Ali-Naqi Vaziri

Ali-Naqi Vaziri (Persian: علی نقی وزیری; 1 October 1886 in Tehran – 9 September 1979), also transcribed as Ali Naghi Vaziri, was a composer, thinker, and celebrated player of the tar. He is considered a revolutionary icon in the history of 20th-century Persian music. Ali-Naqi Vaziri was born on 1 October 1886, in Tehran, Qajar Iran. He was one of the seven children of Musa Khan Vaziri (a prominent official in the Persian Cossack Brigade) and Bibi Khanoom Astarabadi, a notable Iranian writer, satirist, and a pioneering figure in the women's movement of Iran; her book Ma'ayeb al-Rejal (Failings of Men, also translated as Vices of Men) is considered by some as the first declaration of women's rights in the modern history of Iran. The celebrated painter Hassan Ali Khan Vaziri was his brother. Ali-Naqi Vaziri was a master of Persian classical music, so he was able to play the tar in a style very reminiscent of that of Mirza Abdollah. He always looked for new dimensions and perspectives in musical expression, and by doing so he revolutionised the style of playing the tar. He was the first to transcribe the classical radif of the Persian music. He developed the sori and koron symbols to annotate Persian quarter-tone notes in standardized musical notation. Vaziri for years was the director of the Tehran Conservatory of Music and a professor at the University of Tehran. Innovations Vaziri was one the first Persian musicians in the 20th century to go to Europe to study music, and after his return to Tehran in 1924. He was for a long time the only traditional instrumentalist familiar with and promoted the theory of Western classical music. He wrote the first transcription of Iranian music using European staff notation in his lute instruction book Dastur-e Tar, published in Iran (1913) and Germany (1923).