.