Faramarz Payvar's Compositional Techniques

Faramarz Payvar is known as one of the most significant musicians of Iranian classical music in contemporary era. He has contributed to the development of Santur and Iranian ensemble performance and has a well-codified repertory from the elementary to advanced levels. Also, having hours of recorded music, stage performances, dozens of books consisting of his Santur repertory and Vocal Radif of Abdollah Davami, and his special style of improvisation, composition and ensemble arrangement have always made Payvar an important aural and didactic source for music students and his influence can be seen in the next generation of musicians. Therefore it is essential that his many published works to be considered and apprehend what has been done in them. These considerations and techniques in his works are not perchance because Payvar was well-known for his discipline and order in his personal and artistic life, so it can be said this order and techniques are not by accident and certain thoughts were applied. This assessment is essential in a different aspect as well: Most of the papers which has writen for Payvar's works were not analytical and they were only a non useful description of certain pieces and they did not include any useful information about how they were composed. This paper includes Faramarz Payvar's compositional techniques that he used in his performances. These techniques were used in his compositions and improvisations. These techniques have been considered in both modal and structral patterns. The modal techniques refer to a technique which has been used and a structral technique refres to a one which has several characteristcs in a certain form. In this paper by analyzing Payvar's writen works and considering them statistically, for knowing how many times a technique has been used, a definition and categori have been introduced. These techniques have been assessed in different forms of Iranian classical music such as Pishdaramad, Chaharmezrab, Reng and Tasnif. He has many compositions in this forms, therefore they have been written, so it can be easily analyzed and we can assess them easily by numbers. Although it must be said that a broad assessment on Payvar's work and each form should be done separately but the effort in this paper is to give a general perspective to the reader so the method can be applied in a broad and vaster range, not only in Payvar's works but also in other musicians whom Payvar has been influenced by them such as Abolhasan Saba, specially that Payvar has notated a wide range of works by other important musicians such as GholamHossein darvish, Roknedin Mokhtari and dozens of Pieces by Alinaghi Vaziri, Rohollah Khaleghi and AliAkbar Shahnazi that he has arranged them for his ensemble.Also this perspective can ascertain the influences of him on the next generation of musician such as hossien Alizadeh and Parviz Meshkatian. In conclusion it could be said that Payvar's Chaharmezrabs have the most complex in both modal and structral techniques and his Rengs have the least.