Sources of Foroutan Radif

In Iranian classical music, Yousef Foroutan is more known as a Setar player than a Radif master who had his unique and individual techniques and style in playing and great huge knowledge about the old Metric pieces. Consequently, his Radif as an independent and single source of Iranian classical music is less referred to and performed by other musicians. In this paper, Gosheha of Forutan’s Radif are divided in four sections: 1- Rhythmic, 2- Melodic, 3- Metric, and 4- Modal. Then Forutan’s Radif are compared with Mirza Abdollah and Mirza Hosseingholi’s Radifs. The comparison indicates that there are some differences between the Ghoeha of Forutan’s Radif and that of the two later. Modal, Melodic and Rhythmic Gosheha of Forutan’s Radif are not radically different with those of Mirza Abdollah and Mirza Hosseingholi’s Radifs, but Metric Gosheha are significantly different and considered as characteristic elements of his Radif. Forutan’s Radif may be considered as a summary of Mirza Abdollah and Mirza Hosseingholi’s Radifha to which Foroutan’s certain melodic patterns are added, emphasizing on representation of Modal and Melodic Gosheh. A large number of Metric pieces have been made by Foroutan himself. The number of Metric pieces may be considered as the most important characteristic of Foroutan Radif. Metric Radif shows changes in composing musical Radif. These changes provide a source of training and preserving the ancient songs to write ready-to-perform set of melodies in Foroutan period. Considering the above differences between three mentioned Radifha, we have concluded that Foroutan’s Radif can be a source of performance rather than a source of training. When Foroutan’s performance of Radif was recorded, other composers followed his method. As Mirza Abdollah and Mirza Hosseingholi gave few performances and had limited facilities for recording an album, they merely emphasized performing musical pieces in Radif format to preserve the original melodies and pieces facing the danger of being forgotten. They used Radif as a training guide to perform the Gosheha in their original from, not to omit any of the pieces of the music and in general, to preserve the complete set of Iranian Musical Radif. But Foroutan had the chance to consider composing his Radif as a source of performance, create more metric pieces and use the basic pieces from his masters because in the period he lived, the facilities for recording have been improved and there were good prospects for performing live music. For little chance of live performance in Mirza Abdollah and Mirza Hosseingholi period, musicians had no motivation for live performances. Musical sources of the past and Foroutan’s use of such sources in order to compose modern music under the conditions of his time may now be the source of inspiration for contemporary musicians to write music.