Work
Dates
Info
Bar Xizam lecture and resources
Lecture notes
Recording of me reciting the full poem
Recording of me reciting only the text used in the piece
Some more ghazals: recitations and translations
A recording of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, “master” and the most well-known vocal performer of traditional Persian music. Around 1:40 into the video he begins to sing the first few lines of Bar Xizam.
I can highly recommend listening to more of his music:
- His NPR Tiny Desk performance, which is of one piece composed using both modern and medieval poetry (15 minutes). The technique he uses around 11:35 is called “tahrir” or “chah-chah”.
- For those interested in hearing even more, this is one of my favourites of his albums.
Pronunciation
Iranian singers usually sing with full pronunciation of consonants, the trickiest of them are the following:
x corresponds with a voiceless velar fricative, like the German ch in “Bach”
q is somewhere between the French r and a back-of-the-throat uvular plosive
r is always rolled, but when pronounced more quickly is executed as a short tap
Betinis has replaced the x with a “k” sound and the q with the velar fricative “ch/kh”. Ideally, these two consonants would be swapped around, but as long as each singer performs using the exact same sounds then the musical effect is achieved, which is what really matters.