The history of Iranian military bands following European style, or the bands of muzikānchiān, is centered around a French musician, Alfred Jean Baptiste Lemaire (1842–1907). The performances of these bands, as well as a whole repertoire of European-Iranian musical encounters, have remained unknown to us not only because of the lack of sources, but because certain sources have been misconstrued and misremembered. One written source in particular, La musique chez les Persans en 1885, has caused much confusion. Published in 1885 in Paris by Alfred Lemaire's fellow Artesian from Pas-de-Calais, Victor-Hyacinthe Advielle (1833–1903), the short book has remained the sole document on the history and establishment of European-style Iranian military music, and its narrative has survived unchallenged. In addition, Alfred Lemaire was the musician who initially arranged recordings for the Gramophone Company when the first commercial recordings of music were made in Tehran in 1906. The recording sessions included many performances by Lemaire's bands of muzikānchiān.
In this article, I present an archival discovery that seriously challenges this established narrative. The source, which is the first published piece from the repertoire of the muzikānchiān, is titled Marche Triomphale, À Sa Majesté Impériale Nassir-Ed-Din Shah Kadjar de Perse. It is a march composed by Julius Heise (d. 1870) for the Iranian marching bands in 1864, twenty-one years before Victor Advielle published his book.Footnote 1 Marche Triomphale stands out as a unique archival document that has recently surfaced after 150 years. By considering this specific case, the present article demonstrates the need for critical studies of the history of Iranian music using archival sources that have long been hidden and require careful consideration. Although military music may represent a small subset among other genres of Iranian music, such sources reveal the history of Iran's encounters with European music, which was instrumental in the formation of the current “classical” music of Iran. The use of archival sources is paramount to dislodging a history of Iranian music that has been based on European writings from the colonial era. Furthermore, recovery of this forgotten musical source reveals a possible connection between the Persian March by Johann Strauss II and Heise's work, as will be discussed.
Beginning with an account of Iranians’ encounters with European military music, both in Europe and in Iran, this article provides a brief history of European-style Iranian military bands (muzikānchiān). It then briefly addresses how and why Victor Advielle, a French administrator, published his short account of the music in Iran, an account that eventually became the sole document on the subject and shaped modern studies of Iranian music. This article then presents what I have learned about the composer of the Marche Triomphale, Julius Heise (d.1870).
European Music in Nineteenth-Century Iran
Years before the Qajar rulers and members of the elite could view actual European musical instruments, they read about them in newly compiled Persian-language books that described aspects of European culture. In 1801, ʿAbd-ol-Latif Shushtari (1759–1805) wrote in his Tohfat-ol-ʿĀlam what he had heard about European music.Footnote 2 In the same year, Mirza Abutāleb Khan was visiting London, encountered various genres of European music, and heard the band of the Duke of York.Footnote 3 A few years later, Abol-Hasan Ilchi (1776–1845) was sent to Britain as the Iranian envoy and reported his encounters with European music to the shah and other notables.Footnote 4 Ilchi was later sent to Russia, and his reports included more information on European military music.Footnote 5
The largest comprehensive Persian encyclopedic dictionary, Loghat-Nāmeh-ye Dehkhoda, claims that the French term musique is the root for the Persian term muzikān.Footnote 6 However, early Persian reports clarify that muzikān was borrowed from the Russian term muzikant/musicant, which was in turn borrowed from Germanic languages. Iranian encounters with European music emerged coincidentally after a tragic political incident. In 1829, when the Russian envoy, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Griboyedov (1795–1829), was murdered by mobs in Tehran, Prince Khosrow-Mirza Qājār was sent to the Russian court in an act of reconciliation. He was welcomed by bands of military music on several occasions,Footnote 7 and the secretary of the delegation wrote down a new Persian term for the first time: muzekān.Footnote 8 This term was subsequently established as the Persian term for European military music. In another report from a Russian trip in 1855, muzekand/muzikand was used for bands and muzekandchi/muzikandchi was used for musicians.Footnote 9
The first band of muzikān in Iran was part of the Iranian regiments commanded by British Officer Charles Christie (d. 1812) of the Bombay regiment, who entered Iranian service at the request of Sir Harford Jones-Brydges (1764–1847), the British envoy to Iran from 1807 to 1811. The band was seen at the court of Crown Prince Abbas-Mirza (1789–1833) in Tabriz in 1812, four months before Christie was killed during the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813. The band welcomed the British envoy to Iran by playing English tunes, including the British national anthem, “God Save the King.”Footnote 10 Five years later, the Russian envoy to Iran was received in Yerevan, and an Iranian band also welcomed him with the British national anthem, perhaps the same band from Tabriz in 1812.Footnote 11 The Russian delegation had their own music band comprising thirty musicians directed by a capellmeister (conductor).Footnote 12 The secretary of the delegation mentioned band performances on several occasions; the band must have played almost every day during the long travel and stay of the Russian envoy.Footnote 13 Thus, professional European military music was performed in public places in several cities in northwest Iran. Fath-Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), however, did not pay special attention to the military band of the Russian delegation, as is suggested by the reception of their delegation at the shah's encampment in Soltanieh, where they were placed close to a group of court musicians and rope dancers who were the least respected court attendees.Footnote 14
However, Crown Prince Abbās-Mirzā asked the delegation to send their military music band for a close study. He requested that they play all the pieces they knew and then had every instrument presented to him separately. He had every individual play something and then asked them to march to music, admiring the harmony between different sounds.Footnote 15 When Abbas-Mirza died in 1833, Fath-Ali Shah appointed his son Mohammad-Mirza the crown prince. Mohammad Shah (1834–1848) was raised under the supervision of his father Abbas-Mirza, and he continued his father's efforts to modernize the Iranian army. In 1836, two years after Mohammad Shah came to the throne, Sir Henry Bethune (1792–1851) received 400 pounds sterling from the Iranian court to purchase musical instruments.Footnote 16 A year later, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland reported publication of the first Persian newspaper in Tehran and reproduced a transcript of the first issue. The report included a description of a banquet at the British Embassy in Tehran on April 25, 1837, in celebration of the British monarch's birthday. As the newspaper reported, the “band” of music from the Bahādorān regiment played gharibeh (strange) instruments.Footnote 17 This regiment, which was formed of Russian deserters from Caucasus and their sons,Footnote 18 was seen a year later returning from a battle in Khorasan and was described as the only regiment of the Iranian army that had a band.Footnote 19
Three years after Henry Bethune was given a budget to purchase musical instruments, two years after the band of the regiment of Bahādorān was reported to play in Tehran, and one year after the same band was seen returning from an expedition, a European musician was spotted in Iran. It is unclear whether the Iranian court recruited the first European musician or the European musician came of his own accord, perhaps following a fantasy about living in the exotic land of Persia. On December 12, 1839, Lieutenant Jules Pichon from a French diplomatic and military delegation reported his first days in Tabriz as follows:
During the first days of our stay in Tauris, Doctor Berthoni, whom I have already spoken of, presented us to Mr. Marca, an Italian by origin who was employed by the troops of the Shah of Persia as “chef de musique”; we had, in many circumstances, to praise him for his kindness. Later Mr. Marca introduced us to Mr. Colombari, an Italian like him, tied with Prince Karaman Mirza as painter.Footnote 20
Marca's proper name was Marco Brambilla, and his name was mentioned in several subsequent reports by European officers, such as Xavier Hommaire de Hell (1812–1848) in 1848 and Giuseppe Anaclerio between 1862 and 1866; the latter stated that Marco Brambilla had left Turkey to attend the court of Iran.Footnote 21 It may be that Marco Brambilla had a connection with another Italian musician who served at the Ottoman court to establish military music bands in the European style in the 1820s, Giuseppe Donizetti (1788–1856), the older brother of the famous Italian opera composer, Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848). Bosquet (also mentioned as Bousquet and Boschetti) and Royon (also mentioned as Rouyon and Rouillon) are the other two European musicians who organized marching bands in Tehran in the 1850s and 1860s.Footnote 22
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Iranian court expanded the army, and new regiments were created. Several European musicians were hired to advance European military bands in Iran. Julius Gebauer (1846–1895), born in the Czech city of Šternberk, arrived in Tehran in 1879 as one of the Austrian officers who were hired to form the new Austrian-style regiment of or in the Iranian Army (Fig. 1a).Footnote 23 He was mentioned in the Iranian Almanac (Sāl-nāmeh-ye dowlat-e ʿaliyyeh-ye Iran) of 1879, 1880, and 1881 along with the Austrian officers.Footnote 24 Julius Gebauer would perform at various gatherings of the European community in Tehran, and he received the Iranian Order of Science.Footnote 25 He was last reported at a military review in Tehran on February 21, 1895, about five months before his demise in Tehran on July 9, 1895.Footnote 26 An Italian drummer, Monsieur Angelo, also was mentioned as the director of drummers, Tabbāl-bāshi, of the Iranian army from 1877 to 1883.Footnote 27 Alexandre Duval, a French violinist from Lyon, was another European musician who lived in Iran during the last years of Nāsereddin Shah's era (d. 1896).Footnote 28 Finally, the Iranian Cossack Brigade, a cavalry unit founded in 1879, had their own music band, which started with thirty-five musicians of European style (Fig. 1b).Footnote 29 The band was mentioned in the Iranian Almanac from 1881 to 1884, and also was reported as playing at social gatherings.Footnote 30
FIGURE 1. Two bands of muzikānchi in Tehran c. 1910: (a; left) Band of the regiment of Austrian style, founded by Julius Gebauer, directed by Gholam-Reza Sālār Moʿazaz; (b; right) Band of the Iranian Cossack Brigade.
La musique chez les Persans en 1885 and the Fabrication of a Legend
Although La musique chez les Persans en 1885 has been used widely as the unique text on the history of Iranian music in the nineteenth century, as I demonstrate, it was a patriotic and self-promoting collaboration between Alfred Lemaire and Victor Advielle, two compatriots from Pas-de-Calais in France.Footnote 31 Lemaire provided a story, and Advielle added patriotic and heroic elaborations. In that short account, the history of thirty years of European military bands in Iran was reduced to three simple figures: Bousquet, his sous-chef Rouillon, who had started marching bands but abandoned them, and Marco, an Italian sailor who was accused of ruining their efforts. Bousquet and Rouillon were not criticized, most probably because they were Lemaire's French compatriots. Marco, however, was ridiculed as being excellent at making a macaroni that could compensate for his detestable music.Footnote 32 It is unclear whether this humiliation was articulated by Lemaire or Advielle; however, it was a negative stereotype of Italians. Today, we know that Marco Brambilla was more significant than Lemaire and Advielle made him out to be. Brambilla was instrumental in the formation of European marching bands in Iran. He was well known among Iranians. Twenty years after his death, a book was composed on the achievements of Nāsereddin Shah's era, and his name appeared along with that of Alfred Lemaire, as the two directors of military music (muzikānchi-bāshi) of the Iranian army.Footnote 33 Marco Brambilla was not the only European musician whose efforts were eradicated from the history of Iranian music by Alfred Lemaire, as narrated in La musique chez les Persans. The work also completely ignored a German musician who was active in Iran's music scene before Lemaire arrived in Tehran. This German musician was trained at a major conservatory and published the first piece from the repertoire of Iranian marching bands. Nonetheless, in his published account, Alfred Lemaire succeeded in eliminating him from the history of music in Iran.
Alfred Lemaire was born in Aire-sur-la-Lys, a town in the Artois region of northern France, but studied music in Paris. In 1881, he contacted the Association d'Appui Mutuel des Enfants du Pas-de-Calais Résidant à Paris, an association for Artesian people living in Paris, and requested to be registered as an associate member, although he had been living in Tehran for thirteen years.Footnote 34 That correspondence inspired a series of actions that was meant to flatter the Artesian race of the members of the association and ultimately resulted in the writing of a La musique chez les Persans. A year after Lemaire's correspondence, an unidentified member of the Association d'Appui Mutuel des Enfants du Pas-de-Calais Résidant à Paris submitted a manuscript to the Académie des Sciences, Lettres et Arts d'Arras, or Académie d'Arras, an academy founded in 1737 in Arras, the central town of the Artois region.Footnote 35 The entire manuscript was about the Artesian Alfred Lemaire and his extraordinary efforts in teaching music and organizing music bands in Iran. The submission was aimed at winning the Concours des beaux-arts, the association's award in fine arts, which had not been awarded to anyone for a long time.
Although the identity of the petitioner for the concours prize could not be revealed, there is enough reason to believe that it was Victor Advielle, another Artesian who was born in Arras. It was Victor Advielle who first wrote a short account on Alfred Lemaire in L'Artesian, the journal of the Association d'Appui Mutuel des Enfants du Pas-de-Calais Résidant à Paris, in which he also reported Lemaire's correspondence with the association. Finally, Victor Advielle produced a concise book on music among Iranians: La musique chez les Persans en 1885. This notably short and self-published account became the sole “firsthand” account on European music in Iran and Iranian music in the nineteenth century. As a token of gratitude, Lemaire persuaded the Iranian court to decorate Victor Advielle as an Officer of the Order of Science even before the book was printed. Advielle proudly mentioned his Iranian decoration on the cover of the book.
Alfred Lemaire was a master at maintaining a network of power. He was the founder and the first grand master of Lodge Bidāri Iranian, the Iranian branch of the major Masonic organization of the Grand Orient de France.Footnote 36 He was hired by the Iranian court in 1873, with a hefty annual salary of 1,300 tomans—which was the equivalent of 13,000 francs—plus an extra 300 tomans (3,000 francs) in travel expenses, and another 300 tomans to teach advanced courses to a group of ten music students.Footnote 37 His salary would be raised regularly, as it was reported to be a few thousand tomans by 1895.Footnote 38 Despite his generous salary from the court for his services as a musician, he was not completely focused on music education. He was engaged in all manners of business, including importing European goods to Iran. In 1888, his imported European goods, which could have been worth a million francs, caused a scandal in Tehran when the Russians discovered he had falsely declared them as ordered by the shah to avoid paying Russian taxes.Footnote 39 He also was engaged in exporting tobacco from Iran.Footnote 40 In 1890, he was granted a contract to build a road from the northwestern borders to Tehran. The contract included generous monopolies and exclusive rights for shipping in Lake Urmia, building resting areas, and rehabilitating state lands all along the road.Footnote 41 Alfred Lemaire had no experience in construction and had no intention to manage that ambitious project, but he probably acquired the contract by paying higher bribes to the Iranian officials so that he could sell it to subcontractors. The project was never carried out.
As historical data show, but contrary to the narrative account published by Advielle/Lemaire, Marco Brambilla was the main figure in the formation of European military bands in Iran. He was seen there from 1839 to 1866. It was only after Brambilla's death that the Iranian court hired Alfred Jean-Baptist Lemaire. It was Alfred Lemaire, however, who remained known in the history of music in Iran and became a hero. Lemaire's presence in Tehran was longer than Brambilla's; moreover, his reputation benefited from European media, such as the printing press, photography, and recorded music, all of which became part of the elite culture in Iran in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Alfred Lemaire and his fellow Artesian French community portrayed him as the hero of European music in Iran.
In the nineteenth century, racial determinism and other racial interpretations emerged among European scientists and intellectuals. Those racial discourses shaped the writing of a history of music for Iranians in Advielle's short book. The main goal of the book was to promote the Artesian race, not Iranian music. Notably, Joseph Arthur comte de Gobineau (1816–1882), whose theory of racial determinism had an enormous influence upon the subsequent development of race theories and practices in Western Europe, spent a few years in Iran and produced influential works on the Aryan race, a racial pride that motivated changing the international name of Persia to Iran, the land of Aryans.Footnote 42 When Victor Advielle provided a short account for his Artesian fellows, to make them proud of their race and to make himself proud of producing an elegant piece, he never imagined his work would shape the history of European music in Iran. Iranians discovered Advielle's piece outside of its race-promoting context, and to date there has been no reference to the writer's motivations or how they could have shaped his account.
Rediscovering a German Pianist in Tehran: Julius Heise (c. 1825–1870)
Thanks to a single mention of a European pianist serving the Iranian court, we are able to confirm the name of the German musician that Lemaire selectively failed to mention in his account of Iranian music: Julius Heise. A Dutch traveler and collector, Tinco Martinus Lycklama à Nijeholt (1837–1900), who was in Iran in September 1866, mentioned meeting a European pianist named Heise. According to Lycklama à Nijeholt, Heise was the shah's pianist and beloved by the monarch.Footnote 43 This mention, which is the only known mention of Heise in a European travelogue, was instrumental in discovering the existence and the identity of a European musician who served the Iranian court and died in Tehran in 1870. Nāsereddin Shah mentioned a pianist in his diary in 1866 and 1870. However, since his diary manuscript registered a transliterated version of Heise's name that is illegible in Persian, the name could not be deciphered by the diary's editors: one assumed it was Monazzah and the other suggested Hanireh.Footnote 44 On Sunday, February 11, 1866, Nāsereddin Shah wrote the following about Heise (Fig. 2): “Then Monsieur Heise, the Russian [sic.] musician arrived. They had brought the piano that was his own, and he played. He played extremely well.”Footnote 45 Four years later, on Thursday October 27, 1870, the shah was on the road to the Holy Shrine in Karbala when news was telegraphed from Tehran that “the gardener of the square's garden and Monsieur Heise pianozan [the pianist] both have died.”Footnote 46
FIGURE 2. Heise in Nāsereddin Shah's diary. From the National Archives and Library of Iran, courtesy of Majid Abde Amin.
Nāsereddin Shah mentioned Heise as a Russian musician, even though he was Germanic. However, the reference to a Russian reflected a common practice among Iranians who would associate any person from Europe with their typical European term. That is how farangi (Frankish) became the common Persian term for all Europeans.
A catalog of the musical works published in Austria in 1864 revealed a rare piece for the piano: “Heise, Jules, Marche triomphale. (Ueberpersische Melodien.) Wien, Wessely & Büsing. 45 kr.”Footnote 47 Two years later, in 1868, Handbuch der musikalischen Literatur provided a list of musical publications from 1860 to 1867, and included “Heise, Jul., Marche triomphale. A sa M. Nassir-Ed-Tin, Shah kadjar de Perse. Wien, Wessely 8 Ngr.”Footnote 48 In the same year of 1868 and on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the Conservatorium der Musik in Leipzig, a book was published on the history of the conservatorium titled Das Conservatorium der Musik in Leipzig.Footnote 49 It provided rare information, including the names of teachers and a list of students who had been admitted at the school each year. Among those students who were admitted on April 2, 1843, which was the first year of conservatorium's operation, was “Julius Heise aus Grossenhain.”Footnote 50 The small town of Grossenhain is located around sixty miles to the east of Leipzig in Germany.
Das Conservatorium der Musik in Leipzig revealed Heise's German given name, Julius, which was turned into its French version, Jules, when the book was published with a French title. The book also revealed that the Conservatorium der Musik was founded by the famous German composer and pianist Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847), and that it was the first school of music in Germany. The famous German composer Robert Schumann (1810–1856), one of the major figures of German Romanticism, also was a piano teacher at the conservatorium.Footnote 51 We do not know Julius Heise's year of birth; however, it is likely that the Conservatorium der Musik would accept students at a young age, which means that Julius Heise would have had a robust music education under the supervision of Felix Mendelssohn. Music lessons were taught by notable musicians (such as Schumann).
The only known copy of Marche Triomphale is at the Austrian National Library. The Landesbibliothek Coburg library in Germany holds a rare music sheet titled Les belles de Bucharest: contredanse composée pour piano. Published in Vienna by H. F. Müller Veuve, it registers Jules Heise as the composer on the cover page. Landesbibliothek Coburg librarians have concluded that the book had been published in 1848; however, a list of musical publications in 1852 in Germany and the neighboring countries included Les belles de Bucharest.Footnote 52 There is no other composer from the mid-nineteenth century identified as Julius Heise; therefore, it seems that Les belles de Bucharest was composed by the beloved pianist of Nāsereddin Shah.
It is difficult to measure the real influence of Marche Triomphale on the European music scene. As described, Tinco Martinus Lycklama à Nijeholt, another European adventurer, Orientalist, and musician, met Heise in Tehran in 1866 and apparently was inspired by him. Lycklama à Nijeholt composed a marche triomphale titled Les Gardes de Persépolise shortly after returning to Europe.Footnote 53 In addition, there seems to be a connection that is more than coincidental between Heise, or Marche Triomphale (1864), and Persian March (Op. 289), composed by the famous Austrian Johann Strauss II (1825–1899) in the same year of 1864 (Fig. 3). Since Heise was the musician living in Iran and Johann Strauss had no connection to the shah, who ruled a country far from Austria, it is highly likely that Marche Triomphale by Heise was an inspiration for Strauss's Persian March. Heise and Strauss were about the same age, and these two German-speaking musicians may have known each other at a time when the world of composers and musicians was not large. When Heise was in Vienna to publish his book in 1864, they may have met each other. It is notable that Strauss dedicated his Persian March to the Shah of Persia. Strauss had no direct connection to the shah and never traveled to Iran. Perhaps he wanted Heise to take a copy with him to Tehran, or maybe Strauss wished that Heise would inform the Shah of Persia about the piece dedicated to him. In the following years, after Johann Strauss composed his Persian March, he composed more exotic marches, such as Egyptian March (Op. 335, 1869), Russian March-Fantasy (Op. 353, 1872), Russian March (Op. 426, 1886), and Spanish March (Op. 433, 1888).
FIGURE 3. Cover pages of Persian March by Strauss, 1864–1865.
Heise must have spent some time in Iran before publishing his Marche Triomphale in 1864, perhaps having arrived in Tehran in 1863 or earlier. This suggests he lived in Iran for at least seven years, from 1863 to his death in 1870. Alfred Lemaire arrived in Tehran in early 1868, and the two musicians were the only European musicians working in Iran from 1868 until Heise's death in Tehran in 1870. Nevertheless, Lemaire completely ignored Heise in his report to Advielle, even though Heise had published the first piece of music for Iranian marching bands’ repertoire. In all likelihood, Lemaire attempted to replace Heise's version of this piece with one he wrote. Alfred Lemaire published a few pieces for the piano in Paris in 1873, when Nāsereddin Shah traveled to Europe for the first time. Those pieces included Kadjars Marsch (Marche Triumphale Persane), which appeared in Le Monde Illustré on Saturday, July 12.Footnote 54 Five years later when the shah was in Europe for the second time, Lemaire published Kadjars Marsch as a piano piece and added to the cover page that the march was “accepté Par sa Majesté Impériale Le Schah de Perse.”Footnote 55
Conclusion
In oral traditions, historical information is usually passed on orally and transformed to mythology. Ethnography is the sole method of studying those traditions. In semi-oral traditions, as found in Iran, scattered information on music has been documented randomly and sporadically. Those documents are the only sources available; they remain unchallenged. It is essential to be critical of these sole pieces of information and not accept them at face value. It may seem obvious that source criticism and the search for new sources are essential to historical studies, but, at least in the case of Iranian music, historical research is based mainly on a few available written sources that are usually taken at face value. This article has unveiled a new source that seriously challenges the dominant narratives about the history of European music in Iran. It has provided a short history of European music in Iran and explained the role of a sole document shaping that history, La musique chez les Persans en 1885. The source's role in the erasure of two significant players in the history of European music in Iran, Marco Brambilla and Julius Heise, was briefly described. I have attempted to recover Iranian music history with the discovery of hitherto hidden sources and by introducing the German pianist Julius Heise, who was active in Tehran in the 1860s. This recent discovery is now supported by the finding of Marche Triomphale, the first published composition from the repertoire of European military bands in Tehran. Exploration of the history of European music in Iran and the musical analysis of Julius Heise's Marche Triomphale reveals that a self-proclaimed hero, Alfred Lemaire, eliminated the role his predecessor Julius Heise had in shaping European music in Iran through the selective account and influential narrative of La musique chez les Persans en 1885. Not only did Lemaire selectively remove Heise from this narrative, he also further concealed the influence of Heise by composing his own march titled Kadjars March: Marche Triomphale Persane Footnote 56 without acknowledging himin the historic record.
This article highlights the need for a critical study of Alfred Lemaire's influence on the history of music in Iran, considering both traditional music and the growth of European music in Iran. Lemaire lived in Iran for four decades as the most powerful person related to music. His legacy and publications, which form the body of written sources on Iranian music prior to World War I, have been generally accepted without critical inquiry. This article is only the first step in that inquiry, which should cover all aspects of musical life in Iran. Further studies may reveal Lemaire's influence on various aspects of music, such as the theory of music and the notion of music and the musician in society. When conducting this research, it will be important to consider the social circumstances of music in Lemaire's time. He represented European music, a musical culture that seemed far superior to the traditional music of Iran, and that supposedly superior music also was presented in military uniform. Understanding Lemaire's actions is essential to understanding the music of Iran. The discovery of a forgotten work by a musician who had been eliminated from history provides one example of Lemaire's influence on the history of music in Iran.
Mohsen Mohammadi specializes in the music of Iran and the Middle/Central/Near East and plays the setar. His publications are based on his first-hand experience as a musician, on fieldwork, and on a wide range of first-hand historical sources including manuscripts, diaries and memories, old newspapers, and early recordings. His research interests include musical cultures in Persian and Indo-Persian countries, history of music in oral traditions, colonial and contemporary literature on Iranian music, classicization of music, and early recordings. He is currently Director of Indo-Persian music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.
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