A Century of Setar Music

简介

Setar (i.e. "three strings") is one of the members of the lute family. This large family of chordophones includes numerous instruments with different sizes and shapes that are found in many countries in western Asia and in the Middle East, however, setar as we know in the Persian music is now restricted to the central parts of the Iranian plateau. It seems that its present shape is the RESULT of a long period of evolution both in morphology and in sonority. It was known previously as sesim (i.e. "three strings") but from two and a half centuries age Dervish Moshtaq-Ali Shah from Kerman added a fourth drone string to it and called it sim-e moshtaq (i.e. string of Moshtaq). To be precise, it is the white string between the yellow and the bass strings. Though his contribution contradicted with the nomenclature of the INSTRUMENT, it improved its sonority further and became finally popular. In comparison with tar that was proper enough to serve both in classical music and light Motrebi music, setar became restricted to the circles of mystics, people of high class and music connoisseurs. Its thin sonority deprived it from being applied to Motrebi music. Apparent ease in learning and playing setar, especially for those acquainted previously with tar, it was regarded for a while as the second instrument to the majority of tar-players and other instrumentalists. This was the cause of a common negligence of its playing techniques. As it might be expected, the technique of playing any individual instrument is transferred from a generation to the next. Meanwhile the technique is always associated with morphologic characters of each instrument.

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