JOURNAL OF DERAMATIC ARTS AND MUSIC
Year:2018 | Volume:8 | Issue:15 |Papers Count:8

A culture consists of behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols of a group of people which are accepted by them in their life and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. But unfortunately, during the last hundred years, some structural characteristics of rituals have been weakened and even deleted. For its historical ancientness and climatic vastness and also because of spread of numerous ethnic groups, Iran has extensive possibilities for cultural research. These researches can represent and introduce cultural features of this antique civilization. Therefore, the present research, in direction of these purposes, tries to unfold some of symbolic meanings in one of the ancient ceremonies in Iran named Chamar. Aimed at representing and promoting the cultural aspects of the ancient civilization of Iran, this research is to find symbolic issues in an ancient ritual, Chamar, and its existence in the unconsciousness of this nation. This ritual is a mixed set of behaviors, gestures, taboos and customs that concentrate on mourning and all of the conventions of Chamar are connected to each other. On this basis, this research as a case study focuses on the Kord folk living in west of Iran, and by means of qualitative method and by use of some particular branches of that method including historical, descriptive, analytic method and structural analysis investigates the symbolic characteristics of ritual of chamar. The results of this research show that symbols and symbolism as most important way of expressing concepts have a crucial position at the ancient ritual of Chamar. These symbols have been fused in that ritual and particularly could be formulated in two kinds of symbols; symbolic tools and symbolic behaviors. Therefore, each tool and every behavior does not have the usual function of everyday life but forms symbolic things and symbolic actions that by use of meaningful symbols, have a shared meaning for all the members of folk, make great ideas and sublime effects that go beyond words. A brief look at the ceremonies of Chamar and its materials shows that Symbols and Symbolization, as a principal way of explanation of meanings, have a unique situation in these ceremonies. It seems that the Symbolization of these ceremonies has a long history of creation and it exists in the mind and beliefs of this nation. These Symbols are mixed in the structure of the ceremonies and leads humans to deep thinking. Therefore, in a brief glance, gathering the inconsolable men and women in ceremonies of Chamar in circle rows, and using musical and also Symbolic elements like horse, Alam, Kotal and using behavioral elements as wearing black and cutting hairs and other behaviors, builds the Symbolic expression that leads minds towards death and helps these men and women to overcome their everyday situations and conducts them towards a new meaningful life.

War is an important part of human history. The oldest tragedy (written remaining) in the world and the oldest drama that human have until today is ‘ The Persians’ or ‘ The Iranian’ , a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus. A drama which focuses mainly on ‘ War’ . This work is assisted with three other drama that all of them are destroyed. Theater thinking, like any other thinking has always been influenced by history. No doubt that historical events affected the thinking of theater artists. The history of war is one of the major events that have affected the art of theater. War is an important part of human history and its consequences even in times of peace as well as in the works of artists devoted to special status. War has always had a special bond with the theater. The theater artists always have defined their position against war. They consider theater as a very good media to convey their views to the war. The war between nations, ethnic wars, tribal wars, the crusades or the world wars are all areas that have inspired creation of theatrical works. On the other hand, the duty and function of each of the arts [and particularly theater], is to create an aesthetic experience as well as paving the way to enter the field of subjective and objective knowledge. Dramatic Arts, as a result of the long history of the human future, is by far one of the dominant themes of war. This article is based on the assumption that war as a historical phenomenon has influenced the art of theater and theater has been effective in the revolution and clarification of public opinion.

Human has a meaningful connection with his dwelling place. By upbuilding and constructing, he is seeking to find his foothold in the world. In other words, the home in which a man lives, is not just a few square meters of the land and a roof over his head, but it is a place of peace, rest and establishment of his being. Home gives to the man possibility of daydreaming and so, the man symbolizes his inner intentions and creates meaning through building home and making it in the form of artwork. Actually, human being appertains to the world and by building a home, he makes his affiliation palpable. On the other hand, first intention of home is meaning association. So, in the ontological thoughts, Home is the place of identification, authentication and symbol of the human self. It is worth noting, that the purpose of the home in this research is not its architectural and functional aspects, but here is concerned to meaning and concept of home; this refers to those aspects of home that originate of man as a meaning conceptualizer and differ from its instrumental and technical aspects. Therefore, Home as an ontological foundation has a meaningful presence in Dariush Mehrjui’ s movies. On context of the conflict between tradition and modernity, this concept in his works is under influence of Dariush Shayegan’ s thoughts. In this paper, the authors have attempted to describe and explain the concept of Home in Mehrjui’ s movies and orientation of his movies characters in transition between tradition and modernity; the basis of Shayegan’ s argument is the analysis of oriental/Iranian man in relation to the occident. He brings up this relation in context of our retardation or historical distance with west part of world. Also, the question in Dariush Mehrjui’ s films is what the obligation of Iranian human is in confrontation whit demands of modern society. According to Darius Shayegan’ s idea, eastern (Iranian) human has been suffered schizophrenia and psychosis in confronting with Western modernity that has shown in women and men faces and conditions of Mehrjui’ s movies in related to privative or affirmative presence of Home. He settles in the group of filmmakers that created a critical stream in filmmaking known as the new wave of Iranian cinema in 1960 and 1970. Concepts such as “ alienation” , “ Schizophrenia” , “ conflict between tradition and modernity” , and also “ cultural conflict” are exposed in Mehrjui’ s movies, concepts that we can find and study them in the works of Darius Shayegan. Theoretical framework in this study has two bases. The first is based on ontological search of the Home in works of thinkers such as Christian Norberg-Schulz, Amos Rappaport and Carl Gustav Jung and second base includes Dariush Shayegan’ s ideas at study of condition and positioning of Iranian human in confronting or transition from tradition to modernity. Data analysis method in this study is adaptive-analysis and information gathering have been conducted by referring to the written sources and watching the Movies. The result of this study is that the how home in Mehrjui’ s movies represents the orientation, identity, mood and mental condition of characters.

In this research, at the first step the concept of memory and time are explained from Bergson and Deleuze’ s perspective. Then the influences and changes caused by these ideas are explained as well. After that, it comes the analysis of some of contemporary Iranian films which have a modern narrative structure in order to formulate a single pattern for reading this kind of films. Time as an experience of human life never has a steady sense for mankind. All the great thinkers and scientists have tried to find an answer for the big question time. In recent years, time and memory are favored topics among theoreticians and filmmakers. By having some of the most important ideas about these subjects in their minds, they focused on works which emphasis on the concept of time as an original experience in the process of observation. This point of view also can be traced in the serious works of Iranian cinema. In modern times, all the ideas about perception of time are influenced by Bergson and his followers’ ideas. Bergson did not believe in time as only a series of changes and alterations within the framework of an identity. He did not believe of moving in space as the best way of explaining time either. After Bergson, Gilles Deleuze continued the discussion about duration from his own stand point of view. He believes if the concept of durations be examined precisely, the result would be the fact that each part of time has its own moment and regarding its special way of happening has a unique quality, which makes it different from other moments. In the films influenced by Bergson and Deleuze ideas, narrative is based on the inner, subjective and qualified perception of time by the characters. As a result, narrative and all its elements alter in this kind of cinema. Film has an inevitable time cast and this time order imposes on the audience during the experience of watching film and the audiences cannot do anything to change the order and repetition of events. Most of the narrative process in film shaped by ordering and organizing the element of time. Many films have been made from a subjective point of view in Iranian cinema but only a few of them have memory of the past as their dominant theme. But in recent years, the production of these kind of films has increased and it shows the popularity of this perspective among Iranian filmmakers in recent years. In order to explain the result of research, four films have been selected because of their emphasis on concept of memory: The Pear Tree (Darush Mehjouie, 1996), Father’ s farm (Rasoul Mollagholipor, 2002), Last Step (Ali Mosaffa, 2011) and The Yellow, Shallow Sky (Bahram Tavvakoli, 2012). In this research, after the analysis of contemporary philosophical ideas about memory-time and its influence on narrative in film, Iranian contemporary cinema has been analyzed from this stand point of view. This research aims at finding out how these kinds of films were successful to deliver these ideas.

Narrative or what Gerard Genette calls discourse is a fundamental aspect of any text to be studied. Since there have been a little structural study on Iranian cinema, this article attempts to present a structural pattern of a triumphant Iranian movie and scrutinize its narrative structure. Asghar Farhadi is one of the most successful Iranian directors in recent years. Most of his late movies have gained lots of international prizes and praised by famous critics along the world. A Separation (2011) is the first Iranian drama film to ever win the Oscar prize. It focuses on an Iranian middle-class couple who separate, and the conflicts that arise when the husband hires a lower-class caregiver for his elderly father, who suffers from Alzheimer’ s disease. It also won the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Silver Bears for Best Actress and Best Actor at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, becoming the first Iranian film to win the Golden Bear. It also won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, making it the first non-English film in five years to achieve this. It is among the ten most popular movies and bestsellers in Iran. The narrative structure of this movie has been studied according to the theories of Gerard Genette and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. Genette discusses time and studies it in the relation between story and text. He introduces three concepts of “ order” , “ duration” and “ frequency” to evaluate this relation. According to Genette, “ order” is the relation between the time of the story and that of the text or discourse. He defines “ duration” as the relation between the time the events are supposed to have taken to occur and the amount of text devoted to their narration. Under “ frequency” , he discusses the relation between the number of times an event happens in the story and the number of times it is narrated in the text. Next, Rimmon-Kenan’ s theory of characterization in narrative has been applied to A Separation. Rimmon-Kenan classifies and explains different ways of characterization narrative which are “ direct definition” and “ indirect representation” . According to her indirect representation happens through action, speech, external appearance, environment and analogy. This research reveals that talking about order, there is no anachronies in the text except one which creates the plot’ s main crisis. This linear relationship between story and text serves for the realist genre of the movie. Duration of the text is also at the service of creating a realist atmosphere, most the important scenes of the movie have the “ scene” type of duration that means they have given the same times as that of the story. Frequency is also singulative in most parts of the text, except where there is a need for emphasis on one. Characterization analysis also shows that the indirect representation dominates the characterization in the narrative. Moreover, among various techniques of indirect representation; action, speech and analogy are used in this text.

This research examines the development of the blending of arts and the blurring of their boundaries in Fluxus International Art Movement. Fluxus, the core of which was formed in the experimental composition classes of John Cage, included artists who employed diverse artistic media based on similarities of arts, to create various works with infinite possible interpretations. This collage-like and blended character, which dominates all Fluxus works, is evident in first Fluxus festivals and concerts conducted by George Maciunas, the self-proclaimed leader of the group, as well as in wide activities by other members in various fields. Dick Higgins considers this character the central feature of Fluxus works and refers to it as intermedia. Higgins’ intermedia schema conveys the view of Fluxus that there are no limitations neither on blending experiences from artistic fields with different levels nor on presenting a classification of the blending of arts itself, as the presence of Action Music in the center of this schema emphasizes its importance in the views of Fluxus. Thus, the present study intends to highlight the legacy inherited by Fluxus and the influence of early twentieth-century artistic traditions such as Futurism and Dadaism on Fluxus in the manifestos and diagrams of George Maciunas as well as on Higgins’ intermedia classifications of Fluxus activities. This paper seeks to identify the concepts that have influenced the necessity and possibility of blending arts in Fluxus and explore their evolution with the gradual development of Fluxus. The objective is revealing the perspective of Fluxus on the blending of arts and the development of this perspective during 1950s and 1960s. The research employs a descriptive-analytical method. It relies on library resources specially the writings and records of Fluxus activities. The history of Fluxus involves two periods in the blending of arts. From late 1950s to the first half of 1960s, we can see the formation and flourishing of the idea of blending arts with a focus on Action Music that involves blends with simple, general, and concise actions. Therefore, the boundaries between arts are still clear. The blending of arts in this period, considering the tendency of Fluxus toward organization of sound and audio-visual elements, indicates the influence “ simultaneity” from Cage’ s first period. Starting from the second half of 1960s, the blending of arts inclines toward large-scale blending of modern media and technologies, and toward deep and global concepts. Therefore, it seems impossible to distinguish arts. The blending of arts in this period coincides with the development of “ simultaneity” during Cage’ s second period and in some cases, such as large-scale performance and use of some modern media, its impact on Cage’ s concept of simultaneity should be acknowledged. We also witness an inverse interplay in the transformation of the scores of Fluxus and Cage. So that the text scores of Fluxus in the second period, under the influence of Cage, tend toward visual scores, while Cage’ s graphic scores tend toward the text scores of Song Book where the impact of Fluxus on Cage is visible.

The main purpose of this paper is analyzing pitch-class organization and compositional techniques in “ Dialogues” , a piece composed by Elliott Carter. Written in 2003, the piece has been composed for piano and chamber orchestra. In the first part, the authors have studied the ways in which the composer has represented his harmonic language, as well as the manners that he has pursued in order to organize pitch-classes: Utilizing some sets having unique properties, such as sets (“ chords” in his own word rather than “ sets” ) which are two all-interval tetrachords, (0146) and (0137) with Forte names of 4-Z15 and 4-Z29 and all-trichord hexachord (012478), with Forte name of 6-Z17. Another kind of sets have been presented which have a significant role through the piece, and those are aggregates. These four sets (as the composer himself named them “ key chords” ) have a structural role in the harmony of the piece. Except the sets mentioned above, there are some sets which have a graphical phenomenon: symmetry on the circle diagram. We can summarize the utilization of symmetric sets in two ways. First, using a symmetric set as a superset of one of the key chords. In this way, we can separately consider the importance of the superset on the one hand, and its key chord subset on the other. Second, we can find one of the key chord subsets as the subset of the symmetric superset. There is a priority of using symmetry over using key chords or their subsets in the second way. It also has been asserted that the above sets interactively have been combined together and the ways Carter has used these sets in the piece have been reviewed and classified all together. We can follow some of his used procedures in the piece such as adding or removing pitch-classes and consequently augmenting or diminishing intervals, key chords transformations, key chords as subsets as well as utilizing invariance between all-trichord hexachords. In the second part, some other techniques have been presented which demonstrate how Carter makes use of them as compositional possibilities in the piece. Using key chords in the shape of vertical blocks as well as melodies are the most common ways in which Carter combines key chords together. In addition, we can follow three employed methods the composer has exerted aggregates. First, which is similar to serial music, the pitch-classes have been used without repetition to form an aggregate. In the second, we find repeated pitch-classes. In the third, some sets present incomplete aggregates lacking one or two pitch-classes (semi-aggregates). It may be logical to consider the third way as a combination of the first and the second categories. The third method is also most typically found in sets composed in vertical or horizontal structures. Both combinations are other techniques that provide new combinations which can lead to larger sets such as Key chords, subsets, or even aggregates. It has been tried in almost every part of this paper to simplify the complexity of the piece with the analytical examples taken from the “ Dialogues” score.

The purpose of this paper is studying the main compositional elements such as harmony, form, and mode of the piece “ Parvane” (Butterfly) composed by the Iranian composer, Emanuel Melik-Aslanian. The main reason for choosing this piece is that the composer established a new musical language based on Iranian traditional modes (Dastgā h), in this case Chahā rgā h. Using a new method of harmonizing based on these modes, he achieved a new musical idiom which is different from previous pieces composed by Iranian composers. There is not enough information about Aslanian’ s works, and only few interviews can be found about his compositions. Thus, analytical studies about form, mode, and harmony of his works are imperative. The main question of this study is “ What are the main compositional elements in this piece. Especially in terms of harmonic techniques, what are the elements which deal with Iranian traditional modes? ” To this aim, we pursue our study in three steps. Owing to the prominent role of themes and form in analyzing a thematic piece, the first part of our study associates with formal and thematic features. The form of the piece can be described as compound ternary, ABA’ , which has an introduction part at the beginning alongside a coda. In the second step, the study focuses on modal features. Exploiting Iranian modes systems, based on well-tempered system, Aslanian has given an oriental atmosphere to this piece. It can be said that there is a relationship between these modes and harmony in this piece. Therefore, in the third step we try to find these relationships. In this part of the paper, we try to explore the composer’ s approach toward harmony. The structure of chords can be described mainly in quartal (and quintal) system, alongside some tertian harmonic constructions. It should be noted that theses tertian chords are different from those of traditional functional harmony. For instance, the composer has used tertian 7th chords with eliminated third, in second or third inversion positions, which are not commonplace in traditional harmony. Sometimes, triad and other chords concerning thirds can be classified as passing chords among quartal and quintal chords. Moreover, in some cases, the tertian chords’ relations are ambiguous, and using tertian harmony with added tones obscures the presence of tonality. Actually, Aslanin, by means of these approaches, avoided using traditional tonal harmony. On the other hand, as mentioned previously, there is a relationship between modes and the choice of chords in this piece. By using the modes’ structural tones, the chords mainly increase the presence of modality of Chahā rgā h and other related modes. As a case in point, the first chord of the piece consists of three notes (F#, G, C#), which are structurally important in F# Chahā rgā h. Using natural G, which differentiate between major mode and this mode, can also be demonstrated by using this chord. In the end, studying the elements in this piece, it can be understood how Aslanian has created this piece based on traditional Iranian modes and had a new approach toward harmony, at the same time.